Problems, Puzzles, and the Production of Knowledge: Harnessing Census Data in the Age of Trump

Abstract

We tend to think of the Census Bureau as merely a bean counter, but the institution performs another, less apparent, role: signaling which demographic shifts carry the most weight in society. Trump's insistence that the Census Bureau include a controversial citizenship question on the 2020 census would mark a decisive shift in the Bureau's ability to count unauthorized immigrants accurately and in the distribution of federal resources to communities where immigrants settle in large numbers. This essay considers what these consequences, should Trump prevail, would mean for social scientists who study immigration. This distressing prospect presents an opportunity for demographers to consider how the work of ethnographers could be utilized to circumvent the data limitations a citizenship question would likely impose.