Mexico and Central America

This article reviews the literature on migration and HIV/AIDS in Mexico and Central America, including Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, and Panama. Most migrants travel to the US through Mexico. US-Mexico trade agreements created opportunities for increased risk of HIV transmission. The research literature focuses on Mexico. Most countries, with the exception of Belize and Costa Rica, are sending countries. Human rights of migrants are violated in transit and at destination. Migration policies determine migration processes. The Mexican-born population in the US is about 3% of US population and 8% of Mexico's population. About 22% arrived during 1992-97, and about 500,000 are naturalized US citizens. An additional 11 million have a Mexican ethnic background. Mexican migrants are usually economically active men who had jobs before leaving and were urban people who settled in California, Texas, Illinois, and Arizona. Most Mexican migrants enter illegally. Many return to Mexico. The main paths of HIV transmission are homosexual, heterosexual, and IV-drug-injecting persons. Latino migrants frequently use prostitutes, adopt new sexual practices including anal penetration among men, greater diversity of sexual partners, and use of injectable drugs.     

Immigration and the New Racial Diversity in Rural America*

This article highlights the new racial and ethnic diversity in rural America, which may be the most important but least anticipated population shift in recent demographic history. Ethnoracial change is central to virtually every aspect of rural America over the foreseeable future: agro‐food systems, community life, labor force change, economic development, schools and schooling, demographic change, intergroup relations, and politics. The goal here is to plainly illustrate how America's racial and ethnic transformation has emerged as an important dimension of ongoing U.S. urbanization and urbanism, growing cultural and economic heterogeneity, and a putative “decline in community” in rural America. Rural communities provide a natural laboratory for better understanding the implications of uneven settlement and racial diversity, acculturation, and economic and political incorporation among Hispanic newcomers. This article raises the prospect of a new racial balkanization and outlines key impediments to full incorporation of Hispanics into rural and small town community life. Immigration and the new ethnoracial diversity will be at the leading edge of major changes in rural community life as the nation moves toward becoming a majority‐minority society by 2042.     

Public School Resegregation after Desegregation: Some Preliminary Findings

Abstract

This research continues the effort to understand the sociocultural and social-psychological effects resulting from rapid change in rural communities. Two aspects of social well-being that underlie the concept of community are addressed: a sense of local identity and solidarity and a sense of trust. Change in these perceptions during periods of rapid community growth or decline could indicate a changing sense of community and changing levels of social well-being. Four communities, each of which experienced different patterns of population growth and decline, are examined. Analysis indicated that the dimension of community reflected by trust of most people in the community did not change during periods of growth or decline, but that the dimension reflected by a sense of local identity and solidarity suffered during both population growth and population decline. Local identity and solidarity increased in the community that experienced population stabilization after several years of rapid growth. These findings highlight the importance of viewing community as multidimensional and as a resilient social phenomenon.     

SOS—Satisfied or Stuck,Why Older Rural Residents Stay Put: Aging in Place or Stuck in Place in Rural Utah*

As rural communities undergo substantial demographic and economic changes, understanding the migration intentions and their antecedents of rural elderly persons becomes increasingly important. Using data drawn from a survey of adults from 24 rural Utah communities conducted in 2008, we examine whether rural residents 60 years of age or older plan to remain in their present communities (N= 621). We use structural equation models (SEM) to estimate the relationships between a variety of individual and community-level background measures, including perceptions of local service quality, leaving one's community for health care, Internet use, attachment to and satisfaction with community, and plans to age in place. Results suggest that even as the rural context of economic decline, population loss, and distance to medical services may reduce the viability of staying in a community, a desire to remain in the community is primarily a function of perceptions of the quality of local services and community satisfaction. This research highlights the need to better understand the interplay between the availability of medical services and perceptions of distance as well as to understand the complex relationship between individual and community level characteristics for migration intentions.     

