scholarly journals The Effects of Language Skills on the Economic Assimilation of Female Immigrants in the United States

2018 ◽  
Vol 86 (6) ◽  
pp. 789-815 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary Antonia Silles
2000 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 419-434 ◽  
Author(s):  
MOHAMMADREZA HOJAT ◽  
REZA SHAPURIAN ◽  
DANESH FOROUGHI ◽  
HABIB NAYERAHMADI ◽  
MITRA FARZANEH ◽  
...  

This study compares Iranian male and female immigrants in the United States on their attitudes toward marriage and the family. Participants were 160 Iranians in the United States. A 10-item attitude scale measured the degree of traditional attitudes (a stand taken in the prevalent Iranian culture as opposed to that in the mainstream American society) toward premarital sex, marriage, and the family. Results showed Iranian men scored significantly higher than Iranian women on the traditional attitude scale ( p < .05, effect size estimate = .39). Gender difference remained significant after adjusting for participants' age. The attitudinal disparity between Iranian male and female immigrants observed in this study can provide an explanation for a high rate of marital dissolution among Iranians in the United States. Findings can also help in understanding some underlying issues that contribute to intra- and interpersonal tension among the immigrants with implications in marital and family therapy.


2018 ◽  
Vol 52 (1) ◽  
pp. 125-158 ◽  
Author(s):  
Animesh Giri

Given that refugees may be fleeing from political, social, racial, ethnic, or religious persecution, they are not expected to be economically independent upon arrival to the United States. Considerable state and federal resources are specifically aimed at the economic assimilation of refugees in the United States. In this article, I examine the extent to which average refugee wages have assimilated toward those of their native counterparts in the United States. Among synthetic cohorts from 1990 to 2000, most recent young refugees increase average refugee wages by approximately 17 percent within a decade. Similarly, in the period between 2000 and 2010, the gains for young and recent refugees increase average refugee wages by approximately 22 percent. In contrast, across both decades, duration effects for the oldest refugee cohorts — irrespective of their length of stay in the United States — exert a considerable downward push on average refugee wages. The contrasts in wage contributions for the oldest and youngest cohorts are less extreme for non-refugee immigrants. These findings underscore the importance of age at entry into the United States for wage assimilation, especially in the case of refugees.


2018 ◽  
Vol 52 (2) ◽  
pp. 524-558 ◽  
Author(s):  
Debora Pricila Birgier ◽  
Christer Lundh ◽  
Yitchak Haberfeld ◽  
Erik Elldér

We study the interplay between host countries’ characteristics and self-selection patterns in relation to refugees’ economic assimilation using a natural experiment in which immigrants from one region migrated to three destinations under similar circumstances. We focus on emigrants fleeing from Argentina and Chile during the military regimes there to the United States, Sweden, and Israel. We find that those refugees show patterns of selection and assimilation similar to those of economic immigrants. Immigrants to the United States and Israel exhibit better selection patterns and consequently faster assimilation than immigrants to Sweden even considering the positive effect of the Swedish market structure.


2002 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 197-219 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dudley L. Poston

This article analyzed the economic attainment patterns of Asian-born male and female immigrants to the United States using hierarchical linear models (HLM). Specifically, it examined to what extent selected measures of human capital and cultural capital characteristics affect the levels of earnings of male and female Asian-born immigrants. The principal data source for this article came from the five percent file of individual census questionnaires from the Public Use Microdata Samples of the 1990 US Census of Population. In general, the results of the study conform to previous research, i.e., educational attainment at both the micro and macro levels was an important predictor of earnings achievement. As to cultural capital or country level variables, the analysis did not show evidence of statistically significant effects on earnings. The final section discusses the advantages of using the HLM approach as well as issues for further research.


1983 ◽  
Vol 44 (3) ◽  
pp. 245
Author(s):  
Marcus E. Jones ◽  
Delores M. Mortimer ◽  
Roy S. Bryce-Laporte

2011 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 629-646 ◽  
Author(s):  
Inge-Marie Eigsti ◽  
Carol Weitzman ◽  
Jillian Schuh ◽  
Ashley de Marchena ◽  
B. J. Casey

AbstractThis study focuses on the association between language skills and core cognitive processes relative to the duration of institutionalization in children adopted from orphanages abroad. Participants in the adoptive group (n = 46) had arrived in the United States between the ages of 2 and 84 months (mean = 24 months), and had been living in the United States for 1–9 years. Drawing on both experimental and standardized assessments, language skills of the international adoptees differed as a function of length of time spent in an institution and from those of 24 nonadopted controls. Top-down cognitive assessments including measures of explicit memory and cognitive control differed between adopted and nonadopted children, yet differences between groups in bottom-up implicit learning processes were unremarkable. Based on the present findings, we propose a speculative model linking language and cognitive changes to underlying neural circuitry alterations that reflect the impact of chronic stress, due to adoptees' experience of noncontingent, nonindividualized caregiving. Thus, the present study provides support for a relationship between domain-general cognitive processes and language acquisition, and describes a potential mechanism by which language skills are affected by institutionalization.


Author(s):  
Tsedal Neeley

This chapter sets the stage with the dramatic announcement by Hiroshi Mikitani, CEO of Rakuten, informing his 10,000 employees, of which over 7,100 are Japanese nationals, that from that day forward they would need to speak English in the workplace. In two years, they would be required to clear a proficiency test or risk demotion. This chapter introduces three employees who represent the categories that make up the core of the book. The first is Kenji, a Japanese engineer gripped by shock and fear that his years of hard work with the company will count for naught, who then receives the technical and emotional support to practice new English language skills. Next is Robert, a native English-speaking marketing manager from the United States, thrilled that the company is switching to his native language and who anticipates an easy career advance only to have his sense of privilege curtailed by new, daily work requirements, followed by a trip to Japan where his cultural blinders begin to loosen. Finally, there is the German IT technician, Inga, who is pleased by the announcement, who hopes it will streamline her work process—and learns that it does once she climbs the steep and often frustrating learning curve.


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