Generations of Exclusion is one of the most important books written in the field of immigrant incorporation. The book makes two key contributions. First, Telles and Ortiz provide the most authoritative analysis of the trajectories of incorporation of generations of Mexican Americans available today. Given that this is the largest immigrant group, and also the group with the longest generational reach in terms of continuous migration, the importance of the data and the analysis presented by Telles and Ortiz is invaluable. Second, the book advances the theoretical understanding of the immigrant incorporation process.

Generations of Exclusion is empirical research at its best and the richness of the empirical data analyzed in this book is unique. In a minor part, this is due to sheer good luck. Fortune smiled on Telles and Ortiz when, as a result of renovations at UCLA, construction workers found boxes containing the original questionnaires from the 1965 Mexican American Study Project. Yet, the effort Telles and Ortiz made from that point on—to track down and interview the respondents from that study and their offspring—is remarkable. The result of their painstaking work is a data base unique in its richness and in its generational depth. The authors were able to follow two and three generations of the families of the participants in the first study. The methods used by Telles and Ortiz are worthy of study in any research methods course.

With this very rich data the authors are able to shed a unique light on the trajectories of incorporation of Mexican Americans. Telles and Ortiz show that there is some mobility in the families they track, but this mobility takes place mostly between the first and the second generation. There is little improvement in the third and fourth generations. The authors also show that there are divergent trajectories among Mexican Americans. Some experience upward mobility into the middle class. This group, however, is a minority. The majority of Mexican Americans finds itself in the working class and the lower middle class. Telles and Ortiz attribute this lack of mobility to blocked educational opportunities.

The authors also show convincingly that Mexican Americans adopt English as their language, as previous generations of immigrants have done. Second-generation Mexican Americans and beyond prefer to speak English and are very often monolingual. Yet Mexican Americans do not follow the trajectories of the European immigrant groups. In the case of Mexican Americans, ethnicity continues to be a central element in their lived experience in every key aspect of life: identity, marriage, and residence. The children of racialized immigrants assimilate in terms of their sense of belonging, but ethnic identity remains an important component of how they define themselves.

The experience of Mexican Americans is also different from that of African Americans, according to the data gathered by Telles and Ortiz. They experience lower levels of residential segregation and have higher levels of intermarriage than African Americans. The authors argue that while discrimination and segregation are the key elements to explain the African American experience, the lack of access to good education is the key determinant of lack of mobility among Mexican Americans.

The rich findings of this book make it possible to break the theoretical logjam in which the study of immigrant incorporation currently finds itself. The last two decades of migration studies have seen a debate between linear and segmented assimilation theories (Telles and Ortiz put these two approaches within a broader general debate between assimilation and racialization). The new assimilation theory argues that the boundaries between the offspring of the new immigrants and White America are being slowly blurred and eventually, socioeconomic and identity differences will decline and immigrants will join the American mainstream (Alba and Nee, Reference Alba and Nee2003). Segmented assimilation argues that racialization and class inequality determine different paths of incorporation for the children of immigrants (Portes and Rumbaut, Reference Portes and Rumbaut2001). Some indeed join the mainstream but others suffer downward mobility. These two theoretical approaches have been instrumental in moving the field forward through the last two decades of empirical research and theoretical debate. As Telles and Ortiz show, however, these two approaches cannot capture the experience of Mexican Americans.

The main finding of Telles and Ortiz's research on Mexican Americans and of my research on Dominican Americans is that immigrants do experience some mobility but they do not join the mainstream (Itzigsohn Reference Itzigsohn2009). Telles and Ortiz attribute this pattern of incorporation to the pervasiveness of racialization. The Mexican American population experiences generations of exclusion due to its categorization as a racial other. The option of assimilating through joining the White category, as the children of European immigrants did, does not exist for them. The boundaries of race are not being blurred. On the other hand, the experience of racialization of Mexican Americans is different from that of African Americans. At the same time, as opposed to the claims of the segmented assimilation approach, the great majority of the offspring of Mexican Americans do not experience downward mobility into the most marginalized sectors of American society, the so called “underclass.” The story of Mexican Americans is not one of a failure to assimilate, of downward mobility, or of slow progress to assimilation. The pattern is one of incorporation into the working class and lower middle class—with partial mobility into the middle class—and of identification with the United States and the American Dream while maintaining a strong sense of group identity. My own research on the incorporation experience of Dominican Americans yields similar results (Itzigsohn Reference Itzigsohn2009).

Telles and Ortiz assert that the predicament of Mexican Americans is rooted in the constant demand for cheap labor in the American economy, continuous migration, and the poor economic and educational conditions that affect the life of racialized immigrant workers. The constant entry of Mexican immigrants into the lower ranks of the American labor market creates a large poor population and at the same time contributes to the reproduction of stereotypes against Mexican Americans, and a sense among the mainstream of what their group position should be. Yet the authors argue that continuous immigration alone does not explain the conditions experienced by Mexican Americans. They assert that if immigration were to stop completely, the racialized organization of the American labor market would still keep Mexican Americans from full entry into the mainstream. I agree with them.

