Elizabeth Vaquera

Racism, the Immigration Enforcement Regime, and the Implications for Racial Inequality in the Lives of Undocumented Young Adults

The current immigration enforcement regime embodies a colorblind racial project of the state rooted in the racial structure of society and resulting in racism toward immigrants. Approaching racism from structural and social process perspectives, we seek to understand the social consequences of enforcement practices in the lives of undocumented immigrant young adults who moved to the United States as minors. Findings indicate that although legal discourse regarding immigration enforcement theoretically purports colorblindness, racial practices such as profiling subject immigrants to arrest, detention, and deportation and, in effect, criminalize them. Further, enforcement practices produce distress, vulnerability, and anxiety in the lives of young immigrants and their families, often resulting in legitimate fears of detention and deportation since enforcement measures disproportionately affect Latinos and other racialized immigrant groups in U.S. society. We conclude that policies and programs that exclude, segregate, detain, and physically remove immigrants from the country reproduce racial inequalities in other areas of social life through spillover effects that result in dire consequences for these immigrants and their kin. We argue that immigrant enforcement practices reflect the nation’s racial policy of our times.

Friendship, Educational Engagement, and School Belonging: Comparing Hispanic and White Adolescents

The current study explores the relationship between friendship formation, school engagement, and belonging among White and Hispanic students. It employed the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, a nationally representative sample of adolescents in high school. The sample consisted of 6,366 Mexican, 1,132 Cuban, 1,330 Puerto Rican, 4,446 Central/South Hispanic origin youth, and 46,592 non-Hispanic Whites. Hispanic students are less likely to report having friends and to having their best friend at school. Both Hispanic and White students who have a best friend report fewer engagement problems and a higher school belonging. However, only students whose best friend attends their same school report higher levels of school belonging. Findings suggest that ethnic origin is an important stratifier among Hispanics for the studied school outcomes. Signs for optimism are discussed as some Hispanic ethnic groups report higher levels of school belonging compared with their White counterparts.

The Salience of Racial and Ethnic Identification in Friendship Choices Among Hispanic Adolescents

Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, a nationally representative sample of youth in 7th to 12th grades, this study examines how racial and ethnic identification overlap among Hispanic adolescents (N = 6,399). The study examines the choices of friends to evaluate the proximity of race and ethnic identifiers among Hispanics. The result show evidence that ethnicity and race are distinct stratifiers as evidenced by their friendship choices, but that ethnicity is more significant than race in determining the choice of friends of Hispanics. Racial identification of Hispanics is closely associated with choosing a friend of the same race, whether or not that person is Hispanic. Finally, when Hispanics interact with non-Hispanics, racial identity becomes another determinant of friendships.

“Doing Race”: Latino Youth’s Identities and the Politics of Racial Exclusion

For most Latino youth, Latinos constitute a separate, while diverse, racial group. Our study demonstrates that, when asked about their identities, Latino youth do not follow conventional U.S. racial categories. Although they prefer to identify by national origin or panethnicity, they consider themselves to be part of a racial group rather than an ethnic group, as the U.S. Census designates them. Using findings from in-depth semistructured interviews with two samples of young adults in Chicago and Central Florida, this research joins the long-standing debate on the conceptual division between race and ethnicity arguing that there is a mismatch between existing sociological understandings of race and ethnicity and the current racial ideas and racial practices among Latino youth. There is also a mismatch between institutional measures of “race,” such as those found in the U.S. Census, and Latinos’ self-understandings of where they belong in the U.S. racial hierarchy. We suggest that not being officially designated as a racial group leads to the erosion of perceptions of belonging among Latinos to a nation in which being a member of a racial group allows for visibility and claims-making in a multiracial society.

Who is Really Doing it? Peer Embeddedness and Substance Use during Adolescence

Using the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (n = 15,355), this article examines the relationship between adolescent embeddedness and substance use. Unlike most previous work on substance use, the authors focus on the size of an individuals social network (embeddedness) instead of the characteristics of individuals in that network. They examine four levels of embeddedness (isolated, marginal, typical, and saturated) and the variation in their link to substance use, specifically alcohol consumption, binge drinking, cigarette smoking, and marijuana smoking. Students with high in-school embeddedness were significantly more likely to participate in risk behaviors involving alcohol while students with no in-school embeddedness are protected from risk behaviors by their social isolation. The study then argues for future research in substance use and peer effects that explores the interplay between measures of social capital and embeddedness.

