ABSTRACT
In 1992, in the midst of a recession, high crime, and the crack epidemic in the United States, Herbert Gans proposed that many second-generation immigrants, specifically the darker-skinned ones, were at risk of downward mobility. Quickly on Gan's heels, Alejandro Portes and Min Zhou built on this idea, publishing their defining statement on what they called segmented theory. In the Assimilation Process there has been an explosion of research on assimilation and acculturation of the second generation in the United States in the past 20 years, and more recently in Western Europe. Broadly, the most influential studies, largely guided by either segmented or new assimilation theories, examine differences between immigrant groups, and between immigrants and native-born, non-immigrants. Zhou and her colleagues theoretical stance comes through clearly in the way they ignore the sister, whose life seems to dramatically diverge from Rodolfo's.
