"When Care Is Conditional brings together trenchant analysis and deeply moving humanity to understand the barriers faced by Latinx immigrants and their strategies for well-being as they negotiate conditional care in the United States. Through nuanced research and the voices of ordinary people, Dani Carrillo shows how immigration policy, residential location, and, especially, gender shape who can get help, how much, and under what conditions. Beautifully written, this book is a must-read for scholars, policymakers, and philanthropists dedicated to advancing everyone’s well-being."
—IRENE BLOEMRAAD, Class of 1951 Professor of Sociology, University of California, Berkeley

"When Care Is Conditional is a critical reassessment of the failure of social protection in the United States through the lens of low-wage immigrants. Dani Carrillo offers a bottom-up examination of the patchwork of safety net institutions and the perennial difficulty of accessing them. In doing so, she disrupts the idyllic view of the suburbs and reveals how immigrant networks and civil society try to help fill in the gap. More than just a structural accounting, this book centers the importance of cultural narratives and stigmas in reinforcing 'conditional care' and in doing so helps us understand the dynamics of exclusion for all vulnerable racialized communities."
—SHANNON GLEESON, Edmund Ezra Day Professor and chair, Department of Labor Relations, Law, and History, Cornell University

"Dani Carrillo deftly weaves policy history with personal narratives of Latinx immigrants to lay bare how restrictive immigration policies undermine the well-being of families that too often are living in the shadows of our communities and society. The book comes at a critical time in our national, state, and local dialogue around immigration and social policy. When Care Is Conditional is critical reading for scholars, policymakers, and practitioners alike."
—SCOTT W. ALLARD, Associate Dean for Research and Engagement and Daniel J. Evans Endowed Professor of Social Policy, Evans School of Public Policy and Governance, University of Washington

From its inception, the public safety net in the United States has excluded many people because of their race, gendered roles, or other factors. As a result, they must prove their moral worthiness to get resources for themselves and their families. In When Care Is Conditional, sociologist Dani Carrillo reveals the ramifications of this conditional safety net by focusing on one particularly vulnerable population: undocumented immigrants.

Through in-depth interviews with Latinx immigrants in northern California, Carrillo examines three circumstances—place, gender, and immigration status—that intersect to influence an individual’s access to health care, food assistance, and other benefits. She demonstrates that place of residence affects undocumented immigrants’ ability to get care since more services are available in urban areas, where many immigrants cannot afford to live, than suburban areas, where public transportation is limited. She also shows that while both men and women who are undocumented have difficulty obtaining care, men often confront more challenges. Undocumented women who are pregnant or mothers are eligible for some government safety net programs and rely on informal coethnic networks or a “guiding figure”—a relative, friend, neighbor, or coworker—who explains how to get care and makes them feel confident in accessing it. Most undocumented men, in contrast, are not eligible for public programs except in a medical emergency and often lack someone to guide them directly to care. Men sometimes steer one another to jobs through worker centers—where they may learn about various services and take advantage of those that increase their employability, like English or computer classes—but a culture of masculinity leads them to downplay medical problems and seek health care only in a crisis.  

As undocumented immigrants navigate this exclusionary system, Carrillo finds that they resist the rhetoric stigmatizing them as lawbreakers. Dismissing the importance of “papers” and highlighting their work ethic, they question the fairness of U.S. immigration policies and challenge ideas about who deserves care.

Carrillo offers concrete recommendations, such as improving labor conditions and reexamining benefit eligibility, to increase access to care for not only undocumented immigrants but also people who have been excluded because of their race, criminal record, gender identity, sexual orientation, or disability. She argues that working with and across populations creates a powerful form of solidarity in advocating for inclusive care.

When Care Is Conditional provides compelling insights into how safety net and immigration policies intersect to affect people’s everyday lives and calls for a cultural shift so that the United States can provide unconditional care for all.

DANI CARRILLO is a senior researcher and civic technologist.

Selected as a 2024 Noteworthy Book in Industrial Relations and Labor Economics Princeton University Industrial Relations Section

"Daniel Galvin offers readers a superbly incisive, empirically eclectic, narratively compelling analysis of the contemporary politics of workers’ rights. Alt-Labor and the New Politics of Workers’ Rights perceptively charts and contextualizes striking shifts in the American political economy that have profoundly altered the experiences of low-wage workers. What’s more is that Galvin brilliantly centers the agency and power of marginalized workers and the organizations that advance their interests in the face of significant and ongoing structural challenges. Scholars of American politics, students, organizers, and anyone who cares about the fate of American workers will find insight and inspiration in Galvin’s skillful description and analyses of the politics of alt-labor."
—JAMILA MICHENER, associate professor of government and public policy and senior associate dean of public engagement, Brooks School of Public Policy, Cornell University

