Research

Research Projects

The nursing niche  and Filipino Americans

Brenda and her colleagues, Rebecca Karam and Andrew Taeho Kim, have published their paper, “Nursing as Ethnic Capital: Perceptions of Intergenerational Niching Among Filipino Americans” in the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies. Using mixed methods, they confirm Filipinos’ concentration in nursing and discuss its effects on the second-generation. You can find the article here.

Asian Indian professionals and the green card process

Dr. Gambol, along with her colleagues Meghna Sabarwhal and Varaidzo Zvobgo, is working on a project that examines the effects of the green card process on the everyday lives of Asian Indian guest workers in the U.S. The project was supported by the National Science Foundation and was based on 90 semi-structured interviews with Indian professionals who have or currently are working in the U.S.

Their work, “The Green Card Drag: How Highly-Skilled Asian Indian Immigrants Experience the U.S. Immigration System,” has been published in International Migration Review. You can find the work by click here.

Second-generation Filipino and Chinese mobility

Drawing on Add Health data, Dr. Gambol examines how ethnicity and parental SES impact the educational attainment of second-generation Filipinos and Chinese. She finds that, while Chinese Americans are advantaged by their ethnicity, Filipinos are penalized by theirs. Her work has been published in Ethnic and Racial Studies:  https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01419870.2022.2085521?src=

Hyper-selectivity and U.S.-born Filipino underachievement

Dr. Gambol’s dissertation examined why, among the largest Asian populations, U.S.-born Filipino Americans are the only group to experience an educational decline in the second-generation and are the least likely to graduate from college. Drawing on a five-year intensive ethnographic study of Filipino families in the New York City area, as well as an analysis of Add Health and ACS data, she shows how how U.S. colonialism, Filipino culture, and racialization in schools have differentially shaped Filipino youth’s occupational aspirations vis-a-vis East Asians so that they ultimately produce Filipino educational disadvantages.

She writes about her findings in Contexts: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/15365042211035336

Intermarriage and second-generation Filipino Americans

Brenda conducted a study on inter-ethnically and interracially married Filipino Americans in New York City. Drawing on twenty-two interviews with second-generation Filipino Americans, I explored if, how, and to what extent racial and ethnic boundaries are blurred among the Filipino participants and their partners, their families, and their co-ethnics.

She was interviewed  about this project on Adem Carroll’s WBAI 99.5 program, “War on Immigrants.”  The interview can be heard by clicking here.

Her article, “Changing racial boundaries and mixed unions: the case of second-generation Filipino Americans”, which was based on this study, was recently published in Ethnic and Racial Studies.  You can access it by going to this link: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01419870.2016.1164879