Abstract
New and noteworthy social research
Migratory Circuits of Love
Migration and marriage are often intertwined in complex ways. Alexia Bloch’s Istanbul-based ethnography (Global Networks, January 2011) inquires into the apparent “marriages of convenience” of migrant women from Moldova, Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine and illustrates how some of these post-Soviet women extend their stay in a foreign country and send remittances back home thanks to their intimate relationships (including marriage) with Turkish men.
Many seemingly transient relationships, Bloch writes, turn into sustained intimate ones, exemplifying the “complexity of motivations and emotional attachments that define women’s migration experience.”
Uniquely, these relationships lie at a juncture of two imaginations of modernity meet in the migration flow. Turkish men’s uneasy relationship with modernity, masculinity, and religion makes a post-Soviet woman desirable; she’s seen as cultured and free from “complexes” around sexuality. Relationships with Turkish men, on the other hand, seem “reliable” for post-Soviet women, mitigating anxieties about insecurity and uncertainty in the wake of the socio-economic sea change that traumatized family relations back home.
This article vividly depicts one way female migrants, sometimes portrayed as victims, exercise agency. Further, by exploring the complexities of a migratory flow between areas in close proximity, Bloch adds nuance to migration discussions,which predominately focus on global South to global North flows. S.E.
War (Huh! Yeah!) What Is It Good For?
Now home, these soldiers may have to fight for jobs.
Absolutely nothing… if you’re looking for a job after experiencing first-hand combat, that is. Military service is often pitched as an investment in future careers, but sociologist Alair MacLean (American Sociological Review, 2010) shows that, when it comes to job prospects, there’s a difference between veterans who see combat and those who don’t.
By analyzing data from veterans of World War II, Vietnam, and the Korean War, MacLean found combat vets were more likely than their non-combat and non-veteran counterparts to suffer from unemployment and disability. So while military service may help non-combatants (who had the lowest rates of unemployment among the three groups), the scarring effects of combat can put veterans at a relative disadvantage that stays with them throughout their lives.
Some suggest vets from disadvantaged backgrounds suffer most from combat because they lack coping resources, while others think those with pre-combat social advantages suffer most since combat represents a more drastic negative turning point in their lives. MacLean, though, discovers the effects of combat exposure are equally deleterious for all vets, regardless of social background. As more and more vets return home from our current wars, it remains crucial to understand the disadvantages of combat experiences—especially in an era of both high unemployment and heavy military recruitment. Uncle Sam may seem good for the resume, but if you find yourself in the crossfire, the uphill battle may have just begun. A.C.
Give and Take
As many Americans are painfully aware, the number of home foreclosures has skyrocketed during the latest recession. Previous research tells us that minority groups have been unevenly affected by the crisis, and that foreclosure rates are linked to subprime lending. In trying to understand the crisis, economists have proffered explanations about overbuilding, pricing booms, and predatory loans. New research by sociologists Jacob S. Rugh and Douglas S. Massey (American Sociological Review, October 2010) shows that segregation is more helpful in explaining foreclosure rates than more widely-accepted economic indicators.
Discriminatory housing practices, such as red-lining in the 1950s and ‘60s, were integral to the creation of highly segregated neighborhoods in U.S. cities. There has been little decline in residential segregation since, especially in cities with large African American populations. And looking at foreclosures in 100 metropolitan areas from 2006 to 2008, Rugh and Massey found that the greater the degree of segregation in African American neighborhoods, the greater the number of homes that had been foreclosed.
The authors argue that highly segregated African American neighborhoods result in concentrated poverty and joblessness, a lack of mainstream financial institutions servicing these neighborhoods, and many residents unaware of their full range of financial options—a combination that has led to targeted subprime lending. In the midst of a far-reaching economic meltdown, Rugh and Massey demonstrate that the continuing effects of racial segregation have left a disproportionate number of African Americans holding foreclosure notices. S.M.
Get Life, Live Longer
It’s the last place you’d want to live, but prison might help you live longer.
Using census and corrections data, Evelyn Patterson (Demography, August 2010) compared death rates for prisoners and non-prisoners in the United States. Overall, prisoners had higher mortality rates than non-prisoners. But, when Patterson compared rates by race, she found that black men in prison had lower death rates than black men outside of prison. This was not the case for white men or women of both races, who had higher mortality rates in prison.
This finding for black men held true even when excluding deaths from guns or car accidents for those not living in prison. This means that prison does more for black prisoners’ longevity than simply protecting them from hazards they might face on the outside.
But, while it might be tempting to simply think that prison is good for black men’s health, it may actually say more about the racism and inadequate health care black men face on the outside. S.S.
