Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: The Dominican Constitution confers birthright citizenship to anyone born in the country with the exception of persons who are in “transit” through the island. In order 5 gain access to Dominican citizenship, subjects are required to acquire a “cedula” or national identity card. Children of “mixed” unions, namely Dominican and Haitian unions, have traditionally been ascribed a Haitian identity making it difficult, and in many cases impossible, to acquire a “cedula”. In 2005, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights issued a ruling denouncing the Dominican government’s discriminatory practices and demanding that the government take the necessary action to address this problem. In response, the Dominican Supreme Court of Justice responded by re-defining the notion of “transit” in such a manner that it would treat the children of Haitians born in the country, as people in transit. In both cases, women’s bodies became a contested terrain where the Dominican government demarcated its xenophobic national boundaries. This paper explores some of the tensions and legal and political implications of these two rulings.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: The Effects of Immigration on Religion
Among Three Generations of Dominican and Puerto Rican Women


This paper discusses several years of ongoing research of Dominican and Puerto Rican women and their relative commitment to religion over three generations. The first generation of our respondents were born and largely grew up in the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico while second and third generations grew up in New York and surrounding areas.
Women usually inculcated religious beliefs in their children and which did not change much over the three generations. We found a decline over three generations in religious commitment as defined by attending church. However, we also speculate that this decline in religious commitment may be a change in the way religion is practiced with more religious observance taking place in the home and less at church.
The decline in Catholicism saw an increased participation in Protestant religious groups often of the fundamentalist variety. Two possible explanations for this are: the Catholic church rarely had priests in the continental United States at least in the beginning of both immigrations who spoke Spanish while fundamentalist religious groups were quick to use Spanish speaking religious figures; and secondly, the fundamentalist religions may have seemed more appropriate for the new environment. We also suspect that non-Christian practices such as Santeria and Voodou are more wide-spread among our respondents than they admitted to. The denial of such non-Christian practices may have to do with the negative stigma attached to non-Christian practices

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This paper examines divergent approaches to and definitions of Social Capital, drawing on the experiences of grassroots development projects the author observed during over a year of participant observation in the Dominican Republic. Neither the “norms” approach to social capital espoused by Robert Putnam nor the “networks” approach put forward by economic sociologists Mark Granovetter and Alejandro Portes adequately explained the diverse outcomes of microfinance arrangements in the Dominican villages studied. Whether individuals met their obligations to microloan funds or rotating credit associations depended more on the meanings that these institutions had for them than their community’s generalized norms about such obligations or the networks in which they were embedded. The author proposes an extension of social capital theory to include cultural embeddedness, examining the social meaning of credit and debt, along the lines of Viviana Zelizer’s work. This paper is part of an ongoing project to study the symbolic and cultural elements of microfinance arrangements.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: A main finding of this paper is that Dominican and Mexican immigrants incorporate into separate work sectors aided by distinct networks and household structures. Mexicans’ access to jobs is contingent upon a wider spread of network links established by earlier cohorts. The expansion of these links as well as the “in-between” racial identity of Mexicans in NYC contributes to the group’s increased work integration and work niche expansion. These processes connect newly arrived Mexican women into sectors through spouses/male partners’ network links and equally enable them to cross racial and class boundaries within work establishments not easily accessible to Dominicans or other minority groups in NYC. Hence, I argue that as a result, Mexicans are experiencing a more ethnicized immigrant adjustment process in New York City, one which contrasts the more marginalized and isolated, racialized integration which characterizes the experiences of poor and working poor Dominican women in the 1990s.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Researchers have argued that immigrant parents with low levels of human capital can use ethnic social capital to compensate for their structural disadvantages and successfully navigate the American schooling system and the college pipeline for their children. Through interviews with working-class second generation Chinese and Dominicans, who have gone on to college, I examine how parents are able to mobilize (or not) ethnic social capital in these processes. Through ethnic social capital, Chinese parents emphasize specialized public high schools, and Dominican parents Catholic school. However, financial capital and neighborhood incorporation influence the returns to ethnic social capital. While there is social class variation, ethnic social capital is still of use to the Chinese in searching out the better public schools. Dominican parents unable to afford Catholic school lack information about public school stratification, and turn to neighborhood schools, which are often low-performing. In both cases, the importance of non-ethnic social capital is highlighted.