| Ch. 1 | Worlds of the second generation | 1 |
| Ch. 2 | Unraveling the race-gender gap in education : second-generation Dominican men's high school experiences | 28 |
| Ch. 3 | Somewhere between Wall Street and el barrio : community college as a second chance for second-generation Latino students | 57 |
| Ch. 4 | "Being practical" or "doing what I want" : the role of parents in the academic choices of Chinese Americans | 79 |
| Ch. 5 | Who's behind the counter? : retail workers in New York city | 115 |
| Ch. 6 | Leaving the ethnic economy : the rapid integration of second-generation Korean Americans in New York | 154 |
| Ch. 7 | "Isn't anybody here from Alabama?" : solidarity and struggle in a "mighty, mighty union" | 197 |
| Ch. 8 | Ethnic and postethnic politics in New York city : the Dominican second generation | 227 |
| Ch. 9 | Chinatown or uptown? : second-generation Chinese American Protestants in New York city | 257 |
| Ch. 10 | "We're just black" : the racial and ethnic identities of second-generation West Indians in New York | 288 |
| Ch. 11 | Class matters : racial and ethnic identities of working- and middle-class second-generation Korean Americans in New York City | 313 |
| Ch. 12 | Affinities and affiliations : the many ways of being a Russian Jewish American | 339 |
| Ch. 13 | Cosmopolitan ethnicity : second-generation Indo-Caribbean identities | 361 |
| Conclusion : children of immigrants, children of America | 393 |