Juvenile Justice on Trial
Panic over violent “superpredator” teens in the 1990s led to the transfer of certain juveniles to adult court. Once in the adult system, youths were supposed to be sentenced the same as if they were adults. But Megan C. Kurlychek and Brian D. Johnson (Criminology, August 2010) have found that juveniles in the adult system are punished even more harshly than their young adult peers.
Using a matched sample of youth transferred from the juvenile system and young adults already in the adult system in Maryland, Kurlychek and Johnson discovered that transferred juveniles were given more severe sentences. For example, the average 17-year-old transferred to adult court was given a sentence 41 percent longer than an average 18-year-old entering the adult system normally. This disparity was most pronounced for drug crimes: the transferred juveniles’ sentences were six times as severe as those received by comparable young adults.
So, not only are juveniles treated less leniently than young adults in the criminal justice system, but they are also given harsher sentences for non-violent crimes such as drug use or distribution. It’s a far cry from the original intent of juvenile transfer laws meant to crack down on violent youth. S.S.
A Calculated Political Risk
These days it seems little falls outside partisan bickering. According to Andrew Lakoff and Eric Klinenberg (Theory & Society, 2010) even “objective” systems of risk measurement, designed to protect us from future terrorist attacks, fail to escape the clutches of the much-maligned “politics as usual.”
Following the attacks of September 11th, 2001, the Department of Homeland Security was created to bolster America’s national security. The new agency was to determine the level of risk cities face and allocate funds accordingly. However, as its systems of risk diagnosis were unveiled, skepticism remained. Critics were quick to highlight inconsistencies like a drop in funding for New York City, but a boost for Oklahoma, which needed to protect “national treasures” like the Frontier Fun Park. Homeland Security’s response? Make the system more complex and advertise its lack of politics.
Lakoff and Klinenberg argue this case is in line with larger policy trends. Statistics and bureaucratic rationality are seen as the cure-all when agencies are confronted with public scrutiny. Rather than politics disappearing, they are simply pushed backstage, and decisions that seem rational, measurable, and free from partisan fighting are often the most political. So, next time you see complex statistics in the news, it’s worth looking for the politicians behind the numbers. K.G.
Seeing Katrina
We may like to believe that our political beliefs aren’t swayed by the media, but Eran Ben-Porath and Lee Shaker (Journal of Communication, September 2010) show how subtle editorial differences can reframe perceptions.
The authors studied how just the inclusion of a photograph invokes different emotions and opinions about the government and Hurricane Katrina. Many believe the government was to blame for mismanagement after the disaster, so the authors thought simply adding photos to news stories wouldn’t have much of an effect. But after manipulating a news story to include or exclude victim photos, they asked respondents to rate the government’s crisis response. African American respondents overwhelmingly held the federal government more responsible than did white respondents, regardless of photographs. White respondents who were exposed to articles with photographs, however, were less likely to hold the government responsible than those who didn’t see photos.
Ben-Porath and Shaker believe the inclusion of a victim photo is a classic example of priming. The photos made white respondents sort of “forget” structural forces and think more abstractly about the person in the picture. Although this loss of critical analysis didn’t hold for all groups, this research reminds us that presentation can change interpretations. S.L.
No Representation Without Replication
Time and time again, public policy makers ignore indigenous peoples’ intimate knowledge of natural resources and sustainable use. This has led, for example, to the death of rams in the Yukon and clams in New Jersey. While some chalk these losses up to modern arrogance or even racial discrimination, Chantelle Marlor (Qualitative Sociology, July 2010) suggests otherwise. Marlor argues that democratic states rely on seemingly objective and replicable scientific knowledge to the exclusion of alternative ways of knowing.
Marlor develops this analysis in the context of an ethnographic study of clam-related politics in western Canada. She demonstrates how a desire for transparency in decision making fuels a reliance on science in one community’s policy-making.
For a decision to appear politically legitimate, the ideas on which it’s based must appear undisguised, and scientific studies in academic journals are preferred because they’re accessible and authoritative. They’re seen as replicable fact, even though the average citizen or politician might have little hope of deciphering their technical details. In contrast, the personal, experience-based knowledge of the indigenous Kwakwaka’wakw tribe Marlor studies doesn’t fit the bill—it isn’t published in a scientific method-based format.
Democratic states actively need legitimacy, but Marlor’s study helps us understand how efforts to maintain transparency and accountability can result in the exclusion of important knowledge from policy decisions. In this manner, a central principle of democracy can silence the citizens with the most direct experience—lay practitioners, local experts, and the indigenous. K.G.
