Fiona Devine is Professor of Sociology at the University of Manchester. She is the author of Affluent Workers Revisited (1992), Social Class in America and Britain (1997), and Class Practices: How Parents Help Their Children Get Good Jobs (2003). She is the co-author, with Sue Heath, of Sociological Research Methods in Context (1999).

Mary C. Waters is Professor and Chair of the Sociology Department at Harvard University, and co-director of The New York Second Generation Project. Her publications include Ethnic Options: Choosing Identities in America, (1990); the award-winning Black Identities: West Indian Immigrant Dreams and American Realities (1999); The New Race Question: How the Census Counts Multi-Racial Individuals (with Joel Perlmann, 2002); and The Changing Face of Home: The Transnational Lives of the Second Generation (with Peggy Levitt, 2002). Professor Waters was a Guggenheim Fellow (1993-94) and a Visiting Scholar at Russell Sage (1991-92).