Abstract The existing scholarship typically measures “Americanization” along structural lines—such as knowledge of public policies, percentage of life spent in the U.S., or proficiency in the English language. While these variables are certainly important, they overlook another important dimension of newcomers’ post-migration experiences—namely, immigrants’ psychological attachment and sense of belonging to the American social, political, and economic fabric. This article therefore reevaluates what it means to Americanize by exploring the psychological (or symbolic) dimensions of multigenerational immigrants’ evolving political beliefs toward the polity. In rethinking the process of Americanization, we rely on a largely understudied immigrant population—that is, the Los Angeles Armenians (or Armenian Angelenos)—and an original public opinion survey—the Armenian Angeleno Survey (AAS). This study demonstrates that symbolic (rather than merely structural) Americanization is a useful framework in studying how contemporary immigrant groups position themselves in relation to the polity and understand important political outcomes. This article thus introduces an expanded model based on how multigenerational immigrants cultivate their ethnic communities while becoming ideological members of American society.

中文翻译：

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洛杉矶的亚美尼亚人：重新思考“美国化”

摘要 现有的奖学金通常按照结构性的方式衡量“美国化”——例如公共政策的知识、在美国度过的生活百分比或英语熟练程度。虽然这些变量固然重要，但它们忽略了新移民移民后经历的另一个重要方面——即移民的心理依恋和对美国社会、政治和经济结构的归属感。因此，本文通过探索多代移民对政体不断演变的政治信仰的心理（或象征）维度，重新评估了美国化的意义。在重新思考美国化的过程中，我们依赖于很大程度上未被充分研究的移民人口——也就是说，洛杉矶亚美尼亚人（或亚美尼亚洛杉矶人）——以及原始的民意调查——亚美尼亚洛杉矶调查（AAS）。这项研究表明，象征性的（而不仅仅是结构性的）美国化是研究当代移民群体如何将自己与政体联系起来并理解重要政治结果的有用框架。因此，本文介绍了一个基于多代移民如何在成为美国社会意识形态成员的同时培养他们的种族社区的扩展模型。