Contesting Inequality: The Impact of Immigrant Legal Status and Education on Legal Knowledge and Claims-Making in Low-Wage Labor Markets

Author(s):  
Caitlin Patler ◽  
Shannon Gleeson ◽  
Matthias Schonlau

Abstract Low-wage Latina/o workers are subject to an array of workplace abuses. This study focuses on whether educational attainment may moderate inequality in knowledge or claims-making across individuals with different legal statuses. This question is motivated by research which, while highlighting the role of education in promoting civic and political engagement, has not examined the interaction between education and legal status for worker claims-making. We draw from the 2008 Unregulated Work Survey, which is representative of the 1.64 million low-wage workers in Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York, three of the largest immigrant destinations in the United States. Using the Latina/o subsample, we test whether education impacts workers’ procedural knowledge of the claims process, as well as their actual claims-making behavior, across four categories of workers: U.S.-born citizens, naturalized citizens, documented noncitizens, and undocumented noncitizens. Our findings reveal that all noncitizens have lower levels of procedural knowledge about how to file a complaint with the government, compared to citizens, across educational levels. However, when it comes to claims-making, we find that education has significant positive impacts for noncitizen workers, especially the undocumented. Our results suggest that education may improve the workplace agency of even the most marginalized workers.

2004 ◽  
Vol 56 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-60 ◽  
Author(s):  
Douglas M. Thompson ◽  
Gregory N. Stull

Abstract The use of instream structures to modify aquatic habitat has a long history in the United States. Pioneering work by wealthy landowners in the Catskills region of New York produced a range of designs in the decades preceding the Great Depression in an effort to replenish fish populations depleted from overfishing. The scientific evaluation of structures began in 1930. Within two years, a Michigan research team claimed improved fish populations. Cheap labor and government-sponsored conservation projects spearheaded by the Civilian Conservation Corps allowed the widespread adoption of the techniques in the 1930s, before adequate testing of the long-term impact of the devices. The start of World War II temporarily ended the government conservation efforts and prevented the continued evaluation of structures. During the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s, designs of instream structures remained essentially unchanged. Meanwhile, the small number of evaluations of the impact of the structures often were flawed. The continued use of early designs of instream structures helped instill a false belief that instream structures were proven to be a benefit to fish. Even modern use of instream structures continues to rely on the basic blueprints developed in the Catskills, despite documented problems with the use of these designs.


Author(s):  
Eric Jessup ◽  
Ryan Herrington

This research focuses on the frequent and persistent problem of truck shortages for time-sensitive, perishable produce shipment out of the Pacific Northwest. Washington State is the number one apple-producing state in the United States, accounting for more than 2.7 million tons of apples per year valued in excess of $1 billion. However, without timely and accessible transportation to move the product from production to the consumer's table, the value to apple producers and the state's economy diminishes rapidly. This research aims to identify and quantify the change in total transportation cost that occurs as a result of seasonal truck shortages and associated rate increases and to provide an avenue for evaluating changes in specific destination markets, modal changes, and market competitiveness. A cost-minimizing optimization model is used to represent apple shipments from 29 producing supply points to 16 domestic markets and three international export markets over four seasons for two modes (truck and rail). Total transportation costs increase nearly $12 million as a result of truck shortages, from $245.6 million without shortages to $257.5 million under the current seasonal situation. Overall (across all seasons), the export markets of Nogales, Arizona; McAllen, Texas; and the Port of Seattle, Washington, are most affected by the truck shortages, followed by domestic markets near Seattle and San Francisco, California. The large markets of New York City, New York, and Los Angeles, California also experience relatively large increases in transportation cost per ton mile.


Author(s):  
Torsten Feys

This chapter discusses the role of Dutch and Belgian consular agencies in opening and sustaining the business of transatlantic steamship lines from Rotterdam and Antwerp to the United States. Via a case study of the Holland America Line it analyses the responsibility of shipping agencies to gather information on migrant opportunities in the United States and to maintain the reputation of European ports. It uses the Line’s correspondence with New York shipping agents and the Board of Directors to interpret business strategies and inter-firm relationships. Though little is known about the activities of shipping agents and shipping companies in influencing migration, it concludes that their advertising efforts and the effects of fierce company competition brought the prospects of the New World into the mindset of a great number of Europeans. It requests further scholarly research into the impact of agents on migration patterns


