Settlement assistance and intermarriage for immigrants to Canada

Canada initiated a points‐based admission system in 1967 to select immigrants, regardless of racial or ethnic origin, who were most likely to prosper economically and assimilate into the host society. If the points‐based admission system achieved its goal of selecting ‘assimilable ‘ immigrants, those persons admitted under the policy should be just as likely to marry outside of their nationality group as within it. Using data from the Longitudinal Study of Economic and Social Adaptation of Immigrants to Life in Canada, multinomial logistic regression models of spousal choice were estimated for the 3,984 respondents who were single upon arrival in Canada. Nominated immigrants (those persons admitted with promises of settlement assistance) were found to have greater odds of intramarriage than independent immigrants.     

Diffusion of language change: Accommodation to a moving target

The paper focuses on motivations for the spread of new features within a speech community, and on the trajectories the changes follow during diffusion. One set of data represents language use, and here focus is on two changes which have been going on in Danish over the past 40 years, one grammatical and one phonetic. The other set of data are results from a nationwide speaker evaluation experiment which tests the subconscious attitudes to different types of speech among the youth in five different places covering Denmark from east to west. Results show that changes spread centrifugally from Copenhagen, even to the extent that reversal of changes spreads from Copenhagen. Furthermore, the attitudes reflected in the speaker evaluation experiment support the theory that language change is motivated by social psychological factors. Finally, it is argued that it is worthwhile considering the possibility of media being involved in processes of linguistic change.     

The people of California are suffering': The ideology of white injury in discourses of immigration

Abstract

This article examines how the ideology of white injury both conceals and sustains inequitable social relations in turn‐of‐the‐millenium California. Understanding the political and economic context of California in the early 1990s in relation to media, law, and culture helps explain why Californian citizens passed the unconstitutional initiative, Proposition 187, in 1994. Targeting undocumented Mexican immigrants, this ‘color‐blind’ Proposition functioned to conflate economic insecurities with racial anxieties. An analysis of culture, law, and media discloses how racial anxieties limit our understandings of exploitative capitalist relations, serving to artificially augment the white middle‐class ‘ wealth, opportunities, and power, while making vulnerable populations in the United States even more open to exploitation.     

Predicting Change in Marital Satisfaction Throughout Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy

Emotionally focused couple therapy (EFT) is an empirically validated approach to couple therapy that uses attachment theory to understand the needs and emotions of romantic partners. EFT is recognized as one of the most effective approaches to couple therapy, but to guide therapists in their use of EFT, a theoretically based model to predict change is needed. This study tested such a model by recruiting 32 couples, and 14 therapists who provided approximately 21 sessions of EFT. Couples completed self‐report measures of marital satisfaction, attachment security, relationship trust, and emotional control at pre‐ and posttherapy and after each therapy session. Results of hierarchical linear modeling suggested that individuals higher on self‐report attachment anxiety and higher levels of emotional control had greater change in marital satisfaction across EFT sessions. Assessing attachment security at the start of therapy will inform therapists of the emotion regulating strategies used by couples and may help couples achieve positive outcomes from EFT.     

Intergenerational families in child welfare: Assessing needs and estimating permanency

Much of the empirical literature on intergenerational child maltreatment focuses on the mechanisms that explain how maltreatment is transmitted across generations. Few studies have examined child protective service outcomes associated with intergenerational families. The current study addresses this gap in the literature. This study compares 1196 caregivers, most of whom are single African American females, and 2143 children from first and second generation child welfare-involved families. All families have a history of substance abuse. We sought to understand how first and second generation families differ with regard to social and economic status indicators, as well as whether intergenerational child welfare involvement is associated with permanency outcomes. Our findings indicate that second generation families experience significantly more risk factors at the time of case opening, and are two-thirds as likely to be reunified as compared with first generation families. The singular effects of generation status disappeared, however, once the interaction between mental health diagnosis and second generation status was entered into the model, suggesting that it is not just being intergenerationally involved in the child welfare system that reduces the chance of reunification, but rather second generation caregivers have more mental health problems that are associated with a lower likelihood of reunification.     

International Migration: Trends,Determinants, and Policy Effects

This paper synthesizes insights from new global data on the effectiveness of migration policies. It investigates the complex links between migration policies and migration trends to disentangle policy effects from structural migration determinants. The analysis challenges two central assumptions underpinning the popular idea that migration restrictions have failed to curb migration. First, post‐WWII global migration levels have not accelerated, but remained relatively stable while most shifts in migration patterns have been directional. Second, post‐WWII migration policies have generally liberalized despite political rhetoric suggesting the contrary. While migration policies are generally effective, “substitution effects” can limit their effectiveness, or even make them counterproductive, by geographically diverting migration, interrupting circulation, encouraging unauthorized migration, or prompting “now or never” migration surges. These effects expose fundamental policy dilemmas and highlight the importance of understanding the economic, social, and political trends that shape migration in sometimes counterintuitive, but powerful, ways that largely lie beyond the reach of migration policies.     

Relative leader–member exchange,negative affectivity and social identification: A moderated-mediation examination

We argue that leader–member exchange (LMX) standing relative to the LMX relationships of other coworkers (RLMX) in workgroups may influence employees' job performance. Based on social comparison and social identity theories, we develop a moderated-mediation model of the psychological processes linking RLMX and job performance, and test it on a sample of 252 employees and 42 managers working in two large banks. Results of hierarchical regression analyses provide support for the model. We found that RLMX was positively related to social identification after controlling for perceptions of LMX; and also that social identification mediated the relationship between RLMX and job performance. We found further that negative affectivity moderated the relationship between RLMX and social identification which, in turn, also mediated the interactive effect on job performance.     

Cultural Chameleons

This paper uses an empirical case study to present a new way of thinking about the dynamics of multicultural relationships within organizations. The paper initially uses subcultural analysis to identify how doctors became clinical directors and how their culture emerged as they learned to cope with problems of external adaptation and internal integration. Clinical directors were unique in working within and between the medical and managerial cultures, mediating the process of cultural learning and balancing the multicultural dynamics of the organization. They sustained this dynamic by becoming 'cultural chameleons' in both the medical and managerial cultures. It is also argued that clinical directors formed a 'cell culture' rather than a 'subculture' as they developed directly from the medical culture but emerged as different from it. The conclusions reveal how the empirical data describe a complex and dynamic pattern of multicultural relationships that are more interdependent than hierarchical. Consequently an alternative concept of cultural coconstitutionality is used to describe how these three cultures exist alongside each other in a relationship of asymmetric complementarity.