Dr. Ali Chaudhary, Ph.D.

Position Title

Assistant Professor

Rutgers University Department of Sociology

Ali R. Chaudhary is currently an Assistant Professor at the Department of Sociology at Rutgers University. Before coming to Rutgers, he was the prestigious Marie Curie Postdoctoral Fellow at the International Migration Institute at the University of Oxford. This was a two-year position, which ended in December 2016.

He was a doctoral student in the Department of Sociology at UC Davis. He uses quantitative methods and mixed-method research designs to investigate how economic, political and socio-cultural contexts shape the integration of immigrants and minority groups across different migrant receiving societies. His current research consists of four projects related to the incorporation of immigrants and ethnic-racial minorities:

a cross-national comparative dissertation on Pakistani immigrant non-profit organizations in London, Toronto, and New York City;
a series of papers on immigrant and minority self-employment in the United States;
a comparative study of Latin American migrants' transnational engagement in Southern Europe; and
a series of papers using PEW data to understand the political views and identities of Muslims living in the United States.

His research on Political Incorporation and Transnational Political Engagement Among Immigrants in Europe has been published in Global Networks. He was previously a Visiting Fellow at the University of Oxford's International Migration Institute and is currently working on a project examining the effects of citizenship on labor market outcomes across several industry-sectors funded by the Cluster. Ali has also been recently awarded a UC Davis Office of Graduate Studies' Dissertation-Year Fellowship for the 2014-15 academic year.

Content by Dr. Ali Chaudhary, Ph.D.

Migrants’ Transnational Political Engagement in Spain and Italy

Author(s)

Luis Eduardo Guarnizo, Ali R Chaudhary, Ninna Nyberg Sørensen

Published in

Oxford Academia

Abstract
International migrants’ cross-border political activities challenge singular notions of national citizenship and political belonging. Yet most sociological studies of migrants’ transnational political engagement are based on single national groups in the USA, and limit themselves to examining how assimilation and contexts of reception determine migrants’ propensity to engage with homeland politics—thereby under theorizing the influence of origin countries. This study moves beyond this approach by recognizing the multi-directionality of migration, and testing the applicability of existing theoretical approaches across two different origins and receiving contexts. We compare a sample of Colombian and Dominican migrants in Spain and Italy, analyzing how contexts in countries of origin, as well as migrants’ social networks across borders, interact with assimilation and contexts of reception to determine migrants’ political transnational engagement. Findings reveal migrants’ transnational political engagement in Spain and Italy appears to be a highly selective process dominated by a small minority of well-educated males from high social status in origin. Findings also suggest immigrant incorporation and transnational political engagement form a dialectical relationship operating at different scales that is simultaneously complementary and contradictory. Contextual conditions in origin countries explain observed much of variation in Colombian and Dominican migrants’ transnational political engagement.

Co-host editor with Anne Visser of a special issue on Migration and the Informal Economy of Population, Space and Place (2017).

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Paper

Pakistani immigrant organisational spaces in Toronto and New York City

Author(s)

Luis E. Guarnizo, and Ali R. Chaudhary

Published in

Journal for Ethnic and Migration Studies (2016)

Abstract:
This study examines how ‘contexts of reception’ in two migrant cities shape the organisational infrastructure for Pakistani immigrant communities in Toronto and New York City (NYC). Previous research is divided into two epistemic camps, one focusing on locally oriented organisations promoting settlement/incorporation and the other on transnational organisations—thus obscuring the relationships between these organisations. The present study transcends this division by examining how the combined effect of state policies, socioeconomic incorporation, community characteristics and societal attitudes shape the composition and geographical orientation of an immigrant group’s collective organisational space—comprised of local and transnationally oriented organisations. Data come from a newly constructed database of Pakistani non-profit organisations based in Toronto and NYC and from qualitative research conducted in both cities. Contrary to our expectations and previous research, we find that state-sponsored multiculturalism in Toronto is not associated with a larger or more transnationally oriented organisational space. Rather, it is the affluence of the Pakistani community in NYC that is associated with the larger and more transnational of the two Pakistani organisational spaces. Findings also reveal tensions between local and transnationally oriented organisations in both cities, reflecting a growing fragmentation between affluent cosmopolitan immigrant elites and the impoverished segments of Toronto and NYC Pakistani communities.

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Paper

Determinants of Transnational Political Engagement Among Dominican and Colombian Migrants in Southern Europe

Author(s)

Luis E. Guarnizo, and Ali R. Chaudhary

Published in

International Migration Institute, Paper 82 (2014)

Abstract:
This paper seeks to investigate the determinants of transnational political engagement among contemporary Latin American migrants in Spain and Italy. We test a series of hypotheses drawing on conventional assimilation theory and recent transnational migration and social network studies. Zeroinflated negative binomial regression models are used to analyse survey data on Colombian and Dominican migrants in Spain and Italy collected as part of the New Landscapes of Migration: A Comparative Study of Mobility and Transnational Practices between Latin America and Europe (NELMI) research project, conducted in four European countries – Spain, Italy, Denmark, and England. Results indicate that political transnational engagement is a gendered processes dominated by highly educated men. Dominican migrants are generally more likely than Colombians to engage in transnational politics. Overall results challenge the assimilationist assumptions that incorporation and transnational engagement are opposite processes. In fact, Colombians and Dominicans living in Spain, a country with which they share the same language, religious affiliation, and a history of colonialism, are more likely to engage in transnational political action than their counterparts in Italy. We conclude by comparing the findings from the European data with previously published results examining the same groups’ transnational political engagement in the United States.

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Paper

Voting 'Here' and 'There": Integration and Transnational Political Participation Among Immigrants in Europe

Oct 12, 2016

1131 SS&H (Gold Conference Room) | UC Davis

Towards a Theory of Racialized Incorporation: How Race and Generational-Status Shape the Social Organization of Self-Employment in the United States

May 1, 2014

1291 SS&H | Boardroom | UC Davis

Dr. Ali Chaudhary, Ph.D.

Position Title Assistant Professor