This Partnership for International Research and Education (PIRE) links researchers from five U.S. universities with five European counterparts to examine the drivers of success or failure of immigrant children in schools which ultimately lead to incorporation of immigrant communities into society. Richard Alba of State University of New York (SUNY) at Albany heads what may be called a networked group of five-bilateral teams that are matched to investigate specific aspects of the central question. The combined research effort is complemented by a program of research training for U.S. graduate students and post-doctoral fellows, who have extensive opportunities to work with senior investigators at institutions of the international partners. Results should improve our knowledge of particular educational arrangements and processes as well as how the key differences in national education systems shape the integration of immigrant youth.
The five principal teams and their research focus are: 1) Richard Alba of SUNY Albany with Roxane Silberman of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris, who will study the transition from the education system to the labor market in France and the U.S.; 2) Jennifer Holdaway of City University of New York with Maurice Crul of the University of Amsterdam, who will examine school funding and institutional arrangements for tracking in New York and Amsterdam; 3) Mary Waters of Harvard University with Anthony Heath of Oxford University, who will look at post-secondary education and the impact of timing, differentiation, and second chances in Great Britain and the U.S.; 4) Carola Suarez-Orozco of New York University and Mikael Alexandersson of Goteborg University, Sweden, who will study innovative, promising practice schools for children of diverse immigrant origins; and 5) Margaret Gibson of the University of California-Santa Cruz and partner Silvia Carrasco of Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona, Spain. This fifth team will pursue research on social, cultural and linguistic boundaries and the social relations that immigrant children must traverse in California and Catalonia. Team integration will be accomplished through a series of networking and training activities organized by the International Migrant Program of the Social Science Research Council. Such activities should deepen links between senior and junior scholars and their European partners while enabling them to share and build upon their disciplinary, regional, and topical expertise.
This interdisciplinary PIRE, covering the fields of sociology, political science, anthropology, psychology and education, fulfills the program objective of advancing scientific knowledge by enabling experts in the United States and Europe to combine complementary talents and share research resources in areas of strong mutual interest and competence. Broader impacts include development of a new model for successful international collaboration and a cohort of junior U.S. researchers trained to conduct cross-national comparative research in the field of migration studies.
