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Rock, Rap, or Reggaeton?: Assessing Mexican Immigrants’ Cultural Assimilation Using Facebook Data
##manager.scheduler.building##: Velodromo - Bocconi University
##manager.scheduler.room##: N03
Date: 2019-01-25 09:00 AM – 10:30 AM
Last modified: 2018-12-26
Abstract
Immigrants often adopt the local norms and customs of their host
country, a process known as assimilation. While the civic, economic
and geographic aspects of assimilation can be readily quantified,
the cultural aspects of assimilation remain difficult to measure and
compare. This study leverages self-declared Facebook interests as a
measure of cultural taste among immigrants and provides a use case
for an assimilation metric from earlier work. More specifically, we
use the relative levels of interest in particular musical genres where
a similarity to the host population in musical preferences is treated
as a sign of cultural assimilation. We find that first-generation
Mexican immigrants and Mexican Americans assimilate more to
the African American population than to non-Hispanic whites,
and that older, English-speaking and female immigrants assimilate
more. These findings provide empirical support for the hypothesis
that immigrants facing limited prospects may be assimilating to
the culture of disadvantaged neighborhoods.
country, a process known as assimilation. While the civic, economic
and geographic aspects of assimilation can be readily quantified,
the cultural aspects of assimilation remain difficult to measure and
compare. This study leverages self-declared Facebook interests as a
measure of cultural taste among immigrants and provides a use case
for an assimilation metric from earlier work. More specifically, we
use the relative levels of interest in particular musical genres where
a similarity to the host population in musical preferences is treated
as a sign of cultural assimilation. We find that first-generation
Mexican immigrants and Mexican Americans assimilate more to
the African American population than to non-Hispanic whites,
and that older, English-speaking and female immigrants assimilate
more. These findings provide empirical support for the hypothesis
that immigrants facing limited prospects may be assimilating to
the culture of disadvantaged neighborhoods.
Keywords
immigration; social media; Facebook