Poverty Research & Policy

There are many factors that influence whether Mexican immigrants to the United States are able to achieve upward mobility. In his new book, “Dreams Achieved and Denied: Mexican Intergenerational Mobility,” Robert Courtney Smith shares research conducted over twenty years and involving nearly one hundred children of Mexican immigrants in New York City. He examines how being documented or not acts as a master status, and how that is expressed through choices about education, employment, social networks, expressions of masculinity, and romantic and familial relationships.

Robert Courtney Smith is a Professor of Sociology, Immigration Studies and Public Affairs at the School of Public Affairs and in the Sociology Department at the Graduate Center at CUNY.