ALEX STEPICK

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BOOKS

Immigrant Faiths: Transforming Religious Life in America

Recent immigrants are creating their own unique religious communities within existing denominations or developing hybrid identities that combine strands of several faiths or traditions. These changes call for new thinking among both scholars of religion and scholars of migration. Immigrant Faiths responds to these changes with fresh thinking from new and established scholars from a wide range of disciplines. Covering groups from across the U.S. and a range of religious traditions, Immigrant Faiths provides a needed overview to this expanding subfield.

This Land Is Your Land

For those opposed to immigration, Miami is a nightmare. Miami is the de facto capital of Latin America;it is a city where immigrants dominate, Spanish is ubiquitous, and Denny's isan ethnic restaurant. Are Miami's immigrants representative of a trend that is underminingAmerican culture and identity?

Drawing from in-depth fieldwork in the city and lookingclosely at recent events such as the Elián González case, This Land Is Our Land examines interactionsbetween immigrants and established Americans in Miami to address fundamental questions of American identity andmulticulturalism. Rather than focusing on questions of assimilation, as manyother studies have, this book concentrates on interethnic relations to providean entirely new perspective on the changes wrought by immigration in the United States. A balanced analysis of Miami's evolution over the last forty years, This Land Is OurLand is also a powerful demonstration that immigration in America is not simply an "us versus them" phenomenon.

"A path-settingstudy that explores power, context, and diversity in the culturallyheterogeneous, economically vibrant, and politically dynamic city of Miami. Unpacking thecomplexities of race, ethnicity, and class, this lucidly written work takes thereader on rugged journeys as immigrants of different national origins strive tobecome American at their own pace and on their own terms. It provides freshinsight into the long-standing American ambivalence toward immigration, makinga fine contribution to the burgeoning literature on immigration andinter-racial dynamics. "--Min Zhou, co-author of GrowingUp American: How Vietnamese Children Adapt to Life in the United States

Social Inequality in Oaxaca: A History of
Resistance & Change

Temple University Press
http://www.temple.edu/tempress/titles/815_reg_right.html

City on the Edge: The Transformation of Miami

http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/6199.html

Theauthors reveal how the Cuban success story has transformed the character ofMiami while delineating more sharply the identity of other ethniccommunities." --New York Times Book Review

"Makesa case for the importance of political capital . . . in building ethnicsolidarity."--Contemporary Sociology

AWARDS

Robert E. Park Award for the best book in Urban and Community Sociology,The American Sociological Association
See other Robert E. Park Award winners at http://www.commurb.org/awards/park.html

First winner of the Anthony Leeds Book Prize, The Society for UrbanAnthropology

Reviews of City on the Edge

From Kirkus Reviews
A perceptive appreciation of Miami andwhat makes it tick, from a pair of sociologists who understand that anecdotalevidence can be as illuminating as statistical abstracts. Drawing ondemographic data, personal observations, interviews, newspaper articles, andallied sources, Portes (Johns Hopkins Univ.) and Stepick (Florida InternationalUniv.) profile a city in which cultural diversity is a convulsive reality.Noting that Miami has become the Caribbean's de facto capital in the more thanthree decades since Castro seized Cuba, the authors point out that politicalevents, rather than economic or geographic advantages, have made Miami aworld-class entrep"t--a reversal of the way in which America's urbancenters usually develop. After providing a brief history of the Sunshine Stateand its settlement, Portes and Stepick offer detailed human-scale accounts ofthe immigrant groups that changed a sleepy winter resort into a teemingyear-round metropolis with a Hispanic cast. Bourgeois Cubans bent on escapingCastro's Communism were the first to arrive in force. While restructuring theiradoptive city's socioeconomic and political institutions, these exiles werejoined by less favored compatriots (the so-called Marielitos), Haitians, andNicaraguans fleeing the Sandinistas. By 1990, 49.2% of greater Miami'spopulation was Latino, up from 4.0% in 1950; by contrast, Anglos (the localname for whites) represented but 30.3% of the total, with blacks (native-bornor otherwise) at 19.5%. As the authors make clear, the shift in the ethnicbalance of power has not been without serious frictions--but they conclude that,once Castro leaves the stage, assimilation pressures could prove stronger thanthe ties that now bind and divide Miami's disparate communities. A municipalreport that offers clues to what could be in store for other of America'sborder towns. A fine complement to David Rieff's The Exile (p. 773).(Illustrations) -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rightsreserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable editionof this title. http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft9401/reviews/miller.html

Newcomers in the Workplace: Immigrants &the Restructuring of the U. S. Economy

http://www.temple.edu/tempress/titles/1230_reg.html
http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/biblio?inkey=62-1566391318-0

AWARDS

Conrad Arensberg Award 1994, Society forthe Anthropology of Work, American Anthropological Association

