Rubén G. Rumbaut
University of California, Irvine, Sociology, Faculty Member
- Immigration, Social Demography, Bilingualism, Ethnicity and National Identity, Education, Intergenerational mobility, and 31 moreSocial Inequality, Race and Racism, Refugee Studies, Exile, Cuban Studies, Youth; Transitions to Adulthood, Sociology, Undocumented Immigration, Race and Ethnicity, Transnational migration, Immigration Studies, Acculturation, Citizenship, International Migration and Immigration Policy, Migration Studies, Assimilation, Migration, Immigrant Detention, 1.5 and 2nd Generation Children of Immigrants, International Migration, Immigration Law, Contemporary International Migration, Belonging and Citizenship, National Identity, Refugees and Forced Migration Studies, Social Mobility, Immigration Status & Nationality, Xenophobia, Refugees, undocumented latino immigrants in the U.S., and Second Language Acquisitionedit
Research Interests:
Research Interests: History, Education, Self and Identity, Diversity, Refugee Studies, and 15 moreImmigration, Race and Ethnicity, China, Social Exclusion, Longitudinal Research, Social Inclusion, Acculturation, Ethnicity, Multidisciplinary, Generations, Refugee, Integration, Second generation, Children of Immigrants, and Mainstream
Research Interests: Psychology, Developmental Psychology, Demography, Economics, Education, and 15 moreLibrary Science, Children and Families, Emerging Adulthood, Family, Case Studies, Employment, Adolescence, Attitudes, Comparative Analysis, Frontier, Economic Status, Adult Development, Ethnic diversity, Contemporary Sociology, and Developed Nations
Research Interests: Gender Studies, Immigration, Emerging Adulthood, Ethnic and Racial Studies, National Identity, and 15 moreEthnic Identity, Life course, Longitudinal Research, Racialization, Acculturation, Racial and ethnic discrimination, Identity Formation, Immigrants, Generations, Second generation, Assimilation, Early Adulthood, Middle adulthood, Ethnicity and National Identity, and Ethnic Group
ABSTRACT Using a special module (MEUS) of the 2000 General Social Survey, we investigate Americans’ perceptions of the racial and ethnic composition of the United States. We show that, because of innumeracy, it is critical to gauge... more
ABSTRACT Using a special module (MEUS) of the 2000 General Social Survey, we investigate Americans’ perceptions of the racial and ethnic composition of the United States. We show that, because of innumeracy, it is critical to gauge perceptions through relative, rather than absolute, group sizes. Even so, it appears that, as of 2000, roughly half of Americans believed that whites had become a numerical minority; such perceptions were even more common among minority-group members than among whites. Majority-group respondents’ perceptions of the relative sizes of minorities affect their attitudes towards immigrants, blacks and Hispanics, with those having the most distorted perceptions holding the most negative attitudes. Although perceptions of group sizes in the nation are linked to the perceived racial/ethnic composition of the communities where respondents reside, the effects of the former on attitudes are largely independent of the latter. Our findings highlight the frequently overlooked value of an old bromide against prejudice: education.
Research Interests: Sociology, Psychology, Social Psychology, Perception, Immigration, and 13 morePolitical Science, Race and Ethnicity, Stereotypes and Prejudice, Racialization, Social Science Research Network, United States, Group Size, Social forces, Ethnic Group, General Social Survey, Ethnic Classification, Minority Group, and Innumeracy
“Coming of age,” a familiar phrase but an elusive process, can mean many things, but fundamentally it connotes the manifold changes that accompany the exit from adolescence and the entry into adult roles and responsibilities. However it... more
“Coming of age,” a familiar phrase but an elusive process, can mean many things, but fundamentally it connotes the manifold changes that accompany the exit from adolescence and the entry into adult roles and responsibilities. However it is measured, coming of age is taking longer these days. The prolonged completion of higher education affects the timetables of other adult transitions, especially by delaying the entry into full-time work, the exit from the parental household, and decisions about marriage and children. Not only are more young Americans going to college, but they are taking longer to attain what are still called “two year” and “four year” degrees; more are also continuing on to seek advanced degrees in graduate or professional schools, and still others return to school to gain needed credentials or work skills in order to compete in rapidly changing local labor markets. Today, only a fourth (27%) of all those enrolled in higher education are so-called “traditional” full-time students who go directly from high school to a 4-year college or university, are supported financially by their parents, and work either part-time or not at all. In contrast, about 40% attend community colleges, most of whom tend to be “nontraditional” students who may have delayed going after finishing high school, lack the financial support of their parents, often work full-time or nearly full-time, and may already have children of their own. A growing proportion of them are ethnically diverse young adult children of immigrants, especially in regions of high immigration such as San Diego, the setting for the study reported here. We highlight the variety of trajectories San Diegans pursue from high school through college, and the complex financial, institutional and psychological struggles they encounter during the transition to adulthood. The 134 young adults that we interviewed are from a wide range of Latin American and Asian backgrounds and all are the children of immigrants. Through their narratives we illustrate how they come of age through the lens of their educational experience. The cases, most of whom were 24 or 25 years old at the time they were interviewed, were representatively drawn from the San Diego sample of the Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Study (CILS), a panel study which followed for more than a decade a large sample of young people growing up in immigrant families in San Diego, from the end of junior high school through their mid-twenties.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
In this article, the effect of recent immigration on homicide rates across city of Austin, Texas census tracts is examined. Since 1980, Austin's recent immigrant population increased by more than 580% across the metropolitan area and... more
In this article, the effect of recent immigration on homicide rates across city of Austin, Texas census tracts is examined. Since 1980, Austin's recent immigrant population increased by more than 580% across the metropolitan area and it is now considered a “pre-emerging” immigrant gateway city to the United States. Therefore the changing population dynamics in Austin provide an excellent opportunity to study the effect of recent immigration on homicide. After controlling for structural predictors of homicide and correcting for spatial autocorrelation, our findings indicate that recent immigration is not associated with homicide.
Research Interests: Criminology, Geography, Law, Violence, Poverty, and 15 moreHomicide, Immigration, Race and Ethnicity, Social Inequality, Spatial autocorrelation, Population, Crime, Social Science Research Network, United States, Austin, Census, Population dynamic, Immigration and Crime, Metropolitan Area, and Homicide studies
In this article, the effect of recent immigration on homicide rates across city of Austin, Texas census tracts is examined. Since 1980, Austin's recent immigrant population increased by more than 580% across the metropolitan area and... more
In this article, the effect of recent immigration on homicide rates across city of Austin, Texas census tracts is examined. Since 1980, Austin's recent immigrant population increased by more than 580% across the metropolitan area and it is now considered a “pre-emerging” immigrant gateway city to the United States. Therefore the changing population dynamics in Austin provide an excellent opportunity to study the effect of recent immigration on homicide. After controlling for structural predictors of homicide and correcting for spatial autocorrelation, our findings indicate that recent immigration is not associated with homicide.
Research Interests: Criminology, Geography, Law, Violence, Poverty, and 15 moreHomicide, Immigration, Race and Ethnicity, Social Inequality, Spatial autocorrelation, Population, Crime, Social Science Research Network, United States, Austin, Census, Population dynamic, Immigration and Crime, Metropolitan Area, and Homicide studies
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
“Coming of age,�? a familiar phrase but an elusive process, can mean many things, but fundamentally it connotes the manifold changes that accompany the exit from adolescence and the entry into adult roles and responsibilities. However it... more
“Coming of age,�? a familiar phrase but an elusive process, can mean many things, but fundamentally it connotes the manifold changes that accompany the exit from adolescence and the entry into adult roles and responsibilities. However it is measured, coming of age is taking longer these days. The prolonged completion of higher education affects the timetables of other adult transitions, especially by delaying the entry into full-time work, the exit from the parental household, and decisions about marriage and children. Not only are more young Americans going to college, but they are taking longer to attain what are still called “two year�? and “four year�? degrees; more are also continuing on to seek advanced degrees in graduate or professional schools, and still others return to school to gain needed credentials or work skills in order to compete in rapidly changing local labor markets. Today, only a fourth (27%) of all those enrolled in higher education are so-called “traditional�? full-time students who go directly from high school to a 4-year college or university, are supported financially by their parents, and work either part-time or not at all. In contrast, about 40% attend community colleges, most of whom tend to be “nontraditional�? students who may have delayed going after finishing high school, lack the financial support of their parents, often work full-time or nearly full-time, and may already have children of their own. A growing proportion of them are ethnically diverse young adult children of immigrants, especially in regions of high immigration such as San Diego, the setting for the study reported here. We highlight the variety of trajectories San Diegans pursue from high school through college, and the complex financial, institutional and psychological struggles they encounter during the transition to adulthood. The 134 young adults that we interviewed are from a wide range of Latin American and Asian backgrounds and all are the children of immigrants. Through their narratives we illustrate how they come of age through the lens of their educational experience. The cases, most of whom were 24 or 25 years old at the time they were interviewed, were representatively drawn from the San Diego sample of the Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Study (CILS), a panel study which followed for more than a decade a large sample of young people growing up in immigrant families in San Diego, from the end of junior high school through their mid-twenties.
Research Interests:
Research Interests: Psychology, Developmental Psychology, Demography, Economics, Education, and 15 moreLibrary Science, Children and Families, Emerging Adulthood, Family, Case Studies, Employment, Adolescence, Attitudes, Comparative Analysis, Frontier, Economic Status, Adult Development, Ethnic diversity, Contemporary Sociology, and Developed Nations
... RUBEN G. RUMBAUT Michigan State University ... Still, note the authors, development rifts haveforged "three major migration divides in the world: the Rio Grande, separating the United States and Latin America; the Oder-Neisse,... more
... RUBEN G. RUMBAUT Michigan State University ... Still, note the authors, development rifts haveforged "three major migration divides in the world: the Rio Grande, separating the United States and Latin America; the Oder-Neisse, separating Western and Eastern Eu-rope; and ...
Research Interests: Sociology, Political Economy, Terrorism, Refugee Studies, Immigration, and 15 moreImmigration Studies, Political Science, Race and Ethnicity, Politics, Labor Migration, Undocumented Immigration, Refugees, Citizenship, Immigrants, Brain Drain, Immigration Policy, Border control, Contemporary Sociology, Public Policy, and Definition of the Situation
Research Interests: Geography, Demography, Education, Languages and Linguistics, Immigration, and 13 moreRace and Ethnicity, Acculturation, Social Mobility, Bilingualism, Social Science Research Network, Generation, Occupational Status, Assimilation, Socioeconomic Status, Earnings, Ethnic Group, Language Loss, and Metropolitan Area
From 1975 to 1988, nearly 900,000 Indochinese refugees were resettled in the United States. This paper examines patterns of fertility among these refugees from Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam who have exhibited high levels of reproduction... more
From 1975 to 1988, nearly 900,000 Indochinese refugees were resettled in the United States. This paper examines patterns of fertility among these refugees from Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam who have exhibited high levels of reproduction since their arrival. Data are drawn from sample surveys in San Diego and San Francisco, CA. Fertility levels were found to exceed five children per ever-married woman, a level that is consistent with perceptions of ideal family size in the homeland. Fertility levels were significantly higher among rural second-wave refugees than in the more urban first-wave groups. One explanation for the high fertility is that couples have migrated from areas where fertility is high, and they have not yet adapted their reproductive behavior to the low fertility environment of the United States. This possibility is reinforced by a general gender preference for boys and exacerbated by the fact that, while a majority of women are aware of methods of fertility control, ac...
Research Interests: Demography, Nursing, Contraception, Reproduction, Cambodia, and 15 moreFertility, Medicine, LAOS, Pregnancy, Population, Humans, Refugee, Female, Pubmed, Male, Attitude, Asian Americans, Adult, Homeland, and Age Factors
Research Interests:
Research Interests: Human Geography, Demography, Anthropology, Library Science, Publishing, and 15 moreImmigration, Political Science, Japanese, Public Health, Acculturation, Ethnicity, Immigrants, Icon, Citation, Ethnic Group, ICON, Indexation, Multidisciplinary Approach, Contemporary Sociology, and American Ethnic History
Research Interests:
“Assimilation,” a protean concept with an American pedigree and a checkered past, is back in vogue. But in academic and colloquial usage, in social science, public policy and popular culture, the idea and the ideal of “assimilation” have... more
“Assimilation,” a protean concept with an American pedigree and a checkered past, is back in vogue. But in academic and colloquial usage, in social science, public policy and popular culture, the idea and the ideal of “assimilation” have had a bumpy history. Over time the term has conflated various normative prescriptions (“e pluribus unum,” “melting pot”) and empirical descriptions (cultural adaptations, economic mobility, social acceptance by a dominant group) to make sense of the incorporation of “ethnic” difference in American life. After more than a century of use and misuse the term itself remains confusing and contentious. For a “canonical” concept, there remains surprising ambiguity as to its meaning, measurement and applicability. This essay, prepared for a Festschrift in honor of Herbert J. Gans, explores the history of the idea in American society and social science as a master frame and the teleology of Progress underlying it; considers cultural, social, legal, economic and identificational indices of intergenerational change among contemporary ethnic groups based on an array of census and survey data; and raises questions about the limitations and paradoxes of the concept itself in the study of ethnicity and inequality in American life. Despite the grand narratives of modernization which undergird the concept of assimilation, neither race nor religion nor ethnicity has vanished in American life. Linguistic “Anglicization” and other forms of acculturation do proceed rapidly, especially among immigrant children and the second generation. But alongside undeniable upward social mobility from the first to the second generation for most groups, especially the children of the poorest and least educated - though the gains appear to peak in the second generation and decline or plateau thereafter - there is compelling evidence of widening “ethclass” and legal inequalities, of new conflicts and political mobilizations around ethnic and racial issues, and of downward mobility and marginalization for vulnerable segments of these populations. An undocumented status has become a caste-like master status blocking access to the opportunity structure and paths to social mobility for millions of immigrants. A fraught concept like “assimilation,” weighted by the normative baggage of its past, seems ill-suited to grasp these complex dynamics and to focus critical attention on enduring structural inequalities and persistent ethnic and pan-ethnic formations in this “permanently unfinished” society.
Research Interests: Religion, Immigration, Immigration Studies, Race and Ethnicity, Immigration History, and 15 moreAmericanization, Language, Acculturation, Ethnicity, Citizenship, Identity, Race, Ethnocentrism, Inequality, Segmented assimilation, Integration, Assimilation, Ethnic Group, Panethnicity, and Economic Mobility
Research Interests:
... Rubén G. Rumbaut ... Emigration connections forged by US intervention and foreign policies were also a common denominator in the exodus of the Chinese after the 1949 revolution (and subsequently in the issuance of immigrant visas... more
... Rubén G. Rumbaut ... Emigration connections forged by US intervention and foreign policies were also a common denominator in the exodus of the Chinese after the 1949 revolution (and subsequently in the issuance of immigrant visas under separate quotas for applicants from ...
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Page 370. 9 The Health Status and Health Behaviors of Hispanics Jose J. Escarce, Leo S. Morales, and Ruben G. Rumbaut The rapid growth in the Hispanic population, and especially in the number of Hispanic youth, represents ...
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
In this article the authors examine the impact of recent immigration on rates of serious property crime across communities in Austin, Texas. The greater Austin foreign-born population has increased by more than 580 percent since 1980, and... more
In this article the authors examine the impact of recent immigration on rates of serious property crime across communities in Austin, Texas. The greater Austin foreign-born population has increased by more than 580 percent since 1980, and Austin is considered a “preemerging” immigrant gateway city to the United States. The changing population dynamics in Austin provide an excellent opportunity to study the effect of recent immigration on crime in a target destination for recent immigrants. Although interest in the relationship between violent crime and immigration to new locales is evidenced by recent studies that show less favorable outcomes for Latinos in new destinations, little attention has been directed to the relationship of recent immigration with serious property crime in new destinations. Negative binomial regression models with corrections for spatial autocorrelation indicate that recent immigration is not associated with an increased rate of burglary, larceny, or motor vehicle theft once important structural predictors of crime are controlled for.
Research Interests: Sociology, Criminology, Poverty, Sociology of Crime and Deviance, Immigration, and 15 moreCommunity Ecology, Race and Ethnicity, Immigration Law, Social Ecology, Social Inequality, Population, Crime, Social Science Research Network, Communities, Demographic economics, Austin, Social Disorganization, Sociological Perspectives, Property Crime, and Destinations
Research Interests: Demography, Anthropology, Immigration, Cambodia, Birth Weight, and 15 moreCalifornia, LAOS, Hmong Studies, Humans, Infant, Ethnic Groups, Ethnicity and National Identity, Infant Mortality, Ethnic Group, Infant Mortality Rate, Birthweight, Laos and Cambodia, Infant Health, Cause of death, and High risk
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
In the past several decades, a new life stage has emerged: early adulthood. No longer adolescents, but not yet ready to assume the full responsibilities of an adult, many young people are caught between needing to learn advanced job... more
In the past several decades, a new life stage has emerged: early adulthood. No longer adolescents, but not yet ready to assume the full responsibilities of an adult, many young people are caught between needing to learn advanced job skills and depending on their family to support them during the transition.
Research Interests:
A remembrance of Michael A. Olivas, the William B. Bates Distinguished Chair in Law and Director of its Institute for Higher Education Law and Governance from 1982 to 2019. He died at his home in Santa Fe on April 22, 2022. He was... more
A remembrance of Michael A. Olivas, the William B. Bates Distinguished Chair in Law and Director of its Institute for Higher Education Law and Governance from 1982 to 2019. He died at his home in Santa Fe on April 22, 2022. He was nationally renowned across many fields, from immigration law to the law of higher education, the Texas 10% plan (that he helped to craft), Hernández v. Texas, Plyler v. Doe, the Dream Act, DACA, and much more. Along the way he served with distinction as General Counsel of the American Association of University Professors, as President of the Association of American Law Schools, on the editorial boards of more than 20 scholarly journals, and on the Board of Directors of MALDEF since 2002. A recipient of numerous lifetime awards honoring his exceptional service and achievement in multiple fields, he was elected to both the American Law Institute and the National Academy of Education, the only person to have been selected to both of those honor academies. He made seminal contributions in his keynotes, ubiquitous lectures and engaging presentations, brilliant essays like “The Chronicles, My Grandfather's Stories, and Immigration Law: The Slave Traders Chronicle as Racial History”… or the sixteen books he wrote or edited, notably “No Undocumented Child Left Behind: Plyler v. Doe and the Education of Undocumented Schoolchildren” (2012); his last book, “Perchance to DREAM: A Legal and Political History of the DREAM Act” (2020); “The Law And Higher Education: Cases and Materials on Colleges in Court” (4th edition 2015); and his award-winning “Suing Alma Mater: Higher Education and the Courts” (2014). Michael was a consistently incisive voice for reason and legal reasoning on issues that continue to roil American politics, and a vigorous civil rights advocate in pursuit of both historical truth and social justice for immigrants, undocumented students, Latinos, Mexican Americans… including academia.
Research Interests:
In Angelo Falcon, ed., “The Hispanic Question and the 2020 Census.” (New York: National Institute for Latino Policy, 2014). Pigments of Our Imagination: The Racialization of the Hispanic-Latino Category Ruben G. Rumbaut Race is a pigment... more
In Angelo Falcon, ed., “The Hispanic Question and the 2020 Census.” (New York: National Institute for Latino Policy, 2014). Pigments of Our Imagination: The Racialization of the Hispanic-Latino Category Ruben G. Rumbaut Race is a pigment of our imagination. It is a social status, not a biological one; a product of history, not of nature; a contextual variable, not a given. The concept of race is a historically contingent, relational, subjective phenomenon, yet it is typically misbegotten as a natural, fixed trait of phenotypic difference inherent in human bodies, independent of human will or intention. Racial categories (and the supposed differences that they connote) are infused with stereotypical moral meaning. What is called race today is chiefly an outcome of intergroup struggles, marking the boundaries, and thus the identities, of us and them along with attendant ideas of social worth or stigma. As such, race is an ideological construct that links supposedly innate traits of in...
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
One cannot grasp eight years of a historic presidency in eight minutes of talk. It’s like trying to catch lightning in a bottle. Still... At the equivalent point on the 8th year of his presidency eight years ago, on a farewell visit to... more
One cannot grasp eight years of a historic presidency in eight minutes of talk. It’s like trying to catch lightning in a bottle. Still... At the equivalent point on the 8th year of his presidency eight years ago, on a farewell visit to Baghdad, President George W. Bush had two shoes thrown at him by an indignant Iraqi journalist—a symbolic act applauded around the world (which also made a fortune for the Turkish maker of those shoes, the demand for which went through the roof). President Barack Obama, by contrast, on a recent farewell visit to Canada, was applauded by its Parliament, who chanted in wishful unison: “four more years!” Back then Bush’s approval rating was in the low 30s; Obama’s is now in the 50s. Just as Obama benefited by the contrast to the global calamity that was the presidency of his predecessor, so now he rises in comparison to his would-be successor, a man whose campaign of fear and loathing has in turn generated fear and loathing among many around the world, a...
Research Interests: Sociology, Political Sociology, Social Change, International Relations, Presidency (American Politics), and 13 moreInternational Studies, Cuban Studies, Political Science, Revolutions, Politics, Diplomacy, Social movements and revolution, Cuban History, Cuban Revolution, Barack Obama, Social Science Research Network, Presidency, and US- Cuban Relations
This framing chapter focuses on young men of Latin American descent in the United States and on their transitions to adulthood in a context of major demographic and structural change. Following a discussion of societal contexts and... more
This framing chapter focuses on young men of Latin American descent in the United States and on their transitions to adulthood in a context of major demographic and structural change. Following a discussion of societal contexts and transformations shaping adult transitions today, key characteristics of young Hispanic men and women age 18 to 34 are first contrasted against those of major non-Hispanic demographic groups (whites, blacks, Asians); the major Hispanic groups are then compared to each other (Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, Cubans, Central and South Americans and others); finally, differences among different generational cohorts of Latino men are examined, from the first to the second to the third-and-higher generations. Given their central significance to the population as a whole, Latino males can be considered a "strategic research site."
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests: Sociology, Social Change, Social Psychology, Self and Identity, Social Identity, and 12 moreImmigration, Emerging Adulthood, Ethnic and Racial Studies, National Identity, Longitudinal Research, Racialization, Acculturation, Racial and ethnic discrimination, Generations, Social Science Research Network, Assimilation, and Ethnicity and National Identity
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests: Sociology, Criminology, Education, Race and Racism, Immigration, and 14 morePolitical Science, Race and Ethnicity, Stereotypes and Prejudice, Undocumented Immigration, Migration Studies, Immigrant Detention, Latinos, Mass Incarceration, Crime, Social Science Research Network, Myths, Dropout, Incarceration, and Young Men
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
The two general theories, or metaphors, that for so long have dominated the discourse on the fate of immigrants in America – assimilation and ethnic pluralism – do not fare very well in light of the evidence in the preceding chapters.... more
The two general theories, or metaphors, that for so long have dominated the discourse on the fate of immigrants in America – assimilation and ethnic pluralism – do not fare very well in light of the evidence in the preceding chapters. True, supporters of the assimilation perspective can point to the near-universal adoption of English, the equally rapid loss of foreign languages, and the widespread shift to American fashions and lifestyles as evidence that the new second generation is indeed “melting.” But against this conclusion rises an equally solid body of evidence pointing to a universal shift from American identities to ethnic ones, increasing perceptions of discrimination against one’s own group, and an overall reassertion of heritage and cultural distinctness that bode ill for predictions of future national homogeneity.
Research Interests:
At the dawn of a new century, new American ethnic groups are forming faster than ever before. The emerging ethnic groups of the United States in the 21 st century will be the children and grandchildren of today's immigrants. Their numbers... more
At the dawn of a new century, new American ethnic groups are forming faster than ever before. The emerging ethnic groups of the United States in the 21 st century will be the children and grandchildren of today's immigrants. Their numbers and diversity will ensure that the process will have a profound societal impact. This new era of mass immigrationand hence of ethnogenesis-now overwhelmingly non-European in composition, is raising familiar doubts about the assimilability of the newcomers and alarms that they might become consigned to a vast multiethnic underclass, on the other side of a new 21 st century "color line." While assimilation may still represent the master process in the study of today's immigrants, it is a process subject to too many contingencies and affected by too many variables to render the image of a relatively uniform and straightforward path convincing. Instead, the present generation of children of immigrants is better defined as undergoing a process of "segmented assimilation" where outcomes vary across immigrant minorities, and where rapid integration and acceptance into the American mainstream represent just one possible alternative. Why this is so-and how it is that different groups may come to assimilate to different sectors of American society-is a complex story that is explored in this book. The chapters that follow examine systematically a wide range of factors that shape the incorporation of youths of diverse national origins-Mexican, Cuban, Nicaraguan, Filipino, Vietnamese, Haitian, Jamaican and other West Indian-coming of age in immigrant families on both coasts of the United States. They are based on an analysis of a rich new data set collected by the Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Study (CILS), the largest to date in the United States.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
This revised, updated, and expanded fourth edition of Immigrant America: A Portrait provides readers with a comprehensive and current overview of immigration to the United States in a single volume. Updated with the latest available data,... more
This revised, updated, and expanded fourth edition of Immigrant America: A Portrait provides readers with a comprehensive and current overview of immigration to the United States in a single volume. Updated with the latest available data, Immigrant America explores the economic, political, spatial, and linguistic aspects of immigration; the role of religion in the acculturation and social integration of foreign minorities; and the adaptation process for the second generation. This revised 4th edition includes new chapters on theories of migration and on the history of U.S.-bound migration from the late nineteenth century to the present, offering an updated and expanded concluding chapter on immigration and public policy.
Research Interests: Religion, History, Sociology, Education, Social Policy, and 13 moreSecond Language Acquisition, Immigration, Settlement Patterns, Race and Ethnicity, Immigrant children, Acculturation, Racial and ethnic discrimination, Social Inequality, International Migration and Immigration Policy, Integration, Xenophobia, Assimilation, and Issues of Immigration and the Education of Children of Immigrants
In this new opening chapter of the 4th edition of IMMIGRANT AMERICA, we analyze three distinct phases spanning the last century and a third: (1) the Great European Waves of the period from 1880 to 1930, which accompanied the American... more
In this new opening chapter of the 4th edition of IMMIGRANT AMERICA, we analyze three distinct phases spanning the last century and a third: (1) the Great European Waves of the period from 1880 to 1930, which accompanied the American industrial revolution, reached a historic zenith in 1910 when 14.7 percent of the total population was foreign born, and ended with the triumph of restrictionist legislation; (2) a period of Retrenchment from 1930 to 1970, which spanned the Great Depression, World War II and its aftermath, reaching a historic nadir in 1970 when only 4.7 percent of the population was foreign born; and (3) a period of Rebound from 1970 to the present, which remains the focus of the book—an era of economic restructuring, widening economic inequality, and the sharply increased migration of low-wage laborers, professionals, entrepreneurs, refugees and asylees, combining to reach a foreign-born total of 40 million by 2010. Migration during this new era grew by more than a million a year, ending with the Great Recession and unprecedented state persecution of millions of undocumented immigrants. This state policy included the creation of a vast network of immigrant detention centers and historic deportation levels, even as unauthorized migration decreased to net zero. One leitmotif of the book is the counterpoint between the widespread demand for immigrant labor by different sectors of the American economy and the activities of nativists and xenophobes across the three successive phases of U.S.-bound immigration. Indeed, throughout successive chapters, we look to the historical record to place present concerns in a broader comparative context. History does not repeat itself, but it echoes.
