Explore Dr. Yalidy Matos’ research on immigration politics in the United States, Latina/o/x racial identity, Dominican American political incorporation, and women of color political representation. As a trained Americanist and political psychologist, my scholarly work interrogates individual-level public opinion and political behavior within American politics. As a race and ethnic politics scholar, I actively center race, ethnicity, and gender in these interrogations.
Research interests
Immigration politics in the United States
Latinas, Latinos, Afro-Latinas, and racial identity
Women of color politics
Dominican American political incorporation
Immigration politics in the United States
Within the area of immigration politics and policy, my work argues for immigration’s foundational significance, historically and contemporarily, on American politics. I focus on the history of U.S. immigration laws and policies, white Americans racial attitudes, public opinion, and political behavior on immigration, and Latino/a immigration and immigrants.
Latinas, Latinos, Afro-Latinas and racial identity
I am particularly interested in complicating how we think about the relationship between in-groups and out-groups and theorizing the fluidity (or lack thereof) of movement across groups. This line of thinking led me to reflect more deeply about a group, Latinas/os, who are racially diverse and diverse in many ways including race, gender, class, nativity, generation, nationality, and skin color to name a few. This work is particularly interested in examining Afro-Latina political consciousness.
Women of color representation
Women of color represent the fastest growing segment of the women’s vote; WOC account for 74 percent of the growth in eligible women voters since 2000, compared to a 6 percent growth by White women. This work focuses on women of color political representation, Afro-Latina political representation, and intersectionality and politics.
Dominican American political incorporation
Dominicans represent one of the largest and fastest growing Latino groups in the United States. My co-authors and I are contributing to Latino/a/x studies by focusing on Dominicans and Dominican Americans. We focus on Dominican political incorporation as influenced by population size, institutional structure, and, importantly, civic organizations, and Dominican American elected officials.
Thank you to the Russell Sage Foundation for funding my research on Latina/o/x racial identity
Yalidy Matos 