Research Program on Migration & Immigration

The purpose of the Research Program on Migration & Immigration is to stimulate, plan and carry out basic and policy-relevant research on migration and immigration. In order to encourage and help develop multi-investigator, multi-disciplinary, and interdisciplinary research projects, the Program sponsors a number of activities, including meetings to discuss ideas for future research projects, “brainstorming” and information sessions about research funding opportunities, presentations of research findings and work in progress, seminars by both UCI and external speakers, and workshops and conferences.

Much of the Program's research examines the multigenerational incorporation experiences of immigrant groups in the United States, especially those occurring in diverse contexts such as Southern California.  These devote as much attention to what happens to the children and grandchildren of immigrants as to what happens to immigrants themselves.

Examples of current or recent projects include studies examining:

• The long-term experiences of the children of immigrants in the United States, especially their educational attainments and situations;
• The nature and extent of multiple kinds of incorporation among various second- and later-generation immigrant groups in Los Angeles;
• The implications of immigration for changing race/ethnicity and multiracial identification in the United States;
• The volume, nature and legal status of U.S. and California immigration (especially Mexican immigration); and
• Comparisons of the incorporation experiences of U.S. and European immigrant groups.

 

Campus Center for Demographic and Social Analysis (C-DASA)

Prior to the creation of the Center for Population, Inequality, and Policy, the Campus Center for Demographic and Social Analysis (C-DASA) organized research collaboration, seminars, and training for researchers and graduate students across the university. C-DASA affiliates used large-scale field experiments to study the effects of poverty on early childhood and jailhouse interviews to understand incarceration's impact on families. They capitalized on smart phone survey methods to follow up on hard-to-reach populations like parolees and adolescents over time. They linked millions of geo-coded records on ER visits to Census Data to determine whether community health centers reduce emergency room use for psychiatric care. They marshalled data from US states to determine whether higher minimum wages account for declining youth employment. With hundreds of millions of supermarket transactions, they measured whether U.S. Farm Bill programs led food stamp recipients to buy healthier foods. To predict healthy babies, faculty affiliates monitored movements in utero. From tiny kicks to big data, C-DASA promoted collaboration and advances in population science and well-being with weekly seminars, notices of funding opportunities, graduate student training, and small seed grants for research.

The School of Social Sciences offers graduate training in Demographic and Social Analysis (DASA).