Ethnicity is a central theme of the American experience. In this book, Richard D. Alba examines the changing role of ethnicity in the lives of Americans from a broad range of European backgrounds. Alba shows that while the ethnic origins of white Americans have less and less import in such measurable areas as educational and occupational achievement and marriage, they are still salient in more subjective ways. Using data from in-depth interviews with more than five hundred people, Alba examines the impact of ethnicity on food, friendships, organizational memberships, encounters with...

This book examines contemporary attitudes towards ethnic minorities in Germany. These minorities include some of immigrant origin, such as Italians, Turks, and asylum seekers, and the principal non-immigrant minority, Jews. While the findings demonstrate that intense prejudice against minorities is not widespread among Germans, many of whom in fact can be considered immigrant- and minority-friendly, a crystallization of attitudes is also evident: that is, attitudes towards immigrants are strongly correlated with anti-Semitism and with other worldview dimensions, such as positioning in the...

Is Germany still the "ethnic nation" par excellence? This book, drawing on some of the most extensive attitudinal data about immigrant and ethnic minorities ever collected there, reveals a far more complicated picture, which simultaneously confounds and confirms this long-standing characterization.