Race, Ethnicity, and Immigration

  • C. Matthew Snipp
  • Tomas Jimenez
  • Linda Burton
  • Hazel Markus
  • Douglas Massey

Leaders: Linda Burton, Tomás Jiménez, Hazel Markus, Douglas Massey, C. Matthew Snipp

The CPI has an extensive research program on race, ethnicity, immigration, and poverty. The National Poverty Study, for example, is designed to rigorously compare differences across rural black, deindustrialized, reservation, and other “racialized” poverty forms. The CPI also runs a comprehensive program on Hispanic poverty that explores such topics as the “chilling effect” of anti-immigrant laws on program use, the reasons why, contrary to much speculation, the Hispanic poverty rate has not taken off, and the causes of the so-called Hispanic Health Paradox (see, for example, our Pathways Magazine special report on poverty, inequality, and mobility among Hispanics). And one of the CPI’s most distinguished affiliates, Jennifer Eberhardt (who is on the CPI directorate), is carrying out a groundbreaking big-data analysis of policing and race. We list below a sampling of other CPI projects on race, ethnicity, immigration, and poverty.

Poverty among refugees: The U.S. refugee population faces very high rates of poverty, yet we know very little about the effects of different resettlement programs and approaches. There are efforts afoot to exploit available administrative data and begin to find out what works and what doesn’t.

Arrests, race, and poverty: Why are some arrests resolved informally while others are converted into a criminal record that then has a life-long scarring effect? The process of converting an arrest into a criminal booking may play an important role in generating downstream racial disparities.

Reducing the race gap in test scores: The new Stanford Education Data Archive (SEDA) is a rich resource that is providing the most systematic evidence to date on the capacity of school-district policies to reduce the racial gap in test scores.

Poverty and schooling on reservations: Why are test scores and educational outcomes on Native reservations so low (relative to the national average)? In a new project by the noted ethnographer Martin Sánchez-Jankowski, we’ll be learning more about how traditional and formal education are viewed and the ways in which they might be better integrated. 

Race And Ethnicity - CPI Research

Title Author Media
State of the Union 2017: Health Rucker C. Johnson

State of the Union 2017: Health

Author: Rucker C. Johnson
Publisher: Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality
Date: 06/2017

Racial and ethnic minorities experience higher-than-average rates of illness, have higher age-specific death rates throughout the life course, and are more likely to suffer from early onset of illnesses and more severe diseases than whites. In this article, I examine these and other differences in health outcomes for whites and blacks in the United States and show that black-white health disparities are large and appear to widen over the life cycle. I also discuss several policy changes that served to narrow racial health disparities in the past and consider how future policies might help ameliorate racial inequities in health.

State of the Union 2017: Incarceration Becky Pettit, Bryan Sykes

State of the Union 2017: Incarceration

Author: Becky Pettit, Bryan Sykes
Publisher: Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality
Date: 06/2017

Despite observed declines in crime and much talk of criminal justice reform, the United States continues to incarcerate a much larger fraction of its population than any other advanced industrialized country. The burden of this intensive incarceration continues to fall disproportionately on black men: At the end of 2015, a full 9.1 percent of young black men (ages 20–34) were incarcerated, a rate that is 5.7 times that of young white men (1.6%). Fully 10 percent of black children had an incarcerated parent in 2015, compared with 3.6 percent of Hispanic children and 1.7 percent of white children.

State of the Union 2017: Education Sean F. Reardon, Erin M. Fahle

State of the Union 2017: Education

Author: Sean F. Reardon, Erin M. Fahle
Publisher: Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality
Date: 06/2017

Between 1990 and 2015, average academic performance improved for students of all racial and ethnic groups, but grew fastest among black and Hispanic students. As a result, white-black and white-Hispanic achievement gaps have declined by 15 to 25 percent. But achievement gaps remain large: Hispanic students lag almost two grade levels, and black students lag roughly two to two-and-a-half grade levels behind whites. Two nonschooling factors—persistent racial and ethnic disparities in family resources and segregation patterns— are fundamental determinants of unequal educational opportunity for minority students. 

