Yalidy Matos (Political Science) was awarded Brown University’s two-year Presidential Diversity Postdoctoral Fellowship in Race and Ethnicity and International and Public Affairs. She will work closely with the directors of the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America (CSREA), the Watson Institute for International Studies, and the Taubman Center for Public Policy. 

 

The main focus of Matos's scholarly work is the study of race and ethnicity and immigration policy and politics. She examines the intersection of politics with issues of race, ethnicity, and immigration, and considers these from both psychological and historical perspective. Her research aims to expand the ways in which we think about race and ethnicity in America in order to include a wider range of peoples, but also understand the different ways in which race and implicit racial attitudes affect Americans’ policy opinions.

 

Dissertation Description:

Matos's dissertation work addresses the nature of public opinion on immigration by examining three independent but interrelated moving parts: news media framing, individual level predispositions, and context. She puts forward a novel theoretical framework that furthers our understanding of immigration politics, and that has wide applicability beyond the immigration context. She contends that support for restrictive immigration policies, and public opinion on immigration more broadly, is a product of both the individual and the socio-political and historical context and tests her theory by using a multi-method approach.