Second-generation migrants: Europe and the United States Maurice Crul and Jens Schneider The public debate about the second generation in Europe has taken a dramatic shift in the last fve years. The riots in the banlieues in France, involving mostly Algerian and Moroccan sec- ond-generation youth, pitched the cherished republican model into deep crisis. In the Neth- erlands, arguments about the failure of the country’s multicultural society have cited the relatively high number of Dutch Moroccan students who drop out of school and the high crime rate within the Moroccan second gen- eration. In Germany, similar concerns about the Turkish second generation have triggered a debate about the existence of a separate Ges- ellschaft, composed of almost two million Turks living in a parallel world detached from the wider German society. The debate in the US, in contrast, has been much more domi- nated by the question of illegal immigrants. Negative associations around the second gen- eration, however, have been mostly around crime and gangs and teenage pregnancy. Such events on both sides of the Atlantic lead to claims that sections of immigrant com- munities are not integrated. The general idea behind classical assimilation theory is that dis- tinctions along ethnic, cultural, and social lines become less relevant over time as ethnic groups begin to adopt the social and cultural practices of the majority. This is not to suggest that the process of assimilation is a linear one and without diffculties. The fact that (parts of the) second generation are not becoming similar or are resentful toward the host society is often used as evidence by politicians and opinion leaders to argue that integration has failed or that multiculturalism has failed. In the US a number of scholars have argued that funda- mental economic changes in society since the formulation of classical assimilation theory, along with the growing diversity of immigrants in terms of social class and nationality, have made the linear model of integration less likely to ft with the more complex reality of the new second generation (Portes & Rumbaut 2005). New theoretical perspectives emerged in the 1990s from the United States to refect this view, beginning with Gans’ (1992) concept of “second-generation decline” and Portes and Zhou’s (1993) theory of “segmented assimila- tion.” Both ideas expressed a fair degree of pes- simism for the future of some US-born immigrant youth, positing that they could face what Portes and Zhou describe as downward assimilation into the urban underclasses with permanent poverty being a distinct possibility. The idea that people “assimilate” into more marginalized sections of society is useful in understanding that second-generation integra- tion may take different forms. Whereas through education and, to a lesser extent, in the work- place there is the potential for “formal accul- turation” (Gans 1992) of the second generation, their more informal experiences outside school or work can be more signifcant, especially if they have been left disillusioned by poor schooling or low-paid and low-status employ- ment, and especially when immigrant parents are unable – owing to poor language skills and limited knowledge of the new culture – to control how their children are integrating – a process which has been described as “dissonant acculturation” (Portes 1997). On a more optimistic note, the theory of “segmented assimilation” suggests that socio- economic advancement among the Asian second generation often takes place because they uphold the traditions and values of the immigrant community. Upward mobility through ethnic cohesion, as Portes & Zhou The Encyclopedia of Global Human Migration, Edited by Immanuel Ness. © 2013 Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Published 2013 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd. DOI: 10.1002/9781444351071.wbeghm475