Embracing Diversity:
Latino Immigration and the Transformation of American Society

PURPOSE

This national conference will bring together graduate students from the social sciences and the humanities who research ethnic/racial, cultural or religious diversity. It will focus on the how the recent wave of Latino immigration has transformed the American society. Conference participants will explore how Americans of different ethnic/racial backgrounds experience increased Latino immigration and the increasing diversity in the American society more generally. In addition, the conference will examine the unique benefits that this wave of immigration offers, the challenges that it poses, and the relationships between immigration and inequality, social trust, civic engagement and political participation. With this conference, we aim to provide a platform where graduate students can engage in both theoretical and empirical discussions of social processes underlying the incorporation of Latino immigrants and their children and the role of policy and institutions in shaping migration flows.

Themes include:

• Diversity and Latino immigration: benefits and challenges.
• The social, economic and political incorporation of Latino immigrants and their children.
• The role of policy (federal, state, and/or local), institutions, labor markets, gender, and social networks in shaping immigrant flows, incorporation, and transnational behavior.
• Intergroup relations and bridging across racial/ethnic divides: how will new Latinos complicate or be impacted by existing relations?
• Theoretical and methodological discussions of how to conceptualize and study international and internal migration, legal and illegal immigration, especially from Mexico.
• Latino immigrants, ethnic neighborhood concentration and social mobility among the second generation.