"The relentless decline of U.S. unions in recent decades is both a cause and a consequence of the devolution of the bedrock New Deal–era labor law that institutionalized collective bargaining rights for broad swaths of the nation’s labor force. In this lucid, deeply researched study, Daniel Galvin analyzes the rapid expansion of state and local laws governing minimum wages, paid leave, and other conditions of employment, and exposes the challenges that shift presents for the ‘alt-labor’ groups that are increasingly leading the fight for workers’ rights."
—RUTH MILKMAN, Distinguished Professor of Sociology, School of Labor and Urban Studies and the Graduate Center, City University of New York

"Dan Galvin’s book adds exponentially to the scholarship on worker centers and ‘alt-labor’ and so much more. It masterfully traces the shift from labor law to employment law, the consequential turn toward policy and enforcement at the state and local levels, and the strategic capacity worker centers have had to build to carry it out. It thoughtfully engages the puzzle of how organizations with so little have managed to accomplish so much. Alt-Labor and the New Politics of Workers’ Rights is deeply researched, theoretically rich, full of powerful insight, and beautifully written to boot."
—JANICE FINE, professor, Rutgers School of Management and Labor Relations and Workplace Justice Lab@RU

Over the last half century, two major developments have transformed the nature of workers’ rights and altered the pathways available to low-wage workers to combat their exploitation. First, while national labor law, which regulates unionization and collective bargaining, has grown increasingly ineffective, employment laws establishing minimal workplace standards have proliferated at the state and local levels. Second, as labor unions have declined, a diversity of small, under-resourced nonprofit "alt-labor" groups have emerged in locations across the United States to organize and support marginalized workers. In Alt-Labor and the New Politics of Workers’ Rights, political scientist Daniel J. Galvin draws on rich data and extensive interviews to examine the links between these developments. With nuance and insight, Galvin explains how alt-labor groups are finding creative ways to help their members while navigating the many organizational challenges and structural constraints they face in this new context.

Alt-labor groups have long offered their members services and organizing opportunities to contest their unfair treatment on the job. But many groups have grown frustrated by the limited impact of these traditional strategies and have turned to public policy to scale up their work. They have successfully led campaigns to combat wage theft, raise the minimum wage, improve working conditions, strengthen immigrants’ rights, and more. These successes present something of a puzzle: relative to their larger, wealthier, and better-connected opponents, alt-labor groups are small, poor, and weak. Their members are primarily low-wage immigrant workers and workers of color who are often socially, economically, and politically marginalized. With few exceptions, the groups lack large dues-paying memberships and are dependent on philanthropic foundations and other unpredictable sources of funding. How, given their myriad challenges, have alt-labor groups managed to make gains for their members?

Galvin reveals that alt-labor groups are leveraging their deep roots in local communities, their unique position in the labor movement, and the flexibility of their organizational forms to build their collective power and extend their reach. A growing number of groups have also become more politically engaged and have set out to alter their political environments by cultivating more engaged citizens, influencing candidate selection processes, and expanding government capacities. These efforts seek to enhance alt-labor groups’ probabilities of success in the near term while incrementally shifting the balance of power over the long term.

Alt-Labor and the New Politics of Workers’ Rights comprehensively details alt-labor’s turn to policy and politics, provides compelling insights into the dilemmas the groups now face, and illuminates how their efforts have both invigorated and complicated the American labor movement.

DANIEL J. GALVIN is professor of political science at Northwestern University and faculty fellow at the Institute for Policy Research.

American Educational Studies Association Critic's Choice Book Award Winner

"In Meanings of Mobility, Leah Schmalzbauer carefully and in precise detail documents the costs—psychic and embodied—of children of immigrants’ class mobility through elite educational pathways. Driven by love and a desire to make good on parents’ sacrifices, poor and working-class students of color understand that academic excellence only leads to financial success when they can proficiently enact the cultural norms of privileged whiteness. Readers get to witness through these students’ own accounts how they make sense of the tough choices an elite college education presents: the spectrum runs from returning to community to contribute to social justice to leaning into racial capitalism to acquire wealth."
—LEISY J. ABREGO, professor and chair, Chicana/o and Central American Studies, UCLA

"A compassionate and detailed exploration of how young adult children of Latin American immigrants navigate a privileged college environment. Leah Schmalzbauer follows the stories of a new generation of young adults who attend a top liberal arts college, seeking an education in elite spaces while balancing family obligations and the stress of the COVID pandemic. Highly informative and deeply moving, Meanings of Mobility sheds light on how higher education works for a select group, and what needs to change to provide such access to others."
—JOANNA DREBY, professor of sociology, University at Albany

