Institutional Completeness of Ethnic Communities and the Personal Relations of Immigrants

Abstract

This study focuses on the direction of the interpersonal relations of immigrants. The immigrant can become interpersonally integrated within the "native" community, within his ethnic community, or within a group of immigrants of an ethnicity other than his own. The direction of the integration may be determined in part by some of the characteristics of the immigrant himself, for example, his educational background, his age, or his motivation for migrating. In this study attention was focused not on the individual characteristics but on the ability of the ethnic community in the receiving society to attract the immigrant into its social boundaries. It is found that this ability is largely dependent on the degree of institutional completeness of the ethnic community, but other characteristics of the community are also important. The findings indicate that more atttention should be given to the social organization of ethnic communities, particularly to the wide variation which exists among them in this respect.