“In this sequel to Mexican New York, Robert C. Smith solidifies his reputation as an intimate interpreter of social change over the life course. Dreams Achieved and Denied tells a subtle story about the upward mobility of children of Mexican immigrants striving to keep their side of the immigrant family bargain. This is a must-read to understand the experiences of the largest immigrant group in the United States.”
—David FitzGerald, Gildred Chair in U.S.-Mexican Relations and professor of sociology, University of California, San Diego

“The culmination of a two-decade study of immigrant youngsters, Dreams Achieved and Denied exemplifies the power of research that truly matters. With rigor and passion, Robert C. Smith captures experiences deeply significant to policymakers and to all who care about the multifaceted American journey.”
—Patricia Fernández-Kelly, professor of sociology, Princeton University

“A valuable contribution to contemporary debates of social mobility in the United States, Dreams Achieved and Denied shows in great detail the mechanisms that promote upward mobility and those that tragically curtail it. Based on an impressive longitudinal study, this remarkable book offers a worm’s-eye view into the experiences of adult children of Mexican immigrants pursuing their dreams in New York City. Persuasively argued and rigorously researched, this book is a timely and socially important work that deserves a wide readership.”
—Roberto G. Gonzales, Richard Perry University Professor of Sociology and Education, University of Pennsylvania

U.S.-born Mexicans in New York City have achieved perhaps the biggest single jump in mobility in American immigration history. In 2020, 42 percent of second-generation U.S.-born Mexican men and 49 percent of U.S.-born Mexican women in the city had graduated from college–versus a 13-14-percent second-generation college graduation rate for most other places in recent decades. How did this happen? In Dreams Achieved and Denied, sociologist Robert Courtney Smith (Graduate Center, City University of New York) examines the laws, policies, and individual and family practices that promoted–and inhibited–their social mobility.

For over twenty years, Smith followed the lives and mobility of nearly one hundred children of Mexican immigrants in New York City.  Immigrant-inclusive and mobility-promoting measures here include enabling undocumented people to attend public colleges at in-state tuition rates and the city’s subway and school choice systems, which enabled students to attend better schools or take opportunities outside their neighborhoods.

Smith finds that keeping the immigrant bargain – whereby children of immigrants redeem their parents’ sacrifice by doing well in school, helping their parents and siblings, and becoming “good” people (in their parents’ words) – helped them achieve better adult outcomes and lives. Having mentors, picking academically strong schools and friends, and using second chance mechanisms also promoted mobility. However, lacking legal status blocked mobility, by preventing others from benefiting from these same mobility-promoting policies.

Dreams Achieved and Denied deeply analyzes the historic upward mobility of U.S.-born Mexicans in New York City.

ROBERT COURTNEY SMITH is a professor of sociology, immigration studies and public affairs at the CUNY Graduate Center

“James Gibson tackles one of the most pressing issues in contemporary American politics: the health and likely trajectory of our constitutional democracy. His extensive and careful analysis of the 2020 presidential contest, and its aftermath, lead him to a startling conclusion. By and large, Americans’ faith in their political institutions held steady. Scholars, and anyone concerned about the future of our democracy, should read this fascinating book.”
—VINCENT HUTCHINGS, Hanes Walton Jr. Collegiate Professor, Political Science Department and Department of Afro American and African Studies (by courtesy), University of Michigan

“James Gibson advances a cogent analysis showing that our national political institutions remain robust despite efforts to undermine them during and after the 2020 election. Loaded with critical empirical findings and normative implications, Democracy’s Destruction? is a book one will want to keep handy as we sort through future contentious elections and risks to democratic norms and institutions.”
—BRANDON BARTELS, professor of political science, George Washington University

On January 6, 2021, an angry mob stormed the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. This assault on America’s democratic system was orchestrated by then President Donald Trump, abetted by his political party, and supported by a vocal minority of the American people. Did denial of the election results and the subsequent insurrection inflict damage on American political institutions? While most pundits and many scholars say yes, they have offered little rigorous evidence for this assertion. In Democracy’s Destruction? political scientist James L. Gibson uses surveys from representative samples of the American population to provide a more informed answer to the question.

Focusing on the U.S. Supreme Court, the presidency, and the U.S. Senate, Gibson reveals that how people assessed the election, the insurrection, and even the second Trump impeachment has little connection to their willingness to view American political institutions as legitimate. Instead, legitimacy is grounded in more general commitments to democratic values and support for the rule of law. On most issues of institutional legitimacy, those who denied the election results and supported the insurrection were not more likely to be alienated from political institutions and to consider them illegitimate.

Democracy’s Destruction? offers rigorous analysis of the effect of the Trump insurrection on the state of U.S. democracy today. While cautioning that Trump and many Republicans may be devising schemes to subvert the next presidential election more effectively, the book attests to the remarkable endurance of American political institutions.

JAMES L. GIBSON is Sidney W. Souers Professor of Government at Washington University in St. Louis.

