I have always maintained an intense interest in having my work make a difference in the world.
My primary research focus has been on the impact of immigrants on racialization in the U.S. I have written eight books and over 50 articles, focusing primarily on Miami. My book with Alejandro Portes, City on the Edge, won two national awards, the Robert Park Award for the best book in Urban Sociology and the Anthony Leeds Award for the best book in Urban Anthropology. A follow-up book, This Land Is Our Land, was hailed as path-setting. The book, Pride Against Prejudice: Haitians in the United States has already gone through numerous printings and I have also published three books on immigration, religion, and civic engagement that have received acclaim.
The American Anthropological Association and the Society for Applied Anthropology awarded me the Margaret Mead Award for my work with Haitian refugees. My law review article on U.S. refugee and asylum law is used as a definitive reference in classrooms at major law schools throughout the U.S. I have been a Fulbright Fellow twice, a Visiting Scholar at the Russell Sage Foundation in New York and am Emeritus Professor in Global and Sociocultural Studies at Florida International University.
At the graduate level, I have taught Social Research Strategies, Focus Groups and Inequalities. For undergraduates I teach Stratification, Immigrants in America, and Power, Privilege and Prejudice.