Health and the education of children from racial/ethnic minority and immigrant families

Building on a conceptual model of the transition to elementary school, this study explored the role of health in the early cognitive achievement of children from various racial/ethnic minority and immigrant families by applying multilevel modeling to data from a nationally representative sample of American kindergarteners. Whites tended to have the best physical health before transitioning to first grade. Children from immigrant Latino/a and Asian families had the worst physical health but the best mental health. Compared to white children from native families, these health differentials partially explained the lower math achievement and achievement growth of black children (whether from native or immigrant families) in first grade as well as the lower math achievement of children from Latino/a immigrant families and the lower achievement growth of children from Asian immigrant families during this period.     

The Postsecondary Educational Progress of Youth From Immigrant Families

Approximately 650 youth from a variety of ethnic and generational backgrounds participated in a longitudinal study of the postsecondary educational experiences of youth from immigrant families. Youth completed questionnaires and provided official school records in the 12th grade and participated in a phone interview 3 years later. Youth from immigrant families demonstrated the same level of postsecondary educational progress as their peers from American‐born families across a broad array of indicators. In addition, youth from immigrant families were more likely to support their families financially, and some were more likely to live with their parents as compared with those from American‐born families. Variability among those from immigrant families suggested that youth from families with higher incomes, higher levels of parental education, and East Asian backgrounds were more likely to enroll and persist in postsecondary schooling as compared with their peers.     

Policing in Johannesburg after apartheid

This paper traces the genealogy of the “double paradigm shift” that transformed policing in Johannesburg after apartheid: from public to private and from reactive to proactive. The emergence of a market for residential security services led to the growth of a private security industry and a reconfiguration of urban governance. Responding to a growing demand for “proactive” security services, private security companies have recently begun innovating with new approaches to preventative security. These companies operate in a liminal zone of questionable legality, targeting poor black men as potential criminals to be excluded from the neighbourhoods of their clients.     

Family Characteristics and Mate Selection: Evidence From Computer‐Assisted Dating in Japan

Research on mate selection rarely considers singles' preferences for their future partners' family configurations and experiences. Using online dating records from a matchmaking agency in Japan, a society with a strong emphasis on family and kinship, we examine how singles' responses to date requests correspond to potential mates' family circumstances. Results showed that singles' preferences for potential partners' family characteristics stem from a concern about future obligations toward the partner's family and stereotypes associated with certain family traits. Singles are less likely to accept requests from those from large families, which are seen as traditional. Being from a large family, however, hampers individuals' dating chances more if they are firstborn and have no brothers, two conditions that make them the designated child to care for elderly parents. We also find that Japanese singles seek partners with more of the universally valued family traits rather than traits similar to their own.     

Preparing Social Work Students to Practice in Diverse Communities through Difficult Digital Dialogues

This study discusses the qualitative lessons learned from a joint social work difficult dialogue education project undertaken by students from a historically Black college and university (HBCU) and those from a predominantly White institution (PWI). The assignment utilized critical pedagogy as a guiding theory to facilitate difficult dialogues about diversity, privilege, and difference through social media and technology. Qualitative data analyzed from the project points to the usefulness and challenges of using social media and technology in facilitating difficult dialogues as well as the need to train students more purposely in the effective use of social media and technology during their education in order to prepare them for practice.     

A Theory of Access*

Abstract The term “access” is frequently used by property and natural resource analysts without adequate definition. In this paper we develop a concept of access and examine a broad set of factors that differentiate access from property. We define access as “the ability to derive benefits from things,” broadening from property's classical definition as “the right to benefit from things.” Access, following this definition, is more akin to “a bundle of powers” than to property's notion of a “bundle of rights.” This formulation includes a wider range of social relationships that constrain or enable benefits from resource use than property relations alone. Using this framing, we suggest a method of access analysis for identifying the constellations of means, relations, and processes that enable various actors to derive benefits from resources. Our intent is to enable scholars, planners, and policy makers to empirically “map” dynamic processes and relationships of access.     

Students Who Strip: The Benefits of Alternate Identities for Managing Stigma

We apply interactionist theories that highlight the contextual nature of stigma and the relational quality of stigmatization to the case of college students who work as topless dancers. We explore how the “toll of stripping” might be mediated by having an alternate, positive identity like “student.” Our analysis demonstrates that students who strip are distinctive from other strippers in important ways that stem from their salient, positive identity as students. Although they often feel as if they live a “double life” because they hide their occupation from family and friends, they benefit from sharing their student goals and ambitions with club customers. “Student” is a socially acceptable identity to share in routine social interactions and helps student strippers frame dancing as a transient occupation, offering them an opportunity to maintain a positive sense of self while buffering them from some of the negative effects of stripping.     

