Box 1916

Maxcy Hall

112 George Street

Providence, RI 02912

Telephone: (401) 863-2367

Fax: (401) 863-3213

Sociology@brown.edu

 

Contact Information:
Brown University
Department of Sociology
Box 1916
Providence, RI 02912
Email: Orly_Clerge@brown.edu

Year of Entry: 2007

Previous Degrees:
Masters in Sociology, Brown University (2009)
Bachelors in Sociology, Wheaton College (2005)

Curriculum Vitae

Areas of Interest:
Social Stratification, Race and Ethnicity, Migration/Immigration, Urban Sociology, Social Demography, Qualitative Methods, Ethnography, Middle Class Minorities

Research Agenda:
My main interests lie at the intersection of immigration, race, and urban sociology. My research agenda primarily focuses on how racialized immigrant and minority groups experience, contest and reproduce social and spatial hierarchies.

Dissertation Title: “Black Identities Revisited: ‘New’ and ‘Old’ African Americans in Middle Class New York”

The central question of my dissertation is how middle class Haitian and Jamaican immigrant adults negotiate their racial exclusion and socioeconomic integration in comparison to the African American middle class. My doctoral dissertation is based on a year of qualitative research in two metropolitan neighborhoods. With the support of a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship, I set out to systematically examine how ethnicity and residential context impacts the black middle class experience. I conducted my dissertation research in two ethnographic sites: 1) a predominately African American middle class urban area in Queens and 2) a racially diverse middle class suburban setting in Nassau County, New York. I also used ethnographic methods to capture how the increase in foreign born residents is changing the social structure of neighborhoods that were once racially and ethnically homogenous.

In addition, I have begun preliminary research on a new project that explores the assimilation of middle class black, Latino and Asian ethnic youth. This comparative project will investigate how racial, class and ethnic identities are transmitted to, and constructed by, youth of color.

Other Affiliations:
Population Studies and Training Center, Brown University
Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America, Brown University