D G Okamoto
Biographic Data
| ID | 158407 |
|---|---|
| NAME | D G Okamoto |
| GIVEN NAMES | D G |
| FAMILY NAME | Okamoto |
| SIGNATURE | OKAMOTO D G |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of California, Davis |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-9331-6693 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 38 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 682 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 38 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1995 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2023 |
| H-INDEX | 14 |
A Relational Approach to Perceived Discrimination
Perceived discrimination is often theorized within a bounded social context, and much of this literature focuses on how structural and socioeconomic factors shape minorities’ perceptions of discrimination. However, immigrants exist in varied social contexts given their exposure to both home and destination countries. In this study, we propose a relational framework to understand how stratification systems in one's country of origin and relative g…
Skin Tone and Mexicans’ Perceptions of Discrimination in New Immigrant Destinations
Colorism literature examines how skin tone—alongside prototypical group features and hairstyles—correlates with socioeconomic, health, and political outcomes. Yet few studies have explicitly operationalized how skin tone shapes Latinos’ experiences of racialization in “new” U.S. destinations. Here, we draw on a large, representative sample of Mexican immigrants (N = 500) living in two large metropolitan areas (Atlanta and Philadelphia) to investi…
Editors' Letter
Making requests
Advocacy organizations have reframed immigrants as deserving, and improved their access to services and support; yet, we know little about how low-income immigrants understand organizational frames to make individual requests in public institutions and programmes. Analyzing in-depth interviews and fieldwork over multiple years, we show how Filipina/o and Latina/o immigrants become empowered to make claims through an organization's frame of low-in…
Welcoming, Trust, and Civic Engagement
Prior studies have sought to understand how immigrants integrate into U.S. society, focusing on the ways in which local contexts and institutions limit immigrant incorporation. In this study, we consider how interactions among immigrants and U.S.-born within receiving communities contribute to the process of immigrant integration. We emphasize the extent to which immigrants perceive that they are welcome in their social environments and the downs…
Postcolonialism, Racial Political Fields, and Panethnicity
Recent work has called for sociologists to incorporate postcolonial theory into their toolkits to better understand the mechanics of race in the United States. The authors answer this call by showing how postcolonial and field theories can be bridged to explain how movements of the 1970s developed distinct visions of panethnicity. Drawing on published case studies, as well as a unique data set of pioneering 'Asian American' and 'Hispanic' movemen…
How Does Interracial Contact Among the U.S.-Born Shape White and Black Receptivity Toward Immigrants
A notable increase in immigration into the United States over the past half century, coupled with its recent geographic dispersion into new communities nationwide, has fueled contact among a wider set of individuals and groups than ever before. Past research has helped us understand Whites’ and Blacks’ attitudes toward immigrants and immigration, and even how contact between Blacks and Whites have shaped their attitudes toward one another. Nevert…
Boundary Articulation and Emergent Identities
This article examines how minority leaders articulate emergent group boundaries. We provide the first systematic comparison of the Asian and Hispanic panethnic movements of the 1970s, assessing how pioneering publications developed claims about panethnicity before the identities became widely institutionalized. The findings indicate that despite referring to communities with different histories, discussions about Asian and Hispanic panethnicity d…
Immigrant Perceptions of U.S.-Born Receptivity and the Shaping of American Identity
Michael Jones-Correa, Helen B. Marrow, Dina G. Okamoto, Linda R. Tropp, Immigrant Perceptions of U.S.-Born Receptivity and the Shaping of American Identity, RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences, Vol. 4, No. 5, Immigration and Changing Identities (August 2018), pp. 47-80
How Contact Experiences Shape Welcoming
This research examines how intergroup contact experiences—including both their frequency and their qualities (friendly, discriminatory)—predict indicators of welcoming among U.S.-born and immigrant groups. Analyzing a new survey of U.S.-born groups (whites and blacks) and immigrant groups (Mexicans and Indians) from the Atlanta and Philadelphia metropolitan areas (total N = 2,006), we examine welcoming as a key dimension of social integration. Al…
We Only Speak English Here”