State of the Union 2017: Housing Matthew Desmond

State of the Union 2017: Housing

Author: Matthew Desmond
Publisher: Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality
Date: 06/2017
Racial and ethnic gaps in homeownership, housing wealth, and tax expenditures on housing are still very wide. Whereas 71 percent of white families live in owner-occupied housing, only 41 percent of black families and 45 percent of Hispanic families do. Many nonwhite families were excluded from social programs that facilitated dramatic growth in homeownership in the mid-20th century. The ownership gap is related to an affordability gap. Black and Hispanic families are approximately twice as likely as white families to experience “extreme housing costs,” defined as spending at least 50 percent of income on housing. 

 

State of the Union 2017: Safety Net Mark Duggan, Valerie Scimeca

State of the Union 2017: Safety Net

Author: Mark Duggan, Valerie Scimeca
Publisher: Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality
Date: 06/2017

Given that poverty rates are signicantly higher among blacks, Hispanics, and American Indians than in the general population, it is not surprising that their enrollment in federal safety net programs, such as Medicaid and food stamps, is also higher. However, poor blacks and American Indians are significantly less likely than other racial and ethnic groups to enroll in Medicaid, which is the largest federal safety net program. No similar gap exists for enrollment in the food stamp or Supplemental Security Income programs.

race and ethnicity - CPI Affiliates

Alejandro Portes's picture Alejandro Portes Research Professor of Sociology; Member, Postdoctoral Fellowship Selection Committee, National Academy of Education; Member, Center For Research and Analysis of Migration, University College of London
University of Miami and Princeton University
Victor Nee's picture Victor Nee Frank and Rosa Rhodes Professor of Sociology; Director of the Center for the Study of Economy and Society
Cornell University
William T. Bielby Professor of Sociology
University of Illinois-Chicago
Al Camarillo's picture Al Camarillo Leon Sloss Jr. Memorial Professor, Emeritus
Stanford University
Jackelyn Hwang Assistant Professor of Sociology
Stanford University

Pages

Race And Ethnicity - Other Research

Title Author Media
Racial Profiling and Use of Force in Police Stops: How Local Events Trigger Periods of Increased Discrimination Joscha Legewie

Racial Profiling and Use of Force in Police Stops: How Local Events Trigger Periods of Increased Discrimination

Author: Joscha Legewie
Publisher: American Journal of Sociology
Date: 09/2016

Racial profiling and the disproportionate use of police force are controversial political issues. I argue that racial bias in the use of force increases after relevant events such as the shooting of a police officer by a black suspect. To examine this argument, I design a quasi experiment using data from 3.9 million time and geocoded pedestrian stops in New York City. The findings show that two fatal shootings of police officers by black suspects increased the use of police force against blacks substantially in the days after the shootings. The use of force against whites and Hispanics, however, remained unchanged, and there is no evidence for an effect of two other police murders by a white and Hispanic suspect. Aside from the importance for the debate on racial profiling and police use of force, this research reveals a general set of processes where events create intergroup conflict, foreground stereotypes, and trigger discriminatory responses.

The Economic and Fiscal Consequences of Immigration Francine D. Blau, Christopher Mackie

The Economic and Fiscal Consequences of Immigration

Author: Francine D. Blau, Christopher Mackie
Publisher: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine
Date: 09/2016

More than 40 million people living in the United States were born in other countries, and almost an equal number have at least one foreign-born parent. Together, the first generation (foreign-born) and second generation (children of the foreign-born) comprise almost one in four Americans. It comes as little surprise, then, that many U.S. residents view immigration as a major policy issue facing the nation. Not only does immigration affect the environment in which everyone lives, learns, and works, but it also interacts with nearly every policy area of concern, from jobs and the economy, education, and health care, to federal, state, and local government budgets.

The changing patterns of immigration and the evolving consequences for American society, institutions, and the economy continue to fuel public policy debate that plays out at the national, state, and local levels. The Economic and Fiscal Consequences of Immigration assesses the impact of dynamic immigration processes on economic and fiscal outcomes for the United States, a major destination of world population movements. This report will be a fundamental resource for policy makers and law makers at the federal, state, and local levels but extends to the general public, nongovernmental organizations, the business community, educational institutions, and the research community.

