- 439 pages
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub
About this book
U.S.-born Mexicans in New York City have achieved perhaps the biggest single generation 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 New York City had graduated from college – versus a 13-14-percent second-generation college graduation rate for most places for most studies done in recent decades. How did U.S.-born Mexicans in New York City achieve such remarkable mobility? In Dreams Achieved and Denied, sociologist Robert Courtney Smith 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. Smith's longitudinal, ethnographic data enabled him to intimately describe how specific mechanisms blocked or promoted mobility for years as his participants moved from adolescence through early adulthood and into established adulthood. Smith documents how having or gaining legal status made certain New York City or New York State policies and practices more efficacious in supporting individual and family efforts and strategies for mobility. Such immigrant-inclusive and mobility-promoting measures include enabling undocumented people to attend public colleges at in-state tuition rates, and later to get driver's licenses, offering healthcare to all in New York City, 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 towards better adult outcomes and lives. Having mentors, picking academically stronger schools and friends, and using second chance mechanisms also promoted more adult mobility. However, lacking legal status blocked mobility, by preventing them from benefiting from these same mobility-promoting city and state policies, from mentors, or from working hard and keeping the immigrant bargain.
?
Dreams Achieved and Denied deeply analyzes the historic upward mobility of U.S.-born Mexicans in New York City. Itcounters the dominant story research and public discourse tell about Mexican mobility in the U.S. and shows how thoughtful public policy can improve the lives of young immigrants and families.
For over twenty years, Smith followed the lives and mobility of nearly one hundred children of Mexican immigrants in New York City. Smith's longitudinal, ethnographic data enabled him to intimately describe how specific mechanisms blocked or promoted mobility for years as his participants moved from adolescence through early adulthood and into established adulthood. Smith documents how having or gaining legal status made certain New York City or New York State policies and practices more efficacious in supporting individual and family efforts and strategies for mobility. Such immigrant-inclusive and mobility-promoting measures include enabling undocumented people to attend public colleges at in-state tuition rates, and later to get driver's licenses, offering healthcare to all in New York City, 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 towards better adult outcomes and lives. Having mentors, picking academically stronger schools and friends, and using second chance mechanisms also promoted more adult mobility. However, lacking legal status blocked mobility, by preventing them from benefiting from these same mobility-promoting city and state policies, from mentors, or from working hard and keeping the immigrant bargain.
?
Dreams Achieved and Denied deeply analyzes the historic upward mobility of U.S.-born Mexicans in New York City. Itcounters the dominant story research and public discourse tell about Mexican mobility in the U.S. and shows how thoughtful public policy can improve the lives of young immigrants and families.
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Yes, you can access Dreams Achieved and Denied by Robert Courtney Smith in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Social Sciences & Emigration & Immigration. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.
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Table of contents
- Cover Page
- Title Page
- Copyright Page
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- About the Author
- Foreword
- Acknowledgments
- Chapter 1. Introduction: Dreams Achieved and Denied
- Chapter 2. Intergenerational Bequeathal of Dis/Advantage and the Immigrant Bargain: The Impact of Legal Status on the Intrafamily Mechanisms Promoting Upward Mobility
- Chapter 3. How Did You Pick That School? Institutional Settings, Counterfactual Choices, Race, and Value Added (or Subtracted) in New York City High Schools
- Chapter 4. Mentors: Boosting Adult Outcomes and Offering Paths Out of a Hard Life
- Chapter 5. DACA: A Revocable Program That Can Unblock Mobility and Make Private the Stigma of Undocumented Status
- Chapter 6. Second-Chance Mechanisms: Hitting the Reset Button for U.S. Citizens and the Derailment Button for Undocumented Americans
- Chapter 7. Masculinities and Long-Term Outcomes: How Mexican Mobility Masculinity Promotes and Gang Masculinity Inhibits Mobility
- Chapter 8. Friendship Strategies, White Contact, and Mexicanness as an Identity or a Status: Sequentially Constructing the Meaning of Mexicanness in Upwardly or Downwardly Mobile Contexts and Trajectories
- Chapter 9. Conclusion: Empirical, Theoretical, and Policy Stories and Recommendations
- Guide to Online Appendixes
- Notes
- References
- Index