Social networks and immigration stress among first‐generation Mandarin‐speaking Chinese immigrants in Los Angeles

This study examined relationships between social networks and immigration stress among first‐generation Chinese immigrants. Using data from a larger study of health behavior among first‐generation Mandarin/English‐speaking immigrants residing in the Los Angeles metropolitan area (N = 1,183), this study found that Chinese immigrants living closer to immediate family and maintaining larger social networks experienced lower immigration stress. Unexpectedly, immigrants with larger family sizes and who participated in voluntary associations (e.g., religious, alumni, and nationality associations) reported increased immigration stress. The findings suggest that practitioners need to be cautious of a possible downside in designing interventions to expand social networks among immigrant clients. The study is especially important in the context of a rapidly increasing immigrant population from Mainland China to the USA. Key Practitioner Message: ● Working with immigration families should incorporate assessment of their social network; ● Interventions designed to facilitate supportive social networks should differentiate different social network ties; ● Different social network ties may affect the stress level of immigrants differently.     

Poverty Among Korean Immigrant Older Adults: Examining the Effects of Social Exclusion

ABSTRACT

Previous studies have shown that elderly Asian immigrants face greater risks for living in poverty compared with their native contemporaries. Particularly, Korean immigrant older adults are reported to be most likely to experience poverty among many Asian immigrant groups. The purpose of this study is to examine the extent to which demographic, human capital, and social exclusion factors contribute to such economic vulnerability among Korean immigrant older adults. Adding to previous research, this study broadly conceptualizes social exclusion and tests for its additive effects on poverty using nationally representative public data of Korean immigrant older adults. From the 2008–2010 Public Use Microdata Sample of the American Community Survey, this study extracts a sample that consists of individuals aged 65 years and older whose national origin is Korean, who were not born in the United States, and thereafter immigrated to the United States (N = 3,820). The findings indicate that 3 dimensions of social exclusion—exclusion from social and civic life, exclusion from asset building, and exclusion from the labor market—contribute significantly to Korean immigrant older adults’ odds of living in poverty. The study concludes with practice implications for socially inclusive workforce development as a way to ameliorate economic afflictions among Korean immigrant older adults.     

Weighing the Costs and Benefits of Mexican Immigration: The Mexican‐American Perspective*

Objective. Survey research posits that Mexican Americans' perceptions of the costs and benefits of immigration drive their opinions about immigration, but this research does not provide a clear picture of how Mexican Americans calculate these costs and benefits. This article aims to understand the processes that explain how Mexican Americans calculate the costs and benefits of Mexican immigration. Methods. The article employs 123 in‐depth interviews and observation with later‐generation Mexican Americans in Garden City, Kansas, and Santa Maria, California. Result. Respondents are ambivalent about how Mexican immigrants affect their lives, and their ambivalence is driven by prevailing ideologies in American society regarding immigration, race, and ethnicity. On the one hand, ardent anti‐Mexican nativism leads Mexican Americans to see substantial costs accruing to Mexican immigration. Mexican Americans fear that anti‐Mexican nativism leads to status degradation for all people of Mexican descent. On the other hand, an ideology of multiculturalism and its accompanying value of diversity lead Mexican Americans to see substantial benefits accruing to the large Mexican‐immigrant population, particularly in politics, the labor market, and popular culture. Conclusions. Mexican Americans' perceptions of the costs and benefits of Mexican immigration are based not only on economic considerations, but on social and cultural considerations structured by prevailing and often paradoxical ideologies. Respondents' structural position increases concerns about status degradation resulting from immigration, but also shapes how they are positioned to benefit from the boost in prominence that immigration provides to the entire Mexican‐origin population.     

Immigrant Environmental Behaviors in New York City

Objective. This article compares environmental behaviors of immigrants and the native-born to answer questions about potential impacts of immigration on the U.S. environment. Methods. We consider immigrant/native-born differences in the likelihood of engaging in environmentally friendly behavior. With data from a survey of New York City residents, we test two hypotheses regarding environmental behavior: (1) controlling for environmental orientation, environmental knowledge, acculturation, community attachment, and economic status will reduce immigrant/native-born differences, and (2) controlling for race will increase immigrant/native-born differences. Results. Our analysis provided no support for the second hypothesis, but there were varied results for the first hypothesis depending on the type of environmental behavior considered. Conclusions. Our findings for New York City show that fears of immigrants being less likely to engage in environmentally friendly behaviors are unfounded. Of greater significance to environmental organizations is the lower level of immigrant involvement in environmentally oriented political behaviors, suggesting that continued immigration will present challenges both in making the environmental movement more ethnically diverse and in maintaining its vitality.     

