Getting Ahead: Social Mobility, Public Housing, and Immigrant Networks

Acknowledgments

| vii Acknowledgments This book would have never been possible without all my friends and respondents in East and South Boston. I am extremely thankful for the hundreds of hours they allowed me to spend with them and their families. In the interest of confidentiality, I cannot divulge their names, but I thank them all. I am also thankful for the guidance and constructive criticism of my dissertation committee members, Nazli Kibria, Deborah Belle, Judith Gonyea, William Julius Wilson, and Gwen Dordick. Nazli Kibria was instrumental in encouraging me to study immigrants, and Deborah Belle could not have been more instrumental in focusing me on women and poverty. Judith Gonyea was instrumental in getting me through the doctoral program. I am extremely grateful to Bill Wilson for having opened the door to me and challenged my thinking around poor neighborhoods. Gwen Dordick was a tremendous teacher of ethnographic inquiry; I am grateful for all her clarifying questions on my field notes. I am also extremely grateful to James Quane for always pushing me, Diane Purvin and Steve Kalberg for encouragement and support, and Xavier de Souza Briggs, who introduced me to social networks and public housing. I am extremely thankful to Ilene Kalish for believing in my project and to Aiden Amos and the blind reviewers for New York University Press. The Ford Foundation Diversity Fellowship could not have come at a better time, for finding this book project to be valuable and worth supporting and giving me the privilege of being mentored by Cecilia Menjívar, who has been among my biggest supporters and provided me with valuable feedback. Other people who read chapters and provided feedback include Deborah Belle, Nazli Kibria, Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo, Kathrina Zipple, Michael Brooks, James Battle, Danny Farber, Gordana Rabrenovic, Tammi Arford, and my writing group members, including Alisa Lincoln and Theresa Osypuk . I am particularly thankful for the feedback I received in the development of the social flow framework from Steve Vallas, Mario Small, Shelly viii | Acknowledgments Kimelberg, and Liza Weinstein, who read the theoretical chapters and helped me to clarify and strengthen the framework. I am indebted to Helio Leal for his uncanny sharpness and the support he has given me since I began to put this book together. This book would be a different book without his input. To Phillip Berard and José Luis Molina, who helped me to develop the diagrams, thank you so much. I am indebted to José Luis for all the trial and error I put him through transnationally from Boston to Barcelona and back. I am thankful to Gabriela Ruiz for her expert editing. Part of the research on which this book is based was conducted in conjunction with Welfare, Children, and Families: A Three City Study. I am thankful to the principal investigators of that study, who gave me the opportunity to learn from them and access to these data. This book would not have been possible without the funding I received from the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, and the American Association of University Women. I am thankful to Patrick Simon and Marie-Hélène Bacque, who supported me while I was analyzing data in Paris. I am also thankful to the Journal of Social Problems and the University of California Press; the Journal of Community Psychology and Springer; and the Journal of Family Relations and WhileyBlackwell for granting me permission to reprint previously published material in my book. Although my father, Carlos Domínguez, died early in my doctoral education , he is always on my mind, and it is to him that I owe my interest in sociology and inequality. My mother, Silvia Alvarez, is one of the strongest women I have ever known; she and my sisters, Ester, Carmen, and Rosario, provide me with strength and help me maintain my focus, passion, and commitment to work, research, and the development of policy that increases social justice. I am most grateful to my son, Matias, who has had to put up with a mother who sits in front of the computer writing almost all the time. You are the most important person in my life, and each day that passes leaves me in wonder of how you are growing and flourishing. ...