U.S. Deportation Policy,Family Separation,and Circular Migration

Since the mid‐1990s the United States has enacted a series of laws that make it easier to deport noncitizens. Drawing on findings from interviews with a random sample of 300 Salvadoran deportees, we examine how family relations, ties, remittance behavior, and settlement experiences are disrupted by deportation, and how these ties influence future migration intentions. We find that a significant number of deportees were long‐term settlers in the United States. Many had established work histories and had formed families of their own. These strong social ties in turn influence the likelihood of repeat migration to the United States.     

Does Life in the United States Take a Toll on Health? Duration of Residence and Birthweight among Six Decades of Immigrants

We used data from the 1998–2009 waves of the National Health Interview Survey to investigate cohort differences in low birthweight among US‐born children of mothers arriving in the United States between 1955 and 2009, cohort‐adjusted patterns in low birthweight by maternal duration of residence in the United States, and cohort‐adjusted patterns in low birthweight by maternal duration of US residence stratified by age at arrival and region of origin. We found a consistent deterioration in infant health with successive immigrant cohorts and heterogeneous effects of cohort‐adjusted duration in the United States by age at arrival and region. Most notably, we found evidence that maternal health (as proxied by low birthweight) deteriorates with duration in the United States only for immigrant mothers who came to the United States as children. For mothers who arrived as adults, we found no evidence of deterioration. The findings underscore the importance of considering age at arrival and place of origin when studying post‐migration health trajectories and provide indirect evidence that early life exposures are a key to understanding why the United States lags other developed nations in health.     

Multigenerational Punishment: Shared Experiences of Undocumented Immigration Status Within Mixed‐Status Families

Estimates suggest that approximately 16.6 million people in the United States are members of mixed‐status families composed of undocumented immigrants and U.S. citizens or documented immigrants. Drawing on interviews with 32 undocumented 1.5‐generation parents, the author explores how immigration laws affect undocumented parents and their citizen children. She finds that U.S. citizen children and their undocumented parents often share in the risks and limitations associated with undocumented immigration status. She conceptualizes this phenomenon as multigenerational punishment, a distinct form of legal violence wherein the sanctions intended for a specific population spill over to negatively affect individuals who are not targeted by laws. Though not restricted to familial relationships, multigenerational punishment tends to occur within families because of the strong social ties, sustained day‐to‐day interactions, and dependent relationships found among family members. This sheds light on how laws can further the reproduction of inequality within families and over generations.     

Becoming Overweight without Gaining a Pound: Weight Evaluations and the Social Integration of Mexicans in the United States

Mexican women gain weight with increasing duration in the United States. In the United States, body dissatisfaction tends to be associated with depression, disordered eating, and incongruent weight evaluations, particularly among white women and women of higher socioeconomic status. However, it remains unclear how being overweight and obesity are interpreted by Mexican women. Using comparable data of women aged 20–64 from both Mexico (the 2006 Encuesta Nacional de Salud y Nutricion; N = 17,012) and the United States (the 1999–2009 National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys; N = 8,487), we compare weight status evaluations among Mexican nationals, Mexican immigrants, US‐born Mexicans, US‐born non‐Hispanic whites, and US‐born non‐Hispanic blacks. Logistic regression analyses, which control for demographic and socioeconomic variables and measured body mass index and adjust for the likelihood of migration for Mexican nationals, indicate that the tendency to self‐evaluate as overweight among Mexicans converges with levels among non‐Hispanic whites and diverges from blacks over time in the United States. Overall, the results suggest a US integration process in which Mexican‐American women's less critical self‐evaluations originate in Mexico but fade with time in the United States as they gradually adopt US white norms for thinner body sizes. These results are discussed in light of prior research about social comparison and negative health assimilation.     

