Assimilation’s First Steps

The South has become a magnet for Hispanic immigrants, but employers often hold the key to how well these newcomers blend into the communities where they settle.

By David D. Medina • Photography by Meg Reilley

Rice sociologist Katharine Donato was working in Baton Rouge in the early 1990s when she noticed that immigrants little seen before in southern Louisiana were slowly moving into the region. Donato spent her weekends doing fieldwork and discovered that, indeed, Hispanics from Texas and Mexico were following a new immigration pattern in search of jobs.

For Donato, this provided an opportunity right in her own backyard to study the early assimilation process of immigrants. Traditionally, Mexicans migrated to California, Texas, and Midwestern states to work in the fields, but since 1990, they have moved to different parts of the country in search of other livelihoods. “The South has become a new magnet for immigrants,” Donato explains. In North Carolina, for example, the Hispanic population grew by more than 400 percent in the 1990s.

“This trend,” she says, “offers insights into the ways in which immigrants adapt to their new communities.” The purpose of her research, Donato says, is to study how assimilation works in its earliest point. Few studies, if any, have examined this idea. “Most,” she says, “begin sometime after an immigrant population actually emerges in a destination.”

Little is known, therefore, about immigrants’ first job experiences and how employers help or hinder the assimilation process. Among other factors, Donato wanted to learn what role existing communities play in furthering the immigrants’ assimilation and whether speaking English aided in adapting to a new community.

With her team of researchers, which included Melissa Stainback of Rice University and Carl L. Bankston III of Tulane University, Donato set out to interview employers, community leaders, and immigrants and to gather and study public opinion survey information. “By analyzing these data,” Donato explains, “we attempt to understand the first stages of the experience of U.S. immigrants in new destinations and to lay the groundwork for constructing a comprehensive theory of immigrant assimilation for the 21st century.”

Louisiana proved to be an excellent field of study for this purpose. For much of the last century, the state did not attract significant numbers of immigrants; only in the 1970s did it became one of the top 10 resettlement areas for refugees from Vietnam and other southeast Asian countries. Until the mid 1990s, however, there were few Mexicans who settled in Louisiana. “That’s why,” Donato says, “Louisiana presents an excellent opportunity to study the early incorporation of Spanish-speaking immigrants before strong social networks develop and facilitate further migration.”

Her research project focused on four Louisiana communities situated along the Gulf of Mexico: Morgan City, Houma, New Iberia, and Port Fourchon. All four communities had similar demographic profiles in that most of them had seen a growth in the number of Mexican immigrants. The four communities all relied heavily on the oil industry for work. During the 1980s, all the communities suffered from the national recession and lost many workers who decided to move to other places in search of stable jobs or to attend college.

After the economy picked up in the early 1990s, almost all the state’s employers needed skilled and semi-skilled workers such as roustabouts, welders, riggers, fitters, machinists, carpenters, sandblasters, painters, and crane operators. “There was a huge demand for all of this,” Donato says, “just when the local labor force was gone.”

The communities could not satisfy the labor demand, so when visas became available to lure immigrants, employers jumped at the chance to hire them. Donato says she thought employers would only hire experienced workers, but they also were happy to take inexperienced ones. Employers were so desperate to hire workers that they didn’t care if Mexicans could speak English. At the same time, employers began to favor Mexican-born immigrants because of their “soft skills.” According to the employers, Hispanic migrant workers were loyal and hardworking, had a positive attitude, and could get along with other employees.

Mexican immigrants, Donato notes, also were profitable for employers. Many, she says, were paid less and received fewer benefits than their local counterparts. Migrants increased the company’s revenues by working longer days. Employers also liked to hire migrants because they were expendable. When productivity was high, employers hired more migrants; when work was down, employers quickly scaled back their workforce by reducing hours or employees.

“In just a few years,” Donato says, “many employers shifted from relying on a workforce that was almost entirely comprised of the U.S. born to one that consisted of many Mexican born.”

For many of these Mexican immigrants, assimilating into an American community took different paths, depending on a variety of factors, such as the characteristics of the immigrant group and the conditions of the community that accepted them.

“In contrast to the idea that assimilation is a linear process where immigrant groups become more incorporated into the American mainstream as time progresses,” Donato says, “the assimilation process of immigrants actually is segmented and varies with the human capital brought by the group of newcomers and with the context of the receiving community.”

She explains that there are three main factors that shape the process of assimilation: government policies, societal reception of newcomers, and existing ethnic communities. Government policies, for example, may encourage assimilation by allowing the immigrants to enter the country legally and providing help in settling. This happens, she says, when there is a shortage of professional workers or when immigrants are classified as refugees and are part of a resettlement program.

When the host community favors immigrants, the process of incorporation becomes easier. Community members and employers who are willing to help the immigrants with housing, transportation, language, employment, and social services provide an incentive to the immigrants to become part of the community. Incorporation also is facilitated when the community already has a network of immigrants who can help the newcomers find housing, jobs, transportation, and food. “Without a number of compatriots residing in the host community,” Donato says, “migrants often must tackle their foreign community alone and often have more difficulty incorporating into the community.”

The incorporation experience, Donato emphasizes, is different for each community. In Houma, for example, the employers used contract labor to recruit immigrant workers. Mexicans, however, were required to live in company trailers on the job site. Thus, the employer had a great degree of control over its employees, and by forcing the Mexican immigrants to live in isolation, the opportunity for them to incorporate into the community was hampered. “Because housing was physically, legally, and geographically attached to the employer,” Donato says, “workers were segregated from the existing community.”

In Morgan City, on the other hand, the employer relied on a loosely structured system of recruitment to hire Mexican workers. In addition, the workers did not live in housing provided by the employer. One employer, according to Donato, was a shipbuilder who announced to the community that he was housing his workers in mobile homes on the work site, but community members objected. After months of controversy, the employer was forced to move the trailers to a small community on the outskirts of Morgan City.

Placing the trailers away from the job site gave the immigrants more autonomy to move around and become aware of what the community had to offer. They discovered a church that catered to immigrants. One of the church members made it her mission to assist immigrants. She did it by helping them find jobs, housing, and food. She took the immigrants shopping, to the laundry services, and even to the doctor.

“Therefore, in Morgan City, there was no one dominant force shaping the economic incorporation outcomes of immigrants,” Donato explains. “All three factors—employers, community reception, and co-ethnic networks—interacted to facilitate the incorporation of newcomers.”

These findings, Donato concludes, reveal how early assimilation of immigrants is a complex and, at times, paradoxical process. “This finding is noteworthy because it constitutes fresh evidence regarding the earliest adaptive experience of immigrants,” she says. “Rather than suggesting improvements immediately after arriving in the United States, our work suggests that, early on in the immigrant experience, segmented outcomes occur. Even as soon as one or two years after arrival, some immigrants are on an upward path whereas others are headed in the opposite direction.”

Donato has gathered her findings in a book manuscript, Constantly Moving Steel: Immigrant Workers in a New U.S. Destination, which is under review for publication.