|
Abstracts Network K - Race, Ethnicity, and Immigration
|
Maria Jose Aguilar (University of Castilla La Mancha, Spain)
Fatima Cruz Souza (University of Valladolid, Spain)
E-Mail address: mariajose.aguilar@uclm.es
Migrant Women in the Domestic Work Sector: Preliminary Results of a Regional Study
|
|
The number of migrant women is significantly increasing every year in Spain, and in Castilla-La Mancha, the figures are some of the higher growth rates in our country. Alongside the agricultural sector, the domestic work field is one where more migrant women are working in, in this region. Both labor sectors favor similar precarious working conditions, abuses and exploitation closely related to their irregular administrative situation (people without legal documents, in Spanish "sin papeles"). In relation to the domestic work, the legal framework that regulates it and the invisibility that characterizes this sector means that this is one of the more unknown work integration fields. It is also one of the working sectors with a high lack of protection for migrant women.
For all those reasons, including that most of the employers are women - a great difference in relation to other working sectors - this implies that it is a very interesting socio-economic study and research sphere with a great scientific and social interest.
In this paper we present the preliminary results of a regional research project. We will speak about the working conditions access to working posts, kinds of contracts for migrant women working in the domestic and caring sector in this big Spanish region.
|
Vilna Bashi (Rutgers University, USA)
E-Mail address: vbashi@sociology.rutgers.edu
Ethnic Projects: Struggles for Uplift Within Racial Hierarchies
|
|
Four historical cases are used to establish a theory of the ethnic project, a struggle for political, social, cultural, and economic differentiation where the intended outcome is elevated ethnic status and de-racialization. The Mississippi Chinese, who came to the Delta region in the late 19th century, at first shared a place in the racial hierarchy with newly emancipated African slaves, a status quickly made untenable. They soon separated economically and physically from black persons with whom they had formerly associated, and secured an elevated racial status. Similarly, Irish Americans in Northern cities once worked and lived among American blacks. They too withdrew from the African descendants with whom they lived and worked, and in return achieved racial uplift. Caribbean Americans use their social networks to hoard spaces in the American labor market, and their ability to create labor and housing market niches help to create cultural and economic distinctiveness from American-born black persons. Finally, African Americans, too, have engaged variously in uplift programs, with only temporary success. While the racial hierarchy is the ladder other ethnic groups may ascend, African Americans repeatedly fail at racial uplift precisely because their position anchors the bottom rung of that hierarchical ladder.
|
Nancy DiTomaso (Rutgers University, USA)
E-Mail Address: ditomaso@andromeda.rutgers.edu
The Turn to the Right in U.S. Politics: Race, Religion, Rights, and the Right Wing
|
|
Many Europeans have wondered how the American people can support an administration that has been caught in lies regarding the reasons for going to war with Iraq, passed costly tax cuts that benefit the very rich, has endeavored to undermine the New Deal social contract, and has threatened the long term viability of the U.S. economy, especially given that significant support for the Bush administration has come from those whose ostensible self interests appear to be harmed by this administration's policies. To paraphrase a recent book regarding these issues, we might ask, not only "What's the Matter with Kansas?" but more broadly, "What's the Matter with the U.S.?" In this paper, I endeavor to address that question by analysis of unstructured interviews with U.S. born white Americans of prime working age to uncover the political dynamics at work that have contributed to the ascendancy of Republicans as a new almost majority party and to the disarray of Democrats who have steadily lost support from their traditional constituencies and have failed to attract those groups whose interests should be more closely aligned with Democrats than with the Republicans. I argue that racial politics underlie this new state of affairs, but do so in the guise of religious politics and anti-government rhetoric that questions the role of government in maintaining civil society. I further argue that the realignment that seems to be underway in the U.S. is tied up with resentment about the implications of the Civil Rights Movement, even though support for civil rights has become normative in the U.S. in the post-Civil Rights period.