Trajectories of English Acquisition among Foreign‐born Spanish‐Language Children in the United States

The rapidity with which immigrant children learn the dominant language of their country of residence has important short‐term and long‐term consequences for their educational achievements and for their future. In this paper I use US Census data to model trajectories of English acquisition among foreign‐born children living in Spanish‐language households. The results show, as expected, that children's English proficiency increases with length of residence in the United States. However, the results also show a clear trend by age at arrival. The older children are when they arrive in the United States, the less rapid their progress in acquiring proficiency in English.     

The Latina/o Racial and Citizenship Divide on Perceptions of the Influence of Immigrant Mobilizations*

In spring 2006, the United States witnessed immigrant marches throughout the nation. Although Latina/os are often depicted as the “face” of the immigrant marches, we know little about how racial and citizenship statuses shaped Latina/os’ perceptions of how the marches influenced public perceptions of undocumented immigrants. Using logistic regression on data from the 2006 National Survey of Latinos, we find that Latina/os identifying as white are less likely to be supportive of the immigrant marches than those who defied standard racial classifications, and instead identified as “Latina/o.” Moreover, Latina/os who are born in the United States are not as supportive of the immigrant marches in comparison with naturalized citizens and non‐citizen Latina/os, accounting for demographic and human capital factors. This study suggests there is a “racial‐ and citizenship divide” among Latina/os that fragments perceptions on the immigrant mobilizations in the United States.     

Economic Well‐Being in Salvadoran Transnational Families: How Gender Affects Remittance Practices

This article examines how migrant parents' gender affects transnational families' economic well‐being. Drawing on 130 in‐depth interviews with Salvadoran immigrants in the United States and adolescent and young adult children of migrants in El Salvador, I demonstrate that the gender of migrant parents centrally affects how well their families are faring. Gender structurally differentiates immigrant parents' experiences through labor market opportunities in the United States. Simultaneously, gendered social expectations inform immigrants' approaches to parental responsibilities and remitting behaviors. Remittances—the monies parents send—directly shape children's economic well‐being in El Salvador. I find that even though immigrant mothers are structurally more disadvantaged than immigrant fathers, mother‐away families are often thriving economically because of mothers' extreme sacrifices.     

Non‐Citizen Mexican Youth in US Higher Education: A Closer Look at the Relationship between State Tuition Policies and College Enrollment

This paper examines state policies that extend or deny in‐state tuition to children of undocumented immigrants in the United States. Using the Current Population Survey (1997–2010), we assess changes in college enrollment among Mexican‐born non‐citizens — a proxy for the undocumented population. In contrast to previous analyses, we find that policies extending in‐state tuition to undocumented youth do not directly affect rates of college enrollment. However, we find that Mexican‐born non‐citizen youth residing in states that deny in‐state tuition have a 12.1 percentage point lower probability of being enrolled in college than their peers living in states with no such policies.     

Race and school enrollment among the children of African immigrants in the United States

This study examines whether previous findings of an immigrant schooling advantage among Blacks in the United States reflect a declining significance of race in the enrollment patterns of immigrants’ children. Using data from the 2000 US census, the study finds that, despite their advantage within the Black population, the children of Black Africans are collectively disadvantaged relative to the children of White Africans. Disparate enrollment trajectories are found among children in Black and White African families. Specifically, between the first and second generations, enrollment outcomes improved among the children of White Africans but declined among Black Africans’ children. The results also suggest that among immigrants from African multi-racial societies, pre-migration racial schooling disparities do not necessarily disappear after immigration to the United States. Additionally, the children of Black Africans from these contexts have worse outcomes than the children of other Black African immigrants and their relative disadvantage persists even after other factors are controlled.     