Research Interests: History, Sociology, European Studies, Racial and Ethnic Politics, Transnationalism, and 16 moreU.S. history, Asian American Studies, Immigration, Race and Ethnicity, Discrimination, Undocumented Immigration, Migration Studies, Transnational migration, Acculturation, The Industrial Revolution, Racial and ethnic discrimination, Social Mobility, Latinos, Integration, Xenophobia, and Assimilation
Immigrant America: A Portrait. 4th ed., 2014. Chapter 2 - Theoretical Overview. There is no comprehensive theory of international migration. Those that exist tend to focus on manual labor migrants and then extend, haphazardly, to the... more
Immigrant America: A Portrait. 4th ed., 2014. Chapter 2 - Theoretical Overview.
There is no comprehensive theory of international migration. Those that exist tend to focus on manual labor migrants and then extend, haphazardly, to the origins and patterns of settlement of professional migrants, entrepreneurs, and refugees. Existing theories can be organized into four categories: a) determinants of the origins of migration; b) determinants of its continuation and directionality; c) uses of migrant labor; and d) patterns of migrant settlement and adaptation. We review and evaluate these theories and note their applicability to the different types of migrant described in the prior chapter.
There is no comprehensive theory of international migration. Those that exist tend to focus on manual labor migrants and then extend, haphazardly, to the origins and patterns of settlement of professional migrants, entrepreneurs, and refugees. Existing theories can be organized into four categories: a) determinants of the origins of migration; b) determinants of its continuation and directionality; c) uses of migrant labor; and d) patterns of migrant settlement and adaptation. We review and evaluate these theories and note their applicability to the different types of migrant described in the prior chapter.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Immigrant America, 4th ed., 2014 - Chapter 4. n this chapter, we examine in detail the most recent evidence pertaining to the education, labor force participation, occupational status, and incomes of the foreign-born population. We... more
Immigrant America, 4th ed., 2014 - Chapter 4.
n this chapter, we examine in detail the most recent evidence pertaining to the education, labor force participation, occupational status, and incomes of the foreign-born population. We examine determinants of occupational and income achievement of immigrants and propose an alternative interpretation that contrasts an exclusively individualistic approach with one that takes into account the sociological reality of different contexts of reception experienced by different immigrant minorities...
n this chapter, we examine in detail the most recent evidence pertaining to the education, labor force participation, occupational status, and incomes of the foreign-born population. We examine determinants of occupational and income achievement of immigrants and propose an alternative interpretation that contrasts an exclusively individualistic approach with one that takes into account the sociological reality of different contexts of reception experienced by different immigrant minorities...
Research Interests:
Immigrant America, 4th ed., 2014 - Chapter 5. The immigrant world has always been a difficult one, torn between old loyalties and new realities. For the most part, the politics of the first generation -- to the extent that such politics... more
Immigrant America, 4th ed., 2014 - Chapter 5.
The immigrant world has always been a difficult one, torn between old loyalties and new realities. For the most part, the politics of the first generation -- to the extent that such politics have existed -- have been characterized by an overriding preoccupation with the home country. Early participation in American politics has been limited to the more educated groups, those prevented from going back to their countries of origin, and those exceptional circumstances in which the very survival of the immigrant community is at stake. Even then, however, old loyalties die hard because individuals socialized in another language and culture have great difficulty giving them up as a primary source of identity.
Throughout the history of immigration, the characteristics of sending countries have also made a significant difference in shaping the politics of the first generation as well as the timing of its shift into American-based concerns. Immigrants in the past or present may have come from: 1) stateless nations -- divided lands contested by warring factions or occupied by a foreign power; 2) hostile states -- dictatorships that oppressed the entire population of their countries or singled out the immigrants' own group for special persecution; 3) consolidated but indifferent nation-states, that neither promoted nor acknowledged the migrants' departure; or 4) states that actually supported and supervised emigration, regarding their nationals abroad as outposts serving their country's interests.
These diverse origins interact with contexts of reception to give rise to a complex geometry of political concerns among the foreign born that mold, in turn, the politics of later generations. Depending on this variable geometry of places of origin and destination, immigrant communities may be passionately committed to political causes back home, either in support of or in opposition to the existing regime; they may see themselves as representatives of their nation-state abroad; or they may turn away from all things past and concentrate on building a new life in America. Examples of these and other possible outcomes are found both at the turn of the twentieth century and at present. We look first at the earlier period in order to provide a backdrop against which to describe contemporary developments.
The immigrant world has always been a difficult one, torn between old loyalties and new realities. For the most part, the politics of the first generation -- to the extent that such politics have existed -- have been characterized by an overriding preoccupation with the home country. Early participation in American politics has been limited to the more educated groups, those prevented from going back to their countries of origin, and those exceptional circumstances in which the very survival of the immigrant community is at stake. Even then, however, old loyalties die hard because individuals socialized in another language and culture have great difficulty giving them up as a primary source of identity.
Throughout the history of immigration, the characteristics of sending countries have also made a significant difference in shaping the politics of the first generation as well as the timing of its shift into American-based concerns. Immigrants in the past or present may have come from: 1) stateless nations -- divided lands contested by warring factions or occupied by a foreign power; 2) hostile states -- dictatorships that oppressed the entire population of their countries or singled out the immigrants' own group for special persecution; 3) consolidated but indifferent nation-states, that neither promoted nor acknowledged the migrants' departure; or 4) states that actually supported and supervised emigration, regarding their nationals abroad as outposts serving their country's interests.
These diverse origins interact with contexts of reception to give rise to a complex geometry of political concerns among the foreign born that mold, in turn, the politics of later generations. Depending on this variable geometry of places of origin and destination, immigrant communities may be passionately committed to political causes back home, either in support of or in opposition to the existing regime; they may see themselves as representatives of their nation-state abroad; or they may turn away from all things past and concentrate on building a new life in America. Examples of these and other possible outcomes are found both at the turn of the twentieth century and at present. We look first at the earlier period in order to provide a backdrop against which to describe contemporary developments.
Research Interests: Sociology, Political Sociology, Education, Refugee Studies, Immigration, and 13 moreRace and Ethnicity, Stereotypes and Prejudice, National Identity, Undocumented Immigration, Migration Studies, Acculturation, Citizenship, Nativism, Xenophobia, Assimilation, Ethnicity and National Identity, Legal Status, and Citizenship and Naturalization Law
Chapter 6 of 3rd edition (2006) of Immigrant America.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Immigrant America, 4th ed., 2014 - Chapter 7: In the previous chapters, we have examined the diversity of contemporary immigration, its settlement patterns, and modes of incorporation into the American economy and political system, as... more
Immigrant America, 4th ed., 2014 - Chapter 7:
In the previous chapters, we have examined the diversity of contemporary immigration, its settlement patterns, and modes of incorporation into the American economy and political system, as well as aspect of immigrants’ cultural and linguistic adaptation. It is time now to consider how the children are adapting to their role as American citizens. The three stories that open this chapter each offers lessons that will prove useful as we analyze and seek to make sense of these youthful trajectories.
During the last half century a large new second generation has emerged formed by children of immigrants born in the United States or brought at an early age from abroad. Many of its members are still in school, but a large number also entered adulthood during the 1990s and 2000s. During the 1990s, the prior record of 28 million native-born citizens of foreign parentage, reached by descendants of Europeans in the 1940s was surpassed. Immigrants and their offspring contributed a full 70 percent of the country’s population growth since 1990. Hispanics alone, overwhelmingly immigrants and children of immigrants have accounted for half of the population growth since 2000. By 2010 there were over 33 million “new second generation” youths of foreign-parentage in the country or one in four of all Americans aged 24 or younger.
At first glance and based on the experience of the children of European groups in prior decades, we could anticipate that the adaptation process of the new second generation would be relatively smooth. Children would gradually leave foreign languages and identities behind, embrace American culture, and claim and gain their rightful place in the middle-class “mainstream”. As we will see, this straight-line vision fits present experience only imperfectly.
Sons and daughters of immigrants from Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean often encounter obstacles in their path that render their successful adaptation and economic advancement problematic. In today's context, many of these children face the paradox that assimilating to their American surroundings may compromise their successful adaptation, while remaining firmly ensconced in their parents' immigrant communities and cultures may strengthen their chances. This paradox stems from the complexities of contemporary American society and the unexpected effects that it has on newcomers. We will inquire into these dynamics after reviewing what is known about the number, location, and attitudes of this emerging population.
In the previous chapters, we have examined the diversity of contemporary immigration, its settlement patterns, and modes of incorporation into the American economy and political system, as well as aspect of immigrants’ cultural and linguistic adaptation. It is time now to consider how the children are adapting to their role as American citizens. The three stories that open this chapter each offers lessons that will prove useful as we analyze and seek to make sense of these youthful trajectories.
During the last half century a large new second generation has emerged formed by children of immigrants born in the United States or brought at an early age from abroad. Many of its members are still in school, but a large number also entered adulthood during the 1990s and 2000s. During the 1990s, the prior record of 28 million native-born citizens of foreign parentage, reached by descendants of Europeans in the 1940s was surpassed. Immigrants and their offspring contributed a full 70 percent of the country’s population growth since 1990. Hispanics alone, overwhelmingly immigrants and children of immigrants have accounted for half of the population growth since 2000. By 2010 there were over 33 million “new second generation” youths of foreign-parentage in the country or one in four of all Americans aged 24 or younger.
At first glance and based on the experience of the children of European groups in prior decades, we could anticipate that the adaptation process of the new second generation would be relatively smooth. Children would gradually leave foreign languages and identities behind, embrace American culture, and claim and gain their rightful place in the middle-class “mainstream”. As we will see, this straight-line vision fits present experience only imperfectly.
Sons and daughters of immigrants from Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean often encounter obstacles in their path that render their successful adaptation and economic advancement problematic. In today's context, many of these children face the paradox that assimilating to their American surroundings may compromise their successful adaptation, while remaining firmly ensconced in their parents' immigrant communities and cultures may strengthen their chances. This paradox stems from the complexities of contemporary American society and the unexpected effects that it has on newcomers. We will inquire into these dynamics after reviewing what is known about the number, location, and attitudes of this emerging population.
Research Interests: Sociology, Education, Self and Identity, Second Language Acquisition, Youth Studies, and 19 moreDepression, Immigration, Migration, Race and Ethnicity, Stereotypes and Prejudice, Gender, Undocumented Immigration, Migration Studies, Parent Child Relationships, Acculturation, Social Mobility, Self-Esteem, Nativism, Second Generation Immigrants, Academic achievement, Xenophobia, Assimilation, Ethnicity and National Identity, and Dreamers
Immigrant America, 4th ed., 2014 - Chapter 9: Sheriff Joe Arpaio won re-election in Maricopa County albeit by a much diminished margin in 2012. Meanwhile, the deportation campaign conducted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)... more
Immigrant America, 4th ed., 2014 - Chapter 9:
Sheriff Joe Arpaio won re-election in Maricopa County albeit by a much diminished margin in 2012. Meanwhile, the deportation campaign conducted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) continued apace. In chapter 1 we presented the evolution of deportations during the last two decades and showed their massive increase starting in the last years of the Bush Administration. This campaign amounts to what Douglas Massey has labeled “America’s war against its own immigrants.” On the other side of the ledger, President Obama promulgated by decree a temporary stay of the campaign against the children of unauthorized immigrants, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) of 2012; in the first year of the program about 400,000 applicants were allowed to stay in the U.S., although more than half of the undocumented youth under 30 are ineligible. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano proclaimed the end of the indiscriminate deportation campaign, announcing in 2011 that henceforth cases would be reviewed “on an individual basis,” although in 2012 ICE deported 409,849 individuals, a record high. The plummeting of unauthorized immigration prompted by the Great Recession of 2007-2009 and the consequent drying up of labor supplies to agriculture and other labor intensive sectors of the American economy prompted the Obama Administration to re-activate the H-2 temporary visa program on a massive scale, as seen in Chapters 1 and 5.
By 2013, the situation was nothing short of schizophrenic, with agricultural interests clamoring for the same type of worker that ICE was deporting and the U.S. government setting up a revolving door where Mexican workers were thrown out of the country, on the one hand, and welcomed as W-2 visa holders, on the other. Calls for “comprehensive immigration reform” have long been heard, but they have been routinely neutralized by the intransigent opposition of the Republican Party against “rewarding law breakers”. Only the punishing Hispanic vote against Republican candidates in the 2012 presidential election started convincing some party stalwarts to move away from their prior intransigence.
Realities underneath are more complex. While clamoring for a ready supply of foreign labor, chambers of commerce and associations of farmers and ranchers barely raised a finger in the past to stop the border enforcement and deportation campaigns. Although not saying so publicly, many of these interests viewed the American immigration system as not really “broken”, at least until recently, since unauthorized immigration provided them with a steady supply of low-cost and docile labor. Only the increasing power of the Hispanic electorate, brought about largely by the coming of age of the second generation, has introduced a new and potentially decisive element into this political equation.
The contradictions in American immigration policy today represent the latest episode of that ambivalence toward immigrants noted at the start of this book. There is no small irony in the opposite portrayals of immigration to America, reviled when it is taking place and celebrated after a period of time, when the first generation has passed from the scene and its descendants are able to revindicate its achievements. A good part of American literature is made up of these nostalgic retrospectives of the trials and accomplishments of immigrants by their children and grandchildren—Jews and Italians earlier in the twentieth century; Chinese, Cubans, and Mexicans today.
This cycle of negative and positive stereotyping only skims the surface of the phenomenon of immigration, however. This is so because these contradictory images emerge in the realm of public opinion where serious understanding of the dynamics underlying the process, including the role of public opinion itself, is lacking. The well-entrenched public view is that immigration is a consequence of the initiative of migrants themselves who come in search of a better life; they are allowed to settle because of the laxness of government controls and a tolerant attitude among the natives. If such an attitude were to disappear and the government to tighten controls, immigration would certainly go away.
These views are erroneous. Immigrant flows are not initiated solely by the desires and dreams of people in other lands, but by the designs and interests of well-organized groups in the receiving country, primarily employers. Up to a point, public opposition to immigration can play into the hands of these groups by maintaining the newcomers in a vulnerable and dependent position. Similarly, governments are not omnipotent in their regulation of immigration. In particular, governmental attempts at reversing well-established migrant flows do not generally have the intended effect because of the resistance of social networks linking places of origin and destination.
This final chapter aims at teasing out these complex dynamics in order to lay out the basis for a sound understanding of the origins of contemporary immigration and for viable policies toward it. To do so, we must examine the interplay between the two sets of forces just mentioned: the surface level of policy debates and shifting currents of public opinion, and the underlying realities rooted in the political economy of the nation. The interplay has effects on three key constituencies which must be examined systematically: the immigrants themselves, the ethnic groups created by them, and society at large.
Sheriff Joe Arpaio won re-election in Maricopa County albeit by a much diminished margin in 2012. Meanwhile, the deportation campaign conducted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) continued apace. In chapter 1 we presented the evolution of deportations during the last two decades and showed their massive increase starting in the last years of the Bush Administration. This campaign amounts to what Douglas Massey has labeled “America’s war against its own immigrants.” On the other side of the ledger, President Obama promulgated by decree a temporary stay of the campaign against the children of unauthorized immigrants, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) of 2012; in the first year of the program about 400,000 applicants were allowed to stay in the U.S., although more than half of the undocumented youth under 30 are ineligible. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano proclaimed the end of the indiscriminate deportation campaign, announcing in 2011 that henceforth cases would be reviewed “on an individual basis,” although in 2012 ICE deported 409,849 individuals, a record high. The plummeting of unauthorized immigration prompted by the Great Recession of 2007-2009 and the consequent drying up of labor supplies to agriculture and other labor intensive sectors of the American economy prompted the Obama Administration to re-activate the H-2 temporary visa program on a massive scale, as seen in Chapters 1 and 5.
By 2013, the situation was nothing short of schizophrenic, with agricultural interests clamoring for the same type of worker that ICE was deporting and the U.S. government setting up a revolving door where Mexican workers were thrown out of the country, on the one hand, and welcomed as W-2 visa holders, on the other. Calls for “comprehensive immigration reform” have long been heard, but they have been routinely neutralized by the intransigent opposition of the Republican Party against “rewarding law breakers”. Only the punishing Hispanic vote against Republican candidates in the 2012 presidential election started convincing some party stalwarts to move away from their prior intransigence.
Realities underneath are more complex. While clamoring for a ready supply of foreign labor, chambers of commerce and associations of farmers and ranchers barely raised a finger in the past to stop the border enforcement and deportation campaigns. Although not saying so publicly, many of these interests viewed the American immigration system as not really “broken”, at least until recently, since unauthorized immigration provided them with a steady supply of low-cost and docile labor. Only the increasing power of the Hispanic electorate, brought about largely by the coming of age of the second generation, has introduced a new and potentially decisive element into this political equation.
The contradictions in American immigration policy today represent the latest episode of that ambivalence toward immigrants noted at the start of this book. There is no small irony in the opposite portrayals of immigration to America, reviled when it is taking place and celebrated after a period of time, when the first generation has passed from the scene and its descendants are able to revindicate its achievements. A good part of American literature is made up of these nostalgic retrospectives of the trials and accomplishments of immigrants by their children and grandchildren—Jews and Italians earlier in the twentieth century; Chinese, Cubans, and Mexicans today.
This cycle of negative and positive stereotyping only skims the surface of the phenomenon of immigration, however. This is so because these contradictory images emerge in the realm of public opinion where serious understanding of the dynamics underlying the process, including the role of public opinion itself, is lacking. The well-entrenched public view is that immigration is a consequence of the initiative of migrants themselves who come in search of a better life; they are allowed to settle because of the laxness of government controls and a tolerant attitude among the natives. If such an attitude were to disappear and the government to tighten controls, immigration would certainly go away.
These views are erroneous. Immigrant flows are not initiated solely by the desires and dreams of people in other lands, but by the designs and interests of well-organized groups in the receiving country, primarily employers. Up to a point, public opposition to immigration can play into the hands of these groups by maintaining the newcomers in a vulnerable and dependent position. Similarly, governments are not omnipotent in their regulation of immigration. In particular, governmental attempts at reversing well-established migrant flows do not generally have the intended effect because of the resistance of social networks linking places of origin and destination.
This final chapter aims at teasing out these complex dynamics in order to lay out the basis for a sound understanding of the origins of contemporary immigration and for viable policies toward it. To do so, we must examine the interplay between the two sets of forces just mentioned: the surface level of policy debates and shifting currents of public opinion, and the underlying realities rooted in the political economy of the nation. The interplay has effects on three key constituencies which must be examined systematically: the immigrants themselves, the ethnic groups created by them, and society at large.
Research Interests: Sociology, Political Sociology, Political Economy, Education, Second Language Acquisition, and 17 moreImmigration, Political Science, Race and Ethnicity, Immigration Law, International Migration, Undocumented Immigration, Immigration History, Migration Studies, Contemporary International Migration, Acculturation, Social Mobility, Nativism, Xenophobia, Assimilation, Ethnicity and National Identity, Anti-Nativism, and Public Policy
The study of “the new second generation”, arguably the most consequential legacy of contemporary immigration to the United States, is now more than a quarter century old, and has generated a vibrant field of study. The incorporation... more
The study of “the new second generation”, arguably the most consequential legacy of contemporary immigration to the United States, is now more than a quarter century old, and has generated a vibrant field of study. The incorporation trajectories of the adult children of the new immigration have been the subject of vigorous debate: are they not only “assimilating” into the American “mainstream” but exhibiting a “second-generation advantage” relative to native-born peers, or experiencing “downward assimilation” or “second-generation decline”? In this study, we draw from our latest follow-up to the Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Study (CILS) in San Diego, which provides a unique longitudinal view spanning nearly 25 years of the life course of our respondents (1991–2016), from their early teens to their late thirties. It enables us to more fully analyze processes of socioeconomic attainment and cultural incorporation among children of immigrants born in the late 1970s, who grew up during a notably inclusionary period for immigrants and refugees in San Diego and in the U.S. (which contrasts sharply with the context under which many children of immigrants throughout the country are coming of age today); in a state (California) that had invested in a well-planned system of accessible and affordable public colleges and universities; in an era of widening income inequalities in which the prospects of social mobility of immigrants’ children have hinged on their levels of education more than ever before; and who navigated the Great Recession just as they were turning 30. As an indicator of socioeconomic attainment, we focus on educational attainment, arguably the most important indicator of long-term socioeconomic success. While prior studies have examined educational attainment in early adulthood, we note that over half of our respondents were still attending school in their mid-twenties, and 39% attended postsecondary school into their thirties. As indicators of cultural incorporation, we examine the degree to which respondents identify as American and consider themselves part of the American mainstream. Finally, we consider whether and to what degree the current era of immigrant exclusion and expulsion has impacted them.
Research Interests: Sociology, Education, Refugee Studies, Immigration, Identity (Culture), and 10 moreSecond generation identity, International Migration, Migration Studies, Acculturation, Social Mobility, Transition to Adulthood, Generations, Deportation, Longitudinal Studies, and Social Exclusion and Social Inequalities
More immigrants come to the United States than to any other country; more come to California than to any other state; and more settle in Southern California than in any other metropolitan region. The largest nationalities that have come... more
More immigrants come to the United States than to any other country; more come to California than to any other state; and more settle in Southern California than in any other metropolitan region. The largest nationalities that have come to the U.S. since the 1970s—comprising the largest concentrations of refugees and of immigrant professionals, entrepreneurs, and unauthorized laborers—have established their primary settlements there. Within a context of widening economic inequality and increasing governmental persecution of undocumented immigrants, central theoretical and policy questions concern the social mobility (intra- and inter-generational) of new ethnic groups being formed as a result of mass migration from Latin America and Asia—especially the rapidly growing generation of children of immigrants now making their transitions to adulthood (finishing their education, entering full-time work, forming families of their own). Findings are presented from merged samples of two major research studies in Southern California (IIMMLA and CILS-III). The focus is on the divergent educational mobility patterns of foreign-parentage (1.5- and 2nd-generation) young adults of Mexican, Salvadoran, Guatemalan, Filipino, Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, Cambodian and Laotian origin—representing distinct and segmented modes of incorporation. Multivariate analyses examine the effect of factors which facilitate or derail their mobility prospects, including the relative role of parental human capital and legal/citizenship status, family structure and neighborhood contexts growing up, early school achievement, linguistic acculturation, arrests and incarceration, and teenage and non-marital child-bearing, compared to patterns observed for native-parentage (3rd-generation and beyond) white, black, and Mexican-American peers. The paradoxical relationship of acculturation to mobility outcomes is considered. The resultant formation of new patterns of urban ethnic inequality, and their implications for social science and public policy, are discussed.
Research Interests:
More immigrants come to the United States than to any other country; more come to California than to any other state; and more settle in Southern California than in any other metropolitan region. The largest nationalities that have come... more
More immigrants come to the United States than to any other country; more come to California than to any other state; and more settle in Southern California than in any other metropolitan region. The largest nationalities that have come to the U.S. since the 1970s—comprising the largest concentrations of refugees and of immigrant professionals, entrepreneurs, and unauthorized laborers—have established their primary settlements there. Within a context of widening economic inequality and increasing governmental persecution of undocumented immigrants, central theoretical and policy questions concern the social mobility (intra- and inter-generational) of new ethnic groups being formed as a result of mass migration from Latin America and Asia—especially the rapidly growing generation of children of immigrants now making their transitions to adulthood (finishing their education, entering full-time work, forming families of their own). Findings are presented from merged samples of two major research studies in Southern California (IIMMLA and CILS-III). The focus is on the divergent educational mobility patterns of foreign-parentage (1.5- and 2nd-generation) young adults of Mexican, Salvadoran, Guatemalan, Filipino, Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, Cambodian and Laotian origin—representing distinct and segmented modes of incorporation. Multivariate analyses examine the effect of factors which facilitate or derail their mobility prospects, including the relative role of parental human capital and legal/citizenship status, family structure and neighborhood contexts growing up, early school achievement, linguistic acculturation, arrests and incarceration, and teenage and non-marital child-bearing, compared to patterns observed for native-parentage (3rd-generation and beyond) white, black, and Mexican-American peers. The paradoxical relationship of acculturation to mobility outcomes is considered. The resultant formation of new patterns of urban ethnic inequality, and their implications for social science and public policy, are discussed.
Research Interests:
This article first sketches a contemporary portrait of the immigrant first and second generations of the United States, examining national-level census data to specify differences by ethnicity, gender and generation in three variables... more
This article first sketches a contemporary portrait of the immigrant first and second generations of the United States, examining national-level census data to specify differences by ethnicity, gender and generation in three variables shaping socioeconomic trajectories in early adulthood: educational attainment, incarceration, and childbearing. An analysis of the latest results from the Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Study in California is then presented, focusing on patterns and predictors of those same three variables among a sample of young adults in their mid twenties whose parents immigrated from Mexico, the Philippines, China, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, and other countries of origin. As post-secondary educational attainment has become critical to social mobility for young adults, incarceration (for men) and early childbearing (for women) have emerged as turning points that can derail life course trajectories by disrupting educational and occupational opportunities to develop human capital and move into the economic mainstream, setting in motion processes of cumulating disadvantage.
Research Interests:
Intergenerational relations in immigrant families are managed and shaped within divergent contexts of reception and incorporation, and with divergent sets of resources and vulnerabilities. Still, after taking into account the objective... more
Intergenerational relations in immigrant families are managed and shaped within divergent contexts of reception and incorporation, and with divergent sets of resources and vulnerabilities. Still, after taking into account the objective circumstances within which children of immigrants are coming of age – such as their parents’ socioeconomic status, family structure, peer networks and school contexts – there remains substantial and unexpected variance in the children’s interpersonal and intrapersonal responses. This paper explores these dimensions of their adaptation process: the ways they perceive their relationships with their parents and families, their school experiences and work discipline, their sense of self-worth, and the way they imagine and project their educational and occupational adult futures. That mix of psychosocial factors, in turn – especially experiences, attitudes, beliefs and expectations about education – can mold motivation and achievement, an analysis of which then follows. The data for that analysis come from the Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Study (CILS), the largest study of its kind to date in the United States. The study has followed the progress of a large sample of teenage youths representing 77 nationalities in two main areas of immigrant settlement in the United States: Southern California and South Florida.
Research Interests:
This article examines young adults’ educational and occupational trajectories over a ten-year period using panel data from the Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Study (CILS) in California. While many of the young men and women in the... more
This article examines young adults’ educational and occupational trajectories over a ten-year period using panel data from the Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Study (CILS) in California. While many of the young men and women in the study are on straightforward paths to socioeconomic success, others are falling well short of their goals and imagined futures. Males begin with lower educational and occupational expectations than females in junior high school, and are also less likely to translate high expectations into realities in early adulthood. While some occupational choices remain traditionally gendered, females are more likely than males to aspire to and to attain the highest status occupations, even those that are male-dominated. Early educational expectations are important predictors of subsequent success for both males and females. But determinants of outcomes differ significantly for men and women, showing how paths are segmented not only by class and ethnicity, but also by gender.
