STRUGGLES OF INCORPORATION AMONG THE PUERTO RICAN MIDDLE CLASS

In this article I examine the settlement experiences of middle-class Puerto Ricans in the U.S. mainland. Data for the study come from open-ended interviews with 40 middle-class Puerto Ricans who came to the U.S. mainland, 20 of whom remained and 20 of whom returned and resettled in Puerto Rico. I examine their subjective interpretations of incorporation and the conditions under which they resettle in Puerto Rico. Findings reveal that in spite of occupational and economic integration into the U.S. mainstream, migration and U.S. settlement result in dislocations among Puerto Ricans, particularly regarding separation from family and kin networks and experiences with racialization and exclusion. Puerto Ricans see themselves as members of transnational families, yet, the struggles of leading dual lives between mainland and Puerto Rican societies result in settlement decisions that reflect desires to live locally with roots in one place instead of feeling split between the two. Experiences with U.S. racism complicate these decisions. Findings illustrate the various patterns of attachments to place, or emotional embeddedness, that impact the circumstances under which Puerto Ricans engage in alternating periods of mainland and Island settlement. The implications for assimilation theories are discussed.     

Mobile Livelihoods: The Sociocultural Practices of Circular Migrants between Puerto Rico and the United States1

This article focuses on the bilateral flow of people between Puerto Rico and the United States ‐ what has come to be known as circular, commuter, or revolving‐door migration. It documents the migrants' livelihood practices based on a recent field study of population flows between Puerto Rico and the mainland. Specifically, the basic characteristics of multiple movers, one‐time movers and nonmovers residing in Puerto Rico are compared. More broadly, the article assesses the implications of circular migration for Puerto Rican communities on and off the island. The author's basic argument is that the constant displacement of people ‐ both to and from the island ‐ blurs the territorial, linguistic, and juridical boundaries of the Puerto Rican nation. As people expand their means of subsistence across space, they develop multiple attachments to various localities. In the Puerto Rican situation, such mobile livelihoods are easier to establish than in other places because of the free movement of labor and capital between the island and the mainland. The author hypothesizes that circulation does not entail major losses in human capital for most Puerto Ricans, but rather often constitutes an occupational, educational, and linguistic asset.     

Residential Segregation on the Island: The Role of Race and Class in Puerto Rican Neighborhoods

In this paper, we use racial data from Census 2000, available for the first time in 50 years, to examine the links among race, socioeconomic status, and residential location on the island of Puerto Rico. Puerto Ricans overwhelmingly chose white as their race, and they chose only one race, not a combination of races that would seem more in keeping with the ideology of mestizaje. Overall, segregation by race is modest compared with residential segregation in the United States. In keeping with the Puerto Rican claim that class is more important than race, we find that segregation by race is generally lower than segregation between the lowest and highest income categories in all metro areas, but that the results for education and occupational status differ by metropolitan area. In San Juan-Bayamón, the most diverse metropolitan area on the island, we find that as percent black increases, neighborhood socioeconomic status decreases, though the changes are not that stark, except in Loiza, a community of black Puerto Ricans and in some Dominican neighborhoods, though there are relatively few of these neighborhoods.     

Hispanic intermarriage in New York City: new evidence from 1991

"This study [uses] 1991 marriage records from New York City [to examine] trends in marital assimilation among Puerto Ricans and the non-Puerto Rican Hispanic population. The prevalence of intermarriage varies among the six Hispanic national-origin groups. Changes in intermarriage patterns since 1975 are documented. Results show very high rates of intermarriage with non-Hispanics among Cubans, Mexicans, Central Americans, and South Americans. Considerable intermarriage among Hispanics of different national origins is characteristic of all Hispanics. Finally, Puerto Ricans and Dominicans have distinct patterns of intermarriage...."     

