| NSF Org: |
SES Division of Social and Economic Sciences |
| Recipient: |
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| Initial Amendment Date: | May 22, 2017 |
| Latest Amendment Date: | May 22, 2017 |
| Award Number: | 1738696 |
| Award Instrument: | Standard Grant |
| Program Manager: |
Toby Parcel
SES Division of Social and Economic Sciences SBE Directorate for Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences |
| Start Date: | June 1, 2017 |
| End Date: | May 31, 2019 (Estimated) |
| Total Intended Award Amount: | $12,000.00 |
| Total Awarded Amount to Date: | $12,000.00 |
| Funds Obligated to Date: |
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| History of Investigator: |
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| Recipient Sponsored Research Office: |
615 W 131ST ST NEW YORK NY US 10027-7922 (212)854-6851 |
| Sponsor Congressional District: |
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| Primary Place of Performance: |
NY US 10027-7922 |
| Primary Place of
Performance Congressional District: |
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| Unique Entity Identifier (UEI): |
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| Parent UEI: |
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| NSF Program(s): | Sociology |
| Primary Program Source: |
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| Program Reference Code(s): |
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| Program Element Code(s): |
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| Award Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Fund Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Assistance Listing Number(s): | 47.075 |
ABSTRACT
Doctoral Dissertation Research: The Intergenerational Transmission Through Undocumented Status
PI: Shamus Khan, PhD; Co-PI: Nicol Valdez
NSF Abstract
This project is a study of U.S.-born, citizen youth to better understand the intergenerational transfer of citizenship status. The project compares the experience of youth from undocumented and documented immigrant families. The legal-illegal dichotomy ingrained in U.S. immigration policies is conceptually limiting for understanding the diversity of citizenship experiences for the children of immigrants. A more nuanced analysis is now required to further uncover the generational effects of parental undocumented status on their U.S. born children with citizenship. This type of research offers new ways of understanding the intergenerational transmission of parents' social background to their children and develops insight into how local context can mediate and shape the lived experiences of immigrant origin youth. This research holds the potential to help policy makers, educators, and the wider public understand the social implications of undocumented status for future generations.
This comparative qualitative study will interrogate intra-group differences related to the legal status of Mexican-American families residing in New York City. The hypothesis guiding this research is that parents? undocumented status creates a social context that is inheritable or passed on to subsequent generations. Interviews with both undocumented and documented families coupled with ethnographic observations of a subset of these families will provide new insights into the strategies undocumented families employ in their daily lives. This study takes a multi-level ecological approach by gathering observations across both the individual and contextual level. On the individual level, the study will provide a descriptive portrait of the everyday lives of undocumented and documented Mexican-American parents as they raise their families. On a contextual level, this study will detail the highly variable experiences of undocumented parents and their children resulting from factors such as neighborhoods, schools, and social networks. Given that the undocumented experience is often shaped by the local factors, New York's policies on immigrant families can offer insight into how states can help ameliorate the negative impact of an undocumented parent. More broadly, the stakes are high for creating a more empowered and educated immigrant origin youth population, whose future achievements do matter in aiding the competitive advantage of our nation.
PROJECT OUTCOMES REPORT
Disclaimer
This Project Outcomes Report for the General Public is displayed verbatim as submitted by the Principal Investigator (PI) for this award. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this Report are those of the PI and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation; NSF has not approved or endorsed its content.
Nicol Valdez has completed research for her dissertation "The Elusive Dream: The Making of a New Mexican-American Experience". During her funding period she spent over a year collecting data across New York City and North Carolina, across rural and urban areas. As a trained sociologist, Valdez was interested in understanding how legal status was shaping intergenerational aspects within the family as well as understanding how this might shape with-in group dynamics across both undocumented and documented Mexican-American families.
Valdez worked to accomplish collecting qualitative data through participant observations and interviews with families and parents across both states. She worked to detail the daily lives of these families and how they were adapting to a fundamental shift in how they were experiencing their status, and how this was trickling into their children's experiences. This research holds broader aspects on the ways that state level policy matters, and the ways it can be adopted and enforced on the local community level, creating important consequences. This variation existed across the ways families were constrained or limited across their daily lives, and how this trickled into their children's own social and cultural integration. The dissertation research illuminated two main aspects: 1) undocumented and documented parents are creating social boundaries between one another 2) legal status is shaping the ways citizen youth are integrating and experiencing their citizenship. Essentially, this story is an example in which access to citizenship does not translate to access to social citizenship. Valdez captures one of the latest contemporary waves of immigrants that have resided within the border for over 15 years, on average. The undocumented phenonmenon is a familial experience, and one that is fundamentally shaping what it means to be growing up as a Mexican-American today. This work makes a contribution to the literature by not only highlighting a demographic group that is largely hidden, but also tells of a new and different American poverty story existing across legal status. These categorical labels are becoming more and more significant in exemplifying how durable inequality is sustained, created and perpetuated across social setting.
The dissertation research is completed in 2019, and will likely be disseminated to the wider public through publications and/or book project.
Last Modified: 09/03/2019
Modified by: Nicol M Valdez
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