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Alejandro Portes
Children of immigrants comprise one-in-five of Americans under age 18 and the proportion is growing rapidly. How the children of immigrants are adapting to life in the United States and what kind of ties they maintain with their homelands are key questions in my research. Transnational organizations created by immigrants to the United States are critical for maintaining these links and shape the contours of the urban villages within which new immigrants live. They also have a profound impact on the development of sending countries. I am very interested in the evolution of large cities in Latin American during the last decades under the influence of neo-liberal adjustment policies. Finally, I am invested in a major comparative study of "institutions" in Latin America and hope to contribute to a distinctively sociological theory of institutions that will improve and refine its uses in the field of development. Visit WebsitePublications City on the Edge: The Transformation of Miami (with Stepick)
Challenging a classical economic theory that the development of a city is governed by commercial and geographic imperatives, sociology professors Portes and Stepick attempt to show that Miami is the creation of "chance and individual wills." The authors reveal how the Cuban success story transformed the character of Miami while delineating more sharply the identity of other ethnic communities. 
Immigrant America: A Portrait (with Rumbaut)
The authors discuss the nature of foreign influx over the years, relating diverse patterns to U.S. official and unofficial policy as well as politics and living conditions in the immigrants' countries of origin. They characterize immigrant America in its variety, from common laborer to educated elite, identifying those who "make it" and those who don't. 
Legacies: The Story of the Immigrant Second Generation (with Rumbaut)
Nearly one in five children in the U.S. is born to parents who originate from other countries. Their pathways through the American schooling system and the labor market are critically important to the health of the nation as a whole. This comprehensive study of second generation immigrants shows that some are doing very well, finishing high school, going on to college, and taking their place in the middle class, while others are floundering and ending up in the prison system. The variations have to do with the cultural capital of the immigrant parents, the social context of the communities in which they settled, and the thicket of laws that surround some immigrants with support (Cubans) and subject others to exclusion (Nicaraguans). 
Ethnicities 
The Urban Caribbean 
The Informal Economy: Studies in Advanced and Less Developed Countries
Johns Hopkins University Press 
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