|
William J. Grimshaw (Illinois Institute of Technology, USA)
E-Mail address: grimshaw@iit.edu
Urban Institutions and Racial Inequality
|
|
This study provides an explanation of the origins of racial inequality in the northern industrial cities of the United States, using Chicago as a representative case study. The explanation is rooted in the relationship between competing black and European immigrant groups and two powerful urban institutions that emerged during the 1930s: the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) and the Democratic political machine. The study examines the ability of the two competing groups to acquire institutional capital, in the form of employment and power, from the two institutions. The explanation goes beyond institutional racism by incorporating into the analysis the distinctive experiences, values and loyalties that the competing groups brought to the institutions, which shaped the orientations of the groups and the receptivity of the institutions.
|
Estrella Gualda (University of Huelva. Faculty of Sciences of Work, Spain)
E-Mail address: estrella@uhu.es
Attitudes Toward Immigration in Europe and Social Capital: Does the Participation of Europeans in Social Networks Have to be With Greater or Lesser Acceptation of Foreign Populations?
|
|
Is there a relationship between the degree of social participation of and the position in front of foreign populations in Europe? Based on the European Social Surveys (ESS), this work explores involvement in public and civic associations as an important factor explaining a better acceptance of difference. This involvement would imply more trust in institutions and civic Society. Based in the results of the ESS, which has been in 2003 applied in 22 countries in Europe (EU and non-EU) with a sample of more than 40.000 interviews, and with the help of regression models, we have found interesting relationship between being integrated in social networks and more acceptability of immigrants.
|
Panos Hatziprokopiou (Middlesex University, United Kingdom)
E-Mail address: panos1@mdx.ac.uk
The Labor Market Integration of Immigrants In Urban Greece
|
|
Based on recent fieldwork material and secondary sources, this paper addresses the issues related to the socio-economic integration of immigrants in Greece. The focus is on the dynamics of immigrants' labor market integration, but the interplay of political and social factors and non-market processes are highlighted throughout the analysis. While immigrants tend to occupy the lowest sections of the employment pyramid and they generally experience harsh conditions, discrimination and exploitation, contradictory processes appear to be in place. Long-term settlement, the acquisition of legal status and informal social networks, among other factors, may gradually contribute to upward social mobility and senses of belonging. However, the transformation of Greece into a host country has been embedded within the wider context of globalization and restructuring and so are currently the processes of immigrants' integration. Migration and incorporation go hand in hand with the dynamics of socio-economic change, which have to be understood from a general comparative perspective.
|
Aftab Hladikova (Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic)
E-Mail address: aftab.hladikova@mpsv.cz
Labor Migration to the Czech Republic After the Change Over In 1989
|
|
The paper discusses the labor migration from ethnical point of view in the Czech Republic which takes place after the political change over in 1989. In doing so the author has used extensively the accessible statistical data in order to show how the Czech Republic being a non-immigrant country becomes an immigrant country, immigrants of diverse national or ethnic origins become involved in individual labor market segments of the country; massive economic transformation drew a demarcation line in labor market segments: immigrants of the "East" are gap fillers, whereas highly qualified jobs are for the citizens of the OECD countries. But the Vietnamese community chooses to run family businesses. Further the paper discusses how along with economic transformation, accession process to the EU influences migration flow by imposing various screening measures in labor market. But easier law to obtain a trade license encourages some immigrants and employers to by pass the work permit system. With all its diversity in composition of immigrants certain ethnic groups of the third country nationals have already formed their own ethnic communities. Recent analysis even confirmed about the segregation of certain communities. Will the Czech Republic be able to inhibit the formation of ethnic minorities?
|
Valerie F. Hunt (Texas, USA)
Dan Tichenor (Rutgers University, USA)
James Hollifield (Southern Methodist University, USA)
E-Mail addresses: vhunt@smu.edu; tichenor@rutgers.edu; jhollifi@smu.edu
Immigrants, Markets, and the American State
|
|
Are immigration flows to advanced industrial democracies like the United States determined by changing economic conditions in the receiving country, such as labor market dynamics and shifts in GDP? The economic push-pull model that pervades the scholarly literature on immigration -- not to mention popular discourse and media accounts -- presumes that they are. Likewise the sociological literature on globalization attributes increases in immigration to the growth of transnational networks and communities, as well as the greater speed and ease of communication and transportation. In this vein, efforts by the governments of receiving countries to control immigration are considered to be either subservient to economic and sociological conditions or ineffectual. But do state actions have an independent and significant influence on immigration flows? Using time-series analysis and other evidence to evaluate the separate economic and political effects on U.S. immigration over time, we find that economic and policy factors each have had a major impact on inflows of legal immigrants in the United States during the past century. By ignoring the independent influence of state efforts to control immigration, prevailing economic and sociological models lose considerable explanatory and predictive power. Our research shows that future scholarship on immigration must take account of both economic and political forces shaping immigrant flows to the advanced industrial democracies.
