Winner of the 2020 Latino Politics Best Book Prize from the Latino Caucus of the American Political Science Association

Click here to view a webinar discussion of the authors discussing research findings from the book.

“We have long puzzled over the net effect of anti-immigrant hostility on the levels of civic and social engagement. Using this era of—by any measure—extreme anti-immigrant policy action by the Trump administration, James A. McCann and Michael Jones-Correa offer us a heartening answer and one consistent with the life narratives of the individuals involved. Challenged, excluded, and harassed, immigrants to the United States have opted for fuller engagement with our political system in an act of civic affirmation that is rooted in the finest traditions of American democracy, and consistent with the characters of individuals who chose to struggle past adversity to secure better futures for themselves and their progeny. These two nodal scholars have, once again, provided documentary evidence of the civic ideals of new Americans.”
—GARY M. SEGURA, professor and dean, Luskin School of Public Affairs, University of California, Los Angeles“

“Holding Fast is a critical read to understand how Latino immigrants have fared—and in fact remained resilient—under the Trump administration. Even in the face of a slew of anti-immigrant actions, James A. McCann and Michael Jones-Correa make it clear that Latino immigrants remain engaged and are using their voices to speak out and create change. As we head toward the presidential election, the book makes clear the promise and peril for both political parties of failing to truly engage the Latino community.”
—PHILIP E. WOLGIN, managing director, Immigration, Center for American Progress

“In recent years, immigrants from Latin America have been the target of vitriolic political discourse and federal policies restricting their participation in American life. But, as James A. McCann and Michael Jones-Correa show, these trends have not led to an exit from U.S. civic life nor a withdrawal from U.S. society. To the contrary, efforts to draw these immigrants outside the American circle have only strengthened their resolve. Based on an impressive study, Holding Fast powerfully underscores the growing importance of Latino immigrants in American politics and civic life. Engaging and persuasively argued, this book is essential reading for anyone interested in how Latino immigrants are actively forging their place in America’s future. If you pick up any book this year, read this one.”
—ROBERTO G. GONZALES, professor of education and director, Immigration Initiative at Harvard (IIH), Harvard University

The fight over immigration reform and immigrants’ rights in the U.S. has been marked by sharp swings in both public sentiment and official enforcement. In 2006, millions of Latino immigrants joined protests for immigration reform. Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, a policy granting work permits and protection from deportation to undocumented immigrants who entered the country before age 16, was enacted in 2012, despite a sharp increase in deportations during the Bush and Obama administrations. The 2016 election of Donald J. Trump prompted a surge in anti-immigrant sentiment which threatened DACA and other progressive immigration policies. In Holding Fast, political scientists James McCann and Michael Jones-Correa investigate whether and how these recent shifts have affected political attitudes and civic participation among Latino immigrants.

Holding Fast draws largely from a yearlong survey of Latino immigrants, including both citizens and noncitizens, conducted before and after the 2016 election. The survey gauges immigrants’ attitudes about the direction of the country and the emotional underpinnings of their political involvement. While survey respondents expressed pessimism about the direction of the United States following the 2016 election, there was no evidence of their withdrawal from civic life. Instead, immigrants demonstrated remarkable resilience in their political engagement, and their ties to America remained robust.

McCann and Jones-Correa examine Latino immigrants’ trust in government as well as their economic concerns and fears surrounding possible deportations of family members and friends. They find that Latino immigrants who were concerned about the likelihood of deportation were more likely to express a lack of trust in government. Concerns about personal finances were less salient. Disenchantment with the U.S. government did not differ based on citizenship status, length of stay in America, or residence in immigrant-friendly states. Foreign-born Latinos who are naturalized citizens shared similar sentiments to those with fewer political rights, and immigrants in California, for example, express views similar to those in Texas.

Addressing the potential influence immigrant voters may wield in in the coming election, the authors point to signs that the turnout rate for naturalized Latino immigrant may be higher than that for Latinos born in the United States. The authors further underscore the importance of the parties' platforms and policies, noting the still-tenuous nature of Latino immigrants’ affiliations with the Democratic Party.

Holding Fast outlines the complex political situation in which Latino immigrants find themselves today. Despite well-founded feelings of anger, fear, and skepticism, in general they maintain an abiding faith in the promise of American democracy. This book provides a comprehensive account of Latino immigrants’ political opinions and a nuanced, thoughtful outlook on the future of Latino civic participation. It will be an important contribution to scholarly work on civic engagement and immigrant integration.