Young Children's Negative Stereotyping of Peers from Divorced Families

Abstract

Five to 7-year-olds assigned the negative item, on 6 of 7 bipolar pairs of items representing divorce stereotypes in simplified form, more frequently to a child stimulus presented as from a divorced family than to a child described as from an intact family. Negative stereotyping of young children from divorced families was evidenced most clearly by female participants. Gender effects were indicated for participants, child stimulus pairs, and for treatment conditions where participants responded to children from single-mother or single-father versus intact families.     

Family Structure and Music as a Model of Dyadic Behavior

The current study theorized that adult children from noncontinuously intact family structures seek models of dyadic behaviors outside of their home because their family structure lacks the necessary context from which to learn how to behave in a romantic relationship. The present research tested this prediction in two studies. Study 1 surveyed 366 college students from a midwestern university, and Study 2 surveyed 729 college students from a diverse southeastern university. In both studies, participants from noncontinuously intact homes reported risky sexual behaviors, and sexual lyrical content in popular music was able to partially explain the sexual behaviors of participants from divorced, reconstituted families, and never married homes.     

Demography of Illicit Emigration from China: A Sending Country's Perspective

This paper examines the demographic trends of international migration from China, particularly from Fujian Province in the 1980s and 1990s, comparing the characteristics of emigrants with nonemigrants. This research yields two major findings. First, Fujian Province became a leading immigrant-sending province in the mid-1990s. Second, there have also been changes in socioeconomic status (SES) selectivity of emigration from Fujian from 1990 to 1995. In particular, this change in emigration selectivity is characterized by a significant shift from urbanites to rural peasants. The future prospects of emigration from Fujian and China are explored.     

Organizational transformation of a community‐based clinic

This article reports a case study of the planned transformation of a volunteer‐run community crisis‐care center into a community clinic. The data for this study are drawn from organizational records and participant observation. During the transformation, the clinic had to plan an orderly transition from volunteer to paid staff, from paper records to an integrated management information system, from primarily crisis care to chronic care, from primarily (physical) medical care to integrated case management. Along the way, some of the planned activities proved impossible to implement, some of what turned out to be key events were completely unanticipated, and many activities were finally accomplished but in a fashion very different from what was proposed in the plan. Four lessons were drawn from this case. First, as much as the caseload increased, the need for supportive services grew at a much faster rate. Second, the case demonstrates the need to develop productivity benchmarks that are speci.c to the group being served. Third, the case demonstrates the need for .exibility to go “off plan” to accomplish a larger goal. Fourth, the case illustrates how “big money” and rapid growth can threaten the sustainability of an organization. “What we think of as idyllic only looks that way to sightseers from other places, and other times.” —Carolyn Heilbrun, The Last Gift of Time     

Albanian and Polish undocumented workers in Greece: a comparative analysis

"This article deals with the migration of undocumented workers from Albania and Poland to Greece. Its underlying assumption is that migration from the former post-communist countries to Greece is not a homogeneous phenomenon, thus allowing for a distinction and comparison between the migration waves from Poland and Albania to Greece. The article shows that economic migration from Albania and Poland to Greece is primarily an economically triggered phenomenon which results from both individual rational choices and social, structural settings, and which verifies a general tendency of mass flows, characteristic of the era of disorganized capitalism." (EXCERPT)     

Fifty Years of the Southern Sociological Society: Change and Continuity in a Professional Society. Methodological Perspectives on Studying the History of the Southern Sociological Society

This paper revisits research procedures used to collect and analyze data for Fifty Years of the Southern Sociological Society: Change and Continuity in a Professional Society (1988) to comment on methodological issues. The fifty years of change were conceptualized as having shifted the Southern Sociological Society from a disciplinary to a professional mode of organization. The shift occurred both from evolutionary processes and from deliberate revolutionary actions of officials and members. Data for the study came mainly from the Society’s Archives. It included personal accounts by presidents, secretary-treasurers’ and committee reports, annual programs and newsletters. Evolutionary processes of adapting the association to the growth of membership, to differentiation of fields of sociological study, along with the rationalization and formalization of the Society’s governance and operation, were extracted mainly from annual programs, the most continuous and objective body of archival information. Revolutionary changes, including adaptation to societal challenges including racial segregation, from the Society’s founding onward were inferred from personal accounts, committee reports, and newsletters, and were confirmed from interviews with long-standing members.     