The effects of racial/ethnic segregation on Latino and Black homicide

Racial/ethnic residential segregation has been shown to contribute to violence and have harmful consequences for minority groups. However, research examining the segregation–crime relationship has focused almost exclusively on blacks and whites while largely ignoring Latinos and other race/ethnic groups and has rarely considered potential mediators (e.g., concentrated disadvantage) in segregation–violence relationships. This study uses year 2000 arrest data for California and New York census places to extend segregation–crime research by comparing the effects of racial/ethnic residential segregation from whites on black and Latino homicide. Results indicate that (1) racial/ethnic segregation contributes to both Latino and black homicide, and (2) the effects for both groups are mediated by concentrated disadvantage. Implications for segregation–violence relationships, the racial-invariance position, and the Latino paradox are discussed.     

Complex inequality: A contextual parenting framework for Latino infants

Latino infants and toddlers are rapidly becoming the most represented ethnic group within the overall U.S. child population, underscoring the importance of a comprehensive conceptual framework informed by the factors that affect their well-being, including their lived environments. Research that explores parenting among Latino families is limited or tends to portray a homogenized Latino experience, without accounting for within-group differences. This paper presents a contextual parenting framework for Latino infants that incorporates a more nuanced understanding of culture as well as its complex and reciprocal relationship with environment. It highlights the multi-level, multisystemic, contexts affecting these families on the present day. This framework hypothesizes that cultural beliefs around family and child rearing, as well as the environment — constituted of physical environment and social opportunities — influence parenting. Further, institutional and structural inequalities can significantly affect the environmental conditions that Latino families experience and are therefore examined in the model. The way parenting behaviors are understood and interpreted by researchers and practitioners has serious consequences for parents engaged in the child welfare system. This paper explores how vulnerable Latino families with young children engaged in this complicated system experience the factors described by the parenting framework.     

Moving Up in Rural America: Economic Attainment of Nonmetro Latino Immigrants

Rapid Hispanic population growth represents a pronounced demographic transformation in many nonmetropolitan counties, particularly since 1990. Its considerable public policy implications stem largely from high proportions of new foreign‐born residents. Despite the pressing need for information on new immigrants in nonmetro counties and a bourgeoning scholarship on new rural destinations, few quantitative analyses have measured systematically the social and economic well‐being of Latino immigrants. This study analyzes the importance of place for economic well‐being, an important public policy issue related to rural Hispanic population growth. We consider four measures of economic mobility: full‐time, year‐round employment; home ownership; poverty status; and income exceeding the median national income. We conduct this analysis for 2000 and 2006–2007 to capture two salient periods of nonmetro Hispanic population growth, using a typology that distinguishes among nonmetropolitan areas by the categories of “traditional” immigrant destinations concentrated in the Southwest and Northwest, “new” immigrant destinations to capture recent and rapid Hispanic population growth in the Midwest and Southeast, and “all other” rural destinations as a reference category representing more typical nonmetro population trends. We also compare our results to those for metropolitan destinations. We find that place type matters little for stable employment but more so for wealth accumulation and income security and mobility. Compared with urban Latino immigrants, rural Latino immigrants exhibit higher rates of homeownership as well as greater likelihoods of falling into poverty and lower likelihoods of earning a measure of U.S. median income. From 2000 to 2006–2007, rural‐urban differences deteriorated slightly in favor of urban areas. We conclude by discussing implications of these findings and those of addressing rural immigrant economic well‐being more generally.     

The Role of Community Assessments,Place, and the Great Recession in the Migration Intentions of Rural Americans

Many rural areas of the United States are experiencing population decline due to out‐migration. However, others—especially those places rich in natural amenities and recreational opportunities—are attracting new residents and losing less of their native population. In this article we investigate the predictors of rural Americans' migration intentions by examining how individual‐level community assessments, including community attachment and perceptions of community‐level problems, shape rural Americans' migration decision making while controlling for individual and place effects. Drawing on survey data from 17,000 residents in 11 different rural areas around the United States, we find that community attachment is a key predictor of rural migration, even during periods of economic recession, and regardless of individual and place characteristics or perceptions of community‐level problems. We also find that multiple dimensions of community attachment (e.g., practical, natural, family, community trust) have independent effects on the propensity of rural residents to migrate. Our research contributes to knowledge on migration trends among rural Americans by exploring the complicated reasoning behind why people stay in, or move to, certain rural communities and not others.     