JAMES A. MCCANN is professor of political science at Purdue University.

MICHAEL JONES-CORREA  is the President’s Distinguished Professor of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania.

Winner of the 2020 Otis Dudley Duncan Award for Outstanding Scholarship in Social Demography

Honorable Mention for the 2020 Thomas and Znaniecki Award from the International Migration Section of the American Sociological Association

“Using the best available data, state-of-the-art analytical strategies, and sophisticated theoretical framing, Immigration and the Remaking of Black America offers the definitive statement about the diverse experiences of black immigrants to the United States and how they compare to their native-born African American counterparts. Professor Hamilton has unquestionably raised the bar for future scholars who would seek to further advance our understanding of this important, but heretofore poorly understood, population.”
—STEWART E. TOLNAY, S. Frank Miyamoto Professor Emeritus of Sociology, University of Washington

“In the most comprehensive study to date of voluntary black immigration to the United States, Tod Hamilton conducts a tempered and temperate demolition on cherished conventional claims about race, national origin, immigration, and social outcomes. Hamilton’s systematic comparisons of the characteristics and experiences of recent black immigrants vis-à-vis their fellow nationals who remain in their home country, of internal black migrants to the north vis-à-vis those blacks who remained in the south, and of recent black immigrants vis-à-vis the native black American population writ large eradicate cultural-cum-behavioral explanations for ongoing racial inequality in the United States. Immigration and the Remaking of Black America is a masterful study.”
—WILLIAM A. DARITY JR., Samuel DuBois Cook Professor of Public Policy, Professor of African and African American Studies, and Professor of Economics, Duke University

“Immigration and the Remaking of Black America teaches us what it means to be black in America today. Its author, Tod G. Hamilton, provides a timely and accessible theoretical and empirical demographic benchmark describing America’s newest black immigrants. More importantly, Hamilton sets today’s black immigrant experience in comparison with native-born black Americans, who still feel the ancestral sting of forced migration from a much earlier and shameful period in U.S. history. America’s burgeoning immigrant and refugee populations from sub-Saharan Africa are too often overlooked but can tell us a great deal about contemporary race relations, race and class dynamics, and immigrant integration in a multiracial society. Immigration and the Remaking of Black America fills the current void.”
—DANIEL T. LICHTER, Ferris Family Professor, Cornell University

Over the last four decades, immigration from the Caribbean and sub-Saharan Africa to the U. S. has increased rapidly. In several states, African immigrants are now the primary drivers of growth in the black population. While social scientists and commentators have noted that these black immigrants’ social and economic outcomes often differ from those of their native-born counterparts, few studies have carefully analyzed the mechanisms that produce these disparities. In Immigration and the Remaking of Black America, sociologist Tod Hamilton shows how immigration is reshaping black America. He weaves together interdisciplinary scholarship with new data to enhance our understanding of the causes of socioeconomic stratification among both the native-born and newcomers.

Hamilton demonstrates that immigration from the Caribbean and sub-Saharan Africa is driven by selective migration, meaning that newcomers from these countries tend to have higher educational attainment and better health than those who stay behind. As a result, they arrive in the U.S. with some advantages over native-born blacks, and, in some cases, over whites. He also shows the importance of historical context: prior to the Civil Rights Movement, black immigrants’ socioeconomic outcomes resembled native-born blacks’ much more closely, regardless of their educational attainment in their country of origin. Today, however, certain groups of black immigrants have better outcomes than native-born black Americans—such as lower unemployment rates and higher rates of homeownership—in part because they immigrated at a time of expanding opportunities for minorities and women in general. Hamilton further finds that rates of marriage and labor force participation among native-born blacks that move away from their birth states resemble those of many black immigrants, suggesting that some disparities within the black population stem from processes associated with migration, rather than from
nativity alone.

Hamilton argues that failing to account for this diversity among the black population can lead to incorrect estimates of the social progress made by black Americans and the persistence of racism and discrimination. He calls for future research on racial inequality to disaggregate different black populations. By richly detailing the changing nature of black America, Immigration and the Remaking of Black America helps scholars and policymakers to better understand the complexity of racial disparities in the twenty-first century.

TOD G. HAMILTON is assistant professor of sociology at Princeton University.

