ABSTRACT
In the last fifteen years a great deal of research about the second generation has appeared in academic journals and books. These publications have stirred a wider theoretical debate about assimilation and integration. Scholars in the United States have been at the forefront of studies producing both research results and theoretical models on the subject of the second generation. Europe’s scholars are now catching up, starting to respond to the theoretical notions produced within the North American context, notably where the US-born children of Mexican and Asian immigrants dominate discussion about the second generation. In Europe, these groups are, as a whole, ethnically very varied, the largest populations therein having parents who either come from former European colonies or were recruited as labour migrants. Compared to those in the US, Europe’s labour migrants have notably less diverse economic backgrounds. Not all, but most, had come from countryside villages and hardly had any schooling.
