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.     

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 return migration: an Estonian case

Recently there has been growing interest among scholars in ethnic return migration. This article examines return migration during the post World War 2 period of descendants of Estonians who emigrated to Russia at the end of the nineteenth and at the beginning of the twentieth century.
A case of return migration of West-Siberian Estonians from the Omsk province is used as an example. Structuration theory is adopted and return migration is treated as a behavioural norm that evolves, spreads and becomes embedded within an ethnic minority living outside its homeland.
The research shows that in the case of West-Siberian Estonians the main carrier of the migration behavioural norm is a generation. The behavioural norm of Estonians born in the 1910s-1920s has been return migration to Estonia, while the migration behaviour of the 1930s-1940s and the 1950s-1960s generations can be characterized by urbanization in West Siberia.
Behind these inter-generation differences in migration behaviour can be found the different socialization of the generations, appearing largely on the level of practical consciousness.
The results give reason to assume that ethnic return migration over a long period depends neither directly nor indirectly on momentary environmental changes, but rather on changes in people's values, habits, identity etc., which in the case of an ethnic minority living outside its historical homeland may be followed generation by generation.     

The Influence of Family Structure Vs. Family Climate on Adolescent Well-Being

A study was conducted to explore adolescent well-being as a function of family climate versus family structure. Two hundred seventy-eight adolescents (52% female, 48% male; mean age = 14.78 years) completed questionnaires that assessed family structure (nuclear, single-parent, step), family climate (level of satisfaction with one’s family and level of negative affect in one’s family), and several indicators of current well-being (educational expectations, self-esteem, hopelessness, delinquent attitude scores, and optimism). Participant well-being did not vary by family structure. However, family climate and well-being were significantly related. Implications of the study’s findings are discussed.     

Residential Segregation and Institutional Completeness: A Comparison of Ethnic Minorities*

Cette étude de six groupes ethniques à Winnipeg démontre clairement l'importance de la ségrègation residentielle pour le maintien d'un degré de totalité d'un système institutionnel. La communauté francophone se maintient en suivant le modèle que Joy décrit comme s'appliquant au Québec, à savoir celui d'une zone centrale s'étendant dans la région qui l'encercle et se caracterisant par une mobilite intra-régionale considérable. Par ailleurs, les Scandinaves n'ont jamais réussi àétablir une base institutionnelle assez complète dans une zone écologique à part. Ils se sont alors dispersés comme l'auraient prédit les assimilationistes. Contrairement à la prédiction de Joy, la formation de deux communautés juives ségrégées a suivi la mobilité massive de Juifs vers les régions s'étendant dans les banlieues de West Kildonan et River Heights où ils ont établi un nouveau système d'institutions ethniques, abandonnant presque complétement la zone du North End où se trouvait le centre initial de la communauté juive. The importance of residential segregation for the maintenance of institutional completeness is clearly demonstrated by this study of six ethnic groups in Winnipeg. The French community maintainers follow Joy's Quebec core area pattern in St Boniface with extensions of their ethnic belt adjacent to the core and extensive intra-area mobility. On the other hand, the Scandinavians were never able to establish a very complete ethnic institutional base in a segregated ecological area, so they scattered as assimilationists would predict. Contrary to Joy's prediction, extensive Jewish mobility into their West Kildonan and River Heights suburban extended belt areas resulted in the establishment of two new segregated Jewish communities where they have created new complexes of ethnic institutions, leaving the original North End Jewish core area almost entirely.     

Correlates of Social Participation: a Comparison of the Ethnic Community and Compensatory Theories*

The ethnic community and compensatory theories of Black social participation are compared by analyzing affective correlates (political efficacy and self-esteem) of participation for 712 residents of Nashville, Tennessee in 1969. The instrumental-expressive typology of participation is utilized in addition to total participation. Participation and the affective variables are significantly correlated for Blacks, but only weakly correlated for Anglos, lending support to both theories. The relationship between participation, the affective variables, and the controlled background factors is briefly discussed, and problems and directions for future research are outlined.     

Call for Communications and Papers: The New Poor

No abstract available for this article.     

Ethnic integration and cross-culturalism in an academic setting: The case of the Stockholm School of Economics in Riga

This paper investigates the relationships among students at the Stockholm School of Economics in Riga. The students, who come from a variety of Baltic nations, are subjected to a unique curriculum that emphasizes the English language, cooperative methodology and teamwork. The results of the research show that the approach adopted at this institution has had a significant (positive) impact on inter-group relations.     

