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Biography of Alejandro Portes BIOGRAPHY Biography of Alejandro Portes BIOGRAPHY lejandro Portes is a premier Ethnic Enclaves sociologist who has shaped the While at Austin, Portes launched a study of immigration and ur- study comparing the adaptation of Cu- A banization for 30 years. He is ban and Mexican immigrants arriving in chair of the department of sociology at Texas and Florida during the mid-1970s. Princeton University (Princeton, NJ) as ‘‘Up to that point, all Latin immigrants well as co-founder and director of Prin- were seen as pretty much the same. I ceton’s Center for Migration and Devel- wanted to see how the two major Latin opment. In 1998, Portes became a fellow groups arriving at the time resembled of the American Academy of Arts and and differed,’’ he says. Approximately Sciences, and he was elected to the 1,500 Mexican immigrants and Cuban National Academy of Sciences in 2001. refugees were interviewed as soon as From 1998 to 1999, Portes served as they arrived in the United States. president of the American Sociological Through the 1970s, Portes and his col- Association. He has authored and edited leagues followed the progress of these numerous books and has published arti- immigrant groups, interviewing them cles on a range of policy issues, includ- three and six years after their arrival. ing immigrant assimilation, Latin Ameri- ͞ Portes discovered that Cuban exiles in can politics, and United States Cuba Miami were creating a new type of so- relations (1–4). Alejandro Portes cial structure consisting of highly entre- A Cuban exile himself, Portes has preneurial communities that employed spent his career tracking the lives of dif- many of their own coethnics, including ferent immigrant nationalities in the the strongest sociology departments in the most recent arrivals to the United United States. He has chronicled the SOCIAL SCIENCES the country. For his dissertation, Portes States; he named this novel social struc- causes and consequences of immigration studied political radicalism in the urban ture the ‘‘ethnic enclave.’’ By this to the United States, with an emphasis slums of Chile, a country that was polar- unique form of adaptation, Portes ar- on informal economies, transnational ized at the time. ‘‘I went to Chile to gues that an immigrant could spend his communities, and ethnic enclaves (5–8). or her entire life within the confines of In Portes’s Inaugural Article (9), pub- study the political attitudes among low- income urban dwellers in the squatter the ethnic enclave. ‘‘You could be born lished in this issue of PNAS, he and in a Cuban clinic, be employed in a Cu- Hao study the children of immigrants settlements surrounding the city, imme- diately before the election of the com- ban factory or enterprise, and be buried and the factors that determine their suc- in a Cuban cemetery,’’ he said. After cessful adaptation to life in the United munist–socialist alliance to power, and that became my first major study,’’ he studying the Cuban ethnic enclave in States, such as family support and Miami, Portes and colleagues identified recalls. In conjunction with his mentors school socioeconomic status (SES). other immigrant groups, such as the at the University of Wisconsin, William Russian Jews and the Japanese, that had A Need to Understand the Past Sewell and Archibald Haller, Portes au- adopted similar patterns of adaptation, Portes was born in Havana, Cuba, on thored papers on social stratification greatly facilitating their economic suc- October 13, 1944. He began his under- and status attainment in three major cess at the turn of the 20th century. graduate studies at the University of sociology journals in the late 1960s (10– ‘‘But then, not all immigrants have the Havana in 1959 but left after just one 12). His dissertation work was published necessary education, human capital, or year. At the time, Cuba was in the midst in Urban Latin America (2), a book co- favorable reception to create these con- of a revolution, as dictator Fulgencio authored by John Walton. In addition to ditions,’’ Portes acknowledges. The study Batista was overthrown and a new re- the doctorate that he earned in 1970, spawned several articles (13–15) and gime was established under the leader- the University of Wisconsin later Latin Journey: Cuban and Mexican Im- ship of Fidel Castro. ‘‘I left in 1960 awarded Portes an honorary doctorate migrants in the United States (16), a book because of opposition to the regime and in 1998. In 2001, Portes’s alma mater coauthored by Robert L. Bach. became a political exile,’’ he says. In further distinguished him by asking him In 1975, Portes joined the faculty at 1963, Portes resumed his studies at the to deliver the inaugural William H. Duke University as a full professor. He Catholic University of Argentina in Bue- Sewell Memorial Lecture. continued his analyses