Rubén G. Rumbaut

Picture of Rubén G. Rumbaut
Distinguished Professor of Sociology
School of Social Sciences
Ph.D., Brandeis University, 1978, Sociology
University of California, Irvine
3151 Social Science Plaza
Irvine, CA 92697
Academic Distinctions
Elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Elected to the National Academy of Education
Distinguished Professor, University of California, Irvine
Distinguished Career Award, American Sociological Association (International Migration)
Distinguished Career Award, American Sociological Association (Latina/o Sociology Section)
Distinguished Scholarship (Best Book) Award, American Sociological Association
W.I. Thomas and Florian Znaniecki (Best Book) Award, American Sociological Association
Visiting Scholar, Russell Sage Foundation, New York City (1997-1998; 2016-2017)
Fellow, Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford
Founding Chair, Section on International Migration, American Sociological Association
Founding member, Committee on International Migration, Social Science Research Council
Elected member, Council of the American Sociological Association
Elected member, Sociological Research Association
Elected member, General Social Survey Board of Overseers
Elected member, Committee on Population, National Academy of Sciences
Member, Steering Committee, World Commission on Forced Displacement
Member, International Committee, American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Member, National Language Commission, American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Member, National Advisory Committee, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Scholars in Health Policy Research Program
Member, Task Force on Katrina, Social Science Research Council
Member, MacArthur Research Network on Transitions to Adulthood
Founding member, UC-CUBA Academic Initiative

Editorial Boards: The American Journal of Sociology, International Migration Review, Sociology of Education, Sociological Perspectives, The Sociological Quarterly, Journal of Immigrant Health, The American Sociologist, Contexts, AERA Open, Sociology of Race and Ethnicity, ASA’s Rose Series Editorial Board
Research Abstract
Rubén G. Rumbaut joined the UCI Sociology Department in 2002. He is also formally affiliated with the UCI School of Education, and the Departments of Chicano/Latino Studies; Criminology, Law and Society; and Language Science. His research has focused on international migration and refugee movements, types of immigrants and their contexts of exit and reception, inter-generational and life course differences in adaptation, the "one and a half" generation, transitions from adolescence to adulthood, socioeconomic mobility and inequality, educational and occupational achievement, aspirations and expectations, bilingualism and language loss, ethnic identities and pan-ethnic categories, racialization and discrimination, nativism and reactive ethnicity, citizenship and national membership, transnational ties, exile, detention and deportation, mental health, depression and self-esteem, infant health and mortality, immigrant "epidemiological paradoxes," fertility, early childbearing, family formations and family ties, crime and incarceration, and paradoxes of acculturation—as well as immigration policies and politics, historical contexts of inclusion and exclusion, the structure of refuge, demographic shifts in the U.S. population, the evolution and career of the concept of "assimilation" in American sociology, and the social origins and research orientations of immigration scholars.

Since 1991 he has directed (with Alejandro Portes) the landmark Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Study (CILS), still ongoing, which has followed the trajectories into adulthood of thousands of youth representing dozens of different nationalities, primarily from Latin America and Asia. Throughout the 1980s he conducted several of the principal studies of the resettlement of refugees from Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia (including the IHARP and SARYS projects); in the 1990s he also directed the first National Survey of Immigration Scholars in the United States (NASIS); in the 2000s, the Immigration and Intergenerational Mobility in Metropolitan Los Angeles (IIMMLA) study (in collaboration with a multidisciplinary UC team); and in the 2010s, "The Second Generation in Middle Adulthood" (in collaboration with Cynthia Feliciano), an in-depth follow-up of the CILS San Diego subsample nearly 25 years after the baseline surveys, with respondents who completed their adult transitions during and after the Great Recession.

Professor Rumbaut has served on the Steering Committee, World Commission on Forced Displacement; and on both the International Committee and the National Language Commission of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has testified before the U.S. Congress at hearings on comprehensive immigration reform, served as expert witness in federal court trials challenging local ordinances that targeted undocumented migrants, and lectured widely throughout North America, Europe and Asia on immigration issues, with recent keynote addresses and invited lectures in Madrid, Dublin, Vienna, and Havana, as well as Siem Reap, Cambodia; Seoul, South Korea; Almería, Spain; Salzburg, Austria; and Sibiu, Romania. He served as academic advisor for the PBS television series "Americas," focusing on Latin American and Caribbean societies, as well as on Mexicans, Cubans and Puerto Ricans in the United States. And he has continued to examine the Cuban diaspora, the history of U.S.-Cuba relations, and factors affecting the future of Cuba.

