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.
Recent research projects include one
supported by the NSF (Ellis and Wright) that 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.
Another current project, originally supported
by the Russell Sage Foundation, but now with funding from the NSF, with Mark
Ellis co-PI Steven Holloway (U Georgia), studies the residential
patterns 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.
Future research with
Mark Ellis will center on the current recession. The percentage of immigrants
in the US – i.e., about 40 million people – makes immigrant spatial behavior
within the US of great interest, and involves comprehending the mechanisms
whereby in the last two decades or so immigrants have dispersed from a few
gateway locations to settle in multiple locations across the country (Singer
2004). This project asks: what is affecting these choices now? New destinations for immigrants developed
during the relatively benign economic environment of much of the last 25 years.
In this era, growth prevailed in many parts of the country and recessions,
which occurred in the early 1990s and early 2000s, were short and mild by
historical standards. Since late 2007, the economy has contracted at a pace not
experienced since the 1930s, which leads us to question how immigrants modify
their locational choices when the geography of opportunity transforms, becoming
bleak in both older gateways and new destinations. Grafting this concern with
recession effects onto existing explanations of immigrant dispersal to new
destinations leads to the three major questions guiding this project:
i. How do immigrants –
as both new arrivals from abroad and as internal migrants - respond to the pull
of enclaves of co-nationals and the geography of employment opportunities?
ii. How do individual
and group characteristics affect these responses to enclaves and labor markets?
iii. And, crosscutting
these first two questions, are the responses to enclaves and markets – and
their mediation by individuals and groups - different in the current economic
hard times and its aftermath from those observed in the generally prosperous
era of the 1990s?
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 paper
on the Tibetan diaspora, co-authored with Serin Houston ’00. 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 written (with
Natalie Koch '07) a brief history of Geography in the Ivy League, downloadable
from our web page under "About Geography".
I
enjoy teaching both large and small classes and my enthusiasm for teaching is
reflected in class evaluations. Since
arriving at Dartmouth in 1985, I have consistently received very complementary
teaching evaluations from my students. The courses I currently teach reflect my
research interests. Most years, I teach
Geography 20—Economic Geography and Globalization and Geography 28—Immigration,
Race, and Ethnicity. The latter is
cross-listed with Sociology and Latino Studies.
The courses are capped at 45. I
have had the pleasure of teaching Geography 90 recently—the senior “culminating
experience” seminar on research methods in Geography. This course focuses on
the geographies of racial mixing in the United States. It approaches racial mixing with a variety of
methodological perspectives, using various research techniques, via different
theoretical lenses. We not only read scholarly work to understand the
particular topic under discussion; we also think seriously about the
intellectual underpinnings and development of that scholarship.