|
Walton R. Johnson (Rutgers University, USA)
E-Mail address: waltonj@rci.rutgers.edu
Social Domination and Social Change in South Africa
|
|
The social transformations brought about by the transition from apartheid to democracy in South Africa offers an opportunity to learn about the dynamics of social domination and social change. This paper focuses primarily on the impact of social change on dominant groups and argues that a quite powerful 'dominance boomerang' explains part of the resistance these groups experience with the advent of democratization.
|
Alex Julca (United Nations, USA)
E-Mail address: Julca@un.org
Are Remittances Expectations Motivating Migration?
|
|
Having been established that a major macroeconomic cause of migration is the wage differentials between origins and destinations, it is taken for granted that remittances sent home by immigrants is an effect of migration. However, new surveys for Latin American migrants, e.g. Mexicans, Dominicans, have found that remittances are a serious motivation: 1. to decide ex-ante migration due to expected returns at origins; 2. to implement socio-economic projects at origins, i.e. children's education; 3. to keep two economies running in two countries simultaneously. Indeed, expectations of remittances are significantly considered previously or right after immigration. This may indicate the following: a) migration decided individually and/or in with other family members, is substantially affected by the expected remittances that immigrants want to send home from the surplus saved from wages earned in host countries; b) current upward trends of migration and remittances flows have an analytical causality that runs from the latter to the former; c) current transnationalization of labor, technology, finance and commodities make possible that "permanent" migrants have higher probabilities to affect their origins than in past waves of migration.
|
Boaz Kahana ( Elderly Care Research Center, USA)
Eva Kahana (Case Western Reserve University, USA)
Cathie King (Case Western Reserve University, USA)
E-Mail Address: exk@cwru.edu; exk@cwru.edu; cmk@cwru.edu
Socioeconomic Status of Immigrants: An Achieved Status Characteristic
|
|
Socioeconomic status has been typically studied as an ascribed status characteristic, with income and education comprising its critical components.(Hollingshead & Redlich,1958). In a study focusing on elderly immigrants to Israel and to the United States, we considered the relationship between education and income among individuals who arrived in their new homelands without any possessions. Respondents included 300 immigrants from European countries prior to World War II, and 300 who immigrated after enduring the Holocaust. Data were also available from a third group of 520 U.S.-born elderly. There were no associations between education and income among survivors of the Holocaust who immigrated after the war. Modest associations were observed among pre-World War II immigrants. Among older adults who were born in the U.S. there was a strong and significant association between education and income. The high motivation levels and coping resources possessed by immigrants may help them overcome challenges of disrupted education and acculturation (Kahana and Kahana, 2005). Social achievements of Holocaust survivors are remarkable, particularly in the face of psychological trauma they experienced. Implications for theoretical developments regarding conceptualization and measurement of socioeconomic status will be discussed.
|
Eva Kahana (Case Western Reserve University, USA)
Boaz Kahana (Cleveland State University, USA)
E-Mail address: exk@cwru.edu; bkahana@csuohio.edu
Socioeconomic Differences between Physicians and Patients: Contributions to Health Care Disparities
|
|
Unequal medical care of the poor and of racial minorities represents a major social problem in the U.S. (IOM, 2005) It has been argued that inadequate health communication is the major underlying mechanism responsible for disparities in health care (Kreps, 2004). We have proposed a model of health communication that considers proactive roles by both patients and physicians in fostering health communications (Kahana & Kahana, 2003). In this paper we discuss how socioeconomic incongruence between patients and physicians can impact on both instrumental and affective components of health communication. In an ongoing study of old-old adults we consider patient assertiveness and initiative in communication as a function of education and income differences between elderly health care consumers and their physicians. We are interviewing 200 African-American, 200 Hispanic and 200 White elderly persons regarding their experiences in obtaining advice about cancer prevention and screening. Congruence/ incongruence between patient and physician in terms of socioeconomic status, race, gender, and age are considered. Our model proposes that both patient and physician characteristics and the match between patients and physician demographics will impinge on health communication.