He is the author of more than two hundred scholarly papers on immigrants and refugees in the U.S., and coauthor or coeditor of nineteen books and special issues, including "Immigrant America: A Portrait" (new 5th edition, 2024; Spanish edition, 2010); and "Legacies: The Story of the Immigrant Second Generation" (2001; Japanese edition, 2014; Spanish edition, 2011), which won the Distinguished Book Award of the American Sociological Association and the Thomas and Znaniecki Award for best book in the immigration field. As a member of a panel of the National Academy of Sciences (with Marta Tienda et al.) he worked on two volumes on the Hispanic population of the United States, published by the National Academies Press: "Multiple Origins, Uncertain Destinies," and "Hispanics and the Future of America." He was also General Editor (with Steven J. Gold) of a research-oriented book series, "The New Americans: Recent Immigration and American Society" (LFB Scholarly); under their editorship more than 110 books were published between 2002 and 2014 on a wide range of immigration topics.
Publications
Immigrant America: A Portrait (with Alejandro Portes). New fifth edition, revised, expanded, and updated. University of California Press, 2024.
Diversity and the Transition to Adulthood in America. Contemporary Sociology, 53, 2 (2024).
Contextualizing a Coming Anniversary . World on the Move, 29, 2 (Fall 2023-Winter 2024).
Coming of age before the great expulsion: The story of the CILS-San Diego sample 25 years later (with Cynthia Feliciano). Ethnic and Racial Studies, 43, 1 (2020). Reprinted in The End of Compassion: Children of Immigrants in the Age of Deportation (Routledge, 2020).
Immigration and Crime and the Criminalization of Immigration (with Katie Dingeman and Anthony Robles). International Handbook of Migration Studies (2nd ed.), 2019.
I Am Myself and My Circumstance: Aristide R. Zolberg's Games of Identity. Zolberg Institute on Migration and Mobility, 2019.
Report of the World Commission on Forced Displacement. Chumir Foundation on Ethics in Leadership, December 2018.
Varieties of Ethnic Self-Identities: Children of Immigrants in Middle Adulthood (with Cynthia Feliciano). RSF: Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences, 2018.
Crossings to Adulthood: How Diverse Young Americans Understand and Navigate Their Lives (with Teresa Toguchi Swartz and Douglas Hartmann). Brill, 2017.
America's Languages: Investing in Language Education for the 21st Century. Commission on Language Learning, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2017.
The State of Languages in the United States: A Statistical Portrait. Commission on Language Learning, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2016.
Pigments of Our Imagination: On the Racialization and Racial Identities of "Hispanics" and "Latinos." In: How the U.S. Racializes Latinos (Paradigm 2009; Routledge, 2016).
Exemplary Mixed Methods Research Studies. The Mixed Methods Working Group, 2016.
Assimilation of Immigrants. International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, 2015.
The Criminalization of Immigration in the United States. American Immigration Council, 2015.
Unwelcome Returns: The Alienation of the New American Diaspora in Salvadoran Society (with Katie Dingeman-Cerda). In: The New Deportations Delirium, 2015.
Rights of Migrants and Minorities (with Cecilia Menjívar). Paradigm, 2008; Routledge, 2015.
The United States and Cuba: Making Up is Hard to Do (with Luis E. Rumbaut). Global Dialogue, 2015.
Immigrant America: A Portrait (with Alejandro Portes). New fourth edition, revised, expanded, and updated. University of California Press, 2014.
Immigration & Language Diversity in the United States (with Douglas Massey). Daedalus, 2013.
Harvest of Loneliness? Braceros in the American Past, the Politics of the Present, and Lessons for the Future. In: European Migration and Asylum Policies: Coherence or Contradiction? Éditions Bruylant, 2012.
Assimilation's Bumpy Road. In: American Democracy and the Pursuit of Equality: Essays in Honor of Herbert J. Gans, 2011.
Coming of Age in 'America’s Finest City': Transitions to Adulthood among Children of Immigrants in San Diego. In: Coming of Age in America: The Transition to Adulthood in the Twenty-First Century. University of California Press, 2011.
Immigration and Adult Transitions. The Future of Children, 2010.
Review Symposium: Generational Succession in the Big Apple (with Peter Kivisto et al.). Ethnic and Racial Studies, 33, 2 (2010).
