Background: The author discusses an in-depth study of the participatory budgeting process in Chicago's 49th Ward (PB49), a deliberative democratic process in which all residents and ideas were positioned as equal, relying on rational arguments to make decisions about municipal funding allocations. The study documented collective decision-making…

In this research article, Leah Schmalzbauer and Alelí Andrés examine the educational mobility of low-income US citizen and DACAmented youth who are members of mixed-status families. Drawing from thirty life history interviews with Latinx students attending a top-tier liberal arts college, and based on ethnographic case studies of eight of their…

Neighborhoods constitute a microsystem theorized to be of great importance for immigrant families, with the potential to support and facilitate families' transitions to life in the United States. Yet, few studies examine immigrants' perceptions of their neighborhoods and the extent to which different aspects of these neighborhoods, such as safety…

This article examines how qualitative researchers, specifically ethnographers, might utilize complex philosophical concepts in order to disrupt the normative truth-telling practices embedded in social science research. Drawing on my own research experiences, I move toward a methodology of death (for researcher/researched alike) grounded in…

This study estimates the effect of neighborhood disadvantage on bachelor's degree attainment with data from a long-term follow-up of the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods. We focus on heterogeneous effects by race and class as well as individual and neighborhood mechanisms that might explain observed patterns, including…

This article explores the merits and challenges of a community partnership that was forged between a Religious Studies professor at DePaul University and the nonprofit Interfaith Community for Detained Immigrants (ICDI). Through this partnerhip, students in a Religious Studies class participated in a set of ICDI-related, half-day immersion…

For more than two decades varied models of school-linked services and school-family-community partnerships have been advanced with the goal of improving the educational, developmental, mental health, health, and social outcomes for children and families. This study presents an analysis of the impact of a school-based ecological model for parent…

This article explores the spatial practices through which a group of Mexican immigrant women, participants in a school-based writing workshop I facilitated for four years, molded and gave meaning to our weekly writing routine to foster inclusivity as the basis for collective teaching and learning--creating what I refer to as a space of praxis and…

This article sheds light on the educational trajectories of undocumented youth who engage in forms of organizing through a community-school partnership in an urban public school in Chicago. Drawing on data from an ethnographic study in an urban public high school, readers learn that undocumented youth gain a positive sense of identity and…

A 37-item questionnaire was administered to 255 Chicago Hispanics to determine if Hispanics favor assimilation or pluralism or some state in between. Respondents included 23% Mexicans, 36% Puerto Ricans, 29% Cubans, and 11% South Americans. Of these, 33% were blue collar workers, 60% teachers, and 7% high school students. A total of 89% were born…

This paper traces the effects of economic restructuring through comparative socioeconomic profiles of African American and Latinos in the Midwest, with a focus on Chicago and Kansas City. Globalization has been associated with deindustrialization, relocation of jobs to developing countries with cheaper labor, and expansion of the service sector. A…

This year-long study explored the linguistic and cognitive transactions of immigrant language-minority kindergarten students in the social context of classroom collaborative talk in their native language. Collaborative talk transactions were selected from 13 videotaped sessions involving 27 Hispanic kindergarten students, mostly recent arrivals…