The Latinization of the Central Shenandoah Valley

Virginia is among a number of southern states in the United States, such as North Carolina, Arkansas and Georgia, which have experienced a sudden growth in Latino immigration during the past decade. Not only is the volume of growth unprecedented, but many of the destinations are new and located in rural areas. Places that have not hosted immigrant populations for generations are quickly becoming multicultural. The small city of Harrisonburg (population 43,500 according to the 2005 estimate), which is located in the rural Central Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, is perhaps the premier example of this new pattern of change. While local advertising once promoted Harrisonburg for its "99.2% American-born and 93.7% white" population, the area today holds the distinction of hosting the most diverse public school enrollment in the state (in 2006-2007), with students from 64 countries who speak 44 languages. Among them are Spanish speakers from at least 14 different countries. Drawing on social network theory, the paper examines how social networks among Latino immigrants become activated in new settlement areas. It presents a case history of the historic process of "Latinization" involving the settlement of a number of diverse Latino populations (from Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Cuba and Uruguay) in Harrisonburg and the surrounding Central Shenandoah Valley. The study demonstrates how a number of key institutions, including local agricultural industries (apples and poultry), a refugee resettlement office and churches recruited "pioneers" from these immigrant groups to the area and how "pioneers" subsequently engaged in further social network recruitment, thus creating multiple transnational "daughter communities" in the Harrisonburg area. The policy implications of this historical process are explored.     

Conveying a sense of community along Bolsa Avenue: Little Saigon as a model of ethnic commercial belts

In the past, ethnic enclaves have functioned as homogeneous residential areas providing support and comfort to newly arrived immigrants. A new form of urban village is increasingly serving commuting immigrants who live in integrated residential neighbourhoods.
Little Saigon, a Vietnamese commercial belt in Southern California, serves as a model of this emerging form. Participant observation and interviews with users of Little Saigon and other ethnic commercial belts in Southern California reveal that these areas provide users with places where they can experience the sense of community previously provided by ethnic ghettos.
Little Saigon demonstrates that ethnic, commercial enclaves benefit diverse groups of individuals: in these places immigrants with limited English gain employment, older immigrants find solace, and "Americanized" immigrants and their children connect with their ancestral culture.
Concomitant with the cultural advantages are the perpetuation of stereotypes, erosion of ethnic boundaries and persistent forms of specialized crime that threaten these areas' success and yield negative perceptions of the areas' ethnic groups.     

Culturally specific treatment for partner-abusive Latino men: a qualitative study to identify and implement program components

Research based on a demographic survey and qualitative interviews of Latino intimate partner violence perpetrators in Southern California forms the basis of a Spanish-language treatment program designed to be culturally appropriate for Latino immigrant men, and piloted for 4 years with their input. Culturally-specific topics emphasized by participants and integrated into the program are: effective parenting skills for men; gender roles; discussion of discrimination towards immigrants and women; immigration and changing gender roles; marital sexual abuse; and spirituality as related to violence prevention. Attention is given to alcohol abuse and childhood trauma. Results suggest the desirability of an empathic and culturally-sensitive approach, without diminishing responsibility. This program was designed to help clinicians refine their skills and effectiveness in working with this rapidly expanding population.     

Should I stay or should I go? Migration expectations among youth in Icelandic fishing and farming communities

Social mobility presupposes geographical mobility in many rural areas. Migration decisions feature prominently in the lives of rural adolescents, and the viability of local communities often hangs in the balance. As in many other rural areas, the majority of adolescents in Icelandic fishing and farming communities expect to live somewhere else in the future. An analysis of national surveys in 1992 and 2003 reveal that perceptions of occupational opportunities are by far the strongest predictor of migration intentions, and they fully account for gender differences in this regard. Other significant predictors of wanting to stay include being raised in the community, parental support and parental control, and interest in working in the primary industry. Parental education is associated with increased migration intentions, but this effect operates through other factors. In the early 1990s, parental involvement in the primary industry and well-being in school predicted migration intentions, but these issues no longer appeared to be a factor in the early 2000s. Finally, adolescents who identify strongly with the local community and are more proud of their nationality are less likely to expect to migrate. These results are discussed in the context of changing social identities in an increasingly global culture.     

