Alejandro Portes

Alejandro Portes (born October 13, 1944) is a Cuban-American sociologist known for his research on immigration to the United States and on economic sociology. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Philosophical Society, and served as president of the American Sociological Association in 1999.

Portes's work is known for combining theoretically driven questions with original, large-scale longitudinal research. With Kenneth L. Wilson he introduced the concept of the ethnic enclave, and he was among the first sociologists to study the informal economy in advanced as well as developing economies. His theory of segmented assimilation, developed with Min Zhou, describes the divergent paths of the immigrant second generation and drew on the Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Study that he directed with Rubén G. Rumbaut. He helped establish the study of immigrant transnationalism as a research field and contributed to debates over social capital. Urbanization and development formed another aspect of his work, from his studies of Latin American cities to his account of Miami's transformation into an emerging global city. His work is widely cited in the sub-fields of economic sociology, cultural sociology, and race and ethnicity.

Early life and education Portes was born in Havana, Cuba, on October 13, 1944. He began undergraduate studies at the University of Havana in 1959 but, after joining the student opposition to the new revolutionary government led by Fidel Castro, was expelled and granted political asylum in the United States, arriving in Miami in 1960 at the age of 16. At Texas he began the research on immigration that would become his principal focus, launching a study that compared the experiences of Cuban and Mexican immigrants arriving in Texas and Florida. He also led a comparative study of Caribbean urbanization, published as the edited volume The Urban Caribbean: Transition to the New Global Economy (1997), with Carlos Dore-Cabral and Patricia Landolt. In addition, he studied the transformation of Miami in City on the Edge (1993), written with Alex Stepick.

Portes joined Princeton University in 1997 as the Howard Harrison and Gabrielle Snyder Beck Professor of Sociology, a chair he held until becoming emeritus in 2014. In 1998 he co-founded the Center for Migration and Development with Marta Tienda, serving as its director from 1999 to 2012. He has also served on the board of trustees and the Scientific Council of the IMDEA Social Sciences Institute in Madrid.

Research Portes's research centers on economic sociology and the sociology of immigration. At Johns Hopkins he extended this interest to informal economies, economic activity that operates outside state regulation, arguing that such activity was not confined to the developing world but also operated within advanced economies, where it shaped urban labor markets and the incorporation of new immigrants. The study's findings appeared in Legacies: The Story of the Immigrant Second Generation (2001), written with Rumbaut.

Transnationalism After moving to Princeton, Portes turned to immigrant transnationalism, the cross-border economic, political, and cultural ties that immigrants sustain between their countries of origin and settlement. He helped define it as a field of study, distinguishing durable transnational activities from occasional cross-border contacts and calling for systematic, comparative research. Much of this work drew on studies of Colombian, Dominican, and Salvadoran immigrant communities. Working with Julia Sensenbrenner he analyzed how social networks and structures shape economic action among immigrants, introducing concepts such as bounded solidarity and enforceable trust, and in collaboration with Patricia Landolt he examined the "downside" of social capital, the ways close community ties can constrain as well as assist individuals. He brought this work together in Economic Sociology: A Systematic Inquiry (2010).

Urban transformation and global cities Throughout his career Portes also studied urbanization and development in Latin America and the United States. His early work examined politics and poverty in Latin American cities, from the shanty towns of Santiago to the favelas of Rio de Janeiro, 1993. City on the Edge: The Transformation of Miami, with Alex Stepick. University of California Press. . 1997. The Urban Caribbean: Transition to the New Global Economy, edited with Carlos Dore-Cabral and Patricia Landolt. Johns Hopkins University Press. . In 2002 his Legacies: The Story of the Immigrant Second Generation received both the Distinguished Scholarly Publication Award and the W. I. Thomas and Florian Znaniecki Award also from the ASA.

He holds honorary doctorates from five institutions: