| Summary: | "Despite the common perception that most persons of Mexican origin in the U.S are undocumented immigrants or the young children of immigrants, the majority are citizens and have been living in the U.S. for three or more generations. This group initially makes strides on education, English language use, socioeconomic status, intermarriage, residential segregation, and political participation, but progress halts at the second generation as poverty rates remain high, educational attainment declines for the third and fourth generations, and ethnic identity remains generally strong. In these ways, the experience of Mexican Americans differs considerably from previous waves of white European immigrants that were incorporated and assimilated fully into the mainstream within two or three generations. This book examines what ethnicity means and how it is negotiated in the lives of multiple generations of Mexican Americans. Rooted in a large-scale longitudinal and representative survey of 1,500 Mexican Americans living in the West across 35 years, Telles and Sue draw on 72 in-depth interviews to examine individual ethnic strategies and demonstrate that integration is often a process that varies by individual rather than a one-way movement. They detail the myriad ways Mexican Americans understand themselves in relation to their ethnicity, how ethnic identity is often consequential rather than symbolic or optional, that ethnic identity and national identity often co-exist, the meaning of speaking or not speaking Spanish, and their attitudes towards immigration. Telles and Sue are able to show how, when, and why ethnicity matters or does not for multiple generations of Mexican Americans and argue their experiences lie somewhere between Mexican and American."--
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