Ethnic Networks and Illegal Immigration

Illegal immigration through human smuggling originating from the Fujian Province, China, has become a global issue, affecting at least 30 countries. The empirical research on the financial element of illegal immigration suggests the important role of an underground banking system. This study examines the role of ethnic networks in sustaining the operation of Chinese-operated informal fund transfer systems in the United States. The primary source of data is from in-depth interviews with illegal immigrants in New York City and Philadelphia. The findings show that as opposed to lineage-based networks, the networks based on regional dialect allowed illegal Fujianese immigrants, as well as underground bank proprietors, to take advantage of social capital inherent in the expatriate ethnic community. The high levels of trust between underground bank proprietors and their clientele can be understood as resulting from ethnic solidarity and enforceable trust. These features are found to be troublesome at the community level because the research findings illustrate that a community of high ethnic interactions espouses a deviant culture or norms that encourage widely accepted but illegal practices.     

Sexual Behaviors and Attitudes and Ethnic Identity During College

This study examined ethnic differences in sexual behaviors and attitudes, and associations between ethnic identity commitment and sexual behaviors and attitudes. African American (32%), Latino American (29%), and European American (39%) first-year college students (N = 434; 52% female) completed surveys about their sexual behaviors (number of partners, condom use, and alcohol use before intercourse) and attitudes (conservative attitudes, condom-related beliefs, and fear of AIDS) and ethnic identity commitment. Analyses of covariance and hierarchical linear regressions were performed. Among the three groups, Latino Americans reported riskier condom-related behaviors and attitudes, whereas European Americans were less fearful of AIDS. Ethnic identity commitment was a protective factor against risky attitudes regardless of ethnicity. For sexual behaviors, however, ethnic identity served as a protective factor only for European Americans. This study contributes to the understanding of adolescents' sexuality during college and the role of ethnic identity in their sexual experiences.     

Implications of Ethnic Identity Exploration and Ethnic Identity Affirmation and Belonging for Intergroup Attitudes Among Adolescents

The present paper develops and tests two temporal models of the relationships among adolescents' ethnic identity exploration, ethnic identity affirmation and belonging, and attitudes toward their racial/ethnic ingroup and outgroups. Structural equation models for Euro‐Americans, Asian Americans, and Latinos revealed that all hypothesized relationships were positive and significant. The model in which ethnic identity exploration (at Time 1) predicts ethnic identity affirmation and belonging (at Time 2) was superior to the alternative model in which the relationship between them was reversed (i.e., affirmation and belonging at Time 1 predicts exploration at Time 2). Results (1) support the importance of exploration as a basis for establishing a secure attachment to one's ethnic identity, which, in turn, has positive implications for attitudes toward one's own group and other groups and (2) suggest that maintenance of ethnic identity is compatible with positive attitudes toward ethnic outgroups.     

Reference-Other Support and Ethnic Attitudes as Predictors of Intergroup Behavior*

A number of general propositions are proposed concerning the manner in which reference-others and ethnic attitudes influence intergroup behavior. In a laboratory setting, it is shown that the influence of individual reference-others upon behavior is partially determined by certain structural properties of these others which are labeled importance, visibility, centrality, legitimacy, and control. Among other findings, it is also shown that the relative influence of the two predictor variables depends upon the type of activity considered. An explanation for these results is framed in terms of the reference-other properties mentioned above.     

Personalized Neural Networks Underlie Individual Differences in Ethnic Identity Exploration and Resolution

This study examined how ethnic identity relates to large-scale brain networks implicated in social interactions, social cognition, self-definition, and cognitive control. Group Iterative Multiple Model Estimation (GIMME) was used to create sparse, person-specific networks among the default mode and frontoparietal resting-state networks in a diverse sample of 104 youths aged 17–21. Links between neural density (i.e., number of connections within and between these networks) and ethnic identity exploration and resolution were evaluated in the full sample. Ethnic identity resolution was positively related to frontoparietal network density, suggesting that having clarity about one’s ethnic group membership is associated with brain network organization reflecting cognitive control. These findings help fill a critical knowledge gap about the neural underpinnings of ethnic identity.     