Rural ageing in the United States: Trends and contexts

This paper examines rural population ageing in the United States with a particular focus on the contrasting contexts in which older rural residents live. We compare the characteristics of the older population by rural versus urban residence, and explore challenges and opportunities associated with the ageing of rural baby boomers. The United States is a vast territory, and rural areas in the US are diverse regionally, in poverty and income, principal forms of employment, proximity to metropolitan areas, population size, density and composition, the history of change in these parameters, and a number of other factors that affect the ageing process. Hence, the diversity across rural areas is an important consideration in what affects the well being of rural elderly individuals, as well as the community-level impacts of rural ageing. Further, the characteristics of the older rural population help shape community and rural development outcomes for diverse rural communities. We use data from various US Census Bureau sources, and cite other studies to provide a demographic overview of ageing in the rural United States, and to analyze how this situation differs in varying socio-demographic and regional contexts. In the concluding section, we focus on policy implications associated with rural ageing.     

Exploring the relationship between employment-based social capital, job stress, burnout, and intent to leave among child protection workers: An age-based path analysis model

Research suggests that age and organizational factors are consistently linked with job stress, burnout, and intent to leave among child protection workers. However, no study has contextualized how age matters with regards to these adverse employee outcomes. We conducted a theory driven path analysis that identifies sources of employment-based social capital, job stress, burnout, and intent to leave among two age groups. We used a statewide purposive sample of 209 respondents from a public child welfare organization in a New England state in the United States. Results suggest that the paths to job stress, burnout and intent to leave differed by age group. Social capital dimensions were more influential in safeguarding against job stress for older workers compared to younger workers. Our results justify creating workplace interventions for younger workers that target areas of the organization where relational support could enhance the quality of social interactions within the organization. Organizations may need to establish intervention efforts aimed at younger workers by creating different structures of support that can assist them to better deal with the pressures and demands of child protection work.     

The Role of Migration and Single Motherhood in Upper Secondary Education in Mexico

We investigated the link between migration, family structure, and the risk of dropping out of upper secondary school in Mexico. Using two waves of the Mexican Family Life Survey, which includes 1,080 upper secondary students, we longitudinally modeled the role of family structure in the subsequent risk of dropping out, focusing on the role of migration in single motherhood. We found that children living without a father because of international migration or divorce or separation are at a greater risk relative to children in 2‐parent households. Economic characteristics of the household provide a partial explanation for children living in single‐mother households because of divorce or separation but do not explain the greater risk of dropping out for children with fathers in the United States.     

Immigrant socioeconomic mobility in the United States: Mechanisms of inequality and the role of ethnic capital

We review recent social science research on the socioeconomic mobility of immigrants to the United States by focusing on the educational, occupational, and income attainments among immigrant adults, the first‐generation, and the educational attainment of their children, the New Second‐Generation. Existing research has identified significant inequalities in educational attainment between second‐generation Asian and Latinx immigrant groups. Researchers have also highlighted the importance of ethnic capital for mobility, but we find that they have largely proceeded with the assumption that co‐ethnic ties are easily available as a benefit for immigrants upon resettlement. We propose that future research on immigrant socioeconomic mobility should incorporate conceptual insights from economic and cultural sociology as well as use comparative ethnographic research designs to directly observe how ethnic capital operates to challenge or reinforce patterns of socioeconomic inequality.     

Fat talk: A citizen sociolinguistic approach

Fat talk, or self‐disparaging talk about the body, is common among US women and increasingly reported for men. Despite its commonality, this unique genre of talk is difficult to access using traditional sociolinguistic methods both because it is brief and because it arises spontaneously in casual conversation. Here we present a new method of data collection accomplished by collaborating with citizen sociolinguists to collect spontaneous fat talk in public spaces. We compare fat talk exchanges captured by citizen sociolinguists against those collected in a vignette‐based discourse completion task. Our results show redundancy both in how fat talk is initiated and in the manner of the reply across both forms of data collection. However, the citizen sociolinguistic method produced greater variety in fat talk utterances, was less methodologically taxing, and revealed that fat talk occurs differently in same‐sex interactions than mixed‐sex ones.     

