I am interested in how immigrants fit into US society. My
long-term collaborator, Mark
Ellis (University of Washington), and I address this question in several
ways. We study the labor market interactions of immigrants and migrants in and
between the major metropolitan areas and regions of the United States. Our
research features the deeply segmented nature of these labor
markets and the limited interaction between the foreign born and the native
born.
Research by others examines ethnic concentrations at various
geographic scales and various dimensions of the separate lives that many
immigrants lead. Assimilationists think that these new settlement geographies
are producing a balkanized country--one in which, at the very least, the United
States increasingly fails to cohere. In dissenting, Mark and I explore how such
different positions stem from different ideas about labor market process. We
also think these different positions derive from how
place and societal processes are characterized. Terms like melting pot,
quilt, checkerboard, as well as assimilation and pluralism carry with them
distinct geographies as well as distinct ideologies associated with what it
means to be American. One of our research goals is to produce a book that
summarizes much of this.
Mark and I have two other projects. One, supported by NSF and with
Virginia Parks,
examines the interrelationships between where immigrants live and the jobs they
perform. The tendency for immigrants to cluster residentially and concentrate
in particular types of jobs is well known. Scholars speculate about the
connections between these two types of segregation - residential and industrial
- but rarely investigate its specific form. These connections are likely bound-up
with workplace segregation - the concentration of specific types of jobs in
particular places, usually described as the spatial division of labor. We plan
to explore the linkages between these three forms of segregation - residential,
industrial, and workplace - in order to better understand the matching of
immigrants to jobs. We hope to show how the ethnic division of labor is coupled
to the spatial division of labor, and to understand the importance of ethnic
residential geography in this connection.
The other current project, originally supported by the Russell
Sage Foundation, but now with funding through 2007 from the NSF, with co-PI Steven
Holloway (U Georgia), studies the residential choices of mixed-race
couples. Although analysis of mixed-race marriage and partnering has been a
staple of social science research for several decades, the settlement choices
made by partners of different races have gone largely unexamined by social
scientists. This is not to say that investigators have ignored residential
geography in explanations of patterns of mixed-race partnership. Many have
asked how space affects interracial partnership rates using the argument that
residential proximity elevates the chances of contact leading to marriage.
Instead of using residential space to explain mixed-race partnership, however,
we start from the existence of such couples to consider where they fit in
spatially in US metropolitan areas. More specifically, our interests lie in
understanding the effect of racially segregated spaces on mixed-race household
residential choice, the effects of these spaces on the identity of children of
mixed-race couples, and the role that mixed-race plays in remaking urban racial
geography. These questions are of particular importance because of the large
increase in mixed-race partnering over the last 30 years in the United States.
Such trends will probably accelerate, as many of the children and grandchildren
of immigrants are likely to choose partners from other groups when they are of
age.
My research interests also include transnationalism.
A set of papers deals with Salvadorans' transnational social lives, the effect
of Temporary Protective Status on labor market outcomes, and an archive of our
research experiences that provide some practical suggestions for field
research, particularly that conducted by teams. See also a new paper on the Tibetan diaspora that I
co-authored with Serin Houston Õ00.A third related paper (the one that started all this for me) tries to comprehend the links between a village in Oaxaca and Poughkeepsie NY (co-authored with Alison Mountz '95).
I also have recently written (with Natalie Koch '07) a brief history of Geography in the Ivies, downloadable from our web page under "About Geography".