About

My research focuses on the socioeconomic mobility and assimilation of immigrants throughout history. I am generally interested in how processes of mobility and labor market outcomes of immigrants and their children are interlinked with societal institutions and economic structures.

Research topics

• Demographic economics
• Political science
• Sociology
• Geography
• Demography

Selected publications

• Who Benefits from Citizenship? Heterogeneous Effects of Naturalization Decisions in the Early Twentieth-Century United States

  2025-10-02

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  While existing research highlights the occupational advantages of citizenship for immigrants, little is known about how such advantages might vary, and previous studies have not fully dealt with issues of selection. We study the heterogeneous effects of naturalization by leveraging a novel historical dataset of naturalization records from New York City’s Southern District in the early 1900s. We link these to U.S. census data from 1920, 1930, and 1940, tracking 1,947 immigrants who declared their intent to naturalize, analyzing occupational trajectories among them, and modeling selection into naturalization using random forests. Our findings reveal that immigrants who completed the naturalization process attained significantly higher occupational status than those who initiated but did not complete naturalization. In addition, propensity-stratified results support a negative selection hypothesis: Immigrants less likely to naturalize enjoyed greater returns to naturalization, surpassing the unnaturalized in the high-propensity, more advantaged group. We support these results with supplementary analyses of full-count census data, where we find similar trends. These results underscore the role of naturalization as a key driver of socioeconomic mobility while highlighting citizenship as a critical stratifying force.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Defensive Naturalization: Immigrants and Citizenship Acquisition in Early 20th Century America

  2025-09-30

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  From its beginning, naturalization in the United States had been a largely informal, lightly regulated process; this system was upended by the Naturalization Act of 1906, eventuating in place the far more complicated naturalization procedures that have persisted to this day. Prior research argues that this new law achieved its desired goal of deterring citizenship acquisition among the least desired and least resourced immigrants. However, it also changed the value of citizenship wherein immigrants who may have been found citizenship least desirable decided to become a citizen more quickly given various alienage penalties. To understand how naturalization unfolded under these new conditions, this paper draws on a new hand-coded sample from a novel dataset of declaration of intent to naturalize forms and petition to naturalize forms to the 1920, 1930, and 1940 censuses. We then incorporate hand-coded information uniquely available in the naturalization documents, such as detailed place of birth, height, and complexion. We analyze the speed with which applicants for citizenship moved through the different steps of the naturalization process. Despite mixed results, we find more evidence in support of a defensive naturalization hypothesis, with immigrants with less desirable traits at the time naturalizing more quickly.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Contextual Boundaries: Skin Tone Stratification and Skill Transferability Among Mexicans in the Age of Mass Migration

  Demography · 2024-09-11 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  An extensive literature has focused on the association between human, social, and economic capital and better immigrant economic attainment, and how these characteristics contribute to stratification among members of the same group. However, few studies have explored how racialization processes contribute to these within-group differences. We examine the role of intragroup differences in skin tone in stratifying outcomes among Mexican immigrants in the early twentieth century. We create a new dataset of 1910-1940 Mexican border-crossing records that we then link to the U.S. 1940 census. We use characteristics at entry to predict income in 1940 and find that-in line with dominant assimilation theories-standard measures of capital are associated with within-group attainment differences. However, we also find skin tone to be a source of within-group stratification: being perceived as having darker skin is associated with lower subsequent economic attainment than being perceived as having lighter skin. Furthermore, whereas human and social capital transcended context to allow migrants to transfer those skills anywhere, the effect of skin tone was significant only in Texas and not in other major receiving places like California. We argue that although standard measures of assimilation typically predict later outcomes, the stratifying effect of skin tone has long been a feature of Mexican immigration.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Defensive Naturalization: Immigrants and Citizenship Acquisition in Early 20th Century America

  2023-04-12

  preprintOpen accessSenior author

  From its beginning, naturalization in the United States had been a largely informal, lightly regulated process; this system was upended by the Naturalization Act of 1906, eventuating in place the far more complicated naturalization procedures that have persisted to this day. Prior research argues that this new law achieved its desired goal of deterring citizenship acquisition among the least desired and least resourced immigrants. However, it also changed the value of citizenship wherein immigrants who may have been found citizenship least desirable decided to become a citizen more quickly given various alienage penalties. To understand how naturalization unfolded under these new conditions, this paper draws on a new hand-coded sample from a novel dataset of declaration of intent to naturalize forms and petition to naturalize forms to the 1920, 1930, and 1940 censuses. We then incorporate hand-coded information uniquely available in the naturalization documents, such as detailed place of birth, height, and complexion. We analyze the speed with which applicants for citizenship moved through the different steps of the naturalization process. Despite mixed results, we find more evidence in support of a defensive naturalization hypothesis, with immigrants with less desirable traits at the time naturalizing more quickly.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Contextual Boundaries: Skin Tone Stratification and Skill Transferability Among Mexicans in the Age of Mass Migration