Winner of the 2019 Don T. Nakanishi Award for Distinguished Scholarship and Service from the Western Political Science Association Committee on the Status of Asian Pacific Americans

“Immigrants are not necessarily liberals, and religion is a large factor in predicting immigrant conservatism. These points are often overlooked by scholars and policymakers alike, and Janelle Wong’s path-breaking work shines much needed light on the ways in which religion—particularly evangelical Christianity—shapes immigrants’ politics, with considerable implications for the future of American party coalitions.”

—Michael Jones-Correa, professor of political science, University of Pennsylvania

“This is the perfect time for this important book. With evangelicals again in the bright political spotlight over their role in electing Donald Trump, it is essential to understand Janelle Wong’s exploration of evangelical religion, interests, and identities. Evangelical is clearly not a synonym for white Republican. But the steady diversification of evangelicalism will not necessarily entail a moderation of white evangelical politics either. There is fascinating work to be done on how people wrestle with competing racial and religious identities and Wong’s Immigrants, Evangelicals, and Politics in an Era of Demographic Change paves the way.”

—Paul A. Djupe, associate professor of political science, Denison University

As immigration from Asia and Latin America reshapes the demographic composition of the U.S., some analysts have anticipated the decline of conservative white evangelicals’ influence in politics. Yet, Donald Trump captured a larger share of the white evangelical vote in the 2016 election than any candidate in the previous four presidential elections. Why has the political clout of white evangelicals persisted at a time of increased racial and ethnic diversity? In Immigrants, Evangelicals, and Politics in an Era of Demographic Change, political scientist Janelle Wong examines a new generation of Asian American and Latino evangelicals and offers an account of why demographic change has not contributed to a political realignment.

Asian Americans and Latinos currently constitute more than one in every seven evangelicals, and their churches are among the largest, fastest growing organizations in their communities. While evangelical identity is associated with conservative politics, Wong draws from national surveys and interviews to show that non-white evangelicals express political attitudes that are significantly less conservative than those of their white counterparts. Black, Asian American, and Latino evangelicals are much more likely to support policies such as expanded immigration rights, increased taxation of the wealthy, and government interventions to slow climate change. As Wong argues, non-white evangelicals’ experiences as members of racial or ethnic minority groups often lead them to adopt more progressive political views compared to their white counterparts.

However, despite their growth in numbers, non-white evangelicals—particularly Asian Americans and Latinos—are concentrated outside of swing states, have lower levels of political participation than white evangelicals, and are less likely to be targeted by political campaigns. As a result, white evangelicals dominate the evangelical policy agenda and are overrepresented at the polls. Also, many white evangelicals have adopted even more conservative political views in response to rapid demographic change, perceiving, for example, that discrimination against Christians now rivals discrimination against racial and ethnic minorities.

Wong demonstrates that immigrant evangelicals are neither “natural” Republicans nor “natural” Democrats. By examining the changing demographics of the evangelical movement, Immigrants, Evangelicals, and Politics in an Era of Demographic Change sheds light on an understudied constituency that has yet to find its political home.

JANELLE S. WONG is professor of American Studies at the University of Maryland.

Winner of the 2019 Otis Dudley Duncan Book Award from the Sociology of Population Section of the American Sociological Association

Winner of the 2018 Oliver Cromwell Cox Book Award from the Section on Racial and Ethnic Minorities of the American Sociological Association

Winner of the 2018 Robert E. Park Award for Best Book from the Community and Urban Sociology Section of the American Sociological Association

Honorable Mention for the 2018 Outstanding Contribution to Scholarship Book Award from the Race, Gender, and Class Section of the American Sociological Association

“In The Cycle of Segregation, Maria Krysan and Kyle Crowder offer a major breakthrough in understanding of the roots of residential segregation in U.S. society today. Their social-structural sorting perspective elegantly and convincingly explains how black and Hispanic segregation can persist even as minority incomes rise and discrimination and prejudice in housing markets decline. It is a remarkable achievement.”

—Douglas S. Massey, Henry G. Bryant Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs, Princeton University

“I highly recommend this book. Maria Krysan and Kyle Crowder's social structural sorting perspective provides new theoretical lens for recognizing and understanding the self-reinforcing processes of residential segregation. Their original analysis of the drivers of segregation and thoughtful policy prescriptions for dismantling it make Cycle of Segregation a must-read.”