"With penetrating prose, Leah Schmalzbauer provides an intimate portrait of how poverty shapes undergraduate life at even the wealthiest institutions of higher education. Moreover, she forces us to grapple with the simple yet overlooked fact that students do not come to college alone; families come to college. Through revealing interviews with students and their families, Meanings of Mobility outlines the pitfalls and promises of pursuing higher education for the most vulnerable members of society. And with care and attention born of a dedicated scholar, Schmalzbauer provides insights into what can be done to make our institutions not just accessible, but inclusive."
—ANTHONY A. JACK, assistant professor of education, Harvard University

Over the past twenty years, elite colleges and universities enacted policies that reshaped the racial and class composition of their campuses, and over the past decade, Latinos’ college attendance notably increased. While discussions on educational mobility often focus on its perceived benefits – that it will ultimately lead to social and economic mobility – less attention is paid to the process of “making it” and the challenges low-income youth experience when navigating these elite spaces. In Meanings of Mobility, sociologist Leah C. Schmalzbauer explores the experiences of low-income Latino youth attending highly selective, elite colleges.

To better understand these experiences, Schmalzbauer draws on interviews with 60 low-income Latino youth who graduated or were set to graduate from Amherst College, one of the most selective private colleges in the United States, as well as their parents and siblings. The vast majority of these students were the first in their immigrant families to go to college in the U.S. She finds that while most of the students believed attending Amherst provided them with previously unimaginable opportunities, adjusting to life on campus came with significant challenges. Many of the students Schmalzbauer spoke with had difficulties adapting to the cultural norms at Amherst as well as with relating to their non-Latino, non-low-income peers. The challenges these students faced were not limited to life on campus. As they attempted to adapt to Amherst, many felt distanced from the family and friends they left behind who could not understand the new challenges they faced.

The students credit their elite education for access to extraordinary educational and employment opportunities. However, their experiences while in college and afterward reveal that the relationship between educational and social mobility is much more complicated and less secure than popular conversations about the “American Dream” suggest. Many students found that their educational attainment was not enough to erase the core challenges of growing up in a marginalized immigrant family: many were still poor, faced racism, and those who were undocumented or had undocumented family members still feared deportation. The challenges they faced were only intensified by the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Schmalzbauer suggests ways institutions of higher education can better support low-income Latino students and lower the emotional price of educational mobility, including the creation of immigration offices on campus to provide programming and support for undocumented students and their families. She recommends educating staff to better understand the centrality of family for these students and the challenges they face, as well as educating more privileged students about inequality and the life experiences of their marginalized peers.

Meanings of Mobility provides compelling insights into the difficulties faced and the resilience demonstrated by low-income Latinos pursuing educational and social mobility.

LEAH C. SCHMALZBAUER is Karen and Brian Conway ’80, P’18 Presidential Teaching Professor of American Studies and Sociology, Amherst College 

"This highly accessible and engaging book is rich with sociological insight. While recognizing the inevitable sorting role of schools, the authors offer a creative road map towards a more equitable future in education—and in life."
—ADAM GAMORAN, president, William T. Grant Foundation

"We all know that schools sort kids into good and bad jobs. This elegant little book reminds us that schools are also relentless categorizers inside their gates: the free-lunch kids learn they’re poor, the honors kids learn they’re special, and the ‘first years’ learn they’re far from first. Schooled and Sorted makes a brilliant case for regaining control over the categories that define our children’s lives."
—DAVID B. GRUSKY, Edward Ames Edmond Professor in the School of Humanities and Sciences and director, Center on Poverty and Inequality, Stanford University

"Schooled and Sorted makes a convincing case that it takes more than just skill-building curricula and effective teachers for a school to provide its students with ladders to the middle class. When schools also make well-intentioned efforts to boost achievement and motivate students by grouping or categorizing them, the results can be counterproductive. This book explains why and what can be done about them."
—GREG J. DUNCAN, distinguished professor, School of Education and Departments of Economics (by courtesy) and Psychology and Social Behavior (by courtesy), University of California at Irvine

We tend to view education primarily as a way to teach students skills and knowledge that they will draw upon as they move into their adult lives. However, schools do more than educate students – they also place students into categories, such as kindergartner, English language learner, or honor roll student. In Schooled and Sorted, Thurston Domina, Andrew M. Penner, and Emily K. Penner, explore processes of educational categorization in order to explain the complex relationship between education and social inequality – and to identify strategies that can help build more just educational systems. 