Bananas and Bellicosity
While you can thank trade between nations for the pleasure of eating avocadoes at any time of the year, trade relations can have another important benefit: deterring conflict.
Aseygul Aydin (Journal of Peace Research, September 2010) examined data from the Correlates of War project and confirmed past findings that trade can deter interstate conflict. That much we knew. However, while past studies have found the volume of trade is key, Aydin found trade also matters because it fosters connectivity.
As Aydin explains, states are likely to intervene in conflicts that threaten economic interests, especially if those interests are linked through regional trade organizations. Those groups form dense ties and are directly affected when one of their members falls into conflict. For these reasons, other states might view membership in a regional organization (rather than in a more diffuse international group, like the World Trade Organization) as a signal of long-term economic interest by member states.
Apparently, your mango or banana is more valuable than you realize. H.N.
Sinking in Rising Prosperity
After the Second World War, many countries experienced the benefits of economic growth. Until the late 1970s, workers’ wages kept pace with, and in many instances exceeded, this economic expansion. Since then, average real wages and employment rates have fallen, despite the increasing expansion of total income across countries.
Many sociologists have speculated that this might be due to union activity, but they lacked the data to demonstrate it empirically. Now Tali Kristal (American Sociological Review, October 2010) has filled this gap. Using data from 16 democratic capitalist countries, Kristal constructed models to measure the change of labor’s share of national income, finding that the working class’s prosperity corresponds directly to their levels of union activity.
Surprisingly, while labor activity is initially beneficial to the working class, it appears to contain the seeds of its own destruction, since it can adversely affect overall corporate earnings. But that’s true only to a certain point, after which union activity has a positive effect on capitalist profits. That profit is then invested in labor-saving initiatives to reduce the high labor costs imposed by the unions. It might be time, again, for nations to carefully rethink labor relations. C.W.
Recipes for Risk
Environmental justice scholars have examined how community characteristics, like racial composition and average income, influence residents’ exposure to hazardous chemicals. In their new study, Don Grant and his colleagues (American Sociological Review, August 2010) take this research one step further, considering the effects of chemical plants themselves.
Grant and his team examine new Environmental Protection Agency data in order to see the combined effects of facility and community characteristics. Using complex statistical analyses, they find four “recipes” for how community and facility factors intersect to produce high risks. These include: 1. large African American population and low income; 2. large African American population and large Latino population; 3. large African American population, large plant size, and a plant that’s part of a branch; and 4. large Latino population, low income, and a plant that’s part of a branch.
These “recipe” formulations help remind researchers to stop debating which individual community characteristics matter most. Instead, researchers and policy makers should focus on how various factors combine in a variety of ways to produce health-threatening emissions, and maybe even how to put a stop to the danger. H.N.
Learning Curve
No longer free, but still crucial in the reform era, educating a child now costs most urban Chinese families a third of their income. This puts unprecedented pressure on families and causes new social anxieties. Mary Crabb’s (Economy and Society, August 2010) ethnography examines how market reform has rendered schooling their single child both the top priority and the sole responsibility of middle class Beijing families.
Crabb argues that from early 1980s onwards, China’s market rationality gradually infiltrated its education system. This is reflected, Crabb writes, not only in the diversification and privatization of schools, but also in the proliferation of private tutoring, weekend language clubs, and extracurriculars.
Based on her work as an English teacher in a Beijing middle school, the author describes moments in which anxious parents struggle to manage their child’s well-rounded development. One parent explains, “I want my son to have a quality education… We only have one child, so we pin all our hopes on him.” Another laments, “I knew I had to make the right choice… for his future success, and I was very afraid of making the wrong decision.”
Despite anxieties over education’s move to the market, Crabb believes the Chinese state remains schools’ central actor by defining education as the motor of its ever-growing economy. Privatization of education, then, may deliver both an urban, consumer middle class and quality human capital. S.E.
A Lesson in Depression
Moms with higher education are more likely to promote and engage in their children’s learning, positively impacting their kids’ overall academic achievement. We also know that moms experiencing depression are less likely to engage with their child, and this negatively impacts the child’s learning. Yet, researchers haven’t studied how a depressed woman’s own educational experience affects her child’s.
Children at a private educational facility in China.
Jennifer March Augustine and Robert Crosnoe tackle this question in the Journal of Health and Social Behavior (October 2010). They compared maternal depression with children’s academic achievement, testing math and verbal skills in the first, third, and fifth grades and found that a mother’s depression only negatively affected her child’s development when she had a high school education or less. Augustine and Crosnoe speculate that the experience of higher education, valuable in many ways, may also equip mothers with knowledge about and a belief in the value of the educational system that helps buffer their children from some harmful effects of their mother’s depression. S.M.
