Pre‐ and Post‐Migration Determinants of Socio‐Cultural Integration of African Immigrants in Italy and Spain

Using a unique dataset (N=2,014), we examine the pre‐ and post‐migration determinants of socio‐cultural integration among first‐generation immigrant groups in southern Europe: Moroccan and Senegalese migrants in Spain, and Egyptian and Ghanaian migrants in Italy. The results of the pooled and immigrant‐group specific regression analyses partly highlight the dominance of pre‐migration factors. Immigrants who were well‐educated and well‐informed prior to migrating and who migrate at a young age, achieve higher levels of socio‐cultural integration. Going against some hypotheses found in the literature, female gender and North African origin have a positive effect on socio‐cultural integration as opposed to male gender and sub‐Saharan origin. With regard to post‐migration factors, occupational status is the main economic determinant of socio‐cultural integration. Interestingly, being employed as such has no significant effect on socio‐cultural integration. This suggests that labour market segmentation and discrimination negatively impact upon socio‐cultural integration. The results also suggest that policies allowing immigrants to benefit from the human capital they carry across borders and achieve upward socio‐economic mobility are likely to enhance their socio‐cultural integration.     

“A Community of Communities”– Catholic Communitarianism and Societal Crises in Ireland, 1890s–1950s1

Abstract This article argues that discourse on community as a socio‐political problem needs to be located within historical, institutional, and socio‐structural contexts if it is to be properly understood. In particular, it suggests that the role of religion in promoting forms of communitarian discourse and practice needs to be given greater attention than it has hitherto received within the social sciences. The article pursues this argument through examination of the religious discourse on community cultivated and promoted by the Catholic Church in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. By providing an analysis of its role in Catholic responses to three major socio‐political crises in Ireland between the 1890s and 1960s, the paper suggests that not only does socio‐religious discourse on community constitute a powerful alternative to secular social‐scientific discourses, but that such discourse is particularly effective in helping to constitute specific groups as communities, given favourable sociological conditions.     

Socio‐economic stratification of English in globalized landscapes: A market‐oriented perspective

Globalization has dramatically altered the urban societies of Amsterdam and Brussels over recent decades, with intensified socio‐economic inequality, unprecedented levels of multilingualism and the increasing importance of English. In this paper, I examine the use of English in the linguistic landscape of socio‐economically stratified commercial shopping streets in these two second‐tier global cities. I adopt a market‐oriented, contextualized approach to quantitative and qualitative variability in how English emerges in these particular commercial ‘linguistic markets’. McDonaldization in midscale shopping streets occurs alongside downscale and upscale uses of English which are more susceptible to local commercial dynamics, in particular in Brussels. As such, global English in these single city contexts emerges as a heterogeneous and scaled phenomenon shaped by specific local commercial and linguistic market conditions.     

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.     

The relationality of law and culture: Dominant approaches and new directions for cultural sociologists

Much of the cultural sociological research in law and culture falls into one of the following approaches: (1) law as a structure that enables and constrains culture; (2) culture as a structure that enables and constrains law; and (3) law as a cultural toolkit or repertoire upon which actors draw to orient strategies for action. This article briefly reviews these approaches, then, drawing from the generative socio‐legal tradition in law as culture, highlights a fourth approach. While law and culture are often analyzed as autonomous forces in ongoing contention, negotiation, and reconciliation, the socio‐legal approach conceptualizes the relationality of law and culture as constituted by ongoing contention. I argue that this relational approach may offer cultural sociologists who do not study law a framework for better analyzing how power undergirds, enables and constrains cultural meaning. I offer examples to illustrate the utility of this research agenda through three areas of interest for cultural sociologists: (1) embodiment; (2) emotions; and (3) political culture. Such an approach encourages a two‐way bridge between cultural sociology and socio‐legal studies conceptualizing culture as a dynamic system of power relations.     

