Social Problems 61(3)

Social Problems, August 2014: Volume 61, Issue 3

Binational Social Networks and Assimilation: A Test of the Importance of Transnationalism
Ted Mouw, Sergio Chavez, Heather Edelblute and Ashton Verdery

While the concept of transnationalism has gained widespread popularity among scholars as a way to describe immigrants' long-term maintenance of cross-border ties to their origin communities, critics have argued that the overall proportion of immigrants who engage in transnational behavior is low and that, as a result, transnationalism has little sustained effect on the process of immigrant adaptation and assimilation. In this article, we argue that a key shortcoming in the current empirical debate on transnationalism is the lack of data on the social networks that connect migrants to each other and to nonmigrants in communities of origin. To address this shortcoming, our analysis uses unique binational data on the social network connecting an immigrant sending community in Guanajuato, Mexico, to two destination areas in the United States. We test for the effect of respondents' positions in cross-border networks on their migration intentions and attitudes towards the United States using data on the opinions of their peers, their participation in cross-border and local communication networks, and their structural position in the network. The results indicate qualified empirical support for a network-based model of transnationalism; in the U.S. sample we find evidence of network clustering consistent with peer effects, while in the Mexican sample we find evidence of the importance of cross-border communication with friends.

Biopolitical Citizenship in the Immigration Adjudication Process
Sarah Morando Lakhani and Stefan Timmermans

We apply the concept of “biopolitical citizenship” to show how and with what consequences biology and medicine are mobilized as political techniques in the legal immigration procedures of permanent residency acquisition and family reunification. Medical examinations and DNA testing are employed by the U.S. state as objective sorting criteria in the immigration legal process. Based on qualitative examination of immigrants' and their attorneys' participation in the legalization process, we demonstrate how these biological screening mechanisms create added uncertainty and problems that disproportionately affect particular people. In this context, aspiring citizens undergo biological evaluations that appear transparent, objective, and democratic. However, because of how evaluations are structured, they actually lower the chances of certain individuals to succeed in their citizenship endeavors.

Migration, Social Organization, and the Sexual Partners of Mexican Men
Emilio A. Parrado and Chenoa A. Flippen

We build on recent developments in social organization theory to examine the sexual partnering of Mexican men in a new area of immigrant destination. We elaborate on two levels of contextual influence: (1) how differences in social capital between sending and receiving communities affect partner formation and (2) how neighborhood social cohesion influences immigrants' behavior. Data come from an original survey conducted in Durham, North Carolina, and migrant sending communities in Mexico. We show dramatic differences in sexual partnering between Mexico and the United States, which are directly linked to lack of social networks and familial support. Neighborhood-level social cohesion in part counteracts those effects. The role of social capital and neighborhoods, however, is highly gendered. The presence of women is a critical dimension of the social organization of immigrant communities and its effect extends beyond mere partner availability.

Does Segregation Create Winners and Losers? Residential Segregation and Inequality in Educational Attainment
Lincoln Quillian

This article examines the effects of residential segregation on the basis of poverty status and race for high school and college completion. Segregation effects are estimated by contrasting educational outcomes among persons raised in metropolitan areas with varying levels of segregation. This metropolitan-level approach provides two advantages in evaluating segregation effects over neighborhood effects studies: it incorporates effects of residential segregation outside of the affected individuals' neighborhoods of residence and it allows evaluation of gains and losses across groups from segregation. Data are drawn from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics and the decennial censuses. Poor–nonpoor segregation is associated with lower rates of high school graduation among adolescents from poor backgrounds, but has no effect on rates of graduation for students from nonpoor backgrounds. Black–white segregation is associated with lower rates of high school graduation and college graduation for black students, but has no effect on graduation rates for white students. Use of proximity-adjusted segregation measures or instrumental variable estimation gives similar results. The results suggest that residential segregation harms the educational attainment of disadvantaged groups without increasing the educational attainment of advantaged groups.

