Mapping Gender and Migration in Sociological Scholarship: Is It Segregation or Integration?

A review of the sociological research about gender and migration shows the substantial ways in which gender fundamentally organizes the social relations and structures influencing the causes and consequences of migration. Yet, although a significant sociological research has emerged on gender and migration in the last three decades, studies are not evenly distributed across the discipline. In this article, we map the recent intellectual history of gender and migration in the field of sociology and then systematically assess the extent to which studies on engendering migration have appeared in four widely read journals of sociology (American Journal of Sociology, American Sociological Review, Demography, and Social Forces). We follow with a discussion of these studies, and in our conclusions, we consider how future gender and migration scholarship in sociology might evolve more equitably.     

Generalisation of Mood's Test to Factorial Designs to Detect Heterogeneity of Variances

Mood's test, which is a relatively old test (and the oldest non‐parametric test among those tests in its class) for determining heterogeneity of variance, is still being widely used in different areas such as biometry, biostatistics and medicine. Although it is a popular test, it is not suitable for use on a two‐way factorial design. In this paper, Mood's test is generalised to the 2 × 2 factorial design setting and its performance is compared with that of Klotz's test. The power and robustness of these tests are examined in detail by means of a simulation study with 10,000 replications. Based on the simulation results, the generalised Mood's and Klotz's tests can especially be recommended in settings in which the parent distribution is symmetric. As an example application we analyse data from a multi‐factor agricultural system that involves chilli peppers, nematodes and yellow nutsedge. This example dataset suggests that the performance of the generalised Mood test is in agreement with that of the generalised Klotz's test.     

Discovering Diverse Mechanisms of Migration: The Mexico–US Stream 1970–2000

Migrants to the United States are a diverse population. This diversity, identified in various migration theories, is overlooked in empirical applications that describe a typical narrative for an average migrant. Using the Mexican Migration Project data from about 17,000 first‐time migrants from Mexico to the US between 1970 and 2000, this study employs cluster analysis to identify four types of migrants with distinct configurations of characteristics. Each migrant type corresponds to a specific theoretical account and becomes prevalent in a specific period, depending on economic, social, and political conditions in Mexico and the US. Around the period when each migrant type becomes prevalent, a corresponding theory is also developed.     

Evaluating the distribution of invasive woody vegetation around riparian corridors in relation to land use

Invasive species have been causing important and irreversible impacts to native species and communities of ecosystems. They distort ecosystem functions by degrading forest lands, wetlands, and agricultural habitats and replace the native vegetation and reduce biodiversity, forest productivity, and suitable wildlife habitat. To address disturbances caused by invasive species occurrence, further information is needed regarding the occurrence, extent, and dispersal of invasive species and how land use may increase the spread of these species. The objective of this study was to find the frequency and dominance of three invasive species common to riparian areas of east Alabama: Ligustrum sinense (Chinese privet), Elaeagnus pungens (silverthorn), and Triadica sebifera (Chinese tallow tree). Surveys of these species in riparian forests in and around Auburn, Alabama were conducted to show the relative extent of these shrubs and their relation to urban land use. It was expected to see the highest levels of invasive species in the city center with decreasing levels radiating outward into rural areas. Another objective was how urban land use may affect the presence-absence and prevalence of these non-native plant species within study sites. The results showed that around the city center and suburban lands, cover of both Chinese privet and silverthorn tended to increase. In contrast, Chinese tallow tree density percent cover showed an opposite trend with landscapes close to city center often having slightly less cover. This study shows that urban land use may be an important association with distribution of invasive plant species.     

Challenges in Development and Implementation of Health‐Risk‐Based Soil Quality Guidelines: Turkey's Experience

Management of contaminated sites is a critical environmental issue around the world due to the human health risk involved for many sites and scarcity of funding. Moreover, clean‐up costs of all contaminated sites to their background levels with existing engineering technologies may be financially infeasible and demand extended periods of operation time. Given these constraints, to achieve optimal utilization of available funds and prioritization of contaminated sites that need immediate attention, health‐risk‐based soil quality guidelines should be preferred over the traditional soil quality standards. For these reasons, traditional soil quality standards are being replaced by health‐risk‐based ones in many countries and in Turkey as well. The need for health‐risk‐based guidelines is clear, but developing these guidelines and implementation of them in contaminated site management is not a straightforward process. The goal of this study is to highlight the problems that are encountered at various stages of the development process of risk‐based soil quality guidelines for Turkey and how they are dealt with. Utilization of different definitions and methodologies at different countries, existence of inconsistent risk assessment tools, difficulties in accessing relevant documents and reports, and lack of specific data required for Turkey are among these problems. We believe that Turkey's experience may help other countries that are planning to develop health‐risk‐based guidelines achieve their goals in a more efficient manner.     