“Anarchy all over Baščaršija”: Yugoslavia's new socialist culture and the New Primitives poetics of the local

The paper analyses Sarajevo's music movement of New Primitives and its “poetics of the local” as a struggle against the cultural hypocrisy of Yugoslavia's “new socialist culture” and its privileging of “external‐cosmopolitan” as apotheosis of cultured refinement and sophistication while denigrating “local‐parochial” as epitome of uncultured primitiveness. I argue that the movement's praxis is best understood as a call to reject externally‐imposed frames of reference as the basis for self‐understanding, and to embrace a socio‐cultural awareness that the only way to be in the world is to be authentically “primitive”– i.e. to exist as a distinct and autochthon socio‐cultural self.     

Beyond “Inherit It or Marry It”: Exploring How Women Engaged in Sustainable Agriculture Access Farmland

Despite an overall decrease in new farm operations, the number of women farm operators grew 30 percent between 2002 and 2007, with 300 percent growth since 1978. This research suggests, however, that opportunities for women have unfolded unevenly. We argue that women's opportunities to farm are affected by their social location and life course, suggesting that as their lives unfold across specific cultural and economic moments, different cohorts of women experience divergent opportunities to farm. Using in‐depth interviews with women engaged in sustainable farming in the Inland Northwest, this article examines how women access farmland. Our findings suggest three methods for access: (1) access through the traditional means of marrying a male farmer and then carving out space for one's self as a farmer; (2) access later in life after a life‐altering event like divorce and using personal financial means, such as retirement income or selling appreciated property; (3) access at a young age through the pooling of marital resources with a husband who works off the farm. Our research suggests that women's land access should not be presumed a progressive narrative and suggests the need for a more complex understanding of the challenges that women in agriculture face today despite their increased presence in farming.     

Competence in the face of adversity: the influence of early family environment and long‐term consequences

This paper investigates family characteristics that enable children to achieve competence despite being exposed to socio‐economic adversity, and analyses the long‐term outcomes of this positive adaptation. The main finding is that the protective factors that modify the impact of adversity are context specific, and show age as well as period effects. Positive adaptation during early childhood has long‐term consequences, yet resilient young people cannot completely overcome the experience of early socio‐economic disadvantage. The results indicate that future research must identify specific rather than general protective factors that provide protection against specific risks for young people in specific life contexts. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Child‐Care Usage and Mother‐Infant “Quality Time”

Mothers' time‐use patterns were compared in families in which infants spent more than 30 hours per week in child care (In‐Care group; n= 143) versus 0 hours per week (At‐Home group; n= 183) from birth to 6 months of age. In‐Care group mothers spent about 12 fewer hours per week interacting with their infants, for about 32% less time; fathers of these infants were more involved in caregiving. The groups did not differ in the quality of mother‐infant interaction. In the In‐Care group, quantity of interaction was related to greater separation anxiety and concerns about effects of maternal employment. Time‐use data were not related to child outcomes at 15 months of age. Results suggest that the effect of extensive time spent apart on the quantity and quality of mother‐infant interaction may be smaller than anticipated.     

Healthcare Reforms and the Creation of Ex‐/Included Categories of Patients — “Irregular Migrants” and the “Undesirable” in the French Healthcare System

This article reconstructs the socio‐historical processes that have led to the formal inclusion and marginalization of “irregular migrants” in the French public health insurance system and the parallel legal production of exclusion of a share of this group. It interrogates the binary inclusion/exclusion in the field of healthcare linking it to the logic of sovereignty and governmentality in a stratified society. It shows how these processes have led to unequal health practices and increased obstacles to accessing health insurance and healthcare providers, and, consequently, has resulted in the exclusion of a share of this group from the regular healthcare system. These two levels of discrimination are illustrated using empirical research on departments in French public hospitals that have been designed to enable access to care for individuals without insurance (Permanence d'accès aux soins de santé, or PASS: health care access units).     

The Spatial Ecology of Power: Long‐Distance Trade and State Formation in Northeast Africa

This study examines the longue durée pattern of state formation in northeast Africa by situating its determinate dynamics within a wider constellation of social‐property relations and inter‐regional exchange networks. Given the social dynamics of tributary relations, increases in surplus extraction typically took the form of extensive territorial expansion rather than intensive augmentation of production, and the supply of means of coercion (weapons) and means of persuasion (luxury goods) with which to build retinues and alliances was a crucial determinant of the persistent oscillations between centralized rule and periods of pronounced regional autonomy. The sustained spatiality of power in the region was consequently shaped by the uneven and combined dynamics of production and exchange relations rather than by any simple dominance of one over the other. Within the more inclusive spatiotemporal framework adopted here, it is their historical imbrications rather than their idealized juxtapositions that calls for critical analysis and social explanation.     

