Thread by @Noahpinion

1/Next up in my "immigration and diversity" reading series is "Replenished Ethnicity: Mexican Americans, Immigration, and Identity", by Tomas Jimenez.

(I left my copy in a grocery store, but recently managed to recover it!)

amazon.com/Replenished-Et…

2/The book's basic thesis is that Mexican-Americans are different from other immigrant groups because more immigrants keep on coming from Mexico. This affects Mexican-Americans' identity, culture, and opportunities.

3/Jimenez, a Stanford sociologist, interviews a bunch of Mexican Americans in two towns - Santa Maria, California, where Mexican immigration has been more or less continuous, and Garden City, Kansas, where it paused during the mid 20th century.

4/Jimenez concludes that having lots of Mexican immigrants around affects Mexican-Americans in a number of ways.

First of all, it reminds them of their heritage, and spurs them to learn Spanish, rediscover Mexican traditions, and in general feel more Mexican.

5/Immigrants also sometimes incur a nativist backlash (which Jimenez distinguishes from racism) from white or black people, which often prompts Mexican Americans to stick up for the Mexican immigrants, even as they sometimes try to differentiate themselves from the immigrants.

6/The presence of Mexican immigrants, Jimenez finds, causes Mexican Americans to be more pro-immigration, because it reminds them of their own families' history, and cements their ideological belief in America as a "nation of immigrants".

7/Also, the presence of Mexican immigrants offers opportunities to Mexican Americans. It increases demand for Spanish ability in the workplace, and increases Mexican American political clout.

8/This book was good (as all Jimenez books are), and I really enjoyed the interview excerpts. But I felt it could have used more quantitative analysis, in addition to the ethnography and qualitative impressions...

9/If an immigration "pause" has real observable effects, we should be able to see some differences between Santa Maria and Garden City. That would be an interesting quantitative study. But sadly, Jimenez can only convey his own impressions of such differences.

10/Jimenez also misses an important comparison, in my opinion - Irish and German immigrants in the 19th century, who had quite a lot of "replenishment" and several waves of immigration.

medium.com/migration-issu…

11/Also, "Replenished Ethnicity" came out in 2010, before it was apparent that the great Mexican immigration boom had ended.

Now, almost a decade later, we can see that Mexican immigrant "replenishment" is mostly a thing of the past.

12/If Jimenez is right, thee end of net Mexican immigration to the U.S. will have big effects on Mexican-American culture and identity. The Mexican American experience will start looking a bit more like the Irish American experience as the decades pass.

13/In other words, the thesis of "Replenished Ethnicity" is about to be tested in a big way.

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