“Shifting the Power”: Youth Activists’ Narrative Reframing of the Immigrant Rights Movement

This article explores collective efforts by undocumented youth activists to use storytelling to reframe the debates around immigration reform and discursively position themselves as the rightful leaders of a movement that had been dominated by adult citizen‐advocates. Drawing on 19 months of fieldwork, 37 in‐depth interviews, and hundreds of pages of movement documents, I show how youth activists in the United States worked together to develop stories that: (1) drew into question the legitimacy of adult citizen‐advocates to speak on issues of immigration and (2) cast undocumented immigrant youth as the proper authorities on these matters. I argue that through collective storytelling and character work, the activists were able to subvert adult citizen authority and construct themselves as powerful, new collective actors in the contemporary immigrant rights movement. I conclude by discussing some of the practical implications and limitations of using narrative reframing strategies to advance the social change agendas of marginalized movement factions.     

Nativity,Duration of Residence,Citizenship, and Access to Health Care for Hispanic Children

This article examines differences in access to a regular source of health care for children of Hispanic subgroups within the United States. Particular attention is paid to the impact of the immigration status of the mother – including nativity, duration in the United States, and citizenship status – and its affect on access to health care for Hispanic children. Data are pooled from the National Health Interview Survey for 1999–2001 and logistic regression models are estimated to compare Mexican American, Puerto Rican, Cuban, and Other Hispanic children with non‐Hispanic whites and blacks. While initial disparities are recorded among the race/ethnic groups, in the final model, only Mexican American children display significantly less access to health care than non‐Hispanic whites. The combined influence of the mother's nativity, duration, and citizenship status explains much of the differentials in access to a regular source of care among children of Hispanic subgroups in comparison to non‐Hispanic whites.     

Governing transnational social problems: public health politics on the US–Mexico border

Governance research suggests that transnational networks are the key to developing and implementing cooperative public policy across borders. I examine this claim through analysing how the US–Mexico Border Health Commission, a policy instrument designed to enhance transnational public health cooperation, developed from idea to law in Mexico and the United States. Despite a long‐standing transnational network, the policy process took over ten years and was contentious, politicized by domestic policymaking in the United States. I show how transnational networked governance intersects with domestic politics and find that the structure of overlap between the two are places where actors promoting state and transnational interests struggle with each other to define public problems in an attempt to shape policy outcomes.     

Allowances: Incidence in the US and Relationship to Financial Capability in Young Adulthood

This study describes the use of allowance payments by parents to children in the United States (US) and documents the association between receiving an allowance as a child and financial capability as a young adult. Based on the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, the majority of children in the US ages 6 to 15 receive an allowance in childhood. Allowances are a commonly used strategy by parents across many demographic and socioeconomic groups, with no strong relationship between parental income or education and parents offering an allowance. Young adults who received an allowance as children reported modestly higher levels of financial responsibility, suggesting that allowances for children and teenagers may be a useful complement to other financial development strategies for young people.

     

The Unrealistic Educational Expectations of High School Pupils: Is America Exceptional?

There is growing concern that many American teenagers hold unrealistic educational plans. This may indicate a detachment from reality, which could be detrimental to well‐being in later life. But is this problem specific to certain countries like the United States, or is it common among young people from across the developed world? This article uses data from the Trends in Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) and Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) to investigate this issue. It shows how expected and actual college graduation rates differ across a number of countries but also that this gap is particularly large in the United States. Additional analysis suggests that this is being driven, at least in part, by the large proportion of low‐achieving American children who believe they will go on to obtain a bachelor's degree. The implications of these findings are discussed in reference to educational policy and contemporary sociological debates.     

It Takes a Village (Perhaps a Nation): Families,States, and Educational Achievement

Research in the United States has shown that children growing up in 2‐parent households do better in school than children from single‐parent households. We used the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) data to test whether this finding applied to other countries as well (N = 100,307). We found that it did, but that the educational gap was greater in the United States than in the other 13 countries considered. Results from 2‐level hierarchical linear models demonstrated that international differences in the educational gap were associated with several indicators of national policy and demographic contexts. No single policy appeared to have a large effect, but several policy combinations were associated with substantially reduced educational gaps between children from different family structures.