The Immigration-Crime Nexus and Post-Deportation Experiences (with M. Kathleen Dingeman). University of La Verne Law Review, 2010.
Survivor: Cuba. The Cuban Revolution at 50 (with Luis E. Rumbaut). Latin American Perspectives, 2009.
Vietnamese Americans. In: The New Americans. Harvard University Press, 2007.
"If That Is Heaven, We Would Rather Go to Hell:" Contextualizing U.S.-Cuba Relations (with Luis E. Rumbaut). Societies Without Borders, 2007.
Responses to Post-Hearing Questions from Representative Steve King. Testimony at Congressional Hearing on Comprehensive Immigration Reform, 2007.
Language and U.S. Immigrant Integration. Testimony at Congressional Hearing on Comprehensive Immigration Reform, 2007.
On the Past and Future of American Immigration and Ethnic History. Journal of American Ethnic History, 2006.
Immigrant America: A Portrait (with Alejandro Portes). New third edition, revised, expanded, and updated. University of California Press, 2006.
Linguistic Life Expectancies (with Douglas Massey). Population and Development Review, 2006.
The Making of a People. In: Hispanics and the Future of America, 2006.
The Health Status and Health Behaviors of Hispanics (with José J. Escarce and Leo Morales). 2006.
Multiple Origins, Uncertain Destinies: Hispanics and the American Future (with Marta Tienda et al.). National Academies Press, 2006.
A Distorted Nation (with Richard Alba and Karen Marotz). Social Forces, 2005.
On the Frontier of Adulthood: Theory, Research, and Public Policy (with Rick Settersten and Frank Furstenberg). University of Chicago Press, 2005.
Self and Circumstance: Journeys and Visions of Exile (with Rubén D. Rumbaut), 1976, 2005. In: The Dispossessed: An Anatomy of Exile, 2005.
Immigration, Incorporation, and Generational Cohorts in Historical Contexts. In: Historical Influences on Lives and Aging, 2005.
Growing Up Is Harder to Do: A New Stage of Life (with Frank F. Furstenberg et al.). Contexts, 3, 3 (Summer 2004).
Ages, Life Stages, and Generational Cohorts. International Migration Review, 2004.
Severed or Sustained Attachments? Language, Identity, and Imagined Communities in the Post-Immigrant Generation. In: The Changing Face of Home: The Transnational Lives of the Second Generation. Russell Sage Foundation, 2002.
Ethnicities: Children of Immigrants in America (with Alejandro Portes). University of California Press and Russell Sage Foundation, 2001.
Legacies: The Story of the Immigrant Second Generation (with Alejandro Portes). University of California Press and Russell Sage Foundation, 2001.
Immigration Research for a New Century: Multidisciplinary Perspectives (with Nancy Foner and Steven J. Gold). Russell Sage Foundation, 2000.
Assimilation and Its Discontents: Ironies and Paradoxes. In: The Handbook of International Migration, 1999.
Terms of Belonging: Are Models of Membership Self-Fulfilling Prophecies? (with T. Alexander Aleinikoff). Georgetown Immigration Law Journal, 1998.
Paradoxes (and Orthodoxies) of Assimilation. Sociological Perspectives, 1997.
Ties that Bind: Immigration and Immigrant Families. In: Immigration and the Family: Research and Policy on U.S. Immigrants, 1997.
Unraveling a Public Health Enigma: Why Do Immigrants Experience Superior Perinatal Health Outcomes? (with John R. Weeks). Research in the Sociology of Health Care, 1996.
The New Immigration. Contemporary Sociology, 1995.
A Hunger for Memory, a Thirst for Justice. Journal of the University of Michigan Law School, 1993.
Ethnic Minorities and Mental Health (with William Vega). Annual Review of Sociology, 1991.
The Agony of Exile. In: Refugee Children--Theory, Research, and Services, 1991.
The Boat People and Achievement in America. American Journal of Sociology, 1990.
The Structure of Refuge: Southeast Asian Refugees in the United States. International Review of Comparative Public Policy, 1989.
The Politics of Migrant Health Care: A Comparative Study of Mexican Immigrants and Indochinese Refugees (with Leo Chávez, et al.). Research in the Sociology of Health Care, 1988.
Fertility and Adaptation: Indochinese Refugees in the United States (with John R. Weeks). International Migration Review, 1986.
Mental Health and the Refugee Experience. In: Southeast Asian Mental Health, 1985.
Breaking and Entering: Policewomen on Patrol. Work and Occupations: An International Sociological Journal, 1984.
Police Handling of Juveniles. Encyclopedia of Crime and Justice, 1982.
Changing Conceptions of the Police Role: A Sociological Review (with Egon Bittner). Crime and Justice, 1979.
The Politics of Police Reform. PhD Dissertation, Brandeis University, 1978.
Last updated
03/18/2024