Navigating Globalization: Immigration Policy in Canada and Australia, 1945–20071

Scholarship on immigration and globalization has failed to adequately analyze the nation‐state’s regulatory capacities, insisting instead that contemporary patterns of migration jeopardize national sovereignty and territoriality. While recognized that states possess the legitimate authority to control their territorial and membership boundaries, recent transformations of these capacities remain largely unanalyzed. This article’s historical analysis of Australia and Canada’s postwar immigration policies demonstrates that the contours of state regulation are intimately connected to the exigencies of state administration and nation building and—in contrast to the expectations of dominant theories—have intensified and expanded within the globalization context. The literature’s inattention to the fundamentally political nature of immigration has obscured the critical effects of national policies within both the migratory and globalization process. Australia’s and Canada’s contemporary policies constitute a unique model of migration control and reflect attempts by both countries to strategically position their societies within the global system and resolve a number of economic, political, cultural, and demographic transitions associated with globalization.     

A New Kuznetsian Dynamic: The Knowledge Economy and Income Inequality in the United States, 1917–2008

The rise of the knowledge economy resulted in higher levels of income inequality in the United States and forced many to question the Kuznets Inverted‐U hypothesis. However, this study argues that the establishment of a knowledge economy does not negate the importance of employment shifts for income inequality. Instead, the expansion of knowledge employment alters the major sectors that are responsible for the overall distribution of income. To this end, this article presents the key argument that the current service–knowledge transition impacts income inequality trends, of today, in a way that is similar to the agricultural–industrial transition, of the past. According to the autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity regressions, the agricultural–industrial transition returns stronger associations with income inequality in the United States before 1950. The agricultural–industrial transition's impact diminishes thereafter as the service–knowledge transition shares a more robust association with income inequality after 1980.     

The Sociology of Unequal Exchange in Ecological Context: A Panel Study of Lower‐Income Countries, 1975–20001

The structural theory of ecologically unequal exchange posits that through the vertical flow of exports from lower‐income countries, the stratified world economy enables higher‐income countries to misappropriate global environmental space. Tied to their unsustainable consumption levels, this misappropriation by higher‐income countries leads to the suppression of resource consumption in lower‐income countries, well below globally sustainable thresholds, which negatively impacts the well‐being of domestic populations. To evaluate key aspects of the theory, I test the hypothesis that lower‐income countries with elevated levels of exports sent to higher‐income countries exhibit lower consumption‐based environmental demand, measured as per‐capita ecological footprints. Findings for generalized least squares panel regression analyses of 66 lower‐income countries from 1975 to 2000 confirm the hypothesis, providing support for the theory. Additional results indicate that the strength of the hypothesized relationship increased in magnitude during the 25‐year period. These findings hold, net of the effects of economic development, ecological conditions, and other structural factors.     

Ethnic Organizations and the Welfare State: The Impact of Social Welfare Programs on the Formation of Indochinese Refugee Associations

The expansion of the welfare state during the 20th century has altered the conditions shaping the formation of ethnic organizations. Drawing upon research in the divergent fields of social policy, immigrant communities, and social movements, this article argues that social welfare programs promote or suppress ethnic organizations depending on how they affect an ethnic community's institutional completeness. This welfare state channeling theory is contrasted with ethnic competition and resource mobilization explanations for the formation of ethnic organizations. An analysis of 800 Indochinese refugee associations finds that public assistance has no effect on the prevalence of these organizations, but that privatization of federal social service expenditures does, thus partially supporting the welfare state channeling theory.     

