Explaining Variation in the Social Incorporation of Immigrants and the Second Generation in the United Kingdom

Sung S. Park, University of California, Los Angeles

What does the social incorporation among immigrants and the second generation look like? Using the UK Household Longitudinal Study, I show that taking a multidimensional view of one’s social ties provides a more nuanced explanation of an immigrant’s level of social incorporation across three different domains in the host country: familism, religiosity and political engagement. Hence, this study contributes to research on immigrant incorporation by: 1) considering social ties as the dependent, rather than the independent, variable of interest, shifting the focus to understanding how ethnic subgroup, socioeconomic, and demographic characteristics may affect the nature and intensity of social ties among immigrants and nonimmigrants, 2) considering multiple forms of social ties in tandem, and 3) taking a comparative approach to understanding incorporation by using four main groups in the analysis: native-born white, native-born nonwhite (“ethnic second generation children of immigrants”), white immigrants and nonwhite immigrants.