Sociology

In an era of historically high US incarceration rates, the transition from prison to the community of released prisoners has had far-reaching effects on the population and poverty dynamics of neighborhoods of concentrated disadvantage. Despite a large body of research studying the effects of incarceration, relatively few studies have analyzed in detail the process of leaving prison and entering a community.

This project is a study of U.S.-born, citizen youth to better understand the intergenerational transfer of citizenship status. The project compares the experience of youth from undocumented and documented immigrant families. The legal-illegal dichotomy ingrained in U.S. immigration policies is conceptually limiting for understanding the diversity of citizenship experiences for the children of immigrants. A more nuanced analysis is now required to further uncover the generational effects of parental undocumented status on their U.S. born children with citizenship.