Migration of Hispanic Youth and Poverty Status: A Logit Analysis

Abstract In 1988 the Census Bureau reported that 28.2 percent of the 20 million U.S. Hispanics lived in poverty. This research focuses on the relationship between poverty and the migration of Hispanic youth. Individual- and county-level variables are incorporated into a logit analysis. An important finding is that Hispanic youth who are poor have higher ratios of migration than nonpoor Hispanic youth. Also, Hispanic youth residing in counties with higher rates of poverty are more likely to migrate than those living in more prosperous counties. However, these relationships change when multilevel interactions between individual and contextual variables are considered.     

Youth studies in transition: theoretical explorations

In youth studies, a clear distinction is made between theories on youth in transition and theories of youth culture. Whereas theories and research on youth transitions often use quantitative data – (and therefore need to operationalize their ‘variables’) – cultural studies uses various qualitative methods, alongside a more elastic definition of, and conceptual approach to, young people’s socio-material living conditions. The argument made in the present article is that we need a theoretical renewal in youth studies that will enable us to thoroughly explore class, gender and ethnicity in light of the intersections between social and cultural positions. At the same time, we also need to elaborate our conceptual tools to capture contemporary transformations of social identity among youth and in society and culture. The aim is to reintroduce three central concepts in the renewal of youth studies, that of identity, subculture and resistance. Furthermore, it is imperative that connect and create links between these concepts and theories of youth in transition.     

Conditional Families and Lesbian,Gay, Bisexual,Transgender, and Queer Youth Homelessness: Gender,Sexuality, Family Instability,and Rejection

Existing research on lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) youth homelessness identifies family rejection as a main pathway into homelessness for the youth. This finding, however, can depict people of color or poor people as more prejudiced than White, middle‐class families. In this 18‐month ethnographic study, the author complicates this rejection paradigm through documenting the narratives of 40 LGBTQ youth experiencing homelessness. The author examines how poverty and family instability shaped the conditions that the youth perceived as their being rejected because of their gender and sexuality. This rejection generated strained familial ties within families wherein the ties were already fragile. Likewise, the author shows how being gender expansive marked many youth's experiences of familial abuse and strain. This study proposes the concept of conditional families to capture the social processes of how poverty and family instability shape experiences of gender, sexuality, and rejection for some LGBTQ youth.     

Poverty,Delinquency, and Educational Attainment: Cumulative Disadvantage or Disadvantage Saturation?

Data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY) were analyzed to test two competing hypotheses regarding how poverty affects the relationship between delinquency and educational attainment. The cumulative-disadvantage perspective argues that poor youth suffer greater consequences for their involvement in delinquency than middle- and upper-class youth in terms of their educational attainment. Contrary to this perspective, the disadvantage-saturation thesis predicts that delinquency is less con-sequential for the educational attainment of poor youth than it is for nonpoor youth. Results from ordinary least squares and logistic regression analyses support the latter hypothesis. Theoretical and policy implications are discussed.     

Enacting the Millennium Development Goals: Political Technologies of Calculation and the Counter-calculation of Poverty in Namibia

Abstract

This paper advances that the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) act as a governmentality that brings with them assemblages of international and national policies and practices of poverty reduction. These assemblages are characterized by neoliberal rationalities that shape relationships and practices with and of the poor themselves by repositioning and deploying the values and norms of the market as the principal means for the establishment of development aid partnerships. Such rationalities, we argue, are exercised through political technologies that make visible and operable certain governing schemes such as calculative practices. Drawing on extensive interview, policy, programme, and archival documents, the paper advances the argument that the MDGs and the national development plan for Namibia, Vision 2030, shape ideas of poverty reduction through political technologies of calculation and via multi-scale partnership arrangements. These technologies emerge from diverse elements, subsume the shaping of social and political spaces, and have diverse effects on the lives of the poor. Our analysis also highlights an approach to poverty reduction in Namibia, that of BIG, a Basic Income Grant scheme. We view BIG as a potential counter-calculation of poverty, and counter-partnership to poverty reduction efforts, which can develop into a more socially just and sustainable means to reduce poverty and lead to an overturn of contemporary neoliberal assemblages of poverty reduction.     

