Publications by Author: Hochschild, Jennifer L.

2013
Outsiders No More? Models of Immigrant Political Incorporation
Hochschild, Jennifer L, Jacqueline Chattopadhyay, Claudine Gay, and Michael Jones-Correa. 2013. Outsiders No More? Models of Immigrant Political Incorporation. Oxford University Press. Publisher's Version Abstract
Outsiders No More? brings together a multidisciplinary group of scholars to consider pathways by which immigrants may be incorporated into the political processes of western democracies. At a time when immigrants are increasingly significant political actors in many democratic polities, this volume makes a timely and valuable intervention by pushing researchers to articulate causal dynamics, provide clear definitions and measurable concepts, and develop testable hypotheses. By including historians, sociologists, and political scientists, by ranging across North America and Western Europe, by addressing successful and failed incorporative efforts, this handbook offers guides for anyone seeking to develop a dynamic, unified, and supple model of immigrant political incorporation.
2012
Creating a New Racial Order: How Immigration, Multiracialism, Genomics, and the Young Can Remake Race in America
The American racial order—the beliefs, institutions, and practices that organize relationships among the nation's races and ethnicities—is undergoing its greatest transformation since the 1960s. Creating a New Racial Order takes a groundbreaking look at the reasons behind this dramatic change, and considers how different groups of Americans are being affected. Through revealing narrative and striking research, the authors show that the personal and political choices of Americans will be critical to how, and how much, racial hierarchy is redefined in decades to come.

The authors outline the components that make up a racial order and examine the specific mechanisms influencing group dynamics in the United States: immigration, multiracialism, genomic science, and generational change. Cumulatively, these mechanisms increase heterogeneity within each racial or ethnic group, and decrease the distance separating groups from each other. The authors show that individuals are moving across group boundaries, that genomic science is challenging the whole concept of race, and that economic variation within groups is increasing. Above all, young adults understand and practice race differently from their elders: their formative memories are 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, and Obama's election—not civil rights marches, riots, or the early stages of immigration. Blockages could stymie or distort these changes, however, so the authors point to essential policy and political choices.

Portraying a vision, not of a postracial America, but of a different racial America, Creating a New Racial Order examines how the structures of race and ethnicity are altering a nation.

2010

One possible outcome of the economic crash of 2008 was that the majority or mainstream members of a society would direct their anger and fear against the minority or marginal members of their society.  Commentators on television or the radio would claim, “it’s all the fault of the immigrants!” or “if we didn’t hand over so much of our tax dollars to the poor, the economy would not have deteriorated so much,” or “social benefits to African Americans [or German Turks] have distorted the housing market.”  Citizens would come to believe these assertions, politicians would echo them—and the upshot would be not only a deteriorating national and international economy but also increased hostility and fear among racial, ethnic, or nationality groups in a country.  Social solidarity would decline, perhaps irrevocably.

2008_crisis_and_solidarity_in_europe.pdf

WCFIA Working Paper 10-0004, January 2010

2009
Hochschild, Jennifer L, and John Mollenkopf. 2009. Bringing Outsiders In: Transatlantic Perspectives on Immigrant Political Incorporation. Cornell University Press. Publisher's Version Abstract

For immigrants, politics can play a significant role in determining whether and how they assimilate. In Bringing Outsiders In, leading social scientists present individual cases and work toward a comparative synthesis of how immigrants affect—and are affected by—civic life on both sides of the Atlantic.

Just as in the United States, large immigrant minority communities have been emerging across Europe. While these communities usually make up less than one-tenth of national populations, they typically have a large presence in urban areas, sometimes approaching a majority. That immigrants can have an even greater political salience than their population might suggest has been demonstrated in recent years in places as diverse as Sweden and France. Attending to how local and national states encourage or discourage political participation, the authors assess the relative involvement of immigrants in a wide range of settings. Jennifer Hochschild and John Mollenkopf provide a context for the particular cases and comparisons and draw a set of analytic and empirical conclusions regarding incorporation.

Download sample chapter: "Modeling Immigrant Political Incorporation" (PDF 80.84 KB) by Jennifer Hochschild and John Mollenkopf.

2007
Hochschild, Jennifer L, and Vesla Weaver. 2007. “The Skin Color Paradox and the American Racial Order.” Social Forces 86 (2): 1-28. Abstract

Dark-skinned blacks in the United States have lower socioeconomic status, more punitive relationships with the criminal justice system, diminished prestige, and less likelihood of holding elective office compared with their lighter counterparts. This phenomenon of “colorism” both occurs within the African American community and is expressed by outsiders, and most blacks are aware of it. Nevertheless, blacks’ perceptions of discrimination, belief that their fates are linked, or attachment to their race almost never vary by skin color. We identify this disparity between treatment and political attitudes as “the skin color paradox,” and use it as a window into the politics of race in the United States over the past half-century.

2007_27_hochschild.pdf
2003
Hochschild, Jennifer L, and Nathan Scovronick. 2003. The American Dream and the Public Schools. Oxford University Press. Publisher's Version Abstract

The American Dream and the Public Schools examines issues that have excited and divided Americans for years, including desegregation, school funding, testing, vouchers, bilingual education, multicultural education, and ability grouping. These seem to be separate problems, but much of the contention over them comes down to the same thing—an apparent conflict, rooted in the American dream, between policies designed to promote each student's ability to pursue success and those designed to insure the good of all students or the nation as a whole. The authors show how policies to promote individual success too often benefit only those already privileged by race or class, and too often conflict, unnecessarily, with policies that are intended to benefit everyone.