Not all luck is created equal: Sources of income inequality and willingness to redistribute

Despite steadily rising inequality in the US over the last few decades, demand for increasing tax rates and redistribution has not increased. A growing literature argues that one reason for this is that people might perceive inequality to be fair. This literature has documented that Americans tend to perceive economic inequality stemming from merit as being fair and inequality stemming from luck as unfair. However, “lucky breaks” in the real world do not necessarily come from a lottery or random chance but from the actions of the government favoring a “lucky” few. People might be more willing to redistribute if it compensates those negatively affected by government action. Using an online experiment we show that luck stemming from the action of a government-like actor influences individuals’ desire to redistribute earnings making them more likely to favor redistribution than in instances where inequality is caused by merit or by random luck.     

Unlocking Housing Equity for Pensions in Urban China

This article examines the extent to which a reverse mortgage may improve the income of an elderly household. This question is analyzed in the context of an aging society where the existing Confucian contract of filial piety has been eroding with the advent of economic and demographic transitions underway in contemporary China. We use data from a China Household Finance Survey that was administered in 2011 covering 949 elderly households from 22 provinces. We use models from the literature to calculate the incremental gains to income from the use of a reverse mortgage. The findings are revealing in terms of the potential gains from the use of reverse mortgages. On average, an elderly homeowner makes a monthly mortgage payment of RMB ¥1,383; a reverse mortgage for the same household raises monthly income by RMB ¥1,388 or 29%. The major beneficiaries of a reverse mortgage are single and elderly individuals possessing significant housing equity and living in the more developed regions. Overall, the reverse mortgage provides a means for society to allow the elderly access to income without being a burden on the state.     

Moving on from ramps? The utility of the social model of disability for facilitating experiences of nature for disabled children

Experiences of nature have been shown to be beneficial for disabled children; however, opportunities for disabled children to experience nature are often limited. The social model of disability may provide a theoretical base for increasing access to nature for pupils at Special Educational Needs (SEN) schools. Using results from interviews conducted with teachers from seven SEN schools, considered alongside responses from interviews with staff from six environmental centres, this paper seeks to identify the specific constraints that may act upon the opportunities for disabled pupils to visit environmental centres. The research finds that a ‘medicalised’ approach to access may impede upon environmental centres’ ability to cater effectively to the needs of SEN school groups. Dialogue between environmental centres and SEN school teachers is recommended as a means of facilitating SEN school group access.     

Cracking the Code—An Approach to Developing Professional Writing Skills

The development of writing skills sufficient to meet the complexities of contemporary social work practice is a growing demand from employers and practice educators. The paper explores current pedagogical debate relating to student support and the development of writing skills and relates this debate to meeting the needs of social work students engaged in practice learning and professional practice. A number of questions are raised about current social work education in England and the needs of students entering from non-traditional academic backgrounds facing the increasingly rigorous demands of professional report writing. The discussion is then grounded in a practice example of staff from a university social work course and education guidance service working together to meet student need in respect of developing writing skills. The development, implementation and evaluation of a university writing skills programme for social work students are explored. The paper concludes by setting out a range of challenges arising from experience of the programme and a consideration of theory, and points to potential ways forward based on a social practice approach to teaching writing skills.     

Power Indices in the European Union

We analyze the power of the countries in the decisional mechanism of the European Council along an evolutionary path from the old conventional votes mechanism prevailing in the 15-countries European Union via the rules defined in the Nice treaty for various possible enlargements to the future decisional rules defined in the Constitutional Chart, which will become effective from 2009. The theoretical tools applied are the power indices of Banzhaf and Coleman and Shapley and Shubik within the frame of the multicriteria-weighted-majority games. The results unequivocally show a path moving from a power transfer from the more to the less populated countries toward a country power corresponding to the population numerosity.     

Evaluating the benefit from the help of the parent–teacher association to child performance

The contribution of parental involvement in the parent–teacher association (PTA) to schoolchildren's performance is an issue for evaluation research. To resolve the issue, it is reasonable to differentiate people who benefit and others who do not benefit from the involvement. Such differentiation relied on survey data from 289 pairs of Hong Kong Chinese parents and their children between Grade 4 and Grade 9. It revealed that only 28.8% of the parent–child pairs had their child performance benefiting from the help of parent–teacher associations (in terms of a standardized effect of .2). Factors predictive of this minority subgroup were the child's grade and having a single parent. These factors tend to identify the need for help from parent–teacher associations, which can be a consideration for planning effective help from the associations.