Past research suggests that community after-school programs (ASPs) are crucial sites for culturally relevant programming for minority and immigrant youth; yet, we know little about how ASPs address language in their programming. Using an ethnographic fieldwork approach, we examine the goals and practices of ASP workers serving immigrant youth with diverse ethnic and language backgrounds in San Francisco, California. We find that, despite the best…
Designing Culturally Responsive Organized After-School Activities
Organized after-school activities promote positive youth development across a range of outcomes. To be most effective, organized activities need to meet high-quality standards. The eight features of quality developed by the National Research Council’s Committee on Community-Level Programs for Youth have helped guide the field in this regard. However, these standards have largely been defined in terms of universal developmental needs, and do not a…
Group Boundaries, Immigrant Inclusion, and the Politics of Immigrant-Native Relations
In multiethnic nation-states experiencing new flows of immigrants, political officials and citizens alike have expressed hostility in the form of demonstrations, campaigns, vandalism, and even policies. Yet local communities have also displayed public support for immigrants in the form of protests and advocacy efforts. Past literature has almost exclusively focused on anti-immigrant activity, using theories of group threat and competition, which …
Moral or civic ties? Deservingness and engagement among undocumented Latinas in non-profit organisations
As alternatives to mainstream institutions, local non-profit organisations (NPOs) are important sites for immigrant civic engagement; yet, there is little research on how immigrants negotiate the benefits of NPOs. We use ethnographic fieldwork and multiple in-depth interviews with 39 NPO staff and Latina immigrants in San Francisco, California. We offer new insights about how undocumented, low-income, Latina mothers – a group constrained by multi…
Symbolic Politics of the State
A symbolic politics approach contends that the meanings policy proposals convey, and the audiences they attract, may matter more than whether they become law. Yet, we know little about the sociopolitical conditions prompting lawmakers to engage in symbolic politics. Using a new data set, we analyze proposals to expand or restrict in-state college tuition for undocumented students and find that national events-House of Representatives Bill 4437 an…
The Re-Appearance of Race and Ethnicity
lessons learned from postcolonial studies’’ (p. 252). Sociology and Empire should be seen as an important intervention in a longstanding trend whereby sociologists have charted a new course for the future by rewriting the history of the past. As Gurminder Bhambra pointed out in her reflection on ‘‘The Possibilities of, and for, Global Sociology,’’ our only hope of being able to ‘‘understand and address the necessarily postcolonial (and decolonial…
Legitimating Contexts, Immigrant Power, and Exclusionary Actions
In multi-ethnic nation-states, opposition to immigration has manifested itself in attitudes and behaviors. Past research has typically focused on anti-immigrant attitudes, and relied on threat and competition theories to explain patterns in such attitudes. These theories suggest that perceived threats stemming from new influxes or large concentrations of immigrants should prompt dominant groups to protect their interests, leading to anti-immigran…
Asian American Political Participation
Panethnicity
Panethnicity has become a significant form of identification across the globe. Categories, such as Latino and Asian American, but also identities, such as Yoruba and European, have been embraced by a growing number of individuals and institutions. In this article, we focus on three main issues: panethnic identification, the conditions under which panethnic categories are constructed, and recent directions in the field. We argue that panethnicity …
Social Citizenship, Integration and Collective Action
Collective action has been examined in studies of worker insurgency, homeless protest, the Civil Rights movement and white backlash against racial minorities. Relatively few studies, however, focus on noncontentious forms of immigrant collective action. Utilizing a new data set comprising over 1,000 immigrant civic events, we examine whether the civic and political environment within metropolitan areas affect civic engagement. Our results indicat…
Racial Inclusion or Accommodation
In this paper, we examine how community-based organizations (CBOs) and their leaders negotiate and expand the boundaries of the communities they serve and represent. Drawing upon interviews with organizational leaders and documentary data from Asian American CBOs in the San Francisco Bay Area, we find that nearly all of the organizations in our sample engaged in cross-racial work, incorporating other racial groups into their programs, campaigns, …
Beyond good grades
