CILS in Spain!
These are the thrilling moments of grad school (seriously!). You spend so much time thinking about interests, how to bring together what you’re interested with what’s feasible and smart to do. For me, this is some mix between my longstanding interest in language, immigration and schooling, the work I’ve done at SRI, and Spain, among other things. I’ve decided to use the “CILS” (http://cmd.princeton.edu/cils%20iii.shtml) dataset for my statistics project because I want to explore a question about immigrant groups and higher education, and browsing around on the Center for Migration and Development website, I came across a description of a new CILS in Europe, with the initial study happening in Spain! They have a working paper on the preliminary data they’ve found in Huelva, which I’ve started to read, and I immediately emailed Estrella Gualda, the author of the paper, asking for more information and expressing my interest in the work.
The really exciting thing is that this seems to be just getting started. The larger CILS, with 3 different points of data collection in Miami and San Diego, ended a couple years ago, and on the website, they describe this new study as taking the CILS to Europe. Who are the people working with Alejandro Portes and his group at Princeton? Where are they housed in Spanish and other European universities? What possibilities might there be to work with them? Richard Alba, a sociologist that I saw speak at Berkeley last week, also studies immigration in the U.S. and Europe. I think there could be a real place for me to study immigration and schooling in the U.S. and Europe.
How are the schools responding to the influx of immigrants in Spain? Does Gualda’s working paper discuss this? How is the immigrant second generation faring in Spanish schools? Are they transitioning to higher education at rates similar to native Spaniards? If it is too soon to tell, this could be something to study in 10 or 20 years when I’ve built my career in this area.
The possibilities all of a sudden feel much more open. Other people are interested in what I’m interested in studying, and they already have a project going. I’m thrilled to find out more about this effort.