Racial and Ethnic Residential Patterns in Canada

The aim of this study is to understand how city factors explain racial and ethnic residential patterns in contemporary multiethnic cities. We examined residential patterns among 17 groups in 12 Canadian cities. The results suggest that we should be cautious in taking factors derived from literature based largely on European experiences at the beginning of the last century and applying them uniformly to different groups in Canadian multiethnic cities. Our results show that the residential segregation of different racial and ethnic groups is affected by different sets of city factors. In addition, most factors suggested in that literature do not relate to the segregation patterns among visible minority groups.     

Formative Experiences of Orthodox Jewish Women: Attachment Patterns and Spiritual Development

This qualitative study examines formative spiritual experiences of thirteen Orthodox Jewish women. The author discusses differences between Orthodox-born women and women returnees to Orthodoxy. From an attachment perspective, the data suggests that secure as well as insecure attachment bonds are the primary factors in religious development for these respondents. The author also argues that spiritual development from a Kabbalistic perspective offers a complementary paradigm from which to evaluate the respondents’ religious development. Finally, recommendations for clinical practice with Orthodox women are discussed.

Integration through Distinction: German‐Jewish Immigrants,the Legal Profession and Patterns of Bourgeois Culture in British‐ruled Jewish Palestine1

Abstract This article examines the encounter of the German Jewish immigrants with the crystallizing of local Jewish community in British‐ruled Palestine during the 1930s and 1940s. It argues that their accepted image as cultural aliens, based on their allegedly incompatible European‐like bourgeois life‐style, was propagated by both parties in this encounter, causing their marginalization and at the same time serving them as an important socio‐cultural resource. Focusing on the field of the legal profession, it analyses the 1930's and the already emerging and highly‐accepted patterns of a local middle‐class civic culture (despite its rejection by the political discourse), which facilitated the advancement of an elite group of German‐born lawyers in this field.     

Patterns of Participation in Informal Social Activities among Chinese Immigrants in Toronto1

This study addresses two questions. First, among the three major perspectives on integration (i.e., zero‐sum, pluralist, and selective integration) suggested in the literature, which is the dominant pattern of the participation level in informal social activities in the ethnic community and in the wider society among new immigrant groups? Second, how well do the factors suggested by these three perspectives explain these patterns? Based on recently collected data about Chinese immigrants in Toronto, Canada, the analyses suggest that nearly half the respondents claim a low level of social participation. Among those who do participate, the pluralist integration pattern is the dominant pattern of participation in informal social activities among today's Chinese immigrants. Though the analysis shows the consistent effect of human capital resources on the pluralist integration patterns, there is no significant effect of either human capital resources or duration in the country on the zero‐sum and selective patterns. Implications of the results are discussed.     

Entrepreneurial Career Patterns of Residential Real Estate Agents in Montreal

Pour bien comprendre les agents d'immeuble, il faut les considérer comme un type d'entrepreneurs modernes. On construit dans le cadre de cet article un modèle de leurs comportements permettant de comprendre les stratégies qu'ils déploient pour produire des résultats tangibles à brève et à longue échéance. Tenant compte de ce modèle on en arrive à différencier cinq types de carrière: les carrières manquées; les carrières marginales; les carrières ordinaires; les carrières ascendantes; les carrières prestigieuses. Ces types de carrière sont expliqués en utilisant trois facteurs décisifs: (1) le niveau des ventes immobilières utilisant des stratégies entrepreneuriales efficaces; (2) les possibilités de mobilité professionnelle ascendante - ou les barrières structurelles à la mobilité ascendante-lesquelles découlent de l'origine ethnique et du sexe en tant que statuts innés; et (3) les décisions des agents eux-mêmes à des moments critiques de leur carrière dans la vente immobilière.
Real estate agents are best understood as a type of modern entrepreneur. A model of their entrepreneurial behaviour is developed here which includes an explanation of strategies producing short- and long-term success. Given this model, five career patterns are distinguished: abortives, marginals, regulars, upwardly mobiles, and perennial high producers. Finally, these patterns are explained in terms of three determinants: sales success through implementing productive entrepreneurial strategies; mobility opportunities or structurally imposed barriers to mobility, which in turn depend upon ascribed ethnicity and sex status; and individual decisions at crucial career phases.     