Emerging Forms of Racial Inequality in Homeownership Exit, 1968–2009
Gregory Sharp and Matthew Hall

Because homeownership continues to be a key mechanism underlying racial inequality in America, recent developments that led to the foreclosure crisis bring to the forefront issues concerning minority homeowners' ability to sustain ownership. This article uses longitudinal data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics to examine racial differences in the likelihood of homeownership exit over the last four decades. We find that black homeowners are at a significantly higher risk of transitioning to renter status than are white homeowners, even after accounting for life-course, socioeconomic, and housing characteristics, and the selection into homeownership. Most importantly, we show that the racial gap in ownership exit has widened substantially over time, especially among owners who purchased their homes in the 1990s or later. These findings are consistent with arguments that the nature of racial stratification in U.S. housing markets has shifted over time from overt market exclusion to market exploitation.

A Generation Indebted: Young Adult Debt across Three Cohorts
Jason N. Houle

In this study, I examine how young adult indebtedness has changed across three cohorts of young adults in the 1970s, 1980s, and 2000s. I pool data from four National Longitudinal Surveys of Youth cohorts—the NLS-M 1966, NLS-W 1968, NLSY 1979, and NLSY 1997. I have three key findings. First, debt burdens (debt relative to economic resources) have increased substantially across the three cohorts of study. Despite the fact that the most recent cohort of young adults are earlier along in their debt accrual career and have yet to hit many of the major adult milestones that often lead to debt, they are burdened with more debt than previous cohorts of young adults who achieved these milestones earlier. Second, young adult debt portfolios have shifted towards noncollateralized (unsecured) and student loan debt over time, the latter replacing home mortgage debt as the primary form of wealth-building debt among young adults. Third, cohort changes in debt have occurred unequally across social class lines. Young adults from lower social class backgrounds have disproportionately taken on more unsecured debt over time, relative to their more advantaged counterparts. The growth in debt burden across cohorts, however, has been most pronounced among college-educated young adults.

Reproducing Stories: Strategic Narratives of Teen Pregnancy and Motherhood
Christie A. Barcelos and Aline C. Gubrium

Pregnant and parenting young women are simultaneously silenced and overrepresented by raced and classed social narratives on adolescent childbearing in the United States. These narratives posit teen childbearing as an unequivocal social, health, and economic problem, although some scholars and policy makers construct alternative narratives that focus on inequalities and propose different perspectives on causes and consequences. Narrative inquiry that analyzes how stories are produced and utilized can enable a more nuanced approach to complex social problems. We conducted 19 individual, in-depth, and semistructured interviews with young mothers ages 16 to 21 who attend a community-based alternative education program in a low-income northeastern city. Interviews were analyzed using thematic narrative techniques. The young mothers we interviewed used a process of strategic negotiation to distance themselves from prevailing social and cultural stories about the problem of teen motherhood. Participants demonstrated this strategic process through their attempts to assuage stigma and construct unproblematic identities. Young mothers reproduced and reinterpreted a variety of circulating narratives on teen childbearing. They reproduced dominant narratives through pathology, missed adolescence, and redemption stories, and reinterpreted dominant narratives through stories of stratified reproduction, sexual health education, and stigmatization and surveillance. Our participants' narratives illustrate the need to think broadly about the meanings of early pregnancy and motherhood in terms of how they play out in research and policymaking. We call for a discursive shift in ways of knowing about and doing research and policy surrounding teen childbearing.

Moral Outpouring: Shock and Generosity in the Aftermath of the BP Oil Spill
Justin Farrell

The 2010 BP oil spill is the largest human-caused disaster in U.S. history. Using nationally representative panel data measured before, during, and after the spill I find that rather than giving time and money to actual relief efforts, Americans responded primarily through dramatic increases in time and money given for environmental causes. This expands current understandings about how and why Americans respond to large-scale catastrophe. I argue that this phenomenon can be made sense of theoretically by focusing on the cultural context of “moral shock” precipitated by historic environmental harm and corporate negligence, both of which were amplified in the wake of the spill by national media. This heightened emotional climate interacted with Americans' empathetic identities, practices and habits, politics, and culture to produce different pathways to philanthropic engagement. Consistent with this argument, the results show that all four of these factors mattered for predicting generous behavior in this case, but did so at different points in time. I close by outlining the substantive and theoretical implications of my argument.