Jennifer LeeAssociate Professor, Sociology |
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Research Interests |
Immigration, Race/Ethnicity, Social Inequality, Asian American Studies | |
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Academic Distinctions |
J. William Fulbright Scholar to Japan (2008). Distinguished Lecturer, Nagoya American Studies Summer Seminar, Nagoya, Japan (2008). Fellow, Center for the Study of Race, Politics and Culture, University of Chicago (2006-2007). Outstanding Book Award (2006) from the Asia and Asian America Section of the American Sociological Association for Asian American Youth: Culture, Identity, and Ethnicity. New York: Routledge. (Edited volume with Min Zhou). Fellow, Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford, CA (2002-2003). Robert E. Park Award (2003) from the Community and Urban Sociology Section of the American Sociological Association for "From Civil Relations to Racial Conflict: Merchant-Customer Interactions in Urban America." American Sociological Review 67 (1): 77-98, 2002. Honorable Mention for the 2003 Thomas and Znaniecki Distinguished Book Award from the International Migration Section of the American Sociological Association for Civility in the City: Blacks, Jews, and Koreans in Urban America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002). University of California President's Postdoctoral Fellow, 1998-2000 President’s Fellow, Columbia University, 1996-1998 Fellow, Paul F. Lazarsfeld Center for the Social Sciences, Columbia University, 1997. Andrew W. Mellon Scholar, 1993-1995. University Professors’ Fellow, Columbia University, 1993-1995. |
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Research Abstract |
Jennifer Lee is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of California, Irvine, and received her B.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Columbia University. She is author of Civility in the City: Blacks, Jews, and Koreans in Urban America (Harvard University Press, 2002) and co-editor of Asian American Youth: Culture, Identity, and Ethnicity (with Min Zhou, Routledge, 2004), which was named the 2006 Outstanding Book Award from the Asia and Asian America Section of the American Sociological Association. In 2003, she received the Robert E. Park Best Scholarly Article Award from the American Sociological Association's Community and Urban Sociology Section and Honorable Mention for the Thomas and Znaniecki Distinguished Book Award from the International Migration Section. She has been a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford, a Fellow at the Center for the Study of Race, Politics and Culture at the University of Chicago, and a Fulbright Scholar to Japan. Jennifer Lee's research projects stem from her theoretical interests in the intersection of race/ethnicity and immigration. Much of her work has focused on the ways in which contemporary immigrants affect native-born Americans, and also, how native-born Americans affect patterns of immigrant and second-generation incorporation. In Civility in the City: Blacks, Jews, and Koreans in Urban America, she sheds new light on the topic of immigrant entrepreneurship, examining not only interethnic conflict but also cooperation between merchants and customers in urban African American neighborhoods. Her findings dispel the popular myth of the ubiquity of interethnic conflict, and show that social order, routine, and civility are alive and well in America’s inner-cities. Jennifer Lee’s second book manuscript, Postracial America? Race, Immigration, and the Color Line in the 21st Century (currently under revision) examines how contemporary immigration, rising intermarriage, and the growing multiracial population are changing the meaning of race and the placement of the color line in the United States. She and Frank D. Bean find that race is declining in significance more rapidly for Asians and Latinos than for blacks, pointing to a persistent pattern of "black exceptionalism." This trend is troubling because it risks creating support for "color-blind" policies that fail to recognize that race holds dissimilar consequences for various minority groups in the United States. Jennifer Lee's most recent research project focuses on the mobility patterns of Los Angeles's second generation. Based on 160 in-depth interviews of 1.5 and second-generation Mexicans, Chinese, and Vietnamese in LA, she and Min Zhou explore how these groups define success, how they aim to achieve it, and how they choose to identify in the unique context of LA’s racial/ethnic and immigrant diversity. By adopting a "subject-centered approach," Lee and Zhou place the respondents' lived experiences at the center of analysis, allowing them to understand the structural conditions under which members of the second generation make the choices they do in their quest to get ahead. |
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| Publications | In Press. "Plus ça change...? Multiraciality and the Dynamics of Race Relations in the United States." Journal of Social Issues 65 (1), 2009 (with Frank D. Bean). | |
| In Press. "Brown Picket Fences: The Immigrant Narrative and ‘Giving Back’ among the Mexican Middle-Class." Ethnicities 9 (1), 2009 (with Jody Agius Vallejo). | ||
| In Press. "The New U.S. Immigrants: How Do They Affect Our Understanding of the African-American Experience?" Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science (with Frank D. Bean, Cynthia Feliciano, and Jennifer Van Hook). | ||
| 2008. "Success Attained, Deterred, and Denied: Divergent Pathways to Social Mobility in Los Angeles’ New Second Generation." Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 620: 37-61 (with Min Zhou, Jody Agius Vallejo, Rosaura Tafoya-Estrada, and Yang Sao Xiong). | ||
