Yalidy Matos, PhD is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey.
Her scholarship sits at the intersection of race, ethnicity, and politics (REP), immigration, and identity politics. Broadly, her work explores how race and gender operate for various groups in the United States, by asking timely questions that investigate important topics such as immigration politics and policy, voting behavior, and political representation.
In 2022, Matos was named a 2022 American Political Science Association Distinguished Junior Scholar in Political Psychology. Matos will be a Russell Sage Visiting Scholar in 2024-2025. Explore Yalidy’s fellowships and awards.
She graduated from The Ohio State University in Columbus, OH with a PhD in Political Science in 2015, and Connecticut College in New London, CT with a Bachelor of Arts in Government and Gender and Women’s Studies, and a minor in English in 2009. Prior to Rutgers, she was a Presidential Postdoctoral Fellow at Brown University. Explore Yalidy’s CV.
Why is immigration important to the United States? What structures immigration policy in the United States? How are immigration policies constructed? How has immigration policy changed in the U.S.?
Immigration has been at the heart of U.S. politics for centuries. In Moral and Immoral Whiteness in Immigration Politics, Matos examines the inherent moral, value-based, nature of white Americans’ immigration attitudes, including preferences on local immigration enforcement programs, federal immigration policy, and levels of legal immigration allowed. As immigration continues to be weaponized to divide, Matos highlights the importance in understanding the history of immigration in the United States and the ways in which whiteness structures these attitudes.
Politics in our Veins: The Rise of Dominican American Political Power in the United States
Captures the complex journey of how Dominican Americans mobilized to become key progressive players in American politics.
Dominican Americans are one of the largest and fastest-growing Latinx groups in the United States, with a population that has quadrupled from 517,000 to a little over 2.3 million as of 2023. While New York City is home to the largest Dominican community in the country—and is where most Dominican American elected officials (DEOs) are from—Dominican Americans continue to increase their representation nationwide. In Politics in Our Veins, Yalidy Matos, Domingo Morel, and Michelle Bueno Vásquez chart the rise of Dominican American political power across the United States, exploring the myriad factors that have contributed to their political success as thoughtful citizens, activists, and elected officials.
Drawing on original surveys, in-depth interviews with elected officials, and archival data, Matos, Morel, and Vásquez trace the past, present, and future of Dominican American political power, demonstrating how one group fought from the margins for a seat at the table. They explore how community, civic, and cultural organizations have played an important role in helping newly immigrated Dominican Americans gain political power through influential national coalitions like “Dominicans on the Hill” and the Dominican National Roundtable. They also examine how identity politics, in particular race and gender, influence the political attitudes and behavior of DEOs.
Politics in Our Veins shines a light on how Dominicans have created avenues for political engagement, identifying where barriers to participation have been dismantled, where they remain, and where new obstacles are emerging.
Yalidy Matos 