|
Martin Kahanec (Tilburg University, The Netherlands)
E-Mail address: M.Kahanec@uvt.nl
Two Faces of the ICT Revolution: Desegregation and Interethnic Earnings Inequality
|
|
To explain the concurrence of two seemingly contradicting developments in the lives of Black and White Americans since the late 1970s - the rise in earnings inequality and desegregation of Blacks - is a challenge to social scientists. I argue that it is the ICT revolution that, through facilitating social interaction and thus human capital acquisition, has driven both of these developments. In particular, the ICT revolution favors the majority in terms of earnings by disproportionately increasing majority's efficiency in human capital acquisition, as the efficiency gains of majority individuals are obstructed by interethnic social distance only to the limited extent that they interact with minority individuals, who constitute a smaller fraction of the population. Vice versa, minority individuals' social distance to the larger number of majority individuals significantly constraints their ability to benefit from the improved efficiency of social interaction. At the same time, resulting in desegregation, the ICT revolution favors interacting in integrated social environments, as there the ICT-driven efficiency gains for minority individuals are not constrained by segregation from the larger number of majority individuals. Some degree of segregation is sustainable, however, since segregation protects segregated minority individuals from competition of the majority on the labor market.
|
Kiljoong Kim (DePaul University, USA)
E-Mail address: kkim@depaul.edu
Spatial Relations in Metropolitan America: New Empirical Measure Old Phenomena
|
|
In Introduction to Science in Sociology, Park and Burgess defined society as composition of "individuals spatially separated, territorially distributed, and capable of independent locomotion" (509). This ecological distinction based on human behavior, namely competition and selection, was derived as an attempt to analyze rapidly developing urban affairs and communities of the early 1900's. This fundamental notion that people are dispersed in systemic and collective manner led McKenzie (1925) to suggest that a society is composed of series of spatial relationships and their changes over time. By the time Massey and Denton (1993) addressed the issue of concentration of poverty in urban areas largely consisted of poor African Americans, spatial distribution became institutionalized in American culture. In analyzing these phenomena, two elements became crucial in this type of analysis: shapes and sizes. The measurement of these require not only theoretical components such as concentric development and decentralization of metropolis, but also technical component such as Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and spatial statistics that will allow for measuring beyond conventional concept of empirical analysis. In this paper, the conventional unit of analysis in urbanity, typically urban versus suburban, will be challenged by suggesting more precise geographical unit than political boundaries. In the process, classical theories developed by Parks and Burgess on urban development will be re-analyzed using the new concept. The goals of the paper are: 1) to evaluate the feasibility of classical theories in the current context; and 2) to incorporate new concepts and technologies into contemporary issues such as racial segregation, immigrant settlement patterns, and gentrification.
|
Fred A Lazin (Ben Gurion University of The Negev, Israel)
E-Mail address: lazin@bgu.ac.il
From Discrimination to Preferential Treatment: Jews as American Immigrants and Refugees in the 20th Century
|
|
The 1924 US national origin quota system gave preference to Northern and Western Europeans and limited the entry of other Europeans, Asians and Africans. The 1965 Act liberalized immigration but continued to restrict refugee entry to persons fleeing Communist countries. This paper compares the experience of potential Jewish immigrants and refugees in 20th century. During the 1930s, few German Jews managed to enter the United States. Until 1938 the US quota for Germany went unfilled due to discriminatory visa policies. Additional efforts by American Jewish groups failed to rescue German and Austrian Jews. In contrast by the early 1970s American Jewish advocates for Soviet Jews insured that most Soviet Jews who applied were accepted as refugees. Organized efforts obtained financial support for travel across Europe, flights and resettlement in the US. Until 1989 Soviet Jews received preferential treatment. The policy changed with the ending of the Cold War in 1989. The paper tries to explain the shortcomings of organizational efforts on behalf of German Jews and the success on behalf of Soviet Jews. How important were macro factors (economy, foreign policy) versus the strength and weakness of advocacy organizations?