Author(s):  
John D. Swain

Itō Michio’s creative endeavors spanned dance, theatre, and film, just as his career spanned the Pacific and the Atlantic Oceans, however, his life as a creative artist was one of World War II’s international cultural casualties. After decades of work with people such as W. B. Yeats in Ireland, the Washington Square Players and Martha Graham in New York, and the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles, Itō was repatriated to Japan in 1943 where he continued to teach and choreograph until his death. The first son of an old samurai family whose parents encouraged their children to pursue any avenue of interest, Michio was the elder brother by eleven years of Itō Kunio, aka shingeki theater director Senda Koreya. Itō collaborated with Yeats on his Plays for Dancers, and is probably best known for creating the role of the Guardian of the Well in (At the Hawk’s Well) 1916. His work as a dancer and choreographer in the United States is not as well remembered because almost none of that extensive body of work was preserved. He was to choreograph the opening and closing ceremonies of the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, but did not live to see that project materialize. Itō left Japan for Europe in 1912 to study voice. Once in Germany he became disillusioned with opera, but was entranced by the dance of Isadora Duncan, Pavlova, and Nijinsky. He decided to study modern dance, and entered the Dalcroze Institute in 1913. Much of his later work is influenced by eurythmics.


2020 ◽  
pp. 019791832092327
Author(s):  
Tianjian Lai

Unlike many other sociopolitical activities in the United States, civic engagement is not restricted by legal status and is often the initial and primary form of political action available to immigrants. Few studies, however, have disaggregated the impact of legal status on immigrants’ civic participation, despite civic engagement’s significance for immigrant incorporation and despite growing evidence of the stratifying effects of legal categories. Using Wave 1 of the Los Angeles Family and Neighborhood Survey, I nuance theories of legal status stratification by showing where legal status matters for Latino immigrants’ civic engagement and where it does not. Undocumented immigrants, I show, are significantly less likely to participate in general civic organizations, such as community and ethnic organizations, relative to documented immigrants. Likewise, undocumented mothers with undocumented children are less likely to volunteer in schools or participate in parent-teacher associations, compared to both documented mothers and undocumented mothers with documented children. By contrast, legal status does not stratify membership in religious institutions. Moreover, I theorize that undocumented immigrants’ lower levels of general civic engagement are partially mediated by access to US education, a significant site for immigrants’ civic development. This article informs understandings of legal status stratification and immigrant social incorporation.


2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 385-410
Author(s):  
Bryan Kirschen

Abstract This study explores contact between Ladino-speaking Sephardim and Spanish-speaking Latinos in New York City and Los Angeles, home to two of the largest factions of each population in the United States. While the retention of postalveolar sibilants [ʒ, dʒ, ʃ] in Ladino, corresponding to velar [x] in Spanish, helps distinguish these varieties, research has demonstrated cases where Sephardim implement the latter phone in lieu of one of the former. That such contact-induced change is a result of interaction between Sephardim and Latinos is further examined in this research. Twenty-five speakers of Ladino participated in two oral-production tasks: within-group and between-group testing. In the former, informants were paired with another speaker of Ladino; in the latter, they were paired with a speaker of Spanish. Data reveal that informants replace postalveolar sibilants with velar [x] at a rate of 18.2% within group and 76.5% between group, when direct equivalencies exist. Statistical analysis demonstrates that production of velar [x], the dependent variable, is conditioned by several independent variables, both social (age, gender, city of residence, interlocutor) and linguistic (type of lexical correspondence and origin of lexicon). Subsequent discussion considers the role of accommodation in determining the ways in which speakers select and implement variation in their speech.


2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 45-54
Author(s):  
Samuel H. Yamashita

In the 1970s, Japanese cooks began to appear in the kitchens of nouvelle cuisine chefs in France for further training, with scores more arriving in the next decades. Paul Bocuse, Alain Chapel, Joël Robuchon, and other leading French chefs started visiting Japan to teach, cook, and sample Japanese cuisine, and ten of them eventually opened restaurants there. In the 1980s and 1990s, these chefs' frequent visits to Japan and the steady flow of Japanese stagiaires to French restaurants in Europe and the United States encouraged a series of changes that I am calling the “Japanese turn,” which found chefs at fine-dining establishments in Los Angeles, New York City, and later the San Francisco Bay Area using an ever-widening array of Japanese ingredients, employing Japanese culinary techniques, and adding Japanese dishes to their menus. By the second decade of the twenty-first century, the wide acceptance of not only Japanese ingredients and techniques but also concepts like umami (savory tastiness) and shun (seasonality) suggest that Japanese cuisine is now well known to many American chefs.