El Campeón de Los Hispanos? Comparing the coverage of Latino/a collective action in Spanish- and English-language newspapers
Beyond the Ballot
Most studies that attempt to understand immigrant political incorporation focus on patterns of electoral participation and citizenship acquisition. Given that nearly 60 percent of the foreign-born population in the United States is comprised of noncitizens, we argue that past studies miss an important dimension of the immigrant political incorporation process. In this article, we move beyond the ballot by documenting patterns of immigrant protest…
Inheriting the City
Toward a Theory of Panethnicity
This analysis extends theoretical models of ethnic boundary formation to account for the shifting and layered nature of ethnic boundaries. It focuses on the underlying structural conditions that facilitate the expansion ofethnic boundaries or the construction of a pan-national identity, and explores how organizing along an ethnic boundary affects collective efforts at the panethnic level. Two processes could be occurring: (I) Competition with oth…
Panethnicity
Panethnicity has become a significant form of identification across the globe. Categories, such as Latino and Asian American, but also identities, such as Yoruba and European, have been embraced by a growing number of individuals and institutions. In this article, we focus on three main issues: panethnic identification, the conditions under which panethnic categories are constructed, and recent directions in the field. We argue that panethnicity …
Beyond the Ballot
Most studies that attempt to understand immigrant political incorporation focus on patterns of electoral participation and citizenship acquisition. Given that nearly 60 percent of the foreign-born population in the United States is comprised of noncitizens, we argue that past studies miss an important dimension of the immigrant political incorporation process. In this article, we move beyond the ballot by documenting patterns of immigrant protest…
Careers in Print
Academic reputation rests on publication. But unlike many fields, sociology recognizes both journal articles and books, thereby complicating the relation of publication to reputation. Drawing on the sociology of science and organization theory to analyze elite sociology journals and books nominated for a major prize, the authors show how genre structures scholarly fields and shapes the reception of texts. Method and evidence, not subject matter, …
Is There a Supply Side to Occupational Sex Segregation
We examine evidence for supply-side explanations of occupational sex segregation, using the 1979-93 NLSY. Supply-side explanations, such as those derived from neoclassical economic theory and gender socialization, look to individual characteristics of workers, such as values, aspirations, and roles, to explain occupational outcomes. Contrary to human capital theory, we find no tendency for individuals with early plans for employment intermittency…
Institutional Panethnicity
In the wake of the civil rights movement, new organizations formed which were based on the collective interests and identities of their constituencies. Some of these organizations brought together national origin groups who often differed by ethnicity, language, culture, religion and immigration history. In this paper, I focus on the conditions that facilitate the institutionalization of a socially constructed panethnic community. Using a new lon…
Political Consequences of Minority Group Formation
Given the global trend of increasing ethnocultural diversity and the outbreak of nationalist movements based on cultural, linguistic, and territorial identities, this review focuses on social and political mechanisms that lead to the emergence of minority group collective action. This kind of collective action is seen as a function of three necessary conditions: the formation of distinctive social identities, the overcoming of free riding, and th…
Marrying out
Designing Culturally Responsive Organized After-School Activities
Organized after-school activities promote positive youth development across a range of outcomes. To be most effective, organized activities need to meet high-quality standards. The eight features of quality developed by the National Research Council’s Committee on Community-Level Programs for Youth have helped guide the field in this regard. However, these standards have largely been defined in terms of universal developmental needs, and do not a…
Changing the Subject
Social scientists have devoted a great deal of attention to how much people talk, but have paid little attention to what they talk about. Research in the tradition of conversation analysis suggests that transitions between topics of conversation are accomplished in a systematic, structured way, and that social status can affect whose topics are developed and whose are lost. The authors use insights from conversation analysis to develop a systemat…
Beyond good grades
How Contact Experiences Shape Welcoming