Trapped in the Working Class? Prospects for the Intergenerational (Im)Mobility of Latino Youth

Opportunities for upward mobility have been declining in the United States in recent decades. Within this context, I examine the mobility trajectories of a contemporary cohort of 1.5‐, second‐, and third‐plus‐generation Latino youth. Drawing on survey data from California that accounts for the precarious legal status of many 1.5 generation immigrants, I find that Latino youths' patterns of postsecondary enrollment and employment do not differ by generation since migration. Additionally, I do not find evidence of racial/ethnic barriers to Latino youths' enrollment in less selective colleges and participation in the labor market. Yet, given the low socioeconomic origins of many Latino youth and their correspondingly low 4‐year college enrollment rates, only a small proportion will likely enjoy upward mobility through jobs that require a bachelor's degree. Overall, the cohort of Latino youth coming of age during the Great Recession is poised to experience working‐class stagnation. This group's future access to economic and political positions of power will likely be limited by their low enrollment rates in 4‐year colleges in general, but in selective postsecondary institutions in particular.     

Geographic and Spatial Assimilation of Immigrants from Central America's Northern Triangle

With declines in migration from Mexico, the countries of the Northern Triangle of Central America (NTCA) – El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala – are now responsible for some of the largest increases in the population density of Latinos in the United States. Using data from the 5‐year estimates of the 2016 American Community Survey and the Atlas of Rural and Small‐Town America, this article provides a spatial framework for settlement among NTCA immigrants in America. Findings illustrate that, unlike previous streams of Latino migration, which tended to be more agriculturally driven, NTCA immigrants are likely to choose settlement destinations in densely populated counties which support manufacturing rather than those which are farming dependent. We also find that while NTCA communities are predominant in new destinations like Prince Georges and Montgomery counties Maryland, they are also dominant in older Latino destinations like Harris County, Texas and Los Angeles county, California.     

The Determinants of Student Migration to Poland Based on the Opolskie Voivodeship Study

Until recently Poland has been considered a country to emigrate from. However, the situation is now beginning to change, and Poland is becoming an immigration country. This also refers to student migration. Polish universities are becoming increasingly attractive to foreign students, who are mainly of Ukrainian origin. They only began to promote their services abroad in 2005 and their foreign student population growth dynamic is one of the highest in the world. The study was conducted in the Opolskie Voivodeship, the first region in Poland where systematic action was taken to address depopulation, and the steps to counteract population decline were included in its strategic policies. One of the objectives of such policies was to stimulate immigration. For this reason, it was decided that the Opolskie Voivodeship might serve as a lab to study migration processes, including the inflow of foreign students.     

Racially Charged Legislation and Latino Health Disparities: The Case of Arizona's S.B. 1070

Researchers have established that minority groups tend to suffer worse health outcomes compared to their white counterparts, though the specific mechanisms at play are still under investigation. The passing of Arizona's 2010 “Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act,” commonly referred to as “S.B. 1070,” provides a unique opportunity to examine the effects of an increasingly racially charged milieu on Latino health. Using the Arizona sample of the 2009–2011 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, we find that the changing social setting around S.B. 1070 is related to poorer Latino self-reported health, but only for those whose primary language is Spanish. Furthermore, serving as control groups, we find no such relationship in other U.S.-Mexico border states that had no analogous legislation (Texas, New Mexico, and California). We expand on stress process theory and group position theory to explain this increase in Arizona's negative health reporting, despite traditional social and economic protective factors.     

Gender and Ethnicity: Patterns of Electoral Success and Legislative Advocacy Among Latina and Latino State Officials in Four States

SUMMARY

In this article we examine the patterns of gendered representation and related legislative advocacy within Latino delegations to four state legislatures in the Southwest. Most agree that one of the most significant changes in American politics in the post-civil rights era is the increasing election of women and people of color, but there is less agreement about the magnitude, consistency, and impact of this representation. Moreover, little is known about how these patterns vary by state. First, we examine the patterns of gendered and ethnic election in the states of Arizona, California, New Mexico, and Texas from 1990–2004. We find considerable variation across these states, relative to both women and Latinos, but the presence of Latinas within the Latino/a delegation has noticeably increased across all the states and at a rate that outpaces the increase in women in the legislatures overall. Second, using original survey data supplemented with elite interviews, we explore perceived differences in the representational priorities and related behaviors, issue agendas, and policy successes between Latinas and Latino men. We find a number of similarities but also find distinct differences that reveal Latinas place greater emphasis on representing the interests of multiple minority groups, promoting conflict resolution, and building consensus in both the legislature as a whole and within the Latino caucus. Latinas also are more likely than Latino men to introduce and successfully pass legislation that addresses the issue agenda held by both Latina and Latino legislators.     