—William Julius Wilson, Lewis P. and Linda L. Geyser University Professor, Harvard University

“It is rare that a book written on a problem so fundamental to social life—segregation—is able to make a truly unique contribution and to set the stage for a new, more refined research agenda. Cycle of Segregation does so. Maria Krysan and Kyle Crowder have synthesized insights from a wide range of empirical studies, and put them together to develop a theory of how the structure of urban inequality constrains and shapes individuals’ residential choices, giving segregation its own self-perpetuating momentum. This book changed how I think about segregation, and it should be read by anyone who cares about America’s urban neighborhoods.”

—Patrick T. Sharkey, Professor and Chair of Sociology, New York University

The Fair Housing Act of 1968 outlawed housing discrimination by race and provided an important tool for dismantling legal segregation. But almost fifty years later, residential segregation remains virtually unchanged in many metropolitan areas, particularly where large groups of racial and ethnic minorities live. Why does segregation persist at such high rates and what makes it so difficult to combat? In Cycle of Segregation, sociologists Maria Krysan and Kyle Crowder examine how everyday social processes shape residential stratification. Past neighborhood experiences, social networks, and daily activities all affect the mobility patterns of different racial groups in ways that have cemented segregation as a self-perpetuating cycle in the twenty-first century.

Through original analyses of national-level surveys and in-depth interviews with residents of Chicago, Krysan and Crowder find that residential stratification is reinforced through the biases and blind spots that individuals exhibit in their searches for housing. People rely heavily on information from friends, family, and coworkers when choosing where to live. Because these social networks tend to be racially homogenous, people are likely to receive information primarily from members of their own racial group and move to neighborhoods that are also dominated by their group. Similarly, home-seekers who report wanting to stay close to family members can end up in segregated destinations because their relatives live in those neighborhoods. The authors suggest that even absent of family ties, people gravitate toward neighborhoods that are familiar to them through their past experiences, including where they have previously lived and where they work, shop, and spend time. Because historical segregation has shaped so many of these experiences, even these seemingly race-neutral decisions help reinforce the cycle of residential stratification. As a result, segregation has declined much more slowly than many socialscientists have expected.

To overcome this cycle, Krysan and Crowder advocate multilevel policy solutions that pair inclusionary zoning and affordable housing with education and public relations campaigns that emphasize neighborhood diversity and high-opportunity areas. They argue that together, such programs can expand the number of destinations available to low-income residents and help offset the negative images many people hold about certain neighborhoods or help introduce them to places they had never considered. Cycle of Segregation demonstrates why a nuanced understanding of everyday social processes is critical for interrupting entrenched patterns of residential segregation.

MARIA KRYSAN is professor of sociology at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

KYLE CROWDER is Blumstein-Jordon Professor of Sociology at the University of Washington.

“Weathering Katrina is a very thoughtful and elegantly executed monograph by a master of the craft. It is social science at its best.”

— Kai Erikson, William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor Emeritus of Sociology and American Studies, Yale University

“Mark VanLandingham’s book, Weathering Katrina, tells a fascinating story of how the Vietnamese community in New Orleans East survived a major natural disaster and thrived afterward. It makes a significant contribution to the literature on disasters, community resilience, and ethnic culture.”

 —Min Zhou, professor of sociology and Asian American studies, University of California, Los Angeles

In 2005, Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans. The principal Vietnamese-American enclave was a remote, low-income area that flooded badly. Many residents arrived decades earlier as refugees from the Vietnam War and were marginally fluent in English. Yet, despite these poor odds of success, the Vietnamese made a surprisingly strong comeback in the wake of the flood. In Weathering Katrina, public health scholar Mark VanLandingham analyzes their path to recovery, and examines the extent to which culture helped them cope during this crisis.

Contrasting his longitudinal survey data and qualitative interviews of Vietnamese residents with the work of other research teams, VanLandingham finds that on the principal measures of disaster recovery—housing stability, economic stability, health, and social adaptation—the Vietnamese community fared better than other communities. By Katrina’s one-year anniversary, almost 90 percent of the Vietnamese had returned to their neighborhood, higher than the rate of return for either blacks or whites. They also showed much lower rates of post-traumatic stress disorder than other groups. And by the second year after the flood, the employment rate for the Vietnamese had returned to its pre-Katrina level.

