Abstract
of great concern for researchers in this field during the recent past. Reasons include the relative youth of the "new" second generation spawned by post-1965 immigration to the United States and the difficulties of studying it on the basis of census and other official data. Scholarly attention in this field has remained focused on adult immigrants, who are more visible and whose progress through the labor market and through the immigration bureaucracy can be more easily traced. Social scientists whose professional concern is with children, such as sociologists of education, have noted the surge of foreign-origin and, for the most part, nonwhite students in the nation's schools. However, the manner in which data on this new phenomenon have been packaged has hopelessly obscured its character and implications. School records and scholarly surveys most frequently use a classificatory scheme for students based on the pan-ethnic labels "Hispanic," "Black," "Asian," and "non-His? panic white." Such data are nearly useless for the study of the second generation because they mix children of native and foreign parentage, as well as those from the most diverse nationalities. The ethnic category "Hispanic," for example, combines children whose ancestors were living in the country at the time of the Civil War with those who arrived recently as