A Karimi

Biographic Data

ID24317
NAMEA Karimi
GIVEN NAMESA
FAMILY NAMEKarimi
SIGNATUREKARIMI A
AFFILIATIONSUniversity of British Columbia
ORCID0000-0002-9470-0782
VERIFIEDYes
TOTAL WORKS31
TOTAL CITATIONS82
AUTHOR COUNT31
EDITOR COUNT0
FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR1998
LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR2026
H-INDEX6

  • Why are some racial disparities harder to interpret than others

    Open AccessR Wilkes, A KarimiARTICLEFrontiers in Sociology2026

    By definition, every racial disparity entails an ordering of racial groups, with one positioned higher and another lower. Cultural frameworks typically interpret disparities by emphasizing higher outcome positions as desirable, while implicitly casting lower positions as requiring improvement. Structural frameworks, by contrast, interpret disparities by treating higher outcome positions as structurally advantaged and therefore as the locus of cri…

  • What Holds Multiculturalism Together? Shared Middle-Class Identity in Canada

    Open AccessSophie Xiaoyi Liu, A Karimi et al.ARTICLEInternational Migration Review2026

    Recent scholarship on multiculturalism increasingly examines how cultural pluralism intersects with social class, particularly middle-class formation. In Canada, a growing thesis argues that immigration and refugee policies promote diversity while simultaneously advancing a middle-class nation-building project through selection criteria emphasizing skills, education, and professional experience. Moving beyond macro-level analyses, this study inve…

  • Racial Triangulation: Past, Present, and Future Theorizing via Visualizing Diagrams

    Open AccessR Wilkes, A KarimiARTICLERace and Social Problems2026References: 13

  • Are we really surmounting the binary? Visualizing race and ethnicity group relations via embedded relational diagrams

    Open AccessR Wilkes, A KarimiARTICLEFrontiers in Sociology2025References: 81

    Social theories explain the current state of affairs between social groups. In the sociological race literature, theories traditionally explained White-Black relations. In the ethnicity literature, theories explained native-born and immigrant relations. What happens to social theorizing of current group relations when new third groups emerge in society? Because social reconfigurations unfold in the longue durée and are less amenable to controlled…

  • Classic, Segmented-, or Neo-Assimilation, Which Theory to Use? A Scientific-Method Investigation

    Open AccessA Karimi, R WilkesARTICLEInternational Migration Review2025Cited by: 2References: 70

    Classic, segmented, and neo-assimilation theories delineate immigrants’ assimilation trajectories. Classic assimilation, since the early twentieth century, treats newcomers’ and established groups’ interactions as leading to ethnoracial pluralism within one culture. Segmented-assimilation, since the 1990s, examines non-European immigrants’ experiences, and considers how factors such as ethnic capital, immigration policies, and racial discriminati…

  • Visualizing Social Theory with Embedded Relational Diagrams: Theoretical Illustration, Development, and Innovation

    Open AccessR Wilkes, A KarimiARTICLEThe American Sociologist2025Cited by: 1References: 34

  • Refugee Integration Goes Transnational: Afghans and Ukrainians Prepare for Integration in Canada Before and After Arrival

    Open AccessSophie Xiaoyi Liu, A KarimiARTICLEGlobal Networks2025References: 16

    What does integration look like when immigrants and refugees mobilize socioeconomic resources before arriving in their new destination countries to proactively navigate the integration process? To date, research in refugee studies has emphasized the importance of socioeconomic capital and access to digital technologies in facilitating employment, housing and language acquisition. In comparison, our empirical insights from 80 interviews with Afgha…

  • How to assign social groups to ethnic and racial categories after Racial Domination

    Open AccessA Karimi, R WilkesARTICLEEthnicities2025Cited by: 4References: 5

  • What is assimilation, how do we measure it, and how do we know if a group has assimilated

    Open AccessA Karimi, R WilkesARTICLETheory and Society2025References: 106

  • National Assimilation and/or Cosmopolitan Transnationalism? Impending Transnationalism among the Upwardly Mobile Children of Refugees

