Mixed Unions and Immigrant-Group Integration in North America and Western Europe

• Author: Richard Alba,Nancy Foner
• Published date: 01 November 2015
• Date: 01 November 2015
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/0002716215594611
• Subject Matter: Section I: Intermarriage, Boundary Crossing, and Identity

38 ANNALS, AAPSS, 662, November 2015

DOI: 10.1177/0002716215594611

Mixed Unions

and Immigrant-

Group

Integration in

North America

and Western

Europe

By

RICHARD ALBA

and

NANCY FONER

594611ANN The Annals of the American AcademyMixed Unions and Immigrant-Group Integration

research-article2015

We examine unions between individuals with non-

Western immigrant origins and those from the native

majorities in six North American and Western European

countries: Canada, France, Germany, Great Britain,

the Netherlands, and the United States. The analysis

shows that certain deep social cleavages, involving

African ancestry in the United States and Muslim reli-

gion in Western Europe, hinder the formation of mixed

unions; in the European case, low rates of mixed unions

are linked in some countries to high rates of transna-

tional marriage. Overall, the rates of mixed unions

appear to be higher in Canada, France, and the United

States, suggesting a role for integration-related ideolo-

gies. In the case of the United States, we are able to

trace the consequences of mixed unions, which appear

likely to have the effect of changing, or expanding, the

societal mainstream. Yet we conclude that mixed

unions do not have a uniform significance for integra-

tion and that their effects are context-dependent.

Keywords: mixed unions; transnational marriage;

integration; race; religion

Social boundaries—essentially, the social dis-

tinctions individuals make to orient their

ideas about, attitudes toward, and behavior in

relation to others—profoundly shape the incor-

poration of immigrants and the generations

that succeed them (Alba 2005; Wimmer 2013).

The boundaries between native majorities and

Richard Alba is a distinguished professor of sociology at

the City University of New York’s Graduate Center. His

latest book, coauthored with Nancy Foner, is Strangers No

More: Immigration and the Challenges of Integration in

North America and Western Europe (Princeton University

Press 2015).

Nancy Foner is a distinguished professor of sociology at

Hunter College and the Graduate Center, City

University of New York. Her many books include From

Ellis Island to JFK: New York’s Two Great Waves of

Immigration (Yale University Press 2000) and In a New

Land: A Comparative View of Immigration (New York

University Press 2005).

MIXED UNIONS AND IMMIGRANT-GROUP INTEGRATION 39

immigrant minorities are typically embedded in a range of institutions, from

schools to religious bodies, and generally involve steep asymmetries of power and

resources. The relative power of the native majority is particularly imposing when

it comes to defining who is a member of the society by right and who is an “out-

sider.” Coming to feel like an “insider” and being treated like one are central

elements in the process of integration, but the processes involved are structured

by the nature of immigrant-/native-origin boundaries.

If boundaries are critical to understanding processes of integration, so too are

the actual social relations that members of immigrant minorities develop with the

native majority. (By “integration,” we refer to processes that allow members of

immigrant-origin groups to attain, usually gradually and approximately, the same

opportunities long-term native-parentage citizens have, such as improved socio-

economic position for themselves and their children, as well as to gain inclusion

and acceptance in a broad range of societal institutions [Berry 1997].) The fre-

quency and nature of boundary-crossing relationships point to the conditions

under which individuals of immigrant origin can be accepted in the mainstream.

The mainstream refers here to those cultural and social spaces where the native

majority feels at home and its presence is taken for granted and seen as unprob-

lematic; it includes institutions such as schools and government, informal settings

such as heavily native-majority neighborhoods, and accepted ways of behaving.

Especially revealing is when individuals of minority and majority origins form

mixed unions—which simultaneously involve intense intimacy between two peo-

ple and ramify through extended-family networks. We speak here mainly of

“mixed unions” because of the changing status of marriage as the main legitimate

bond uniting couples who live and raise children together. Suffice to say that the

percentage of births to unmarried mothers, rising in the rich societies to heights

unimaginable a half century ago, is an indicator of a decline in marriage’s for-

merly privileged status.

Our concern is not only with the occurrence of mixed unions—and why they

are more frequent among some immigrant-origin groups than among others—

but also their consequences insofar as these can be deciphered from the extant

research. Mixed unions may do more than reflect the nature of social boundaries:

they also hold the potential to influence them, because they forge boundary-

spanning kinship networks and because they give rise to a new generation whose

backgrounds and identities are “novel” compounds of both sides. Under some

circumstances, then, mixed unions may help to blur boundaries, at least as they

are experienced by some portions of a group.

We take a comparative perspective in considering minority-majority mixed-

union patterns and what they reveal, looking not just across groups but also across

national contexts. A comparative, cross-national perspective is especially useful for

assessing the magnitude of mixed-union rates and for understanding the factors

accounting for differing rates for particular groups in particular societies. Our

analysis comes from a larger comparative project, in which we examine integration

in six North American and Western European societies that have received large

immigrant populations since the middle of the twentieth century: Canada, France,

Germany, Great Britain, the Netherlands, and the United States (Alba and Foner