Dreams achieved and denied : Mexican intergenerational mobility /

Dreams achieved and denied : Mexican intergenerational mobility /

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Bibliographic Details
Author / Creator:	Smith, Robert C., 1964- author.
Imprint:	New York, New York : Russell Sage Foundation, [2024]
Description:	xxvi, 413 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm.
Language:	English
Series:	American Sociological Association's Rose series in sociology Rose series in sociology.
Subject:	Mexican Americans -- New York (State) -- New York -- Social conditions. Mexicans -- New York (State) -- New York -- Social conditions. Immigrants -- New York (State) -- New York -- Social conditions. Noncitizens -- New York (State) -- New York -- Social conditions. Social mobility -- New York (State) -- New York.
Format:	Print Book
URL for this record:	http://pi.lib.uchicago.edu/1001/cat/bib/14158310

Hidden Bibliographic Details
Other authors / contributors:	Castro, Manuel, writer of foreword.
ISBN:	9780871549419 0871549417 9781610449090
Notes:	Includes bibliographical references and index.
Summary:	"In Dreams Achieved and Denied, Robert Courtney Smith follows Mexican immigrant children in New York City over time, collecting and analyzing extensive data on them and their families. Smith finds that U.S.-born Mexicans in New York City have experienced strong and even exceptional single generation mobility, made more impressive by the relatively low income and educational levels of their immigrant parents. Study participants and their families who all had legal status or were born in the United States became upwardly mobile through specific family and individual strategies, whose efficacy was increased by specific policies, practices, and conditions in New York City and New York State, which treat immigrants and their families as fellow New Yorkers-as "us," not "them." Smith also finds that the lives and mobility of "long-term undocumented Americans"- those who were brought to the United States as children but have been unable to legalize their status by adulthood-are blocked by their lack of legal status, even when engaging in the same strategies and practices as their upwardly mobile, U.S. citizen peers. Moreover, the help their U.S.-born peers received from many mobility-promoting New York City and New York State policies and practices was blocked by their lack of legal status. These divergent trajectories underline the reality that structural inclusion or exclusion of immigrants and their children-having or lacking legal status, respectively-has become an enduring feature of American life that affects intergenerational mobility and well-being"--
Other form:	Online version: Smith, Robert C., 1964- Dreams achieved and denied New York : Russell Sage Foundation, [2024] 9781610449090

Description
Summary:	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.<br> <br> <br> <br> 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.<br> <br> 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.<br> <br> <br> <br> 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.
Physical Description:	xxvi, 413 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm.
Bibliography:	Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN:	9780871549419 0871549417 9781610449090