Strengthening Qualitative Research through Methodological Innovation and Integration: Assimilation and Transition to Early Adulthood for Mexican Americans

Cuny Baruch College, New York NY

Investigators

Abstract

SES- 1026580 Robert Courtney Smith CUNY Baruch College This project studies the experience of assimilation and transition to early adulthood for Mexican Americans in New York, drawing on fourteen years of ethnographic research and using new methodological approaches. The project will analyze data gathered by the PI on children of Mexican immigrants in New York at work, in school and in their social and personal lives. This project draws on long term ethnographic and interview research to that will be analyzed to study the mechanisms through which immigrant youth use to become more or less upwardly mobile as they enter early adulthood. The project uses new methods to examine assimilation and mobility in the transition to early adulthood. Specifically, it applies a case oriented logic of analysis to ethnographic data to transform it into synopses and then into numbers so it may be analyzed using new techniques. The PI has developed the Lifecourse Multidimensional Analytical Protocol (LMAP) which arranges qualitative data so it can be used for Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA). Broader Impact The project will contribute to the integration of qualitative and quantitative methodological approaches. Further, the findings will contribute insight into developing CUNY (City University of New York) programs that promote college attendance among children of immigrants and other youth