  2023-03-02 · 1 citations

  preprintOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  A large literature has focused on how capital – human, social, and economic – are associated with better immigrant economic attainment, contributing to stratification among members of the same group. However, few studies have explored how other factors, namely racialization processes, contribute to these within group differences. We examine the role of skin tone as a source of intra-group difference that stratifies outcomes among Mexican immigrants in the early twentieth century. We create a new dataset of Mexican border crossing records between 1910 and 1940 that we then link to the 1940 census. We use at-entry characteristics to predict income in 1940 and find that—in line with dominant assimilation theories—standard measures of capital are associated with within-group differences in attainment. However, we also find that skin tone was a source of within-group stratification: being perceived as having darker skin is associated with lower subsequent economic attainment compared to those with lighter skin. Furthermore, we find that while human and social capital transcended context in that migrants were able to transfer those skills anywhere, the effect of skin tone was greater in Texas and nonexistent in California. Taken together, we argue that while standard measures of assimilation typically predict later outcomes, the stratifying effect of skin tone has been a long-run feature of Mexican immigrant history.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Replication Data for: The Refugee Advantage: English-Language Attainment in the Early Twentieth Century

  Harvard Dataverse · 2023-08-22

  datasetOpen access

  The United States has admitted more than 3 million refugees since 1980 through official refugee resettlement programs. Scholars attribute the success of refugee groups to governmental programs on assimilation and integration. Before 1948, however, refugees arrived without formal selection processes or federal support. We examine the integration of historical refugees using a large archive of recorded oral history interviews to understand linguistic attainment of migrants who arrived in the early twentieth century. Using fine-grained measures of vocabulary, syntax and accented speech, we find that refugee migrants achieved a greater depth of English vocabulary than did economic/family migrants, a finding that holds even when comparing migrants from the same country of origin or religious group. This study improves on previous research on immigrant language acquisition and refugee incorporation, which typically rely on self-reported measures of fluency. Our findings are consistent with the hypothesis that refugees had greater exposure to English or more incentive to learn, due to the conditions of their arrival and their inability to immediately return to their origin country. These patterns provide an optimistic historical precedent for the incorporation of refugees into American society.

  PublisherDOI

• The Refugee Advantage: English-Language Attainment in the Early Twentieth Century

  Sociological Science · 2023-01-01 · 9 citations

  articleOpen access

  The United States has admitted more than 3 million refugees since 1980 through official refugee resettlement programs. Scholars attribute the success of refugee groups to governmental programs on assimilation and integration. Before 1948, however, refugees arrived without formal selection processes or federal support. We examine the integration of historical refugees using a large archive of recorded oral history interviews to understand linguistic attainment of migrants who arrived in the early twentieth century. Using fine-grained measures of vocabulary, syntax and accented speech, we find that refugee migrants achieved a greater depth of English vocabulary than did economic/family migrants, a finding that holds even when comparing migrants from the same country of origin or religious group. Our findings are consistent with the hypothesis that refugees had greater exposure to English or more incentive to learn, due to the conditions of their arrival and their inability to immediately return to their origin country.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The Refugee Advantage: English-Language Attainment in the Early Twentieth Century

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2023-01-01 · 2 citations

  articleOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• The Refugee Advantage: English-Language Attainment in the Early Twentieth Century

  National Bureau of Economic Research · 2023-09-01 · 2 citations

  reportOpen access

  The United States has admitted more than 3 million refugees since 1980 through official refugee resettlement programs. Scholars attribute the success of refugee groups to governmental programs on assimilation and integration. Before 1948, however, refugees arrived without formal selection processes or federal support. We examine the integration of historical refugees using a large archive of recorded oral history interviews to understand linguistic attainment of migrants who arrived in the early twentieth century. Using fine-grained measures of vocabulary, syntax and accented speech, we find that refugee migrants achieved a greater depth of English vocabulary than did economic/family migrants, a finding that holds even when comparing migrants from the same country of origin or religious group. This study improves on previous research on immigrant language acquisition and refugee incorporation, which typically rely on self-reported measures of fluency. Our findings are consistent with the hypothesis that refugees had greater exposure to English or more incentive to learn, due to the conditions of their arrival and their inability to immediately return to their origin country.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• :<i>Dispossession and Dissent: Immigrants and the Struggle for Housing in Madrid</i>

  American Journal of Sociology · 2022-11-01

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Ran Abramitzky

  Stanford University

  19 shared

• Leah Platt Boustan

  Princeton University

  19 shared

• Dylan S. Connor

  Arizona State University

  19 shared

• Rob Voigt

  Northwestern University

  19 shared

• Roger Waldinger

  University of California, Los Angeles

  5 shared

• Nathan Isaac Hoffmann

  UCLA Health

  4 shared

• María Vignau Loría

  University of Washington

  3 shared

• Sarah Farr

  University of Michigan–Ann Arbor

  1 shared