Economic progress of immigrants in Sweden from 1970 to 1990: a longitudinal study

This article presents a longitudinal study of immigrants' adaptation to the Swedish labour market. The study is based on data from the 1970, 1975, 1980, 1985 and 1990 censuses. It demonstrates large differences in economic success between different immigrant groups compared with corresponding native-born Swedish groups. There are differences in both socioeconomic trends and income trends. Some of the results tend to support the corresponding studies made in the United States, but there are also results that differ from the findings in the United States. It is necessary to understand the economic progress among immigrants in a very broad perspective. The economic and the political circumstances, both in the emigrant and the immigrant countries must be added to a traditional human capital model.     

Immigration and environment in the U.S.: A spatial study of air quality

Environmental consequences are frequently cited as a justification for restricting immigration to the United States, but there is little empirical research on the environmental consequences of immigration to support such arguments. The research that does exist shows immigration to be less environmentally harmful than native population growth, but is hampered by small samples and fails to account for spatial autocorrelation of air quality. We use the air quality domain of the Environmental Protection Agency’s Environmental Quality Index (EQI) to examine the association between immigrant and native populations and local air quality across all counties in the continental U.S. We employ spatial models to account for spatial autocorrelation of air quality across the counties, controlling for indicators of economic development and location characteristics. We find that native population is strongly associated with worse air quality, while foreign-born population is associated with better air quality. However, this association varies by immigrant country of origin, with East Asian immigrants in particular associated with worse air quality, and by immigrants’ year of entry, with some immigration cohorts positively associated with air quality, and others negatively. These findings highlight the importance of population characteristics in understanding population-environment linkages.     

Greek Policy towards Immigration and Immigrants

The policy of Greek authorities towards immigrants is the subject of this paper. By the term “policy” we mean both the legal framework concerning immigration and the practices of Greek authorities and their agencies regarding immigrants. We argue that this policy is defined by the commitments and the obligations undertaken by Greece as a member of the EU, but also by the number, the ethnic composition, the economic and social situation of immigrants, the attitudes of Greeks towards them and, also, the effects of their presence. In this context, the policy is characterized by dilemmas and hesitations. This is due to the attitudes of Greek opinion and concerns about the possibility that the immigrants could in the long term create problems of national integration. Those main concerns are counterbalanced, to some extent, by the contribution of immigrants to the economy. Like other members of the EU, Greek authorities have tried twice, in 1997 and in 2001, to legalize the illegal immigrants. Legalization seems to benefit both the immigrants and the Greeks. Crime rates have been reduced and xenophobia is losing ground. On the other hand, recent studies have shown that the situation of the immigrants has started to improve. Despite these positive developments, the dilemmas of immigration policy have already registered in everyday life and allow for various hostile practices towards the immigrant population.     

不对称的全球化--国际移民的政治经济学分析

经济全球化过程中存在着贸易和资本的自由化与劳动力自由流动的不对称现象。自由移民虽然在经济上具有明显的合理性,但是由于主权国家体系的存在阻碍了劳动力市场的全球化,由此导致了资本主义世界体系中南方与北方、资本与劳动、人权与主权的根本矛盾,自由主义的经济、政治和道德理念受到了挑战。长远看,自由移民的实现将服从于资本运动的需要,发达国家的国民和发展中国家的少数精英分子将率先实现自由移民。     

19世纪60-80年代俄国境内朝鲜移民法律地位形成的中朝因素探析

19世纪60-80年代,随着俄国积极吸引劳动力开发远东政策的推行,朝鲜移民数量逐年增加,其法律地位亟待确立.在19世纪下半叶东北亚各国利益角逐与权力制衡的背景下,俄国朝鲜移民的法律地位问题不仅关乎俄国自身大计,更牵涉了中朝利益.通过对解密的俄罗斯帝国对外政策档案及相关原始资料的分析,我们认为,中朝两国对俄国积极安置朝鲜移民政策进行了全力抵制,不仅影响了俄国境内朝鲜移民法律地位的形成,还阻止了俄国东北亚战略计划的实施.在中朝两国的反对下,俄国仅部分地确立了其境内朝鲜移民的合法地位,这大大限制了俄国远东地区的朝鲜劳动力数量,破坏了俄国利用朝鲜移民开发远东,并以此为契机渗入朝鲜、角逐东北亚的战略计划.     