An Analysis of the Levels of Job Satisfaction and Life Satisfaction of the Academic Staff

Job satisfaction is generally related with life satisfaction and can directly affect social, physical and mental health of individuals. This study was investigated to determine whether the levels of job satisfaction and life satisfaction of academicians have significantly differentiated under demographic variables and to enlighten the correlation among them. The samples of the study involve 186 academic personnel who work in the Faculty of Science and Art (122) and in the Faculty of Engineering and Architecture (64) in Eskisehir Osmangazi University. While analysing the data, t test, analysis of variance and regression analysis were used for SPSS 10.0. There was significant difference between job and life satisfaction levels of the academicians depending on the variables like the faculties that academic personnel working at, their titles, educational backgrounds, marital statuses, periods of duty, ages and genders. The results and their implications have been discussed.     

A Comparison of Two Group Classification Approaches to Fat-tailed and Skewed Data

The problem of two-group classification has implications in a number of fields, such as medicine, finance, and economics. This study aims to compare the methods of two-group classification. The minimum sum of deviations and linear programming model, linear discriminant analysis, quadratic discriminant analysis and logistic regression, multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) test-based classification and the unpooled T-square test-based classification methods, support vector machines and k-nearest neighbor methods, and combined classification method will be compared for data structures having fat-tail and/or skewness. The comparison has been carried out by using a simulation procedure designed for various stable distribution structures and sample sizes.     

Increasing Migration,Diverging Communities: Changing Character of Migrant Streams in Rural Thailand

This paper studies how increasing migration changes the character of migrant streams in sending communities. Cumulative causation theory posits that past migration patterns determine future flows, as prior migrants provide resources, influence, or normative pressures that make individuals more likely to migrate. The theory implies exponentially increasing migration flows that are decreasingly selective. Recent research identifies heterogeneity in the cumulative patterns and selectivity of migration in communities. We propose that this heterogeneity may be explained by individuals’ differential access to previously accumulated migration experience. Multi-level, longitudinal data from 22 rural Thai communities allow us to measure the distribution of past experience as a proxy for its accessibility to community members. We find that migration becomes a less-selective process as migration experience accumulates, and migrants become increasingly diverse in socio-demographic characteristics. Yet, selectivity within migrant streams persists if migration experience is not uniformly distributed among, and hence not equally accessible to, all community members. The results confirm that the accumulation and distribution of prior migrants’ experiences distinctly shape future migration flows, and may lead to diverging cumulative patterns in communities over time.     

The effect of education on unemployment duration

Exploiting the variation in education induced by a reform that compelled individuals to obtain additional schooling in Turkey, and using administrative unemployment insurance (UI) records, we show that high-educated unemployed workers, compared to their low-educated counterparts, use unemployment benefits longer, and they are less likely to find employment before their benefit periods expire. This suggests education increases one's selectiveness over jobs. We also show benefit generosity impacts the high- versus low-educated differentially. Extended benefits increase low-educated workers' probability of finding employment more than the high-educated. Our findings highlight the importance of considering worker attributes when designing the UI system.     

An Integrated Analysis of Migration and Remittances: Modeling Migration as a Mechanism for Selection

Prior work has modeled individuals?? migration and remittance behavior separately, and reported mixed empirical support for various remittance motivations. This study offers an integrated approach, and considers migration as a mechanism for selection in a censored probit model of remittance behavior. This approach leads to different conclusions about the determinants of remittance behavior in the Thai internal migration setting. To the extent that these determinants capture different remittance motivations, as prior research has presumed, the analysis also provides varying support for these motivations. These results suggest that migration and remittance behavior are interrelated, and it is crucial for an analysis of remittance behavior to control for the selectivity of migration.