Welcoming America: A Case Study of Municipal Immigrant Integration,Receptivity, and Community Practice

A growing number of leaders in towns and cities across the United States have embraced policies encouraging receptivity and integration of immigrant populations. This article examines this phenomenon and how communities are seeking greater immigrant integration. To do this, we describe immigration federalism and how it influences receptivity. A discussion of the organizational networks that facilitate greater immigrant integration follows. We consider Welcoming America, a nonprofit organization that serves as a convener for dialogue and policy change, as a case study among these larger organizational networks. The article concludes with a broader examination of implications for receptivity and integration in community practice work.     

DECISION MAKING PROCESSES: USING DISCRIMINATION NETS FOR SECURITY SELECTION

This paper examines the judgmental processes of individuals involved in stock selection through the use of discrimination nets. Research has shown that there is no incompatibility in the so-called random walk model and the fundamentalist or intrinsic approach. Doing systematically better than the average investor implies that the superior investor has a superior way of evaluating existing information. An improved market success depends in part on an increased understanding of investors decisionmaking processes. Thus, if a superior investor's judgmental processes can be demonstrated and readily modeled, then, the next step would be to compare these decision processes with those of the average investors and note differences. The results of this study showed that the decision-making processes of individuals not only can be adequately programmed, but that the decision process is rather stable for a given investor. The paper also shows, however, that while the model accurately predicted accept or reject decisions, in most cases it was limited in its ability to rank order securities from the set of accepted investments.     

The Role of the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights of Migrants

The position of Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights of Migrants was established in 1999 by the Commission on Human Rights. During the short period since her appointment, the Special Rapporteur has directed her attention to examining ways and means to overcome obstacles impeding the full and effective protection of the human rights of migrants, and also examining difficulties for the return of migrants who are undocumented or in irregular situations. This schedule has involved visits to governments and the dissemination of information on the legal framework and aspects of the mandate designed to explain the complexity of migration. The Special Rapporteur calls for increased efforts to ensure success of the World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance, to be held in Durban, South Africa, in 2001. She also encourages those governments which have not yet ratified the International Convention to take the necessary steps.     

Cash Is King—How OBM Helped a North American Telecommunications Organization Obtain $76 Million in Receivables

Imagine a freshly formed team of people who are new to their jobs, assigned by top leadership to meet very ambitious targets in the mission-critical department that collects aged (past-due) payments from the company's largest accounts … (cue Mission Impossible theme). At a large telecommunications company in North America, the Senior Leadership Team led an effort to increase collections of aged receivables on its top accounts by $50 million from the previous year. Using OBM techniques, they surpassed the $50 million goal, reaching $76 million. The team also lowered the Days Sales Outstanding (DSO) by 8.5 days.     

Social antecedents of the role stress and career-enhancing strategies of newcomers to organizations: A longitudinal study

Newcomers experience uncertainty and stress following entry into an organization. Two features of socialization are important for reducing their stress: socialization tactics and relations with superiors and co-workers. The present study tests a structural equation model, including, first, the effects over time of initial institutional socialization tactics and, second, the association between social relations at the workplace on newcomers’ role stress and career-enhancing strategies, two years later, among a large (N=661) international sample of job and organization stayers. Using LISREL 8.3 the results indicate a good fit between the model and data on several fit indices. Institutional socialization tactics had a significant association with newcomers’ relations with both their superiors and co-workers, and a significant negative association with their role conflict. Newcomers’ relations with superiors had a negative relationship with their role ambiguity, and a positive relationship with two kinds of career-enhancing strategies that they use to aid in their adaptation to their work situation. The relations of newcomers with co-workers were positively related to role conflict and negatively related to role ambiguity. Co-worker relations were also positively related to immediate career-enhancing strategies. Role conflict was positively related to immediate and negatively related to intermediate career-enhancing strategies, while role ambiguity was negatively related to intermediate career-enhancing strategies. The results are discussed in relation to their theoretical and practical importance.     

Generations and Motivations: Russian and other Former Soviet Immigrants in Costa Rica

GÉNÉRATIONS ET MOTIVATIONS : IMMIGRANTS RUSSES ET AUTRES IMMIGRANTS EX-SOVIÉTIQUES AU COSTA RICA
Nous examinons dans cet article le rôle qu'ont joué les réseaux sociaux dans la migration et l'installation des immigrants russes et autres immigrants de l'ex-Union soviétique au Costa Rica. Ce groupe d'immigrants est particulièrement intéressant en ce qu'il constitue un exemple de migration à partir d'une ex-nation communiste dans un pays du tiers-monde et non dans un pays riche (États-Unis ou pays européen). De plus, des femmes soviétiques qui ont épousé des Costariciens vers la fin des années 1970 sont à l'origine de cette migration. Notre recherche avait pour objectif d'examiner la structure et la signification de ces réseaux sociaux d'immigrants ainsi que le rôle qu'ils jouent dans le pro-cessus de migration et pendant l'installation. Les résultats donnent à penser qu'il existe une différence significative dans la forme et la fonction des réseaux sociaux des immigrants arrivés avant 1991 (pendant l'époque soviétique) et de ceux qui sont venus après 1991 et à la suite de l'effondrement de l'Union soviétique.     

"Not prepared to care" and "raising the bar": case examples of building university-community partnerships in gerontological social work research

This paper examines university-community partnerships in gerontological social work research. Utilizing a case study approach, the process of collaboration is explored within the context of a two-phase research project conducted jointly by agency social workers, social work students and a social work faculty member. The benefits and challenges of the university-community research partnership are discussed along with the implications for gerontological social work research, education and practice.     

Learning from your neighbor: tax-benefit systems swaps in Latin America

Over the last decades, Latin American countries have experienced a noticeable decrease in income inequality. While this trend is mainly associated with a decline in wage inequality, progressive reforms of the tax-benefit systems of the region may have played a role. While redistributive systems in Latin America are still in their infancy, they are constantly expanding and do so at different pace in the region. To investigate this point in a comparative way, the present study exploits newly developed tax-benefit microsimulation models for Ecuador and Colombia. These two neighboring countries show contrasted situations in terms of income distribution and we characterize the extent to which this difference is explained by different tax-benefit systems. The comparative nature of our microsimulation models allows us to swap tax-benefit systems between countries to produce counterfactual simulations whereby the system of a country is applied to the population of the other. In this way, we can decompose the total country difference in income distribution to extract the role of different tax-benefit policies. We confirm that the Ecuadorean system is more redistributive and quantify the difference: if the Ecuadorean system was applied to the Colombian population, the Gini coefficient would be reduced by 1.7 points in Colombia. Headcount poverty would decrease by around 10% and the intensity of poverty by up to 14.7%. This analysis contributes to the recent literature on the redistributive role of tax-benefit systems in Latin America and highlights the role of microsimulation techniques to show how countries in the region can learn from each other in order to improve social protection and reduce income inequality.     

Identifying With a Stereotype: The Divergent Effects of Exposure to Homosexual Television Characters

Scholars examining homosexual television characters have typically come to one of two conclusions: either exposure to homosexual characters can lead to increased acceptance, or homosexual characters serve to reaffirm negative stereotypes. We seek to bridge these two bodies of research by introducing the concept of stereotyped identification—the idea that cognitively and emotionally identifying with fictional characters can increase acceptance of minorities, while reinforcing implicit stereotypes about how they look, act, and talk. Results from our national survey (N = 972) offer support for this hypothesis.