Publications by Author: Hochschild, Jennifer L.

2012

A glance at a newspaper or the wait staff in a restaurant, at high-technology hubs such as Silicon Valley, on the streets of cities like Berlin or Barcelona, or at the students in our classes makes it clear how many immigrants now live in North America and Western Europe, and how important they are to our cultural, economic, and social lives. A glance at the landscape of governance, however, does not give a clear or consistent image of immigrants’ presence. In 2007, only twelve Representatives in the 435-member United States Congress were immigrants, as were only two each of the 50 governors and 100 senators. Immigrants cast only 6.3 percent of the vote in the American presidential election of 2008, despite being almost 13 percent of the total adult population (Garbaye and Mollenkopf forthcoming 2012). As of 2009, 11 deputies in the 622-seat German Bundestag were foreign-born (Alonso and Claro da Fonseca 2009). As of 2007, no French citizen of Mahgrébin origin had sat in the 555-member National Assembly.

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2011
Hochschild, Jennifer L., Vesla Weaver, and Traci Burch. 2011. “Destabilizing the American Racial Order.” Daedalus. Daedalus. Publisher's Version Abstract

Since America’s racial disparities remain as deep-rooted after Barack Obama’s election as they were before, it was only a matter of time until the myth of postracism exploded in our collective national face.
–Peniel Joseph, The Chronicle of Higher Education, July 27, 2009

In electing me, the voters picked the candidate of their choice, not their race, which foreshadowed the historic election of Barack Obama in 2008. We’ve come a long way in Memphis, and ours is a story of postracial politics.
–Congressman Steve Cohen, Letter to the Editor, The New York Times, September 18, 2009

Race is not going to be quite as big a deal as it is now; in the America of tomorrow . . . race will not be synonymous with destiny.
–Ellis Cose, Newsweek, January 11, 20101

Are racial divisions and commitments in the United States just as deep-rooted as they were before the 2008 presidential election, largely eliminated, or persistent but on the decline? As the epigraphs show, one can easily find each of these pronouncements, among others, in the American public media. Believing any one of them—or any other, beyond the anodyne claim that this is “a time of transition”—is likely to be a mistake, since there will be almost as much evidence against as for it. Instead, it is more illuminating to try to sort out what is changing in the American racial order, what persists or is becoming even more entrenched, and what is likely to affect the balance between change and continuity. That, at any rate, is what we propose to do (if briefly) in this article.

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2010
Hochschild, Jennifer L. 2010. “How, If at All, Is Racial and Ethnic Stratification Changing, and What Should We Do about It?” Cambridge University Press. Cambridge University Press. Publisher's Version Abstract

These chapters on the politics of groups push the reader to consider a difficult but essential question: How, if at all, are old forms of racial and ethnic stratification changing? A broadly persuasive answer would have powerful implications ranging from constitutional design and electoral strategies to interpersonal relationships and private emotions. However, the question is not only difficult to answer for obvious empirical reasons, but also because, for scholars just as for the general public, one’s own views inevitably shape what one considers to be legitimate evidence and appropriate evaluation of it. So the study of racial dynamics is exasperatingly circular, even with the best research and most impressive researchers. Although my concerns about circularity lead me to raise questions about all three chapters, I want to begin by pointing out their quality. Each provides the reader with a clear thesis, well defended by relevant evidence and attentive to alternative arguments or weaknesses in the preferred one. Each chapter grows out of a commitment to the best values of liberal democracy—individual freedom and dignity, along with collective control by the citizenry over their governors—but commitments do not override careful analysis. Each chapter is a pleasure to read and teaches us something new and important. My observations begin with a direct comparison of Pildes’s and Karlan’s respective evaluations of the United States’ Voting Rights Act and its appropriate reforms. I then bring in Hutchings and his colleagues’ analysis of American racial and ethnic groups’ views of each other, which provides some of the essential background for adjudicating between Pildes’s and Karlan’s positions. Underpinning my discussion, and becoming more explicit in the conclusion, is an observation that is not new to me but is nevertheless important: People who identify as progressives are often deeply suspicious of attempts to alter current policies about or understandings of racial and ethnic stratification, whereas people who identify as conservatives are often most eager to see and promote modifications in current practices. There is something deeply ironic here—both in the difficulties of many on the left to recognize what has changed and in the difficulties of many on the right to recognize what has not.

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Hochschild, Jennifer L. 2010. “If Democracies Need Informed Voters, How Can They Thrive While Expanding Enfranchisement?” Election Law Journal. Election Law Journal. Publisher's Version Abstract

In a democracy, knowledge is power.
—Jerit et al. 2006, 266

The two simplest truths I know about the distribution of political information in modern electorates are that the mean is low and the variance high.
—Converse 1990, 372

If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.
—Thomas Jefferson, letter to Charles Yancey, 1816

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While Canada is often described as the most and France as one of the least successful countries in the realm of immigrant incorporation, the question remains unresolved of how to evaluate a country’s policies for dealing with immigration and incorporation relative to that of others.
Our strategy is to examine the relationships among 1) countries’ policies and practices with regard to admitting immigrants, 2) their educational policies for incorporating first and second generation immigrants, and 3) educational achievement of immigrants and their children.
We compare eight western industrialized countries. We find that immigration regimes, educational regimes, and schooling outcomes are linked distinctively in each country.
>States that are liberal, or effective, on one dimension may be relatively conservative, or ineffective, on another, and countries vary in their willingness and ability to help disadvantaged people achieve upward mobility through immigration and schooling.
>We conclude that by some normative standards, France has a better immigration regime than does Canada. Overall, this study points to new ways to study immigration and new normative standards for judging states’ policies of incorporation.