This research examines how intergroup contact experiences—including both their frequency and their qualities (friendly, discriminatory)—predict indicators of welcoming among U.S.-born and immigrant groups. Analyzing a new survey of U.S.-born groups (whites and blacks) and immigrant groups (Mexicans and Indians) from the Atlanta and Philadelphia metropolitan areas (total N = 2,006), we examine welcoming as a key dimension of social integration. Al…
Group Boundaries, Immigrant Inclusion, and the Politics of Immigrant-Native Relations
In multiethnic nation-states experiencing new flows of immigrants, political officials and citizens alike have expressed hostility in the form of demonstrations, campaigns, vandalism, and even policies. Yet local communities have also displayed public support for immigrants in the form of protests and advocacy efforts. Past literature has almost exclusively focused on anti-immigrant activity, using theories of group threat and competition, which …
Legitimating Contexts, Immigrant Power, and Exclusionary Actions
In multi-ethnic nation-states, opposition to immigration has manifested itself in attitudes and behaviors. Past research has typically focused on anti-immigrant attitudes, and relied on threat and competition theories to explain patterns in such attitudes. These theories suggest that perceived threats stemming from new influxes or large concentrations of immigrants should prompt dominant groups to protect their interests, leading to anti-immigran…
Immigrant Perceptions of U.S.-Born Receptivity and the Shaping of American Identity
Michael Jones-Correa, Helen B. Marrow, Dina G. Okamoto, Linda R. Tropp, Immigrant Perceptions of U.S.-Born Receptivity and the Shaping of American Identity, RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences, Vol. 4, No. 5, Immigration and Changing Identities (August 2018), pp. 47-80
Racial Inclusion or Accommodation
In this paper, we examine how community-based organizations (CBOs) and their leaders negotiate and expand the boundaries of the communities they serve and represent. Drawing upon interviews with organizational leaders and documentary data from Asian American CBOs in the San Francisco Bay Area, we find that nearly all of the organizations in our sample engaged in cross-racial work, incorporating other racial groups into their programs, campaigns, …
Moral or civic ties? Deservingness and engagement among undocumented Latinas in non-profit organisations
As alternatives to mainstream institutions, local non-profit organisations (NPOs) are important sites for immigrant civic engagement; yet, there is little research on how immigrants negotiate the benefits of NPOs. We use ethnographic fieldwork and multiple in-depth interviews with 39 NPO staff and Latina immigrants in San Francisco, California. We offer new insights about how undocumented, low-income, Latina mothers – a group constrained by multi…
Skin Tone and Mexicans’ Perceptions of Discrimination in New Immigrant Destinations
Colorism literature examines how skin tone—alongside prototypical group features and hairstyles—correlates with socioeconomic, health, and political outcomes. Yet few studies have explicitly operationalized how skin tone shapes Latinos’ experiences of racialization in “new” U.S. destinations. Here, we draw on a large, representative sample of Mexican immigrants (N = 500) living in two large metropolitan areas (Atlanta and Philadelphia) to investi…
We Only Speak English Here”
Past research suggests that community after-school programs (ASPs) are crucial sites for culturally relevant programming for minority and immigrant youth; yet, we know little about how ASPs address language in their programming. Using an ethnographic fieldwork approach, we examine the goals and practices of ASP workers serving immigrant youth with diverse ethnic and language backgrounds in San Francisco, California. We find that, despite the best…
Measuring Interruption
Dina G. Okamoto, Lisa Slattery Rashotte, Lynn Smith-Lovin, Measuring Interruption: Syntactic and Contextual Methods of Coding Conversation, Social Psychology Quarterly, Vol. 65, No. 1 (Mar., 2002), pp. 38-55
Welcoming, Trust, and Civic Engagement
Prior studies have sought to understand how immigrants integrate into U.S. society, focusing on the ways in which local contexts and institutions limit immigrant incorporation. In this study, we consider how interactions among immigrants and U.S.-born within receiving communities contribute to the process of immigrant integration. We emphasize the extent to which immigrants perceive that they are welcome in their social environments and the downs…
How Does Interracial Contact Among the U.S.-Born Shape White and Black Receptivity Toward Immigrants
A notable increase in immigration into the United States over the past half century, coupled with its recent geographic dispersion into new communities nationwide, has fueled contact among a wider set of individuals and groups than ever before. Past research has helped us understand Whites’ and Blacks’ attitudes toward immigrants and immigration, and even how contact between Blacks and Whites have shaped their attitudes toward one another. Nevert…
