Helen B. Marrow is Assistant Professor of Sociology and Latin American Studies at Tufts University. Her research and writing focus on immigration, race and ethnicity, social class, health, and inequality and social policy. She teaches courses on sociology, social policy, immigration and the media, and qualitative research methods, and was designated one of the university’s Neubauer Faculty Fellows in 2011-12.
**Note: Professor Marrow is on junior research leave between January and December 2013.
Her book, New Destination Dreaming: Immigration, Race, and Legal Status in the Rural American South (Stanford University Press, 2011) draws on 129 in-depth interviews and a year of participant observation to understand how Hispanic/Latino newcomers are being incorporated into or excluded from economic, social, institutional, and political life in “new immigrant destinations” of the rural U.S. South. Professor Marrow has also published this research in the American Sociological Review, Ethnic and Racial Studies, Perspectives on Politics, and (forthcoming) Dædalus: The Journal of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. For her work, she has been awarded the 2008 Best Dissertation Award from the American Sociological Association, and the 2011 Distinguished Contribution to Research Article Award from the Latino/a Sociology Section of the American Sociological Association.
Professor Marrow’s other research has been published in various places. Most recently, her case study of the effects of San Francisco’s inclusive policy context toward unauthorized immigrants in health care have been published in special volumes on immigration and health in Ethnic and Racial Studies (2012) and Social Science & Medicine (2012). For this scholarship, she was also awarded the 2010 Best Paper Award from the First Annual Research Training Workshop of the University of California Centers of Expertise on Migration and Health (COEMH). Results from two earlier projects — the first on second-generation Brazilians’ racial and ethnic identities in the United States, and the second on first-generation Latin Americans’ racial and ethnic identities in Ireland – have both been published in Ethnicities. Along with sociologist Mary C. Waters and historian Reed Ueda, Professor Marrow is co-editor of The New Americans: A Guide to Immigration since 1965 (Harvard University Press, 2007).
Professor Marrow is currently working on two interdisciplinary research projects via the Russell Sage Foundation. One is entitled “Immigrant-Native Relations in 21st-Century America: Intergroup Contact, Trust, and Civic Engagement.” In collaboration with political scientist Michael Jones-Correa (Cornell), sociologist Dina Okamoto (UC-Davis), and social psychologist Linda Tropp (UMass-Amherst), we are using survey data, in-depth interviews, and targeted field observations to examine patterns and cultural contact and threat among two native groups (whites and blacks) and two immigrant groups (Mexicans and South Asian Indians) in metropolitan Philadelphia and Atlanta, with an eye toward their impact on intergroup trust and civic participation. In addition to being funded by a Presidential Authority Award and a Project Award from Russell Sage, pilot work for this project has been supported by Cornell University and the University of California Center for New Racial Studies (UCCNRS).
The second, funded by a Presidential Authority Award from Russell Sage, is entitled “Perceived Discrimination among Immigrants as a Function of Community-Level Variables.” In collaboration with political scientist Daniel Hopkins (Georgetown University), social psychologists Victoria Esses (University of Western Ontario) and Cheryl Kaiser (University of Washington), and sociologist Monica McDermott (UI-Urbana Champaign), we are analyzing existing survey data on perceived discrimination (PD) in the U.S. and Canada, and piloting new and more refined questions about PD among convenience samples of Mexican and Chinese immigrants, to examine variation in how immigrants perceive themselves as targets of discrimination.
Prior to coming to Tufts, Professor Marrow served as a Robert Wood Johnson Postdoctoral Scholar in Health Policy (UC-Berkeley and UCSF, 2008-10); a European Network on Inequality Research Fellow (Harvard University and University College Dublin, 2006); a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow (Harvard University, 2002-04 and 2005-06); a Research Fellow with the Multidisciplinary Program in Inequality and Social Policy (Harvard University, 2001-04); and a Foreign Language and Area Studies Summer Fellow with the U.S. Department of Education (Brazil, 2002). She received her M.A. and Ph.D. in Sociology and Social Policy from Harvard University, where she received four Certificates of Distinctions in Teaching, and her A.B. (summa cum laude) in Sociology and Latin American Studies from Princeton University, where she received a President’s Award for Academic Achievement in 1998. She has been interviewed and quoted in the New York Times, the Miami Herald, Harvard Magazine, and Tufts Now.
Helen B. Marrow grew up in eastern North Carolina. She currently lives outside Boston with her husband Mike, always-on-the-go toddler George, and baby daughter Virginia. She likes to cook, jog, hang out with friends and family, watch TV, and travel in her “spare” time as a working mom. She speaks proficient English, Spanish, and Portuguese — unfortunately those learn-it-yourself French tapes and that one night course in elementary Mandarin never stuck — and has studied, worked, or volunteered in Belize, Brazil, Ecuador, Ireland, Mexico, and Spain.