Media advisory: Professor can discuss her role in national immigrant integration report
LAWRENCE — A University of Kansas Foundation Distinguished Professor is available to discuss the recent report by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine that found immigrants and their descendants are integrating into U.S. society and with the second or third generations resembling other native-born Americans.
Cecilia Menjívar, who this fall joined the Department of Sociology, was a member of the committee that worked for two years on the report "The Integration of Immigrants into American Society."
"Though we normally associate integration with well-being, there are three outcomes where well-being declines as immigrants integrate and their descendants become more like the native-born: health, crime and the percentage of children growing up with two parents," she said.
Menjívar is an expert on U.S.-bound migration, particularly from Central America, and how the laws and legal context that receive immigrants influence their lives and trajectories in America. Today, 41 million immigrants represent 13.1 percent of the U.S. population, and the U.S.-born children of immigrants represent an additional 12 percent. Together first- and second-generation immigrants account for one-quarter of the county's population.
The Academies' committee consisted of scholars from around the country in many disciplines, including sociology, political science, psychology, anthropology and economics. Committee members have briefed stakeholders, including federal immigration leaders and congressional leaders. The committee drafted 10 chapters on issues related to integration of immigrants from all regions of the world.
"The integration of immigrants actually has been a fundamental question for the constitution of U.S. society in general historically, and though migratory flows go up and down, the concern remains because this is a country created by immigrants," Menjívar said. "A question that informs all of this is: How is this affecting U.S. society in positive and negative ways? And what does this mean for U.S. society in general?"
Menjívar said the regional origin and the educational background of immigrants have shifted significantly in the last century. Instead of a majority of immigrants coming from Europe, they now migrate from Asia and Latin America. And rather than the mostly unskilled laborers coming to the U.S. in the past, today many professionals or college students, along with laborers, migrate from a wide variety of countries. Thus, migratory flows are much more heterogeneous today.
"However, the actual conditions that immigrants leave today and the conditions they find here are very similar to what immigrants in the early 20th century experienced," she said. "Like immigrants of the past, immigrants today are seeking to escape economic hardship, conflict and violence in their countries of origin, and they are seeking to make better lives for themselves and their families."
The report addresses a major factor that has changed over the years regarding immigrants and the legal system they face now as opposed to immigrants roughly 100 years ago.
"One of the concerns the panel identified with relation to integration is the legal statuses that the current system of laws creates, as an undocumented status significantly slows or blocks the integration of not just the undocumented immigrants but also their U.S.-citizen children," she said.
Menjívar has written more than 100 books, articles and book chapters and has received numerous awards and accolades for her books, including "Enduring Violence: Ladina Women's Lives in Guatemala" and "Fragmented Ties: Salvadoran Immigrant Networks in America." She is one of nine KU Foundation Distinguished Professors and will be co-leading the creation of a new center at KU focusing on migration and immigration studies.
To arrange an interview in English or Spanish with Menjívar, contact George Diepenbrock at 785-864-8853 or gdiepenbrock@ku.edu.