Article 4

1.Citation (ASA Style):

Hirschman, Charles. 2001. "The Educational Enrollment of Immigrant Youth: A Test of the Segmented-Assimilation Hypothesis." Demography 38:317-336.      

This article is based solely around immigrants and their enrollment rates in secondary school. It goes into the main “types” of immigrants that America gets and how each one has a different trend when it come to enrolling in school.     

The group studies kids from 15-17 from the Public Use Microdata Sample as well as the 1990 Census information. This filtered down to about 40,000 foreign born adolescents in the specified age range. Hirschman actually breaks down many of his finding by place of birth, race, and nationality.

Like all good sociologists Hirschman is able to take raw data and turn it in a beautiful array of statistics. Since it would be impossible to go around to every state in every area and find out all the pertinent information required to conduct this experiment, his use of public information to formulate his observations was masterful. He uses country of origin as well as age and parental involvement in order to organize his findings which he got from public information.      

5.What were the primary findings of the research? Along with statistical research which shows the Bibliography trends that usually occur from the 34 different Annotated countries in which he researched, Worksheet he also found some other interesting factoids in regards to

“placement.” Certain migrants tend to settle in certain places. More specifically Latinos, Africans,

Review thefrom directions and How an Annotated and those the Caribbean tendto to Prepare settle in impoverished or less then middle class areas. Living Bibliography in these places the families tend to fall on the soup of the socioeconomic ladder where the

tendency is not completing or pursuing school much after adolescence. But for others like the Asians they grow up with a rich value system perfect for success no matter where they are located. To sum up there are a myriad of issues that affect one’s enrollment in school. And any one of those factors can be magnetized or numbed by the assimilation into American society. But on a positive note the majority of high school age immigrants are nearly just as likely to attend and graduate high school as their national classmates.       2.What is the primary research question or thesis of this article?

3.What are the characteristics of the population studied? How many people, ages, genders, race/ethnicity/nationality, professions, etc.? How were these people selected? 6.Critique this article, discuss method, findings, analysis, writing style, or other elements of the research project.

Thankfully this type of research has been around for a while. We all know the tendencies of certain nationalities to trump our own efforts in schools especially other migrant nations. But it was interesting to read an article that addressed more than one group and how their assimilation or lack there of is understood. One thing I saw as a problem in article is the references to Asian households and the effect of parenting and values. It leads one to consider that other parents of other households don hold the same or similar values. As rue as that may or may not be I would reason with Hirschman on the point economic status, personal environment, and discrimination playby thethe most predominant Was role inthis enrollment in 4.What research method(s) was employed researchers? appropriate for the the US forand immigrants. population the research question? Were there limitations to this method?