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In this article, I review the most important works of American sociological literature that have looked into immigrant assimilation over the course of more than a century. I start by presenting the straight line assimilation paradigm – whose roots can be found in the Chicago School research – that conceived an individual convergence process towards the American mainstream. The article highlights the scientific efforts of American sociologists to deconstruct this dominant paradigm and to depart from its more or less explicit ethnocentrism. These efforts have been productive because they rely on empirical evidence describing the mechanisms of production, reproduction and persistence of ethnic and racial inequality in American society. The last section of this review presents the most recent theoretical research, which rethinks assimilation theory from the perspective of interethnic group relations, drawing particular attention to the notion of ethnic boundaries.