Tomas Jimenez

Associate Professor of Sociology and Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity, Stanford University

Making Sense of Immigration Hysteria in the Nation of Immigrants

 

Professor Tomas Jimenez focuses his research and writing on immigration, assimilation, social mobility, and ethnic and racial identity. His latest book, The Other Side of Assimilation: How Immigrants are Changing American Life, uses interviews from a race and class spectrum of Silicon Valley residents to show how a relational form of assimilation changes both newcomers (immigrants and their children) and established individuals (people born in the US to US-born parents.) His first book, Replenished Ethnicity: Mexican Americans, Immigration, and Identity, draws on interviews and participant observation to understand how uninterrupted Mexican immigration influences the ethnic identity of later-generation Mexican Americans. The book was awarded the American Sociological Association’s Sociology of Latinos as section Distinguished Book Award.

Professor Jimenez has also published his research in Science, American Sociological Review, American Academy of Sciences, Social Sciences Quarterly, and the Annual Review of Sociology. He has taught at the University of California, San Diego and was named a Sigma Xi Distinguished Lecturer (1917-1919). He was the American Sociological Association Congressional Fellow in the office of U.S representative Mike Honda, where he served as a legislative aide for immigration, veterans’ affairs, housing, and election reform. Professor Jimenez has written opinion editorials about immigration assimilation in news outlets that include The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and CNN.com.