The Opportunities and Costs of Voice and Exit
Minority group members who face threats to their security have a number of options: they can stay in their country of origin and fight for social and political change; they can choose to emigrate, finding comfort and safety across an international border; they can participate in insurgency activities and leave their country of residence; or they can take no purposive action and hope that improvements in their home country will eventually take pla…
Ethnic competition and mobilization by minorities at risk
In this article, we use the Minorities at Risk dataset to examine the effects of five forms of ethnic competition (demographic, ecological, political, cultural, and economic) on multiple types of mobilization (communal conflict, rebellion, and protest). Overall, we find that measures of competition predicted communal conflict between groups rather than mobilization by minority groups towards the state. Ecological competition, a form of competitio…
Mobilizing an Asian American Community
Careers in Print
Academic reputation rests on publication. But unlike many fields, sociology recognizes both journal articles and books, thereby complicating the relation of publication to reputation. Drawing on the sociology of science and organization theory to analyze elite sociology journals and books nominated for a major prize, the authors show how genre structures scholarly fields and shapes the reception of texts. Method and evidence, not subject matter, …
Constructing School Success
How can we bolster the academic success of low achieving students and provide a more egalitarian classroom setting? This book describes the process of 'untracking', an educational reform effort that has prepared students from low income, linguistic, and ethnic minority backgrounds for college. Untracking offers all students the same academically-demanding curriculum while varying the amount of institutional support they receive. Helpful instituti…
Is There a Supply Side to Occupational Sex Segregation
We examine evidence for supply-side explanations of occupational sex segregation, using the 1979-93 NLSY. Supply-side explanations, such as those derived from neoclassical economic theory and gender socialization, look to individual characteristics of workers, such as values, aspirations, and roles, to explain occupational outcomes. Contrary to human capital theory, we find no tendency for individuals with early plans for employment intermittency…
Political Consequences of Minority Group Formation
Given the global trend of increasing ethnocultural diversity and the outbreak of nationalist movements based on cultural, linguistic, and territorial identities, this review focuses on social and political mechanisms that lead to the emergence of minority group collective action. This kind of collective action is seen as a function of three necessary conditions: the formation of distinctive social identities, the overcoming of free riding, and th…
Changing the Subject
Social scientists have devoted a great deal of attention to how much people talk, but have paid little attention to what they talk about. Research in the tradition of conversation analysis suggests that transitions between topics of conversation are accomplished in a systematic, structured way, and that social status can affect whose topics are developed and whose are lost. The authors use insights from conversation analysis to develop a systemat…
Ethnic competition and mobilization by minorities at risk
In this article, we use the Minorities at Risk dataset to examine the effects of five forms of ethnic competition (demographic, ecological, political, cultural, and economic) on multiple types of mobilization (communal conflict, rebellion, and protest). Overall, we find that measures of competition predicted communal conflict between groups rather than mobilization by minority groups towards the state. Ecological competition, a form of competitio…
Measuring Interruption
Dina G. Okamoto, Lisa Slattery Rashotte, Lynn Smith-Lovin, Measuring Interruption: Syntactic and Contextual Methods of Coding Conversation, Social Psychology Quarterly, Vol. 65, No. 1 (Mar., 2002), pp. 38-55
Toward a Theory of Panethnicity
This analysis extends theoretical models of ethnic boundary formation to account for the shifting and layered nature of ethnic boundaries. It focuses on the underlying structural conditions that facilitate the expansion ofethnic boundaries or the construction of a pan-national identity, and explores how organizing along an ethnic boundary affects collective efforts at the panethnic level. Two processes could be occurring: (I) Competition with oth…
Mobilizing an Asian American Community
Asian American Youth
Institutional Panethnicity
In the wake of the civil rights movement, new organizations formed which were based on the collective interests and identities of their constituencies. Some of these organizations brought together national origin groups who often differed by ethnicity, language, culture, religion and immigration history. In this paper, I focus on the conditions that facilitate the institutionalization of a socially constructed panethnic community. Using a new lon…