In and Out of the Ethnic Economy: A Longitudinal Analysis of Ethnic Networks and Pathways to Economic Success across Immigrant Categories1

The economic benefits to immigrants of taking jobs in ethnic workplaces, relative to the open economy, are heavily debated. We examine longitudinally differences across immigrant categories in how the choice of ethnic or non‐ethnic workplace influences the ethnic composition of social networks and how these factors impact immigrants’ economic success. Using the Longitudinal Survey of Immigrants to Canada, with data 6 months, 2 years, and 4 years after arrival, we find support for both sides of the ethnic economy debate when it is qualified by immigrant category. While economic immigrants benefit from non‐ethnic workplaces, family immigrants face economic penalties in the open economy and do better in ethnic workplaces. We argue that policies sorting immigrants into visa categories do much of the work of leading them into segmented paths of incorporation.     

Priests,Publicans and the Irish Poor: Ethnic Enterprise and Migrant Networks in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Liverpool

Part of the outreach mission of one of the earliest Catholic parishes in Irish Liverpool, the St Patrick's Society developed into one of the largest collecting societies in Victorian Britain, offering burial benefit to tens of thousands of poor Irish migrants beyond the reach of organised labour or industrial insurance. Growth soon led to scandal and litigation, revealing a number of fault lines within the migrant community. Catholic clergy withdrew in protest as publicans and other ‘Micks on the make’ came to the fore, secular ethnic culture brokers who accentuated the ‘Irishness’ of the Society, running it as a machine which looked less to the respectability (or religion) of the members than to their assurance of an adequately funded ‘wake’. It was this ‘Irish’ image, as much as the alleged financial irregularities, which brought the Society into disrepute (and ruin), a judgement yet to be challenged by historians. The study examines this mutualist network and explains the rise and fall of an important, but until this point, unexamined feature of the communal life of the Irish neighbourhoods of Liverpool.     

Ethnic Enclaves,Networks and Self‐Employment among Middle Eastern Immigrants in Sweden

The proportion of immigrants from countries in the Middle East living in Sweden has increased since the 1970s, and it is a well‐known fact that immigrants from the Middle East suffer from low earnings and high rates of unemployment on the Swedish labour market. There are often great hopes that self‐employment will enable immigrants to improve their labour market situation. Further, in Sweden as in many other countries, the question of whether the existence of ethnic enclaves are good or bad for immigrants’ earnings and employment opportunities has also been widely debated. This paper presents a study of the extent to which Middle Eastern ethnic enclaves and networks in Sweden enhance or hinder immigrants’ self‐employment. The results show that the presence of ethnic enclaves increases the propensity for self‐employment. Thus, immigrants in ethnic enclaves provide their co‐ethnics with goods and services that Swedish natives are not able to provide. The results also show that ethnic networks seem to be an obstacle to immigrant self‐employment. One explanation is that an increase in network size implies increased competition for customers among self‐employed immigrants. The question of whether ethnic enclaves are good or bad for the integration of immigrants into the labour market has been widely debated. The results of this paper provide us with information about the integration puzzle. Ethnic enclaves seem to enhance self‐employment propensities among Middle Eastern immigrants in Sweden.     

Priests, Publicans and the Irish Poor: Ethnic Enterprise and Migrant Networks in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Liverpool

Part of the outreach mission of one of the earliest Catholic parishes in Irish Liverpool, the St Patrick's Society developed into one of the largest collecting societies in Victorian Britain, offering burial benefit to tens of thousands of poor Irish migrants beyond the reach of organised labour or industrial insurance. Growth soon led to scandal and litigation, revealing a number of fault lines within the migrant community. Catholic clergy withdrew in protest as publicans and other 'Micks on the make' came to the fore, secular ethnic culture brokers who accentuated the 'Irishness' of the Society, running it as a machine which looked less to the respectability (or religion) of the members than to their assurance of an adequately funded 'wake'. It was this 'Irish' image, as much as the alleged financial irregularities, which brought the Society into disrepute (and ruin), a judgement yet to be challenged by historians. The study examines this mutualist network and explains the rise and fall of an important, but until this point, unexamined feature of the communal life of the Irish neighbourhoods of Liverpool.     