Voices from the bottom

Despite many years of poverty eradication programs in numerous countries, 25% of the world's population continues to live in poverty. In the light of this global crisis, it is clear that anti-poverty strategies have not been as successful as they should have been. This paper argues that continuing poverty may be related in part to the fact that policies developed to alleviate the problem are mainly based on monetary definitions developed by ‘experts’, rather than by the poor themselves. Thus this paper will demonstrate that expert definitions invariably neglect the more qualitative aspects and experiences of poverty. In contrast, it is argued here that the poor are the ‘real’ poverty experts and their voices should be included in the definition of poverty and the formulation of solutions. While there is increasing recognition of this latter approach in developing nations, often taking a human needs perspective, this response is only in its infancy in Australia. After a discussion of the conceptualisation of human needs, this paper reports on a small pilot study that presents the voices of 10 disadvantaged men, identifying what poverty is for them in Melbourne     

Disconnected Geography: A Spatial Analysis of Disconnected Youth in the United States

Since the Great Recession, US policy and advocacy groups have sought to better understand its effect on a group of especially vulnerable young adults who are not enrolled in school or training programs and not participating in the labor market, so called ‘disconnected youth.’ This article distinguishes between disconnected youth and unemployed youth and examines the spatial clustering of these two groups across counties in the US. The focus is to ascertain whether there are differences in underlying contextual factors among groups of counties that are mutually exclusive and spatially disparate (non-adjacent), comprising two types of spatial clusters – high rates of disconnected youth and high rates of unemployed youth. Using restricted, household-level census data inside the Census Research Data Center (RDC) under special permission by the US Census Bureau, we were able to define these two groups using detailed household questionnaires that are not available to researchers outside the RDC. The geospatial patterns in the two types of clusters suggest that places with high concentrations of disconnected youth are distinctly different in terms of underlying characteristics from places with high concentrations of unemployed youth. These differences include, among other things, arrests for synthetic drug production, enclaves of poor in rural areas, persistent poverty in areas, educational attainment in the populace, children in poverty, persons without health insurance, the social capital index, and elders who receive disability benefits. This article provides some preliminary evidence regarding the social forces underlying the two types of observed geospatial clusters and discusses how they differ.     

More than just nickels and dimes: a cross-national analysis of working poverty in affluent democracies

Despite its centrality to contemporary inequality, working poverty is often popularly discussed but rarely studied by sociologists. Using the Luxembourg Income Study (2009), we analyze whether an individual is working poor across 18 affluent democracies circa 2000. We demonstrate that working poverty does not simply mirror overall poverty and that there is greater cross-national variation in working than overall poverty. We then examine four explanations for working poverty: demographic characteristics, economic performance, unified theory, and welfare generosity. We utilize Heckman probit models to jointly model the likelihood of employment and poverty among the employed. Our analyses provide the least support for the economic performance explanation. There is modest support for unified theory as unionization reduces working poverty in some models. However, most of these effects appear to be mediated by welfare generosity. More substantial evidence exists for the demographic characteristics and welfare generosity explanations. An individual's likelihood of being working poor can be explained by (a) a lack of multiple earners or other adults in one's household, low education, single motherhood, having children and youth; and (b) the generosity of the welfare state in which he or she resides. Also, welfare generosity does not undermine employment and reduces working poverty even among demographically vulnerable groups. Ultimately, we encourage a greater role for the welfare state in debates about working poverty.     

Uganda: No More Pro‐poor Growth?

This article explores changing growth regimes in Uganda, from pro‐poor growth in the 1990s to growth without poverty reduction, actually even with a slight increase in poverty, after 2000. Not surprisingly, it finds that good agricultural performance is the key determinant of direct pro‐poor growth in the 1990s, while lower agricultural growth is the root cause of the recent increase in poverty. At the same time, after 2000 low agricultural growth appears to have induced important employment shifts out of agriculture, which have dampened the increase in poverty. The article also assesses the indirect form of pro‐poor growth by analysing the incidence of public spending and the tax system, and finds that indirect pro‐poor growth has been achieved to only a limited extent.     