“Timely, meticulously researched and argued, Reunited deftly weaves the voices of Central American youth migrants into cutting-edge scholarly arguments to produce a compelling account that is inspiring, humane, and powerful. Essential reading for scholars, students, policymakers, and anyone interested in understanding the so-called root causes of Central American migration.”
—CECILIA MENJÍVAR, Dorothy L. Meier Chair in Social Equities and professor of sociology, University of California, Los Angeles

“Reunited captures the full complexity of contemporary Central American migration to the United States, explaining both the structural and historical forces propelling it and the ways in which families are surviving in their midst. This important book humanizes one of the most politically and morally challenging issues of our time.”
—LEAH C. SCHMALZBAUER, Karen and Brian Conway ‘80, P’18 Presidential Teaching Professor of American Studies and Sociology, Amherst College

“Reunited is an essential account of the nefarious effects of inhumane U.S. immigration policy that separates Central American children from their immigrant parents. Ernesto Castañeda and Daniel Jenks offer a nuanced and compelling portrayal of the enduring toll of these separations on child well-being and family ties, as well as the challenges and emotional labor involved in ‘picking up the pieces’ once children migrate to the United States to reunite with their parents, while also suggesting reforms that would aid their integration in U.S. society.”
—CHIARA GALLI, assistant professor, Department of Comparative Human Development, University of Chicago

Over the last dozen years, an increasing number of children from El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala began arriving without parents at the U.S.-Mexico border. In many cases, the parents had left for the United States years earlier. In Reunited sociologists Ernesto Castañeda and Daniel Jenks explain the reasons for Central American youth migration, describe the journey, and document how minors experienced separation from their families and their subsequent reunification.

In interviews with migrant youth, their sponsors, and social services practitioners in and around Washington, D.C., Castañeda and Jenks find that these minors migrate on their own for three main reasons: gang violence, lack of educational and economic opportunity, and a longing for family reunification. The authors note that youth who feel comfortable leaving and have feelings of belonging upon arrival integrate quickly and easily while those who experience trauma in their home countries and on their way to the United States face more challenges.

Castañeda and Jenks recount these young migrants’ journey to the U.S. border, detailing the difficulties passing through Mexico, their encounters with U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials, and staying in shelters while their sponsorship, placement, and departure are arranged. The authors also describe the tensions the youth face when they reunite with family members they may view as strangers. Despite their biological, emotional, and financial bonds to these relatives, the youth must learn how to relate to new authority figures and decide whether or how to follow their rules.

The experience of migrating can have a lasting effect on the mental health of young migrants. Although Castañeda and Jenks find that Central American youths’ mental health improves after migrating to the United States, they remain at risk of further problems. They are likely to have lived through traumatizing experiences that inhibit their integration. Difficulty integrating, in turn, creates new stressors that exacerbate PTSD, depression, and anxiety. Consequently, schools and social service organizations are crucial, the authors argue, for enhancing youth migrants’ sense of belonging and their integration into their new communities. Bilingual programs, Spanish-speaking PTA groups, message boards, mentoring of immigrant children, and after-school programs for members of reunited families are all helpful in supporting immigrant youth as they learn English, finish high school, apply to college, and find jobs.

Offering a complex exploration of youth migration and family reunification, Reunited provides a moving account of how young Central American migrants make the journey north and ultimately reintegrate with their families in the United States.

ERNESTO CASTAÑEDA is director of the Center for Latin American and Latino Studies at American University.

DANIEL JENKS is a doctoral student at the University of Pennsylvania.

“In Structured Luck, Onoso Imoagene gives us an unparalleled look into the U.S. Diversity Visa Program, revealing its far-reaching effects on the life trajectories of migrants and its role as a catalyst of the migration industry in countries of origin. Through rich interviews and careful institutional analysis in the United States, Nigeria, and Ghana, she offers us a critical assessment of the program’s reputation as a windfall lottery and shows us that luck, in this case, is painstakingly made through strategic responses to policy constraints.”
Natasha Iskander, James Weldon Johnson Professor of Urban Planning and Public Service, New York University

The Diversity Immigrant Visa Program is a lottery that awards winners from underrepresented countries the chance to apply for legal permanent residence in the United States. Most lottery winners think of themselves as lucky, viewing the win as an opportunity to pursue better lives for themselves and their families. In Structured Luck, sociologist Onoso Imoagene uses immigrants’ stories to show how the program’s design often leads to their exploitation in their origin countries, the interruption of their education, and reduced potential once they are in the United States.