Materialist Scholarship and The People of Puerto Rico

The People of Puerto Rico occupies an ambivalent place in both the genealogy of anthropological theory and the understanding of Puerto Rican society. Its co-authors collectively developed a uniform and complex conceptual scheme which expressed both convergence and divergence among them. The book furthered Marxist approaches in U.S. anthropology and was the first serious scholarly materialist analysis of Puerto Rico. While privileging the lives of common people, it fell short of representing important strains of Puerto Rican diversity and socio-historical dynamics. The Puerto Rico Social Anthropology Project used four different models to explain the genesis of cultural forms and the interrelations among aspects of society/culture, in a given, homogeneous, “subculture” or “socio-cultural segment” of a complex society. The Project's members stressed a linear-utilitarian analysis of these subcultures, but where they could not account for observed cultural forms with such an approach, they appealed to the culture-psychology relation. This article considers the four interlinked paradigms, the associated analysis of socio-cultural trends, the resulting problematic theoretical consequences, and the flawed Marxism of the work.     

Disclosures of Sexual Abuse by Puerto Rican Children

Psychotherapists who have experience working with Puerto Ricans on issues of child sexual abuse, and Puerto Rican women who were abused sexually as children were interviewed in this exploratory study about disclosure. Certain cultural norms and factors related to Puerto Ricans' status as an oppressed minority in the United States were identified as making the disclosure of sexual abuse especially difficult for Puerto Rican children.     

“I am a Worker-Professional”: Teachers and their Classes in Puerto Rico

This article examines economic and cultural capital in the lives of public school teachers in Puerto Rico across the last half of the twentieth century to examine the processes through which their class relations have formed and reformed with shifts in Puerto Rican political and economic conditions from the early days of United States rule through neoliberal school reforms of the 1990s. It traces the historical development of the “teacher class” as a female-identified, poorly paid, professional workforce, and examines the impact of class and gender ideologies in this process.     

“Coloniality of power” and racial dynamics: Notes toward a reinterpretation of Latino Caribbeans in New York City 1

The category of “Latino” collapses the differences among populations with diverse historical experiences of oppression. We establish in this article a distinction within the Latino Caribbean diaspora among “immigrants/’ “colonial immigrants,” and “colonial/racial subjects” of the U.S. empire. Using the notion of “coloniality of power” developed by Peruvian sociologist Aníbal Quijano, we argue that the social position and racialization of several different populations in the U.S. today has its roots in the racial hierarchies produced by centuries of European colonial expansion and that this essentially colonial set of relationships continues. We use this notion of coloniality to reconceptualize three social processes: (1) the construction of Puerto Ricans as colonial racialized subjects in the Euro‐American imaginary; (2) the transformation of Dominicans into colonial immigrants in the New York Metropolitan Area, that is, the way Dominicans became “Puerto Ricanized” and (3) the disassociation of pre‐1980s Cuban migrants from the “Puerto Ricanization” experienced by the Dominicans.     

THE IMPACT OF SOCIAL CAPITAL ON THE EARNINGS OF PUERTO RICAN MIGRANTS

There is a paucity of studies examining the relationship between Puerto Ricans' social capital and their earnings. I utilized data from the Latin American Migration Project (collected in 1998 and 1999) to test five hypotheses derived from social capital theory to predict the hourly earnings of Puerto Rican migrants. My study illustrates that Puerto Rican migrants' social capital is positively related with their earnings. Interestingly, the social capital effects only pertain to Puerto Rican females. Additionally, Puerto Rican migrants do not benefit from ethnic solidarity in terms of increased wages. My analyses point toward social capital's ability to provide important labor market information to Puerto Rican females, which they appear to use to acquire jobs paying higher wages.
Social capital theory has been applied to many different phenomenon including banking, education, immigration, labor markets, and nation building ( Massey et al. 1987 ; Coleman 1988 ; Uzzi 1999 ; Fernandez, Castilla, and Moore 2000 ; Putnam 2000 ). Within the labor market, social capital has been found to be related with earnings, employment, formal employment, and job tenure ( Mier and Giloth 1986 ; Donato, Durand, and Massey 1992 ; Aguilera 1999; 2003 ; Philips and Massey 1999 ; Aguilera and Massey 2003 ). Within the immigration field, social capital has been linked with the migration process, labor market outcomes, and attainment of citizenship ( Massey et al. 1987 ; Baker 2000 ; Aguilera and Massey 2003 ; Fussell 2004 ). Unfortunately, Puerto Ricans have been unstudied within this massive literature about social capital. Additionally, gender differences in returns to social capital are only just beginning to be recognized and there is little agreement as to whether males or females benefit most from social capital. I studied the relationship between social capital and labor market outcomes of Puerto Rican migrants, paying special attention to differences in gender.     

