2008 National Symposium on Family Issues
Development of Hispanic Children in Immigrant Families: Challenges and Prospects
Speakers and Discussants
Richard Alba is Distinguished Professor of Sociology at The Graduate Center, City University of New York. His teaching and research focus on race/ethnicity and international migration, in the U.S. and in Europe. His research has been supported by the Guggenheim Foundation, the German Marshall Fund and Russell Sage Foundation. Dr. Alba's most recent book is Remaking the American Mainstream: Assimilation and Contemporary Immigration (2003), co-written with Victor Nee.
Randolph Capps is a demographer and Senior Policy Analyst at the Migration Policy Institute. Dr. Capps recently published national-level reports on trends in the immigrant labor force, the health and well being of young children of immigrants, and the characteristics of immigrants' children in elementary and secondary schools. He is currently conducting a study of the impact of immigration enforcement operations on children of unauthorized immigrants and recently participated in an evaluation of employment services in the federal refugee resettlement program.
Stephen J. Trejo is Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Texas at Austin. His research focuses on public policy issues involving labor markets, including overtime pay regulation, the experiences of immigrants, and obstacles to the economic progress of minority groups. Dr. Trejo's recent work analyzes patterns of intergenerational improvement among Mexican Americans, and how selective intermarriage and ethnic identification might bias standard measures of socioeconomic progress for the U.S.-born descendants of Mexican immigrants.
Stephen M. Quintana holds a joint appointment with the University of Wisconsin Departments of Counseling Psychology and Educational Psychology. His current research involves developing and evaluating a model of children's understanding of social status, which includes ethnicity, race, gender, and social class. Dr. Quintana's multicultural research has focused on student's adjustment to higher education, children's understanding of ethnic prejudice, and multicultural training in professional organizations.
Kimberly Updegraff is Associate Professor in the School of Social and Family Dynamics at Arizona State University. Her research focuses on the role of family and peer relationships in youth adjustment, with a particular interest in understanding culture and gender dynamics. Her current work focuses on Mexican American families raising teenagers and young adults.
Jennifer Van Hook is Associate Professor of Sociology at Penn State, whose research focuses on the relationship between policy contexts of reception and incorporation patterns of immigrants and their children. She is currently studying the health and well-being of the children of immigrants, including patterns and trends in household/family structure, child poverty, welfare receipt, food security, and child obesity. Dr. Van Hook has evaluated and revised methods for estimating size, growth, and characteristics of the unauthorized migrant population living in the U.S.
Rosalie Corona is Assistant Professor of Clinical Psychology at Virginia Commonwealth University. Dr. Corona's research focuses on the emotional and behavioral adjustment of minority adolescents, particularly Latino and African American youth. She has incorporated her research findings into the design and evaluation of parent and youth prevention programs aimed at promoting adolescent health and resilience and improving parent-child connectedness.
Donald J. Hernandez is Professor of Sociology at University at Albany (SUNY). He recently completed research on 140 indicators of child well-being for race-ethnic/immigrant groups by country of origin for the U.S. He also assessed the extent to which socioeconomic disparities versus cultural differences can account for low enrollment in early education programs among Hispanic children. Dr. Hernandez is leading a UNICEF project to develop internationally comparable indicators for children in immigrant and native-born families in eight rich countries.
Carola Suárez-Orozco is Professor of Applied Psychology at New York University's Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, & Human Development and Co-Director of Immigration Studies. She publishes widely in the areas of cultural psychology, academic engagement, immigrant youth, and identity formation. Dr. Suárez-Orozco is a principal investigator on the NSF funded Partnership for International Research and Education, "Children of Immigrants in Schools." She is an expert on the psychology of immigration whose work has been discussed in the media.
Katharine Donato is Professor of Sociology at Vanderbilt University. Her broad interests focus on social stratification and demography, especially international migration between Mexico and the U.S. Dr. Donato's research has addressed questions related to the impact of U.S. immigration policy on the labor market incorporation of migrants and the process of immigrant incorporation in new U.S. destinations. She has begun a new tri-city project, funded by the NSF that examines immigrant parent involvement in schools in Chicago, New York, and Nashville.
Suet-ling Pong is Professor of Education, Sociology, and Demography at Penn State. Dr. Pong's research on sociology of education centers on the relationship between family structure and children's education, parental practices and involvement, and the education of immigrants' children. Currently, she is writing a book (with David Post) about the social consequences of education in Hong Kong, which include the integration of immigrant children from Mainland China.
Andrew Fuligni is Professor of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Science at UCLA. Dr. Fuligni's research has focused on family relationships and adolescent development among culturally and ethnically diverse populations. Much of his work has examined the adaptation of immigrant families to American society, and how that adaptation process ultimately influences the development and adjustment of adolescents in those families. He has examined how youth's sense of duty and obligation to the family shapes their psychological well-being.
Margarita Alegria is Professor of Psychiatry and Director of the Center for Multicultural Mental Health Research at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Alegria researches mental health services for Latinos and other ethnic populations. Her published work focuses on mental health services research, conceptual and methodological issues with minority populations, risk behaviors, and disparities in service delivery. Dr. Alegria is PI of the Latino arm of the National Latino and Asian American Study.
Deborah Roempke Graefe is Research Associate in the Population Research Institute at Penn State. Her research utilizes population-focused and econometric approaches to study public policy development and consequences for the behavior and well-being of immigrant and poor families. Dr. Graefe's current research on health disparities addresses the importance of residential context, including availability of appropriate health care facilities and the immigrant receptivity climate, for access to and use of health care among children in Mexican immigrant families.
Robert E. Roberts is Professor of Behavioral Sciences at the School of Public Health, University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston. His research focuses on the role of culture in relation to the etiology and natural history of mental health problems. He has conducted research comparing ethnocultural groups within the United States and cross-national research, examining the cross-cultural reliability and validity of measures. More recently, he has been working on the role of obesity as a risk factor for psychological distress among adolescents and adults.
Cheryl Boyce is Associate Director for Pediatric Research Training and Career Development; and Chief of the Child Abuse and Neglect Program within the Division of Developmental Translational Research (DDTR) at the NIMH, NIH, and Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS). She serves as the project officer for numerous research projects and consults with Federal agencies, those in clinical practice and the Nation's public regarding issues of research training, child abuse, health disparities, social and cultural issues, and developmental psychopathology.
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