of immigration nos Aires. He completed his B.A. in After graduate school, Portes ac- and social integration, combining an sociology in 1965 at Creighton Univer- interest in urbanization and develop- sity in Omaha, NE. Portes was drawn to cepted a position as assistant professor ment in the Third World, primarily the field of sociology because he wanted of sociology at the University of Illinois Latin America. During this period, to make sense of his own experience at Urbana–Champaign. After one year Portes spent a year in Brazil as a pro- during the Cuban revolution. ‘‘I needed at Illinois, he became a tenured associ- gram adviser for the Ford Foundation to understand what had happened in the ate professor at the University of Texas conducting a study on housing policy country where I was born. [Cuba] was at Austin, where he was also associate and the urban slums of Rio de Janeiro literally taken away from me and my director of Latin American studies. family by a major social process that I Portes continued his dissertation work could barely understand,’’ said Portes. on Chilean political radicalism before This is a Biography of a recently elected member of the Portes pursued his graduate education turning to the study of immigration, a National Academy of Sciences to accompany the member’s in sociology at the University of Wis- topic that would become his major re- Inaugural Article on page 11920. consin in Madison, which housed one of search focus in future years. © 2004 by The National Academy of Sciences of the USA www.pnas.org͞cgi͞doi͞10.1073͞pnas.0405169101 PNAS ͉ August 17, 2004 ͉ vol. 101 ͉ no. 33 ͉ 11917–11919 Downloaded by guest on September 23, 2021 during the military dictatorship (17, 18). on the experiences of pre-World War II youths do succeed in schools and in For another year, he was a fellow at the European immigrants, it was clear to their early careers thanks to support Center for Advanced Study in the Be- Portes that the future of ethnic groups from their families, ethnic communities, havioral Sciences in Stanford, CA. in the United States would be defined and their own efforts. Nevertheless, said After four years at Duke, Portes more by the second generation than by Portes, downward assimilation is ‘‘prob- accepted a position as professor of soci- the first. ‘‘Immigrants are often in the lematic because it adds to the minority ology at Johns Hopkins University in society, but not yet of it,’’ he says. First- population trapped in American inner Baltimore in 1981. At Hopkins, Portes generation immigrants may return to cities. Children of immigrants from poor launched a study of the informal econo- their country of origin, but their U.S.- working families who have had a precar- my—an economy created by unregulated born children are U.S. citizens with ious education in bad urban schools are service jobs, such as construction work, American aspirations, and most are here especially at risk of following this path.’’ landscaping, and domestic services. to stay. ‘‘Whether [the children] succeed In 2001, Portes published the results of ‘‘This form of employment is most com- or not, economically and socially, will CILS in Legacies: the Story of the Immi- mon in Latin America and the Third determine the fate of the ethnic groups grant Second Generation, coauthored World, where informal workers are that come out of today’s immigration as with Ruben Rumbaut (25). The book more numerous than those regulated by they did for Irish Americans, Polish has won several awards, including the the state. The population is not covered Americans, and Italian Americans in the Distinguished Scholarly Publication by social security, but labors under these past.’’ Award from the American Sociological irregular conditions,’’ Portes explains. In the late 1980s, Portes and his col- Association. However, Portes and his collaborators league Rube´n G. Rumbaut of Michigan In his PNAS Inaugural Article (9), found that the informal economy was State University launched a labor-inten- Portes describes how the SES of schools also present in the mature, developed sive project called the Children of Immi- works in tandem with the family SES to economies of the United States and grants Longitudinal Study (CILS). With determine children’s academic success. Western Europe as well as those of the the help of local field teams, they inter- Immigrant youths from advantaged fam- former Soviet regime. The comparative viewed more than 5,000 children of im- ilies who also attend advantaged schools project encompassed studies of all world migrants, 8th and 9th graders, in the exhibit greater academic performance regions, including the United States, school systems of Miami, Fort Lauder- than if they had attended average Latin America, Africa, and Europe dale, and San Diego. The children were schools. The opposite happens to chil- (19–21).
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