Maria G. Rendon, Associate Professor of Urban Planning and Public Policy, Department of Urban Planning and Public Policy, UC Irvine, presents, “Stagnant Dreamers: How the Inner City Shapes the Integration of Second Generation Latinos.”

Maria G. Rendon, Associate Professor of Urban Planning and Public Policy, Department of Urban Planning and Public Policy, UC Irvine, presents, “Stagnant Dreamers: How the Inner City Shapes the Integration of Second Generation Latinos.”

How does the American urban context, with high levels of poverty concentration and segregation, shape the integration process of children of Latino immigrants? Stagnant Dreamers calls attention to urban structural conditions constraining social mobility for the second-generation while highlighting how the Latinx community draws on internal resources to inhibit ‘second-generation decline.’ The book follows the lives of 42 Latino young men whose immigrant families settled in Los Angeles in the 1980s and early 1990s, a time when urban violence peaked in American cities. Rather than negative acculturation processes shaping social mobility, Stagnant Dreamers documents how exposure to urban violence hurt young men’s schooling and how segregation reinforced working poor and working class insular social networks. Kin and community ties help the second-generation get by, but a lack of cross-racial and cross-class ties complicate how they navigate institutions of higher education and broker access to highly coveted jobs. Stagnant Dreamers demonstrates how the American urban context is a place of paradox – while it constrains opportunities, it also sustains the concept of the American Dream. This book explains why despite the adversity Latino young men face, most remain optimistic about their future or determined to get ahead.

Zoom Seminar. Please contact laura.satterfield@duke.edu to obtain Seminar Link. 

 

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Zoom Seminar. Please contact laura.satterfield@duke.edu to obtain Seminar Link. 
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