The Cost of Instability: The Effects of Family,Work, and Welfare Change on Low‐Income Women’s Health Insurance Status

The number of uninsured Americans has risen substantially over the last decade. Despite the availability of Medicaid, low‐income women are at particularly elevated risk of having no or inadequate health insurance. How does continuity of work, family, and welfare affect low‐income women’s health insurance status? A multinomial logistic regression analysis of 1,662 low‐income women from the Welfare, Children, and Families: A Three‐City Study provides evidence of the consequences of life changes on access to health insurance from 1999–2005. The results show that compared to those with stable welfare, work, and family attachments, new full‐time employment actually increases low‐income women’s risk of being uninsured as does being underemployed, on welfare, or single for extended periods of time. These findings illustrate how health‐care reform must adequately address the complexity of low‐income women’s lives—including the ways labor market, state, and family factors interact to create barriers to health insurance—in order to improve access to care under the current U.S. health insurance model.     

Social Changes and Welfare Reform in South Korea: In the Context of the Late-coming Welfare State

The Korean welfare state is facing diverse pressures and challenges due to changing economic, social, and demographic circumstances: prevalence of the service economy, labor market flexibility, weakened family function and increase of untraditional families, lowest fertility rate and the most rapid ageing of the population among OECD countries, and so forth. These challenges, which indicate new types of social risks, have been stimulating a series of discussions on welfare reform in Korea. The old social risks such as retirement, ill health, poverty, and unemployment have not disappeared because of insecure or inadequate welfare, and now these risks are even intertwined with the so-called new social risks. Thereby the Korean welfare state is facing complicated reform tasks. This study attempts to analyze the structure and context of these challenges in Korea, and to explore the various driving forces that have formulated Korean welfare reform in recent decades. Through the above analyses, this study will shed light the characteristics of welfare reform in Korea as a late-coming welfare state.     

Welfare,Premarital Childbearing,and the Role of Normative Climate: 1968–1994

Nationally representative, longitudinal survey data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics were used to examine the conditions under which welfare benefit levels affected the likelihood that low‐income women age 15–24 bore their first child prior to marriage. Benefit levels had a positive effect on premarital childbearing during the 1980s and early 1990s but not during the 1970s or late 1960s. The effect of benefit levels was also stronger where community attitudes toward premarital sex were more tolerant than where attitudes were less tolerant, but this did not account for the varying effect of benefit levels over time. The study introduces a new way of measuring normative climate using attitudinal data from the General Social Surveys.     

The Politics of Regional Inequality in Ghana: State Elites,Donors and PRSPs

Through an analysis of Ghana's HIPC Fund which was established as part of the PRSP process, this article shows how aid‐financed efforts to reduce regional inequality in Ghana have failed. Dominant political elites agreed to policies reducing regional inequality in order to have access to aid funding but, once approved, these funds were allocated on quite different criteria in ways that marginalised the poorest. This analysis reinforces the growing recognition that developmental outcomes in most poor countries are shaped not so much by the design of ‘good’ policies per se, but more importantly by the power relationships within which policy‐implementing institutions are embedded. Aid donors seem unable to grasp this important lesson fully, and so their capacity to contribute to reducing regional inequality remains limited.     

Families in Poverty in the 1990s: Trends,Causes, Consequences,and Lessons Learned

During the 1990s, poverty rates in the United States remained relatively stable despite a robust economy in which unemployment and inflation were at their lowest points in many years. Approximately 13% of individuals, 11% of families, and 19% of children lived below the poverty line in 1998, a decline of only 1% or less for each of these categories since 1990. These high rates of poverty result in many severe consequences. This essay reviews the research and theoretical and conceptual developments during the past decade, including: (a) a background on how the poverty line was developed; (b) general research themes in the 1990s; (c) the causes of the virtually unchanged poverty rate; (d) the consequences of poverty, particularly for children; and (e) the lessons we have learned from research over the past decade, with some directions for the future.     

State Welfare and the Development of Voluntary Action: The Case of Ireland,North and South

This paper considers the development of voluntary action in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. Drawing on research conducted during 2002–2003 at the Centre for Voluntary Action Studies at the University of Ulster and funded by the Royal Irish Academy, it is argued that the way that voluntary and community organizations developed in Ireland’s two jurisdictions after the partition of the island in 1922 illuminates debates on the role of states in structuring the civic space in which voluntary action occurs. It illustrates, in particular, the interaction of state policy drivers with the cultural and ideological forces that shape voluntary action. Analysis lends support to the view that state action, together with cultural trends and social capital resources, is the crucial determinant of how the voluntary sector develops in a jurisdiction.     