Research Interests:
No state has felt the impact of the new immigration more than California, and no institution more than its public schools. A third of the nation's immigrants are concentrated in California; and over a third of California's K-12 public... more
No state has felt the impact of the new immigration more than California, and no institution more than its public schools. A third of the nation's immigrants are concentrated in California; and over a third of California's K-12 public school children speak a language other than English at home. These new Californians are extraordinarily diverse; they hail largely from Asia and Latin America, and include among them at once the most educated and the least educated ethnic groups in the U.S. today. Their children are growing up in a context where economic restructuring, a prolonged recession, and accompanying fiscal woes have exacerbated a deep public discontent particularly aimed at immigrants. Yet for all of the political controversy surrounding the public education of immigrant children - and even though they will become a crucial component of the larger economy and society in the years to come - very little is in fact known about their educational progress and adaptation patterns to date. The import of the course of the adaptation of this new second generation goes far beyond its immediate impacts on school systems, state budgets, and fiscal policies. It will ultimately be the measure by which the long-term national consequences of the present wave of immigration are gauged. This chapter aims to contribute to the development of that knowledge base and to review current research findings about immigrant students in California public schools. It is organized in five parts. First, census data on the size, national origins, and socioeconomic characteristics of the foreign-born population are presented to document the current diversity and its concentration in California. This is followed by a profile of both LEP (Limited English Proficient) and FEP (Fluent English Proficient) language-minority students enrolled statewide in K-12 public schools in California. Next I report results from two new comparative research studies of the educational performance of children of immigrants in San Diego schools (including dropout rates, GPAs, achievement test scores, and educational aspirations), focusing on the largest groups: Mexicans, Filipinos, Vietnamese, Laotians, Cambodians, and East Asian-origin groups. Finally, the findings of four case studies of the adaptation of immigrant high school students in different parts of California are discussed, focusing on Southeast Asians, Punjabi Sikhs from India, Mexicans, and Central Americans.
Research Interests:
“Inheriting the City: The Children of Immigrants Come of Age” presents the results of a major research project on the children of immigrants in New York City, focusing on eight groups, five of which are immigrant groups: Dominicans; South... more
“Inheriting the City: The Children of Immigrants Come of Age” presents the results of a major research project on the children of immigrants in New York City, focusing on eight groups, five of which are immigrant groups: Dominicans; South Americans from Colombia, Ecuador and Peru; English-speaking West Indians; the Chinese; and Russian Jews. The three comparison groups are native whites, native blacks, and Puerto Ricans. The symposium allowed three critics who have followed this project from its earliest phases to assess the results and the authors to respond to the issues raised by their commentaries.
Research Interests:
RESUMEN Este trabajo examina de forma comparativa y longitudinal los logros educativos que han obtenido dos muestras de jóvenes: los que se quedaron con sus familias en su lugar de origen en México, y los del mismo lugar que emigraron a... more
RESUMEN
Este trabajo examina de forma comparativa y longitudinal los logros educativos que han obtenido dos muestras de jóvenes: los que se quedaron con sus familias en su lugar de origen en México, y los del mismo lugar que emigraron a California o nacieron del otro lado de la frontera en los Estados Unidos. Los pocos estudios longitudinales de las trayectorias de hijos de inmigrantes, como CILS en Estados Unidos e ILSEG en España, comparan grupos de jóvenes en el mismo país. El presente estudio, denominado Estudio Longitudinal de Logros Educativos (ELLE) en México y Estados Unidos, no sólo compara con métodos cualitativos y cuantitativos la situación de jóvenes y de sus padres del mismo origen en dos países durante períodos de crisis entre 2008-2012, sino también compara familias de inmigrantes en California en calidad de indocumentados, documentados y ciudadanos americanos.
ABSTRACT
This paper presents the results of a comparative longitudinal study of educational achievement between two samples of young people: those who stayed with their families in their home town in Mexico, and those from the same place who emigrated to California or were born to immigrant parents in the United States. The few longitudinal studies of the trajectories from adolescence to adulthood of children of immigrants, such as CILS in the U.S. and ILSEG in Spain, compare groups of youth in the same country. This work, the Longitudinal Study of Educational Achievement (ELLE) in Mexico and the United States, employs qualitative and quantitative methods not only to compare the situation of young people and their parents of the same origin in two countries during periods of crisis between 2008-2012, but also compares the outcomes of undocumented, documented and U.S. citizen youth in immigrant families in California.
Este trabajo examina de forma comparativa y longitudinal los logros educativos que han obtenido dos muestras de jóvenes: los que se quedaron con sus familias en su lugar de origen en México, y los del mismo lugar que emigraron a California o nacieron del otro lado de la frontera en los Estados Unidos. Los pocos estudios longitudinales de las trayectorias de hijos de inmigrantes, como CILS en Estados Unidos e ILSEG en España, comparan grupos de jóvenes en el mismo país. El presente estudio, denominado Estudio Longitudinal de Logros Educativos (ELLE) en México y Estados Unidos, no sólo compara con métodos cualitativos y cuantitativos la situación de jóvenes y de sus padres del mismo origen en dos países durante períodos de crisis entre 2008-2012, sino también compara familias de inmigrantes en California en calidad de indocumentados, documentados y ciudadanos americanos.
ABSTRACT
This paper presents the results of a comparative longitudinal study of educational achievement between two samples of young people: those who stayed with their families in their home town in Mexico, and those from the same place who emigrated to California or were born to immigrant parents in the United States. The few longitudinal studies of the trajectories from adolescence to adulthood of children of immigrants, such as CILS in the U.S. and ILSEG in Spain, compare groups of youth in the same country. This work, the Longitudinal Study of Educational Achievement (ELLE) in Mexico and the United States, employs qualitative and quantitative methods not only to compare the situation of young people and their parents of the same origin in two countries during periods of crisis between 2008-2012, but also compares the outcomes of undocumented, documented and U.S. citizen youth in immigrant families in California.
Research Interests:
Differences in nativity (of self and parents) and age at arrival, which are criteria used to distinguish between generational cohorts, are known to affect significantly the modes of acculturation of adults and children in immigrant... more
Differences in nativity (of self and parents) and age at arrival, which are criteria used to distinguish between generational cohorts, are known to affect significantly the modes of acculturation of adults and children in immigrant families, especially with regard to language and ethnic identity, educational attainment and aspirations, patterns of social mobility, outlooks and frames of reference, and even their propensity to sustain transnational attachments over time. However, despite the import of intergenerational analysis for the study of the long-term impact of immigration, the meaning and measurement of “generations” has varied. The term “one-and-a-half” or “1.5” generation distinguishes those who immigrate as children from the “first” generation of immigrants who migrate as adults and the “second” generation of native-born persons of foreign parentage. Segments of any foreign-born population can be further refined into distinct types, depending on their ages and life stages at migration. Among those who immigrate as children their processes of acculturation and educational experiences can vary significantly depending on whether their migration occurred during early childhood, middle childhood, or adolescence. They are at starkly different life stages at the point of migration and begin their adaptation processes in very different social contexts. Educational and other adaptive outcomes are also affected by historical circumstances (such as the case of war-torn refugees), the cultural distance traveled by migrant populations, their socioeconomic resources, legal status and contexts of reception in host countries. While life stage and generational status matter, intergenerational analyses need to consider multiple possible determinants of concrete outcomes, and situate and interpret the data within larger contexts.
Research Interests:
The Workshop to Examine Current and Potential Uses of NCES Longitudinal Surveys by the Education Research Community was held on November 5-6, 2013, in Washington, DC, with the aim of providing the National Center for Education... more
The Workshop to Examine Current and Potential Uses of NCES Longitudinal Surveys by the Education Research Community was held on November 5-6, 2013, in Washington, DC, with the aim of providing the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) with input on the changing needs of the education research community and to offer ideas on ways NCES longitudinal surveys could be organized to plan into the future — particularly in light of a changing U.S. student population due to growing and diverse flows of immigrants. The following provides an overview of the transformation of the United States into a new nation of immigrants over the past several decades, and of a rapidly growing second generation of children of immigrants; discusses immigration and generational contexts most relevant to situating the educational experience of a changing student population; takes note of a similar previous effort to incorporate immigration-relevant data into federal surveys and official statistics; and proposes a “common core” of questions in NCES longitudinal surveys (only some of which are already being used in some surveys, but not consistently).
Number of Pages in PDF File: 26
Number of Pages in PDF File: 26
Research Interests:
The Mixed Methods Working Group, sponsored by the Spencer Foundation, included senior-level scholars and funders who use or support the use of multiple methods in education research. The group was convened to discuss guidelines for mixed... more
The Mixed Methods Working Group, sponsored by the Spencer Foundation, included senior-level scholars and funders who use or support the use of multiple methods in education research. The group was convened to discuss guidelines for mixed methods research that addresses broad and enduring educational problems in an increasingly diverse and unequal society by capitalizing on the complementary strengths of different methods. The challenging education issues of today require sophisticated theorizing and the collection of complex data using mixed methods. Using these tools to capture educational phenomena, and the forces driving them, strengthens education policy and its outcomes.
Research Interests:
The Mixed Methods Working Group (MMWG) addressed key features of successful mixed methods research; challenges of proposing and conducting such research; ways to address such challenges; training in mixed methods research; and issues of... more
The Mixed Methods Working Group (MMWG) addressed key features of successful mixed methods research; challenges of proposing and conducting such research; ways to address such challenges; training in mixed methods research; and issues of funding and publishing such work. To focus our discussion, we developed a selective list of exemplary mixed methods research suggested by all members of the MMWG. Group members were asked to annotate these resources with the following questions in mind: (1) How were methods mixed in this study? (2) Why was mixing methods vital to the study?
Research Interests:
Immigration reform in the United States has constituted an important legislative focus for nearly half a century. However, it has seldom pre-occupied policymakers to the degree that it has recently, moving this year to front-and-center... more
Immigration reform in the United States has constituted an important legislative focus for nearly half a century. However, it has seldom pre-occupied policymakers to the degree that it has recently, moving this year to front-and-center stage among US public policy issues, at least for a while. Because of worries about both increasing numbers of Mexican migrants and proposals to legalize unauthorized entrants (most of whom are Mexican), the question of
Research Interests:
This paper presents the results of a study carried out in Southern California with a multiethnic and multigenerational sample of young adults in their 20s and 30s. It merges two major surveys of adult children of immigrants, IIMMLA... more
This paper presents the results of a study carried out in Southern California with a multiethnic and multigenerational sample of young adults in their 20s and 30s. It merges two major surveys of adult children of immigrants, IIMMLA (Immigration and Intergenerational Mobility in Metropolitan Los Angeles) and the San Diego half of CILS (the Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Study). Both surveys utilized the same measures for key variables, and were carried out at about the same time in the six contiguous counties of Southern California with respondents were of similar ages, ethnicities, and generations. The analysis focuses on the independent effects of fluent bilingualism (measuring multiple dimensions of linguistic ability) on three socioeconomic outcomes: dropping out of high school, occupational status, and earnings. Southern California, as the nation’s largest regional site of immigrant incorporation over the past three decades – and home to the largest nationalities and most diverse types of immigrants (including professionals, refugees and undocumented laborers) to have settled in the U.S. over this period, as well as to their rapidly growing second generations – is a strategic site for such research. Of the region’s 21 million residents, half speak a language other than English at home, while half speak English only. Remarkably, controlling for major predictors, multivariate analyses show significant effects of bilingualism on all three socioeconomic outcomes: decreasing the odds of dropping out of high school, and increasing occupational status and earnings.
Research Interests:
While the United States historically has been a polyglot nation characterized by great linguistic diversity, it has also been a zone of language extinction in which immigrant tongues fade and are replaced by monolingual English within a... more
While the United States historically has been a polyglot nation characterized by great linguistic diversity, it has also been a zone of language extinction in which immigrant tongues fade and are replaced by monolingual English within a few generations. In 1910, 10 million people reported a mother tongue other than English, notably German, Italian, Yiddish, and Polish. The subsequent end of mass immigration from Europe led to a waning of language diversity and the most linguistically homogenous era in American history. But the revival of immigration after 1970 propelled the United States back toward its historical norm. By 2010, 60 million people (a fifth of the population) spoke a non-English language, especially Spanish. In this essay, we assess the effect of new waves of immigration on language diversity in the United States, map its evolution demographically and geographically, and consider what linguistic patterns are likely to persist and prevail in the twenty-first century.
Research Interests:
The ability to understand, speak, read and write in another language in addition to English confers a wide array of benefits for individuals across the life course—from the cognitive to the economic and the cultural—as well as for the... more
The ability to understand, speak, read and write in another language in addition to English confers a wide array of benefits for individuals across the life course—from the cognitive to the economic and the cultural—as well as for the Unites States as a whole—from commerce to security and diplomacy. Expanding the capacity for language learning is in the national interest. English is not sufficient to meet the nation’s needs in the 21st century. Research comparing bilinguals to monolinguals links fluency in a second language to enhanced cognitive ability and problem solving, improved learning performance and outcomes from primary to secondary grades—including higher standardized test scores in both math and English reading skills—as well as significantly lower high school dropout rates, higher educational expectations and self-esteem, and higher earnings in early adulthood.
Ironically, however, despite the diversity of America’s languages historically, the United States has acquired a well-deserved but dubious reputation as a language graveyard. No other country in the world has received more multilingual peoples, and yet in no other country has a switch to monolingual English occurred as rapidly as it has in the United States. The experience of bilingualism and multilingualism is normative in most countries around the world, but not in the United States.
Chiefly as a result of international migration to the United States over the last few decades, the percentage of people in the United States who speak English-only has declined from about 90 percent in 1970, the country’s linguistic nadir, to just under 80 percent today, while 20 percent now indicate that a language other than English is spoken in their home. However, when asked how well they speak that other language, only about half of that 20 percent speak a non-English language well. In other words, only 1 in 10 people in the United States speaks another language proficiently; the vast majority of American citizens remain monolingual. In that respect the U.S. lags behind most nations of the world, including Europe and China, in the percentage of its citizens who have some knowledge of a second language.
Most of the people in the U.S. who speak a non-English language did not learn it in school, but at home. They tend to be immigrants or children of immigrants. Yet the children of immigrants are losing their home language quite rapidly—we can actually measure language death with survey methods. And so we have American-born residents failing to acquire second-language skills through school, and immigrants and children of immigrants who are not retaining and passing on their non- English language skills. The result is a self-inflicted national disadvantage in global business, in international diplomacy and national security, in the exchange in research and ideas, in our ability to communicate with our own neighbors—as well as a missed opportunity to significantly expand the cognitive abilities and academic performance of America’s children, and the lifelong benefits that accrue to bilinguals from early childhood on, across the life course.
Monolingualism is a curable disease, but we cannot wait until middle school or high school to attack it. If we are to invest in and value language education as a persistent national need—just like education in math and English—it is critical to start early. By age two or three, the brain is generating trillions of new synapses, and language is acquired most easily during the first ten years of life. The capacity of young children to learn a new language is extraordinary; they are like sponges. If you have ever spent a year in a Kindergarten language immersion classroom, and seen little kids from all background (white, black, Latin and Asian American) arrive at school in September without speaking a non-English language, and then nine months later you see them speaking it effortlessly and without an accent… you can see how possible it is to turn a language graveyard into a language playground.
Ironically, however, despite the diversity of America’s languages historically, the United States has acquired a well-deserved but dubious reputation as a language graveyard. No other country in the world has received more multilingual peoples, and yet in no other country has a switch to monolingual English occurred as rapidly as it has in the United States. The experience of bilingualism and multilingualism is normative in most countries around the world, but not in the United States.
Chiefly as a result of international migration to the United States over the last few decades, the percentage of people in the United States who speak English-only has declined from about 90 percent in 1970, the country’s linguistic nadir, to just under 80 percent today, while 20 percent now indicate that a language other than English is spoken in their home. However, when asked how well they speak that other language, only about half of that 20 percent speak a non-English language well. In other words, only 1 in 10 people in the United States speaks another language proficiently; the vast majority of American citizens remain monolingual. In that respect the U.S. lags behind most nations of the world, including Europe and China, in the percentage of its citizens who have some knowledge of a second language.
Most of the people in the U.S. who speak a non-English language did not learn it in school, but at home. They tend to be immigrants or children of immigrants. Yet the children of immigrants are losing their home language quite rapidly—we can actually measure language death with survey methods. And so we have American-born residents failing to acquire second-language skills through school, and immigrants and children of immigrants who are not retaining and passing on their non- English language skills. The result is a self-inflicted national disadvantage in global business, in international diplomacy and national security, in the exchange in research and ideas, in our ability to communicate with our own neighbors—as well as a missed opportunity to significantly expand the cognitive abilities and academic performance of America’s children, and the lifelong benefits that accrue to bilinguals from early childhood on, across the life course.
Monolingualism is a curable disease, but we cannot wait until middle school or high school to attack it. If we are to invest in and value language education as a persistent national need—just like education in math and English—it is critical to start early. By age two or three, the brain is generating trillions of new synapses, and language is acquired most easily during the first ten years of life. The capacity of young children to learn a new language is extraordinary; they are like sponges. If you have ever spent a year in a Kindergarten language immersion classroom, and seen little kids from all background (white, black, Latin and Asian American) arrive at school in September without speaking a non-English language, and then nine months later you see them speaking it effortlessly and without an accent… you can see how possible it is to turn a language graveyard into a language playground.
Research Interests:
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, more than sixty-five million U.S. residents speak a language other than English at home—a number that has been growing decade by decade since the 1970s. Nevertheless, that number represents only 20.7... more
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, more than sixty-five million U.S. residents speak a language other than English at home—a number that has been growing decade by decade since the 1970s. Nevertheless, that number represents only 20.7 percent of the total population, and only a fraction of this cohort speaks, reads, and comprehends a second language well enough to use it in their everyday lives. The vast majority of American citizens remain monolingual.
While English continues to be the lingua franca for world trade and diplomacy, there is an emerging consensus among leaders in business and politics, teachers, scientists, and community members that proficiency in English is not sufficient to meet the nation’s needs in a shrinking world, nor the needs of individual citizens who interact with other peoples and cultures more than at any other time in human history.
In this report--the first of its kind in over 30 years--the Commission on Language Learning of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences recommends a national strategy to improve access to as many languages as possible for people of every region, ethnicity, and socioeconomic background—that is, to value language education as a persistent national need similar to education in math or English, and to ensure that a useful level of proficiency is within every student’s reach. As children prove especially receptive to language education—they spend much of their time in educational settings and can develop language skills gradually throughout their lives—the Commission believes that instruction should begin as early in life as possible. Its primary goal, therefore, is for every school in the nation to offer meaningful instruction in world languages as part of their standard curricula.
As a corollary, the Commission urges two- and four-year colleges and universities to continue to offer beginning and advanced language instruction to all students, and to reverse recent programmatic cuts wherever possible. It also applauds recent efforts to create new undergraduate language requirements on two- and four-year campuses.
Key Findings of this Report:
* The ability to understand, speak, read, and write in world languages, in addition to English, is critical to success in business, research, and international relations in the twenty-first century.
* The United States needs more people to speak languages other than English in order to provide social and legal services for a changing population.
* The study of a second language has been linked to improved learning outcomes in other subjects, enhanced cognitive ability, and the development of empathy and effective interpretive skills. The use of a second language has been linked to a delay in certain manifestations of aging.
* The United States lags behind most nations of the world, including European nations and China, in the percentage of its citizens who have some knowledge of a second language.
* One of the biggest obstacles to improved language learning is a national shortage of qualified teachers. Forty-four states and Washington, D.C., report that they cannot find enough qualified teachers to meet current needs, but every school district in the nation responds to the teacher shortage in its own way (by cutting classes, by combining classes, by contracting before- or after-school enrichment programs, to name a few). We need better information about these district-level responses to attach a specific number to the national teacher shortage, and encourage any study that advances our knowledge of its size and scope.
* Technological innovations will play an ever more significant role in language learning, as a motivating factor for a new generation of students, as a means for providing educational opportunities to more students across the nation, and as an aid and reference for people in their everyday lives.
* Native American languages are distinct in political status and history, and are the object of school- and community-based rec-lamation and retention efforts aligned with the Native American Languages Act of 1990 (NALA).
The report focuses on five capacity-building goals and includes many more specific recommendations, spelled out in the report.
While English continues to be the lingua franca for world trade and diplomacy, there is an emerging consensus among leaders in business and politics, teachers, scientists, and community members that proficiency in English is not sufficient to meet the nation’s needs in a shrinking world, nor the needs of individual citizens who interact with other peoples and cultures more than at any other time in human history.
In this report--the first of its kind in over 30 years--the Commission on Language Learning of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences recommends a national strategy to improve access to as many languages as possible for people of every region, ethnicity, and socioeconomic background—that is, to value language education as a persistent national need similar to education in math or English, and to ensure that a useful level of proficiency is within every student’s reach. As children prove especially receptive to language education—they spend much of their time in educational settings and can develop language skills gradually throughout their lives—the Commission believes that instruction should begin as early in life as possible. Its primary goal, therefore, is for every school in the nation to offer meaningful instruction in world languages as part of their standard curricula.
As a corollary, the Commission urges two- and four-year colleges and universities to continue to offer beginning and advanced language instruction to all students, and to reverse recent programmatic cuts wherever possible. It also applauds recent efforts to create new undergraduate language requirements on two- and four-year campuses.
Key Findings of this Report:
* The ability to understand, speak, read, and write in world languages, in addition to English, is critical to success in business, research, and international relations in the twenty-first century.
* The United States needs more people to speak languages other than English in order to provide social and legal services for a changing population.
* The study of a second language has been linked to improved learning outcomes in other subjects, enhanced cognitive ability, and the development of empathy and effective interpretive skills. The use of a second language has been linked to a delay in certain manifestations of aging.
* The United States lags behind most nations of the world, including European nations and China, in the percentage of its citizens who have some knowledge of a second language.
* One of the biggest obstacles to improved language learning is a national shortage of qualified teachers. Forty-four states and Washington, D.C., report that they cannot find enough qualified teachers to meet current needs, but every school district in the nation responds to the teacher shortage in its own way (by cutting classes, by combining classes, by contracting before- or after-school enrichment programs, to name a few). We need better information about these district-level responses to attach a specific number to the national teacher shortage, and encourage any study that advances our knowledge of its size and scope.
* Technological innovations will play an ever more significant role in language learning, as a motivating factor for a new generation of students, as a means for providing educational opportunities to more students across the nation, and as an aid and reference for people in their everyday lives.
* Native American languages are distinct in political status and history, and are the object of school- and community-based rec-lamation and retention efforts aligned with the Native American Languages Act of 1990 (NALA).
The report focuses on five capacity-building goals and includes many more specific recommendations, spelled out in the report.
Research Interests: Sociology, International Relations, Humanities, Languages and Linguistics, Social Sciences, and 12 moreGlobalization, Learning and Teaching, Immigration, Diplomacy, Bilingual Education, Cognitive Linguistics, Migration Studies, Acculturation, Bilingualism and Multilingualism, Bilingualism, National Security, and Academic achievement
Languages are fundamental to nearly every aspect of our lives. They are not only our primary means of communication; they are the basis for our judgments, informing how we under- stand others as well as ourselves. By several measures,... more
Languages are fundamental to nearly every aspect of our lives. They are not only our primary means of communication; they are the basis for our judgments, informing how we under- stand others as well as ourselves.
By several measures, the United States has neglected languages in its educational curricula, its international strategies, and its domestic policies. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, more than 60 million U.S. residents speak a language other than English at home—a number that has been growing decade by decade since the 1970s. But of the more than 230 million English speakers in the United States, very few develop proficiency in a language other than English in our schools, and the numbers of school language programs and qualified language teachers appear to be decreasing. Meanwhile, American businesses have reported a need for employees who understand the nuances of communicating with the international community, and the federal government continues to struggle to find representatives with enough language expertise to serve in diplomatic, military, and cultural missions around the world.
While English continues to be the lingua franca for world trade and diplomacy, there is an emerging consensus among leaders in business and politics, teachers, scientists, and com- munity members that proficiency in English is not sufficient to meet the nation’s needs in a shrinking world.
This report summarizes the nation’s current language capacity, focusing on the U.S. education system. The disparity between our goals—most notably the preparation of citizens who can thrive in the twenty-first century—and the nation’s current capacity in languages will be the subject of a forthcoming report from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences’ Commission on Language Learning.
By several measures, the United States has neglected languages in its educational curricula, its international strategies, and its domestic policies. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, more than 60 million U.S. residents speak a language other than English at home—a number that has been growing decade by decade since the 1970s. But of the more than 230 million English speakers in the United States, very few develop proficiency in a language other than English in our schools, and the numbers of school language programs and qualified language teachers appear to be decreasing. Meanwhile, American businesses have reported a need for employees who understand the nuances of communicating with the international community, and the federal government continues to struggle to find representatives with enough language expertise to serve in diplomatic, military, and cultural missions around the world.
While English continues to be the lingua franca for world trade and diplomacy, there is an emerging consensus among leaders in business and politics, teachers, scientists, and com- munity members that proficiency in English is not sufficient to meet the nation’s needs in a shrinking world.
This report summarizes the nation’s current language capacity, focusing on the U.S. education system. The disparity between our goals—most notably the preparation of citizens who can thrive in the twenty-first century—and the nation’s current capacity in languages will be the subject of a forthcoming report from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences’ Commission on Language Learning.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
This chapter examines the evolution of English and foreign language competencies, preferences, and use among young adult children of immigrants in the United States, including the extent to which bilingualism is sustained or not over time... more
This chapter examines the evolution of English and foreign language competencies, preferences, and use among young adult children of immigrants in the United States, including the extent to which bilingualism is sustained or not over time and generation in the U.S. The issues of language loyalty and change are first considered in a broader historical context, and a national profile is sketched of foreign and English language patterns over the past three censuses. It then focuses on results from the last wave of the Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Study (CILS), which followed a large sample of 1.5- and second-generation youth (immigrant children who arrived in the U.S. before adolescence, and U.S.-born children of immigrants) for more than a decade from mid-adolescence to their mid-twenties. The baseline sample of more than 5,000 was representative of 77 nationalities, including all of the principal immigrant groups in the U.S. today. The CILS data set permits both comparative and longitudinal analyses of language fluencies across the largest immigrant groups in the U.S., from widely different cultural and class origins, in distinct generational cohorts, and in different areas of settlement. The analysis is supplemented with other available survey and census data.
Research Interests:
The question that this book raises is whether and to what extent “transnational” attachments are sustained by the children of immigrants, particularly those born in the U.S. who lack the memories of their immigrant parents and a birth... more
The question that this book raises is whether and to what extent “transnational” attachments are sustained by the children of immigrants, particularly those born in the U.S. who lack the memories of their immigrant parents and a birth connection to the parental homeland. Where is home--or perhaps homes--for the second generation? Do they imagine themselves in multiple sites of belonging? Are they able to lead dual lives or to maintain dual frames of reference? Are they even interested? Or will they become merely curious visitors to their ancestral lands, incidental genealogists or accidental ethnics, largely indifferent to the transnational possibilities of the present age? After all, no matter how cheap and fast the travel or how advanced the communications technologies, motivated and resourceful actors are still required to avail themselves of those means of attachment and to pursue a meaningful transnational project of "dual lives." As is the case with the maintenance of a second language in the United States, so too may be the fate of transnationality in the "post-immigrant" new second generation: If you don't use it, you lose it. That is an open empirical question, and it is the question addressed here. The chapter is intended chiefly as an empirical contribution to this volume. It aims to do so in two ways. First, it seeks to specify in detail the size and composition—and definition—of what is loosely called the "second generation" in the United States, nationally and in metropolitan areas of principal settlement. And second, it seeks to assess whether attachments (both subjective and objective) to the parental homeland are severed or sustained into early adulthood among children of immigrant parents. A typology and an index of transnational attitudinal and behavioral attachments is developed, measured by subjective and objective indicators (remittances, visits to the homeland, perceptions of "home"). The analysis focuses on factors that either promote or undermine the maintenance of transnational ties over time in that post-immigrant generation.
