Social Science Research Council

Co-Organizers

Katharine M. Donato is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Rice University. Her main research interests are international migration and social inequality. She has written extensively on Mexican migration to the United States and its consequences, and covered a variety of topics including the effects of immigration policy, employment conditions of Mexicans in the United States, and how migration affects Mexican health. Recent publications examine the significance of gender in the effects of migration on child health, gender differences in the social process of undocumented border crossing, and gendered consequences of U.S. immigration policy. She received her PhD in Sociology from SUNY Stony Brook, and thereafter completed a Postdoctoral Fellowship in Demography at The University of Chicago.

Donna Gabaccia is the Mellon Professor in History at the University of Pittsburgh. Her main research interest is international migration. She has written extensively on working-class and women immigrants in the U.S. and compared U.S. and other national histories of immigration. Recent related publications include Immigration and American Diversity (Blackwell 2002) and We Are What We Eat (Harvard University Press 1998). For the past decade she has led an international collaborative project on Italian migration around the world; it has resulted in two co-edited publications: Italian Workers of the World (University of Illinois Press 2001) and Women, Gender and Transnational Life (University of Toronto Press 2002), and a monograph, Italy's Many Diasporas (University College of London Press 2000). She is currently organizing a third interdisciplinary collaboration of that project called "Sex, Gender and Intimacy: Making Nations in the Diasporic Private Sphere." Her new research focuses on mobile labor, capital, and technology in the building of North American systems of transportation.

Martin F. Manalansan IV is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign. He has appointments in the Unit for Criticism and Theory, Asian American Studies Program and the Program for Gender and Women Studies. His publications include an edited collection of essays entitled Cultural Compass: Ethnographic Explorations of Asian America, published by Temple University Press (2000), and a co-edited anthology, Queer Globalizations: Citizenship and the Afterlife of Colonialism, published by New York University Press (2002). His book, Global Divas: Filipino Gay Men in the Diaspora, is forthcoming from Duke University Press in November, 2003. His essays on sexuality, gender, immigration and transnationalism have been published in several journals including Amerasia, GLQ, and positions: east asia cultures critique. His current projects include an ethnographic study of Filipino return migration in the past ten years and an examination of Asian immigrant culinary cultures in New York City.

Patricia R. Pessar is professor of American studies and anthropology at Yale University. She has conducted ethnographic research in Brazil, the Dominican Republic, the United States, and Guatemala. Her publications on international migration include: When Borders Don't Divide: Labor Migration and Refugee Movements in the Americas (Center for Migration Studies, 1988), Between Two Islands: Dominican International Migration (co-authored with Sherri Grasmuck; University of California Press, 1991), A Visa for a Dream: Dominicans in the United States (Allyn & Bacon, 1995), and Caribbean Circuits: New Directions in the Study of Caribbean Migration (Center for Migration Studies, 1997). Among her most recent scholarship are a special edited volume of the journal Identities (7(4), 2001) dedicated to works on gender and transnationalism and a book on Brazilian millenarianism entitled From Fanatics to Folk: Brazilian Millenarianism and Popular Culture (Duke University Press, 2004).

Participants

Kitty Calavita is Professor in Criminology, Law and Society at the University of California, Irvine. She received her PhD in Sociology from the University of Delaware in 1980. Her research is on immigration policymaking, and other issues relating to law, power, and ideology. Among her publications is a book on state theory and the operation of the Bracero Program (Inside the State: The Bracero Program, Immigration, the INS) and articles on the contradictions and dilemmas surrounding enforcement of the Chinese Exclusion Laws ("The Paradoxes of Race, Class, Identity, and 'Passing': Enforcing the Chinese Exclusion Acts, 1882-1910"). She is currently writing a book on contemporary immigration policies in Spain and Italy exploring the tensions associated with constructions of immigrant Otherness.

Sara Curran is Assistant Professor of Sociology and Director of Undergraduate Studies in Sociology at Princeton University. She received her Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina in 1994. Curran researches internal migration in developing countries, family demography, environment and population, and gender. She is writing a book, Shifting Boundaries, Transforming Lives: Globalization, Gender and Family Dynamics in Thailand, which analyzes how migration and education transformed Thai society between 1984-2000. With a grant from the Mellon Foundation, she is collaborating with colleagues from the International Center for Research on Women (ICRW) and the Institute for Population and Social Research (IPSR) to research adolescent migration in Thailand. Curran recently edited a special issue of Ambio where contributors address population, consumption and environment research, especially the impact of human migrants upon coastal ecosystems. Curran was one of four Princeton University faculty members to have been the inaugural recipients of Graduate Mentoring Awards and was honored during the Graduate School's hooding ceremony on June 3, 2002. She also received "Outstanding Faculty Advisor" awards from both Junior Sociology majors and Senior Sociology majors in the department on Class Day '02. She was also the recipient of the 2001 Sociologists for Women and Society mentoring award. Curran was interviewed for a piece in the November 8th, 1999 edition of the Princeton Weekly Bulletin where she comments on surviving change and how individuals make sense of their world through social relations. On May 20, 2003, the PRB's Center for Public Information on Population Research posted a Press Release about Curran's recent publication on Migrant Networks in the latest issue of Demography (co-authored with Rivero-Fuentes). Curran's book, Shifting Boundaries, Transforming Lives: Globalization, Gender and Family Dynamics in Thailand, has been accepted for publication by the Princeton University Press and is due out in 2005.