Measuring the impact of price changes on poverty

This paper develops a methodology to measure the impact of price changes on poverty measured by an entire class of additive separable poverty measures. This impact is captured by means of the price elasticity of poverty. The total effect of changes in price on poverty is explained in terms of two components, income and distribution effects. The income effect measures the change in poverty when all prices increase uniformly, whereas the distribution effect captures the change in poverty because of changes in relative prices. Using this decomposition, the paper derives an empirically operational index, which reveals whether the price changes have been pro-poor or anti-poor. The paper also derives a new price index for the poor. While this index can be computed for any poverty measures, our empirical analysis applied to Brazil is based on three poverty measures, the head-count ratio, the poverty gap ratio and the severity of poverty. The empirical analysis shows that price changes in Brazil during the 1999–2006 periods have been anti-poor. Nevertheless, during the last 2 to 3 years, the price changes have affected the poor less adversely than the non-poor.     

Diffusion of Variegated Neoliberalization processes in Euro-Mediterranean policies: a strategic relational approach

ABSTRACT

Recent contributions to the study of neoliberalism have made considerable advances in transcending the dichotomy between understandings of the concept either as an ‘ideology’ or as a monolithic ‘structure’. In particular, the Variegated Neoliberalization (VNLT) approach has proposed an understanding of neoliberalism that relies on a path-dependent moment (i.e. the ‘uneven development of neoliberalization’) which is then followed by a path-shaping moment (i.e. the ‘neoliberalization of regulatory uneven development’). Such a perspective allows us to understand both systemic and contingent tendencies in neoliberalization processes across different geographies, transcending the socially constructed North–South divide. However, the VNLT approach has encountered a number of critiques, particularly in relation to its treatment of agency. In order to transcend these critiques and propose a more nuanced understanding of ways agents reflexively and recursively interpret and deepen – or refrain from deepening – neoliberal norms, I turn to the Strategic-Relational Approach (SRA) proposed by [Jessop, B. (2001). Institutional re(turns) and the strategic – relational approach. Environment and Planning A, 33(7), 1213–1235]. Through the SRA, it becomes possible to pinpoint both instances of ‘structured coherence’ and ‘patterned incoherence’ resulting from agential reflexivity in different contexts of neoliberalization. I will therefore turn to cases where these two patterns can be observed in the context of Euro-Mediterranean policies – that is, Morocco’s ‘structured coherence’ due to its internalized and deepening neoliberalization, and Egypt’s ‘patterned incoherence’ as a result of its still uneven development of neoliberalization.     

Poverty at a Racial Crossroads: Poverty Among Multiracial Children of Single Mothers

Although multiracial youth represent a growing segment of children in all American families, we have little information on their well‐being within single‐mother households. This article examines multiracial children's level of poverty within single‐mother families to identify the degree to which they may stand out from their monoracial peers. Using data from the 2006–2008 American Community Survey (3‐year estimates), we explore the level of racial disparities in child poverty between monoracial White children and monoracial and multiracial children of color. Fully adjusted multivariate logistic regression analyses (n = 359,588) reveal that nearly all children of color are more likely to be poor than White children. Yet many multiracial children appear to hold an in‐between status in which they experience lower rates of poverty than monoracial children of color. The high level of variation across groups suggests that the relationship between race and childhood poverty is more complicated than generally presumed.     

Transnational social movements and changing organizational fields in the late twentieth and early twenty‐first centuries

Recent decades have seen dramatic changes in the global political arena, including shifts in geopolitical arrangements, increases in popular mobilization and contestation over the direction of globalization, and efforts by elites to channel or curb popular opposition. We explore how these factors affect changes in global politics. Organizational populations are shaped by ongoing interactions among civil‐society, corporate and governmental actors operating at multiple levels. During the 1990s and 2000s, corporate and government actors promoted the ‘neoliberalization of civil society’ and the appropriation of movement concepts and practices to support elite interests. Not all movement actors have been passive witnesses to this process: they have engaged in intense internal debates, and they have adapted their organizational strategies to advance social transformation. This article draws from quantitative research on the population of transnational social movement organizations (TSMOs) and on qualitative research on contemporary transnational activism to describe changes in transnational organizing at a time of growing contention in world politics. We show how interactions among global actors have shaped new, hybrid organizational forms and spaces that include actors other than states in influential roles.     