Educational Achievement of Immigrant Adolescents in Spain: Do Gender and Region of Origin Matter?

This study explores the educational achievement of immigrant youth in Spain employing data from 3 waves of the Longitudinal Study of Families and Childhood (Pànel de Famílies i Infància), a representative sample of children in Catalonia first interviewed at ages 13-16 in 2006 (N = 2,710). Results suggest consistent disadvantage in achievement among first-generation students. Differences in achievement between the second and third generations are apparent in bivariate analyses, but are explained by observable characteristics in multivariate analyses. Gender-specific analyses uncover a large achievement gap between first-generation girls and their third-generation counterparts, but no equivalent gap for boys. Region-of-origin differences are modest, with the exception of Latin American adolescents who exhibit the lowest educational outcomes. The significance of perceptions about school on achievement are discussed.

Unwelcomed Immigrants: Experiences With Immigration Officials and Attachment to the United States

In this article, we argue that efforts at increased immigration control have consequences for immigrants’ affective attachments to the United States. Based on data from the Immigrant Transnationalism and Modes of Incorporation (ITMI) Survey that was administered to a random sample of South Florida immigrants (N = 1,268), we examine qualitatively and quantitatively how immigrants’ negative experiences in the United States with immigration officials, at the point of entry and during their residency in the country, impact their affective attachments to the United States. Examining the effects of negative experiences with immigration officials, both isolated incidents and patterns of treatment, reveals that immigrants with negative experiences are less attached to the United States. We suggest that how immigrants are treated in their countries of destination is likely to affect their approaches to other government officials and more broadly, their patterns of incorporation into U.S. society.

Spanish Universities and the "Ranking 2005" Initiative.

This article assesses the quality of the Spanish higher education system, focusing mainly on the methodological challenges that the existence of public and private universities represents in the calculation of global higher education rankings. Researchers from the University of Barcelona and the University of Pennsylvania calculated the first ranking of higher education institutions in Spain, known as Ranking 2000, a few years ago. The report, Excelencia, calidad de las universidades espanolas (Excellence: Quality of the Spanish Universities), included a detailed description of almost 100 indicators used, the data from all universities, and correlations between all indicators. In the present Ranking 2005, the authors present more recent data and an updated methodological discussion; finally, an improved selection of indicators supports a refined final index.

Patterns of Incorporation of Latinos in Old and New Destinations From Invisible to Hypervisible

This special issue introduces a range of articles that analyze patterns of incorporation among Latinos living in the United States. We discuss the importance of race and institutionalized discrimination across various social institutions and through legislation and policies that promote and/or blunt Latino incorporation. Building on the findings of the studies in this special issue, this introduction considers how race and racialization shape the lives of Latino youth and adults through directives and policies emerging from a range of institutions—from the U.S. Census Bureau to State Courts, and state and federal legislative bodies. Mediating incorporation is legislation such as the Affordable Care Act and administrative changes such as the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which, while promoting inclusion of Latino populations into the U.S. body-politic, also render some Latinos part of a class of people that are subjugated based on their origins. We conclude this introductory article with an assessment of how this structural discrimination results in various forms of incorporation that include marginalized belonging, blocked mobility, and both the invisibility and hypervisibility of Latinos in the United States.

Personal and Cultural Trauma and the Ambivalent National Identities of Undocumented Young Adults in the USA

Using data from 41 in-depth interviews with undocumented young adults, we examine how they define what it means to be an American and explore whether and to what extent they identify as ‘Americans’. Framing our analysis in theories of personal and cultural trauma, we illustrate how undocumented youth experience double-consciousness that compounds their approach to national identities. Respondents express ambivalence towards adopting an American identity, recognising their commitment to American cultural values, yet continuously feeling repelled by laws that position them as outsiders to US polity. In spite of this, undocumented youth contest their liminal status by working towards full participation in civil society. Their activities, actions, and levels of civic participation demonstrate that even though they are barred from US citizenship, they work towards embodying what they believe a true American should be.