Inhabited Institutions: Social Interactions and Organizational Forms in Gouldner’s Patterns of Industrial Bureaucracy

Organizational sociologists often treat institutions as macro cultural logics, representations, and schemata, with less consideration for how institutions are ”inhabited“ (Scully and Creed, 1997) by people doing things together. As such, this article uses a symbolic interactionist rereading of Gouldner’s classic study Patterns of Industrial Bureaucracy as a lever to expand the boundaries of institutionalism to encompass a richer understanding of action, interaction, and meaning. Fifty years after its publication, Gouldner’s study still speaks to us, though in ways we (and he) may not have anticipated five decades ago. The rich field observations in Patterns remind us that institutions such as bureaucracy are inhabited by people and their interactions, and the book provides an opportunity for intellectual renewal. Instead of treating contemporary institutionalism and symbolic interaction as antagonistic, we treat them as complementary components of an “inhabited institutions approach” that focuses on local and extra–local embeddedness, local and extra-local meaning, and a skeptical, inquiring attitude. This approach yields a doubly constructed view: On the one hand, institutions provide the raw materials and guidelines for social interactions (“construct interactions”), and on the other hand, the meanings of institutions are constructed and propelled forward by social interactions. Institutions are not inert categories of meaning; rather they are populated with people whose social interactions suffuse institutions with local force and significance.     

The election of Jewish deputies in Vilna in 1818: government projects and Jewish claims

This article focuses on the election of the so-called deputies of the Jewish people in Vil'na (Vilnius) in 1818. At the time, the Russian government perceived Jewish society as a “state within a state” with its own secret government. Russian rule tried to legalise and control that imagined government or to neutralise and repress it. The Jewish elite used these mental constructs of the Russian ruling circles and positioned themselves as the holders of the “Jewish rule,” demanding the usual prerogatives of nobility.     

Emerging Patterns of Hispanic Residential Segregation: Lessons from Rural and Small‐Town America

The past two decades have ushered in a period of widespread spatial diffusion of Hispanics well beyond traditional metropolitan gateways. This article examines emerging patterns of racial and ethnic residential segregation in new Hispanic destinations over the 1990–2010 period, linking county, place, and block data from the 1990, 2000, and 2010 decennial censuses. Our multiscalar analyses of segregation are framed by classical models of immigrant assimilation and alternative models of place stratification. We ask whether Hispanics are integrating spatially with the native population and whether recent demographic and economic processes have eroded or perpetuated racial boundaries in nonmetropolitan areas. We show that Hispanic residential segregation from whites is often exceptionally high and declining slowly in rural counties and communities. New Hispanic destinations, on average, have higher Hispanic segregation levels than established gateway communities. The results also highlight microscale segregation patterns within rural places and in the open countryside (i.e., outside places), a result that is consistent with emerging patterns of “white flight.” Observed estimates of Hispanic‐white segregation across fast‐growing nonmetropolitan counties often hide substantial heterogeneity in residential segregation. Divergent patterns of rural segregation reflect local‐area differences in population dynamics, economic inequality, and the county employment base (using Economic Research Service functional specialization codes). Illustrative maps of Hispanic boom counties highlight spatially uneven patterns of racial diversity. They also provide an empirical basis for our multivariate analyses, which show that divergent patterns of local‐area segregation often reflect spatial variation in employment across different industrial sectors.     

Reportage: Romania and its Jewish museums

After the proclamation of the People's Republic of Romania, at the end of 1947, until 1988, about 300,000 Jews have left Romania. Currently, in Romania, the Jewish population is around 12,000–15,000, generally aging. Despite the general interest of the Romanian society in Judaism and the Jewish communities, as the article highlights, there are only about half a dozen Jewish museums, most of them being rather unknown and modest community exhibitions, dusty and decrepit. The article focuses on these particular museums and their collections, but trying to point out the resources and real potential of the Jewish heritage in Romania, envisaging that it is high time to experience new Jewish museums.     

Jewish lesbians: New work in the field

Abstract

This introduction provides an overview of the field of Jewish lesbian studies, particularly in the United States and the English-speaking world. The author looks at the opening of the field of Jewish lesbian feminist work and then explores ways in which Jewish lesbians have been active in religious and spiritual initiatives, the arts, politics and history, as well as academic and organizational life, and matters of exclusion.     

East European Jewish migration: inside and outside

This introductory article provides an overview of modern Jewish migration from Eastern Europe. It engages the foundational historiography of the field and explores intersections of Jewish migration with general migration theory. In addition to framing the six articles in this special collection, this essay presents longue durée factors linking today's post-Soviet diaspora communities on three continents with social and political trends beginning in the late nineteenth century and during the interwar period and postwar periods.     

Jewish marriages in the USSR: a demographic analysis

Marriage trends among Jews in the former Soviet Union are examined for the period 1979-1989. Consideration is given to intermarriage, the percentage of the population that is currently married by sex, and marriage age. Data are presented for the whole country and for selected republics.