Marrying out
The Opportunities and Costs of Voice and Exit
Minority group members who face threats to their security have a number of options: they can stay in their country of origin and fight for social and political change; they can choose to emigrate, finding comfort and safety across an international border; they can participate in insurgency activities and leave their country of residence; or they can take no purposive action and hope that improvements in their home country will eventually take pla…
Inheriting the City
Beyond the Ballot
Most studies that attempt to understand immigrant political incorporation focus on patterns of electoral participation and citizenship acquisition. Given that nearly 60 percent of the foreign-born population in the United States is comprised of noncitizens, we argue that past studies miss an important dimension of the immigrant political incorporation process. In this article, we move beyond the ballot by documenting patterns of immigrant protest…
El Campeón de Los Hispanos? Comparing the coverage of Latino/a collective action in Spanish- and English-language newspapers
Social Citizenship, Integration and Collective Action
Collective action has been examined in studies of worker insurgency, homeless protest, the Civil Rights movement and white backlash against racial minorities. Relatively few studies, however, focus on noncontentious forms of immigrant collective action. Utilizing a new data set comprising over 1,000 immigrant civic events, we examine whether the civic and political environment within metropolitan areas affect civic engagement. Our results indicat…
Racial Inclusion or Accommodation
In this paper, we examine how community-based organizations (CBOs) and their leaders negotiate and expand the boundaries of the communities they serve and represent. Drawing upon interviews with organizational leaders and documentary data from Asian American CBOs in the San Francisco Bay Area, we find that nearly all of the organizations in our sample engaged in cross-racial work, incorporating other racial groups into their programs, campaigns, …
Beyond good grades
Asian American Political Participation
Panethnicity
Panethnicity has become a significant form of identification across the globe. Categories, such as Latino and Asian American, but also identities, such as Yoruba and European, have been embraced by a growing number of individuals and institutions. In this article, we focus on three main issues: panethnic identification, the conditions under which panethnic categories are constructed, and recent directions in the field. We argue that panethnicity …
The Re-Appearance of Race and Ethnicity
lessons learned from postcolonial studies’’ (p. 252). Sociology and Empire should be seen as an important intervention in a longstanding trend whereby sociologists have charted a new course for the future by rewriting the history of the past. As Gurminder Bhambra pointed out in her reflection on ‘‘The Possibilities of, and for, Global Sociology,’’ our only hope of being able to ‘‘understand and address the necessarily postcolonial (and decolonial…
Legitimating Contexts, Immigrant Power, and Exclusionary Actions
In multi-ethnic nation-states, opposition to immigration has manifested itself in attitudes and behaviors. Past research has typically focused on anti-immigrant attitudes, and relied on threat and competition theories to explain patterns in such attitudes. These theories suggest that perceived threats stemming from new influxes or large concentrations of immigrants should prompt dominant groups to protect their interests, leading to anti-immigran…
We Only Speak English Here”
Past research suggests that community after-school programs (ASPs) are crucial sites for culturally relevant programming for minority and immigrant youth; yet, we know little about how ASPs address language in their programming. Using an ethnographic fieldwork approach, we examine the goals and practices of ASP workers serving immigrant youth with diverse ethnic and language backgrounds in San Francisco, California. We find that, despite the best…
Designing Culturally Responsive Organized After-School Activities
Organized after-school activities promote positive youth development across a range of outcomes. To be most effective, organized activities need to meet high-quality standards. The eight features of quality developed by the National Research Council’s Committee on Community-Level Programs for Youth have helped guide the field in this regard. However, these standards have largely been defined in terms of universal developmental needs, and do not a…
Sociology (35 works) · Political science (30 works) · Psychology (22 works) · Law (20 works) · Immigration (18 works) · Politics (15 works) · Ethnic group (14 works) · Migration, Refugees, and Integration (13 works) · Gender Studies (12 works) · Social Psychology (11 works)