Improving the Measurement of the Relationship between Opportunities and Income: Evidence from Longitudinal Data from Chile

The relationship between exogenous circumstances faced in early childhood (opportunities) and earnings has been increasingly studied in the past decade. In this article we assess the sensitivity of this relationship to different income measures. Typically the empirical evidence is based on short‐term income measures that suffer from variability and measurement error. Using longitudinal data from Chile, we find that when four‐ and seven‐year earnings are used, the relationship between inequality of opportunity and income inequality is significantly higher than that obtained with yearly measures. Monte Carlo simulations with several data‐generating processes confirm this result. This supports policies targeted to reduce long‐term income inequality via providing equal opportunity to individuals at early stages in life.     

Social Policy, “Deservingness,” and Sociotemporal Marginalization: Katrina Survivors and FEMA

Limiting assistance in the context of the neoliberal U.S. welfare state relies on a distinction between the deserving and undeserving poor. Hurricane Katrina survivors were caught between two opposing cultural characterizations—”deserving” disaster victims and “undeserving” welfare cheats. In this article, I examine Hurricane Katrina survivors' experiences with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)'s rental assistance policies and practices, as their experiences reveal important aspects of how aid is allocated in the context of the contemporary U.S. welfare state, and what consequences this has for marginalized populations. I analyze in‐depth interviews and field observations with displaced Katrina survivors and find that FEMA policies and practices assumed a “middle class” model of family structure and economic standing. Those who did not fit into this model were made to wait while their cases were investigated, which had negative psychological and material consequences. I argue that being made to wait, or temporal domination, is a central component of the larger sociotemporal marginalization of the poor, or the way in which time structures social stratification. Temporal domination is a feature of neoliberal social policy, neither maliciously intended nor entirely unintended, that has the consequence of punishing the “undeserving.”     

Global Human Rights and State Sovereignty: State Ratification of International Human Rights Treaties, 1965–20011

This research seeks to understand the factors that lead nation‐states to ratify international human rights treaties in the contemporary world, despite their potential cost for state sovereignty. We argue that normative pressure from international society, along with historical contingencies during the Cold War, encouraged many states to ratify these treaties. We present an event‐history analysis of ratification of seven key international human rights treaties in 164 countries in the period between 1965 and 2001. The results lend support to the world society argument as well as to our historical argument and also specify that normative pressure and imitation have been important factors shaping states’ decisions to ratify international human rights treaties.     

Urban poverty,economic restructuring and poverty reduction policy in urban China: Evidence from Shanghai, 1978–2008

This article uses the city of Shanghai as a case study to analyze the changing institutional mechanisms for the new urban poverty stratum in China. Specifically, the article examines urban poverty in relation to economic restructuring and the transformation of the welfare provision system in three stages of market reforms. The article first examines the overall economic growth strategies at the national level, and then examines local government policy outcomes at the city level. The impacts of institutional changes on urban poverty and social inequality are subsequently. Finally, the article assesses the current poverty reduction policies and proposes a “social inclusion” framework to alleviate urban poverty in China.     

Tribute to Joan Acker (1924–2016): Views from ‘the South’

This short personal piece provides reflections on the contribution of Joan Acker's theorising and insights for gendered organization scholars working in New Zealand. We have positive recollections of Joan Acker the person, as well as her sharp and thoughtful analyses of gendered inequalities. Her contributions moved beyond gender as intersectionality influenced her later works. Her thoughts on positive organizational change are considered and finally, we offer quotes that will endure.     