Research Interests:
In this statement to a House Hearing on comprehensive immigration reform focusing on immigrant integration, English and foreign language competencies, preferences and use among immigrants and their children in the United States are... more
In this statement to a House Hearing on comprehensive immigration reform focusing on immigrant integration, English and foreign language competencies, preferences and use among immigrants and their children in the United States are examined, based on both historical and contemporary census and survey data. The findings of key studies measuring inter-generational language change are summarized, including longitudinal and cross-generational analyses. Data are then presented from research measuring the “linguistic life expectancies” of immigrant languages in Southern California, the region of main immigrant settlement in the U.S. - that is, the generational point at which an immigrant language (Spanish, Chinese, Korean, Tagalog, Vietnamese) effectively “dies” and is replaced by English language preference and use. Responses are also provided to these post-hearing questions posed by the House minority ranking member, Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa): “Is there such a thing as too much immigration? Legal immigration? Illegal immigration? How many immigrants are too many? Is there a limit to how many immigrants we can successfully assimilate? What are the criteria? What are the consequences if the wrong judgment is made about how many immigrants we can assimilate? How did previous generations of immigrants learn English without federal programs?”
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Introduction to the 1997 special issue of Sociological Perspectives on "Immigration and Incorporation." In at least one sense the "American century" is ending much as it had begun: the United States has again become a nation of... more
Introduction to the 1997 special issue of Sociological Perspectives on "Immigration and Incorporation." In at least one sense the "American century" is ending much as it had begun: the United States has again become a nation of immigrants, and it is again being transformed in the process. But the diversity of the "new immigration" to the United States over the past three decades differs in many respects from that of the last period of mass immigration in the first three decades of the century. The immigrants themselves differ greatly in their social class and national origins, and so does the American society, polity, and economy that receives them--raising questions about their modes of incorporation, and challenging conventional accounts of assimilation processes that were framed during that previous epoch. The dynamics and future course of their adaptation are open empirical questions--as well as major questions for public policy, since the outcome will shape the future contours of American society. Indeed, as the United States undergoes its most profound demographic transformation in a century; as inexorable processes of globalization, especially international migrations from Asia, Africa, and the Americas, diversify still further the polyethnic composition of its population; and as issues of immigration, race and ethnicity become the subject of heated public debate, the question of incorporation, and its serious study, becomes all the more exigent. The essays in this special issue of Sociological Perspectives tackle that subject from a variety of analytical vantages and innovative approaches, covering a wide range of groups in major areas of immigrant settlement. Several of the papers focus specifically on Los Angeles and New York City, where, remarkably, fully a quarter of the total U.S. immigrant population resides.
Research Interests: Sociology, Mexican Studies, Refugee Studies, Immigration, Immigration Studies, and 15 moreCentral American Studies, Iranian Studies, Adaptation, Cambodia, Discrimination, Caribbean Studies, El Salvador, Paradoxes, Acculturation, Refugees, Hmong Studies, Filipino Studies, Nativism, Vietnamese studies, and Assimilation
“Assimilation,” a protean concept with an American pedigree and a checkered past, is back in vogue. But in academic and colloquial usage, in social science, public policy and popular culture, the idea and the ideal of “assimilation” have... more
“Assimilation,” a protean concept with an American pedigree and a checkered past, is back in vogue. But in academic and colloquial usage, in social science, public policy and popular culture, the idea and the ideal of “assimilation” have had a bumpy history. Over time the term has conflated various normative prescriptions (“e pluribus unum,” “melting pot”) and empirical descriptions (cultural adaptations, economic mobility, social acceptance by a dominant group) to make sense of the incorporation of “ethnic” difference in American life. After more than a century of use and misuse the term itself remains confusing and contentious. For a “canonical” concept, there remains surprising ambiguity as to its meaning, measurement and applicability. This essay, prepared for a Festschrift in honor of Herbert J. Gans, explores the history of the idea in American society and social science as a master frame and the teleology of Progress underlying it; considers cultural, social, legal, economic and identificational indices of intergenerational change among contemporary ethnic groups based on an array of census and survey data; and raises questions about the limitations and paradoxes of the concept itself in the study of ethnicity and inequality in American life. Despite the grand narratives of modernization which undergird the concept of assimilation, neither race nor religion nor ethnicity has vanished in American life. Linguistic “Anglicization” and other forms of acculturation do proceed rapidly, especially among immigrant children and the second generation. But alongside undeniable upward social mobility from the first to the second generation for most groups, especially the children of the poorest and least educated - though the gains appear to peak in the second generation and decline or plateau thereafter - there is compelling evidence of widening “ethclass” and legal inequalities, of new conflicts and political mobilizations around ethnic and racial issues, and of downward mobility and marginalization for vulnerable segments of these populations. An undocumented status has become a caste-like master status blocking access to the opportunity structure and paths to social mobility for millions of immigrants. A fraught concept like “assimilation,” weighted by the normative baggage of its past, seems ill-suited to grasp these complex dynamics and to focus critical attention on enduring structural inequalities and persistent ethnic and pan-ethnic formations in this “permanently unfinished” society.
Research Interests:
This article reviews the evolution of the concept of assimilation in American social science. It distinguishes assimilation from accommodation as modal adaptation outcomes of different immigrant generations, as well as various aspects... more
This article reviews the evolution of the concept of assimilation in American social science. It distinguishes assimilation from accommodation as modal adaptation outcomes of different immigrant generations, as well as various aspects that are commonly conflated by the concept (cultural adaptations, economic mobility, social acceptance into a native mainstream); discusses interrelated cultural (subtractive and additive acculturation), structural (primary and secondary integration), and psychological (identification) dimensions of the concept; and describes the process of “segmented assimilation” — how it is that different groups, in varying contexts of reception and incorporation, adapt to and are absorbed into different sectors of the society.
Research Interests:
Published in The Handbook of International Migration: The American Experience (New York: Russell Sage Foundation). This essay expands the argument presented in “Assimilation and its Discontents: Between Rhetoric and Reality,”... more
Published in The Handbook of International Migration: The American Experience (New York: Russell Sage Foundation). This essay expands the argument presented in “Assimilation and its Discontents: Between Rhetoric and Reality,” International Migration Review 31, 4 (1997), and “Paradoxes (and Orthodoxies) of Assimilation,” Sociological Perspectives 40, 3 (1997), both based on a paper originally presented at the Social Science Research Council Conference on “Becoming American/America Becoming: International Migration to the United States,” Sanibel Island, Florida, January 1996.
Research Interests:
The concept of assimilation, whether as outcome or process, conflates elements that are both empirical and ideological, ethnographic and ethnocentric. Conventional wisdom on the adaptation of immigrants in America has conceived of... more
The concept of assimilation, whether as outcome or process, conflates elements that are both empirical and ideological, ethnographic and ethnocentric. Conventional wisdom on the adaptation of immigrants in America has conceived of "assimilation" prescriptively and not only descriptively, as a linear process of progressive adjustment to American life. This conception is guided by an implicit deficit model: to get ahead immigrants need to learn how to "become American" and overcome their deficits with respect to the new language and culture, the new economy and society. As they shed the old and acquire the new over time, they surmount those obstacles and make their way more successfully – a homogenizing process more or less completed by the second or third generation. Recent research findings, however, especially in the areas of immigrant health, mental health, ethnic self-identity and education, debunk such ethnocentric assumptions, often running precisely in the opposite direction of what is expected from traditional perspectives. Some empirical examples are highlighted, focusing on paradoxes – on evidence that contradicts orthodox expectations – in order to identify areas that need conceptual, analytical, and theoretical refinement, including the need to spell out precisely and systematically what it is that is being "assimilated," by whom, under what circumstances, and in reference to what sector of American society. The diversity of contemporary immigrants to the United States, in terms of class, culture, color, and the contexts within which they are received, and their segmented modes of incorporation, raise new questions about assimilation from what? to what? and for what?
Research Interests:
In 1992, boxes of questionnaires used in a mid-1960s household survey of Mexican Americans in Los Angeles and San Antonio were accidentally discovered by construction workers at UCLA. Those files would form the basis for a unique... more
In 1992, boxes of questionnaires used in a mid-1960s household survey of Mexican Americans in Los Angeles and San Antonio were accidentally discovered by construction workers at UCLA. Those files would form the basis for a unique follow-up study, entailing a multiyear detective effort to locate and reinterview the original respondents who had been surveyed three decades before, and now also a sample of their grown children. The analyses follow an intergenerational longitudinal design: the original respondents were first, second, or third generation adults; their children were second, third, or fourth generations. The parents had gone to school between the 1930s and 1950s, the children between the 1950s and 1980s. The book poses a key question: are social (ethnic and racial) boundaries between Mexican Americans and other groups, especially dominant Anglos, enhanced or eroded over time and generation-since-immigration? Mexican immigrants see themselves as different: they speak Spanish, live in segregated barrios, have distinct political views. But for their descendants, what happens to those ethnic boundaries? Do they persist, blur, or disappear? In sharp contrast to assumptions of linear progress underlying conventional assimilation perspectives, the authors find that educational attainment peaks among second-generation children of immigrants, but declines for the third and fourth generations (the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of immigrants). Similarly, economic progress halts by the second generation — education was the only variable to consistently explain variation in the socioeconomic status of Mexican Americans. Poverty rates remained high for later generations. On the other hand, evidence of acculturation was strong on several indicators, above all language, with English spoken well by the second generation and Spanish becoming nearly extinct after the fourth. Despite the decline of Spanish, ethnic identification persists into the fourth generation, with the lion’s share of respondents preferring Mexican, Mexican American and Hispanic identity labels over American — an outcome that the authors attribute in part to “racialization experiences.” The authors identify institutional barriers as a major source of Mexican American disadvantage. Poorly funded school systems where Mexican American children are concentrated, punitive immigration policies coincident with reliance on cheap Mexican labor in key states, and persistent discrimination all combine to make integration problematic. In these respects, the Mexican American trajectory differs from that of European immigrants in previous generations.
Research Interests:
Few concepts in the history of American social science have been as all-encompassing and consequential as “assimilation,” or as fraught with irony and paradox. That master concept long ago penetrated the public discourse and seeped into... more
Few concepts in the history of American social science have been as all-encompassing and consequential as “assimilation,” or as fraught with irony and paradox. That master concept long ago penetrated the public discourse and seeped into the national narrative, offering an elemental explanation for a phenomenal accomplishment — the remarkable capacity of a self-professed nation of immigrants to absorb, like a giant global sponge, tens of millions of newcomers of all classes, cultures and countries from all over the world. And yet, few concepts have been so misused and misunderstood, or erected on such deep layers of ethnocentric pretensions. Few have so thoroughly conflated the real with the rhetorical, the idea with the ideal and the ideological, mixing descriptions of what is observable with prescriptions of what is desirable, even framing it as a corollary to the central myth of progress at the heart of the core culture. The ultimate paradox of assimilation American-style may well be that in the process, what is being assimilated metamorphoses into something quite dissimilar from what any of the protagonists ever imagined or intended. It is in these conceptual interstices between theory, rhetoric, and reality that irony and paradox emerge (or at least what appears paradoxical from the vantage of the prevailing worldview). By focusing on ironies and paradoxes — on evidence that contradicts core assumptions and points instead to assimilation’s discontents — my aim in this paper is to test empirically the conception of assimilation as a linear process leading to improvements in immigrant outcomes over time and generation in the U.S. Through the examination of ironic and paradoxical cases — in effect, deviant case analyses of “outcomes of events that mock the fitness of things” — fruitful reformulations can be stimulated, considered and advanced.
Research Interests:
The development of caste and class relationships stratified by racial and ethnic statuses has been a central theme of the history of the United States, shaped over many generations by the European conquest of indigenous peoples and by... more
The development of caste and class relationships stratified by racial and ethnic statuses has been a central theme of the history of the United States, shaped over many generations by the European conquest of indigenous peoples and by massive waves of both coerced and uncoerced immigration from all over the world. Indeed, immigration, annexation and conquest-by hook or by crook-have been the originating processes by which American ethnic groups have been formed and through which, over time, the United States itself has been transformed into arguably the world's most ethnically diverse society, with sizable communities of people drawn from every continent on earth. The familiar Anglocentric story of the origins of the nation typically begins with the founding of the first permanent English settlement in America at Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607, and with the arrival of the Pilgrims at Plymouth, Massachusetts, in 1620. Until very recently the "Hispanic" presence in what is now the United States was little noted (the term itself was not used by the Census Bureau until 1970), although that presence antedates by a century the creation of an English colony in North America and has left an indelible (if ignored) Spanish imprint throughout Florida and the Southwest. Today that presence has emerged, seemingly suddenly, as a pervasive fact of American life. History is filled with unintended consequences, and one of the ironies (a "latent destiny"?) of the history of a nation that expanded its influence and "manifest destiny" into Latin America and the Caribbean is that, in significant numbers, their diverse peoples have come to the United States and themselves become "Americans."
[Published in "Americas: New Interpretive Essays," a volume of scholarly papers accompanying the PBS-TV series "Americas," broadcast nationally in 1993.]
[Published in "Americas: New Interpretive Essays," a volume of scholarly papers accompanying the PBS-TV series "Americas," broadcast nationally in 1993.]
Research Interests:
UCI Sociology Seminar taught in the Time of the Pandemic, Spring 2020. “The goal of this seminar is to broaden your intellectual horizons, and to invite you to a memorable sociological adventure amid a global crisis that you and I will... more
UCI Sociology Seminar taught in the Time of the Pandemic, Spring 2020. “The goal of this seminar is to broaden your intellectual horizons, and to invite you to a memorable sociological adventure amid a global crisis that you and I will still be talking about many years from now. The course ended in June, but not our role and responsibility as members of the polis, as citizens as well as sociologists confronted by historic crises. The critically informed citizen—whose voice is heard, who acts and votes and remains civically engaged—is racism’s and nativism’s worst enemy. Becoming a critically informed citizen; contextualizing and grasping the varieties of international migration and national (and nativist) reactions to them; seeing through the dominant ideologies of racialization, the politics of moral panics, the criminalization of immigration, detention and incarceration, exclusion and deportation, mobilization and collective action; working to end racial domination and to make this a more just world... all of this is a lifetime commitment that never ends. Silence is not an option at this (potential) turning point in the history of American democracy and racial justice, even amid a once-in-a-century pandemic. Know that history. Voice that history. Read-think-write... and act.”
Research Interests:
“Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.” —William Butler Yeats (1889) Welcome to our course, “Race and Ethnicity”! These are not, needless to say, normal circumstances. This is the first time in four... more
“Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.” —William Butler Yeats (1889)
Welcome to our course, “Race and Ethnicity”! These are not, needless to say, normal circumstances. This is the first time in four decades of teaching that I am doing so “online.” It may be a new experience for you as well. There are bound to be glitches (not to mention Murphy’s Law) as we adapt to the new conditions and challenges... but I have no doubt that we will overcome them together. Our course, which begins on March 31, 2020, is being held in the context of the historic crisis we are all engulfed in, a once-in-a-century global pandemic that is not only bordering on a public health apocalypse but shaking all aspects of our lives and of our worlds (interpersonal, educational, occupational, financial, economic, political, residential, medical, social, cultural, psychological, familial)—requiring adaptations to rapidly changing and unpredictable circumstances. (Like this online course, for instance!) It is precisely in such moments of crisis—which shake our taken for granted notions and routines to their foundation, revealing the artifices of our social constructions of “reality” (including what we construct as “race” and “ethnicity”)—that a sociological imagination flourishes. A folk saying has it that “when life gives you lemons, make lemonade.” I look forward to making sociological lemonade with you this quarter. The pandemic will not hit everyone alike, but will be patterned along hard lines of social and economic inequality and disadvantage—including race and ethnicity and immigration status. Not everyone can “stay at home.” Harsh realities are being exposed anew by this public health catastrophe... including the fact that SYSTEMIC RACISM IS A PUBLIC HEALTH ISSUE... along with possibilities to reshape the structure of our societies in the calamitous aftermath. (But as Frederick Douglass famously said long ago: “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”)
We will read 1 book during our 11-week course: Race in America, by Matthew Desmond and Mustafa Emirbayer. This is one of the very best textbooks on the subject that I have seen. The book is made up of 11 chapters, each about 40 pages (including many images, maps and graphics); you’ll be reading a chapter a week on average. The first 2 chapters spell out key concepts and address the historical invention and institutionalization of “race.” The next 8 core chapters (#3-10) focus on separate (but interconnected) fields of social life: political, economic, residential, legal, educational, aesthetic, associational, and intimate spheres (family, self, identity). The last one, chapter 11, looks to the future: “Toward Racial Democracy.” In addition to the text, you will read a few supplementary readings, listed in the syllabus and course agenda. In tandem with the course readings, over the next ten weeks I will regularly email you selected articles, reports, and analyses seeking to connect what you are studying to the breaking news of the day; while we cannot know now what may come in the coming months, we can be pretty certain that the issues addressed by our course will be at the heart of the historic crisis (or crises) that will engulf us. By the end of the class you will have effectively a “curated” set of such accompanying relevant readings.
Tuesday March 31 is the start of our class. Saturday April 4 marks the anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. As I do every year at that time, as well as on the anniversary of his birth on January 15, I send my students an annual message of remembrance. Please take time to read and reflect on it.
The goal of this class is to broaden your intellectual horizons; to study stress, not to cause it; to invite you to a memorable sociological adventure amid a global crisis that you and I will still be talking about many years from now. And remember: Our course will end in June, but not our role and responsibility as members of the polis, as citizens as well as sociologists confronted by historic crises. The critically informed citizen—whose voice is heard, who acts and votes and remains civically engaged—is racism’s worst enemy. Becoming a critically informed citizen, ending racial domination and making a more just world is a lifetime commitment that never ends. Silence is not an option at this (potential) turning point in the history of American democracy and racial justice, even amid a once-in-a-century pandemic. Know that history. Voice that history. Read-think-write... and act.
"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere... Justice too long delayed is justice denied." —Martin Luther King, Jr., Letter from Birmingham Jail (1963)
Welcome to our course, “Race and Ethnicity”! These are not, needless to say, normal circumstances. This is the first time in four decades of teaching that I am doing so “online.” It may be a new experience for you as well. There are bound to be glitches (not to mention Murphy’s Law) as we adapt to the new conditions and challenges... but I have no doubt that we will overcome them together. Our course, which begins on March 31, 2020, is being held in the context of the historic crisis we are all engulfed in, a once-in-a-century global pandemic that is not only bordering on a public health apocalypse but shaking all aspects of our lives and of our worlds (interpersonal, educational, occupational, financial, economic, political, residential, medical, social, cultural, psychological, familial)—requiring adaptations to rapidly changing and unpredictable circumstances. (Like this online course, for instance!) It is precisely in such moments of crisis—which shake our taken for granted notions and routines to their foundation, revealing the artifices of our social constructions of “reality” (including what we construct as “race” and “ethnicity”)—that a sociological imagination flourishes. A folk saying has it that “when life gives you lemons, make lemonade.” I look forward to making sociological lemonade with you this quarter. The pandemic will not hit everyone alike, but will be patterned along hard lines of social and economic inequality and disadvantage—including race and ethnicity and immigration status. Not everyone can “stay at home.” Harsh realities are being exposed anew by this public health catastrophe... including the fact that SYSTEMIC RACISM IS A PUBLIC HEALTH ISSUE... along with possibilities to reshape the structure of our societies in the calamitous aftermath. (But as Frederick Douglass famously said long ago: “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”)
We will read 1 book during our 11-week course: Race in America, by Matthew Desmond and Mustafa Emirbayer. This is one of the very best textbooks on the subject that I have seen. The book is made up of 11 chapters, each about 40 pages (including many images, maps and graphics); you’ll be reading a chapter a week on average. The first 2 chapters spell out key concepts and address the historical invention and institutionalization of “race.” The next 8 core chapters (#3-10) focus on separate (but interconnected) fields of social life: political, economic, residential, legal, educational, aesthetic, associational, and intimate spheres (family, self, identity). The last one, chapter 11, looks to the future: “Toward Racial Democracy.” In addition to the text, you will read a few supplementary readings, listed in the syllabus and course agenda. In tandem with the course readings, over the next ten weeks I will regularly email you selected articles, reports, and analyses seeking to connect what you are studying to the breaking news of the day; while we cannot know now what may come in the coming months, we can be pretty certain that the issues addressed by our course will be at the heart of the historic crisis (or crises) that will engulf us. By the end of the class you will have effectively a “curated” set of such accompanying relevant readings.
Tuesday March 31 is the start of our class. Saturday April 4 marks the anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. As I do every year at that time, as well as on the anniversary of his birth on January 15, I send my students an annual message of remembrance. Please take time to read and reflect on it.
The goal of this class is to broaden your intellectual horizons; to study stress, not to cause it; to invite you to a memorable sociological adventure amid a global crisis that you and I will still be talking about many years from now. And remember: Our course will end in June, but not our role and responsibility as members of the polis, as citizens as well as sociologists confronted by historic crises. The critically informed citizen—whose voice is heard, who acts and votes and remains civically engaged—is racism’s worst enemy. Becoming a critically informed citizen, ending racial domination and making a more just world is a lifetime commitment that never ends. Silence is not an option at this (potential) turning point in the history of American democracy and racial justice, even amid a once-in-a-century pandemic. Know that history. Voice that history. Read-think-write... and act.
"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere... Justice too long delayed is justice denied." —Martin Luther King, Jr., Letter from Birmingham Jail (1963)
Research Interests: Sociology, Political Sociology, Criminal Justice, Education, Social Sciences, and 14 moreSegregation, Immigration, Identity (Culture), Slavery, Race and Ethnicity, Colonialism, Social Exclusion, Critical Race Theory and Whiteness theory, Racial and ethnic discrimination, Mass Incarceration, Crime, Deportation, Xenophobia, and Cultural appropriation
Research Interests:
Through an analysis of qualitative interview and survey data, this study examines ethnic identity development from mid-adolescence to middle adulthood among a representative sample of immigrants' children from Mexico, the Philippines, and... more
Through an analysis of qualitative interview and survey data, this study examines ethnic identity development from mid-adolescence to middle adulthood among a representative sample of immigrants' children from Mexico, the Philippines, and other countries, who were followed for more than twenty years. Findings reveal that ethnic self-identity labels are more stable in adulthood than adolescence or the transition to adulthood, but the importance of ethnic identity diminishes, especially among those born abroad. Most prefer ethnic identity labels referencing their origin country, reflecting family ties and cultural attachments. However, some, mostly foreign-born, shift to ethnic self-identity labels exclusively related to their American experience, including panethnic labels in response to U.S. racialization. Only a few actively resist such labeling and claim non-hyphenated American identities. Overall, the findings reveal how diverse ethnic identity development patterns over the life course are shaped both by ancestral attachments and the imposition of existing U.S. racial structures.
Research Interests: Sociology, Social Change, Social Psychology, Self and Identity, Social Identity, and 11 moreImmigration, Emerging Adulthood, Ethnic and Racial Studies, National Identity, Longitudinal Research, Racialization, Acculturation, Racial and ethnic discrimination, Generations, Assimilation, and Ethnicity and National Identity
This mixed-methods longitudinal study examines ethnic self-identity change from mid-adolescence to middle adulthood among a representative sample of adult children of immigrants first surveyed in 1992 in San Diego when they were 14.2... more
This mixed-methods longitudinal study examines ethnic self-identity change from mid-adolescence to middle adulthood among a representative sample of adult children of immigrants first surveyed in 1992 in San Diego when they were 14.2 years old, and followed for more than twenty years until their late thirties. Findings reveal the complexities of ethnic identity. Ethnic identity labels are often used interchangeably yet usually stabilize by middle adulthood. While the importance of ethnic identity often diminishes, immigrants’ children in their late thirties express distinct ethnic identity formations, ranging from strong ethnic attachments to indifference, that vary within and between nativity and national-origin groups. Ethnic identities relate to political views and behaviors, interethnic friendships, and cultural practices, but not interethnic unions. Consistent with life course theory, results show how identities develop across nearly a quarter century, influenced by sociohistorical contexts and relationships with others.
Research Interests:
Focusing on the formation of ethnic self-identities during adolescence, this paper examines the psychosocial adaptation of children of immigrants from Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean. The data are drawn from the CILS survey carried... more
Focusing on the formation of ethnic self-identities during adolescence, this paper examines the psychosocial adaptation of children of immigrants from Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean. The data are drawn from the CILS survey carried out in the San Diego and Miami metropolitan areas of over 5,000 children of immigrants attending the 8th and 9th grades in local schools. The sample is evenly split by gender and nativity (half are U.S.-born, half foreign-born). The results show major differences in their patterns of ethnic self-identification, both between and within groups from diverse national origins. Instead of a uniform assimilative path, we found segmented paths to identity formation. Detailed social portraits are sketched for each ethnic identity type. Multivariate analyses then explore the determinants of assimilative and dissimilative ethnic self-identities, and of other aspects of psychosocial adaptation such as self-esteem, depressive affect, and parent-child conflict, controlling for gender, socioeconomic status, and national origin. The theoretical and practical implications of these results – especially the effects of acculturation, discrimination, location and ethnic density of schools, parental socialization and family context, upon the psychosocial adaptation of children of recent immigrants to the United States – are discussed.
Research Interests:
How do “Latinos” or “Hispanics” fit in the country’s “white racial frame”? Are they a “race” – or more precisely, a racialized category? If so, how and when did that happen? Does not the U.S. Census Bureau insist (or has since the 1970s)... more
How do “Latinos” or “Hispanics” fit in the country’s “white racial frame”? Are they a “race” – or more precisely, a racialized category? If so, how and when did that happen? Does not the U.S. Census Bureau insist (or has since the 1970s) on putting an asterisk next to the label – uniquely among official categories – indicating that “Hispanics may be of any race”? Is it a post-1960s, post-Civil Rights-era term, not fraught with the racial freight of a past in which for more than a century, in Texas since 1836 and the rest of the Southwest after 1848, “Mexican” was disparaged as a subordinate caste by most “Anglos”? The use of the label “Latino” or “Hispanic” is itself an act of homogenization, lumping diverse peoples together into a Procrustean aggregate. But are they even a “they”? Is there a “Latino” or “Hispanic” ethnic group, cohesive and self-conscious, sharing a sense of peoplehood in the same way that there is an “African American” people in the United States? Or is it mainly an administrative shorthand devised for statistical purposes, a one-size-fits-all label that subsumes diverse peoples and identities? Is the focus on “Hispanics” or “Latinos” as a catchall category (let alone “the browning of America”) misleading, since it conceals the enormous diversity of contemporary immigrants from Spanish-speaking Latin America, obliterating the substantial generational and class differences among the groups so labeled, and their distinct histories and ancestries? How do the labeled label themselves? What racial meaning does the pan-ethnic label have for the labeled, and how has this label been internalized, and with what consequences? This chapter considers these questions, focusing primarily on official or state definitions and on the way such categories are incorporated by those so classified.
Research Interests:
The immigrant-stock population of the United States, the largest ever, is a youthful one - and today’s U.S.-born second generation, with a median age of 12, is poised to explode into adulthood in the coming 10 to 20 years. They are... more
The immigrant-stock population of the United States, the largest ever, is a youthful one - and today’s U.S.-born second generation, with a median age of 12, is poised to explode into adulthood in the coming 10 to 20 years. They are “coming of age” in an aging society undergoing profound social and economic transformations, all of which will have, inevitably, political ramifications. A great deal of how tomorrow’s social contract between natives and newcomers is worked out, and how the commitment to democratic values of equity and inclusion is met, will hinge on the mode of political incorporation and civic engagement of newcomer youth today. In widely varying contexts of social inequality, the way young newcomers come to define themselves is significant, revealing much about their social attachments (and detachments) as well as how and where they perceive themselves to “fit” in the society of which they are its newest members. Self-identities and ethnic loyalties can often influence long-term patterns of behavior and outlook as well as intergroup relations, with potential long-term political implications. And the decisive turning point for change in ethnic and national self-identities can be expected to take place in the second, not in the first generation. As they react to their contexts of reception and learn how they are viewed and treated within them, newcomer youths form and inform not only their own identities but also their attitudes toward the society that receives them. If there is a moral to this story of reception and belonging, it echoes an ancient admonition: that societies, too, reap what they sow.
