Boundary crossing in first marriage and remarriage

•We compare intermarriage behavior in first and subsequent marriages.•White-Hispanic and White-Asian boundary are more permeable in remarriage than in first marriage.•Boundaries between minorities are more rigid in remarriage than in first marriage.•White-Black boundary is more rigid in remarriage than in first marriage.

Owing to secular increases in divorce rates, remarriage has become a prevalent feature of American family life; yet, research about mate selection behavior in higher order marriages remains limited. Using log-linear methods to recent data from the 2008-2014 American Community Survey, we compare racial and ethnic sorting behavior in first and subsequent marriages. The two most frequently crossed boundaries - those involving White-Asian and White-Hispanic couples - are more permeable in remarriages than in first marriages. Boundaries that are crossed with less frequency - those between minority groups and the White-Black boundary-are less permeable in remarriages than in first marriages. Collectively, these findings suggest that racial and ethnic sorting processes in remarriage may reify existing social distances between pan-ethnic groups. Racial and ethnic variations in how the relative permeability of boundary changes between first and higher-order marriages underscore the importance of considering a broad array of interracial pairings when assessing the ways in which changes in family structure and marital sorting behavior promote integration.