Immigration and Cultural Assimilation

Sergio Wals, assistant professor of political science, focuses on topics related to race and ethnicity in the United States and Latin America. His current projects aim to better understand the processes by which immigrants import their “political suitcases.” His work attempts to explain how immigrants pre-migration political predispositions and experiences affect their political assimilation, attitudes and behaviors once in the United States.

Cynthia Willis-Esqueda studies the effects of race and ethnicity, with bias and issues of assimilation and acculturation a part of the mix. She teaches a class on the psychology of immigration, which touches upon all aspects of immigration and acculturation.

Dr. Jordan Soliz is a professor who studies communication and intergroup processes primarily in family and personal relationships. Current projects focus on communication in multiethnic-racial families, interfaith families, and grandparent-grandchild relationships with a goal toward understanding communicative dynamics associated with individual well-being and relational-family solidarity. He also investigates processes and outcomes of intergroup contact and intergroup dialogue as well as communication processes that minimize outgroup attitudes (e.g., ageism) and/or buffer effects of discrimination.

Julia Reilly is an Assistant Professor of Practice of Global Studies at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. Her research focuses on the ways people respond to human rights violations and the ripple effects of those responses. She specifically looks at how international criminal accountability mechanisms affect the ways that civil wars end and don’t end; how people who are targeted in genocide mobilize to stop the perpetrators of the genocide; and how refugees integrate into communities in the Midwest, and the ways that Midwestern communities can best support them. Reilly received her degrees from Colgate University and the University of Nebraska–Lincoln.