Immigration theory between assimilation and discrimination

Abstract

While most immigration studies traditionally build on assimilation theory, references to discrimination are increasingly present in the field, usually in an oppositional way. This article attempts to rethink the coexistence of these two concepts in the immigration scholarship and analyse their relationship. I first review the analytical perspectives of assimilation theory and argue that, unlike assimilation, discrimination is not a migration-specific concept. I distinguish between three forms of discrimination facing the immigrant population: civic discrimination, discrimination against migratory attributes and ethnoracial discrimination. The empirical section uses self-reported measures of discrimination from recent large-scale French data to assess each of these three forms of discrimination and analyse their determinants. The results show evidence relative to each of these three forms and point to discrepancies with assimilation. In particular, assimilation-facilitating characteristics such as early childhood knowledge of French and education in France are associated with higher levels of perceived discrimination. Perceptions of skin colour and religious discrimination also appear to remain stable if not increase over immigrant generations from non-European origins. The conclusion discusses some avenues to bridge the gap between intergenerational perspectives of immigrant socioeconomic attainment and the more general scholarship on the reproduction of inequality.