A sociological comparison of anti‐Semitism and anti‐Muslim sentiment in Britain1

Comparisons of anti‐Semitic and anti‐Muslim sentiment (the latter also known as ‘Islamophobia’) are noticeably absent in British accounts of race and racism. This article critically examines some public and media discourse on Jewish and Muslim minorities to draw out the similarities and differences contained within anti‐Semitic and anti‐Muslim sentiment. It provides a rationale for focusing upon the period of greatest saliency for Jewish migrants prior to the Second World War, compared with the contemporary representation of Muslims, and identifies certain discursive tendencies operating within the representations of each minority. The article begins with a discussion of multiculturalism, cultural racism and racialization, followed by a brief exploration of the socio‐historical dimensions of Jewish and Muslim groups, before turning to the public representation of each within their respective time‐frames. The article concludes that there are both hitherto unnoticed similarities and important differences to be found in such a comparison, and that these findings invite further inquiry.     

“Police,Public Safety,and Race‐Neutral Discourse”

In the final decades of the 20th century policing in America was refashioned in the public image of community policing. Race‐neutral discourses dominate public and professional support for community‐oriented policing philosophies. In the contemporary era of hyper‐incarceration a focus on ethnoracial divisions grounded in the sociology of peculiar institutions is essential for documenting transformations in how the municipal police services are legitimized. Here I analyze how the public discourses of law‐and‐order center on distortions of social fact and public safety. Today the criminalization of immigrants is the latest turn in public discourses shaping patterns of ethnoracial visions and divisions. The carceral breadth of the neoliberal penal state extends beyond social structure, repackaged as race‐neutral ideology across the public sphere.     

Visitors to modern and contemporary art museums: towards a new sociology of ‘cultural profiles’

Sociologists traditionally focus on the power of socio‐economic variables as drivers of attendance at museums. However, this research runs the risk of a certain socio‐economic reductionism which fails to register the aesthetic dimensions of cultural consumption. To remedy this, I propose a new focus on cultural profiles beyond the prism of SES, which allows us to better interpret the role of the art museum visit in visitors' daily life. The cultural profile is defined as a set of cultural, creative and leisure preferences and activities, towards various forms of art, which classify and can be classified. I use multiple correspondence analysis to examine the nature of cultural profiles among visitors of six museums of modern and contemporary art in Belgium. Six different cultural profiles are defined, each a ‘bricolage’ of different classifying registers that structure and define practices and tastes. My approach allows us to reconcile and elaborate current interests in cultural sociology about the relationship between high versus low culture (Bourdieu), experimentation versus classicism, transgression versus conservatism and omnivores versus univores (Peterson).     

Pauvreté et convergence des consommations au Canada*

To study changes in household consumption patterns, five socio‐economic household groups were defined using a new multidimensional index (IMPR) composed of three dimensions: satisfaction of basic needs, marginalization relative to a reference population, and total disposable household income. When household incomes rose from 1969 to 1992, lower socio‐economic groups did not display the same consumption behaviours as upper‐income classes. The growth in household income during their life‐cycles did not allow them to catch up to higher‐income households. Middle‐class households experienced marked changes in consumption over their life‐cycle's, but in the 1990s, they experienced difficulties. Cinq groupes socioéconomiques de ménages sont définis à l'aide d'un nouvel indice multidimensionnel de pauvreté‐richesse (IMPR), construit à partir de trois dimensions: satisfaction des besoins de base, marginalisation par rapport à une population de référence et revenu total disponible du ménage. De 1969 à 1992, quand les revenus des ménages augmentent, les classes socioéconomiques qui occupent des positions inférieures n'ont pas les mêmes comporte‐ments de consommation que les classes supérieures. La croissance des revenus des ménages les moins riches au cours de leur cycle de vie ne leur permet pas de rattraper les positions des ménages plus riches. Dans les années 1990, la classe moyenne connaît une situation difficile.     

