Search

The Sociology of Immigration provides students with a contemporary sociological perspective on the entire immigration process: deciding to leave one’s home country, establishing oneself in a new host society, being received by the host population, and deciding whether to assimilate or seek citizenship. Using historical and contemporary examples, it applies many foundational concepts in sociology, such as culture, socialization, race and ethnicity, gender, and the sociological imagination, to the phenomenon of human migration. The text introduces immigration and migration on a global scale, but also emphasizes immigration in a U.S. context.

Chicago's Reckoning confronts the complicated history of race, politics, and policing in Chicago through a study of Richard J. and Richard M. Daley's terms in mayoral office. The book uses a study of police misconduct and political corruption in Chicago to develop an exclusion-containment theory of legal cynicism that explains ongoing problems with urban policing.

With increasing racial and ethnic diversity in the U.S., it is important to fully understand the character of interactions between individuals of different backgrounds. The current study advances this goal by analyzing experiences with interpersonal racial discrimination. Existing research demonstrates that reports of such antagonistic encounters are widespread. This persistent interracial hostility may hinder the country's adaptation to a more multi-racial reality. In three separate papers I consider the extent, correlates and consequences of interpersonal racial discrimination. The first paper examines how neighborhood racial composition can affect reports of discrimination. Using the Project for Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods and data from the U.S. Census, I analyze the discrimination experiences of black, Hispanic and white young adults. Results indicate different patterns across groups, which I characterize using the contact, group threat and ethnic density hypotheses. African Americans perceive the least discrimination in neighborhoods with few co-racial residents, following the contact hypothesis. Hispanics perceive the most discrimination in neighborhoods that are around half Hispanic and half non-Hispanic, following group threat theory. Finally, whites report decreasing discrimination levels as the neighborhood percentage white increases, following the ethnic density hypothesis. The causes and implications of these disparate patterns are discussed. The second paper examines whether experience with racial discrimination can perpetuate interracial hostility. I analyze how reported discrimination experiences are associated with negative racial attitudes among a sample of black, white and Hispanic adults from the Chicago Area Study. Further, I place such hostile experiences within one's totality of interracial experiences by simultaneously considering positive contact experiences (interracial friendship) and interracial proximity (neighborhood and workplace contact). Through this approach, I present a more holistic understanding of real-world interracial contact. Multivariate results indicate three distinct patterns. The first occurs commonly among Hispanics and suggests that friendship contact mitigates the negative attitudinal consequences of discrimination. The second occurs occasionally among African Americans and suggests that friendship is beneficial only for those not experiencing discrimination. The final pattern, occurring among whites, suggests that the consequences of discrimination grow more extreme with greater interracial neighborhood contact. The final paper examines the understudied phenomenon of racial discrimination fear. I consider the extent and correlates of these fears among a sample of black and Hispanic adolescents from the final wave of the Project for Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods. I lay the groundwork for a new line of inquiry focused on discrimination fears and develop hypotheses linking fear to direct discrimination experience, indirect experience and environmental signals. Results show discrimination fear to be common among minority adolescents and more prevalent than among their parents. Multivariate results indicate that fears are most likely when one has experienced discrimination directly. Indirect experience also predicts greater fear, suggesting that the consequences of discriminatory acts are not limited to the immediate victim. Finally, among African Americans, the presence of racial out-groups in one's neighborhood acts as a signal for discrimination, resulting in greater fear.