 

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No self-respecting political scientist will accept the cliché that demography is destiny; political structures, practices, and leaders intervene between raw numbers and electoral or policy outcomes. Nevertheless, as a country’s demography changes, if the politics do not change in accord with the circumstances or desires of the new residents, one sees greater and greater strain and even disruption in governance. That is the situation now with regard to immigration in many wealthy western countries. The crucial question is whether the political effects of native-borns’ anxiety about immigration will slow migration or keep migrants out of the social, economic, and political mainstreams, or conversely, whether migrants and their allies will become strong enough to create political dynamics in their favor. The answer to that question will profoundly affect most countries in the world

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Hochschild, Jennifer L., and Vesla Weaver. 2010. ““There’s No One as Irish as Barack O’Bama”: The Policy and Politics of American Multiracialism.” Perspectives on Politics. Perspectives on Politics. Publisher's Version Abstract

For the first time in American history, the 2000 United States census allowed individuals to choose more than one race. That new policy sets up our exploration of whether and how multiracialism is entering Americans’ understanding and practice of race. By analyzing briefly earlier cases of racial construction, we uncover three factors important to understanding if and how intensely a feedback effect for racial classification will be generated. Using this framework, we find that multiracialism has been institutionalized in the federal government, and is moving toward institutionalization in the private sector and other governmental units. In addition, the small proportion of Americans who now define themselves as multiracial is growing absolutely and relatively, and evidence suggests a continued rise. Increasing multiracial identification is made more likely by racial mixture’s growing prominence in Amer- ican society—demographically, culturally, economically, and psychologically. However, the politics side of the feedback loop is complicated by the fact that identification is not identity. Traditional racial or ethnic loyalties and understandings remain strong, including among potential multiracial identifiers. Therefore, if mixed-race identification is to evolve into a multiracial identity, it may not be at the expense of existing group consciousness. Instead, we expect mixed-race identity to be contextual, fluid, and additive, so that it can be layered onto rather than substituted for traditional monoracial commitments. If the multiracial movement successfully challenges the longstanding understanding and practice of “one drop of blood” racial groups, it has the potential to change much of the politics and policy of American race relations.

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2008
Hochschild, Jennifer L. 2008. “Clarence N. Stone and the Study of Urban Politics”. Abstract

Among political scientists, the study of urban politics, whether within one nation or cross nationally, resembles the comparative study of national politics—with one crucial exception. In both the urban field and the comparative field, scholars typically come to know one or several localities very well... Clarence Stone is in the latter camp, with disturbingly few peers in political science scholarship on urban politics. He is deeply knowledgeable about Atlanta, Georgia, having studied its political development for decades. He is familiar with a dozen other American cities, having studied their educational reform efforts for years.With coauthors or independently, he has developed broad theoretical frameworks—regime analysis, the “power to” approach, the systemic bias of power and inequality, the centrality of agenda setting and coordination, the urgent need for democratic decision making—that explain actions and outcomes not only in his cities but in many others as well. All of this work is undergirded by a few simple, clear principles about human nature and the conduct of social science that are easy to state and surprisingly fecund.

hochschild_clarence.pdf
Hochschild, Jennifer L., and Brenna M. Powell. 2008. “Racial Reorganization and the United States Census 1850-1930: Mulattoes, Half-Breeds, Mixed Parentage, Hindoos, and the Mexican.” Studies in American Political Development. Abstract

Between 1850 and 1930, demographic upheaval in the United States was connected to reorganization of the racial order. Socially and politically recognized boundaries between groups shifted, new groups emerged, others disappeared, and notions of who belonged in which category changed. All recognized racial groups—blacks, whites, Indians, Asians, Mexicans and others—were affected. This article investigates how and why census racial classification policies changed during this period, only to stabilize abruptly before World War II. In the context of demographic transformations and their political consequences, we find that census policy in any given year was driven by a combination of scientific, political, and ideological motivations.

Based on this analysis, we rethink existing theoretical approaches to censuses and racial classification, arguing that a nation's census is deeply implicated in and helps to construct its social and political order. Censuses provide the concepts, taxonomy, and substantive information by which a nation understands its component parts as well as the contours of the whole; censuses both create the image and provide the mirror of that image for a nation's self-reflection. We conclude by outlining the meaning of this period in American history for current and future debates over race and classification.

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This paper was originally: Hochschild, Jennifer L., and Brenna M. Powell. "Racial Reorganization and the United States Census 1850-1930: Mulattoes, Half-Breeds, Mixed Parentage, Hindoos, and the Mexican." Working Paper 2007-28, Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University, 2007.

2007

Individually or in combination, two federal policies have the potential to transform the American racial and ethnic hierarchy more than any other policy changes since the civil rights movement. They are the Immigration Act of 1965 and the introduction of the "mark one or more" instruction in the race question on the 2000 census. Unlike the civil rights activities of the 1940s through 1960s, the first change was not intended to overturn the racial order and the second was a response to a process of transformation already underway. Both were, and remain, highly dependent on the isolated choices of many people around the world, as well as strategies of political and business leaders and economic or other forces outside anyone's control. Because the long-term effects of these policies have not played out fully, their ultimate outcomes will remain unclear for a long time—but they could be substantial.

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