Newcomers in theWorkplace: Immigrants and the Restructing of the U.S Economy
Lamphere, Louise, AlexStepick, and Guillermo Grenier
http://www.temple.edu/tempress/awards-socio.html

Pride Against Prejudice: Haitians in theUnited States

http://www.abacon.com/newimmigrants/

Review of Pride Against Prejudice
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/reviews_in_american_history/v027/27.2barkan.html

The story of Haitiansrecently arriving in the United States has been marked by escapes frompersecution, flights across open seas, surreptitious entries, significantracial/cultural/linguistic/religious differences from mainstream [American society, prejudice and discrimination by the larger society and byothers of color, intra-group class divisions, changes among second-generationchildren, vulnerability due to arbitrary (or perhaps quite calculated)immigration policies, and political instability in the homeland (as well as theU.S. government-sparked AIDS scare regarding Haitians). Stepick concentrates onthose elements of the story as they affect Haitians in South Florida where theyhave had to contend with hostile whites, prejudiced African Americans, and aCuban enclave and enclave economy, all of which have hampered Haitian efforts togain a secure foothold and create an effective enclave of their own. As withthe others discussed here, the "family remains the central organizinginstitution" (p. 15) and remittances continue to be "central" totheir lives, symbolizing "strong transnational psychological ties torelatives back home" (pp. 29-30). Stepick details the struggles ofHaitians to get jobs, to establish fledgling businesses with limited capital (afar cry from Wong's Chinese), to overcome the absence of an enclave economy, topersuade Americans to hire them, and to enhance their human capital (educationand skills) as well as their social capital (family and kin networks). Incontrast to the other volumes, Stepick puts a particular emphasis on thestudies of the second generation, detailing the struggles of the "justcomes" (recent arrivals) and the "cover ups." The latter,particularly in high school, strive to hide their Haitian identity and engagein "segmentary assimilation" whereby they copy the African Americans'behavior, language patterns, and culture rather than the whites' in an attemptto avoid rejection and humiliation at the hands of African American classmates.As part of that strategy they also adopt an "adversarial academicorientation" (pp. 62-67), and their school performance suffers. Incontrast, those born in Haiti and/or the children of professionals have beenmore likely to resist covering up, to pursue academic excellence, and toproudly assert their Haitian heritage. Stepick labels this response to thehostility encountered "reactive formation ethnicity" (p. 72), and itdiffers substantively from that described in the other works. South Florida'sHaitians look to the second generation to improve their own status in America.

Haitian Refugees in the United States
A close examination of the economic and social position of the Haitiancommunity in the USA.
http://www.minorityrights.org/catalogue.asp

This short, though informational, booklet gives a brief history of Haiti andHaitian immigration into the United States, the Dominican Republic and theBahamas. It also details US policy towards Haitians. The material was veryuseful, though dated as it was published in 1986 and much has changedpolitically in Haiti since.

Miami Now!

http://www.upf.com/BIP-floridiana.html

Voices From The Welfare Vortex A DescriptiveProfile of Urban, Low-Income African American Women on the Eve ofDevolution  36 Volume 7
Stan L. Bowie, Carol Dutton Stepick & Alex Stepick III

Race, Gender & Class in Social Work andPractice
Volume 7, Number 4, 2000 ISSN 1082-8354
Guest Co-Editors: Beverly Favre and Rose Wilson

The preliminary study is a longitudinal, ethnographic profile of 20welfare-reliant African American women in urban Miami who are experiencing thetransition from Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) to Temporary Aidto Needy Families (TANF). Data were collected through repeated, in-depthinterviews over an 18-month period and respondents were assessed regardingfamily patterns and history, family health status, employment experiences, incomesources, and expenditure patterns. Dominant themes from their welfare reformexperience are isolated and respondent quotations are provided regarding lifeon welfare, employment prospects and the impact of immigrants, job trainingprograms, the need to compromise self-respect and dignity for survival, andhope and family aspirations.

Latinos in the 21st Century: Mapping theResearch Agenda
http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~drclas/pages/tabpages/events/conferences/past/latinos/index.html

Margaret Mead Award
http://www.aaanet.org/committees/awards/awards.htm#mead

Improving Intergroup Relations Among Youth:Summary of a Research Workshop (1999)

Division ofBehavioral and Social Sciences and Education (more titlesfrom DBSSE)
Related Books
http://www.nap.edu/books/0309067928/html/index.html

Children of Immigrants:Health, Adjustment,and Public Assistance (1999)

Division ofBehavioral and Social Sciences and Education (more titlesfrom DBSSE)
http://www.nap.edu/books/0309065453/html/index.html

You can find a list of all the books by Alex Stepick at:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/Author=Stepick%2C%20Alex/103-3079103-3586218

Website Designed by Melanie Acevedo Last Updated October 11, 2001 Email comments or suggestions to the webmaster, all other inquiries should be directed to Dr. Alex Stepick.