| Abstrakt: |
Previous research has examined the role of churches in assisting immigrants with the migration process, including the choice to migrate, border crossing, living arrangements and locating jobs. There is still more to be explored regarding how churches serve as both integrators and possibly isolators for new immigrants. To what extent are churches an ethnic space where immigrants mostly speak Spanish with co-ethnics? How do immigrants who attend co-ethnic churches differ from immigrants who attend churches with few co-ethnics? This study focuses on the religious attendance of newly-admitted Latino immigrants. Using SEM, I explore service attendance and church composition (countries of origin and languages spoken by attenders) as they relate to immigrants' linguistic abilities, education, income, time spent in the U.S., and self-reported overall health. I also test for interaction effects such as age, gender, and religious tradition. Data are from Wave 1 of the New Immigrant Survey, and my sample includes 2,885 newly-admitted immigrants from Spanish-speaking Latin American countries. The religious affiliations include: 70% Catholic, 18% Orthodox/Protestant, 7% no religion, and 5% all other faiths.Preliminary results suggest that many Latinos attend congregations where most people speak their native language and few people are from the U.S. More specifically, of my sample, 31% responded that less than 5% of their fellow church attenders were from the U.S.. Nearly one-fifth said that all people at their church are from their home country. Also, 58% of the sample said that all of the people at their church speak their native language. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