|
Vladimir Mazyrin (Moscow State University, IAAS, Russia)
E-Mail address: vmm@freemail.ru
Vietnamese Migrants in Russia: Socio-Economic Dimensions and Perspectives
|
|
This paper attempts to draw the general picture and characteristic features of Vietnamese migration to Russia. The author analyzes specific patterns of the formation of Vietnamese community making provisional calculation of its amount. He emphasizes socio-economic dimensions and perspectives of inflow of Vietnamese migrants (Vietkieu) to the Russian Federation. Firstly, the paper considers the politics of Hanoi leadership in the field of manpower export. This is followed by analysis of the attitude toward Vietnamese migration in Russia. Dynamics, channels, motives and legal status of Vietnamese migration are considered carefully. The author characterizes the abilities, lifestyle and social structure of Vietkieu. Through describing business-making practice and commercial activities of migrants their place in "shadow economy" is explored. For conclusion the author notes that Vietnamese community became an integral part of economic and public life of Russia. Therefore he recommends faster question solving of Vietkieus stay and work, removing bureaucratic barriers that restrain this change. Conclusions given in the article arise mainly from the sociological survey (poll), made by the author in 2002 through interviewing Vietnamese migrants in 3 main localities of their habitation in Russia (Moscow, Saint-Petersburg, Vladivostok).
|
Marta Moskal (Academie of Agriculture, Poland)
E-Mail address: mmoskal@ar.krakow.pl
Polish Migrants in the New Europe: Social, Demographic and Economic Contours
|
|
The paper will examine international migrations between Poland and the EU. It focuses on the question if the migration pattern changed after 1st May 2004, that is the enlargement of the European Union. With Poland joining the European Union the visa restrictions on travel of Polish citizens to other EU member states have been completely removed, however the restriction on freedom of labor remained in place in all countries except the UK, Ireland and Sweden. The economic transition was closely linked with the emergence of unemployment on the Polish labor market and then with its substantial growth. High unemployment coincided with the stabilization of registered emigration from Poland. Apart of the registered settlement migration, there is a large group of legal short term (usually up to three months) labor migration. The aim of this paper is to analyze new tendencies in East-West migration in Europe challenge and transform the traditional migrant trajectory from migrant to citizen.
|
Jose C. Moya (UCLA, USA)
E-Mail address: moya@ucla.edu
Domestic Service in a Global Perspective: Gender, Migration, and Ethnic Niches
|
|
Relying on the international scholarly literature on the topic, both historical and sociological, this paper offers a global and comparative analysis of three salient aspects of the domestic service during the modern period, particularly during the last two centuries. The first addresses its gendered dimension. When, how, to what degree, and why did the domestic service become a female sector? The second relates to the role of international and internal migration. To what degree did it become an occupation of immigrants? What differences can be detected between various countries of immigration and with those where the inflow of people from beyond national borders was insignificant? The third addresses the related question of ethnic niches. Although the formation of these economic niches is normally associated in the sociological literature with independent entrepreneurship, historically ethnic occupational concentration has had more to do with wage labor than with business-creation, at least in terms of the number of people involved. The paper thus examines the degree to which the dramatic differences of participation in the domestic service of different immigrant groups reflect processes of niche-formation.
|
Antoine Pecoud (University of Paris 7, France)
E-Mail address: pecoud@unice.fr
What is Ethnic in an Ethnic Economy?
|
|
Immigrants' business activities are frequently labeled 'ethnic': ethnicity is understood as providing immigrants with social capital and networks that enable them to overcome individual shortcomings and illustrates the embeddedness of their activities in a sociocultural context. On the basis of empirical findings on immigrant entrepreneurship in Continental Europe, this communication suggests that the 'ethnic business' paradigm underestimates differences within 'ethnic' economies and leads to a too sharp distinction between immigrants and non-immigrants, as non-immigrant businesspeople may use resources that are similar to ethnic ones. The communication then relates the success of ethnicity-factors to institutional and intellectual contexts. Institutionally, the literature on immigrant entrepreneurship developed in North America, where the regulation of economic activities is weak, thus leaving space for the establishment of in-group resources. In Europe's coordinated economy, immigrant entrepreneurs must insert themselves in a regulatory framework that inhibits their reliance on ethnic resources. Intellectually, research on immigrant economies was elaborated by economic sociologists who oppose the views of neo-classical economists, which has led scholars working on self-employment to stress the importance of embeddedness and ethnic networks.