'Operating in the Ethnic Sphere': Irish Migrant Networks and the Question of Respectability in Nineteenth-Century South Wales

This study explores the problems of entry by middle-class Irish migrants into respectable urban elite networks in British towns. Although opportunities to participate in political, cultural and charitable institutions were plentiful in nineteenth-century urban Britain, few Irish migrants achieved such distinctions. In the context of south Wales, this was because there were few opportunities for Irish migrants to acquire the necessary occupational status for entry into public life. Those Irish who worked in 'middle class' occupations, were more likely to do so in the retail and service sectors than in the professions, from which ranks local 'worthies' were more likely to be drawn. As a result, they struggled to attain status and remained on the margins of respectable Welsh middle-class life. For these Irish, the 'ethnic sphere' provided an alternative network within which status and recognition could be achieved.     

Racial and Ethnic Determinants of Interracial and Ethnic Trust

The purpose of this cross-sectional study was to discern which individual factors are associated with interracial/ethnic trust among a national probability sample of African Americans, Latinos, and non-Hispanic whites. Using national data from the 2000 Community Benchmark Survey, the multiple regression results indicate that, even after controlling for education and income, African Americans and Latinos reported significantly lower levels of interracial/ethnic trust than did non-Hispanic whites. Additionally, separate regression equations indicate that predictors associated with interracial/ethnic trust varied by racial and ethnic group. Implications and future research are discussed.     

Attitudes and Vocational Information

This article addresses the dearth of African American women in high school U.S. history textbooks. The authors conducted a content analysis of the images in an African American history textbook and found that black women are underrepresented. Women are found in less than 15 percent of the images in the African American history text, while they make up nearly 30–50 percent of the images in two mainstream texts that the authors analyzed. The authors use Rachel Mattson's five heuristics to show how to incorporate images of black women in more meaningful ways in the curriculum: sourcing, inside-the-frame/outside-the-frame, intertextuality, framing historical questions, and using visual codes and conventions.     

Consensual Attitudes and Attitude Structure

Analyses of attitude consistency have usually operationallydefined consistency in terms of high statistical associationbetween questionnaire items. For a variety of statistical reasonsresearchers have avoided subject areas where such consistencyis likely or, if these areas are investigated, the results tendto be misleading. These problems are illustrated by an examinationof attitude coherence on racial issues among blacks and whitesin 1968.     

Stratification and Ethnic Groups

Ethnic stratification is compared with other forms of stratification, particularly those based on economic class. Using "ethnic" in its broadest sense, it is clear that such groups are most likely to move toward creation of their own separate nation-state. As a consequence, there are certain outcomes of ethnic stratification that cannot be accounted for in a general theory of stratification or one based solely on economic dimensions. An ethnic stratification system will also affect other forms of stratification in the society. For example, class alliances will be weaker if a given economic level is occupied by different ethnic strata. The added proliferation of statuses in a society with ethnic stratification compounds the political process. Other ways are also considered in which the presence of an ethnic hierarchy in the nation interacts with and affects age, sex, and economic stratification.     

民族问题、民族工作与民族社会工作探析

民族问题是一个国家正常发展的主要问题之一,民族问题具有长期性、重要性、国际性、复杂性、普遍性的特点。解决民族问题的方法很多种,其中民族社会工作是有效的方法之一。民族地区现存的社会问题主要是贫困问题、生态环境问题、性别不平等问题。民族社会工作的应对措施包括大力发展少数民族地区社会工作、建立并完善管理机构、强化民间组织的主体地位,弱化政府的行政力量、实现民族地区社会工作的创新。