Becoming American, Remaining Ethnic: The Case of Armenian-Americans in Central California (The New Americans: Recent Immigration and American Society)

Jendian provides a snapshot of the oldest Armenian community in the western United States. He explores assimilation and ethnicity across four generations and examines ethnic identity and intermarriage. He examines cultural, structural, marital, and identificational assimilation for patterns of change (assimilation) and persistence (ethnicity). Assimilation and ethnicity co-exist as two, somewhat independent, processes. Assimilation is not a unilinear or zero-sum phenomenon, but rather multidimensional and multidirectional. Future research must understand the forms ethnicity takes for different generations of different groups while examining patterns of change and persistence for the fourth generation and beyond.