The blame game: news,blame, and young homicide victims

Media have represented blame in homicide cases as attributable to a victim or an offender; we provide a more nuanced category of shared blame. We examine stories covering young homicide victims to demonstrate how shared blame is operationalized in print news, noting stark differences across a victim’s race and gender. We conduct a content analysis of the Orlando Sentinel newspaper and police reports from Seminole County and Sanford, Florida, from 2000 to 2012. Stark racial and gender differences are apparent in the way the content is framed and how the victims are depicted. The newspaper’s representation of young African American males is consistent with existing stereotypes of the “criminal black man.” We discuss the larger implications of our findings and how our results apply to high-profile killings of young homicide victims including Trayvon Martin.     

Cross-National Coverage of Water Handling: A Community Structure Approach

A cross-national community structure survey examined the relationship between national characteristics and newspaper coverage of water handling. Sampling all relevant 250+ word articles from September 1, 2000 (the implementation of UN Millennium Development Goal target 7c) to September 1, 2010 in 21 newspapers worldwide in NewsBank and AllAfrica databases yielded 394 articles. Articles were coded for visual/editorial “prominence” and “direction” (framing of clean water access as primarily “government responsibility,” “societal responsibility,” or “balanced/neutral” coverage), then combined to produce composite “Media Vector” scores for each newspaper (+.5241 to ?.3886, a range of .9127). Thirteen of 21 Media Vectors (60%) reflected coverage favoring government responsibility for water handling. Pearson correlations revealed the potency of 4 variable cluster scales (all α = .70+) as major correlates of water handling coverage: “female empowerment,” “vulnerability,” “privilege,” and “press freedom,” with three clusters connected to “societal” responsibility. Regression analysis reinforced the strong role of female empowerment in coverage emphasizing societal responsibility. Overall, indicators of privilege and press freedom followed suit, also linked to coverage emphasizing “societal” responsibility for water handling, whereas indicators of vulnerability instead correlated with more media emphasis on government responsibility.     

Media Framing of Body Burdens: Precautionary Consumption and the Individualization of Risk*

The accumulation of chemicals in human bodies and ecosystems represents a universal environmental and technological risk. As yet, little attention has been paid to media coverage of “body burdens,” the internal contaminant load carried by most organisms in the industrialized world. Using a sociology of risk perspective, this article analyzes the framing of chemical bioaccumulation in Canadian newspaper articles from 1986 to 2006. In later years, articles employ frames that reinforce an individualization of risk, where individuals are encouraged to avoid contaminants through “precautionary consumption” of green consumer goods. This shift in media discourse suggests that self‐protection is emerging as a key frame in the discourse of risk, one that provides a sense of individual control over chemical exposure and shifts the focus away from collective forms of protection from universal risks.     

CONSTRUCTING A POLITICAL SPECTACLE:

Murray Edelman (1988) argued that media accounts evoke a spectacle that is a construction — an interpretation reflecting the social situations of the agents that produced it. Events take on meanings that perpetuate political roles, statuses and ideologies. Examining this perspective, this study compares the accounts of the “Crisis in the Gulf” constructed by a leading American newspaper, The New York Times, and a leading Indonesian newspaper, Kompas. The research bears on two related questions. First, is the account of this political event offered by each of these newspapers better understood as a symbolic representation of political reality or as a symbolic construct reflecting and serving political, economic and ideological interests? Second, do the accounts offered by the two newspapers differ in this regard?The New York Times operates within the context of a “free press” system while Kompas operates as a “developmental press.” Comparison suggests whether formal media system norms affect media news content.     

