RESEARCH
The Ohio Immigrant Workers Survey Project was the feature story of the Wooster Alumni Magazine's Winter 2019 Issue.
Ohio Immigrant Workers Survey Project
I am a co-Principal Investigator on a collaborative project with a group of researchers from The College of Wooster, Kenyon College, Denison University, and Ohio-Wesleyan University. We partnered with the Immigrant Worker Project, a 501(c)(3) that offers legal aid to migrants and asylum seekers to conduct an original survey. Over the course of seven weeks in the summer of 2018 we collected approximately 350 in-depth interviews (conducted in Spanish, K’iche, and English) with Latin American immigrant workers across North East Ohio. After presenting preliminary results in the Spring of 2019 at the Latin American Studies Association meeting in Boston, MA, we have now entered the data analysis and writing stage of the project.
Awards
Recipient of the 2023 Emerging Scholar Award from the Latino Caucus of the American Political Science Association
Recipient of the 2019 American Political Science Association Fund for Latino Scholarship
Publications
Peer-Reviewed:
2024. “When Demography Is (Not) Destiny: Exploring Identity and Issue-Cross-Pressures among Latino Voters in the 2020 Presidential Election” Accepted at Social Science Quarterly.
2024. "El Cuento del Destino: Latino Voters and the Myth of an Inevitable Democratic Majority." Forthcoming. Political Science Quarterly.
2023. "The Wall between Latinas and Latinos? Gender and Immigration Enforcement Attitudes among U.S. Latina/o Voters." Politics & Gender 20(1): 29–53. Link to article.
2023. “Raids at Work: Latinx Immigrant Labor Precarity and the Spectacle of ICE Worksite Enforcement Raids.” Political Research Quarterly 76(3), 1529-1541. Link to article.
with Joe R. Tafoya and David L. Leal. 2022. "Nationalism in the ‘Nation of Immigrants’: Race, Ethnicity, and National Attachment." The Forum: A Journal of Applied Research in Contemporary Politics. Link to article.
with Chris Busey and Erika Davis. 2021. “‘All Enemies, Foreign and Domestic’: The Presence of Anti-Latinx Political Rhetoric and Latinxs as Third World Threats in Secondary U.S. Citizenship Curriculum.” Teachers College Record v123 (2). Link to article.. Coverage from The College of Wooster
2020. “Allies, Antagonists, or Ambivalent? Exploring Latino attitudes about the Black Lives Matter Movement.” Hispanic Journal of Behavioral Sciences v42(4). Link to article.
with David L. Leal. 2020. “Latinos Por Trump? Latinos and the 2016 Presidential Election.” Social Science Quarterly v101(3): 1115-1131.
Link to article. Coverage of research in New York Times op-ed.
"Latinos Por Trump?" Abstract:
Objective: This article examines the unresolved puzzle of the Latino vote in the 2016 presidential election. The National Election Pool (NEP) estimated that Trump received 28 percent, which surprised many given Trump's rhetoric, but it was just one of several estimates (ranging from 18 to over 30 percent).
Methods: We analyze the 2016 and 2012 American National Election Study, Pew's 2016 and 2012 National Survey of Latinos, the 2016 Cooperative Congressional Election Study, and various media polls.
Results: The data indicate that (1) Trump improved on Romney among key groups of Latinos (Protestants, low income, and the third generation) but lost ground among others; (2) Clinton underperformed Obama across multiple dimensions; and (3) many Latino undecided voters and third‐party supporters broke late for Trump.
Conclusion: Trump did better than expected among Latinos. This highlights an increasingly diverse Latino electorate and complicates our understanding of the political implications of demographic change.
Other Publications:
Blog Post: “Both Trump and Biden are being pushed by the American public’s illiberal turn on immigration and the Mexico-US border.” London School of Economics U.S. American Politics and Policy Blog. January 18, 2024. Link here.
Blog Post: “Steve King may be leaving Congress, but many of his once fringe immigration policy ideas are now mainstream in the Republican Party.” London School of Economics U.S. American Politics and Policy Blog. June 18, 2020. Link here.
Book Review: Review of The Rise of the Latino Vote: A History. By Benjamin Francis-Fallon. International Migration Review. Link
Book Review: Review of Defending Latina/o Immigrant Communities: The Xenophobic Era of Trump and Beyond. By Alvaro Huerta. Journal of Race, Ethnicity, and Politics. Link
with David Leal. 2020. "One in four Latinos voted for Trump last time. They’ll likely do so again." The Washington Post. The Monkey Cage blog. November 2. Link
Book Review: Review of Sanctuary Cities: The Politics of Refuge. By Loren Collingwood and Benjamin Gonzalez O’Brien. Perspectives on Politics. 2020. v18(3). Link
Two Entries: “La Raza Unida Party” & “Willie Velasquez and the Southwest Voter Registration and Education Project.” September 2019. In Norma Iglesias Prieto and Adelaida Del Castillo (Eds.), The Chicana and Chicano Movement: From Aztlán to Zapatistas, ABC-CLIO/Greenwood Praeger. Google Books. Barnes & Noble.
with David L. Leal, and Joe Tafoya. “Introduction: The 2008 Primary and General Election Campaign.” Forthcoming. In Louis and David L. Leal, (Eds.) 2020. Latinos and the 2008 Elections: The Politics of Winning Coalitions. New York: Routledge.
“Pathway to Citizenship.” 2016. In Alvaro Huerta, Norma Iglesias-Prieto, and Donathan L. Brown (Eds.), Contemporary Issues for People of Color: Surviving and Thriving in the U.S. Today (5 of 5 volumes - Immigration/Migration). Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO / Greenwood, pp. 259-266. Link.
with Casellas, Jason. 2013. “Lone Star Lines: The Battle over Redistricting in Texas.” In William Miller and Jeremy Walling (Eds.),The Political Battle over Congressional Redistricting. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, pp. 287-302. Link.
Select Works In Progress:
Book Manuscript in Preparation: Surviving in the Heartland: Latinx Immigrants in Rural Ohio. Editors: Alvaro Corral, Michele Leiby, and The Immigrant Worker Project. To be completed Summer 2024.
with José Villagrán. “Working in the Shadow of the Wall: The Politics of Low-Wage Work in the Rio Grande Valley” Forthcoming.
“‘Trump es la cabeza de todo esto’: Rhetoric, Racism, and the Political Socialization of Latina/o Immigrants in a New Destination” Under Review
Contributor to 2020 Collaborative Multi-racial Post-Election Survey
Reviewer for Referred Journals:
Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology; Political Science Quarterly; Politics Research Quarterly; American Politics Research; Politics, Groups, and Identities; Politics & Religion