Research

My research

My research explores the emergence of social boundaries around immigrants and racial minorities across the world as well as how these boundaries contribute to the reproduction of ethnic-based social inequality. I investigate how political factors shape the experiences of immigrants in the U.S. I also conduct research to test whether theories of racial inequality and immigrant adaptation devised by U.S. scholars have explanatory power in other social contexts. More specifically, I have examined how ethnoracial traits like skin color and national origin shape the experiences of minorities in Europe and Latin America. Methodologically, I draw on a variety of statistical approaches to the analysis of administrative and survey data as well as on computational text analysis.

My work focuses on four research areas:

1. Socio-Political Factors that Shape Immigrants’ Experiences
2. Race and Ethnicity in Latin America
3. Racial Boundaries in the U.S.
4. Immigration in Europe

1. Socio-Political Factors that Shape Immigrants’ Experiences

Outside of "The Roads End Pub and Club" in Hazleton, PA. 2006.

I assess the effect of political factors like immigration policies and politicians’ statements on public attitudes towards immigrants. I have examined how local restrictive immigration ordinances, such as English-only declarations and fines for employers of undocumented immigrants, shape the communities in which they are proposed. These policies have spread throughout the country as Hispanic immigrants have ventured out of traditional immigrant gateways. Although the determinants of these laws have been studied, we know less about their consequences.
I relied on semi-structured interviews with 103 residents of Hazleton, PA, a town that passed an anti-immigrant ordinance, to examine this law’s impact on inter-ethnic relations (Flores 2014). I have also assessed the impact of anti-immigrant laws on gun sales in Pennsylvania counties to test whether these policies increased residents’ concern with crime spurring self-defensive gun ownership, as I found in Hazleton (Flores 2015). I have also focused on Arizona’s SB 1070, a controversial state bill passed in 2010 that authorized police officers to detain anyone they suspected of being an illegal immigrant (Flores 2017). I evaluate the impact of SB 1070 on public sentiment towards immigrants by using computational text analysis techniques to analyze more than 300,000 immigration-related tweets posted by Arizona residents in 2010.
I have also examined whether political elites have the power to influence public perceptions of social groups they praise or denounce. I test this by analyzing the attitudinal effects of Donald Trump’ s 2016 presidential campaign announcement speech, in which he referred to Mexican immigrants as “rapists” and “criminals” (Flores 2018).
In a collaborative project with Ariela Schachter, we experimentally investigate the social stereotypes that shape perceived illegality in the U.S. (Flores and Schachter 2018). We find that national origin, social class, and criminal background powerfully shape perceptions of illegality.

Publications:

• Flores, René D. 2014. "In the Eye of the Storm: How did Hazleton′s Restrictive Immigration Ordinance Affect Local Interethnic Relations?” American Behavioral Scientist. Vol. 58(13) 1743−1763.

• Flores, René D. 2015. "Taking the Law Into their Own Hands: Do Local Anti-Immigrant Ordinances Increase Gun Sales?” Social Problems. 62, no. 3: 363-390.

• Flores, René D. 2017. "Do Anti-immigrant Laws shape Public Sentiment?: A Study of Arizona′s SB 1070 using Twitter data.” American Journal of Sociology 123, no. 2, 333-384.

• Flores, René D. 2018. "Can Elites Shape Public Attitudes Towards Immigrants?: Evidence from the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election." Social Forces. 96: 1649-1690.

• Flores, René D. 2018. "Interviewing in the Eye of the Storm: Do Local Anti-immigrant Policies Have Social Consequences?" SAGE Research Methods Cases.

• Flores, René D. and Ariela Schachter. 2018. "Who are the ’illegals’?: The Social Construction of Illegality in the U.S." American Sociological Review.

