The origins of “new assimilation theory”

Boundaries play an important role in Richard Alba’s articulation of new assimilation theory, as is evident in the major works he has produced during the past two decades. This article traces his interest in boundaries to “The Twilight of Ethnicity among Americans of European Ancestry: The Case of Italians”, an article he published in ERS in 1985. It is in this article and a related book published the same year that one can begin to trace the evolution of his thinking on both ethnic boundaries and the cultural content contained within those boundaries.