The Sociology of Immigration: From Assimilation to Segmented Assimilation, from the American Experience to the Global Arena

Theory and research in international migration have centered on two basic sets of questions: Why does migration occur, and how is it sustained over time? What happens to the migrants in the receiving societies and what are the economic, social, and political consequences of their presence? While sociologists have historically focused primarily on the second set of questions, in the context of the “age of migration” (Castles and Miller 1993) they have also paid increasing attention to the first set.