Biography of Alejandro Portes

摘要

A lejandro portes is a premier sociologist who has shaped the study of immigration and ur-banization for 30 years. He is chair of the department of sociology at Princeton University (Princeton, NJ) as well as co-founder and director of Princeton's Center for Migration and Development. In 1998, Portes became a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2001. From 1998 to 1999, Portes served as president of the American Sociological Association. He has authored and edited numerous books and has published articles on a range of policy issues, including immigrant assimilation, Latin American politics, and United States/Cuba relations. A Cuban exile himself, Portes has spent his career tracking the lives of different immigrant nationalities in the United States. He has chronicled the causes and consequences of immigration to the United States, with an emphasis on informal economies, transnational communities, and ethnic enclaves. In Portes's Inaugural Article, published in this issue of PNAS, he and Hao study the children of immigrants and the factors that determine their successful adaptation to life in the United States, such as family support and school socioeconomic status (SES).