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
Immigration and the Great Recession Douglas S. Massey

Immigration and the Great Recession

Author: Douglas S. Massey
Publisher:
Date: 10/2012

Immigration has been a major component of demographic change in the United States over the past several decades, constituting at least a third of U.S. population growth and up to a half of labor force growth in any given year. By any standard, it is a central feature of the nation’s political economy and thus especially important to monitor as the Great Recession plays out. This brief reviews levels and patterns of immigration to the United States over the past three decades, with a particular focus on their implications for the nation as it recovers from the worst economic downturn since the 1930s.

Origins of the New Latino Underclass Douglas S. Massey, Karen A. Pren

Origins of the New Latino Underclass

Author: Douglas S. Massey, Karen A. Pren
Publisher: Springer US
Date: 04/2012

Over the past four decades, the Latino population of the United States was transformed from a small, ethnically segmented population of Mexicans in the southwest, Puerto Ricans in New York, and Cubans in Miami into a large national population dominated by Mexicans, Central Americans, and South Americans. This transformation occurred through mass immigration, much of it undocumented, to the point where large fractions of non-Caribbean Hispanics lack legal protections and rights in the United States. Rising illegality is critical to understanding the disadvantaged status of Latinos today. The unauthorized population began to grow after avenues for legal entry were curtailed in 1965. The consequent rise in undocumented migration enabled political and bureaucratic entrepreneurs to frame Latino migration as a grave threat to the nation, leading to a rising frequency of negative framings in the media, a growing conservative reaction, and increasingly restrictive immigration and border policies that generated more apprehensions. Rising apprehensions, in turn, further enflamed the conservative reaction to produce even harsher enforcement and more still more apprehensions, yielding a self-feeding cycle in which apprehensions kept rising even though undocumented inflows had stabilized. The consequent militarization of the border had the perverse effect of reducing rates of out-migration rather than inhibiting in-migration, leading to a sharp rise in net undocumented population and rapid growth of the undocumented population. As a result, a majority of Mexican, Central American, and South American immigrants are presently undocumented at a time when unauthorized migrants are subject to increasing sanctions from authorities and the public, yielding downward pressure on the status and well-being of Latinos in the United States.

Immigration and the New Racial Diversity in Rural America Daniel T. Lichter

Immigration and the New Racial Diversity in Rural America

Author: Daniel T. Lichter
Publisher: Wiley Online Library
Date: 03/2012

This article highlights the new racial and ethnic diversity in rural America, which may be the most important but least anticipated population shift in recent demographic history. Ethnoracial change is central to virtually every aspect of rural America over the foreseeable future: agro-food systems, community life, labor force change, economic development, schools and schooling, demographic change, intergroup relations, and politics. The goal here is to plainly illustrate how America's racial and ethnic transformation has emerged as an important dimension of ongoing U.S. urbanization and urbanism, growing cultural and economic heterogeneity, and a putative “decline in community” in rural America. Rural communities provide a natural laboratory for better understanding the implications of uneven settlement and racial diversity, acculturation, and economic and political incorporation among Hispanic newcomers. This article raises the prospect of a new racial balkanization and outlines key impediments to full incorporation of Hispanics into rural and small town community life. Immigration and the new ethnoracial diversity will be at the leading edge of major changes in rural community life as the nation moves toward becoming a majority-minority society by 2042.

Ethnic Inequality in Choice-Driven Education Systems Michelle Jackson, Jan O. Jonsson, Frida Rudolphi

Ethnic Inequality in Choice-Driven Education Systems

Author: Michelle Jackson, Jan O. Jonsson, Frida Rudolphi
Publisher:
Date: 11/2011
Doing Race: 21 Essays for the 21st Century Hazel Rose Markus

Doing Race: 21 Essays for the 21st Century

Author: Hazel Rose Markus
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Date: 04/2010

Doing Race focuses on race and ethnicity in everyday life: what they are, how they work, and why they matter. Going to school and work, renting an apartment or buying a house, watching television, voting, listening to music, reading books and newspapers, attending religious services, and going to the doctor are all everyday activities that are influenced by assumptions about who counts, whom to trust, whom to care about, whom to include, and why. Race and ethnicity are powerful precisely because they organize modern society and play a large role in fueling violence around the globe.Doing Race is targeted to undergraduates; it begins with an introductory essay and includes original essays by well-known scholars. Drawing on the latest science and scholarship, the collected essays emphasize that race and ethnicity are not things that people or groups have or are, but rather sets of actions that people do.Doing Race provides compelling evidence that we are not yet in a “post-race” world and that race and ethnicity matter for everyone. Since race and ethnicity are the products of human actions, we can do them differently. Like studying the human genome or the laws of economics, understanding race and ethnicity is a necessary part of a twenty first century education.

race and ethnicity - CPI Affiliates

Thomas J. Espenshade's picture Thomas J. Espenshade Professor of Sociology, Emeritus; Faculty Associate, Office of Population Research
Princeton University

Pages

Race And Ethnicity - Other Research

Title Author Media
Immigration and Inequality David Card

Immigration and Inequality

Author: David Card
Publisher: NBER
Date: 01/2009
Illegal Migration from Mexico to the United States Gordon H. Hanson

Illegal Migration from Mexico to the United States

Author: Gordon H. Hanson
Publisher:
Date: 04/2006
Making it in America: Social Mobility in the Immigrant Population George Borjas

Making it in America: Social Mobility in the Immigrant Population

Author: George Borjas
Publisher: National Bureau of Economic Research
Date: 03/2006
Housing and Wealth Inequality: Racial-Ethnic Differences in Home Equity in the United States Lauren J. Krivo and Robert L Kaufman

Housing and Wealth Inequality: Racial-Ethnic Differences in Home Equity in the United States

Author: Lauren J. Krivo and Robert L Kaufman
Publisher: Demography
Date: 08/2004
Black-White Differences in Wealth and Asset Composition Blau, Francine D., and John W. Graham

Black-White Differences in Wealth and Asset Composition

Author: Blau, Francine D., and John W. Graham
Publisher: Quarterly Journal of Economics
Date: 03/1989

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