KAREN A. WOODROW-LAFIELD, PH.D.

SOCIOLOGIST AND DEMOGRAPHER

WoodrowLafield@cs.com

Introduction

Card

Curriculum Vitae

Fields
Research Interests

Biography

Karen A. Woodrow-Lafield (Ph.D. in Sociology, 1984, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign) has expertise in social demography, international migration, unauthorized migration, immigration policy, and political incorporation and citizenship. Her studies have addressed the size and change in the U.S. unauthorized population, Mexico-U.S. migration, implications of immigration for Congressional reapportionment and census coverage, family reunification and immigrant integration, and persistence of unauthorized migration after immigration reforms and enforcement. She has published articles in Demography, Population Research and Policy Review, Journal of the American Statistical Association, International Migration Review, Journal of Family History, and Rural Sociology as well as papers in published proceedings of the American Statistical Association, special reports related to her public service at the U.S. Bureau of the Census, and chapters in such books as Illegal Immigration in America: A Reference Handbook and Undocumented Migration to the United States: IRCA and the Experience of the 1980s.

Dr. Woodrow-Lafield resides in Washington, D.C. following a visiting appointment as a faculty fellow and Director of Border and Inter-American Affairs in the Institute for Latino Studies at the University of Notre Dame At ILS, she sought to develop a research agenda for informed policy on border affairs within the Americas, migration and immigration to the United States, and wellbeing of migrants and immigrant families. She also initiated courses on migration, race, and ethnicity for the new minor in Latino Studies in the College of Arts and Letters (the major became effective in the fall of 2005). Prior to the ILS appointment, she was a tenured Associate Professor in Sociology at Mississippi State University in 1996-2002. In 1993-1995, she held research appointments at the University of Texas at Austin, the U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform, and SUNY-Albany and taught at Ramapo College of New Jersey. Trained in formal demography, she developed expertise in measuring international migration over 1984-1992 as Statistician and Demographer on the Population Analysis Staff at the U.S. Census Bureau. She planned immigration and emigration surveys, conducted research measuring immigration, unauthorized migration, emigration, and the foreign-born population, and coauthored demographic analyses to evaluate 1990 census coverage.

Over 1995-1997, she was invited as one of ten American scholars appointed by the bipartisan U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform to collaborate with ten Mexican scholars in the Binational Study on Migration Between Mexico and the United States, sponsored by both governments and private sector funding. The three published volumes report on assessing quantities of migration, migrant characteristics, influencing factors, social and economic effects, and policy responses to the migrations. She has been a consultant with the Census Bureau, the Public Policy Institute of California, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, General Accounting Office, and the National Institutes of Health, served on the editorial board of Population Research and Policy Review, and held office as the 2004 President of the Southern Demographic Association. She recently authored a chapter on immigrant naturalization appearing in From Arrival to Incorporation: Migrants to the U.S. in a Global Era (2008).

Research Agenda

Dr. Karen A. Woodrow-Lafield focuses on (1) quantifying unauthorized and lawful migration and improving these estimation methodologies; (2) discerning migrant status transitions and immigration consequences for population growth, racial and ethnic change, and social institutions; (3) assessing wellbeing for immigrant and low income families; (4) studying minority communities and special populations in censuses and surveys, as well as related transnational networks; and (5) modeling immigrant pathways to U.S. citizenship. With NICHD-funding beginning in 1999, she explored new longitudinal modeling for the timing of naturalization for immigrant cohorts of 1978-1991 and influences of admission circumstances as indicators of human and social capital. The long term goal is creation of an immigration-naturalization data archive to include immigrant records linked with subsequent naturalization records relating to cohorts for 1978-1991 and for post-1991 after the Immigration Act of 1990.

Agenda on Migration, Population, and Border Affairs

Courses Taught
Selected Funded Projects
Current and Recent Memberships
Selected Studies on Unauthorized Migration
Selected Studies on Naturalization and Citizenship
Selected Studies on Emigration
Other Current Presentations and Recent Papers

Additional Links

WoodrowLafield@cs.com
Biographical Page
Teaching Evaluations
Karen A. Woodrow-Lafield, Curriculum Vitae
Mexico-U.S. Binational Migration Study
Border and Inter-American Affairs, 2002-2004, Institute for Latino Studies
Mexican web site Binational Study