Contemporary immigration: theoretical perspectives on its determinants and modes of incorporation

This article reviews conventional theories about different aspects of labor migration: its origins, stability over time, and patterns of migrant settlement. For each of these aspects, the authors provide alternative explanatory hypotheses derived from the notions of increasing articulation of the international system and the social embeddedness of its various subprocesses, including labor flows. A typology of sources and outcomes of contemporary immigration is presented as a heuristic device to organize the diversity of such movements as described in the empirical literature.     

Immigrant Bilingualism in Spain: An Asset or a Liability?

This study contributes to the ongoing debate about bilingual advantage and examines whether bilingual immigrant youths fare better, as well as, or worse academically than the matching group of monolinguals. Using data from Spain, where close to half of immigrants speak Spanish as their native language, we found no evidence of costs of bilingualism: bilingual youths did benefit from their linguistic skills. Their advantage, however, manifested itself not uniformly across discrete outcomes, but in a direct trajectory toward higher educational attainment. Bilingualism neutralized the possible negative effect of ethnic origins and extended the positive effect of high parental ambition. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.     

The U.S. Health System and Immigration: An Institutional Interpretation1

We examine the institutions that comprise the U.S. health system and their relationship to a surging immigrant population. The clash between the system and this human flow originates in the large number of immigrants who are unauthorized, poor, and uninsured and, hence, unable to access a system largely based on ability to pay. Basic concepts from sociological theory are brought to bear on the analysis of this clash and its consequences. Data from a recently completed study of health institutions in three areas of the United States are used as an empirical basis to illustrate various aspects of this complex relation. Implications of our results for theory and future health policy are discussed.     

Three years later: the adaptation process of 1980 (Mariel) Cuban and Haitian refugees in South Florida

In recent years, southern Florida has experienced rapid new inflows of immigrants from Central America and the Caribbean. Since the arrival in 1980 of Mariel (Cuban) and Haitian immigrants to this area, a great deal of speculation has emerged as to the adaptation of these two groups to south Florida and the impact which their presence has wielded on the social and economic arenas of that region. In this paper, we present selected background characteristics of representative samples of both groups and discuss our empirical findings with regard to the labor market experiences, social networks, and educational experiences of the immigrants included in our sample. While the two groups minimally differ from earlier cohorts of their compatriots entering south Florida, their experiences since arriving in Florida have been quite different. Both the Cuban and Haitian immigrants arriving in 1980 demonstrate higher levels of unemployment than their counterparts who arrived earlier; however, the existence of the Cuban economic enclave in Miami did facilitate the entry of a greater number of Cubans than Haitians into the formal labor market. Initial evidence indicates that significant numbers of individuals from both groups participate in the informal labor market, often receiving less than the minimum wage.This study was conducted with the support of the Sociology Program, National Science Foundation (Grant #SES-8215567).     

Portrait of the Scholar: Notes on Irwin Deutscher's What We Say/What We Do

Book Reviews are in this Articles.
What We Say/What We Do: Sentiments and Acts. By Irwin Deutscher.     

Identification of mother-child interaction patterns:: A longitudinal evaluation of early age intervention effects on early adolescents

Evidence is offered that meaningful patterns of mother-child interaction could be detected in families more than 10 years after a family-centered, early age, preventive intervention. The interactions of mother-child dyads in a situational test during the child's early adolescence were examined for three experimental conditions: a lower socioeconomic experimental group that participated in the intervention for approximately 2 years, an untreated lower socioeconomic, and an untreated upper middle socioeconomic control group.Factor analyses of family interaction measures revealed three factors, which were called Democratic-Participatory Interaction, Mixed Dominance Interaction, and Mother Controlled Interaction. Separate ANOVAS based on factor scores were performed for each factor. Both the intervention group and the middle socioeconomic comparison group were significantly higher than in the lower socioeconomic comparison group in the first factor.     

A Cross‐Atlantic Dialogue: The Progress of Research and Theory in the Study of International Migration

The articles included in this issue were originally presented at a conference on Conceptual and Methodological Developments in the Study of International Migration held at Princeton University in May 2003. The conference was jointly sponsored by the Committee on International Migration of the Social Science Research Council (SSRC), the Center for Migration and Development (CMD) at Princeton, and this journal. Its purpose was to review recent innovations in this field, both in theory and empirical research, across both sides of the Atlantic. The conference was deliberately organized as a sequel to a similar event convened by the SSRC on Sanibel Island in January 1996 in order to assess the state of international migration studies within the United States from an inter‐disciplinary perspective. A selection of articles from that conference was published as a special issue of International Migration Review (Vol. 31, No. 4, Winter), and the full set of articles was published as the Handbook of International Migration: The American Experience (Hirschman, Kasinitz and DeWind, 1999).     

Status Inconsistency and Lower-Class Leftist Radicalism*

The hypothesis of status inconsistency predicts greater leftism as an interaction effect of discrepant status dimensions. Inconsistent individuals are objectively low in some dimensions and subjectively insecure in those where they hold a high position. Ensuing anxiety and frustration are likely to be translated into political opposition to the status quo. Though theoretically plausible, empirical investigations of the hypothesis report mixed results. Employing data collected among a sample of 382 lower-class Chilean slum dwellers, a new test of the hypothesis is conducted. Dummy-variable regressions are employed to isolate status additive effects on leftism from inconsistency interaction effects. Neither education-occupation nor education-income discrepancies are found to produce significant changes in the dependent variable. Identical results are obtained when age is controlled for. Limitations of these findings and their theoretical implications, as they add to a growing body of research, are discussed.