Research Interests:
This paper presents detailed findings on ethnic self-identity and the factors that shape it based on structured longitudinal surveys with a large representative sample of over 5,000 adolescent children of immigrants (1.5 and second... more
This paper presents detailed findings on ethnic self-identity and the factors that shape it based on structured longitudinal surveys with a large representative sample of over 5,000 adolescent children of immigrants (1.5 and second generations), from scores of different national origins, coming of age on both coasts of the United States. Four mutually exclusive types of ethnic self-identities emerged: (1) a foreign national identity; (2) a hyphenated-American identity; (3) a plain American identity; and (4) a pan-ethnic minority group identity (e.g., Hispanic, Latino, Chicano, Black, Asian). The paths to those different forms of ethnic self-definition are shaped by a variety of social and psychological forces. The results show the complex, conflictual, often incongruous and unexpected ways in which race and class, discrimination and acculturation, family relationships and personal dreams can complicate their sense of who they are. They suggest that identities are neither fixed nor irreversible, but always a function of relational processes, whose meaning is embedded in concrete social and historical contexts. Ethnic self-identities emerge from the interplay of racial and ethnic labels and categories imposed by the external society and the original identifications and ancestral attachments asserted by the newcomers. Such considerations underscore the need for mixed research methods to get at dimensions of varying subjectivity and situationality, and to facilitate a more thoroughly contextualized study of ethnic identity and social belonging.
Research Interests:
It is traditional, at least in the United States, to see immigrant adaptation as a straight-line process in both political and social terms: non-members of a nation-state residing outside state borders gain entry, take up residence, and... more
It is traditional, at least in the United States, to see immigrant adaptation as a straight-line process in both political and social terms: non-members of a nation-state residing outside state borders gain entry, take up residence, and seek full membership in the state. As a narrative of legal status, the acquisition of full membership is the transition from alien to citizen, from stranger to rights-holder, from foreigner to governor. As a narrative of social belonging, the story is one of integration over time, a transition from out-group to in-group which is expected to be completed within a span of two or three generations. But these versions of the national narrative fit the historical experience of some ethnic and racial groups more than that of others, and there are egregious exceptions to the normative tale. We write as a lawyer and a sociologist interested in the relationship of our disciplines’ perspectives on these narratives, and on the linkages between the political and the social realms that are reflected in U.S. models of membership. We argue that the way people are invited or welcomed to become members of the society influences their joining behavior which, in turn, influences how the society invites others to join it. Further, we note that the formulation of public policy helps to produce the conditions that affirm the public policies. A nation concerned about and committed to the successful integration of a large and growing resident immigrant population needs to adopt policies that help orient and acculturate immigrants, provide skills and access, and foster tolerance and non-discrimination. The state should model the behavior - such as attachment, commitment and loyalty - that it seeks from its newest members. Anti-immigrant policies are not integrative policies, even if they provide quasi-coercive incentives to naturalization. Models of membership are not free-standing. Like other self-fulfilling prophecies, those models are influenced by the very phenomenon they purport to be classifying. Preservation of the inclusionary model is important not just on principled grounds, but because the model produces the designed outcome and thereby promotes the national interest.
Research Interests:
Using a special module (MEUS) of the 2000 General Social Survey, we investigate Americans’ perceptions of the racial and ethnic composition of the United States. We show that, because of innumeracy, it is critical to gauge perceptions... more
Using a special module (MEUS) of the 2000 General Social Survey, we investigate Americans’ perceptions of the racial and ethnic composition of the United States. We show that, because of innumeracy, it is critical to gauge perceptions through relative, rather than absolute, group sizes. Even so, however, it appears that, as of 2000, roughly half of Americans believed that whites had become a numerical minority; such perceptions were even more common among minority-group members than among whites. Majority-group respondents’ perceptions of the relative sizes of minorities affect, moreover, their attitudes towards immigrants, blacks, and Hispanics, with those having the most distorted perceptions holding the most negative attitudes. Although perceptions of group sizes in the nation are linked to the perceived racial/ethnic compositions of the communities where respondents reside, the effects of the former on attitudes are largely independent of the latter. Our findings highlight the frequently overlooked value of an old bromide against prejudice: education.
Research Interests:
Review of Michael A. Olivas, ed., “Colored Men” and “Hombres Aquí:” Hernández v. Texas and the Rise of Mexican American Lawyering. The focus is on an unlikely civil-rights case, Hernández v. Texas, involving a drunken barroom brawl and a... more
Review of Michael A. Olivas, ed., “Colored Men” and “Hombres Aquí:” Hernández v. Texas and the Rise of Mexican American Lawyering. The focus is on an unlikely civil-rights case, Hernández v. Texas, involving a drunken barroom brawl and a club-footed murder suspect, which in 1954 became the first ever tried by Mexican American lawyers before the U.S. Supreme Court, and the first to open up for persons of Latin American ancestry the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
Research Interests:
It is traditional, at least in the United States, to see immigrant adaptation as a straight-line process in both political and social terms: non-members of a nation-state residing outside state borders gain entry, take up residence, and... more
It is traditional, at least in the United States, to see immigrant adaptation as a straight-line process in both political and social terms: non-members of a nation-state residing outside state borders gain entry, take up residence, and (usually) seek and (frequently) obtain full membership in the state. As a narrative of legal status, the acquisition of full membership is the transition from alien to citizen, from stranger to rights-holder, from foreigner to governor. As a narrative of social belonging, the story is one of (more or less effective) integration or assimilation over time; a transition from out-group to in-group which is expected to be completed within a span of two or three generations. These versions of the national narrative, to be sure, fit the historical experience of some ethnic and racial groups more than that of others, and there are egregious exceptions to the normative tale. Different groups’ frames of remembrance and retellings of their past—their definitions of the situation—tell much about who is included and excluded in the national narrative, and hence about the society’s terms of belonging. We write as a lawyer and a sociologist interested in the relationship of our disciplines’ perspectives on these narratives...
Research Interests:
UCI Sociology Seminar taught in the Time of the Pandemic, Spring 2020. It is precisely in such moments of crisis—which shake our taken for granted notions and routines to their foundation, revealing the artifices of our social... more
UCI Sociology Seminar taught in the Time of the Pandemic, Spring 2020. It is precisely in such moments of crisis—which shake our taken for granted notions and routines to their foundation, revealing the artifices of our social constructions of “reality”—that a sociological imagination flourishes. The goal of this seminar is to broaden your intellectual horizons, and to invite you to a memorable sociological adventure amid a global crisis that you and I will still be talking about many years from now. The course will end in June, but not our role and responsibility as members of the polis, as citizens as well as sociologists confronted by historic crises. The critically informed citizen—whose voice is heard, who acts and votes and remains civically engaged—is racism’s and nativism’s worst enemy. Becoming a critically informed citizen; contextualizing and grasping the varieties of international migration and national (and nativist) reactions to them; seeing through the dominant ideologies of racialization, the politics of moral panics, the criminalization of immigration, detention and incarceration, exclusion and deportation, mobilization and collective action; working to end racial domination and to make this a more just world... all of this is a lifetime commitment that never ends. Silence is not an option at this (potential) turning point in the history of American democracy and racial justice, even amid a once-in-a-century pandemic. Know that history. Voice that history. Read-think-write... and act.
Research Interests:
Historically in the United States, periods of large-scale immigration have been accompanied by perceptions of threat and stereotypes of the feared criminality of immigrants. A century ago major commissions investigated the connection of... more
Historically in the United States, periods of large-scale immigration have been accompanied by perceptions of threat and stereotypes of the feared criminality of immigrants. A century ago major commissions investigated the connection of immigration to crime; each found lower levels of criminal involvement among the foreign-born. The present period echoes that past. Over the past quarter century, alarms have been raised about large-scale immigration, and especially about undocumented immigrants from Latin America. But over the same period, violent crime and property crime rates have been cut in half; the decline in crime has been more pronounced in cities with larger shares of immigrants; and foreign-born young men are much less likely to be incarcerated than natives. The evidence demonstrating lower levels of criminal involvement among immigrants is supported by a growing number of contemporary studies. At the same time the period has been marked by the criminalization of immigration itself, and by the confluence of immigration and criminal law and enforcement apparatuses. A series of critical events succeeded by moral panics influenced the passage of hyper-restrictive laws and a massive injection of institutional resources that has built the " crimmigration " enforcement apparatus into the " formidable machinery " underpinning mass deportation today.
Research Interests:
The events of the 1960's confronted police agencies in the United States with a crisis of legitimacy, accompanied by a proliferation of demands and proposals for reform, and by a growing social science interest in the police as an... more
The events of the 1960's confronted police agencies in the United States with a crisis of legitimacy, accompanied by a proliferation of demands and proposals for reform, and by a growing social science interest in the police as an institution. Despite this unprecedented scrutiny, the research literature is marked by a dearth of detailed and critical accounts of actual programs of planned social change in police organizations.
This case study examines a process of social intervention and change in the conception, conduct, management and organization of patrol work in a major metropolitan police bureaucracy. The study is based on extensive field research over a four-year period in the San Diego Police Department. The author's active role as a participant observer in that setting afforded an unusual opportunity to observe at first hand both the social structure of different organizational "worlds" throughout the hierarchy of the police bureaucracy, and the backstage political activity of interest groups within the department which would otherwise remain hidden from view to outside researchers. The approach is ethnographic and critical, relying largely on qualitative data derived from participant observation and emphasizing members' frames of reference, but endeavoring to probe and tie members' meanings and actions to the conditions of their work and organization.
Thesis (Ph.D.)--Brandeis University, 1977-78. Bibliography: leaves 339-354. Microfiche.
This case study examines a process of social intervention and change in the conception, conduct, management and organization of patrol work in a major metropolitan police bureaucracy. The study is based on extensive field research over a four-year period in the San Diego Police Department. The author's active role as a participant observer in that setting afforded an unusual opportunity to observe at first hand both the social structure of different organizational "worlds" throughout the hierarchy of the police bureaucracy, and the backstage political activity of interest groups within the department which would otherwise remain hidden from view to outside researchers. The approach is ethnographic and critical, relying largely on qualitative data derived from participant observation and emphasizing members' frames of reference, but endeavoring to probe and tie members' meanings and actions to the conditions of their work and organization.
Thesis (Ph.D.)--Brandeis University, 1977-78. Bibliography: leaves 339-354. Microfiche.
Research Interests:
"La Bestia" (aka "el tren de la muerte"): A report done in 2014 in Guadalajara, México, based on interviews with desperate young immigrants from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador who had been riding "La Bestia" till the trains slowed... more
"La Bestia" (aka "el tren de la muerte"): A report done in 2014 in Guadalajara, México, based on interviews with desperate young immigrants from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador who had been riding "La Bestia" till the trains slowed down going by a particular colonia in Guadalajara, where they'd jump off for a few of days of rest and begging for food and money before getting back on La Bestia again, headed for the US border. This brief illustrated report recounts my encounters with them.
Research Interests: Sociology, Anthropology, Immigration, Central America and Mexico, Central American Studies, and 11 moreMigration, Undocumented Immigration, Forced Migration, Migration Studies, Sociology of Migration, El Salvador, undocumented latino immigrants in the U.S., Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, and Economic migrants
In: The New Deportations Delirium, edited by Dabiel Kanstroom and M. Brinton Lykes (NY: New York University Press, 2015), pp. 227-251.
Research Interests:
For more than a century, innumerable studies have confirmed two simple yet powerful truths about the relationship between immigration and crime: immigrants are less likely to commit serious crimes or be behind bars than the native-born,... more
For more than a century, innumerable studies have confirmed two simple yet powerful truths about the relationship between immigration and crime: immigrants are less likely to commit serious crimes or be behind bars than the native-born, and high rates of immigration are associated with lower rates of violent crime and property crime. This holds true for both legal immigrants and the unauthorized, regardless of their country of origin or level of education. In other words, the overwhelming majority of immigrants are not “criminals” by any commonly accepted definition of the term. For this reason, harsh immigration policies are not effective in fighting crime.
Unfortunately, immigration policy is frequently shaped more by fear and stereotype than by empirical evidence. As a result, immigrants have the stigma of “criminality” ascribed to them by an ever-evolving assortment of laws and immigration-enforcement mechanisms. Put differently, immigrants are being defined more and more as threats. Whole new classes of “felonies” have been created which apply only to immigrants, deportation has become a punishment for even minor offenses, and policies aimed at trying to end unauthorized immigration have been made more punitive rather than more rational and practical. In short, immigrants themselves are being criminalized.
Unfortunately, immigration policy is frequently shaped more by fear and stereotype than by empirical evidence. As a result, immigrants have the stigma of “criminality” ascribed to them by an ever-evolving assortment of laws and immigration-enforcement mechanisms. Put differently, immigrants are being defined more and more as threats. Whole new classes of “felonies” have been created which apply only to immigrants, deportation has become a punishment for even minor offenses, and policies aimed at trying to end unauthorized immigration have been made more punitive rather than more rational and practical. In short, immigrants themselves are being criminalized.
Research Interests:
In what follows, we report research findings of prevailing and persistent stereotypes about immigration and crime in Southern California and deportation and crime in El Salvador. With respect to the former, we “en/counter” enduring... more
In what follows, we report research findings of prevailing and
persistent stereotypes about immigration and crime in Southern
California and deportation and crime in El Salvador. With respect to
the former, we “en/counter” enduring stereotypes and public
perceptions of crime and immigration that are in sharp contrast to
available evidence on crime and incarceration rates. We focus on the
experiences of young adult children of immigrants in Southern
California, especially Mexicans, Salvadorans and Guatemalans (and
now increasingly Hondurans), who together account for two-thirds or
more of the undocumented immigrant population in the United States.
With respect to the latter, we focus on the experiences of men, including
former gang members, who have been deported to El Salvador on
criminal and non-criminal charges, and we challenge the stereotype of
deportees as increasingly hardened criminal actors who, once removed,
primarily focus their efforts on establishing and strengthening
transnational criminal organizations
persistent stereotypes about immigration and crime in Southern
California and deportation and crime in El Salvador. With respect to
the former, we “en/counter” enduring stereotypes and public
perceptions of crime and immigration that are in sharp contrast to
available evidence on crime and incarceration rates. We focus on the
experiences of young adult children of immigrants in Southern
California, especially Mexicans, Salvadorans and Guatemalans (and
now increasingly Hondurans), who together account for two-thirds or
more of the undocumented immigrant population in the United States.
With respect to the latter, we focus on the experiences of men, including
former gang members, who have been deported to El Salvador on
criminal and non-criminal charges, and we challenge the stereotype of
deportees as increasingly hardened criminal actors who, once removed,
primarily focus their efforts on establishing and strengthening
transnational criminal organizations
Research Interests:
Pp. 119-139 in A. Khashu, ed., The Role of Local Police: Striking a Balance Between Immigration Enforcement and Civil Liberties. Washington, DC: Police Foundation, 2009. The paper examines the relationship of contemporary immigration,... more
Pp. 119-139 in A. Khashu, ed., The Role of Local Police: Striking a Balance Between Immigration Enforcement and Civil Liberties. Washington, DC: Police Foundation, 2009. The paper examines the relationship of contemporary immigration, including undocumented migration, to crime and imprisonment. First, at the national level, it analyzes: (1) changes in the rates of violent crimes and property crimes during the years of the surge in undocumented immigration from 1993 to 2007; (2) the incarceration rates of young men 18 to 39, comparing the foreign-born vs. the U.S.-born by national origin and by education, and, among the foreign-born, by length of residence in the United States; and (3) comparative rates of incarceration of foreign-born young men from nationalities the majority of whom are undocumented immigrants with less than a high school education (Mexicans, Salvadorans and Guatemalans) vs. the rates for other immigrant nationalities as well as for native ethnic majority and minority groups. A detailed summary is provided of the available empirical evidence from a wide range of other studies, comparing it to prevailing public perceptions, and noting their implications for criminological theory, research, and public policy.
Research Interests:
Because many immigrants to the United States, especially Mexicans and Central Americans, are young men who arrive with very low levels of formal education, popular stereotypes tend to associate them with higher rates of crime and... more
Because many immigrants to the United States, especially Mexicans and Central Americans, are young men who arrive with very low levels of formal education, popular stereotypes tend to associate them with higher rates of crime and incarceration. The fact that many of these immigrants enter the country through unauthorized channels or overstay their visas often is framed as an assault
Research Interests:
Contemporary conceptions of the police and of the problems of policing in the United States have been shaped by the political upheavals and crisis of legitimacy that confronted all institutions of government in the 1960s. Recent research... more
Contemporary conceptions of the police and of the problems of policing in the United States have been shaped by the political upheavals and crisis of legitimacy that confronted all institutions of government in the 1960s. Recent research has focused attention on the structural aspects of discretion and peacekeeping in police work, and on the emergence of the ideology of police-community relations. Such studies have provided a critique of traditional police rationales and have demonstrated the complexity and contradictions inherent in the exercise of police power. Meanwhile, police reform in the 1970s has become an established enterprise, increasingly under the technical and administrative control of a class of professional change-makers. The present direction of technologically and legalistically determined reforms reflects an accelerated movement away from concerns of "substantive rationality" to those of "formal rationality" so that the reform process has become depoliticized and lacks policy direction. While helping to insulate the police from arbitrary political manipulation, this movement also attenuates the aims of substantive political justice, including those of police accountability, local community review, and control of police discretionary policy-making powers. Moreover, the prevailing forms of change-making in police organizations have not been substantively aimed toward creating the informed, skilled, and judicious police officer.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
The past few decades have seen the confluence of two eras in the United States: an era of mass immigration and an era of mass imprisonment. A great deal has been said and written about each, reinforcing age-old popular stereotypes about... more
The past few decades have seen the confluence of two eras in the United States: an era of mass immigration and an era of mass imprisonment. A great deal has been said and written about each, reinforcing age-old popular stereotypes about immigration and crime (a Google search for" immigration+ crime" immediately returns 57.2 million hits). But rarely are carefully researched connections made between the two, based on rigorous evidence.
Research Interests:
The past few decades have seen the confluence of two eras in the United States: an era of mass immigration and an era of mass imprisonment. A great deal has been said and written about each, reinforcing age-old popular stereotypes about... more
The past few decades have seen the confluence of two eras in the United States: an era of mass immigration and an era of mass imprisonment. A great deal has been said and written about each, reinforcing age-old popular stereotypes about immigration and crime. But rarely are carefully researched connections made between the two, based on rigorous evidence. In this article, the aim is to examine empirically the role of ethnicity, nativity, and generation in relation to crime and imprisonment, and to test assumptions that are widely held among contemporary scholars and policymakers alike. The analysis will be elaborated at two levels. First, at the national level, the focus will be on the incarceration rates of young men 18 to 39, comparing differences between the foreign born and the US born by national origin and by education, and, among the foreign born, by length of residence in the United States. Then, at the local level, the latest results from the Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Study (CILS) will be explored. CILS is a decade-long panel study that has followed the progress of second-generation children from early adolescence to early adulthood.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
This paper examines the impact of recent immigration on rates of serious property crime in Austin, Texas. The foreign-born population in greater Austin has increased by more than 580 percent since 1980, and Austin is considered a... more
This paper examines the impact of recent immigration on rates of serious property crime in Austin, Texas. The foreign-born population in greater Austin has increased by more than 580 percent since 1980, and Austin is considered a "pre-emerging" immigrant gateway city to the United States, yet little attention has been directed to the relationship of recent immigration with serious property crime in such "new destinations." We examine that relationship in the unique quasi-experimental environment of Austin’s rapid and substantial growth in new immigration, ostensibly the most criminogenic of environments if the anti-immigration rhetoric is to be believed. Negative binomial regression models with corrections for spatial auto-correlation indicate that recent immigration is not associated with an increased rate of burglary, larceny, or motor vehicle theft once structural predictors of crime are controlled for. The findings are consistent with the existing literature and point to the protective effect of recent immigration on public safety. Given the cumulative weight of the evidence on immigration and crime, the rise in immigration is arguably one of the most important reasons that crime rates in general continue to decrease in the United States — and even more so in cities of immigrant concentration. The problem of crime in the United States is not "caused" or aggravated by recent immigration, but the uncritical assumption that the opposite is true persists among policymakers, the media, and the general public, thereby depriving a genuine understanding of complex phenomena — a situation that undermines the development of evidence-based, reasoned public responses to both crime and immigration.
Research Interests:
In this article, the effect of recent immigration on homicide rates across city of Austin, Texas census tracts is examined. Since 1980, Austin’s recent immigrant population increased by more than 580% across the metropolitan area and it... more
In this article, the effect of recent immigration on homicide rates across city of Austin, Texas census tracts is examined. Since 1980, Austin’s recent immigrant population increased by more than 580% across the metropolitan area and it is now considered a “pre-emerging” immigrant gateway city to the United States. Therefore the changing population dynamics in Austin provide an excellent opportunity to study the effect of recent immigration on homicide. After controlling for structural predictors of homicide and correcting for spatial autocorrelation, our findings indicate that recent immigration is not associated with homicide.
Research Interests: Violence, Poverty, Homicide, Immigration, Race and Ethnicity, and 3 moreSocial Inequality, Crime, and Austin
For more than a century, innumerable studies have confirmed two simple yet powerful truths about the relationship between immigration and crime: immigrants are less likely to commit serious crimes or be behind bars than the native-born,... more
For more than a century, innumerable studies have confirmed two simple yet powerful truths about the relationship between immigration and crime: immigrants are less likely to commit serious crimes or be behind bars than the native-born, and high rates of immigration are associated with lower rates of violent crime and property crime. This holds true for both legal immigrants and the undocumented, regardless of their country of origin or level of education. But while the overwhelming majority of immigrants are not “criminals” by any commonly accepted definition of the term, immigrants have the stigma of “criminality” ascribed to them by an ever-evolving assortment of laws and immigration-enforcement mechanisms. Whole new classes of “felonies” have been created which apply only to immigrants; deportation has become a punishment for even minor offenses; and policies aimed at trying to end unauthorized immigration have been made more punitive rather than more rational and practical. The apparatus designed to implement these policies has expanded dramatically in recent decades. More and more immigrants have been ensnared by enforcement mechanisms new and old, from worksite raids to Secure Communities. Detained immigrants are housed in a growing nationwide network of private, for-profit prisons before they are deported from the United States. As U.S. immigration laws create more and more “criminal aliens” and the machinery of detention and deportation grows larger, a widening dragnet is cast over the nation’s foreign-born population in search of anyone who might be deportable. With the technology in place today, being stopped by a police officer for driving a car with a broken tail light can culminate in a one-way trip out of the country if the driver long ago pled guilty to a misdemeanor that has since been defined as a deportable offense. The US is in the midst of a “great expulsion” of immigrants who tend to be non-violent and non-threatening and who often have deep roots in this country. This relentless removal campaign is frequently justified as a war against “illegality.” But that justification does not come close to explaining the banishment from the United States of lawful permanent residents who committed traffic offenses and who have U.S.-based families. Nor does it explain the lack of due-process rights accorded to so many immigrants ensnared in deportation proceedings. The current wave of deportations is often portrayed as a crime-fighting tool, but as the findings of this report make clear, the majority of deportations carried out in the US each year do not actually target “criminals” in any meaningful sense of the word.
Research Interests:
This paper examines the relationship of contemporary immigration, including undocumented migration, to crime and imprisonment. First, at the national level, I analyze changes in the rates of violent crimes and property crimes during the... more
This paper examines the relationship of contemporary immigration, including undocumented migration, to crime and imprisonment. First, at the national level, I analyze changes in the rates of violent crimes and property crimes during the years of the surge in immigration. Next I look at the incarceration rates of young men 18 to 39, comparing the foreign-born vs. the U.S.-born by national origin and by education, and, among the foreign-born, by length of residence in the United States. The analysis compares the rates of incarceration of foreign-born young men from nationalities the majority of whom are undocumented immigrants with less than a high school education (Mexicans, Salvadorans and Guatemalans) vs. the rates for other immigrant nationalities as well as for native ethnic majority and minority groups. Finally, I summarize the available empirical evidence from a wide range of other studies, compare it to prevailing public perceptions, and note their implications for criminological theory, research, and public policy.
Research Interests:
(This feature is part of an ongoing RSF blog series, Work in Progress, which highlights some of the research of the Russell Sage Foundation 2016-17 class of Visiting Scholars.) RSF Visiting Scholar Rubén G. Rumbaut (UC Irvine)—a leading... more
(This feature is part of an ongoing RSF blog series, Work in Progress, which highlights some of the research of the Russell Sage Foundation 2016-17 class of Visiting Scholars.)
RSF Visiting Scholar Rubén G. Rumbaut (UC Irvine)—a leading scholar on immigration and the co-author or co-editor of several RSF books including "Legacies: The Story of the Immigrant Second Generation" (2001), "Ethnicities: Children of Immigrants in America" (2001), and "Immigration Research for a New Century" (2003)—has studied the persistence of myths and stereotypes associated with immigrants, including the belief that immigrants are likely to be criminals. This claim in particular was repeated as recently as the week before the US presidential election [October 30, 2016] by Donald Trump, who again called for increased border security and the mass deportation of undocumented immigrants, arguing that a Clinton administration would let “650 million people pour in in one week” [sic]. Earlier, in June 2015, he had opened his campaign by saying of Mexican immigrants, “They’re bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime, they’re rapists.”
Rumbaut has conducted several studies using the decennial census, crime records, large-scale surveys, and other data sources that show that immigrants, including those who are undocumented, are in fact less likely to commit crimes than the native-born or to be incarcerated. Other research supported by the Russell Sage Foundation, including a 2015 National Academies of Sciences study, has echoed this finding. In a new interview with the foundation, Rumbaut explained why centuries-old misconceptions about immigrants—which he calls “zombie ideas”—have continued to proliferate to this day.
RSF Visiting Scholar Rubén G. Rumbaut (UC Irvine)—a leading scholar on immigration and the co-author or co-editor of several RSF books including "Legacies: The Story of the Immigrant Second Generation" (2001), "Ethnicities: Children of Immigrants in America" (2001), and "Immigration Research for a New Century" (2003)—has studied the persistence of myths and stereotypes associated with immigrants, including the belief that immigrants are likely to be criminals. This claim in particular was repeated as recently as the week before the US presidential election [October 30, 2016] by Donald Trump, who again called for increased border security and the mass deportation of undocumented immigrants, arguing that a Clinton administration would let “650 million people pour in in one week” [sic]. Earlier, in June 2015, he had opened his campaign by saying of Mexican immigrants, “They’re bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime, they’re rapists.”
Rumbaut has conducted several studies using the decennial census, crime records, large-scale surveys, and other data sources that show that immigrants, including those who are undocumented, are in fact less likely to commit crimes than the native-born or to be incarcerated. Other research supported by the Russell Sage Foundation, including a 2015 National Academies of Sciences study, has echoed this finding. In a new interview with the foundation, Rumbaut explained why centuries-old misconceptions about immigrants—which he calls “zombie ideas”—have continued to proliferate to this day.