北京市劳动力供求趋势预测

在北京市的发展规划中,经济增长和劳动力配置起着关键作用。经济增长和产业技术特点决定劳动力需求,人口自然增长率和人口净迁入规模决定劳动力供给。本文在对北京市未来25年经济增长的预测基础上,利用三种方法预测了劳动力供给和需求的变动趋势,并根据高、中、低三种方案预测北京市未来25年劳动力市场将逐渐由供给充足向供给紧张的状况转变,同时提示了对策建议。     

When the Export of Social Problems Is No Longer Possible: Immigration Policies and Unemployment in Switzerland

Throughout the twentieth century, Switzerland has been one of the OECD countries with the highest proportion of immigrants in its population. The aim of this article is to show how institutional factors have shaped the opportunities for change in immigration and immigrant‐employment‐related policies there in the 1990s. Whereas unemployment had remained low in the 1970s and 1980s, there was a marked increase at the beginning of the 1990s. Existing migration policies were considered a central cause of this increase, since the great majority of foreigners who had come and settled in Switzerland in the periods of economic expansion were low‐skilled, and were now over‐represented among the unemployed. The reforms undertaken in the field of immigration and integration policy to respond to these new problems have been determined by specific institutional factors: direct democracy, a defensive migration regime, the development of immigrant rights and the weak autonomy of the central state. These factors account to a large extent for the limited scope and specific pathways of policy reforms in these two domains.     

Ethnic Identity, Immigration, and Well-Being: An Interactional Perspective

On the basis of existing theory and research regarding ethnic identity and immigration and our own empirical work in four immigrant-receiving countries, we suggest an interactional model for understanding psychological outcomes for immigration. Specifically, the interrelationship of ethnic and national identity and their role in the psychological well-being of immigrants can best be understood as an interaction between the attitudes and characteristics of immigrants and the responses of the receiving society. This interaction is moderated by the particular circumstances of the immigrant group. The strengths of ethnic and national identity vary depending on the support for ethnic maintenance and the pressure for assimilation. Most studies show that the combination of a strong ethnic identity and a strong national identity promotes the best adaptation.     

Labor Market Outcomes for Legal Mexican Immigrants Under the New Regime of Immigration Enforcement

OBJECTIVES: This paper documents the effects of increasingly restrictive immigration and border policies on Mexican migrant workers in the United States. METHODS: Drawing on data from the Mexican Migration Project we create a data file that links age, education, English language ability, and cumulative U.S. experience in three legal categories (documented, undocumented, guest worker) to the occupational status and wage attained by migrant household heads on their most recent U.S. trip. RESULTS: We find that the wage and occupational returns to various forms of human capital generally declined after harsher policies were imposed and enforcement dramatically increased after 1996, especially for U.S. experience and English language ability. CONCLUSION: These results indicate that the labor market status of legal immigrants has deteriorated significantly in recent years as larger shares of the migrant workforce came to lack labor rights, either because they were undocumented or because they held temporary visas that did not allow mobility or bargaining over wages and working conditions.     

Immigrant Success in the Knowledge Economy: Institutional Change and the Immigrant Experience in Canada, 1970–1995

This research examines how institutional changes associated with the emergence of a "knowledge economy"—specifically the expansion of education and the changing labor market structure —shaped employment experiences of newly arriving immigrants to Canada over the period 1970–1995. Census data on successive cohorts of immigrant men and women (from microdata files for 1981, 1986, 1991, and 1996) show a progressive trend toward lower rates of labor force participation and lower levels of earnings relative to the native-born population, both overall and for most specific origins groups. These trends are only partly attributable to business cycle fluctuations in labor demand. The present article examines the impact of selected educational and labor market changes on successive cohorts of immigrants, using intertemporal substitution methodology. The analysis finds that (1) increased native-born education levels infringe upon the traditional immigrant education advantage, outpacing effects of increased immigrant skill selectivity; (2) increased returns to education among native-born workers do not apply to immigrants; and (3) other institutional obstacles to immigrant success also exist. The declining relative value of immigrant education may be due to the location-specific nature of credential validation processes. Directions for further research and policy analysis are suggested.     