Factors related to attitudes toward diversity in Australia,Malaysia, and Puerto Rico

In this study, we tested social identity complexity theory (Roccas & Brewer, 2002) in relation to attitudes toward diversity and the associated variables of patriotism, nationalism, religiosity, aggression, and sense of self (well-being) in a cross-cultural study of 398 Malaysian, 239 Australian, and 201 Puerto Rican students. Puerto Ricans reported the most positive attitudes toward diversity, followed by Australians, and finally Malaysians. For Puerto Ricans, pro-diversity attitudes were predicted by a positive correlation with constructive patriotism and a negative correlation with blind patriotism. For Australians, pro-diversity attitudes were predicted by a positive association with constructive patriotism, a negative association with traditional nationalism, and a negative association with physical aggression. For Malaysians, pro-diversity attitudes were predicted by positive relationships with all of the following variables: constructive patriotism, traditional nationalism, verbal aggression, hostility, and the need to bolster self through idealizing others. These results support social identity complexity theory and partially support associated predictions for Australians, Puerto Ricans, and some of the predictions for Malaysians. The results are explained in terms of local cultural contexts that may not easily be understood by a simple understanding of the variables that were measured.     

Migration in a small semiperiphery: the movement of Puerto Ricans and Dominicans

"This article argues that the semiperipheral development of Puerto Rico since around 1975 has led to the creation of a relative labor surplus in the formal sectors of the economy while at the same time increasing the demand for cheap labor in the informal service sector. Thus, Puerto Ricans leave their country in search of good jobs in the United States while Dominicans migrate to Puerto Rico and find work in the informal sector. The return migration of Puerto Ricans has also been significant, but is due to their strong national culture, rather than economic reasons. The article concludes that migration to and from Puerto Rico is of a semiperipheral type because it combines characteristics of migration previously described as 'migration from the periphery to the center' and 'migration within the periphery.' A precise definition of the semiperipheral characteristics of Puerto Rico is given."     

Nationwide Newspaper Coverage of Detainee Rights at Guantanamo Bay: A Community Structure Approach

A community structure analysis compared community characteristics and coverage of detainee rights and Guantanamo Bay in leading newspapers in 28 major cities nationwide, sampling all relevant 250+ word articles from September 12, 2001, to September 11, 2012. The resulting 359 articles were coded for “prominence” and “direction,” then combined into a “Media Vector” score for each newspaper (range = .6034 to ?.2500). About four out of five (82%) newspapers supported detainee rights. Stakeholder and buffer clusters were important. Pearson correlations revealed that stakeholders (the proportions and concerns of which are expected to be reflected in media coverage) were significant, with percentage of Mainline Protestant (r = .550, p = .001) linked to favorable media coverage of detainee rights and percentage of age 65 and older (r = ?.321, p = .048) linked to unfavorable coverage. The buffer hypothesis (associating higher proportions of privileged groups with coverage receptive to human rights claims) was also confirmed, with percentage of college educated correlating with favorable coverage (r = .409, p = .015). Regression analysis yielded two significant variables—percentage Mainline Protestant, 33%, and percentage professional/technical occupational status (another “buffer” measure), 27%, totaling 59.9%, both linked to favorable coverage. Unexpectedly, the Midwest displayed more media support for detainee rights than any other region of the United States.     

Geographical differentials in the socioeconomic status of Puerto Ricans: human capital variations and labor market characteristics

"This article examines the role of human capital and labor market characteristics in explaining geographical and individual differentials in socioeconomic outcomes of Puerto Rican women [in the United States]. The better socioeconomic performance of Puerto Ricans outside the Northeast can be in part related to their larger amount of human capital. Labor market characteristics also play a role, but their effects are generally small. Net of other characteristics, Northeast residence reduces labor force participation, increases female headship, but reduces welfare use. Of all groups examined, recent migrants from Puerto Rico located in the Northeast show the poorest socioeconomic outcomes."     

Community Media Studies: An Overview

This essay provides an overview of the field of community media studies. Like the study of “alternative media,” “citizens' media,” “independent,” and “radical” media – to mention but a few of the terms applied to participatory communication projects – academic inquiry into the structures, forms, and practices of community media has surged in recent years. While scholars often use these labels interchangeably, this essay focuses on academic and practitioner perspectives that explicitly and purposefully employ the term “community media.” The overview identifies and briefly considers three prominent conceptual frameworks – media democratization, civil society, and the symbolic construction of community – which shape and inform this vibrant field of study. This overview concludes with some thoughts on the limits and possibilities of community media theory, and practice, in the new millennium.