Combining ethnographic observation in Africa and interviews with over one hundred immigrants from Ghana and Nigeria, Imoagene demonstrates that the visa program is a process of “structured luck,” from how people hear about the lottery, who registers for it, and who participates in it to the application requirements for the visa. In Ghana and Nigeria, people often learn about the lottery through friends, colleagues, or relatives who persuade them to enter for the perceived benefits of receiving a visa: opportunities for upward mobility, permanent legal status, and the ability to bring along family members. Though anyone can enter the lottery, not everyone who wins obtains a visa. The visa application process requires proof of a high school diploma or artisan skills, a medical exam, a criminal background check, an interview with U.S. consular officers, and payment of fees. Such requirements have led to the growth of visa entrepreneurs, who often charge exorbitant fees to steer immigrants through the process. Visa recipients who were on track to obtain university degrees at home often leave in the middle of their studies for the United States but struggle to continue their education due to high U.S. tuition costs. And though their legal status allows them to escape the demoralizing situations that face the undocumented, these immigrants lack the social support that the government sometimes provides for refugees and other migrants. Ultimately, Imoagene notes, the real winner of the visa lottery is not the immigrants themselves but the United States, which benefits from their relatively higher levels of education. Consequently, she argues, the U.S. must do more to minimize the visa program’s negative consequences.

Structured Luck illuminates the trauma, resilience, and determination of immigrants who come to the United States through the Diversity Visa Program and calls for the United States to develop policies that will better integrate them into society.

ONOSO IMOAGENE is associate professor of social research and public policy at New York University, Abu Dhabi.

“As the Latino population has grown in the United States, it has been racialized along the lines of legality and nationality, compelling middle-class Latinos who ‘look Hispanic’ constantly to have to identify themselves as not being undocumented, unskilled Mexican migrants. This dynamic plays out differently in different regions of the country, depending on the local history of immigration and the actual ethnic and class origins of the region’s Latinos. Irene Browne’s probing analysis of college-educated Dominicans and Mexicans in greater Atlanta is brilliant in revealing the dilemmas, complexities, and burdens that prevailing U.S. stereotypes create for middle-class Latinos of Afro-Caribbean and mestizo origin, especially within a region historically characterized by a rigid Black-White color line. Precarious Privilege reminds us of the need to always look beyond the narrow confines of stigmatized ethnoracial labels to see the true nature of the individuals they purport to describe.”
—DOUGLAS S. MASSEY, Henry G. Bryant Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs, Princeton University

“Since 2005, southern states have been plagued by rising anti-immigrant sentiment and immigration policy restrictionism, racializing the experiences of all Latines as ‘poor,’ ‘undocumented,’ and ‘Mexican.’ In this compelling book, sociologist Irene Browne takes us deep into the lives of middle-class and professional Mexican and Dominican immigrants in Atlanta, Georgia, who simultaneously experience but also marshal class-based identities and resources to resist such stigmatization and prove their worth. Absolutely essential reading for anyone interested in better understanding the U.S. Latine population’s remarkable internal diversity today.”
—HELEN B. MARROW, associate professor of sociology, Tufts University

In recent years crackdowns on immigrant labor and a shrinking job market in California, Arizona, and Texas have pushed Latine immigrants to new destinations, particularly places in the American South. Although many of these immigrants work in manufacturing or food-processing plants, a growing number belong to the professional middle class. These professionals find that despite their privileged social class and regardless of their national origin, many non-Latines assume that they are undocumented working-class Mexicans, the stereotype of the “typical Latine.” In Precarious Privilege, sociologist Irene Browne focuses on how first-generation middle-class Mexican and Dominican immigrants in Atlanta respond to this stigmatizing assumption.

Browne finds that when asked to identify themselves by race, these immigrants either reject racial identities entirely or draw on belief systems from Mexico and the Dominican Republic that emphasize European-indigenous mixed race identities. When branded as typical Latines in the U.S., Mexican middle-class immigrants emphasize their social class or explain that a typical Latine can be middle-class, while Dominicans simply indicate that they are not Mexican. Rather than blame systemic racism, both Mexican and Dominican middle-class immigrants often attribute misperceptions of their identity to non-Latines’ ignorance or to individual Latines’ lack of effort in trying to assimilate.

But these middle-class Latine immigrants do not simply seek to position themselves on par with the U.S.-born white middle class. Instead, they leverage their cosmopolitanism—for example, their multilingualism or their children’s experiences traveling abroad—to engage in what Browne calls “one-up assimilation,” a strategy that aims to position them above the white middle class, who are often monolingual and unaware of the world outside the United States. Middle-class Latines’ cosmopolitanism and valuing of diversity also lead them to have cordial relations with African Americans, but these immigrants do not see themselves as sharing African Americans’ status as oppressed minorities.

Although the stereotype of the typical Latine has made middle-class Latine immigrants susceptible to stigma, they insist that this stigma does not play a significant role in their lives. In many cases, they view the stereotype as a minor issue, feel that opportunities for upward mobility outweigh any negative experiences, or downplay racism by emphasizing their class privilege. Browne observes that while downplaying racism may help middle-class Latine immigrants maintain their dignity, it also perpetuates inequality by reinforcing the lower status of working-class undocumented immigrants. It is thus imperative, Browne argues, to repeal harsh anti-immigration policies, a move that will not only ease the lives of the undocumented but also send a message about who belongs in the country.

Offering a nuanced exploration of how race, social class, and immigration status intersect, Precarious Privilege provides a complex portrait of middle-class Latine immigrants in the United States today.

IRENE BROWNE is associate professor of sociology at Emory University.