Contact Info
Professor Kevin J.A. Thomas
University of Texas

Kevin J.A. Thomas is Professor of African American and African Diaspora Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. He obtained his Ph.D. in Demography at the University of Pennsylvania and has a Master’s degree from the same institution. After completing his doctoral work, he served as a post-doctoral fellow at both the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies and the Harvard Initiative for Global Health. Thomas’s research focuses on international migration, racial and ethnic inequality, children and families, as well as population and development issues in Africa. His work on these issues has appeared in several leading journals including Demography, International Migration Review, Journal of Marriage and Family, and Social Science Research. He served on the 2014 National Academy of Sciences panel on the integration of immigrants in the US, and on its 2015 panel on the educational success of young English language learners. Kevin Thomas is the author of three books: Diverse Pathways: Race and the Socioeconomic Incorporation of Black, White, and Arab-origin Africans in the US (Michigan State University Press); Contract workers, risk, and the war in Iraq: Sierra Leonean labor migrants at US military bases (McGill-Queen’s University Press); and Global Epidemics, Local Implications: African Immigrants and the Ebola crisis in Dallas (Johns Hopkins University Press).

**Selected Publications**

Thomas, K.J.A. 2012 “Migration processes, family contexts, and schooling dropout among Black youth”; Demography, 49(2): 477-498.

Thomas, K.J.A. 2012 “Race and enrollment disparities among the children of immigrants: An examination of differences between the children of Black and White Africans”; International Migration Review. 26(1), 37-60.

Thomas, K.J.A. 2012 “Migration, household configurations, and the well-being of adolescent orphans in Rwanda”, Population Research and Policy Review, 31(4): 587-607.

Thomas, K.J.A. 2011 “Familial influences on child poverty in Black immigrant, US-born Black, and non-Black Immigrant Families”, Demography 48(2): 437-460.

Landale, N., Thomas, K.J.A., and Van Hook, J 2011 “The living arrangements of the children of immigrants”, Future of Children, 21(1): 43-70.

Thomas, K.J.A 2010 “Household context, generational status, and English proficiency among the children of African Immigrants in the US”, International Migration Review, 44(10): 142-172.

Thomas, K.J.A. 2007: “Child mortality and Socioeconomic Status: Differences among immigrants and the native-born in South Africa”, International Migration Review, 41(1) 40-74.

Thomas, K.J.A 2004: “Disability among the children of migrants in South Africa”, African Population Studies, 19(2) Sup. B. 139-164.

 

Faculty Page: https://liberalarts.utexas.edu/aads/faculty/kt26283