|
Joel Perlmann (Levy Economics Institute of Bard College, USA)
E-Mail address: perlmann@levy.org
'Race of People': American Social Science, Bureaucracy and Ethnic Politics, 1898-1913
|
|
The 'race or people' classification of immigrants to the United States was developed in 1898 by several bureaucrats at the Port of NY, adopted by their Washington superiors, justified and streamlined by the Smithsonian Institution's anthropologists (yet really left unaltered). It was protested mainly by American Jewish leaders of German-Jewish origins because it identified Jews and thus violated separation of Church and state. These Jews were in turn protested by Zionists of east-European origin who proclaimed that Jews were a race. The struggle shows up not merely in a celebrated debate published in the U.S. Immigration Commissions Reports, but more revealingly in hundreds of pages of unpublished letters I have found in the National Archives. The issue remerges in connection with the 1910 U.S. Census - should the 'race' classification be applied to European immigrants? The compromise introduced the mother tongue question -- not out of interest in language preservation but in hopes that mother tongue could proxy race. Letters from Census Bureau officials reviewing the data reflect their emerging understanding that mother tongue would be an imperfect proxy for race and must be used on its own, letting users make of it what they would.
|
Viola-Donata Rauch (Technical University Berlin, Germany)
E-Mail address: violarauch@hotmail.com
My Story-My City - Narration, Identity and the Impact of the City on Identity Formation of Turkish-German Women
|
|
This paper sketches the different biographical stages in the life histories of women in Berlin who come from migrant backgrounds through narrative account. It attempts to link their biographical experiences to the city in order to understand the city's impact on their identity formation process. The Turkish "guest workers" were offered to work temporarily in Germany in the 1960s and 70s. They were not actively integrated and instead given the label of temporary immigrants. The women of the second generation are confronted with the need to negotiate their own position and identity within the sphere of tension between their Turkish family heritage and the framework of the German society at large. Where do the women position themselves, within the city and their cultural and social settings? How do they express their identity and which role does the city play in the process of identity negotiation? The women's identity has an impact on their position on both labour and housing market as well as on their consumption patterns, this being the economic dimensions of my focus. Through the analysis of narrative life history interviews with immigrant women I am hoping to understand the city's impact on identity formation in the context of immigration by using different analytical dimensions of positioning: spatial, cultural, social, symbolic and verbal/expressive.
|
Damir Skenderovic (University of Fribourg, Switzerland)
E-Mail address: damir.skenderovic@unifr.ch
Anti-Immigration Parties in Switzerland: An Evaluation of Explanation Theses
|
|
Referring to theories of economic interest and material grievances, some authors hold that bad economic conditions, unemployment and increased competition over scarce resources result in the support of anti-immigration parties. Others argue that the increase of the number of immigrants represent favorable conditions for anti-immigration parties who take advantage of the mistrust toward immigrants shared by a majority of the population in most Western societies. In contrast, as a number of authors point out, there is no correlation of immigration and the voting for these parties or the strengthening of hostile attitudes toward immigrants. They argue that anti-immigration parties construct and politicize the so-called 'immigration problem' and thereby evoke or reinforce anti-immigrant sentiments among the population. Moreover, critics of the grievance and socio-economic theses maintain that socially disoriented and economically disadvantaged people are not more attracted than others to anti-immigration parties. In order to evaluate the different explanation models, my paper examines the case of anti-immigration parties in Switzerland. The Swiss case is of particular importance, since the so-called 'movement against over foreignization', comprised of political parties advocating a fiercely xenophobic agenda, emerged as early as the 1960s and represents a precursor to anti-immigration parties in Western Europe.
|
|