Alienation of the outsider: the plight of migrants

This paper compares the plight of international migrants with those from rural to urban areas, examining specifically the migration of Turks into Europe and into Turkish metropolitan centers. This allows comparison of migrant groups with the same point of origin in terms of national, ethnic, cultural, religious, and social characteristics, as well as the same traditional family culture. Economic factors are the main reasons for immigration into Europe. The migrant worker and his family often become marginal to both the country of origin and the country of sojourn. The migrant family must be flexible in dividing or reconstructing itself in various ways to accommodate time, space, and money requirements and to protect ties with the home country requiring intensive geographical mobility, resulting in structural instability and even fragmentation. For the 2nd generation, poor school performance decreases self-esteem and hinders the development of cultural identity; the higher the aspirations for the future and the perception of marginality, the greater is the child's orientation toward the home country. In Turkey, rapid change in traditional agricultural production and rapid population growth caused the movement of population from rural to urban areas. Through rural-urban migration and international migration millions become uprooted populations and become "outsiders." The distinction between 1st and 2nd generation is one of degree, based on the retention of the traditional culture and identity. Factors which interfere with the integration of the migrant population into the dominant society include 1) the unicultural nature of the dominant society and 2) the degree of similarity (or dissimilarity) between the 2. In Turkey, as well as in many other developing countries, the "traditional" family interaction pattern is characterized by relatedness and interdependence among individuals and between generations. Turkish rural to urban migrants are in a more favorable situation than immigrants to Europe to utilize the informal affiliations of family, kin, and community. Extended communal networks are recreated through congested slum living conditions and through friendship sometimes replacing family and kin; traditional identities are reaffirmed through strengthened religious and national sentiments and informal groupings.     

The right to be different: Multiculturalism and the racialization of scandinavian welfare politics; The case of Denmark

‘Multiculturalism’ as an influential ideology for structuring ethnic relations has become exposed to increasing critique also in the Scandinavian context. The paper discusses a racialized political debate, legislation, and institutional practices, taking Denmark as the prime example. An increasingly ‘dual welfare’ is becoming legitimized through a hegemonic culturalized language, consistently interpreting ‘the right to be different’ as ‘being different’, and ‘being different’ as being ‘non‐integrated’. In a society where public debate on ethnic and racial discrimination is less than rudimentary, tolerant claims of multiculturalist relativism are effectively turned upside down in the service of neo‐racism, the preachings of which are imperceptibly becoming adopted as the conventional wisdom. This calls for a discussion on ‘politics of recognition’ which brings the debate on the universalism and particularity out of the abstract, while focusing on the vicissitudes of contemporary democracy in a changing welfare state.     

ESTIMATING NET INTERRACIAL MOBILITY IN THE UNITED STATES: A RESIDUAL METHODS APPROACH

This paper presents a residual methods approach to identifying social mobility across race/ethnic categories. In traditional demographic accounting models, population growth is limited to changes in natural increase and migration. Other sources of population change are absorbed by the model residual and can be estimated only indirectly. While these residual estimates have been used to illuminate a number of elusive demographic processes, there has been little effort to incorporate shifts in racial identification into formal accounts of population change. In light of growing evidence that a number of Americans view race/ethnic identities as a personal choice, not as a fixed characteristic, mobility across racial categories may play important roles in the growth of race/ethnic subpopulations and changes to the composition of the United States. To examine this potential, we derive a reduced-form population balancing equation that treats fertility and international migration as given and estimates survival from period life table data. After subtracting out national increase and net international migration and adjusting for changes in racial measurement and census coverage, we argue that the remaining error of closure provides a reasonable estimate of net interracial mobility among the native born. Using recent U.S. Census and ACS microdata, we illustrate the impact that identity shifts may have had on the growth of race/ethnic subpopulations in the past quarter century. Findings suggest a small drift from the non-Hispanic white population into race/ethnic minority groups, though the pattern varies by age and between time periods.