Can Old Immigration Theories Be Applied to New Immigrants?

Joel Perlman and Roger Waldinger question in their theory the pessimism of the present scholarship on assimilation. These authors emphasize the duality of contemporary immigration and compare historical facts with new findings on contemporary immigrant research. Furthermore, they criticize the way scholars such as Alba, Hirschman and Falcon, and Lieberson and Waters, apply old immigration theories and how the results show prospects for contemporary immigrants in an unfavorable light. (226)
Perlman and Waldinger argue that the linear theory approach which compares historical results of research for immigration assimilation, does not address the fact that contemporary immigrants face a different social and economic environment then than in the past. In The Handbook of International Migration "Immigrants Past and Present: A Reconsideration", the authors voice their opinions and point out that changes in economy and changes in changes in skills that new immigrants bring to the US affect economical assimilation for the second immigrant generation.
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