| 2007 "Reinventing the Color Line: Immigration and America's New Racial/Ethnic Divide." Social Forces 86 (2): 561-586 (with Frank D. Bean). | ||
| 2007 "Becoming Ethnic or Becoming American? Reflecting on the Divergent Pathways to Social Mobility and Assimilation among the New Second Generation." Du Bois Review 4 (1): 189-205 (with Min Zhou). | ||
| 2007 "Redrawing the Color Line?" City & Community 6 (1): 49-62 (with Frank D. Bean). | ||
| 2006 "Constructing Race and Civility in Urban America." Urban Studies 43 (5-6): 903-917, Review Issue on (In)Civility and the City. | ||
| 2004 "Immigration and the Black-White Color Line in the United States." Review of Black Political Economy, Special Issue on The Impact of Immigration on African Americans 31 (1-2): 43-76 (with Frank D. Bean, Jeanne Batalova, and Sabeen Sandhu). | ||
| 2005 "Immigration and Racial/Ethnic Relations in the United States." People and Place 13 (1): 1-13 (with Frank D. Bean and Susan K. Brown). | ||
| 2006 "Cultural Assets or Structural Advantages in Numbers Gambling: Comment to Darrell Steffensmeier and Jeffery T. Ulmer – ‘Black and White Control of Numbers Gambling: A Cultural Assets—Social Capital View.’ " American Sociological Review 71 (1): 157-161. | ||
| 2005 "Who We Are: America Becoming and Becoming American." Du Bois Review 2 (2): 287-302. | ||
| 2004 "America's Changing Color Lines: Race/Ethnicity, Immigration, and Multiracial Identification." Annual Review of Sociology 30: 221-242 (with Frank D. Bean). | ||
| 2000 "The Salience of Race in Everyday Life: Black Customers’ Shopping Experiences in Black and White Neighborhoods." Work and Occupations 27 (3): 353-376. | ||
| 2000 "Immigrant and African American Competition: Jewish, Korean, and African American Entrepreneurs," in Immigration Research for a New Century, edited by Nancy Foner, Rubén G. Rumbaut, and Steve J. Gold (New York: Russell Sage Foundation). | ||
| 2001 "The Racial and Ethnic Meaning behind Black: Retailers’ Hiring Practices in Inner-City Neighborhoods," in Color Lines: Affirmative Action, Immigration, and Civil Rights Options for America, edited by John D. Skrentny (Chicago: University of Chicago Press). | ||
| 2004 "Immigration and Fading Color Lines in America." Census Bulletin (with Frank D. Bean). | ||
| 2004 "Immigration and the Black-White Color Line in the United States." Review of Black Political Economy, Special Issue on "The Impact of Immigration on African Americans" (with Frank D. Bean). | ||
| 2004 Asian American Youth: Culture, Identity, and Ethnicity (Edited Volume with Min Zhou, New York: Routledge). | ||
| 2002 Civility in the City: Blacks, Jews, and Koreans in Urban America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press). | ||
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2002 "From Civil Relations to Racial Conflict: Merchant-Customer Interactions in Urban America." American Sociological Review 67 (1): 77-98. |
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| 1999 "Segmented Assimilation and Minority Cultures of Mobility." Ethnic and Racial Studies 22 (6): 945-965 (with Kathryn Neckerman and Prudence Carter). | ||
| 1999 "Retail Niche Domination among African American, Jewish, and Korean Entrepreneurs: Competition, Coethnic Advantage, and Disadvantage." American Behavioral Scientist 42 (9): 1398-1416. | ||
| 1998 "Cultural Brokers: Race-Based Hiring in Inner-City Neighborhoods." American Behavioral Scientist 41 (7): 927-937. | ||
| Grants | "Immigration, Racial/Ethnic Diversity, and Multiracial Identification." Frank D. Bean and Jennifer Lee, Principal Investigators. Funded by the Russell Sage Foundation, $265,000. | |
| "Immigrant and Intergenerational Mobility in Metropolitan Los Angeles." Ruben Rumbaut, Frank D. Bean, Leo Chavez, Min Zhou, Jennifer Lee, Susan Brown, and Louis DeSipio, Principal Investigators. Funded by the Russell Sage Foundation, $1.7 million. | ||
| "Immigration and Intergenerational Mobility in Metropolitan Los Angeles." Ruben Rumbaut, Frank D. Bean, Leo Chavez, Min Zhou, Jennifer Lee, and Susan Brown, Principal Investigators. Funded by the Russell Sage Foundation, $136,000. | ||
| "Immigration and Race/Ethnicity: America's Changing Color Lines." Frank D. Bean and Jennifer Lee, Principal Investigators. Funded by the Population Reference Bureau and the Russell Sage Foundation, $15,000. | ||
| "The Mexican Minority Culture of Mobility: Coethnic Ties among Mexican Middle-Class Immigrants in Suburban Los Angeles." Jennifer Lee, Principal Investigator, University of California, Irvine, Single Investigator Innovative Grant, $3,200. | ||
| "Immigration and Intergenerational Mobility in Metropolitan Los Angeles: A Qualitative Study." Jennifer Lee, Leo Chavez, and Min Zhou, Principal Investigators. Funded by the Russell Sage Foundation, $30,000. | ||
| "Becoming 'Ethnic,' Becoming 'Angeleno,' and/or Becoming 'American': The Multifaceted Experiences of Immigrant Children and the Children of Immigrants in Los Angeles." Jennifer Lee and Min Zhou, Principal Investigators. Funded by the Russell Sage Foundation, $210,000. | ||
| "Los Angeles' New Second Generation: Mobility, Identity, and the Making of a New American Metropolis." Jennifer Lee and Min Zhou, Principal Investigators. Funded by the Russell Sage Foundation, $108,088. | ||
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Professional Society |
American Sociological Association. Section Memberships: Asia and Asian America; Community and Urban Sociology; International Migration. |
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| Research Center | Faculty Affiliate, Center for Research on Immigration, Population, and Public Policy; Demographic and Social Analysis Program; Asian American Studies | |
| Link to this profile | http://www.faculty.uci.edu/profile.cfm?faculty_id=4667 | |
| Last updated | 10/23/2008 | |