Becoming Poor: The Experiences of Elders1

Elderly Americans residing in nonmetropolitan (nonmetro) areas have higher poverty prevalence than their metropolitan (metro) counterparts. Data from both the response and nonresponse files of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (1988 wave) are analyzed to establish the extent to which this disadvantage also occurs in the length of poverty spells and the risk of becoming poor at older ages. Specifically, for individuals aged 55 and older Kaplan-Meier survival functions and multivariate discrete-time hazards models are estimated to document residential differences in the poverty risks of metro and nonmetro men and women. Nonpoor nonmetro elders are much more likely to become poor than metro elders. These results hold when controlling for race, education, marital status, age, change in work effort, becoming widowed, and types of income received.     

Ethnic jokes and social change: The case of the Welsh

Ethnic minorities and immigrants in most societies tend to become the subject of jokes told by the dominant majority. The Welsh, England's nearest neighbouring people, an aboriginal remnant of the autochthonous inhabitants of Britain have been the subject of English jokes for well over 400 years. When under the Tudors, a dynasty with a Welsh name and a tinge of Welsh descent, Wales was merged with England both legally and politically by the Act of Union of 1536, the Welsh became England's oldest and most prominent ethnic minority and significant numbers of them migrated from their peripheral homeland to the more central areas of England.’ At this point jokes about the Welsh began to proliferate¹ based on a well‐defined comic stereotype, though one that was to change significantly over time. This article traces the history and assesses the character of these jokes     

Effects of Race and Sex on Work Group Cooperation Vs. Competition

This study examines whether differences in individualism-collectivism by race and sex result in differences in cooperation vs. competition. Expanding upon the earlier work of Cox et al., individual and group-level comparisons are made by race and sex. Exclusively examining race-based effects, Cox et al. had suggested that blacks display greater cooperation than do whites. Our findings concur; however, we are able to demonstrate this using a more complete group-level comparison. Given literature suggesting sex to be as relevant as race when administering work force diversity, we further expanded upon the earlier study by testing for such effects. While some previous research has suggested a tendency for women to behave more cooperatively than do men, our findings show that this is not necessarily the case. Specifically, this study demonstrates that sex decreases in importance, when controlling for race. Applications and suggestions for future research are presented.     

The Modern Poor: On the Sociological Position of Social-Aid Clients

Abstract

The social-aid institution has been analyzed almost exclusively from a social problems approach, aiming at the understanding of social aid clients as a social problem. This article views them from a different angle, as a sociological category occupying a unique position in society. Following Simmel, we deal here with those who are poor in a social sense, i.e., anyone receiving public assistance. It is the acceptance of social assistance which makes clients into a specific sociological stratum. The specific kinds of rules and roles involved in any society's public assistance system are thus seen to produce the sociological position of the clients. With goalmotivated assistance, clients tend to be by-passed. With relationship-motivated assistance, the increasing formalization of modern society has made clients and practioners equal in one important sense—both are subordinated to the same rules and regulations.     

Classroom and Advocacy: A Project on the Working Poor in St. Louis

A social work seminar on employment issues was devoted to a research-based advocacy project on the working poor. All class members participated in data gathering, interviewing, and report writing. The report included national, state, and local data describing the working poor population. Particular attention was given to single mothers, the homeless, and health care issues. The project resulted in a published report by a major social welfare ad     

The Work Ethnic and Delinquency

Abstract

Many criminologists argue that delinquency stems, in part, from the abandonment of the work ethnic by adolescents. No longer willing to engage in hard work and self-denial, adolescents become more likely to engage in delinquency. Using longitudinal data from a national survey of adolescent boys, this study found that adolescents with a low commitment to the work ethic were more likely to become delinquent. The effect of the work ethic was explained, in large part, by social control and cultural deviance theory. The implications of these findings are briefly examined.     

Poor People in Poor Places: Local Opportunity Structures and Household Poverty*

Abstract Accounts of poverty generally fall into either “individualist” or “structuralist” camps. Often these are seen as irreconcilable and incompatible competing perspectives. This paper integrates individualist and structuralist accounts of poverty by examining the relationship between “person poverty” and “place poverty” in nonmetropolitan and metropolitan labor markets, using a multilevel framework. I fashion a general model of poverty production and allocation, drawing on the labor market ecology perspective. After a discussion of this perspective, I develop a multilevel framework for analyzing data from the 1990 Census PUMS‐L sample, STF‐3c, and other sources to show how compositional and contextual factors affect households' likelihoods of being in poverty. These multilevel models also allow us to estimate the degree to which labor market conditions influence the magnitude of household labor supply characteristics. Results suggest that both compositional and contextual factors contribute to the metro‐nonmetro difference in poverty rates, and that the effects of employment vary in accordance with labor market characteristics.     

International Charity: For the Poor?

We show how international charity leads to reduced self-help, exacerbated internal income inequality, and less charity for needy countries when international funds transfer is costly and there are information asymmetries. Mechanism design techniques are used to analyze international income transfer programs in the context of moral hazard, principal-agent, and adverse selection problems. We show that the burden of information asymmetry is borne by the most needy even when charities design incentive contracts which limit informational rents.