Development by Dispossession: Terra Nullius and the Social‐Ecology of New Enclosures in Ethiopia

One of the alarming features of the intersection of the world economic crisis with the global food and energy crises has been the tidal wave of large‐scale land acquisitions it has unleashed. By enclosing the village commons and extinguishing the customary rights of smallholders, these land grabs are accelerating trends toward large‐scale industrial farming and tenure rearrangements favoring international agribusiness. This article situates these developments in the social space of Ethiopia and a specific historical context of transformations in state and property relations. By critically analyzing the designation of the commons as empty or underutilized spaces awaiting redemptive development, it highlights the ways in which the legitimizing claims of terra nullius efface the complex ecologies and distinctive spatial dynamics of social reproduction in the zones designated for enclosures.     

“Transnational” Socio‐Cultural Systems and Ethnographic Research: Views from an Extended Field Site

This article discusses a widespread pattern of migratory moves that is often overlooked in contemporary research on transnational migration. Transnational theory has successfully highlighted the significance of migrants' attachments to people and places transcending the confines of nation‐states. By emphasizing, a priori, the national, this theory tends to overlook the full complexity and meaning of migrants' extra‐local socio‐cultural relations. Through an ethnographic study of dispersed family networks of Caribbean origin, I explore the wide range of migration practices in which differing actors engage and the nature of the sociocultural systems that emerge as migrants move between places.     

WikiLeaks: Between disclosure and whistle‐blowing in digital times

The 2010 WikiLeaks' disclosures of U.S. war logs were the first megaleaks to shake the world of international diplomacy and political elites. Since then, more leaks followed, from the Snowden to the Panama Papers. As this phenomenon continues to evolve, a significant body of scholarly work has analysed the emergence, the struggle, and the history of WikiLeaks .This article aims to provide a cross disciplinary overview of the research that has explored the rise and the legacy of the disclosure platform and whistle‐blowing website WikiLeaks. It identifies four scholarship approaches to research focusing on Julian Assange's platform in order to understand its impact on various aspects of the media and of public life. The approaches considered range from the effect WikiLeaks has had on traditional journalism to the platform's challenge to power in the realm of the balance between openness and secrecy in domestic and international politics; further scholarships use WikiLeaks as a case study to understand the relationship between media and social movements and to study the platform's ethics and the legal consequences of its operations. The impact of WikiLeaks's revelations still poses relevant questions the media, politics, and regulators must address in such a pivotal time that sees a change in news consumption and an increasingly bitter debate between online privacy and transparency. The conclusion reflects upon current development of what the author calls “new digital culture of disclosure.” Future research should explore questions about the opportunities, challenges, and obstacles for this emerging culture of disclosure. What are the socio‐political‐economic conditions that have enabled this new culture? Are these leaks becoming a renewed example of democratic accountability? Is this culture of disclosure replacing public interest journalism in times of crisis?     

Wildfire Perception and Community Change

Given increasing political and financial commitments to wildfire preparedness, risk policy demands that risk identification, assessment, and mitigation activities are balanced among diverse resident groups. Essential for this is the understanding of residents' perceptions of wildfire risks. This study compares wildfire‐risk perceptions of Pennsylvania residents with those of Minnesotans living in natural‐amenity‐rich communities. Natural‐amenity‐driven migration shifts land‐use patterns and social conditions, making it important to understand if and how such changes affect residents' perceptions of wildfire. Key informant interviews suggest land use and contrasting values associated with sociodemographic shifts were intertwined with wildfire‐risk awareness, concern, and mitigation. In both study areas, local social interactions were impaired by geospatial and sociocultural barriers related to land use and population change. Barriers included perceived threats to quality of life, conflicting needs for economic development, and homes built in isolated locations. As a result, residents did not agree on community‐wide notions of wildfire risk and response. Further, residents' ideas about the potential for a wildfire disaster did not correspond to those of risk managers. Although some places were attempting to overcome these challenges, many informants said their communities were overwhelmed with the effects of change. Finding common notions of wildfire risk is critical precisely because resident participation is crucial to hazard management. In these localities, rural community development can facilitate capacities to address wildfire risk in the context of landscape and social change.