Professional Bio

Research and Teaching Interests

Immigration (health and well-being of children of immigrants, assimilation and integration of immigrants; unauthorized migration, indirect estimation techniques of migration flows); social demography; demographic techniques; population health.

Current Research Projects

Archiving Data on the IWPR Population (NICHD/NIH) aims to harmonize and share data about immigrants who are without permanent residence (IWPR). Few national surveys include questionnaire items on immigrants’ permanent residence, and when available, these surveys are often met with skepticism due to their questionable validity. And while some organizations use indirect demographic methods to produce estimates of IWPR sub-populations, it is difficult for researchers to obtain information about detailed groups of interest. This is an important shortcoming given that the IWPR population makes up one-third of all adults and children born abroad. In addition, nearly 80 percent of children of the IWPR population are U.S.-born citizens. In this project we harmonize data across existing data sets (American Community Survey, Department of Homeland Security admission data, and demographic estimates of mortality, emigration, and ACS survey coverage rates) that together provide a detailed demographic estimates and projections of the IWPR population and its children.  We will deposit the harmonized data and documentation in Data Sharing for Demographic Research archive (DSDR). This project is part of a larger effort to democratize data about the residency status of the foreign-born population through the production and dissemination of population estimates and projections via our website, U.S. Migration Metrics.

Health and Kinship Networks among the Latino Population (NIH/NIH) explores how residency status exposures impact the health of older (50+) Latino population. The non-permanent Latino foreign-born population in the US is currently aging in place, leading to a growing number of older Latinos who experienced years of health risk throughout their adult lives and, as older adults, are excluded from the US social safety net system. The aging of the Latino population is thus likely accompanied by two related trends: (1) dramatic increases in the share of older Latinos without full access to the public programs that have been shown to improve health for older Americans, and (2) increased reliance by older Latinos on kinship networks – chiefly their middle-aged children – for daily health care needs. Our goal is to document these trends and explore how they impact the health of older Latinos and the implications for the broader US population.

Texas-Style Exclusion: Mexican Americans and the Legacy of Limited Opportunity, 2024, Russell Sage Foundation Press, by Jennifer Van Hook and James D. Bachmeier. 

While Americans largely support legal immigration, this support is conditional on the basis that immigrants do not make use of public assistance. Previous generations of immigrants, such as European-origin Industrial Era immigrants, came to the U.S. impoverished, worked hard, and achieved the American Dream seemingly on their own. Mexican immigrants, the nation’s largest contemporary immigrant group, are often viewed with suspicion and are accused of being dependent on the government and refusing to integrate into American society the “right way.” In Texas-Style Exclusion, we investigate such claims by comparing how American society has responded to different groups of immigrants over time.

Drawing on census and archival data on the quality of public schooling, we find that Industrial Era European immigrants, who were primarily located in the northeastern U.S., benefitted from programs and policies championed by the Americanization and Progressive movements. By contrast, Mexican immigrants in the 1920s and 1930s, the majority of whom resided in Texas, had radically different experiences from their European counterparts. Mexicans in Texas were subjected to racism, segregation, labor exploitation, and intentional school failures. This resulted in tremendous generational disadvantage that persists to the current day. We conclude that whether one is optimistic or pessimistic about the integration of Mexican Americans depends on when and where one looks.