From Undesirable to Marriageable

• Author: Jennifer Lee
• DOI: 10.1177/0002716215594626
• Published date: 01 November 2015
• Date: 01 November 2015
• Subject Matter: Section I: Intermarriage, Boundary Crossing, and Identity

ANNALS, AAPSS, 662, November 2015 79

DOI: 10.1177/0002716215594626

From

Undesirable to

Marriageable:

Hyper-

Selectivity and

the Racial

Mobility of

Asian

Americans

By

JENNIFER LEE

594626ANN The Annals of the American AcademyFrom Undesirable to Marriagable

research-article2015

Asian Americans are at the vanguard of rising intermar-

riage in the United States. Once deemed “undesirable”

and “unassimilable,” Asian Americans have become the

most “marriageable” racial minority group in the coun-

try. In this article, I posit that the passage of the 1965

Immigration and Nationality Act altered the socioeco-

nomic profiles of Asian immigrants to the United States,

thereby making them more desirable partners in the

marriage market. Further, I explain interracial “mar-

riageability” as a social construction and document how

the rising rate of intermarriage has resulted in a growing

Asian multiracial population that experiences fewer

social identity constraints than do other multiracial

Americans. Some demographers claim that these trends

reflect a “diversity explosion,” in which racial boundaries

are upending, especially for Asian Americans. However,

the gendered patterns of intermarriage and the persis-

tence of racial and gender stereotypes, including the

“model minority” trope in the case of Asian Americans,

indicate that while Asians may have achieved racial

mobility, racial boundaries persist and inhibit full incor-

poration.

Keywords: Asian Americans; intermarriage; multira-

cial identification; racial mobility; model

minority

Interracial marriage is on the rise and accounts

for one in twelve marriages in the United

States. Among new marriages that took place

between 2008 and 2010, the ratio narrows to one

in seven (Frey 2014). That interracial marriage

was illegal in sixteen states as late as 1967 makes

Jennifer Lee is a professor of sociology at the University of

California, Irvine. Her recent work bridges research in

immigration, culture, and social psychology to debunk the

assumption that Asian American educational achievement

can be reduced to cultural values and traits. Her new work

focuses on Asian Americans and affirmative action.

NOTE: The author wishes to thank the Russell Sage

Foundation for generously providing the funding on which

the research for this article is based. For incisive comments

and suggestions on an earlier draft, the author thanks the

four anonymous reviewers and the editor of thi s speci al

issue, Dan Rodríguez-García.