Research Interests:
‘‘Coming of age,’’ a cultural cliché´ but an elusive process, typically connotes the changes that accompany the exit from adolescence and the entry into adult roles via status transitions from school to work, and from one’s family of... more
‘‘Coming of age,’’ a cultural cliché´ but an
elusive process, typically connotes the
changes that accompany the exit from adolescence
and the entry into adult roles via status
transitions from school to work, and from
one’s family of origin to the formation of new
intimate relationships, notably marriage and
parenthood. "Diversity and the Transition to
Adulthood in America" is a lucid, engaging,
holistic, and systematic account of the
diverse and even diverging paths to adulthood
traversed today by millions of young
people in the United States—reflecting a rapidly
changing society that has been transformed
over the past half-century. In this context,
the American narrative of adulthood is
largely based on a White middle-class ideal,
which misrepresents and oversimplifies the
complexity and paradoxes of contemporary
adult transitions and their structural underpinnings.
The routes from childhood to adulthood are
not reducible to simple linear sequences.
One of the book’s key findings is that ‘‘adulting’’
experiences differ especially between
those who are college educated and those
who are not. A college degree emerges as
a ‘‘great equalizer’’ in terms of racial, ethnic,
immigrant and gender differences in the transition
to adulthood. In contrast, the authors
find much stronger influences of race, ethnicity,
nativity, and gender on the completion of
adulthood markers among those without
a college degree. The book succeeds in its
aim to address and redress the lack of
systematic research on how racial and ethnic
minority and immigrant young people
‘‘come of age’’ in a country becoming increasingly
diverse precisely along those lines. It is
an excellent sociological introduction to an
engrossing topic.
elusive process, typically connotes the
changes that accompany the exit from adolescence
and the entry into adult roles via status
transitions from school to work, and from
one’s family of origin to the formation of new
intimate relationships, notably marriage and
parenthood. "Diversity and the Transition to
Adulthood in America" is a lucid, engaging,
holistic, and systematic account of the
diverse and even diverging paths to adulthood
traversed today by millions of young
people in the United States—reflecting a rapidly
changing society that has been transformed
over the past half-century. In this context,
the American narrative of adulthood is
largely based on a White middle-class ideal,
which misrepresents and oversimplifies the
complexity and paradoxes of contemporary
adult transitions and their structural underpinnings.
The routes from childhood to adulthood are
not reducible to simple linear sequences.
One of the book’s key findings is that ‘‘adulting’’
experiences differ especially between
those who are college educated and those
who are not. A college degree emerges as
a ‘‘great equalizer’’ in terms of racial, ethnic,
immigrant and gender differences in the transition
to adulthood. In contrast, the authors
find much stronger influences of race, ethnicity,
nativity, and gender on the completion of
adulthood markers among those without
a college degree. The book succeeds in its
aim to address and redress the lack of
systematic research on how racial and ethnic
minority and immigrant young people
‘‘come of age’’ in a country becoming increasingly
diverse precisely along those lines. It is
an excellent sociological introduction to an
engrossing topic.
Research Interests:
Research Interests: Sociology, Psychology, Cognitive Science, Values, Political Science, and 14 moreCase Studies, Substance Abuse, Adolescence, Young Adults, Marriage and Family, Attitudes, Comparative Analysis, Frontier, Clinical Sciences, Economic Status, Adult Development, Ethnic diversity, Public Policy, and Developed Nations
Research Interests:
This framing chapter focuses on young men of Latin American descent in the United States and on their transitions to adulthood in a context of major demographic and structural change. Following a discussion of societal contexts and... more
This framing chapter focuses on young men of Latin American descent in the United States and on their transitions to adulthood in a context of major demographic and structural change. Following a discussion of societal contexts and transformations shaping adult transitions today, key characteristics of young Hispanic men and women age 18 to 34 are first contrasted against those of major non‐Hispanic demographic groups (whites, blacks, Asians); the major Hispanic groups are then compared to each other (Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, Cubans, Central and South Americans and others); finally, differences among different generational cohorts of Latino men are examined, from the first to the second to the third‐and‐higher generations. Given their central significance to the population as a whole, and for a variety of reasons which will be explored below, Latino males can be considered a strategic research site (Merton 1987).
Research Interests:
Beginning in the last quarter of the 20th century and well into the new millennium, it has become clear that the process of becoming an adult or taking on the roles usually associated with adulthood is not quick, easy, normative, or... more
Beginning in the last quarter of the 20th century and well into the new millennium, it has become clear that the process of becoming an adult or taking on the roles usually associated with adulthood is not quick, easy, normative, or typical. In recent years, social scientists from a wide range of fields have documented a more complex, multifaceted, and extended transition among young people in the United States and around the world. So much so that scholars now see coming-of-age and transitioning into adulthood as a new, distinctive phase in the lifecourse. But while we now know a great deal about the various dimensions, pathways, and structural forces that define and shape this new “emerging” adulthood—which we define, following other scholars, as stretching into the mid 30s—we know much less about how the transition to adulthood is understood and experienced by the men and women actually living through the process. What do “transitioning” young adults know and think about themselves and their lives as they move into the traditional adult roles of worker, partner-spouse, homeowner, and/or parent? What are their priorities, hopes, and dreams? What challenges and obstacles do they believe stand in their way? What is their vision of the society they live in and the world around them—and their place in it? How do these understandings and experiences vary by race or education, generation, gender and class, where young adults live, or where they came from? This volume turns to a fairly substantial battery of interviews with American young adults from a diverse array of backgrounds to generate answers to these questions.
Research Interests:
Many theoretical questions have been raised about the incorporation of children of immigrants: their “coming of age” in the United States, their modes of acculturation, ethnic identity, ethnic group formation, patterns of language use and... more
Many theoretical questions have been raised about the incorporation of children of immigrants: their “coming of age” in the United States, their modes of acculturation, ethnic identity, ethnic group formation, patterns of language use and shift, and social, residential, reproductive, marital, educational, occupational, economic, civic and political trajectories into adulthood. All of these are open empirical questions, but each of them presupposes a clear operational definition of what is meant by “second generation” vis-à-vis the “first generation,” and even of something as basic as the ethnicity of first- vs. second-generation persons. While the import of intergenerational analysis for the study of the long-term impact of immigration is clear, there is no consensus on the meaning and measurement of “generations.” This article focuses on problems with the definition and empirical identification of immigrant “first” and “second” generations in the United States. These aggregates are decomposed into a typology of distinct generational cohorts (1.0, 1.25, 1.5, 1.75, 2.0, 2.5) defined by age and life stage at migration for the foreign-born, and by parental nativity for the U.S.-born. Differences in educational and occupational attainment, language and other aspects of acculturation are then examined to consider whether the practice of “lumping” these generational cohorts together, or “splitting” them into distinctive units of analysis, is empirically supported by available evidence. The paper concludes with some thoughts on data needs and methodological considerations in the study of immigrant generations.
Research Interests:
Immigration, a transformative force, has produced striking demographic changes in the American population over the past few decades, especially among its young adults. As recently as 1970, only 4 percent of the approximately 48 million... more
Immigration, a transformative force, has produced striking demographic changes in the American population over the past few decades, especially among its young adults. As recently as 1970, only 4 percent of the approximately 48 million young adults (aged 18 to 34) in the United States were foreign born – the lowest proportion since the U.S. Census Bureau began keeping records on nativity in 1850. But by 2008, when the number of young adults had grown to more than 68 million, almost 30 percent of them were either foreign born or of foreign parentage. These new first and second generations of immigrant origin are steadily growing and changing the ethnic composition and stratification of the nation’s young adult population. What is more, their transitions to adult roles – leaving the parental home, finishing school, entering into full-time work, getting married, having children – not only differ significantly by generation and ethnicity, but often stand in marked contrast to patterns observed among their native counterparts who are conventionally assumed to set societal standards. This article sketches a comparative portrait of young adults in the United States in the first years of the twenty-first century, focusing on new patterns of ethnic diversification and of widening socioeconomic and legal inequalities in early adulthood. We focus on generational differences between the foreign-born first and “one and a half” generations and the U.S.-born second generation (of foreign parentage), who are mainly of Latin American and Asian origins, compared with native-parentage young adults, who are overwhelmingly non-Hispanic blacks and whites. We consider structural barriers faced by sizable segments of immigrant youth, especially the undocumented and the less educated poor, in their transitions to adulthood, and discuss possible policy options.
Research Interests:
This paper aims to contribute to our understanding of historical and generational influences in the incorporation of immigrants in the United States. The first part addresses the importance of spelling out historical contexts for... more
This paper aims to contribute to our understanding of historical and generational influences in the incorporation of immigrants in the United States. The first part addresses the importance of spelling out historical contexts for understanding virtually any aspect of the study of immigration and incorporation. By not doing so, we are left with an elegant but ahistorical positivism. The second section specifies the size and composition - and definition - of what are loosely referred to as the immigrant first and second “generations” in the United States, outlines a typology of distinctive generational cohorts (based on differences in nativity and age at arrival), and analyzes their patterns of acculturation as well as educational and occupational attainment. In particular, I consider the utility and validity of “lumping” vs. “splitting” such generational cohorts in the study of the adaptation of foreign-born immigrant children and the native-born children of immigrants. These distinctions - in a field where the study of intergenerational relations has been criticized as ahistorical - underscore the importance of situating and understanding generational processes in specific historical contexts.
Research Interests:
“Coming of age,” a familiar phrase but an elusive process, can mean many things, but fundamentally it connotes the manifold changes that accompany the exit from adolescence and the entry into adult roles and responsibilities. However it... more
“Coming of age,” a familiar phrase but an elusive process, can mean many things, but fundamentally it connotes the manifold changes that accompany the exit from adolescence and the entry into adult roles and responsibilities. However it is measured, coming of age is taking longer these days. The prolonged completion of higher education affects the timetables of other adult transitions, especially by delaying the entry into full-time work, the exit from the parental household, and decisions about marriage and children. Not only are more young Americans going to college, but they are taking longer to attain what are still called “two year” and “four year” degrees; more are also continuing on to seek advanced degrees in graduate or professional schools, and still others return to school to gain needed credentials or work skills in order to compete in rapidly changing local labor markets. Today, only a fourth (27%) of all those enrolled in higher education are so-called “traditional” full-time students who go directly from high school to a 4-year college or university, are supported financially by their parents, and work either part-time or not at all. In contrast, about 40% attend community colleges, most of whom tend to be “nontraditional” students who may have delayed going after finishing high school, lack the financial support of their parents, often work full-time or nearly full-time, and may already have children of their own. A growing proportion of them are ethnically diverse young adult children of immigrants, especially in regions of high immigration such as San Diego, the setting for the study reported here. We highlight the variety of trajectories San Diegans pursue from high school through college, and the complex financial, institutional and psychological struggles they encounter during the transition to adulthood. The 134 young adults that we interviewed are from a wide range of Latin American and Asian backgrounds and all are the children of immigrants. Through their narratives we illustrate how they come of age through the lens of their educational experience. The cases, most of whom were 24 or 25 years old at the time they were interviewed, were representatively drawn from the San Diego sample of the Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Study (CILS), a panel study which followed for more than a decade a large sample of young people growing up in immigrant families in San Diego, from the end of junior high school through their mid-twenties.
Research Interests:
On the Frontier of Adulthood reveals a startling new fact: adulthood no longer begins when adolescence ends. A lengthy period before adulthood, often spanning the twenties and even extending into the thirties, is now devoted to further... more
On the Frontier of Adulthood reveals a startling new fact: adulthood no longer begins when adolescence ends. A lengthy period before adulthood, often spanning the twenties and even extending into the thirties, is now devoted to further education, job exploration, experimentation in romantic relationships, and personal development. Pathways into and through adulthood have become much less linear and predictable, and these changes carry tremendous social and cultural significance, especially as institutions and policies aimed at supporting young adults have not kept pace with these changes. This volume considers the nature and consequences of changes in early adulthood by drawing upon a wide variety of historical and contemporary data from the United States, Canada, and Western Europe. Especially dramatic shifts have occurred in the conventional markers of adulthood—leaving home, finishing school, getting a job, getting married, and having children—and in how these experiences are configured as a set. These accounts reveal how the process of becoming an adult has changed over the past century, the challenges faced by young people today, and what societies can do to smooth the transition to adulthood.
"This book is the most thorough, wide-reaching, and insightful analysis of the new life stage of early adulthood."—Andrew Cherlin, Johns Hopkins University
"From West to East, young people today enter adulthood in widely diverse ways that affect their life chances. This book provides a rich portrait of this journey-an essential font of knowledge for all who care about the younger generation."—Glen H. Elder Jr., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
"On the Frontier of Adulthood adds considerably to our knowledge about the transition from adolescence to adulthood. . . . It will indeed be the definitive resource for researchers for years to come. Anyone working in the area—whether in demography, sociology, economics, or developmental psychology—will wish to make use of what is gathered here."—John Modell, Brown University
"This is a must-read for scholars and policymakers who are concerned with the future of today's youth and will become a touchpoint for an emerging field of inquiry focused on adult transitions."—Jeanne Brooks-Gunn, Columbia University
"This book is the most thorough, wide-reaching, and insightful analysis of the new life stage of early adulthood."—Andrew Cherlin, Johns Hopkins University
"From West to East, young people today enter adulthood in widely diverse ways that affect their life chances. This book provides a rich portrait of this journey-an essential font of knowledge for all who care about the younger generation."—Glen H. Elder Jr., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
"On the Frontier of Adulthood adds considerably to our knowledge about the transition from adolescence to adulthood. . . . It will indeed be the definitive resource for researchers for years to come. Anyone working in the area—whether in demography, sociology, economics, or developmental psychology—will wish to make use of what is gathered here."—John Modell, Brown University
"This is a must-read for scholars and policymakers who are concerned with the future of today's youth and will become a touchpoint for an emerging field of inquiry focused on adult transitions."—Jeanne Brooks-Gunn, Columbia University
Research Interests:
This unique, collaborative volume assembles papers written by members, associates and collaborators of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Transitions to Adulthood and Public Policy. It tackles some of... more
This unique, collaborative volume assembles papers written by members, associates and collaborators of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Transitions to Adulthood and Public Policy. It tackles some of the most pressing questions and issues that face young, coming-of-age Americans in an increasingly diverse, globalizing world. The chapters, conceived and written in direct dialogue with one another over the course of a series of meetings over several years, are based upon an unparalleled battery of more than 400 interviews commissioned by the MacArthur Research Network for the expressed purpose of providing qualitative balance and counter-point to the demographic and statistical analyses that have so far dominated the study of “young” or “emerging” adulthood. Drawn from four very different and strategically selected communities around the United States, with over-samples of children of immigrants and ethnoracial minorities as well as majority white rural natives, the interviews provide an in-depth, insider's look at the diverse ways young adults in the United States understand themselves, their society, and the challenges, risks, and opportunities of this still little-understood but rapidly changing phase in the life course.
The chapters are organized in two parts. The first section focuses on how young adults in the United States understand and navigate the five key traditional social markers of adulthood; the second set is designed to call attention to emerging cultural issues and social phenomena—politics, recreation and leisure, diversity, intermarriage, acculturation—that have particular salience, meaning, and significance for these populations at a unique moment in world history. Drawing upon a large and diverse sample in different sites from coast to coast, each chapter highlights the wide variety in young adult experiences and conceptions across racial, ethnic, generational, gender, class, and regional lines in the U.S. Each chapter also makes a point of situating the experiences and understandings of American young adults in comparative contexts, and assesses how subjective understandings compare with popular perceptions and conventional social scientific accounts. Collectively, the contributions highlight the cultural changes and social challenges for youth and young adults occasioned by the social and economic transformations of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.
Based as it is on subjects' own words and stories, this collaborative volume provides a rich, uniquely readable entry point into the latest research on youth, young adulthood, and the transition to adulthood that is the subject of so much fascination and consternation in the mass media and contemporary public culture. Indeed, it cultivates a deeper and more nuanced understanding of the challenges and possibilities of the transition to adulthood that emerges when we take the subjective states and perceived efficacy of young people themselves seriously.
The chapters are organized in two parts. The first section focuses on how young adults in the United States understand and navigate the five key traditional social markers of adulthood; the second set is designed to call attention to emerging cultural issues and social phenomena—politics, recreation and leisure, diversity, intermarriage, acculturation—that have particular salience, meaning, and significance for these populations at a unique moment in world history. Drawing upon a large and diverse sample in different sites from coast to coast, each chapter highlights the wide variety in young adult experiences and conceptions across racial, ethnic, generational, gender, class, and regional lines in the U.S. Each chapter also makes a point of situating the experiences and understandings of American young adults in comparative contexts, and assesses how subjective understandings compare with popular perceptions and conventional social scientific accounts. Collectively, the contributions highlight the cultural changes and social challenges for youth and young adults occasioned by the social and economic transformations of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.
Based as it is on subjects' own words and stories, this collaborative volume provides a rich, uniquely readable entry point into the latest research on youth, young adulthood, and the transition to adulthood that is the subject of so much fascination and consternation in the mass media and contemporary public culture. Indeed, it cultivates a deeper and more nuanced understanding of the challenges and possibilities of the transition to adulthood that emerges when we take the subjective states and perceived efficacy of young people themselves seriously.
Research Interests:
This chapter examines patterns of interracial and interethnic relationships (mixed couples) among children of immigrants in California and New York, and the ways in which they cross from adolescence to adulthood. Throughout these... more
This chapter examines patterns of interracial and interethnic relationships (mixed couples) among children of immigrants in California and New York, and the ways in which they cross from adolescence to adulthood. Throughout these transitions we pay close attention to factors and issues that influence dating, cohabiting, and marrying across racial and ethnic lines. We bring together two bodies of literature to illuminate these relationships: transitions to adulthood and intermarriage. Previous studies have found that young adults are less likely to be in mixed relationships as they transition to adulthood. What has not been answered is why this is the case. We found that many of these mixed couples date, cohabit, and marry for similar reasons as coethnic couples (for example, love, companionship, becoming parents). We also find, however, that imagining the future is a powerful explanation for why involvement in mixed relationships declines with increasing age among young adults. These young adults talked about parental prejudices and pressures, and language and other cultural differences, as becoming especially pronounced the closer they got to marriage and having children—i.e. to a relationship more embedded in family networks. These factors made it less likely that these children of immigrants in California and New York would marry someone from a different racial or ethnic background.
Research Interests:
This chapter aims to contribute to our understanding of historical influences on lives and aging, and of generational influences in the incorporation of immigrants in the United States. The first part addresses the importance of spelling... more
This chapter aims to contribute to our understanding of historical influences on lives and aging, and of generational influences in the incorporation of immigrants in the United States. The first part addresses the importance of spelling out historical contexts ("influences") for understanding virtually any aspect of the study of immigration and incorporation. By not doing so, we may be left with an elegant but ahistorical positivism. The second section specifies the size and composition—and definition—of what are loosely referred to as the immigrant first and second “generations” in the United States, outlines a typology of distinctive generational cohorts (based on differences in nativity and age at arrival), and analyzes their patterns of acculturation as well as educational and occupational attainment. In particular, I consider the utility and validity of “lumping” vs. “splitting” such generational cohorts in the study of the adaptation of foreign-born immigrant children and the native-born children of immigrants. These distinctions bear directly on the connections between changing historical times in lives and aging, and—in a field where the study of intergenerational relations has been accurately criticized as “strikingly ahistorical” (Elder, 1978)—underscore the importance of situating and understanding generational processes in specific historical contexts.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
What do we know about young adults in the United States? How many young adults are there between the ages of 18 and 34? What are their demographic and socioeconomic characteristics? What percent of them have “completed” any or all of the... more
What do we know about young adults in the United States? How many young adults are there between the ages of 18 and 34? What are their demographic and socioeconomic characteristics? What percent of them have “completed” any or all of the conventional milestones marking normative transitions into adulthood? How many have left home, finished school, work full time, have been married or had children — and by what age? Does the timing and sequencing of these transitions differ for young men and women? How does the “early-transition” cohort among young adults (ages 18-24) — in most respects the most vulnerable during this period of the life course — compare to older cohorts (ages 25-29 or 30-34)? Of those who have not yet formed households of their own, how many still live with their parents? How many live in college dorms or other group quarters? Especially among males in these age groups, how many are in the military, or in prison? In an era of movies like “Failure to Launch” and neologisms like “adultolescence,” this report sketches a profile of young adults in the United States at the turn of the century, based on an analysis of data from the 5% Public Use Microdata Sample of the 2000 census. The data are limited to young adults aged 18 to 34, and broken down for three age groups: 18-24 (“early transition”), 25-29 (“middle transition”), and 30-34 (“late transition”). A summed index (“adultra”) of the five conventional markers of transitions into adult statuses—leaving home, finishing school, entering the workforce, getting married, and having children — was computed: among 18-24 year olds only 16% had reached as many as four or all five of these “milestones,” while 70% of the 30-34 year olds had accomplished four or all five of these transitions into adult statuses. However, these five conventional “milestones” or “markers” in transitions to adult statuses should be seen only as a snapshot, a frozen moment in the life course, not as “completed” or irreversible social accomplishments or changes in social status. Most (and arguably all) of the five are reversible, in principle and in practice: e.g., young adults who leave home at one point in time may later return to live with their parents; those who are no longer attending school may do so subsequently, and those who “drop out” of college may “drop in” years after; those who hold a full-time job now may lose it or leave it for any number of reasons; marriage or cohabitation are scarcely permanent arrangements, but may eventuate in separation or divorce (or the death of a partner) and a new marital status. Even having a child of one’s own living in one’s household can be subject to status change. Nonetheless, such normative markers reflect key exits and entrances into adult statuses, and as such the typology of the five transitions remains useful as a means to sketch, if with broad brush strokes, a heuristically meaningful empirical portrait of the social situation of young adults.
Research Interests:
Mexican immigrants to the United States have better reproductive outcomes than do U.S.-born non-Latina whites. Explanations offered for this “epidemiologic paradox” include (1) poor outcomes among Mexican women may be hidden by their... more
Mexican immigrants to the United States have better reproductive outcomes than do U.S.-born non-Latina whites. Explanations offered for this “epidemiologic paradox” include (1) poor outcomes among Mexican women may be hidden by their return to Mexico; (2) Mexican women may have a higher fetal death rate that alters the pattern of live birth outcomes; (3) Mexican women may have socioeconomic
Research Interests: Epidemiology, Mexican Studies, Immigration, Race and Ethnicity, Paradoxes, and 14 moreAcculturation, Medicine, Immigrant Health, Drug Use, Pregnancy, Social Science Research Network, Reproductive health, Country of Origin, United States, Logistic Regression Analysis, Public health systems and services research, Alcohol Use, San Diego Tijuana Border, and Fetal death
This chapter, one of a section that outlines areas urgently needing systematic research and discusses many of the research difficulties that may be encountered, provides an example of the fruits that can be harvested through a... more
This chapter, one of a section that outlines areas urgently needing systematic research and discusses many of the research difficulties that may be encountered, provides an example of the fruits that can be harvested through a well-designed and adequately funded research project. It describes the IHARP study, a large project that comprehensively examines the adaptive experiences of a random sample of families from each of the four major Southeast Asian ethnic groups--Hmong, Khmer, ethnic Chinese, and Vietnamese--residing in San Diego. While the findings are manifold, three conclusions stand out: (1) Southeast Asians are a highly heterogeneous population, and among them the Hmong and Khmer groups were at significantly greater risk on their affective measures of happiness and depression; (2) the second year of residence in the United States appears to be a period of significantly heightened demoralization and psychological stress for refugees--a finding with important implications for preventive intervention program activities; and (3) while the psychological experiences of exiles are complex and multidimensional, they are also patterned and, to a degree, predictable.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Policy-oriented research has tended to focus on objective dimensions of the refugee adaptation process (such as economic “self-sufficiency”, employment, and welfare dependency rates) than on subjective factors that are not only more... more
Policy-oriented research has tended to focus on objective dimensions of the refugee adaptation process (such as economic “self-sufficiency”, employment, and welfare dependency rates) than on subjective factors that are not only more difficult to measure but more often than not are seen as epiphenomenal (such as migration motives, acculturative attitudes, and mental health). Yet refugee “mental health” is no mere epiphenomenon: it both shapes and is shaped by those objective realities and as such, needs to be taken seriously into account by refugee policy. This paper seeks to contribute to our understanding of subjective aspects of the Southeast Asian refugee experience and of their import for refugee policy. Specifically, the paper reports on findings from a longitudinal survey (IHARP) of a representative sample of Vietnamese, Cambodian, and Laotian men and women in the San Diego metropolitan area, site of one of the largest Indochinese refugee concentrations in the United States. A general model of migration, adaptation, and mental health is proposed and tested with the survey data. A typology of motives is developed empirically from a diverse set of open-ended responses, distinguishing between “targets,” “rebels,” “victims,” and seekers.” Rates of psychological well-being and distress were measured at two points in time. The paper examines the varying effects of a wide range of pre-arrival and post-arrival factors on their adaptive responses over time. The refugees’ changing levels of psychological distress and of satisfaction with various areas of their lives in the United States – which serve, respectively, as affective and cognitive indicators of their “mental health” – are analyzed as principal outcome variables in this study. Adult mental health outcomes, in turn, are shown to be independent variables in their own right, affecting other aspects of the refugee adaptation process – from their economic self-sufficiency, to pregnancy outcomes of refugee mothers, and even the educational attainment of their children several years later – and thus medical, educational and economic policy goals.
Research Interests: Mental Health, Refugee Studies, Depression, Resilience, Immigration, and 4 moreFamily, Gender, Exile, and Anxiety
Chapter 6 from IMMIGRANT AMERICA: A PORTRAIT (3rd ed.). Adaptation to a myriad of circumstances in a foreign world underscores the need to take seriously and to understand the subjective experience of immigration. It is commonplace in... more
Chapter 6 from IMMIGRANT AMERICA: A PORTRAIT (3rd ed.). Adaptation to a myriad of circumstances in a foreign world underscores the need to take seriously and to understand the subjective experience of immigration. It is commonplace in the literature on migration, mental health, and mental disorder to observe that long-distance journeys entail a set of engulfing life events (losses, changes, conflicts, and demands) that, although varying widely in kind and degree, severely tests the immigrant's emotional resilience. Migration can produce profound psychological distress, even among the best prepared and most motivated and even under the most receptive of circumstances. It is not coincidental that the words "travel" and "travail" share an etymology. But some investigators have remarked on the positive drive and the sense of efficacy and "hardiness" certain groups of immigrants exhibit and on how their triumph over adversity promotes increasing self-confidence. This is at the heart of what has been called the "immigrant paradox," whether it deals with pregnancy outcomes, health and mental health, crime or incarceration. The study of the immigrant experience offers fertile ground to address not merely the "pathogenic" (what makes people ill) but also the "salutogenic" (what keeps people healthy) responses of individuals to conditions of personal crisis -- not merely issues of marginality, alienation and anomie but of creativity and freedom. Yet the subjective experience of immigration is an area that has been more difficult to study systematically and comparatively. That is the focus of this chapter.
Research Interests: Psychology, Epidemiology, Anxiety Disorders, Mental Health, Refugee Studies, and 13 moreSociology of Crime and Deviance, Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), Immigration, Immigration Studies, Adaptation, Paradoxes, Acculturation, Depression (Psychology), Travel, Pregnancy, Crime, Second Generation Immigrants, and Psychologie Du Travail
The sociological study of the mental health of racial-ethnic minorities addresses issues of core theoretical and empirical concern to the discipline. This review summarizes current knowledge about minority mental health and identifies... more
The sociological study of the mental health of racial-ethnic minorities addresses issues of core theoretical and empirical concern to the discipline. This review summarizes current knowledge about minority mental health and identifies conceptual and methodological problems that continue to confront research in this field. First, a critique is presented of epidemiological approaches to the definition and measurement of mental health in general, and minority mental health in particular, including an overview of the most frequently used symptom scales and diagnostic protocols. Next, the most important research studies conducted over the past two decades are summarized and discussed, and comparisons of prevalence rates and correlates of depressive symptomatology among Black, Hispanic, Asian, and American Indian ethnic groups are provided. Following the overview of descriptive epidemiological findings, some key analytic issues surrounding the study of stress, adaptation and minority mental health are considered. Finally, we propose various recommendations for future research.