Sarah J. Mahler is an Associate Professor in the department of Sociology/Anthropology at Florida International University in Miami. She received her undergraduate degree from Amherst College and her graduate degrees from Columbia University. Her research and publications focus primarily on Latin American and Caribbean migration to the United States and the development of transnational ties between migrants and their home communities. In recent years she has won numerous grants to study the importance of religion to immigrants in Miami, substance abuse and recovery among immigrants, and gender in transnational perspective. Among her publications are American Dreaming: Immigrant Life on the Margins (Princeton 1995) and "Engendering Transnational Migration: A Case Study of Salvadorans" in American Behavioral Scientist (January 1999). She is also co-editor with Patricia Pessar of a special issue of the journal Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power on gender relations in transnational spaces (2001). She is currently writing a new book, tentatively entitled God Knows No Borders: Transnational Religious Ties Linking Cuba and Miami with Katrin Hansing.

Nicola Piper is Senior Research Fellow at the Australian National University in Canberra. She holds a PhD in Sociology from the University of Sheffield in the UK. Her research has revolved around various aspects of international labour migration. She is the author of the book Racism, Nationalism and Citizenship (1998), the co-editor of the volumes Women and Work in Globalising Asia (2002), Wife or Worker? Asians Marriage and Migration (Rowman & Littlefield, 2003), Transnational Activism in Asia - Problems of power and democracy (Routledge, 2004), as well as various journal articles. Her research interests are international labour migration, governance and global politics; gender; NGOs and transnational activism; political organizing of labour; human rights; with empirical focus of Asia and Europe. Her current project focuses on the intersection of international law (HR and labour rights) and pro-migrant civil society activism.

Desirée Baolian Qin-Hilliard is a doctoral candidate in Human Development and Psychology at Harvard Graduate School of Education. Her research focuses on gender, immigration, ethnicity, globalization, and education. Her current dissertation study examines the role of gender in Chinese immigrant children's educational and psychosocial adaptation. She is the author of "Gendered Expectations and Gendered Experiences: Immigrant Students' Adaptation in Schools" (New Directions for Youth Development, 2003). Qin-Hilliard served on the Editorial Board of the Harvard Educational Review from 2000 to 2002 and was co-chair of its special issue on Immigration and Education (2001). She is also the co-editor of the six-volume series titled Interdisciplinary Perspectives on the New Immigration (Routledge, 2001), The New Immigration Millennium Reader (Routledge, forthcoming), and Globalization: Culture and Education in the New Millennium (UC Press, 2004).

Rachel Silvey is Assistant Professor of Geography and Research Associate at the Population Program, Institute of Behavioral Science at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Her research interests include gender and feminist geography, migration studies, social activism, Indonesia, and Islam. Among other outlets, her work has appeared in the Annals of the Association of American Geographers, Political Geography, Progress in Human Geography, Gender, Place, and Culture, and World Development. She has also been selected as a Fulbright New Century Scholar for 2004-2005 (http://www.cies.org/NCS/), during which time her research will focus on geographies of gender and Islam among Indonesia-US transnational migrants in Jakarta and Los Angeles.

Suzanne Sinke, Associate Professor of History at Florida State University, is the author of numerous articles on gender and migration as well as a monograph, Dutch Immigrant Women in the United States, 1880-1920, and a co-edited (with Rudolph Vecoli) volume, A Century of European Migrations, 1830-1930. After completing her doctorate at the University of Minnesota (1993), Sinke taught at Clemson University for seven years, with a Fulbright-sponsored teaching break in Finland, as well as some sabbatical time courtesy of the Social Science Research Council. She has been active in the Social Science History Association, where she served as co-chair of the Migration Network from 1996 to 1999. Her current book project relates marriage and transnational migration in U.S. history from bride ships to the world wide web. In addition, since 2002, she has been book review editor for the Journal of American Ethnic History.

Carola Suárez-Orozco is the Co-Director of the Harvard Immigration Projects and Managing Director of the Longitudinal Immigrant Student Adaptation Study (L.I.S.A.) She publishes widely in the areas of cultural psychology, academic engagement, immigrant youth, and identity formation. Her publications include Children of Immigration (with Marcelo Suárez-Orozco, Harvard University Press, 2001) and Transformations: Migration, Family Life, and Achievement Motivation Among Latino Adolescents (with Marcelo Suárez-Orozco, Stanford University Press, 1995). They are also co-editors of the six volume series entitled Interdisciplinary Perspectives on The New Immigration (with Desirée Qin-Hillard, Routledge, 2001). She has published many articles and chapters on such topics as academic engagement, the role of the "social mirror" in identity formation, immigrant family separations, the role of mentors in facilitating positive development in immigrant youth, the gendered experiences of immigrant youth, etc. Her recent research focuses on the intersection of cultural and psychological factors in the adaptation of immigrant and ethnic minority youth.

Henry Yu is an Associate Professor in the Department of History at the University of British Columbia, in Vancouver, Canada, and in the Department of History at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he is also a faculty member of the Asian American Studies Center. Currently, he is working on developing collaborative research and teaching on trans-Pacific migration, as well as a book entitled How Tiger Woods Lost His Stripes. He received his BA in Honours History from the University of British Columbia, and his MA and PhD in History from Princeton University. His book, Thinking Orientals: Migration, Contact, and Exoticism in Modern America (Oxford, 2001), focused on the role of social science and Asian Americans in the production of ideas about race and culture, and received the Norris and Carol Hundley Prize for Most Distinguished Book of 2001 from the American Historical Association's Pacific Coast Branch. His published essays include "Mixing Bodies and Cultures: The Meaning of America's Fascination With Sex Between 'Orientals' and Whites," in Sex, Love, Race: Crossing Boundaries in North American History, edited by Martha Hodes (New York University Press, 1998).