While some commentators initially attributed this resilience to fairly simple explanations such as strong leadership or to a set of vague cultural strengths characteristic of the Vietnamese and other “model minorities”, VanLandingham shows that in fact it was a broad set of factors that fostered their rapid recovery. Many of these factors had little to do with culture. First, these immigrants were highly selected—those who settled in New Orleans enjoyed higher human capital than those who stayed in Vietnam. Also, as a small, tightly knit community, the New Orleans Vietnamese could efficiently pass on information about job leads, business prospects, and other opportunities to one another. Finally, they had access to a number of special programs that were intended to facilitate recovery among immigrants, and enjoyed a positive social image both in New Orleans and across the U.S., which motivated many people and charities to offer the community additional resources. But culture—which VanLandingham is careful to define and delimit—was important, too. A shared history of overcoming previous challenges—and a powerful set of narratives that describe these successes; a shared set of perspectives or frames for interpreting events; and a shared sense of symbolic boundaries that distinguish them from broader society are important elements of culture that provided the Vietnamese with some strong advantages in the post-Katrina environment.

By carefully defining and disentangling the elements that enabled the swift recovery of the Vietnamese in New Orleans, Weathering Katrina enriches our understanding of this understudied immigrant community and of why some groups fare better than others after a major catastrophe like Katrina.

MARK J. VANLANDINGHAM is the Thomas C. Keller Professor at the Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine.

“If marriage patterns indicate the durability of the color line, Marriage Vows and Racial Choices is a rich account of how the color line shapes the experience of marriage. With lucid prose, Jessica Vasquez-Tokos goes inside the lives of Latina wives and Latino husbands to show how race colors whom they marry, how they stay married, and how they raise children. Demography is destiny, and Marriage Vows and Racial Choices is a must read for anyone who hopes to understand how that destiny is unfolding.”

—Tomás R. Jiménez, associate professor of sociology, Stanford University

“Jessica Vasquez-Tokos’s key contribution in this important new book is to open a black box inside theories of assimilation by illuminating how people actually make their marriage choices. Marriage Vows and Racial Choices details how race and ethnicity, generation, and gender ideologies and images about them play into people’s decisions on whom to marry. A strong empirical scientist, she follows her data to unanticipated places, deepening our understanding of immigration and contemporary America and reframing the debate.”

—Robert C. Smith, professor of sociology, immigration studies, and public affairs, Austin W. Marxe School of Public and International Affairs, Baruch College and CUNY Graduate Center

Choosing whom to marry involves more than emotion, as racial politics, cultural mores, and local demographics all shape romantic choices. In Marriage Vows and Racial Choices, sociologist Jessica Vasquez-Tokos explores the decisions of Latinos who marry either within or outside of their racial and ethnic groups. Drawing from in-depth interviews with nearly fifty couples, she examines their marital choices and how these unions influence their identities as Americans.

Vasquez-Tokos finds that their experiences in childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood shape their perceptions of race, which in turn influence their romantic expectations. Most Latinos marry other Latinos, but those who intermarry tend to marry whites. She finds that some Latina women who had domineering fathers assumed that most Latino men shared this trait and gravitated toward white men who differed from their fathers. Other Latina respondents who married white men fused ideas of race and class and perceived whites as higher status and considered themselves to be “marrying up.” Latinos who married non-Latino minorities—African Americans, Asian Americans, and Native Americans—often sought out non-white partners because they shared similar experiences of racial marginalization. Latinos who married Latinos of a different national origin expressed a desire for shared cultural commonalities with their partners, but—like those who married whites—often associated their own national-origin groups with oppressive gender roles.

Vasquez-Tokos also investigates how racial and cultural identities are maintained or altered for the respondents’ children. Within Latino-white marriages, biculturalism—in contrast with Latinos adopting a white “American” identity—is likely to emerge. For instance, white women who married Latino men often embraced aspects of Latino culture and passed it along to their children. Yet, for these children, upholding Latino cultural ties depended on their proximity to other Latinos, particularly extended family members. Both location and family relationships shape how parents and children from interracial families understand themselves culturally.

As interracial marriages become more common, Marriage Vows and Racial Choices shows how race, gender, and class influence our marital choices and personal lives.

JESSICA VASQUEZ-TOKOS is associate professor of sociology at the University of Oregon.