Spanish Legacies
Regular price
€31.99
Much like the United States, the countries of Western Europe have experienced massive immigration in the last three decades. Spain, in particular, has been transformed from an immigrant-exporting country to one receiving hundreds of thousands of new immigrants. Today, almost 13 percent of the country's population is foreign-born. Spanish Legacies, written by internationally known experts on immigration, explores how the children of immigrants-the second generation-are coping with the challenges of adaptation to Spanish society, comparing their experiences with those of their peers in the United States. Using a rich data set based on both survey and ethnographic material, Spanish Legacies describes the experiences of growing up by the large population of second-generation youths in Spain and the principal outcomes of the process-from national self-identification and experiences of discrimination to educational attainment and labor-market entry. The study is based on a sample of almost 7,000 second-generation students who were interviewed in Madrid and Barcelona in 2008 and then followed and re-interviewed four years later.
A survey of immigrant parents, a replacement sample for lost respondents in the second survey, and a survey of native-parentage students complement this rich data set. Outcomes of the adaptation process in Spain are systematically presented in five chapters, introduced by real-life histories of selected respondents drawn by the study's ethnographic module. Systematic comparisons with results from the United States show a number of surprising similarities in the adaptation of children of immigrants in both countries, as well as differences marked by contrasting experiences of discrimination, self-identities, and ambition.
Alejandro Portes is a best-selling UC Press author, Howard Harrison and Gabrielle S. Beck Professor of Sociology (emeritus) at Princeton University, and Research Professor at the University of Miami. He is a former president of the American Sociological Association and a member of the National Academy of Sciences. Rosa Aparicio is Senior Researcher at the Ortega y Gasset University Institute of Madrid and the current chair of the Spanish National Board for Immigrant Integration. William Haller is Associate Professor of Sociology at Clemson University; he has published widely on immigration and second-generation adaptation in the United States.