Cultural pluralism and the future of American unity: the impact of illegal aliens

This paper explores the question of the impact of illegal migration on American unity and cultural pluralism in the US. Assuming that over time the descendants of undocumented workers now in the US will behave substantially like descendants of those who immigrate legally, the long-term impact of illegal migration barely will be noticeable provided it is reduced substantially in the future. The process of acculturation will work in the same way for both groups as it has for other ethnic groups in the past, given comparable levels of education and length of family residence in the US. The author takes special notice of the illegal migration of Spanish-speaking workers and hypothesizes that the behavior of their descendants will not differ from that of the descendants of other immigrants, legal or illegal, in ways that disrupt fundamental patterns of American political unity and cultural pluralism.     

Measuring a Nonprofit’s Civic Footprint

VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations - It is widely recognized that nonprofit organizations provide benefits to society such as goods and services that promote...     

Sexuality and the Second Slavery: Figuring Sexuality in Racialized Labor Formations

From the seventeenth to the late nineteenth century, sexuality was a key factor in the reorganization of New World slavery through the period described as the Second Slavery. With the early nineteenth century bans on the transatlantic slave trade initiated by the United States and the British Empire, there was a corresponding transition from prior plantation economies focused on US Upper South tobacco and Caribbean sugar islands toward more differentiated forms of labor based on hiring out in domestic services, manufacture, and the expansion into new frontiers of accumulation in the New South of the Mississippi Delta, Cuba, and Brazil. This qualitative change and expansion of New World slavery carried gendered understandings based on the sexuality and reproductive capabilities of enslaved people. Using Tomich's conception of the Second Slavery, I incorporate an analysis that demonstrates how conceptions of sexuality were integral to racializing and gendering processes of subordination that reveal the heterogeneity of the historical and economic moment.     

Preliminary Development and Validation of the Social and Emotional Health Survey for Secondary School Students

This study reports on the preliminary development and validation of the Social and Emotional Health Survey (SEHS) with a sample of 4,189 (51 % female) California students in Grades 8, 10, and 12. The SEHS was designed to measure the psychological building blocks of adolescents’ positive mental health and is operationalized in the present study by a theoretical model comprised of 12 measured indicators that form four first-order domains (belief-in-self, belief-in-others, emotional competence, and engaged living) that, in turn, contribute to one underlying, second-order meta-construct called covitality. This study was the first to investigate the validity and utility of the adolescent covitality construct, which is conceptualized as the synergistic effect of positive mental health resulting from the interplay among multiple positive-psychological building blocks. Findings from confirmatory factor analyses, invariance analysis, and latent means testing all supported the theoretical model underlying the SEHS, indicating that the second-order covitality model was the best fit for both males and females. Results from a path-modeling analysis indicated that covitality was a strong predictor of students’ subjective well-being (operationalized as a composite of life satisfaction, positive affect, and negative affect), and findings from additional concurrent validity analyses indicated that adolescents’ covitality level was significantly associated with self-reported academic achievement, perceptions of school safety, substance use, and experiences of depressive symptoms. Implications for theory, practice, and future research are discussed.     

Parenthood and Leaving Home in Young Adulthood

With increases in nonmarital fertility, the sequencing of transitions in early adulthood has become even more complex. Once the primary transition out of the parental home, marriage was first replaced by nonfamily living and cohabitation; more recently, many young adults have become parents before entering a coresidential union. Studies of leaving home, however, have not examined the role of early parenthood. Using the Young Adult Study of the 1979 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (n = 4,674), we use logistic regression to analyze parenthood both as a correlate of leaving home and as a route from the home. We find that even in mid-adolescence, becoming a parent is linked with leaving home. Coming from a more affluent family is linked with leaving home via routes that do not involve children rather than those that do, and having a warm relationship with either a mother or a father retards leaving home, particularly to nonfamily living, but is not related to parental routes out of the home.     

Salience,Valence, Context,and Integration: Conceptualizing the Needs of Sexually and Gender Diverse Youth in P–12 Schools

A framework for conceptualizing the needs of lesbian, gay male, bisexual, transgender, questioning, and other sexually and gender diverse youth is essential for guiding service delivery throughout educational settings. Review and synthesis of the literature reveals that integrating assessment of the salience, valence, and context of issues related to sexual and gender diversity facilitates affirmative practice at the individual student, group, and school-wide levels. The authors describe the components of the salience, valence, context, and integration (SVCI) model with emphasis on practical application. The theoretical and empirical support for each component of the model is also discussed.     

A Comparison of Mental Health,Substance Use,and Sexual Risk Behaviors Between Rural and Non-Rural Transgender Persons

The aim of this study was to compare the mental health, substance use, and sexual risk behaviors of rural and non-rural transgender persons. Online banner advertisements were used to recruit 1,229 self-identified rural and non-rural transgender adults (18+ years) residing in the United States. Primary findings include significant differences in mental health between rural and non-rural transmen; relatively low levels of binge drinking across groups, although high levels of marijuana use; and high levels of unprotected sex among transwomen. The results confirm that mental and physical health services for transgender persons residing in rural areas are urgently needed.     

Ensuring Parliamentary Gender Equality Through a New Zipper Method: An Application to Finland

Gender equality constitutes a crucial objective for a successful societal development. Although research has found that the differences are shrinking, parliamentary composition is not gender balanced in most areas of the world. Henceforth, recent literature has undertaken important efforts aimed at developing different initiatives to promote parity in democratic parliaments, especially through the use of quota systems. Prior initiatives, although leading to an improvement of gender parity, do not manage to ensure an optimal gender-egalitarian parliamentary composition. Thus, this paper presents a method to organize closed and blocked lists of candidates that guarantees the achievement of gender-balanced representation in parliamentary elections. Specifically, parity is sought globally, in each party and also in each electoral constituency. Furthermore, the method is applied to the elections held over the last two decades in Finland. Results reveal that parity in gender representation increases at global, party, and constituency levels throughout all the parliamentary elections in Finland, even approaching optimal numerical parity (i.e. 50 % for each gender) in most of the cases.     

Life Satisfaction as a Distinguishing Indicator of College Student Functioning: Further Validation of the Two-Continua Model of Mental Health

The two-continua model of mental health contends that both psychological distress and psychological well-being make related-yet-distinct contributions to our understanding of human health and its relations with other quality of life outcomes. Using self-reported somatization, depression, and anxiety symptoms as indicators of psychological distress and self-reported life satisfaction as an indicator of psychological well-being, the present study classified participants into one of four mental-health-status groups—mentally healthy, mentally unhealthy, symptomatic yet content, or asymptomatic yet discontent—and investigated between-group differences across three key indicators of college student functioning: academic achievement, interpersonal connectedness, and physical health. Findings provide further validation for the two-continua model of mental health among college students, showing that, when considered in conjunction with clinical symptoms, life satisfaction serves as a distinguishing indicator of college students functioning across academic, social, and physical health domains—as well as a strong predictor of the absence or presence of clinical symptoms and comorbidity. Implications for theory, practice, and future research are discussed.