2. Race and ethnicity in latin america

Nation-building ideologies in Latin America have generally downplayed the significance and even existence of racial boundaries within the population. In a series of articles, my colleagues and I assess whether race and ethnicity are important factors that shape the lives of contemporary Latin Americans. I focus on two main indicators, identity and social stratification, to understand how racial and ethnic boundaries function in Latin America.

Publications:

Flores, René D. and Edward Telles. 2012. "Social Stratification in Mexico: Disentangling Color, Ethnicity, and Class.” American Sociological Review. 77:4 86−94. [Comment on Villareal 2010.]

Martínez Casas, Regina, Emiko Saldívar, René D. Flores and Christina Sue. 2014. "The Different Faces of Mestizaje: Ethnicity and Race in Mexico” in Edward Telles (ed) Pigmentocracies: Ethnicity, Race and Color in Latin America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

Telles, Edward and René D. Flores. 2014. "A Reassessment of Ethnicity and Race in Latin America with PERLA findings” in Edward Telles (ed) Pigmentocracies: Ethnicity, Race and Color in Latin America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

Telles, Edward, René D. Flores and Fernando Urrea. 2015. "Why Skin Color is Better than Ethnoracial Identification at Predicting Inequality in Latin America?” Research in Social Stratification and Mobility. Vol. 40, 39−58.

Flores, René D. and David Sulmont. "Can Non-Ethnic Factors Shape Indigenous Identity in Latin America?: Evidence from National Survey Experiments.” Under Review.

Cousins. Oaxaca, México, 2010.

3. Immigration in EUrope

Contemporary critics have increasingly questioned the relevance of the concept of “race” around the world. Such critical voices are especially sharp in European countries like France and Germany, where the concept of “race” is generally regarded as “anathema to official thinking.” Instead, the general consensus in European scholarship is that, though racial animosity may have been prevalent once, racism is not as widespread in continental Europe as in the U.S., and that cultural differences, especially Muslim religion, are the main drivers of anti-immigrant sentiment. In contrast, in the U.S., race is commonly considered the dominant social cleavage, a theoretical bent that can be traced to the early work of the Chicago School of Sociology. In this line of research, I adjudicate between these competing theoretical expectations. I analyze immigrants’ discrimination reports as captured by large-scale nationally-representative surveys to assess the emergence of symbolic boundaries around immigrants on the basis of their race, nationality, and religion.

Publications:

• Flores, René D. 2015. "The Resurgence of Race in Spain: Perceptions of Discrimination Among Immigrants in Spain.” Social Forces. 94: 237-269.
- Aristide Zolberg Student Scholar Award, ASA International Migration Section, 2013.

• Flores, René D. "Sticky Boundaries: Do Immigrants in Europe Feel Discriminated Against due to their Religion or Race?” Under review.

4. RACIAL BOUNDARIES IN THE U.S.

Working with actors in a photo shoot for an experimental study on attitudes towards interracial relationships. Ann Arbor, MI 2015.

Publications:

Flores, René D. "A Little More Ghetto, a Little Less Cultured: Are there Racial Stereotypes About Interracial Daters in the U.S.?"
- Conditional Acceptance, Sociology of Race and Ethnicity.
Flores, René D. "Are you the Company you Keep?: Romantic Relationships and Women′s Perceived Race.” Under review.

Uncovering the effect of interpersonal relationships on individual outcomes is a central theme in sociology. Sociological studies have documented how our social ties affect our wealth (Lin 1999), our propensity to commit crimes (Papachristos, Hureau, and Braga 2013), our educational attainment (Rendón 2014), and our body weight (Christakis and Fowler 2007). I contribute to this line of research by examining the effect of a specific type of close social ties, romantic peers, on women’s perceived attributes.
More specifically, I use both focus groups and survey experiments to understand how the race of women’s romantic partners shapes their perceived class status, cultural values, sexual customs, and even their race in the eyes of others. Though recent survey evidence suggests that the racial boundary between blacks and whites in the U.S. has weakened, I find that it remains rigid enough that it is socially consequential for the women who cross it.