    Open AccessA Karimi, Sara K Thompson et al.ARTICLESociology2024References: 59

    In sociology of migration, assimilation theory anticipates second-generations’ socio-economic mobility into the mainstream. In contrast, the concept of transnationalism predicts second-generations’ simultaneous belonging to the origin and destination countries. We draw on 118 qualitative interviews with second-generation Somali-Canadians whose parents were refugees to assess which of these perspectives best explains our participants’ experiences.…

  • Muslims on the Margins: Creating Queer Religious Community in North America

    Open AccessA KarimiARTICLEContemporary Sociology A Journal…2024

  • What does the Maihda method explain

    Open AccessR Wilkes, A KarimiARTICLESocial Science & Medicine2024Cited by: 3References: 33

  • Wartime (im)mobilities: Effects of aspirations-capabilities on displaced Ukrainians in Canada and Germany and their viewpoints on those who remain in Ukraine

    A Karimi, Yuliya ByelikovaARTICLENew Community2024Cited by: 4References: 52

    In war times, what differentiates those who manage to flee from those who remain behind? Based on 468 qualitative interview and survey responses with displaced Ukrainians’ in Canada and Germany, and the aspirations-capabilities framework, we identify how macro-level policies and individual resources and aspirations combine to shape wartime (im)mobility outcomes. Canada and Germany have relaxed their entry-stay policies to facilitate the displaced…

  • A transnational amendment to assimilation theory: Country of origin’s racial status versus transnational Whiteness

    Open AccessA Karimi, R WilkesARTICLEEthnic and Racial Studies2023

    In the twentieth century, European migrants’ ethnic and racial status changed as they joined the mainstream. Assimilation theory identified socioeconomic mobility as the driver of this outcome. More recently, non-European migrants have also achieved socioeconomic parity with the mainstream. Yet, a puzzle has emerged: unlike earlier European migrants these non-Europeans remain “racialized”. They are both a part of, and excluded from, the majority …

  • Assimilated or the boundary of Whiteness expanded? A boundary model of group belonging

    Open AccessA Karimi, R WilkesARTICLEBritish Journal of Sociology2023Cited by: 8References: 82

    In 19th century U.S., European ethnics were considered dark-skinned and working-class. By the 1950s, they were re-categorized as White Americans. Assimilation theory suggests that Europeans' intergroup interactions such as socioeconomic attainments and intermarriage with Anglo-Saxon Whites led to their assimilation and racial re-categorization. The theory anticipates that class mobility translates into re-categorization into Whiteness such that n…

  • Multi-group data versus dual-side theory: On race contrasts and police-caused homicides

    Open AccessR Wilkes, A KarimiARTICLESocial Science & Medicine2023Cited by: 6References: 54

    Empirical evidence points to a persistent Black-White racial gap in police-caused homicides. Some scholarship treats the gap as denoting criminal justice exposure either in terms of involvement in crime or living in a high-crime context. By contrast, health scholarship typically points to the importance of racism including the attitudes, institutional practices, and overall structures that operate to privilege one group over another. Still, given…

  • Context of racialized assimilation: A case of second-generation Somali-Canadians

    A Karimi, Sara K Thompson et al.ARTICLEEthnic and Racial Studies2023Cited by: 5References: 34

    Can second-generation racialized Canadians cross racial and class boundaries into middle-class mainstream society? Currently, neo-assimilation theory anticipates identificational and socioeconomic assimilation into the mainstream, while segmented-assimilation theory argues that racial and economic structures inhibit racialized groups' assimilation. An emerging strand of assimilation theory - racialized incorporation - hypothesizes that, for racia…

  • A methodological analysis of national models of integration: Time to Think Without the Models

    Open AccessA Karimi, R WilkesARTICLENew Community2022Cited by: 6References: 82

    National models of integration are widely used to understand the relationship between nationalism and integration-immigration policies. In this methodological article, we highlight two key concerns. First, national models of integration emerged out of inductive and normative case studies. The analytical value of models which are based on inductive and normative reasoning is not directly generalisable beyond very similar cases. Second, and despite…

