Latinos and Social Science Research on Immigration, Race, and Ethnicity in America
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 January 2016
Research on immigrants and the eventual outcomes of immigration processes was at the very foundation of American sociology. But with the exception of a couple of studies on the Mexicans in the United States, such as Paul Taylor' (1932, 1934) monumental work on the life story of Mexican immigrant laborers in the Chicago and Calumet region during the late 1920s and early 1930s, Manuel Gamio' (1971 [1930], 1971 [1931]) anthropological studies of Mexican immigrants in the United States, and Edith Abbott' The Tenements of Chicago, 1908–1935 (1936), Latinos were remarkably absent from such studies. Instead, these studies focused on the European immigrant experience and the experience of black Americans as newcomers to America' cities. Scholarship on Latinos (much less by Latinos) simply did not put down roots as early as scholarship on Afro-Americans. Perhaps this was partly due to the smaller size of the population back then, coupled with its being largely immigrant—composed of people who thought they would one day return to where they came from.