Discouraged Workers
The link between incarceration and employment is clear: it’s hard to get work after prison. The dominant view is that previously incarcerated offenders are simply stigmatized. Recently, Robert Apel and Gary Sweeten (Social Problems, August 2010), explored the complexities of this link using National Longitudinal Survey of Youth data from 1997.
Consistent with previous research, young adults in this study were less likely to be employed for years after being released, even if their incarceration was short (four months or less). But upon closer scrutiny, Apel and Sweeten found that non-employed ex-inmates hadn’t necessarily experienced difficulty in finding work. Rather, they just hadn’t looked (or gave up quickly). When compared to others who were convicted but not incarcerated for their crimes, the effect weakened; being locked up affected future employment far more than just the label “convicted criminal.”
Removal from society (and the resulting disruption of work history and education), as well as limited job options and better earnings in illegal markets, produce discouraged workers who don’t seek employment after prison. The authors are careful not to dismiss the stigma of incarceration on employment outcomes, but their analysis shows how employer willingness to hire is useless if ex-inmates aren’t applying. S.L.
Crack Babies in Black and White
The dangers of substance use during pregnancy are widely known, but media attention has vilified certain drugs (and certain drug users) more than others. Starting in the mid-1980s, the media focused significant coverage on an array of social problems believed to be associated with pregnant crack users, stoking public outrage over “crack babies.”
Kristen W. Springer (Sociological Forum, September 2010) looked at New York Times articles spanning more than 15 years to explore how media portrayals of crack cocaine use during pregnancy compared with those of alcohol and tobacco use. She also examined how portrayals of poor and minority pregnant women compared with others.
Springer has found that crack-using pregnant women are significantly more likely to be presented as “bad mothers” than those using alcohol or tobacco during pregnancy, and that racial minority and poor women are portrayed negatively more often than others. What makes these media representations problematic is that medical research suggests alcohol and tobacco use are more harmful to fetal development that cocaine use and that far more babies are born to white drug users than to any other race.
Springer’s study suggests that framing and frequency of news stories about pregnant drug users has little to do with protecting the health of children. Instead, she argues, poor and minority mothers are portrayed as unfit moms—easy targets and scapegoats who can shoulder the blame for changes and problems in the family today. K.H.
“Can You Spare a Kidney?”
It’s doubtful you considered the prospect of kidney failure when choosing your neighborhood. But new research suggests that your neighborhood’s racial composition and poverty level could affect your likelihood of being placed on a donor kidney waitlist if you happen to ever reach end stage renal disease. That is, where you live can impact how long you live.
Researcher Milda R. Saunders and colleagues (American Journal of Transplantation, 2010) analyzed Census data against statistics on blacks and whites who initiated dialysis over a six-year span in order to determine patients’ neighborhood characteristics.
Not surprisingly they found a consistent black-white gap. Additionally, they discovered that neighborhood poverty disproportionately affected black residents’ transplant chances. Whites from wealthier neighborhoods had a better chance of getting onto a transplant waitlist than their black neighbors and anyone from poorer neighborhoods. Altogether, when neighborhood wealth decreased, the disparity between blacks and whites on the transplant waitlist increased. This results in blacks from primarily black, poor neighborhoods having the lowest likelihood of appearing on transplant waitlist.
So while your neighbors may help you out with a cup of sugar, they may be hindering your chances of getting a kidney. A.C.
Testing the Waters
Planning to protest a proposed Wal-Mart store? Not so fast—you could be inadvertently aiding its expansion (and saving the retailer some money).
According to Paul Ingram and his coauthors (American Journal of Sociology, July 2010), Wal-Mart filed about 1,600 proposals for new stores between 1998 and 2005. Some 563 of these proposals were met by protests, and 65 percent of those stores never opened. This suggests protests are highly effective, and by extension, detrimental to Wal-Mart’s profit margins.
But why does Wal-Mart file proposals when they have sufficient resources to simply build their stores without the hassle? The authors conclude that proposals give Wal-Mart an inexpensive way to predict the profitability of future stores. A proposal that’s met by protests indicates a lukewarm local reception. By not opening that store, Wal-Mart saves money it can invest in opening outlets in friendlier neighborhoods. Or, if they push ahead with the proposed-but-protested store, they’re able to make targeted concessions that’ll help appease each local community’s concerns.
Some tips for anti-Wal-Mart activists: protests are more likely to succeed in communities that are pro-Democrat, have strong “buy local” values, and are located near other communities that’ve successfully faced down Wal-Mart before. Or so says Wal-Mart’s marketing research. C.W.
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