Labor Market Disparities Between African Americans and Afro Caribbeans: Reexamining the Role of Immigrant Selectivity

Black immigrants from the Caribbean have long attained greater labor market success than African Americans. The most recent studies show that Afro Caribbeans have earnings that are approximately 16% greater than African Americans and that Afro Caribbeans are as much as 21% more likely to be employed than African Americans. The most prominent explanation for greater Afro Caribbean success is that, because they have chosen to migrate, Afro Caribbeans are positively self‐selected on characteristics that are key for success in the U.S. labor market. Proponents of immigrant selectivity argue that migrants have greater levels of both hard and soft skills than nonmigrants. Using data from the National Survey of American Life—the first social survey to provide a nationally representative sample of both African Americans and Afro Caribbeans—this study finds that Afro Caribbeans have greater hard skills than African Americans but split the difference on two measures of soft skills: African Americans and Afro Caribbeans are matched on John Henryism, but African Americans have greater personal mastery than Afro Caribbeans. Contrary to expectations, controlling for differences in hard and soft skills does not provide for a meaningful reduction in labor market disparities between African Americans and Afro Caribbeans.     

Racial/Ethnic Patterns of Kindergarten School Enrollment in the United States

Enrollment into unequal schools at the start of formal education is an important mechanism for the reproduction of racial/ethnic educational inequalities. We examine whether there are racial/ethnic differences in school enrollment options at kindergarten, the start of schooling. We use nationally representative data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study‐Birth Cohort (ECLS‐B) to model whether parents seek information about their child's school before enrolling, whether parents move to a location so that a child can attend a certain school, or whether parents enroll their child in a school other than the assigned public school. Results indicate that enrollment patterns differ greatly across race/ethnicity. Whereas Black families are the most likely to seek information on a school's performance, White families are the most likely to use the elite option of choosing their residential location to access a particular school. These differences persist when controlling for socioeconomic status and sociogeographic location. Kindergarten enrollment patterns preserve the advantages of White families, perpetuating racial/ethnic disparities through multiple institutions and contributing to intergenerational processes of social stratification. Research should continue to examine specific educational consequences of housing inequities and residential segregation.     

Learning disabled students and access to accommodations: socioeconomic status,capital, and stigma

In the 1990s, Canadian universities began implementing policies to accommodate learning disabled students. While such policies appear to make post-secondary education more accessible, students must manage considerable complexity and absorb social and financial costs to receive accommodations. Through interviews with learning disabled students, this research explores the effects of socio-economic status (SES) on how, or whether, students access accommodations at a Nova Scotian university. Drawing on the work of Bourdieu and Goffman, this study suggests that SES affects students’ abilities to navigate the accommodation process successfully, and that accommodation policies, while important, may not ensure equal access to accommodations.     

Family Formation and Close Social Ties Within Religious Congregations

The study of family and religion has yet to elaborate on the social ties that connect these two important and changing institutions. Specifically, how does family formation (i.e., marriage and childrearing) impact social ties to religious communities? Using longitudinal data from the Portraits of American Life Study (2006–2012) and fixed effects regression models that control for time‐stable heterogeneity (N = 1,314), this study tests the effects of marriage and childrearing on changes in close congregational social ties. Fixed effects estimates suggest that marriage actually decreases close social ties to religious congregations, whereas rearing children within marital unions increases them. Thus, it is children, not marriage per se, that actually integrates married couples into religious communities. These contrasting effects tend to be the strongest among young adults, but they weaken with age as well as marital duration.     

Investigating the differential mobility experiences of Chinese cross-border students

Recent migration studies have adopted the lens of mobility to examine the stratifying effects of border policies, but few investigate the differential mobility of migrant families and children. This paper aims to contribute to the migration literature by considering the interplay between border policies, family configurations, and differential mobility. We apply the lens of differential mobility to the experiences of Chinese cross-border pupils – young child migrants with Hong Kong permanent residency who reside in Shenzhen, China, and cross the border to attend school. We begin by describing shifts in Hong Kong’s border and immigration policies since 1997, which have created a typology of families differentiated by mixed status, citizenship rights, and mobility. We then turn to four case studies of students with unequal border-crossing experiences to elucidate how border control constrains or promotes family mobility and perpetuates inequalities.     

Is giving or receiving psychologically beneficial to older mothers in South Korea? Importance of marital status

In order to understand intergenerational financial transfers and subjective well-being for older mothers, this study argues that marital status is an important factor to be considered. Using the first wave of the Korean Longitudinal Study of Aging (KLoSA), this study finds that married older mothers report higher levels of life satisfaction when they provide economic support but widowed older mothers feel higher levels of life satisfaction when they receive economic support. Also, regular or irregular financial support appears to also matter in the associations between financial support and life satisfaction. These findings suggest that married and widowed older mothers have different viewpoints about the parent-children relationship.     

Struggle as opportunity: making sense of U.S. migration experiences through Buddhist practice

Recent scholarship demonstrates how immigrants rely on religion for resources and psychological and social support at various stages of migration. Many studies of religion focus on the institutional role of faith-based organisations, with little regard for the social importance of religious experiences in daily life. Using interviews with U.S. immigrants who identify as Buddhists, I examine how migrants use Buddhist philosophies as a lens for finding meaning in the struggles associated with migration, including language acquisition, employment, and legal status. Through their practice, migrants gain a sense of agency amid vulnerable circumstances. I also explore the potentially negative consequences of the practice’s individual focus, including the propensity to mask structural causes of inequality and impede possibilities for collective action.     

Who Is the Residential Parent? Understanding Discrepancies in Unmarried Parents' Reports

Research examining parental reports of children's living arrangements has often relied on information about legally ordered custody agreements following divorce. This analysis used data from matched pairs of parents (N = 1,156) in the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study who live apart to compare mother and father reports of their child's residence 5 years after a nonmarital birth. The authors found that over one third of unmarried parents disagreed about who their child lived with and that conflicting reports were much more likely when fathers spent nights with the mother (an indicator of part‐time cohabitation) and had overnights with the child on their own. The results further suggest that discrepancies in unmarried parents' reports were more closely associated with the complexity and ambiguity of their living situations than with the quality of their relationships with each other. Implications for measuring children's living arrangements in families formed outside of marriage are discussed.     

新农村建设中农民主体地位实现的信息化路径

农民是实践主体与价值主体的统一体,其主体地位的实现与否直接关系到社会主义新农村建设的成败。信息化与农民主体地位的实现具有一定的内在联结,实现农民主体地位是信息化在农村的发展目标,信息化在农村的发展要以农民主体地位的实现为基础,两者统一于社会主义新农村建设。在新农村建设中,应该以信息化激发农民的主体意识,提高农民的文化素质,拓宽农民利益表达渠道,改善农村公共服务水平,以此推动农民主体地位的实现。     

Markets or networks: Households’ choice of financial intermediary in Western China

We argue that households’ choice of financial intermediary is conditioned by households’ social network structures and socioeconomic status. Analyses show that households’ social network size and network composition affect their choices by limiting the quality and quantity of information, resources, and social influence one can access through social ties. Moreover, we find that high-SES families favor formal intermediaries due not only to their richer financial knowledge, higher affordability, and greater capacity to repay loans, but also to their high demands and special types of financial needs that can hardly be satisfied by embedded resources.