Cynthia Feliciano

Cynthia Feliciano

Professor of Sociology

Cynthia Feliciano’s broad research agenda centers on the development and consequences of group boundaries and inequalities based on race and ethnicity, especially as they relate to the descendants of Latin American, Caribbean, and Asian immigrants in the United States. Her research on educational inequality focuses on how contextualizing immigrant parents’ pre-migration socioeconomic positions helps explain ethnic and racial disparities in socioeconomic outcomes among children of immigrants. Her research on ethnic and racial boundary-making and relations focuses on patterns of racial preferences in dating and marriage, as well as the social forces shaping ethnic identity and racial classification. She is currently working on a book project, based on qualitative and quantitative data collected over nearly 25 years, which examines educational and occupational attainment, intergenerational mobility, family formation, racial and ethnic identity development, and other aspects of cultural and socioeconomic integration among children of immigrants across their life course, from mid-adolescence to middle adulthood.


Faculty webpage