Research Interests:
Research has pointed to an apparent public health enigma among new immigrants to the United States: high-risk groups, particularly low-income immigrants from Mexico and Southeast Asia, show unexpectedly favorable perinatal outcomes and... more
Research has pointed to an apparent public health enigma among new immigrants to the United States: high-risk groups, particularly low-income immigrants from Mexico and Southeast Asia, show unexpectedly favorable perinatal outcomes and seem to be “superior health achievers.” This study attempts to unravel the reasons for this “epidemiological paradox” by examining an in-depth data set drawn from a Comprehensive Perinatal Program (CPP) in San Diego County providing prenatal care services to low-income pregnant women, most of whom were immigrants from Mexico and various Asian countries, The CPP data set consists of nearly 500 independent variables per case (including most of those listed in the research literature as likely biomedical and sociocultural determinants of pregnancy outcomes) for a sample of both foreign-born and U.S.-born women, matched to infant health outcome measures collected from hospital records for every baby delivered by CPP mothers during 1989-1991. The analysis focuses on the identification of maternal risk factors that best explain observed ethnic and/or nativity differences in pregnancy outcomes (birth weight, diagnoses at birth, complications, length of hospitalization of the baby). Asians and Hispanics (mostly foreign-born) had superior outcomes relative to Anglos and African-Americans (mostly native-born); within ethnic groups outcomes were generally better for immigrants than for natives; and for immigrants outcomes worsened as the general acculturation or “Americanization” of the mother increased. The comparative socioeconomic advantages of US-born women – in education, employment, income, English literacy and proficiency – appeared to be overwhelmed by biomedical, nutritional and psychosocial disadvantages. In multivariate analyses, ten independent variables – a set of both biomedical and sociocultural factors – remained as significant predictors of pregnancy outcomes. Four qualitative case histories of CPP mothers are drawn from psychosocial reports to shed further light on the quantitative findings drawn from the statistical analysis. Limitations and implications of this study for health policy and future research are considered.
Research Interests:
This article presents detailed comparative analyses of infant health outcomes and risk factors among refugee groups from Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, compared to all other major racial-ethnic groups in San Diego County, California... more
This article presents detailed comparative analyses of infant health outcomes and risk factors among refugee groups from Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, compared to all other major racial-ethnic groups in San Diego County, California (Hispanics, non-Hispanic whites and blacks, Filipinos, Chinese, Japanese, and American Indians). Data are drawn from (1) a complete list of all linked live births (N=269,252) and infant deaths (N=2,610) recorded in San Diego County from 1978 to 1985; (2) longitudinal survey data from refugee respondents in the Indochinese Health and Adaptation Research Project (IHARP), matched to the vital statistics data; and (3) in-depth qualitative interviews which were conducted with a subsample of refugee mothers about their pregnancies since their arrival in the United States. Findings measure early neonatal and post-early neonatal infant mortality rates for all groups, as well as birth weight (in grams), low-birthweight births, late onset of prenatal care, and other risk factors. Multivariate analyses of the vital statistics and the longitudinal survey data identify the determinants of infant health outcomes, while four detailed case histories of Hmong and Vietnamese refugee mothers are sketched from the qualitative data. Despite severe economic and cultural handicaps and traumatic migration histories, Indochinese refugees were found to exhibit significantly lower infant mortality rates than more advantaged groups, another instance of the, “epidemiological paradox,” also observed among Mexican immigrants. Theoretical and policy implications of these findings are discussed.
Research Interests:
Mexican immigrants to the United States have better reproductive outcomes than U.S.-born non-Latina whites. Explanations offered for this, "epidemiological paradox," include (1) poor outcomes among Mexican women may be hidden by their... more
Mexican immigrants to the United States have better reproductive outcomes than U.S.-born non-Latina whites. Explanations offered for this, "epidemiological paradox," include (1) poor outcomes among Mexican women may be hidden by their return to Mexico; (2) Mexican women may have a higher fetal death rate that alters the pattern of live birth outcomes; (3) Mexican women may have socioeconomic characteristics which, if properly measured, would explain the outcome; (4) Mexican women may have personal characteristics which would explain the outcome, if properly measured; (5) there may be ameliorative or salutogenic, "protective," effects of culture; and (6) migration may be selective of healthier women who are thus more prone to positive outcomes. We test these explanations, with an emphasis on the last one, using a data set that combines reproductive histories and birth outcomes for Mexico-born women delivering in San Diego, California and Mexican women delivering in Tijuana, Mexico. These data are compared with U.S.-born Latinas and U.S.-born non-Latina Whites. Multivariate logistic regression analysis suggests that when controlling for birth history (stillbirths and miscarriages), socioeconomic characteristics (education and prenatal visits), personal characteristics (age, parity, time in area, history of family problems), and health characteristics (history of smoking, alcohol use, drug use, anemia, vaginal bleeding, urinary infection), the adjusted odds of a positive birth outcome (measured as a live birth of 2500 grams or more) is highest for women delivering in Tijuana, implying that migrants may not be so selective when compared to the country of origin. The number of prenatal visits was an important explanatory variable.
Research Interests:
The numerically large and growing Indochinese refugee population has been little studied with respect to infant health. It is a population that is young, is experiencing high fertility, late onset of prenatal care, and is characterized by... more
The numerically large and growing Indochinese refugee population has been little studied with respect to infant health. It is a population that is young, is experiencing high fertility, late onset of prenatal care, and is characterized by low socioeconomic status. Thus, it presents a high risk profile with respect to infant mortality. Using linked birth and infant death records for the San Diego metropolitan area for the period 1978–1985 infant mortality rates (IMRs) were calculated for Indochinese refugee groups from Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia in comparison with other ethnic groups. We found, surprisingly, that Indochinese refugees as a group had an IMR below that for non-Hispanic Whites and substantially below that for Blacks. In general, IMRs for Indochinese refugees were similar to those for other Asian groups. These findings held even after controlling for birth weight and onset of prenatal care. The timing and causes of death suggest areas in which the IMR could drop to even lower levels with improved community outreach programs, especially among refugee groups from Laos (Hmong and Lao) who exhibited the unusual pattern of higher post-early neonatal than early neonatal mortality.
Research Interests:
The rapid growth in the Hispanic population, and especially in the number of Hispanic youth, represents one of the most dramatic and important demographic trends affecting the U.S. Contemporary working-age Hispanic adults will age to... more
The rapid growth in the Hispanic population, and especially in the number of Hispanic youth, represents one of the most dramatic and important demographic trends affecting the U.S. Contemporary working-age Hispanic adults will age to become the first sizable wave of Hispanic seniors. More consequential, the large number of contemporary Hispanic children and adolescents will age to swell the ranks of Hispanic young and middle-aged adults within a decade or two. The health status and health behaviors of today’s Hispanic youth will play a central role in shaping the long-term health and health care needs not only of Hispanics in the U.S. but of all Americans. Yet efforts to provide a detailed and comprehensive description of the health and health behaviors of Hispanics are complicated by a variety of factors. Hispanics living in the U.S. represent an increasing diversity of national origin groups, and health status differs across national origin groups. Relatively new groups, such as Dominicans, Salvadorans, Guatemalans, and Colombians, have grown rapidly, adding their numbers to well-established populations of Mexican, Puerto Rican, and Cuban origin. Additionally, the health of U.S. Hispanics differs by generational status. On numerous dimensions, foreign-born Hispanics – i.e., immigrants to the U.S. – have better health indicators than their U.S.-born counterparts. Among the foreign-born, moreover, health status and health behaviors may differ by degree of acculturation to U.S. culture. In this context, the gaps in the available data on the health and health behavior of Hispanics impose serious limitations. One frequent and noteworthy problem is the lack of detailed data for subgroups of Hispanics defined by national origin and generation in the U.S. Most studies group Hispanics into a single category or focus on Hispanics of Mexican origin, who are by far the most numerous. Another problem is the relative lack of detailed epidemiologic data on the incidence and prevalence of common and important diseases, such as cardiovascular disease. Moreover, for many conditions data are unavailable to assess incidence or prevalence according to immigrant status or, among the foreign-born, by length of residence in the U.S. and degree of acculturation. Despite these limitations, researchers have learned a great deal about the health status and health behaviors of Hispanics over the last 25 years. The story that has emerged is a complex one, with some findings that warrant optimism and others that merit serious concern. The picture of both advantage and disadvantage that has surfaced must be appreciated and understood in order to develop interventions and design policies to improve Hispanic health. In this chapter, we provide an overview of the health status and health behaviors of Hispanics in the U.S. The chapter is divided into several sections: First we discuss mortality rates among Hispanics, compare them with rates for non-Hispanic whites and non-Hispanic blacks, and illustrate the variation in mortality across Hispanic national origin groups. The next three sections cover the health status and health behaviors of Hispanic adults, the health status and health behaviors of Hispanic children and adolescents, and birth outcomes. The fifth section discusses the so-called “epidemiological paradox,” one of the most fascinating findings regarding the health of Hispanics and a source of controversy since it was first described. Finally, we conclude with a summary of our findings and what they mean for the health and health care needs of future generations of Hispanics in the U.S.
Research Interests:
Research Interests: Psychology, Public Opinion, Fear, Politics, Homosexuality, and 16 moreCalifornia, Factor analysis, Humans, Female, Male, Sexual Behavior, Quarantine, Risk factors, Adult, Random sampling, Public health systems and services research, Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, Risk Factors, Southern California, Sexual Activity, and Acquired immunodeficiency syndrome
... ROBERT w. WINSLOW,' RUBEN G. RUMBAUT, AND JIMMY ... and nurses (Douglas et al., 1985) and fear of HIV contamination among health and hospice care workers via shared food with patients, touching of patients, and handling... more
... ROBERT w. WINSLOW,' RUBEN G. RUMBAUT, AND JIMMY ... and nurses (Douglas et al., 1985) and fear of HIV contamination among health and hospice care workers via shared food with patients, touching of patients, and handling body fluids (Cummings, Rapaport, & ...
Research Interests:
... 11 Communication Interday Reliability of Function Assessment for a Health Status Measure The Quality of Well-Being Scale JOHN P. ANDERSON, PHD,* ROBERT M. KAPLAN, PHD,* CHARLES C. BERRY, PHD,* JAMES W. BUSH, MD,* AND RUBEN G. RUMBAUT,... more
... 11 Communication Interday Reliability of Function Assessment for a Health Status Measure The Quality of Well-Being Scale JOHN P. ANDERSON, PHD,* ROBERT M. KAPLAN, PHD,* CHARLES C. BERRY, PHD,* JAMES W. BUSH, MD,* AND RUBEN G. RUMBAUT, PHDt ...
Research Interests:
The Cuban nation has a long and proud record of struggle for self determination and defense of its sovereignty. For more than 500 years, Cubans have rejected and defeated colonialism, military interventions and foreign influences. For... more
The Cuban nation has a long and proud record of struggle for self determination and defense of its sovereignty. For more than 500 years, Cubans have rejected and defeated colonialism, military interventions and foreign influences. For decades US policy toward Cuba has misread Cuban history. Cuba’s present and future must be determined by the Cuban people, not by the United States. While Cuban American academics and public intellectuals—artists, writers, philosophers, scientists, legal scholars and others—have at times played significant roles in efforts to change U.S.-Cuba policy as individuals, to date there has been no concerted participation of this sector of our community in the struggle to end an unjust and irrational approach toward Cuba. In Cuban history, intellectuals repeatedly acted as moral agents and catalysts for change. In the United States today, intellectuals continually come together to speak out on important causes, providing a moral compass to their society. Drawing from those noble traditions of civic participation in both Cuba and the United States—and with a great sense of urgency—we have organized ourselves to voice our outrage at a policy that is inhumane, unjust, ill-conceived, hypocritical, and contrary to American ideals. For too long, this debate has been dominated by one sector of our community. We are determined that no longer will others in our community speak for us as they continue to insist on taking this country down a misguided path that has served neither the best interests of the United States nor those of the Cuban people.
Research Interests:
We are a group of Cuban American scholars and artists who have coalesced as a network of U.S. citizens opposed to current U.S. policy toward Cuba. We are committed to promoting reasoned debate in the public arena, to countering the... more
We are a group of Cuban American scholars and artists who have coalesced as a network of U.S. citizens opposed to current U.S. policy toward Cuba. We are committed to promoting reasoned debate in the public arena, to countering the stereotype of a monolithic Cuban American community, to challenging the disproportionate influence of an unrepresentative sector out of touch with U.S. public opinion, and to help bring about an end to a failed policy that defies all sound principles for conducting foreign affairs.
Research Interests:
It is not easy to come across individuals who enjoy the advantage of having been the actors of certain historical processes by having actively participated in the evolution and transformation of particular human groups and,... more
It is not easy to come across individuals who enjoy the advantage of having been the actors of certain historical processes by having actively participated in the evolution and transformation of particular human groups and, simultaneously, of being among the key analysts of those processes by having mastered the skills necessary to interpret them in the most appropriate light. But such is the case examined here, of a Cuban-born scholar has been one of the most prominent scholars in the field of Migration and Refugee Studies in the U.S. over the past several decades, yet who has never lost sight of the sociopolitical events taking place on the island nor the metamorphoses that the Cuban diaspora has undergone over time. The body of this article has been divided into two sections in which we hope to get a fairly in-depth knowledge of Professor Rumbaut’s experiences and impressions as both a subject and privileged observer of the path followed by Cuban migrants/exiles in the U.S. The queries in the first section delve into more personal recollections, since we are primarily interested here in learning what the experience of becoming an exile at a relatively young age was like and what key factors had an incidence on the process of adaptation to the host country. There will be aspects of Rumbaut’s condition as a Cuban-American exile that may sound familiar and comparable to those of other migrants; however, there will presumably be others more specific to the experience of his compatriots and his own family. One aim of this first set of questions would be to ascertain which elements of the migratory passage have helped/hindered the integration in the receiving country and which others have contributed to maintaining some ties with the motherland. In the second section, our attention will turn to collective issues regarding the Cuban diaspora in the U.S.
Research Interests:
August 2016: One cannot grasp eight years of a historic presidency in eight minutes of talk. It’s like trying to catch lightning in a bottle. But here goes... At this point on the 8th year of his presidency eight years ago, on a farewell... more
August 2016: One cannot grasp eight years of a historic presidency in eight minutes of talk. It’s like trying to catch lightning in a bottle. But here goes...
At this point on the 8th year of his presidency eight years ago, on a farewell visit to Baghdad, President George W. Bush had two shoes thrown at him by an indignant Iraqi journalist—a symbolic act applauded around the world (which also made a fortune for the Turkish maker of those shoes, the demand for which went through the roof). President Barack Obama, by contrast, on a recent farewell visit to Canada, was applauded by its Parliament, who chanted in wishful unison: “four more years!”
Back then Bush’s approval rating was in the low 30s; Obama’s is now in the 50s. Just as Obama benefited by the contrast to the global calamity that was the presidency of his predecessor, so now he rises in comparison to his would-be successor, a man whose campaign of fear and loathing has in turn generated fear and loathing among many around the world, astonished by the rise of a figure unabashedly unleashing such nativist, racist, and fascist impulses: the anti-Obama, the leading “birther” who sought incessantly for years to delegitimize him. Poetic justice: The rise of Trump has led to the revival of Obama (and possibly, when all is said and done, to the reviling of Trump).
In 2008 Obama’s election was met by global elation—people from Sierra Leone to Cuba danced in the streets; and if the world could have voted, Obama would have won in a worldwide landslide, 3 to 1. The global expectations were so high that just months into his first year in office he was prematurely bestowed the Nobel Peace Prize—a grand projection of the hopes of others for the possibilities he might bring to a world ensnared by war and intractable conflicts.
But today we are not “grading on a curve” in this preliminary appraisal of President Obama’s potential legacy, focusing on his impact on international relations. Setting aside the subjective mood of “then,” what is to be made of the objective residue of “now,” looking forward?
At this point on the 8th year of his presidency eight years ago, on a farewell visit to Baghdad, President George W. Bush had two shoes thrown at him by an indignant Iraqi journalist—a symbolic act applauded around the world (which also made a fortune for the Turkish maker of those shoes, the demand for which went through the roof). President Barack Obama, by contrast, on a recent farewell visit to Canada, was applauded by its Parliament, who chanted in wishful unison: “four more years!”
Back then Bush’s approval rating was in the low 30s; Obama’s is now in the 50s. Just as Obama benefited by the contrast to the global calamity that was the presidency of his predecessor, so now he rises in comparison to his would-be successor, a man whose campaign of fear and loathing has in turn generated fear and loathing among many around the world, astonished by the rise of a figure unabashedly unleashing such nativist, racist, and fascist impulses: the anti-Obama, the leading “birther” who sought incessantly for years to delegitimize him. Poetic justice: The rise of Trump has led to the revival of Obama (and possibly, when all is said and done, to the reviling of Trump).
In 2008 Obama’s election was met by global elation—people from Sierra Leone to Cuba danced in the streets; and if the world could have voted, Obama would have won in a worldwide landslide, 3 to 1. The global expectations were so high that just months into his first year in office he was prematurely bestowed the Nobel Peace Prize—a grand projection of the hopes of others for the possibilities he might bring to a world ensnared by war and intractable conflicts.
But today we are not “grading on a curve” in this preliminary appraisal of President Obama’s potential legacy, focusing on his impact on international relations. Setting aside the subjective mood of “then,” what is to be made of the objective residue of “now,” looking forward?
Research Interests:
An analysis of the process of normalization of relations between Cuba and the United States, after more than a half century of hostile relations--examining the legacy of the past and the prospects for future change.
Research Interests: Sociology, Political Sociology, International Relations, Peace and Conflict Studies, Cuban Studies, and 7 moreCold War, Cuban History, Cold War International Relations, Cuban Revolution, United States Foreign Policy, Diplomacy and international relations, and International Relations in the Post-Cold War era
Cuba’s history subsequent to Spanish colonization can be divided into 50 years of republican capitalist government (1902-1952) and 50 years of socialist revolutionary government (1959-2009), with an intervening 7 years of dictatorship... more
Cuba’s history subsequent to Spanish colonization can be divided into 50 years of republican capitalist government (1902-1952) and 50 years of socialist revolutionary government (1959-2009), with an intervening 7 years of dictatorship (1952-1958). The revolutionary period was the result of and grew from the first, capitalist, period, including the Batista dictatorship, within the larger context of the Cold War. Immediately after coming to power, the revolution met a determined reaction from the United States, setting the stage for 50 years of struggle for its survival, with and without the support of the former Soviet bloc. Far from representing a static tableau of abstract capitalism versus socialism, relations between the two countries followed a tortuous map of events and changes around the world in which both were protagonists, each with victories and defeats. The essential merit of the revolution is to have survived for the past half century.
Research Interests:
The history of Cuba is one of conquest and rebellion. Since the arrival of Columbus, it has had two colonial masters: Spain and the United States. Spain, after the collapse of its empire, ceased to be a threat to the peoples of America.... more
The history of Cuba is one of conquest and rebellion. Since the arrival of Columbus, it has had two colonial masters: Spain and the United States. Spain, after the collapse of its empire, ceased to be a threat to the peoples of America. Now, the Spanish are among the principal investors in Cuba, and make up a high percentage of tourists to the island. The United States, engaged in empire-building as sole superpower and continuing to pursue a half-century-old policy of regime change in Cuba, is still seen by the Cubans as the greatest threat to their independence and sovereignty. This article reviews the history of relations between the two countries, seeking to contextualize their social origins and political evolution, concluding that an improvement in relations is unlikely absent a profound change in the political economy of either country, or of both, a change that could occur internally or be caused by external factors.
Research Interests:
A comparative analysis of national results in the Toronto Pan Am Games, by gold medal and total medal counts, controlling for country population size and GDP per capita. A total of 41 countries and territories participated in the Games;... more
A comparative analysis of national results in the Toronto Pan Am Games, by gold medal and total medal counts, controlling for country population size and GDP per capita. A total of 41 countries and territories participated in the Games; they represented virtually all of the Americas—a region of some 990,000,000 people. Competing were delegations from the United States (the largest and richest country in the hemisphere), and Canada, the host country (and second richest in the Americas)—as well as from tiny islands like St. Kitts & Nevis (with a population of scarcely 50,000) and countries like Haiti (the poorest by far in the Americas, with a per capita GDP of $1,300). Fifteen countries, whose populations account for over 93% of the peoples of the Americas, won 97% of the total medals. The numbers tell three competing stories.
Research Interests:
Encuentro con Fidel Castro, La Habana, Cuba, enero del 1978.
Interview with Fidel Castro, Havana, Cuba, January 1978.
Published in Areíto, IV, 3-4, Spring 1978. Special issue. Número especial.
Interview with Fidel Castro, Havana, Cuba, January 1978.
Published in Areíto, IV, 3-4, Spring 1978. Special issue. Número especial.
Research Interests:
[August 2016:] One cannot grasp eight years of a historic presidency in eight minutes of talk. It’s like trying to catch lightning in a bottle. But here goes… At this point on the 8th year of his presidency eight years ago, on a farewell... more
[August 2016:] One cannot grasp eight years of a historic presidency in eight minutes of talk. It’s like trying to catch lightning in a bottle. But here goes…
At this point on the 8th year of his presidency eight years ago, on a farewell visit to Baghdad, President George W. Bush had two shoes thrown at him by an indignant Iraqi journalist—a symbolic act applauded around the world (which also made a fortune for the Turkish maker of those shoes, the demand for which went through the roof). President Barack Obama, by contrast, on a recent farewell visit to Canada, was applauded by its Parliament, who chanted in wishful unison: “four more years!”
Back then Bush’s approval rating was in the low 30s; Obama’s is now in the 50s. Just as Obama benefited by the contrast to the global calamity that was the presidency of his predecessor, so now he rises in comparison to his would-be successor, a man whose campaign of fear and loathing has in turn generated fear and loathing among many around the world, astonished by the rise of a figure unabashedly unleashing such nativist, racist, and fascist impulses: the anti-Obama, the leading “birther” who sought incessantly for years to delegitimize him. Poetic justice: The rise of Trump has led to the revival of Obama (and possibly, when all is said and done, to the reviling of Trump).
In 2008 Obama’s election was met by global elation—people from Sierra Leone to Cuba danced in the streets; and if the world could have voted, Obama would have won in a worldwide landslide, 3 to 1. The global expectations were so high that just months into his first year in office he was prematurely bestowed the Nobel Peace Prize—a grand projection of the hopes of others for the possibilities he might bring to a world ensnared by war and intractable conflicts.
But today we are not “grading on a curve” in this preliminary appraisal of President Obama’s potential legacy, focusing on his impact on international relations. Setting aside the subjective mood of “then,” what is to be made of the objective residue of “now,” looking forward?
I am struck by the ironies and paradoxes of Obama’s presidency, and particularly by two glaring contradictions: Obama campaigned unequivocally in 2008 as the anti-(Iraq)-war candidate, and as a progressive comprehensive-immigration-reformer who would make it a priority to achieve a path to citizenship for the “Dreamers” and help to regularize the status of undocumented immigrants. Yet when he leaves office next January 2017, he will be remembered as the “Deporter in Chief,” under whose eight-year tenure some 3 million people will have been deported, by far the most of any president in history.
Just as ironically, the Nobel-Peace-Prize Commander-in-Chief has been at war longer than any president in U.S. history. He will have presided over what are now the two longest wars in the country’s history, in Afghanistan and Iraq—though to be fair, he will leave behind far fewer troops on those battlefields than those he inherited from Bush—and taken military action in at least five other countries (Syria, Libya, Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen), including an unprecedented campaign of secretive assassinations by remote-control drones...
To be sure: Obama’s international legacy will also reflect his reasoned, steady and persistent leadership and diplomacy in securing a historic global climate change agreement in Paris last year, as well as the Iran deal which will reduce the odds of a nuclear-armed Iran.
And perhaps most astonishing has been his symbolic and historic reset of U.S. policy toward Cuba, seeking to “normalize relations” that for over half a century had been trapped in the time warp of the Cold War… and for two centuries in the “mental mold” (Shoultz 2011) of U.S. policy toward Cuba specifically and Latin America generally, dripping with a presumption of entitlement and moral superiority: of imperial aims masked as selfless moral purpose (Pérez 2016).
Theodore Roosevelt said in 1905, in the middle of his eight-year presidency: “It is manifest destiny for a nation to own the islands that border its shores.” And then this, in 1906: “I am so angry with that infernal little Cuban republic that I would like to wipe its people off the face of the earth. All that we ever wanted from them was that they would behave themselves and be prosperous and happy so that we would not have to interfere.”
Obama brought a very different message last March (2016) when he became the first U.S. president to visit the island since Calvin Coolidge in the 1920s. He began his speech in Havana by quoting, in the Spanish original, the first line of one of José Martí’s best known poems, instantly recognizable by any Cuban, old or young: “Cultivo una rosa blanca.” It was a momentous occasion—as had been the surprise simultaneous announcements by both Obama and Cuban President Raúl Castro on December 17, 2014, declaring their goal of normalizing relations, and the subsequent reopening of embassies in both countries in summer 2015...
Formidable obstacles remain in the way of “fully normal relations” between the United states and Cuba... But improbably, Barack Obama, who entered the presidency knowing little about Latin America (and perhaps caring less) may yet come to be lastingly remembered for cultivating that white rose (la rosa blanca) with the infernal little Cuban republic.
At this point on the 8th year of his presidency eight years ago, on a farewell visit to Baghdad, President George W. Bush had two shoes thrown at him by an indignant Iraqi journalist—a symbolic act applauded around the world (which also made a fortune for the Turkish maker of those shoes, the demand for which went through the roof). President Barack Obama, by contrast, on a recent farewell visit to Canada, was applauded by its Parliament, who chanted in wishful unison: “four more years!”
Back then Bush’s approval rating was in the low 30s; Obama’s is now in the 50s. Just as Obama benefited by the contrast to the global calamity that was the presidency of his predecessor, so now he rises in comparison to his would-be successor, a man whose campaign of fear and loathing has in turn generated fear and loathing among many around the world, astonished by the rise of a figure unabashedly unleashing such nativist, racist, and fascist impulses: the anti-Obama, the leading “birther” who sought incessantly for years to delegitimize him. Poetic justice: The rise of Trump has led to the revival of Obama (and possibly, when all is said and done, to the reviling of Trump).
In 2008 Obama’s election was met by global elation—people from Sierra Leone to Cuba danced in the streets; and if the world could have voted, Obama would have won in a worldwide landslide, 3 to 1. The global expectations were so high that just months into his first year in office he was prematurely bestowed the Nobel Peace Prize—a grand projection of the hopes of others for the possibilities he might bring to a world ensnared by war and intractable conflicts.
But today we are not “grading on a curve” in this preliminary appraisal of President Obama’s potential legacy, focusing on his impact on international relations. Setting aside the subjective mood of “then,” what is to be made of the objective residue of “now,” looking forward?
I am struck by the ironies and paradoxes of Obama’s presidency, and particularly by two glaring contradictions: Obama campaigned unequivocally in 2008 as the anti-(Iraq)-war candidate, and as a progressive comprehensive-immigration-reformer who would make it a priority to achieve a path to citizenship for the “Dreamers” and help to regularize the status of undocumented immigrants. Yet when he leaves office next January 2017, he will be remembered as the “Deporter in Chief,” under whose eight-year tenure some 3 million people will have been deported, by far the most of any president in history.
