The Assimilation of Immigrants in America and Europe: The Darwinian Evolution of Multiethnic Nations

 "Anonymous" has posted this comment on my previous post:

Dear Professor Arnhart, in the main article where you discuss immigration "Locke's Open Borders Immigration Policy as Cultural Group Selection" (2018), you refer to a Cato Institute source which concludes "Second, DFES predicts that today's immigrants will assimilate into America's regional cultures (unless all Americans quickly die and are replaced by immigrants)."  The article also stresses along the lines that the immigrants that make up the interpreted-as-positive American data are latin Americans (= of latin + christian culture = sharing many cultural affinities with American majority population).  By advocating for "open borders" is dismissed the difficulty of assimilation that the source you refer to acknowledges.  Along the lines, this article in fact does not say that the borders should be "open".  With no intention to offense, I think you dismiss too quickly the difficulties of European nations in integrating non-EU immigrants due to a form of (maybe unconscious) American exceptionalism and false-prejudices against European nations, maybe among many other factors (for instance not speaking a non-European language, and not have lived outside of Western (including Latin America) countries or communities)

This poorly written comment is hard to understand.  But if you look at the essay by Alex Nowrasteh (2016) to which he refers, the point he's trying to make becomes clear.

Nowrasteh's argument is that the fear that immigrants to the United States in recent years are no longer assimilating to American culture as they once did is mistaken because "immigration assimilation is proceeding quickly in the United States."  One of the primary means of assimilation is "ethnic attrition" caused by immigrant intermarriage with natives either of the same or different ethnic groups.  This process of intermarriage is deepened with the second or third generation of descendants of American immigrants.

Previously, I have written about the importance of assimilation through intermarriage for the Darwinian evolution of Indigenous Americans through genetic and cultural hybridization that has made America a multiethnic nation--or what Frederick Douglass called "the composite nation."

And yet the anonymous commentator is pointing to passages in Nowrasteh's essay where he concedes that the empirical evidence suggests that immigrant assimilation has been more successful in America than in Europe.  To explain this, he observes: "American identity in the United States (similar to Australia, Canada, and New Zealand) is not based on nationality or race nearly as much as it is in the old nation states of Europe, likely explaining some of the better assimilation and integration outcomes here."

Anonymous explains this by suggesting that the Latin American immigrants to the United States share "many cultural affinities with the American majority population."  But notice what he concedes here--that the cultural identity of America is not confined to white Anglo-Saxon Protestant culture because immigrants from mestizo and Hispanic Catholic cultures can easily assimilate in America.  This is a remarkably multiethnic, multiracial, and multireligious conception of American cultural identity.

But then Anonymous implies that there is still one fixed border--Western European culture versus all the cultures beyond the Western European tradition.  That might explain "the difficulties of European nations in integrating non-EU immigrants."

Nevertheless, from my reading of the empirical studies of modern immigration and assimilation, the difference between the U.S. and Europe in immigrant assimilation is only a difference in degree.  Over time the assimilation of immigrants in all of these nations is eventually successful, but this assimilation is a little slower and more difficult for some immigrant groups in some European countries--particularly for Muslim immigrants to the UK and France.

One of the best surveys of the evidence that I have seen is by Lucas G. Drouhot and Victor Nee (2019).  They conclude: "Our review of the literature shows that the overall observed pattern in both the United States and Western Europe is one of assimilation--the gradual erosion of ethnic, racial, religious, and other differences as determinants of life chances for immigrants and their children" (178).

They also recognize, however, that studies of Western Europe have identified "religion--and specifically the Muslim/non-Muslim distinction--as a potent symbolic divide affecting assimilation" (178).  Particularly in the UK and France, many Muslim parents teach their children to identify themselves as members of a strict Muslim culture that is set apart from the non-Muslim culture.  As a consequence of this, there are low rates of religious intermarriage among second-generation Muslims; and Muslim youths prefer to befriend other Muslims.  But even so, there is also evidence that in France this separation of Muslims from non-Muslims vanishes among those Muslims who were born in France and speak French (185).

I see no evidence here to deny my claim that the genetic and cultural assimilation of immigrants into multiethnic nations has succeeded--although the process is a little faster and easier in the United States than it is for some immigrant groups in some European countries.

REFERENCES

Drouhot, Lucas G., and Victor Nee. 2019. "Assimilation and the Second Generation in Europe and America: Blending and Segregating Social Dynamics Between Immigrants and Natives." The Annual Review of Sociology 45:177-199.

Nowrasteh, Alex. 2016."The Great Assimilation Scare." Cato at Liberty Blog, January 19.