Sociology at Penn Spotlight: Dr. Emilio Parrado, Professor and Chair of Sociology
By Faith Memmo (Class of '16), Penn Sociology Online Ambassador
Today's Sociology at Penn Spotlight is on Dr. Emilio Parrado, Professor and Chair of Sociology and Director of the Latin American and Latino Studies Program (LALS) at Penn.
His research focuses on migration and how it is related with other aspects of society, with a specific interest in the Hispanic population in the U.S. I caught up with Dr. Parrado to find out more about the motivation behind his studies, the importance of Sociology, and his current research.
Faith: Coming from Argentina, why did you decide to focus on migration specifically in the United States?
Emilio: I came to the U.S. with the idea of studying social change from the perspective of people actually doing it, and how social change expresses itself in the lives of individuals. Argentina has a long history of immigration, so I was familiar with the issue of immigration. When you talk to people in Argentina about immigration, they think about Europeans; I was interested in Bolivians and Paraguayans, so I brought that interest with me. Immigration is an action that produces social change, and for the individuals who are changing their lives it is very exciting and different. It connects with macro level problems, issues that have to do with regulating immigration, concerns with immigrants and problems of race and ethnicity, so there was a natural emerging of my concern with social change and immigration.
FM: Being the chair of the department, why do you think that Sociology is an important field of study?
EP: Sociology is good at connecting people with history, placing people in historical time, and understanding both individual decisions and how macro forces affect those decisions. [It is] very historical, very empirical. We learn a lot from experiences, and we understand what happens in these transitions. Not just individualistic and not just cultural, we connect particular periods with how people behave. Sociology is great for studying immigration because it is historical and provides a comprehensive account of what happens in transition. Sociology connects those transitions with other transitions. Sociological approaches are very insightful in explaining immigrant experiences.
FM: Recently you were given a grant from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development to research immigration and fertility. Why is this important?
EP: Every single developed society receives immigrants; declining fertility and lower mortality is affecting the age structure of these populations. Immigrants affect both the age structure of the population, fertility of the population, and the mortality of the population. We don’t quite understand demographically how that happens. Some of the models do not quite reflect how immigrants affect those things.
If we want to know the future of Social Security, we need to know what’s happening with the US population. If we want to know the size of our labor force, we need to understand how immigration affects these things. If we want to know how many children will go to school, we need to do these things. So the proposal is about that, trying to create better models that in a different way incorporate immigration into our demographic equation.
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For more on Dr. Emilio Parrado, visit his webpage.