"人力资本论"中的劳工迁移观分析

二战结束后,随着美国科技革命的展开和经济结构中服务业的崛起,美国从20世纪50年代开始出现了经济繁荣和社会失业率并行攀升的趋势。对此,以西奥德.舒尔茨为代表的经济学家通过实践和潜心研究,提出了颇有影响的人力资本论,其中关于劳工迁移的精辟论述具有很强的历史和现实性价值,但是,其中的局限性也十分突出,尤其是强调区域工资差异的论述似有以偏概全之嫌。无论是在理论上,还是近现代史上的跨国移民以及二战后美国以劳工为核心的人口流动,都证明了该理论中的局限性。     

Immigrant employment through the Great Recession: Individual characteristics and metropolitan contexts

Immigrants continue to settle in metropolitan areas across the United States and bring significant changes to various urban labor markets. Using American Community Survey (ACS) data for 2007 and 2011, we trace the employment outcomes of immigrants compared to native-born workers before and after the recent Great Recession across the 100 largest metropolitan areas and examine individual-level and metropolitan-level factors that shape their employment outcomes. We find that low-skilled workers in general and immigrants without English proficiency and those who are new entrants or earliest arrivals are harder hit in the recession. Latino immigrants and black workers fare worse in areas with high immigrant concentration. Latino immigrants experience employment gains, however, in the South, large urban economies, as well as new immigrant gateways. Asian immigrants see declines in employment likelihood in areas with a large construction sector, while areas with a large trade sector hurt native-born white workers.     

农民工经济贡献自我评价差异的影响因素研究

随着改革开放的深入，农民工对流入地的经济贡献越来越大。但就农民工个体而言，他们对经济贡献的自我评价受到各种因素的影响而存在差异。本文从农民工的流出/流入地、人力资本、经济回报、社会接纳和社会认同等五个方面入手，通过建立Logistic回归模型，探讨并分析影响农民工对流入地经济贡献自我评价的诸多因素。结果表明，除了流出/流入地对经济贡献自我评价并不显著，其余四项对经济贡献自我评价作用显著。     

Immigration and wage inequality in the 1990s: Panel evidence from the current population survey

In spite of record economic growth in the 1990s, income inequality continued to escalate in the United States. One popular explanation is that the proportion of unskilled immigrant inflows has increased due to policy reforms over the last four decades. This study evaluates the impact of immigrant skills on inequality using a panel data set of states derived from the March Current Population Survey (CPS). The data set provides unique insights into local impacts of immigration due to its ability to discern shorter-term annual adjustments versus the traditional longer-term focus of the Decennial Census. Using a basic theoretical model to develop testable hypotheses, the dynamic analyses reveal that increased relative inflows of unskilled immigrants indeed increase wage inequality. The impact on native wage inequality is especially pronounced, with an effect nearly twice as large as that on overall wage inequality.     

Buying into the American Dream? Mexican Immigrants,Legal Status,and Homeownership in Los Angeles County*

Objectives. Contemporary patterns of homeownership reflect the continuing racial and ethnic stratification that exists in nearly all areas of American society. Of particular interest, especially within the context of recent immigration legislation, are the homeownership experiences of Mexican immigrants in the United States. Methods. The current study employs unique data from the 2001 Los Angeles County Mexican Immigrant Residency Status Survey (LAC‐MIRSS) to examine the association between diverse forms of legal status and homeownership for Mexican immigrants. Results. Analyses indicate that the relationship between legal status and housing tenure is not statistically significant, after accounting for economic, life‐course/life‐cycle, and assimilation/social capital characteristics. Conclusions. The lack of a significant relationship is contrary to past research, perhaps explained by the explosive growth of the subprime mortgage market in the United States; the increasing recognition by financial institutions of Latino immigrants as a largely untapped, yet emerging, market in the mortgage industry; the availability of alternative forms of identification; and the institutionalization of unauthorized immigration in Los Angeles.     

How does immigration affect welfare support in Korea?

This study explored the association between the perceived presence of immigrants and support for social spending in a non-Western context, particularly Korea, so far relatively under-researched. Using the Korean General Social Survey data, specifically, it analysed whether and how native Koreans' attitudes toward government spending on (each area of) social security are influenced by the perceived presence of immigrant populations in Korean society, and furthermore, whether the degree and direction of the relationship may depend not only on the type of social benefits, but also on the type of immigration, that is, whether the share of certain groups of immigrants in the population is perceived to be high or low. The results suggest that the association between (perceived) immigration and support for social spending exists in Korea, and its degree and direction differs when the types of social benefits and immigration are considered.