For all its merit, the book does not go far enough in pursuing the conclusions of its empirical findings. While the book shows empirically the limits of assimilation theory, it stops short of presenting a full critique of this analytical frame. The book shows that the racial and class structure limit the choices open to Mexican Americans in their incorporation process, yet the authors still argue in terms of future assimilation possibilities without elaborating on the changes American society would need to go through in order for that to happen. This contradicts their emphasis on the pervasiveness of racial boundaries. In order to go beyond the assimilation framework it is necessary to propose an alternative framework. I do that in my analysis of the Dominican incorporation experience (Itzigsohn Reference Itzigsohn2009).

My argument is that the pattern they found of partial mobility, mostly working-class incorporation, and the permanence of ethnoracial identities and ties is what incorporation into American life means for racialized groups. I have called this pattern “stratified ethnoracial assimilation.” The idea behind this approach is that immigrants enter the receiving society but they incorporate into existing racial and class niches that correspond to the racial and class structure of American society. Segmented assimilation theory also makes a similar claim, but their understanding of the class structure of American society is a very simple one, divided into middle class and underclass. The great merit of Generations of Exclusion is that it brings the working class into the analysis of the process of incorporation, and also to recognize the partial mobility and the internal class stratification within the group. These findings correspond also to my own findings in my study of the incorporation of Dominicans in Providence, Rhode Island, and they constitute the elements that differentiate the stratified ethnoracial incorporation approach from segmented assimilation.

It is important to point out that the approach to the study of incorporation that I propose is rooted in W. E. B. Du Bois's own analysis of the structural position and lived experience of African Americans. As Du Bois ([Reference DuBois1896] 1995) showed in The Philadelphia Negro, the lives of African Americans in Philadelphia were conditioned by the racial and class systems of stratification in the city at that time. Furthermore, as Du Bois ([Reference DuBois1903] 2009) showed in The Souls of Black Folk, the development of a strong group identity is the only way in which people develop a positive sense of self in a situation of racial exclusion. Du Bois was the first to analyze the experience of racialized groups in American society and his work is still essential for the contemporary study of the trajectories of incorporation of minority immigrants.

Stopping short in their critique of assimilation theory also affects the authors' suggestions about what to do to address the existing exclusions. Telles and Ortiz end the book with a policy proposal that in their view will allow for the assimilation of Mexican Americans. Since their diagnosis is that lack of educational opportunities is what blocks the mobility of Mexican Americans, Telles and Ortiz propose the implementation of a Marshall Plan-type investment in education to raise the educational level of Mexican Americans and in this way allow for their incorporation into the middle-class mainstream. I do not oppose this proposal and I would certainly like to see it implemented. Yet if, as the authors argue, the trajectories of the Mexican American generation are rooted in the race and class structure of American capitalism, how and why can we expect the implementation of equalizing policies without a strong political challenge to the current working of American social and economic structures?

The main contribution of the book to public debate is not in its policy recommendations but in its careful presentation of empirical data. If the book will have an effect on the public sphere it is because it shows very clearly the limits to the American understanding of this society as a society of opportunities for all. But I focus on the policy recommendations, which admittedly are a very small part of the book, almost an afterthought, because they illustrate the “habitus” of American social science. The latter is firmly rooted in the pragmatic tradition: the presentation of facts and the development of rational arguments to provide solutions to social problems. Therefore, the fine analysis of data should be complemented with policy proposals that a rational society will have to consider. This was indeed Du Bois's ([Reference DuBois1896] 1995) hope when he undertook the project that became the Philadelphia Negro. Yet, as Du Bois realized when he was working on that book, mainstream society is not necessarily enlightened by reasoned arguments rooted in carefully assembled empirical evidence. After that experience, while maintaining a strong interest in social science research, Du Bois took a much more critical outlook and an activist orientation to the process of social change.

A lot has happened since Du Bois's early work emerged, and critical academics now certainly have more voice than in Du Bois's era. Yet if social scientists want to make policy recommendations they need to think also about the politics of those policies. The pragmatic orientation to social problems is not enough to challenge the entrenched barriers of racial exclusion. Political change does not take place by appealing to rational policies but by critiquing the existing order and making appeals to ideas of a good society. Often, the presentation of careful research data can make a difference if there are social actors that can use data to advocate for social change. I believe that the social sciences need to take a critical, rather than a pragmatic, approach in thinking about ways of addressing contemporary racial and class inequalities and exclusions. It is important also to think about what kind of politics can bring about those changes. Incidentally, this was the road that Du Bois took.

In spite of the limitations I have pointed out, Generations of Exclusion is an immense contribution to our understanding of processes of incorporation. The empirical work the authors have conducted is unsurpassed in the literature. And the critique of existing theoretical approaches—despite the fact that in my opinion it does not go far enough—opens up the possibility of starting a more adequate elaboration of how race and class structure paths of incorporation. In fact, Telles and Ortiz allow us to reencounter the path of social analysis and critique that Du Bois started and that American social sciences have abandoned for too long.