Article on children of immigrants wins award

Maria Rendon

María G. Rendón, associate professor of urban planning and public policy, has received another honor for her 2018 Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies article, “Children of Latino Immigrants Framing Race: Making Sense of Criminalization in a Colorblind Era.” 

The Racial and Ethnic Minorities Division of the Society for the Study of Social Problems has recognized the article with its 2021 Kimberlé Crenshaw Outstanding Article Award. Last year, the article received honorable mention for the 2020 Distinguished Contribution to Research Article Award, in the Latina/o Sociology Section of the  American Sociological Association. The School of Social Ecology was the first to recognize Rendón’s work with its 2018 Dean’s Inclusionary Excellence Award.  

Rendón’s research examines neighborhood conditions and processes that shape cultural outlooks and life trajectories, especially for children of immigrants. In her paper (co-authored with Adriana Aldana and Laureen D. Hom), “Children of Latino Immigrants Framing Race: Making Sense of Criminalization in a Colorblind Era,” she presents a longitudinal study on how children of Latino immigrants make sense of their criminalization and the extent to which they see this through a racial lens. The paper calls attention to how the American segregated context informs the race consciousness of children of Latino immigrants and how urban conditions sustain colorblind ideologies.

Rendón, Aldana and Hom note: “High rates of incarceration and ongoing police abuse captured in social media has renewed attention to the criminalization of urban, young men of color, reawakening a sense of race consciousness reflected in the Black Lives Matter movement. We draw attention to the criminalization of Latino young men in segregated poor, urban neighborhoods as a long-standing ‘racial project,’ reinvigorated in an era of mass incarceration that functions to racialize the group. We examine how inner city, Latino young men experience criminalization and make sense of this process, specifically the extent to which they perceive this through a racial lens.  We draw on in-depth interviews with forty-two Latino young men from two high poverty neighborhoods in Los Angeles conducted in 2007 and a follow up study with half of these young men in 2012. We find Latinos’ hypersegregation structures their criminalization and racialization, while paradoxically sustaining a colorblind ideology. Holding strongly to meritocratic ideals and framing racism as blatant acts of interpersonal prejudice, inner city Latino young men disregard criminalization as a function of race. Internal dynamics in urban neighborhoods further obscures their racialization. Gang-related violence in these communities justifies police presence in the minds of many residents, while moral boundaries drawn against the ‘gang’ label reinforce a dichotomy between criminal and noncriminal young men, normalizing criminalization. We find a race framework emerges for young men who step out of their urban neighborhoods, particularly into white spaces, and discover they are uniformly categorized and ‘othered’ as a function of their zip code or association to the criminalized inner city.  As a result, respondents more likely to traverse urban space were those most likely to emerge in racial consciousness, whereas the most economically stagnant, ‘locked in place’ and most subject to criminalization, normalize this process and sustain a colorblind lens minimizing the role of race.”

Rendón, who received her Ph.D. in sociology and social policy at Harvard University, is a sociologist who examines the integration process of Latino immigrants and their children in the United States. She is the author of “Stagnant Dreamers: How the Inner City Shapes the Integration of Second-Generation Latinos” (2019, Russell Sage Foundation), a longitudinal study that follows a group of Latino young men as they transition to adulthood. Based on in-depth interviews and ethnographic observations with them and their immigrant parents, “Stagnant Dreamers” describes the challenges they face coming of age in the inner city and accessing higher education and good jobs and demonstrates how family-based social ties and community institutions can serve as buffers against neighborhood violence, chronic poverty, incarceration, and other negative outcomes.

The book has received several awards by the American Sociological Association, including the Robert E. Park Award, (Community and Urban Sociology section); Distinguished Contribution to Research Book Award (Latina/o Sociology);  Honorable Mention for the Thomas and Znaniecki Best Book Award (International Migration). It also was a finalist for the Pierre Bourdieu Book Award (Sociology of Education) and the International Latino Book Award.


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Mimi Ko Cruz
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