We propose to undertake a detailed study of developmental outcomes concerning schooling, employment, and social incorporation among young adult children of post-1965 immigrants to metropolitan New York City. Our research program includes: 1) a telephone survey of 3,200 respondents from six to eight second generation and native born groups, 2) in-depth, in-person, followup interviews with 480 of the survey respondents, and 3) six strategically positioned ethnographies. The Russell Sage Foundation initiated this program and is expected to fund a substantial portion of the total cost. Here, we request support for the principal investigators, the in-depth interviewing, and the ethnographic component of the research program. We wish to study native born young adults aged 18-32 with parents who immigrated after 1965 (the second generation) or who were born abroad but arrived here by age 12 and grew up here (the """"""""1.5 generation""""""""). We focus on children from the three largest sending regions, Anglophone West Indians, Dominicans, and mainland Chinese, and compare them with native young adults with native white, black, and Puerto Rican parents. If sufficient funding is developed, we will add comparison groups from non-mainland Chinese and Colombian, Ecuadoran, and Peruvian backgrounds, We chose age 18 as the practical minimum for leaving school and entering the labor force and 32 as the oldest a native child of post-1965 immigrants could be in 1997. Our study will provide data to address the central questions raised by current scholarship on immigrant incorporation, assimilation, and the new second generation, particularly how this crucial cohort is facing issues of educational attainment, employment, discrimination, inter- group relations, and individual and group identification. Its response to these issues will define not only the health of individuals and communities, but the meaning of assimilation in the twenty-first century.