Some educational categories have broadly egalitarian consequences. Indeed, Domina, Penner, and Penner argue that when societies enroll young people in school, making them students, they mark them as individuals who are worthy of rights. But other educational categories reinforce powerful social categories – including race, gender, and class – and ultimately reproduce social and economic inequality in society. Elite colleges, tracked high schools, and elementary school gifted programs provide not only different educational experiences, but also create merit and inequality by sorting students into categories that are defined by the students who are excluded.

Schooled & Sorted highlights that many of the decisions that define educational categories occur in school-based committee meetings and other relatively local settings. The local nature of these decisions provides many opportunities to define educational categories differently, and for school communities to bring about change. 

Schooled & Sorted is an illuminating investigation into the ways sorting within schools translates into inequality in the larger world. While some educational categorization may be unavoidable, the authors suggest ways to build a more equitable system – and thus a more equitable society.

THURSTON DOMINA is Robert Wendell Eaves Sr. Distinguished Professor in Educational Leadership, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
ANDREW M. PENNER is a professor of sociology, University of California, Irvine
EMILY K. PENNER is associate professor of education, University of California, Irvine

"An important and engaging book that is a ‘must read’ for anyone interested in U.S. poverty, whether they be general readers or people working in the poverty field. Perhaps the best new book on U.S. poverty this year."
—ROBERT GREENSTEIN, founder and president emeritus, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, and visiting fellow, Economic Studies, the Brookings Institution

"Zachary Parolin has given us the most comprehensive and thoughtful summary of how the pandemic affected the poorest amongst us and the policy lessons that emerged from this experience. The sudden onset of COVID underlined how those who were most at risk of poverty were affected, by how much monthly poverty changed and how policy responded, and the lasting consequence of the pandemic for the poorest Americans. Whether the outcome was disparities in job loss, material hardship, income, assets, mental health consequences, or the effects of childcare and school closures on children and their families, it is all masterfully brought together in this compact and highly readable volume."
—TIMOTHY M. SMEEDING, Lee Rainwater Distinguished Professor of Public Affairs and Economics, La Follette School of Public Affairs, University of Wisconsin

"Despite our nation’s enormous wealth, the United States entered the pandemic with high rates of poverty and systematic inequities by race and ethnicity. The public health crisis led to enormous loss of life and economic vitality. The federal government, straddling two administrations, responded in kind with a massive policy response. Zachary Parolin’s comprehensive and readable book studies poverty and inequity in the United States during the COVID-19 pandemic. He assembles a wide range of evidence documenting how poverty acts as a preexisting risk factor for health and economic hardship experienced during this period. He also shows how a robust policy response mitigated the worst of the economic shock and how this can help point the way forward in the next generation of antipoverty policy. A must read for anyone wanting to understand the consequences of poverty and structural inequalities in America."
—HILARY HOYNES, professor of public policy and economics and Haas Distinguished Chair of Economic Disparities, University of California, Berkeley

At the close of 2019, the United States saw a record-low poverty rate. At the start of 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic threatened to upend that trend and plunge millions of Americans into poverty. Contrary to such fears, and despite the highest unemployment rate since the Great Depression, the poverty rate declined to the lowest in modern U.S. history. In Poverty in the Pandemic social policy scholar Zachary Parolin provides a data-rich account of how poverty influenced the economic, social, and health consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic in the U.S., as well as how the country’s policy response led to historically low poverty rates.

Drawing on dozens of data sources—ranging from debit and credit card spending, the first national databases of school and childcare center closures in the U.S., and bi-weekly Census-run surveys on well-being—Parolin finds that those already living in poverty at the start of the pandemic experienced a greater likelihood of contracting and dying from COVID, as well as losing their job. Additionally, he found that students from poor families suffered the greatest learning losses as a result of school closures and the shift to distance learning during the pandemic.

However, unprecedented legislative action by the U.S. government, including the passage of the Families First Coronavirus Response Act (FFCRA), the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, and the American Rescue Plan (ARP) helped mitigate the economic consequences of the pandemic and lifted around 18 million Americans out of poverty. Based on the success of these policies, Parolin concludes with policy suggestions that the U.S. can implement in more ‘normal’ times to improve the living conditions of low-income households after the pandemic subsides, including expanding access to Unemployment Insurance, permanently expanding the Child Tax Credit, promoting greater access to affordable, high-quality healthcare coverage, and investing more resources into the Census Bureau’s data-collection capabilities. He also details a method of producing a monthly measurement of poverty, to be used in conjunction with the traditional annual measurement, in order to better understand the intra-year volatility of poverty that many Americans experience.

Poverty in the Pandemic provides the most complete account to date of the unique challenges that low-income households in the U.S. faced during the COVID-19 pandemic and policies that have been proven to help them as we move forward.

ZACHARY PAROLIN is an assistant professor of social policy at Bocconi University and a senior research fellow at Columbia University.