2007 ◽  
Vol 30 (4) ◽  
pp. 47
Author(s):  
P. Pace-Asciak ◽  
T. Gelfand

Medical students depend on illustration to learn anatomical facts and details that may be too subtle for the written or spoken word. For surgical disciplines, learners rely on tools such as language, 2-dimensional illustrations, and 3-dimensional models to pass on important concepts. Although a photograph can convey factual information, illustration can highlight and educate the pertinent details for understanding surgical procedures, neurovascular structures, and the pathological disease processes. In order to understand the current role of medical illustration in education, one needs to look to the past to see how art has helped solve communication dilemmas when learning medicine. This paper focuses on Max Brodel (1870-1941), a German-trained artist who eventually immigrated to the United States to pursue his career as a medical illustrator. Shortly after his arrival in Baltimore, Brodel made significant contributions to medical illustration in Gynecology at John Hopkins University, and eventually in other fields of medicine such as Urology and Otolaryngology. Brodel is recognized as one of America’s most distinguished medical illustrators for creating innovative artistic techniques and founding the profession of medical illustration. Today, animated computer based art is synergistically used with medical illustration to educate students about anatomy. Some of the changes that have occurred with the advancement of computer technology will be highlighted and compared to a century ago, when illustrations were used for teaching anatomy due to the scarcity of cadavers. Schultheiss D, Udo J. Max Brodel (1870-1941) and Howard A.Kelly (1858-1943) – Urogynecology and the birth of modern medical illustration. European Journal of Obstetrics & gynecology and Reproductive Biology 1999; 86:113-115. Crosby C. Max Brodel: the man who put art into medicine. New York: Springer-Verlag, 1991. Papel ID. Max Brodel’s contributions to otolaryngology – Head and Neck surgery. The American Journal of Otology 1986; 7(6):460-469.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francesco Rigoli

Research has shown that stress impacts on people’s religious beliefs. However, several aspects of this effect remain poorly understood, for example regarding the role of prior religiosity and stress-induced anxiety. This paper explores these aspects in the context of the recent coronavirus emergency. The latter has impacted dramatically on many people’s well-being; hence it can be considered a highly stressful event. Through online questionnaires administered to UK and USA citizens professing either Christian faith or no religion, this paper examines the impact of the coronavirus crisis upon common people’s religious beliefs. We found that, following the coronavirus emergency, strong believers reported higher confidence in their religious beliefs while non-believers reported increased scepticism towards religion. Moreover, for strong believers, higher anxiety elicited by the coronavirus threat was associated with increased strengthening of religious beliefs. Conversely, for non-believers, higher anxiety elicited by the coronavirus thereat was associated with increased scepticism towards religious beliefs. These observations are consistent with the notion that stress-induced anxiety enhances support for the ideology already embraced before a stressful event occurs. This study sheds light on the psychological and cultural implications of the coronavirus crisis, which represents one of the most serious health emergencies in recent times.


Author(s):  
Anne Nassauer

This book provides an account of how and why routine interactions break down and how such situational breakdowns lead to protest violence and other types of surprising social outcomes. It takes a close-up look at the dynamic processes of how situations unfold and compares their role to that of motivations, strategies, and other contextual factors. The book discusses factors that can draw us into violent situations and describes how and why we make uncommon individual and collective decisions. Covering different types of surprise outcomes from protest marches and uprisings turning violent to robbers failing to rob a store at gunpoint, it shows how unfolding situations can override our motivations and strategies and how emotions and culture, as well as rational thinking, still play a part in these events. The first chapters study protest violence in Germany and the United States from 1960 until 2010, taking a detailed look at what happens between the start of a protest and the eruption of violence or its peaceful conclusion. They compare the impact of such dynamics to the role of police strategies and culture, protesters’ claims and violent motivations, the black bloc and agents provocateurs. The analysis shows how violence is triggered, what determines its intensity, and which measures can avoid its outbreak. The book explores whether we find similar situational patterns leading to surprising outcomes in other types of small- and large-scale events: uprisings turning violent, such as Ferguson in 2014 and Baltimore in 2015, and failed armed store robberies.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document