Between the market and the hard place: neoliberalization and the Polish LGBT movement

ABSTRACT

Whilst the fall of state socialism in 1989 opened up a space for the Polish LGBT movement to emerge and develop, over the last three decades the process has taken place against the backdrop of material and ideological constraints of neoliberalization, a point that has been largely overlooked in the scholarship on the Polish LGBT movement. Informed by interviews with Polish LGBT activists this article explores the contradictory ways in which processes of neoliberalization and market logic influence and often constrain the Polish LGBT movement. The argument is that neoliberalization and its logic profusely affect what is possible and desirable for the Polish LGBT movement on a personal, local as well as a national level. The contradictory effects of the processes of neoliberalization combined with the political climate, with minimal or no state support for LGBT organizing, result in a movement that is at the mercy of the market-like environment, under-resourced, dependent almost entirely on voluntary labor and spatially scarce.     

Latino Adolescent Reproductive and Sexual Health Behaviors and Outcomes: Research Informed Guidance for Agency-Based Practitioners

Latinos are the largest and fastest growing minority youth group in the United States. Currently, Latino adolescents experience higher rates of teen pregnancy compared to any other racial or ethnic group and have disproportionately high levels of sexually transmitted infections and HIV. Latino teens are also affected by a number of social problems such as school dropout, poverty, depression and limited access to healthcare, which contributes to disparities in reproductive health outcomes for this population. Relatively few intervention research studies and programs have been dedicated to reducing sexual risk among Latino youth, despite their particular vulnerabilities in experiencing negative reproductive health outcomes. We provide recommendations for identifying the unique reproductive health needs of Latino youth and specific applied strategies so that agency-based social workers and other providers can develop family-based interventions that improve adolescent Latino sexual and reproductive health.     

Entrepreneurial development for U.S. minority homeless and unstably housed youth: A qualitative inquiry on value,barriers, and impact on health

BackgroundHomeless and unstably housed youth in the U.S. have high rates of unemployment and often rely on survival strategies that negatively impact their economic, emotional, and physical health. While integrated health and entrepreneurial development initiatives targeting the poor have been successfully implemented in developing countries, little is known regarding interests in similar initiatives among vulnerable U.S. youth, particularly racial minorities who are disproportionately impacted by poverty and homelessness. This study examined African-American homeless and unstably housed youth's interests in entrepreneurial development programming to enhance economic self-sufficiency and health-related outcomes.MethodsQualitative methods using nine focus groups and one in-depth interview were conducted from December 2013 to March 2014 with 52 purposively-selected youth, aged 15 to 24, who had experienced homelessness within the prior 18 months in Baltimore, Maryland and Washington, D.C. An emergent, open-ended topic guide was used to examine reasons why youth may want to participate in entrepreneurial development initiatives, what barriers they anticipated in becoming an entrepreneur, and how engaging in entrepreneurial and other economic empowerment activities might impact their physical and emotional well-being. All focus groups and interviews were recorded, transcribed, and analyzed.ResultsThe majority of youth were unemployed in the formal sector, but actively engaged in income generating activities in the informal sector. Four themes related to youth's interest in entrepreneurial development initiatives: the perceived inadequacy of traditional income and educational pathways, wanting to be one's own boss, desires for alternatives to joblessness and illicit income risks, and interests in building on current entrepreneurial activities. Commonly perceived barriers were lack of business mentors and opportunities, not knowing “what was possible”, difficulty in changing prior mindsets, and anticipated negative reactions from peers. Youth envisioned entrepreneurial development activities would inspire a range of health protective behaviors by minimizing poverty-related depression, hopelessness, and anxiety.ConclusionThis study underscores the need to address the intersection of poverty and health outcomes. Integrated health and entrepreneurial development programs should target low-income U.S. minority youth, particularly those with the greatest housing, health, and economic needs. More research is needed in understanding the behavioral dynamics between economic empowerment and health risk reduction among disadvantaged youth.     

