Turn down the heat under the melting pot

An intuitive speculation on globalizing trends: there should be more inter-ethnic and inter-racial marriages today than ever in America, right? The more global we get, the less our racial, cultural and ethnic backgrounds should matter, right? Wrong.

A new study finds that intermarriages (as a percentage of total marriages) declined between 1990 and 2000, reversing a thirty year trend. How did this happen?

The study, published in the latest issue of the American Sociological Review, found "large increases in marriage between native- and foreign-born co-ethnics among Hispanics and Asian Americans" -- that is, immigrants integrating into previously-established immigrant populations rather than seeking to assimilate through access to the white-majority world.

Something both new and old is going on. "Traditional assimilation theory" holds (to oversimplify) that minorities become absorbed by majorities, but sociologists are beginning to revise this view. The intermarriage data confirms previous experiences of immigration "waves": the first generation is ushered in to ethnic enclaves, and the second generation begins to intermarry and move out of immigrant sphere.

But as long as more than half of adult Hispanics and three-quarters of adult Asians are immigrants, the pool remains large enough for any newcomer to seek cultural equivalents for marriage. Just think: 11 million immigrants in the 1990s! As the wave subsides (this is yet to happen), late-arriving immigrants and second-generation populations are forced to look beyond their cultural confines.

A rose is una rosa

Buying or sending roses for Valentine's? Chances are they came from Colombia. Three out of every 4 roses in America originate from the greenhouses of Colombia's Andean plateau, with each rose averaging out to somewhere between $3 and $4, almost entirely in transport and retail mark-up.

Strangely, this is not widely known (to wit: today's Times op-ed on flowers with no mention of Colombia), despite some staggering figures:

• 2 billion stems of Colombian flowers sold for Valentine's day alone
  
• $900 million in export sales in 2005 for Colombian growers
• 98% of the chrysanthemums and 90% of the carnations bought in the U.S. and Canada are Colombian

This from an industry not yet in its fourth decade.

So if you look at Manhattan delis and see rows of flowers arrayed under a plastic awning outside, you are looking at almost purely Colombian product (with the rest likely supplied by Ecuador).

Where are they and why did they go? 4 million Colombians overseas

(IOM in Colombia)

Over the weekend, El Tiempo covered the publication of an important study on Colombian migration. The study, "Colombia: migrations, transnationalism y displacement," was directed by National University anthropologist Gerardo Ardila, for the Centro de Estudios Sociales.

Besides shoring up data on the astonishing number of Colombians overseas (over 4 million of 44 million total), the study may also serve to alert the government to its responsibilities toward an exceedingly migrant populace, forced overseas for not purely economic reasons. Though the study won't be complete for another six months, the academics involved hope they spur a cohesive migration policy in a government that has yet to examine its international relations with its citizens abroad in mind.

Colombia's one innovation in the area (from the 1993 constitution) is to have a non-voting representative of "overseas Colombians" in the House, elected by popular vote. (There are other non-voting positions for ethnic minorities and one for women, though all elected positions are open to everyone.)

Says Ardila in an interview in the paper:

En el exterior no hay comunidades colombianas. La desconfianza mutua no permite que se constituyan. Si alguien tiene un negocio relativamente boyante, todos los demás sospechan de su origen.

There are no Colombian communities overseas. Mutual distrust does not allow them to form. If someone has a business that works, all the others suspect a dubious origin.

He also points out the poverty of a foreign policy that seeks to capitalize on remittances, as if the more than 3 million Colombians working in developed countries owed more than their share to a state where they no longer live.

A final point Ardila brings up: many of the Colombians in "receptor" countries are not learning their host language -- but this doesn't mean they are mono-lingual. On the contrary: they are picking up several languages: the languages of their immigrant barrios. In Europe, for example, Ardila points out, many Colombians are learning African languages.

Consumido

Can you spot the Virgin? (photo)

Rob Walker's wonderful "Consumed" column in this week's Sunday Times Magazine has finally got to the basics of niche marketing to ethnic minorities, especially once they become large, collectively-deep-pocketed minorities such as Hispanics today.

The case in point is Pizza Patron, which sells "más pizza" for "menos dinero." Go to the store locator on the website and click through to watch the stores spread like the African killer bee invasion touted in the early 1990s. Says founder and prez Antonio Swad, in a company promotional release describing increases of over 35% in sales last quarter, "Our base is growing and so are we."

It's an idea that has that how-come-no-one-thought-of-this-before ring to it (which explains why it made Walker's column), but begs the question: Why has it taken so long to realize that the hispanic market is huge? Why does Hollywood, for example, lag so ridiculously far behind even the modest progress of television's "Ugly Betty"? (Did they really think "Spanglish" was crossing the ethnic divide?)

Walker looks beyond the dust-up in mid-January surrounding the chain's decision to accept pesos and sees the brilliance of repackaging a product in a context that matches the consumer: same product (pizza), different environment (Latino-friendly). Just what "Latino-friendly" means then becomes the challenge.