Mixed unions reveal progress in integration but also enduring societal social cleavages, which revolve around race in the US and religion in Europe

Recent months have seen debates over immigration and the integration of immigrants into North American and Western European societies come to the fore in public discourse. In new research, Richard Alba and Nancy Foner assess the state of immigrant integration by analysing unions between those with non-Western immigrant origins and those from native majorities in North America and Western Europe. They find that, while the frequency of mixed unions varies among countries, the greater variation occurs among groups, reflecting pronounced social cleavages in different countries: racial divisions, especially between blacks and whites, in the United States and the separation between Muslims and long-established secular/Christian natives in Western Europe. Other factors, including the settler society experience in North America and cultural traditions among Muslim groups, also play a role.