The multifaceted nature of poverty and differential trajectories of health among children

The relationships between poverty and children’s health have been well documented, but the diverse and dynamic nature of poverty has not been thoroughly explored. Drawing on cumulative disadvantage and human capital theory, we examined to what extent the duration and depth of poverty, as well as the level of material hardship, affected changes in physical health among children over time. Data came from eight waves of the Korea Welfare Panel Study between 2006 and 2013. Using children who were under age 10 at baseline (N?=?1657, Observations?=?13,256), we conducted random coefficient regression in a multilevel growth curve framework to examine poverty group differences in intra-individual change in health status. Results showed that chronically poor children were most likely to have poor health. Children in households located far below the poverty line were most likely to be in poor health at baseline, while near-poor children’s health got significantly worse over time. Material hardship also had a significant impact on child health.     

Poverty Catchments: Migration,Residential Mobility,and Population Turnover in Impoverished Rural Illinois Communities

Abstract Research has thoroughly documented how out‐migration of the educated and skilled from rural areas leaves behind a poorer population and creates pockets of rural poverty. Recently, studies have recognized that the poor are also geographically mobile and that poverty migration patterns can reinforce rural poverty concentrations. In this process, certain impoverished rural communities in economically depressed regions receive a disproportionate share of poverty migrants, concentrating poverty in certain locations. This paper examines the conditions and processes through which poor rural communities become likely destinations for a highly mobile segment of the rural poor and near‐poor. Utilizing case studies of depressed rural Illinois communities, it investigates how the interplay of community factors and the behavior of migrants transforms rural communities from residentially stable to highly mobile, impoverished places.     

Step-Up: Promoting Youth Mental Health and Development in Inner-City High Schools

African American and Latino youth who reside in inner-city communities are at heightened risk for compromised mental health, as their neighborhoods are too often associated with serious stressors, including elevated rates of poverty, substance abuse, community violence, as well as scarce youth-supportive resources, and mental health care options. Many aspects of disadvantaged urban contexts have the potential to thwart successful youth development. Adolescents with elevated mental health needs may experience impaired judgment, poor problem-solving skills, and conflictual interpersonal relationships, resulting in unsafe sexual behavior and drug use. However, mental health services are frequently avoided by urban adolescents who could gain substantial benefit from care. Thus, the development of culturally sensitive, contextually relevant and effective services for urban, low-income African American and Latino adolescents is critical. Given the complexity of the mental health and social needs of urban youth, novel approaches to service delivery may need to consider individual (i.e., motivation to succeed in the future), family (i.e., adult support within and outside of the family), and community-level (i.e., work and school opportunities) clinical components. Step-Up, a high school-based mental health service delivery model has been developed to bolster key family, youth and school processes related to youth mental health and positive youth development. Step-Up (1) intervenes with urban minority adolescents across inner-city ecological domains; (2) addresses multiple levels (school, family and community) in order to target youth mental health difficulties; and (3) provides opportunities for increasing youth social problem-solving and life skills. Further, Step-Up integrates existing theory-driven, evidence-based interventions. This article describes Step-Up clinical goals, theoretical influences, as well as components and key features, and presents preliminary data on youth engagement for two cohorts of students.     

The Impact of Migration on Poverty Concentrations in the United States, 1995–2000

Poverty is frequently conceptualized as an attribute of either people or places. Yet residential movement of poor people can redistribute poverty across places, affecting and reshaping the spatial concentration of economic disadvantage. In this article, we utilize 1995 to 2000 county‐to‐county migration data from the 2000 United States decennial census to explore how differential migration rates of the poor and nonpoor affect local incidence of poverty, and how migration reconfigures poverty rates across metropolitan, micropolitan, and noncore counties. We further examine the impact of differential migration rates on African American and Latino poverty rates, two groups that have experienced higher than average poverty rates and have a sizable presence in rural areas. Our analysis indicates that during the 1990s the poor moved at rates equal to or greater than the nonpoor, and that, especially in micropolitan counties, this movement tended to deepen existing poverty concentrations. Both African American and Latino migration patterns tended to reinforce existing poverty concentrations, a result similar to that of the population as a whole, although the migration patterns of both groups more severely exacerbated poverty in high‐poverty noncore counties.