 

On the Move: Changing Mechanisms of Mexico-U.S. Migration Filiz Garip

On the Move: Changing Mechanisms of Mexico-U.S. Migration

Author: Filiz Garip
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Date: 08/2016

Why do Mexicans migrate to the United States? Is there a typical Mexican migrant? Beginning in the 1970s, survey data indicated that the average migrant was a young, unmarried man who was poor, undereducated, and in search of better employment opportunities. This is the general view that most Americans still hold of immigrants from Mexico. On the Move argues that not only does this view of Mexican migrants reinforce the stereotype of their undesirability, but it also fails to capture the true diversity of migrants from Mexico and their evolving migration patterns over time.

Using survey data from over 145,000 Mexicans and in-depth interviews with nearly 140 Mexicans, Filiz Garip reveals a more accurate picture of Mexico-U.S migration. In the last fifty years there have been four primary waves: a male-dominated migration from rural areas in the 1960s and '70s, a second migration of young men from socioeconomically more well-off families during the 1980s, a migration of women joining spouses already in the United States in the late 1980s and ’90s, and a generation of more educated, urban migrants in the late 1990s and early 2000s. For each of these four stages, Garip examines the changing variety of reasons for why people migrate and migrants’ perceptions of their opportunities in Mexico and the United States. 

Looking at Mexico-U.S. migration during the last half century, On the Move uncovers the vast mechanisms underlying the flow of people moving between nations.

 

Factors Associated With Ocular Health Care Utilization Among Hispanics/Latinos Laura A. McClure, D. Diane Zheng, Byron L. Lam, Stacey L. Tannenbaum, Charlotte E. Joslin, Sonia Davis, Daniel López-Cevallos, Marston E. Youngblood Jr, Zhu-Ming Zhang, Claudia Pulido Chambers

Factors Associated With Ocular Health Care Utilization Among Hispanics/Latinos

Author: Laura A. McClure, D. Diane Zheng, Byron L. Lam, Stacey L. Tannenbaum, Charlotte E. Joslin, Sonia Davis, Daniel López-Cevallos, Marston E. Youngblood Jr, Zhu-Ming Zhang, Claudia Pulido Chambers
Publisher: JAMA Opthalmology
Date: 03/2016

Our findings suggest that increasing insurance coverage, decreasing the costs of care, and increasing the availability of care for Hispanics/Latinos with poor self-rated eyesight are relevant issues to address to improve ocular health care use among Hispanics/Latinos of diverse backgrounds.

Foreign-Born Latinos Living in Rural Areas are More Likely to Experience Health Care Discrimination: Results from Proyecto de Salud para Latinos Daniel F. López-Cevallos, S. Marie Harvey

Foreign-Born Latinos Living in Rural Areas are More Likely to Experience Health Care Discrimination: Results from Proyecto de Salud para Latinos

Author: Daniel F. López-Cevallos, S. Marie Harvey
Publisher: Journal of Immigrant and Minority Health
Date: 09/2015

Health care discrimination is increasingly considered a significant barrier to accessing health services among minority populations, including Latinos. However, little is known about the role of immigration status. The purpose of this study was to examine the association between immigration status and perceived health care discrimination among Latinos living in rural areas. Interviews were conducted among 349 young-adult Latinos (ages 18 to 25) living in rural Oregon, as part of Proyecto de Salud para Latinos. Over a third of participants experienced health care discrimination (39.5 %). Discrimination was higher among foreign-born (44.9 %) rather than US-born Latinos (31.9 %). Multivariate results showed that foreign-born Latinos were significantly more likely to experience health care discrimination, even after controlling for other relevant factors (OR = 2.10, 95 % CI 1.16–3.82). This study provides evidence that health care discrimination is prevalent among young-adult Latinos living in rural areas, particularly the foreign-born. Effective approaches towards reducing discrimination in health care settings should take into consideration the need to reform our broken immigration system.

Race And Ethnicity - Multimedia

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