Tomás R. Jiménez

Tomás Jiménez is an assistant professor of sociology at Stanford University.  He is also a Fellow at the Center for Social Cohesion. His research and writing focus on immigration, assimilation, social mobility, and ethnic and racial identity. His book, Replenished Ethnicity: Mexican Americans, Immigration, and Identity (University of California Press, 2010) draws on interviews and participant observation to understand how uninterrupted Mexican immigration influences the ethnic identity of later-generation Mexican Americans.  The book was recently awarded the American Sociological Association’s Sociology of Latinos/as Section 2011 Distinguished Book Award.  Professor Jiménez has also published this research in the American Journal of Sociology, Ethnic and Racial Studies, Social Science Quarterly, DuBois Review, and the Annual Review of Sociology.  

He is currently working on three projects.  The first - which is funded by grants from the National Science Foundation, the Stanford United Parcel Service Endowment Fund, and the Stanford Institute for Research in the Social Sciences - examines how host-society individuals (US-born of US-born parents) participate in the assimilation process by drawing on in-depth interviews with host-society individuals and observations in three distinct sub-regions in the Silicon Valley: East Palo Alto, Cupertino, and Berryessa. A second project (with Stanford PhD Candidate, Lorena Castro) looks at how immigration becomes part of American national identity by studying a sample of high school US history textbooks from 1930-2005.  A third project (with social psychologist John Dovidio (Yale), political scientist Deborah Schildkraut (Tufts), and social psychologist Yuen Ho (UCLA)), uses lab experiments, survey data, and in-depth interviews to to understand how contextual factors shape the sense of belonging and related intergroup attitudes, behaviors, and support for immigration policies among immigrants and host-society members in the United States. This project is funded by the Russell Sage Foundation.

Professor Jiménez has taught at the University of California, San Diego. He has also been an Irvine Fellow at the New America Foundation.  Before that, he was the American Sociological Association Congressional Fellow in the office of Rep. Michael Honda (CA-15), where he served as a legislative aide for immigration, veterans’ affairs, housing, and election reform.  His writing on policy has appeared in reports for the Immigration Policy Center, and he has written opinion-editorials on the topic of immigrant assimilation in several major news outlets, including the Los Angeles Times, CNN.com, and the San Diego Union-Tribune. He holds a B.S. in sociology from Santa Clara University and A.M. and Ph.D. degrees in sociology from Harvard University.

 

 

 

Curriculum Vitæ

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RESEARCH AREAS

Immigration; Race and Ethnicity; Inequality; Assimilation; Mexican Americans.

OTHER APPOINTMENTS/ORGANIZATIONS

Faculty Affiliate, Center for Comparative Studies of Race and Ethnicity, Stanford University

New America Foundation Fellow (2007– )

PUBLICATIONS

Recent Books:

  • Jiménez, Tomás R. (2010). Replenished Ethnicity: Mexican Americans, Immigration, and Identity. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

Recent Articles:

  • Jiménez, Tomás R. (forthcoming) "Affiliative Ethnic Identity: A More Elastic link between Ethnic Ancestry and Culture" Ethnic and Racial Studies.
  • Linton, April and Tomás R. Jiménez. (2009) “Contexts for Bilingualism among U.S.-born Latinos.” Ethnic and Racial Studies, 32(6): 967-95.
  • Jiménez, Tomás R. (2008). “Mexican-Immigrant Replenishment and the Continuing Significance of Ethnicity and Race.” American Journal of Sociology, 113(6): 1527-1567.

  • Jiménez, Tomás R. and David Fitzgerald (2007). “Mexican Assimilation:  A Temporal and Spatial Reorientation.” Du Bois Review, 4(2): 337-354.

  • Jiménez, Tomás R. (2007). “Weighing the Costs and Benefits of Mexican Immigration: The Mexican American Perspective.” Social Science Quarterly, 88(3): 599-618.

  • Waters, Mary C. and Tomás R. Jiménez. (2005). “Assessing Immigrant Assimilation: New Empirical and Theoretical Challenges.” Annual Review of Sociology, 31: 105-125.

    Reprinted (in Spanish) in:

  • Marcela F. Gonzalez (ed) (2008). The Contemporary Debate in the Field of International Migration in the U.S., Buenos Aires: Prometo Press.

  • Jiménez, Tomás R. (2004). “Negotiating Ethnic Boundaries: Multiethnic Mexican Americans and Ethnic Identity in the United States.” Ethnicities, 4(1): 75-97.

 

Other Publications:

  • Jiménez, Tomás R. (2009). "What Different Generations of Mexican Americans Think About Immigration from Mexico." Generations, 32(4): 93-96.
  • Jiménez, Tomás R. (2007). “From Newcomers to Americans: An Integration Policy for a Nation of Immigrants,” (policy paper) Immigration Policy In Focus, 5(11). Immigration Policy Center, a division of the American Immigration Law Foundation, Washington, DC.

  • Jiménez, Tomás R. (2005). “Immigration Reform and the Latino Vote,” in Footnotes: The Newsletter of the American Sociological Association, 33(8)

  • Jiménez, Tomás R. (2005). “American Immigration Policy: Toward Integration,” in Footnotes: The Newsletter of the American Sociological Association, 33(7)

  • Jiménez, Tomás R. (2005). “On Being the Minority” in Footnotes: The Newsletter of the American Sociological Association, 33(5)

  • Jiménez, Tomas R. (2003). "Negotiating Ethnic Boundaries: Multiethnic Mexican Americans and Ethnic Identity in the United States." Pp. 161-188 in Crossing Lines: Race and Mixed Race Across the Geohistorical Divide, edited by M. Coronado, R. P. J. Guevarra, J. Moniz, and L. F. Szanto. Lanham, MD: Alta Mira Press.

  • Jiménez, Tomás. (2001). “Ethnic Inter-marriage,” pp 435-439 in The Encyclopedia of American Immigration, edited by James Ciment and Immanuel Ness. New York: M.E. Sharpe, Inc.

  • García, Alma M. and Tomás Jiménez. (1998) “Latina,” in the Women’s Studies Encyclopedia, edited by Helen Tierney. New York: Greenwood Press.

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