Income Inequality across Micro and Meso Geographic Scales in the Midwestern United States, 1979–20091

This article examines the spatial distribution of income inequality and the socioeconomic factors affecting it using spatial analysis techniques across 16,285 block groups, 5,050 tracts, and 618 counties in the western part of the North Central Region of the United States. Different geographic aggregations result in different inequality outcomes, suggesting spatial scale needs to be carefully considered in inequality research. Inequality is spatially clustered in suburban areas of larger metro areas and around Native American reservations in the Dakotas. Higher inequality is associated with better socioeconomic conditions, counter to the social inequality literature but consistent with the inequality growth literature. However, growing inequality is associated with worse socioeconomic outcomes. Results partially support the polarization thesis that declines in industrial sectors and growth in services has caused incomes to diverge. Higher and growing inequality is associated with both low‐skill and high‐skill services jobs. However, employment in agricultural and industrial sectors experiencing large losses over the past three decades is also linked to higher and growing inequality. This suggests a dual process where many former agricultural and industrial workers are now employed in other sectors at lower wages, while the remaining workers in these sectors earn higher and growing wages.     

Women's Changing Attitudes Toward Divorce, 1974–2002: Evidence for an Educational Crossover

This article examines trends in divorce attitudes of young adult women in the United States by educational attainment from 1974 to 2002. Women with 4‐year college degrees, who previously had the most permissive attitudes toward divorce, have become more restrictive in their attitudes toward divorce than high school graduates and women with some college education, whereas women with no high school diplomas have increasingly permissive attitudes toward divorce. We examine this educational crossover in divorce attitudes in the context of variables correlated with women's educational attainment, including family attitudes and religion, income and occupational prestige, and family structure. We conclude that the educational crossover in divorce attitudes is associated most strongly with work and family structure variables.     

Innovation and Diversity Redux: Analyzing Musical Form and Content in the American Recording Industry, 1990–2009

Using the American recording industry as a case study, this article analyzes innovation and diversity concurrently and outlines the analytical purchase gained from doing so; examines the effects of performer incumbency and combinatorial role patterns, thereby offering an empirical application of the “role as resource” perspective (Baker and Faulkner 1991 ); and provides data on an underexplored era in which the emergence of digital technology has had wide‐ranging repercussions. Regressing measures of innovation (form) and diversity (content) on incumbency status and combinatorial role patterns reveals that innovation and diversity operate through distinct collaborative patterns. New artists are found to be carriers of musical innovation, and while performing artists with autonomy over the roles of songwriter and producer are more likely to be progenitors of musical diversity, innovation emerges from role specialization. Artistic roles and performer attributes, moreover, come together in particular ways to influence diversity and innovation depending on the environmental context. Post compact disc (CD) format era, innovation wrought by producer specialization is predominant, but the music is devoid of diversity. I conclude by arguing that the manner in which configurations of diversity and innovation interact has implications both for cultural production and reception.     

“Where the Danger Lies”: Race,Gender, and Chinese and Japanese Exclusion in the United States, 1870–19241

Race too often is used as the explanatory variable for understanding immigration exclusion, marginalizing the significance of race making, ethnic differentiation, and gender construction in particular. This article explores these processes by examining exclusionary policies implemented against Chinese and Japanese immigrants from the mid‐1870s to 1924, the year the National Origins Act was passed. Politicians, intellectuals, and moral reformers used a gendered logic—the construction of idealized gender norms, roles, and sexual propriety and the attachment of these meanings to male and female bodies—to distinguish Japanese immigrants from the Chinese immigrants they followed, allowing for ethnic differentiation and dissimilar policies. The convergence toward exclusion rested on a racialized logic—the construction and attachment of inferior status and meanings to immigrant groups through discourse, formal and informal categorization, or social closure—which claimed that the Japanese were unassimilable and racially undesirable like the Chinese. Exclusionists focused on the immigrant women, decrying their sexual and gender impropriety as evidence of the groups’ threats to the sanctity of white families, which imperiled the nation. Gender and race both mattered in these logics and their meanings were constructed as their salience interconnected.