Measuring Geographic Migration Patterns Using <Emphasis Type="Italic">Matrículas Consulares</Emphasis>

In this article, we show how to use administrative data from the Matrícula Consular de Alta Seguridad (MCAS) identification card program to measure the joint distribution of sending and receiving locations for migrants from Mexico to the United States. Whereas other data sources cover only a small fraction of source or destination locations or include only very coarse geographic information, the MCAS data provide complete geographic coverage of both countries, detailed information on migrants’ sources and destinations, and a very large sample size. We first confirm the quality and representativeness of the MCAS data by comparing them with well-known household surveys in Mexico and the United States, finding strong agreement on the migrant location distributions available across data sets. We then document substantial differences in the mix of destinations for migrants from different places within the same source state, demonstrating the importance of detailed substate geographical information. We conclude with an example of how these detailed data can be used to study the effects of destination-specific conditions on migration patterns. We find that an Arizona law reducing employment opportunities for unauthorized migrants decreased emigration from and increased return migration to Mexican source regions with strong initial ties to Arizona.     

Measuring State Welfare Policy Changes: Why Don't They Explain Caseload and Employment Outcomes?*

Objectives. Since the implementation of the 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, many analysts have attempted to measure the effects of new state welfare policies, particularly work requirements, sanctions, and time limits, on the Act's key goals—reducing cash assistance caseloads and increasing employment among single mothers. De Jong et al. present new measures of state policy variations, but they do not attempt to evaluate the relationships between these measures and welfare reform outcomes. For their analysis to be meaningful, it should contribute to a better understanding of cross‐state variations in caseload declines and increased employment among single mothers. Methods. We first raise conceptual questions about the extent to which their measures are meaningful in a policy sense. We then present analyses of Current Population Survey data. Results. We find that differences in the De Jong et al. stringency measures (factor scores) are not significantly correlated with differences in welfare reform outcomes by state.     

A new class of skew distributions with climate data analysis

In this paper, we develop a new general class of skew distributions with flexibility properties on the tails. Moreover, such class can provide heavy and light tails. Some of its mathematical properties are studied, including the quantile function, the moments, the moment generating function and the mean of deviations. New skew distributions are derived and used to construct new models capturing asymmetry inherent to data. The estimation of the class parameters is investigated by the method of maximum likelihood and the performance of the estimators is assessed by a simulation study. Applications of the proposed distribution are explored for two climate data sets. The first data set concerns the annual heat wave index and the second data set involves temperature and precipitation measures from the meteorological station located at Schiphol, Netherlands. Data fitting results show that our models perform better than the competitors.     

Toward a DuBoisian theorization of school curricula

After a near century of mainstream academic exclusion, recent efforts in sociology have centered Du Bois as a foundational figure. However, these efforts have overlooked his contributions to theorizing K-12 and college/university formal curricula. Moreover, curricula, teaching, and learning scholarship, already marginalized within mainstream sociology of education, have typically overlooked Du Bois’ theorizations, thus reproducing his marginalization. As a correction, this article centers Du Bois as a key figure in critical curricula theory. Specifically, Du Bois theorized that schools institutionalize formal curricula imbued with race-class ideologies and that said ideologies shape peoples’ subjectivities, identities, and consciousness of social processes. However, Du Bois also theorized how Black schools can serve as meso-level sites for challenging hegemonic ideologies and producing transformative ideologies. In articulating these processes, Du Bois identifies how ideological propaganda, organizational structures, and interpretations of temporal processes maintain and perpetuate racism and capitalism. This article concludes with suggestions for future research in educational sociology that incorporates these insights.