Just as ironically, the Nobel-Peace-Prize Commander-in-Chief has been at war longer than any president in U.S. history. He will have presided over what are now the two longest wars in the country’s history, in Afghanistan and Iraq—though to be fair, he will leave behind far fewer troops on those battlefields than those he inherited from Bush—and taken military action in at least five other countries (Syria, Libya, Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen), including an unprecedented campaign of secretive assassinations by remote-control drones...
To be sure: Obama’s international legacy will also reflect his reasoned, steady and persistent leadership and diplomacy in securing a historic global climate change agreement in Paris last year, as well as the Iran deal which will reduce the odds of a nuclear-armed Iran.
And perhaps most astonishing has been his symbolic and historic reset of U.S. policy toward Cuba, seeking to “normalize relations” that for over half a century had been trapped in the time warp of the Cold War… and for two centuries in the “mental mold” (Shoultz 2011) of U.S. policy toward Cuba specifically and Latin America generally, dripping with a presumption of entitlement and moral superiority: of imperial aims masked as selfless moral purpose (Pérez 2016).
Theodore Roosevelt said in 1905, in the middle of his eight-year presidency: “It is manifest destiny for a nation to own the islands that border its shores.” And then this, in 1906: “I am so angry with that infernal little Cuban republic that I would like to wipe its people off the face of the earth. All that we ever wanted from them was that they would behave themselves and be prosperous and happy so that we would not have to interfere.”
Obama brought a very different message last March (2016) when he became the first U.S. president to visit the island since Calvin Coolidge in the 1920s. He began his speech in Havana by quoting, in the Spanish original, the first line of one of José Martí’s best known poems, instantly recognizable by any Cuban, old or young: “Cultivo una rosa blanca.” It was a momentous occasion—as had been the surprise simultaneous announcements by both Obama and Cuban President Raúl Castro on December 17, 2014, declaring their goal of normalizing relations, and the subsequent reopening of embassies in both countries in summer 2015...
Formidable obstacles remain in the way of “fully normal relations” between the United states and Cuba... But improbably, Barack Obama, who entered the presidency knowing little about Latin America (and perhaps caring less) may yet come to be lastingly remembered for cultivating that white rose (la rosa blanca) with the infernal little Cuban republic.
Research Interests:
This three-year longitudinal study of the migration and resettlement of 739 Southeast Asian refugees - 373 women, 366 men - in San Diego County, California examined the causal relationships between antecedent life stressors, mediating... more
This three-year longitudinal study of the migration and resettlement of 739 Southeast Asian refugees - 373 women, 366 men - in San Diego County, California examined the causal relationships between antecedent life stressors, mediating adaptational resources, and variables of adaptational outcome. The sample consisted of randomly selected adult participants from Chinese-Vietnamese, Hmong, Khmer, Lao, and Vietnamese ethnic groups, representing 437 households. Eligible participants ranged from 25 to 65 years of age. Initial data collection occurred in 1982 and 1983, with a second wave of data collection in 1984. Interview sessions with each participant typically lasted three hours utilizing a structured interview schedule. Interviewers were rigorously trained and ethnically matched with respondents. The Murray Research Archive holds original record paper interviews and coded computer data from each wave. There are both computer and paper data for every cohort except Lao, for which ther...
Concluding address to the conference on “Escaping Violence: New Approaches to Forced Migration,” Zolberg Institute on Migration and Mobility, The New School, NYC, April 12, 2019. The conference was held on the sixth anniversary of the... more
Concluding address to the conference on “Escaping Violence: New Approaches to Forced Migration,” Zolberg Institute on Migration and Mobility, The New School, NYC, April 12, 2019. The conference was held on the sixth anniversary of the death of Aristide R. Zolberg, and focuses on his unpublished memoir “Games of Identity: How I Dodged the Nazis and Became an Ivy Leaguer,” particularly on the dramatic core of his narrative, which spans the war years of 1940 to 1944, when he was between ages 8 and 13. What he experienced as a Jewish child in Nazi-occupied Belgium during World War II shaped his emotional and intellectual development, and his subsequent work as a world-renowned scholar of international migration, refugee movements, exile, and identity. As he reflects in his narrative, he owed his survival first to those adults who acted to move the family underground, entailing risks which ultimately led his father to Auschwitz; and to his own skill at playing “games of identity”—notably, in passing himself off as a Belgian of Flemish Catholic origin. Those war-time experiences and the risky games of identity that he played formed and informed his subsequent professional interests in how societies manage differences of language, religion, and ancestry among their population, both as a historical legacy of state-formation and as a consequence of immigration.
Research Interests:
This chapter reports on findings from a survey of Vietnamese, Cambodian, and Laotian-Hmong refugees in the San Diego, California metropolitan area, site of one of the largest Indochinese concentrations in the United States. The study... more
This chapter reports on findings from a survey of Vietnamese, Cambodian, and Laotian-Hmong refugees in the San Diego, California metropolitan area, site of one of the largest Indochinese concentrations in the United States. The study focuses first on a sample of adult men and women, examining the effects of a wide range of prearrival and post-arrival variables on their adaptive responses at two points in time. Next, it moves to a consideration of the adaptation of their adolescent children in San Diego secondary schools, examining the effects of family composition d parental characteristics on the students' educational attainment. us, the study does not address the situation of orphaned, unaccompanied, or Amerasian refugee children, but rather that of children who me with one or both parents. They comprise the vast majority of Indochinese children, and for them the family in exile constitutes a central context within which they must forge a new modus vivendi in American schools and communities. Indeed, the Indochinese are now the youngest population in the United States, with a median age of 8 years (Rumbaut, 1989a). Hence, the future of these refugee communities in America will depend largely on the mode of incorporation of their children.
Research Interests:
Rumbaut's chapter provides a pioneering example of the fruits that can be harvested through a well-designed and adequately funded research project. He describes a large project that is comprehensively examining the adaptive experiences of... more
Rumbaut's chapter provides a pioneering example of the fruits that can be harvested through a well-designed and adequately funded research project. He describes a large project that is comprehensively examining the adaptive experiences of a random sample of families from each of the four major Southeast Asian ethnic groups--Hmong, Khmer, ethnic Chinese, and Vietnamese--residing in San Diego. Rumbaut's findings are manifold, but three conclusions stand out: (1) Southeast Asians are a highly heterogeneous population,and among them the Hmong and Khmer groups appear to be at significantly greater risk on their affective measures of happiness and depression; (2) the second year of residence in the United States appears to be a period of significantly heightened demoralization and psychological stress for refugees--a finding with import-ant implications for preventive intervention program activities; and (3) while the psychological experiences of exiles are complex and multidimensional, they are also patterned and, to a degree, predictable.
Research Interests:
The self in exile, and the circumstances of exile, are as varied as human character and human history. Forced uprooting from one's homeland and community, coerced homelessness, may be the common crisis that confronts all exiles and... more
The self in exile, and the circumstances of exile, are as varied as human character and human history. Forced uprooting from one's homeland and community, coerced homelessness, may be the common crisis that confronts all exiles and refugees, but such groups that are affected by it perceive and react to their changed and changing circumstances in different ways. Exile is not a uniform journey, but many different journeys, and, “it,” cannot be grasped by a single vision, but many, reflecting the different vantages and framings of different selves, and indeed of the same self over time, in circumstances that never stay the same. The meaning of exile, and of home, varies, not least as a function of age and generation, of biography and history, of self and circumstance. These four short essays on a common theme, “Two Generational Perspectives on the Experience of Exile,” were written a quarter of a century apart by a father and son, a psychiatrist and a sociologist: the former spoke as a survivor of “four shocks," including, “exile shock,” a concept he coined to distinguish it from other phenomena; the latter spoke from the vantage of the “one-and-a-half” generation, the term he coined to distinguish between the first-generation adult protagonists (Literally, “first actors”) of the decision to go into exile, and the generation of their children, who as deuteragonists (“second actors”) tend to be free of the impulse for self-justification that drives their parents' exilic vision. Taken together, this collaboration consists of a selective set of reflections, spanning a quarter century of changing circumstances, of two selves, two journeys, two visions, two voices, two generational perspectives on the experience of exile.
Research Interests:
Recent research and theoretical debates about the economic mobility and labor incorporation of immigrants to the United States have tended to focus on either the individual characteristics of employees (supply-side “human capital”) or the... more
Recent research and theoretical debates about the economic mobility and labor incorporation of immigrants to the United States have tended to focus on either the individual characteristics of employees (supply-side “human capital”) or the institutional characteristics of employers (demand-side “segmented labor markets”). Structural perspectives and analyses have also shown the heterogeneity of modes of incorporation within immigrant enclaves and in the informal economy. But the experience of Indochinese refugees points to the importance of still other variables that combine to provide an alternative to low-wage employment in the secondary labor market. These include a “structure of refuge” created by a complex of state policies, refugee programs and what I call “segmented state welfare systems,” on the one hand; and the size and composition of Indochinese refugee families/households, reflecting a very young age structure and very high fertility and age-dependency ratios for this population, on the other. Most available research, whether approached from individual or institutional perspectives, has tended to neglect a focus either on the pivotal role of women or on the refugee family/household as a unit of analysis. Also neglected is the role of the state, despite the fundamental political processes governing both international refugee flows (their mode of exit) and refugee resettlement in asylum countries (their mode of entry and incorporation). Nationally, almost half of the Indochinese refugee population in the United States is receiving some form of public assistance. There are wide differences in Indochinese welfare dependency rates among the states, however; California and Texas (where most Indochinese refugees are located) provide polar opposite examples. Still, the national welfare rates for Indochinese refugees stand in contrast not only to those of other legal immigrants (to say nothing of illegal immigrants) but also to the rates for other refugees. All of this requires explanation. Here I first describe the historical development of a “structure of refuge” in the United States. This is followed by a detailed examination of the occupational and economic situation of Indochinese refugees in San Diego County, California, based on data from a comprehensive longitudinal survey – the Indochinese Health & Adaptation Research Project (IHARP) – carried out during 1982-1985. Multivariate analyses of refugee earnings and welfare dependency are presented, and the implications of the findings for future research and public policy are discussed.
Research Interests:
In the years following the end of the Vietnam War in 1975, one and a half million refugees and immigrants from Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia arrived in the United States. Together with their nearly half a million American-born children, by... more
In the years following the end of the Vietnam War in 1975, one and a half million refugees and immigrants from Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia arrived in the United States. Together with their nearly half a million American-born children, by the year 2000 they already represented more than one out of every six Asian Americans, adding significantly not only to the size but to the diversity of the Asian-origin population in the U.S.; but the story of their migration and incorporation differs fundamentally from that of other Asian Americans. Except for persons of Japanese descent, the overwhelming majority of today’s Asian Americans are foreign-born, reflecting the central role of contemporary immigration in the formation of these ethnic groups. But unlike the others, most of the Vietnamese (together with the Laotians and Cambodians) came as refugees rather than as immigrants. Unlike post-1965 immigrants from the Philippines, Korea, China, India and elsewhere in Asia whose large-scale immigration was influenced by the abolition of racist quotas in U.S. immigration law, the Vietnamese entered outside of regular immigration channels as part of the largest refugee resettlement program in U.S. history, peaking in 1980 and continuing thereafter. As refugees from a country devastated by war, they experienced contexts of exit more traumatic than other newcomers in recent times and they had no realistic prospects of return to their homelands. Their reception as refugees also entailed an entry status that facilitated access to a variety of public assistance programs to which other immigrants were not equally entitled. The American welfare state shaped their incorporation far more than any other immigrant group in U.S. history, even as their exodus and resettlement were themselves complex, unintended consequences of U.S. foreign policies and of the American warfare state. This paper explores the history of their migration and the growth of their population in the U.S., their patterns of settlement and acculturation, social and economic adaptations, and the transitions to adulthood of young Vietnamese Americans coming of age in American contexts.
Research Interests:
This paper reports the development and major findings of the Indochinese Health and Adaptation Research Project (IHARP), a comprehensive longitudinal study of the migration and resettlement of Vietnamese, Chinese-Vietnamese, Cambodian,... more
This paper reports the development and major findings of the Indochinese Health and Adaptation Research Project (IHARP), a comprehensive longitudinal study of the migration and resettlement of Vietnamese, Chinese-Vietnamese, Cambodian, Lao and Hmong refugees in San Diego County, California. IHARP is based on random samples of men, women, adolescents, and school-aged children from each of the main Indochinese ethnic groups resettled in the United States between 1975 and 1983. Unlike earlier studies carried out in the wake of the evacuation of the 1975 (mostly Vietnamese) refugees or subsequent research that focused on specific aspects of the adaptation of some of the "second wave" ethnic groups, the IHARP study encompassed both of the major "waves" and all of the major Southeast Asian refugee groups; it distinguished the sizable segment of ethnic Chinese from Vietnam (who constituted between a quarter and a third of all refugee admissions from Vietnam at the time, and who differ in significant ways from the Vietnamese) as a separate sample for analysis; it focused on refugee women (whose central role is often neglected in studies of migration and mobility) and their children, and not solely on male heads of household; it combined quantitative survey research with qualitative "oral histories" and in-depth open-ended interviews; and it allowed for a longitudinal rather than cross-sectional analysis of the refugee "adaptation process," broadly conceived. The study, the largest of its kind, originally funded during 1982-1985 by NICHD, was expanded thereafter into related quantitative and qualitative research projects based on the original IHARP data set, including a qualitative-quantitative study of the educational and occupational attainment of refugee youth; and longitudinal analyses of fertility and infant health and mortality in the Indochinese population of San Diego County.
Research Interests:
Levels of fertility among Indochinese refugees in the United States are explored in the context of a highly compressed demographic transition implicit in the move from high-fertility Southeast Asian societies to a low-fertility... more
Levels of fertility among Indochinese refugees in the United States are explored in the context of a highly compressed demographic transition implicit in the move from high-fertility Southeast Asian societies to a low-fertility resettlement region. A theoretical model is developed to explain the effect on refugee fertility of social background characteristics, migration history and patterns of adaptation to a different economic and cultural environment, controlling for marital history and length of residence in the U.S. Multiple regression techniques are used to test the model, which was found to account for nearly half of the variation in refugee fertility levels in the United States. Fertility is much higher for all Indochinese ethnic groups (Vietnamese, Chinese-Vietnamese, Cambodian, Lao, Hmong) than it is for American women; the number of children in refugee families is in turn a major determinant of welfare dependency. Adjustments for rates of natural increase indicate a total 1985 Indochinese population of over one million, making it one of the largest Asian-origin populations in the United States. This remarkable phenomenon has occurred in less than a decade. Implications of these findings for public policy are discussed, focusing on family planning, maternal and child health needs, and the attainment of refugee economic self-sufficiency.
Research Interests:
This report presents the results of a comparative study conducted in 1986-87 in San Diego, California, of the adaptation of refugee youth from Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. The project examined both successes and problems of these refugee... more
This report presents the results of a comparative study conducted in 1986-87 in San Diego, California, of the adaptation of refugee youth from Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. The project examined both successes and problems of these refugee youth regarding their educational and occupational attainments and aspirations, and evaluated their prospects for economic self-sufficiency in the United States. Data were drawn from the Indochinese Health & Adaptation Research Project (IHARP) longitudinal surveys, the San Diego City Schools (including complete academic histories), the San Diego County Probation Department, and intensive qualitative interviews with 76 informants. Findings are presented in the following areas: (1) characteristics of San Diego high school students; (2) grade point averages of San Diego high school students; (3) characteristics of Southeast Asian students and their parents; (4) grade point averages of Southeast Asian students; (5) standardized test achievement scores; (6) determinants of educational attainment; (7) occupational aspirations of Southeast Asian students; (8) problem areas: student dropouts, school suspensions, and juvenile delinquency; (9) adaptive resources: social class and cultural characteristics; (10) adaptive contexts: family, school, and community; and (11) adaptive strategies: acculturation and coping. Data are presented in 50 figures and tables.
Research Interests:
ABSTRACT Examined data from the present authors' (1988) study of 5,472 linguistic minority high school juniors and seniors and 239 7th–12th grade Southeast Asians (SAs) in a comparison between limited-English-proficient (LEP) and... more
ABSTRACT Examined data from the present authors' (1988) study of 5,472 linguistic minority high school juniors and seniors and 239 7th–12th grade Southeast Asians (SAs) in a comparison between limited-English-proficient (LEP) and fluent-English-proficient (FEP) SAs. Results suggest that (1) SAs are more likely to be LEPs than other language minorities, (2) FEPs are doing better in all measures of academic achievement than are LEPs, and (3) in spite of having proportionately more LEPs, SAs (as a group) have above-average grades. Implications for teachers focus on predictors of academic achievement and English proficiency, as well as placement in special education, for these SA groups. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Research Interests: Sociology, Cognitive Science, Education, Second Language Acquisition, Southeast Asian Studies, and 14 moreChild and adolescent mental health, Refugee Studies, Immigration, Adaptation, Cambodia, Laos (Lao PDR), Acculturation Stress, Linguistics, Acculturation, Bilingualism, Hmong Studies, Vietnamese studies, Clinical Sciences, and Indochinese Refugees
This account is the product of four years of ethnographic research and experimental reform work carried out in the San Diego Police Department between 1973 and 1977, leading to what came to be called “Community Policing.”
Research Interests:
Page 1. \ ; \' / N 't, \ *l < v-- , '¥ 4 M; *.4 , ^W^W..,.^ rJ^t .- rt 11 rt ft^?.^t? 1^ ^4 rv"<.^ £j Cuban Exiles and Cuban Americans in South Florida, 1959-1994 Page 2. Page 3. Havana USA Page 4. Page 5. Havana... more
Page 1. \ ; \' / N 't, \ *l < v-- , '¥ 4 M; *.4 , ^W^W..,.^ rJ^t .- rt 11 rt ft^?.^t? 1^ ^4 rv"<.^ £j Cuban Exiles and Cuban Americans in South Florida, 1959-1994 Page 2. Page 3. Havana USA Page 4. Page 5. Havana USA Cuban ...
Research Interests:
A review of the first major sociological analysis of the phenomenon of policewomen on patrol, and one of the few (as of 1984) available case studies of the occupational lives of women who earn a wage in nontraditional blue-collar jobs.... more
A review of the first major sociological analysis of the phenomenon of policewomen on patrol, and one of the few (as of 1984) available case studies of the occupational lives of women who earn a wage in nontraditional blue-collar jobs. Like the women who are here portrayed “breaking and entering” into the police world, Susan Ehrlich Martin’s book, “Breaking and Entering: Policewomen on Patrol” is a pioneering effort, contributing to our understanding of the changing organization of police work. It is also a detailed depiction of the cultural and organizational contexts that pressure female officers, in the words of one of the respondents in the study, “to think like men, work like dogs, and act like ladies.” The contradictions between occupational and gender roles are especially sharp in policing. As tokens in an organization, they cope with the dilemmas of their status along a continuum of options between two polar patterns: defeminization or deprofessionalization. But the presence...
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
This account is the product of four years of ethnographic research and experimental reform work carried out in the San Diego Police Department between 1973 and 1977, leading to what came to be called “Community Policing.”
Research Interests: Organizational Behavior, Sociology, Cultural Studies, Political Sociology, Social Sciences, and 14 moreOrganizational Change, Ethnography, Organizational Culture, Sociology of Crime and Deviance, Subcultures, Political Science, Case Study Research, Police, Work and Occupations, Community Policing, Police Reform, Intervention, Social Intervention, and Public Policy
“Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.” —William Butler Yeats (1889) Welcome to our course, “Race and Ethnicity”! These are not, needless to say, normal circumstances. This is the first time in four decades... more
“Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.” —William Butler Yeats (1889)
Welcome to our course, “Race and Ethnicity”! These are not, needless to say, normal circumstances. This is the first time in four decades of teaching that I am doing so “online.” It may be a new experience for you as well. There are bound to be glitches (not to mention Murphy’s Law) as we adapt to the new conditions and challenges... but I have no doubt that we will overcome them together. Our course, which begins on March 31, 2020, is being held in the context of the historic crisis we are all engulfed in, a once-in-a-century global pandemic that is not only bordering on a public health apocalypse but shaking all aspects of our lives and of our worlds (interpersonal, educational, occupational, financial, economic, political, residential, medical, social, cultural, psychological, familial)—requiring adaptations to rapidly changing and unpredictable circumstances. (Like this online course, for instance!) It is precisely in such moments of crisis—which shake our taken for granted notions and routines to their foundation, revealing the artifices of our social constructions of “reality” (including what we construct as “race” and “ethnicity”)—that a sociological imagination flourishes. A folk saying has it that “when life gives you lemons, make lemonade.” I look forward to making sociological lemonade with you this quarter. The pandemic will not hit everyone alike, but will be patterned along hard lines of social and economic inequality and disadvantage—including race and ethnicity and immigration status. Not everyone can “stay at home.” Harsh realities are being exposed anew by this public health catastrophe... including the fact that SYSTEMIC RACISM IS A PUBLIC HEALTH ISSUE... along with possibilities to reshape the structure of our societies in the calamitous aftermath. (But as Frederick Douglass famously said long ago: “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”)
We will read 1 book during our 11-week course: Race in America, by Matthew Desmond and Mustafa Emirbayer.
This is one of the very best textbooks on the subject that I have seen. The book is made up of 11 chapters, each about 40 pages (including many images, maps and graphics); you’ll be reading a chapter a week on average.
The first 2 chapters spell out key concepts and address the historical invention and institutionalization of “race.” The next 8 core chapters (#3-10) focus on separate (but interconnected) fields of social life: political, economic, residential, legal, educational, aesthetic, associational, and intimate spheres (family, self, identity). The last one, chapter 11, looks to the future: “Toward Racial Democracy.” In addition to the text, you will read a few supplementary readings, listed in the syllabus and course agenda. In tandem with the course readings, over the next ten weeks I will regularly email you selected articles, reports, and analyses seeking to connect what you are studying to the breaking news of the day; while we cannot know now what may come in the coming months, we can be pretty certain that the issues addressed by our course will be at the heart of the historic crisis (or crises) that will engulf us. By the end of the class you will have effectively a “curated” set of such accompanying relevant readings.
Tuesday March 31 is the start of our class. Saturday April 4 marks the anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. As I do every year at that time, as well as on the anniversary of his birth on January 15, I send my students an annual message of remembrance. Please take time to read and reflect on it.
The goal of this class is to broaden your intellectual horizons; to study stress, not to cause it; to invite you to a memorable sociological adventure amid a global crisis that you and I will still be talking about many years from now. And remember: Our course will end in June, but not our role and responsibility as members of the polis, as citizens as well as sociologists confronted by historic crises. The critically informed citizen—whose voice is heard, who acts and votes and remains civically engaged—is racism’s worst enemy. Becoming a critically informed citizen, ending racial domination and making a more just world is a lifetime commitment that never ends. Silence is not an option at this (potential) turning point in the history of American democracy and racial justice, even amid a once-in-a-century pandemic. Know that history. Voice that history. Read-think-write... and act.
"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere... Justice too long delayed is justice denied." —Martin Luther King, Jr., Letter from Birmingham Jail (1963)
Welcome to our course, “Race and Ethnicity”! These are not, needless to say, normal circumstances. This is the first time in four decades of teaching that I am doing so “online.” It may be a new experience for you as well. There are bound to be glitches (not to mention Murphy’s Law) as we adapt to the new conditions and challenges... but I have no doubt that we will overcome them together. Our course, which begins on March 31, 2020, is being held in the context of the historic crisis we are all engulfed in, a once-in-a-century global pandemic that is not only bordering on a public health apocalypse but shaking all aspects of our lives and of our worlds (interpersonal, educational, occupational, financial, economic, political, residential, medical, social, cultural, psychological, familial)—requiring adaptations to rapidly changing and unpredictable circumstances. (Like this online course, for instance!) It is precisely in such moments of crisis—which shake our taken for granted notions and routines to their foundation, revealing the artifices of our social constructions of “reality” (including what we construct as “race” and “ethnicity”)—that a sociological imagination flourishes. A folk saying has it that “when life gives you lemons, make lemonade.” I look forward to making sociological lemonade with you this quarter. The pandemic will not hit everyone alike, but will be patterned along hard lines of social and economic inequality and disadvantage—including race and ethnicity and immigration status. Not everyone can “stay at home.” Harsh realities are being exposed anew by this public health catastrophe... including the fact that SYSTEMIC RACISM IS A PUBLIC HEALTH ISSUE... along with possibilities to reshape the structure of our societies in the calamitous aftermath. (But as Frederick Douglass famously said long ago: “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”)
We will read 1 book during our 11-week course: Race in America, by Matthew Desmond and Mustafa Emirbayer.
This is one of the very best textbooks on the subject that I have seen. The book is made up of 11 chapters, each about 40 pages (including many images, maps and graphics); you’ll be reading a chapter a week on average.
The first 2 chapters spell out key concepts and address the historical invention and institutionalization of “race.” The next 8 core chapters (#3-10) focus on separate (but interconnected) fields of social life: political, economic, residential, legal, educational, aesthetic, associational, and intimate spheres (family, self, identity). The last one, chapter 11, looks to the future: “Toward Racial Democracy.” In addition to the text, you will read a few supplementary readings, listed in the syllabus and course agenda. In tandem with the course readings, over the next ten weeks I will regularly email you selected articles, reports, and analyses seeking to connect what you are studying to the breaking news of the day; while we cannot know now what may come in the coming months, we can be pretty certain that the issues addressed by our course will be at the heart of the historic crisis (or crises) that will engulf us. By the end of the class you will have effectively a “curated” set of such accompanying relevant readings.
Tuesday March 31 is the start of our class. Saturday April 4 marks the anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. As I do every year at that time, as well as on the anniversary of his birth on January 15, I send my students an annual message of remembrance. Please take time to read and reflect on it.
The goal of this class is to broaden your intellectual horizons; to study stress, not to cause it; to invite you to a memorable sociological adventure amid a global crisis that you and I will still be talking about many years from now. And remember: Our course will end in June, but not our role and responsibility as members of the polis, as citizens as well as sociologists confronted by historic crises. The critically informed citizen—whose voice is heard, who acts and votes and remains civically engaged—is racism’s worst enemy. Becoming a critically informed citizen, ending racial domination and making a more just world is a lifetime commitment that never ends. Silence is not an option at this (potential) turning point in the history of American democracy and racial justice, even amid a once-in-a-century pandemic. Know that history. Voice that history. Read-think-write... and act.
"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere... Justice too long delayed is justice denied." —Martin Luther King, Jr., Letter from Birmingham Jail (1963)
Research Interests: Sociology, Political Sociology, Criminal Justice, Education, Social Sciences, and 15 moreSegregation, Immigration, Slavery, Race and Ethnicity, Colonialism, Ethnic and Racial Studies, Social Exclusion, Racialization, Racial and ethnic discrimination, Mass Incarceration, Crime, Jim Crow Segregation, Deportation, Xenophobia, and Cultural appropriation
An overview of milestones of the Civil Rights Movement, 1954-1968, aimed to deepen students’ understanding of history... of the extraordinary struggles of fellow human beings for dignity, freedom and fairness... of the campaigns of civil... more
An overview of milestones of the Civil Rights Movement, 1954-1968, aimed to deepen students’ understanding of history... of the extraordinary struggles of fellow human beings for dignity, freedom and fairness... of the campaigns of civil resistance and nonviolent protest and civil disobedience that framed the movement to end racial segregation and Jim Crow American Apartheid... and to learn about and remember especially those young and old who lost their lives to the savage depredations of a system of caste oppression and insufferable inequities. Here are some short informative entries to that end, on the week marking his birthday and annual national remembrance.