  • Sexuality and integration: A case of gay Iranian refugees’ collective memories and integration practices in Canada

    A KarimiARTICLEEthnic and Racial Studies2021

    During the past two decades, Canada has accepted hundreds of LGBT asylum seekers, including gay Iranian men. Sociologists of sexualities and migration have yet to study this group as immigrants whose sexualities play a central role in their social interactions, immigration, and integration practices. Taking integration as a category of practice and relying on Halbwachs’s theory of collective memory, I provide an empirical study of integration pra…

  • Limits of Social Capital for Refugee Integration: The Case of Gay Iranian Male Refugees' Integration in Canada

    Open AccessA KarimiARTICLEInternational Migration2020Cited by: 6References: 18

    Each year thousands of refugees, including racialized LGBT refugees, are resettled in Canada. Currently, economic independence is the foremost policy goal in integrating Canada's refugees. This policy often relies on social capital as a non‐economic solution to integration. I draw on 35 multi‐sequential interviews with 19 gay Iranian men to connect the empirical and theoretical debates around refugee integration and argue that over‐reliance on re…

  • The Role of Intimate Relationship Status, Sexuality, and Ethnicity in Doing Fieldwork among Sexual-Racial Minority Refugees: An Intersectional Methodology

    Open AccessA KarimiARTICLESociological Inquiry2020References: 78

    Feminist researchers from a range of disciplines have called for consolidation of intersectionality as a methodology. In this article, I contribute to the literature on intracategorical intersectional methodology by drawing on my experiences of conducting fieldwork with 19 gay male Iranian refugees in Canada. Also, by merging the research on intersectionality, sexuality, and refugee studies, I take intersectionality beyond its traditional applica…

  • Refugees’ Transnational Practices: Gay Iranian Men Navigating Refugee Status and Cross-border Ties in Canada

    Open AccessA KarimiARTICLESocial Currents2019Cited by: 7References: 45

    Despite the rise in displaced population numbers, refugees’ transnational lives, and those of sexual-racial minority refugees in particular, have remained at the margins of transnational migration studies. In this article, I focus on the case of gay Iranian refugees in Canada and analyze their pre-migration transnational lives and understandings of the asylum process, their post-migration transnational ties, and their activism practices. I underl…

  • African immigrant women’s transition and integration into Canadian society: Expectations, stressors, and tensions

    P Okeke-Ihejirika, Bukola Salami et al.ARTICLEGender Place & Culture2019Cited by: 10References: 14

    This article contributes to an emergent body of research that explores African immigrant women’s experiences in Western destination countries. Foregrounding these immigrant women’s voices in this research, we aim to better understand the challenges they grapple with as newcomers to Canada. Specifically, our study sought to explore the stressors they faced within and outside the family and how these stressors mediate their transition and integrati…

  • Gender identity and integration: Second-generation Somali immigrants navigating gender in Canada

    A Karimi, Sandra M Buceriu et al.ARTICLEEthnic and Racial Studies2019Cited by: 8References: 54

    Many right-leaning politicians claim that normative Islamic perspectives on gender are at odds with the Western values and act as barriers to immigrant integration. Our interviews with 256 second-generation Somali-Canadians, however, suggest that gender-egalitarian identities are achieved - they are constructed and deployed by our participants to practice integration and express belonging in Canada. In this study, we move beyond analysis of attai…

  • Hamjensgara belongs to family; exclusion and inclusion of male homosexuality in relation to family structure in Iran

    A KarimiARTICLEIdentities2018

    This paper looks at current struggles of Iranian gay men to form new sexual identities that are directly tied to family structure and based on values of emotional bond and commitment to a same-sex partner. Based on fieldwork conducted among Iranian gay men in 2012–2014 and through looking at Iranian gay men’s terminologies, Hamjensgara and Gay in particular, I will clarify how Iranian gays, in a way different from that of Western LGBT activists, …