Browsing by Subject "Immigration"

This thesis investigates the work and life experiences of an under-discussed and female-dominant Chinese diasporic community, Chinese immigrant teachers in American K12 education. I argue that, firstly, while being privileged as high-skilled professionals and enjoying more mobility compared to their domestic sisters, Chinese female immigrant teachers are also subject to the precarity and intersectionality deriving from the underfunded American education and their triple marginality of being women, Asian and first-generation immigrants. Secondly, the structural inequality of gendered labor performed in both the professional and domestic roles of female teachers tends to be reinforced in the diaspora. By adopting mixed approaches of interview-based ethnography and digital ethnography, this thesis offers a critical alternative to the masculine and material version of Chinese immigration and contributes to a more extensive intellectual effort to understand the systematic racial and gender inequality associated with globalization.

The increasing ethnic diversity among Black people in the United States is growing at a near exponential rate due to the migration of Afro-Caribbean, Afro-Latino, and African immigrants to the United States. This study is an endeavor to understand how this increasing diversity in ethnicity among Blacks in the U.S. will influence the boundaries of Black identity and Black politics. I ultimately aim to gain a sense of the processes by which Black immigrants come to embrace or reject a racial identity, the mechanisms by which African-Americans become more accepting of "cross-cutting" political issues, and the extent to which an intraracial coalition and a broader, more inclusive racial consciousness--a diasporic consciousness--might develop among Black immigrants and African Americans. This study utilizes survey data, in-depth interviews with African Americans and Black immigrants, and controlled experiments to examine the questions presented here. This study finds that African Americans and Black immigrants are accepting of a Black identity that is inclusive of ethnic diversity, largely due to shared racialized experiences. Moreover, this study concludes that while group consciousness influences the behaviors and attitudes of Black immigrants and African Americans in very similar ways, there are important differences between the groups that will need to be considered in future Black politics studies. Finally, this study finds that there are obstacles to raising a more inclusive racial consciousness because African Americans and Black immigrants do not see eye-to-eye on what issues should be be prioritized on a unified Black political agenda.

Examination of the moralized risk discourse that occurs during moral panics can help us better understand how discourse supports neoliberal modes of governance. Using the moral panics about crack babies in the 1980's and illegal immigration in the 2000's to conduct a content analysis of almost 1500 newspaper articles, television transcripts and congressional hearings, I found that discourses of fairness, authority, and purity supported techniques of surveillance and control that contribute to the maintenance of racial and class boundaries in the US.

My dissertation examines the circular transit of ideas about race and identity. Through transnational archival research and oral histories in North Carolina and throughout Mexico, I argue that migrants' ideas about race differed depending on their sending community. I use the experiences of migrants from Cherán, Michoacán, to emphasize that race making is a fluid process. Though historians conventionally have treated ethnic and racial categories as separate, if often intersecting, I treat them as fundamentally similar and interchangeable. While the majority of historical scholarship on Mexicans in the United States focuses on areas that were once part of Mexico (like the US Southwest), my study attends to how ideas about race form differently in regions traditionally isolated from Mexican migration, like North Carolina. This research reveals that indigenous migrants' identities developed and transformed differently, intimately linked to the ways racial and ethnic histories have been propagated and lived by Mexican citizens in diverse regions of Mexico. My dissertation also demonstrates that migrants not only adopted the racial ideas of their receiving state, but they also transmitted racial knowledge back to their home communities. In doing so, this history of migration to the United States both begins and ends outside of the country. In our increasingly global and transnational context, my project changes our understanding of how racial formations are generated in a transitional world.

This dissertation consists of two related essays on the economics of immigration. The first chapter presents new evidence on whether the earnings of foreign-born workers grow faster than that of similarly educated natives. We compare cross-sectional and panel analyses of assimilation in the U.S. context. The panel data allow us to control for fixed unobserved heterogeneity in earnings. As others have found for earlier entry cohorts, we find that immigrants with less than a college education start at an earnings disadvantage but converge toward native earnings with time in the U.S. in the cross-section. Lower earning immigrants selectively leave on-the-books jobs. We also find substantial selection among low earnings natives who also tend to work less and leave the labor force earlier. Both groups display selection and the net result is that controlling for fixed unobserved heterogeneity has little effect on the relative earnings growth of low-skilled immigrants.

We find very different results for high-skilled workers. In the cross-sectional analysis, immigrants whose highest level of education is a bachelor's degree exhibit a decline in relative earnings with time in the U.S. However, for these immigrants, the inclusion of an individual fixed effect reveals faster earnings growth relative to natives. Among both immigrants and natives, lower earners selectively leave the covered sector. However, because low earning immigrants who remain in the sample become more likely to work with time in the U.S., the net result is that the average earnings of immigrants diminish. These results indicate that controlling for individual heterogeneity is important in estimating the economic assimilation of immigrants.

The second chapter examines the role of the workplace in earnings assimilation. Using an earnings panel much like in the first chapter, we consider whether job characteristics such as firm size, industry, and firm specific tenure can account for earnings differences between native and foreign-born workers. We focus on workers with less than a college education and find that the job characteristics considered account for almost all of the faster earnings growth of high school dropouts and half of the faster earnings growth of high school graduate immigrants. Rising relative job tenure of immigrants is the most important factor.

Immigrants rely on social networks upon arrival to their country of destination to access resources, find a job, and begin the process of incorporation. However, the contours of how and under what circumstances networks support a job search or facilitate assimilation remain unexplored. In this dissertation, I look at the intersection of migration, social networks and employment to shed light on both the limitations and benefits of social networks for immigrant incorporation. In Chapter 1, I study whether return migrants use social networks to find a job when they return to their home country. In doing so, I contribute to the academic debate on whether immigrants lose or maintain their connections to friends and family when they leave. Using Colombia as a case study, I draw on data from two years of Colombian nationally representative household surveys conducted in 2016 and 2017. I use a Difference-in-Differences strategy and exploit a mass deportation event of Colombian migrants from Venezuela in 2015 which prompted a wave of return-migrants. This yields three main findings: (1) Return migrants are more likely to use networks in their search than never migrants; (2) social networks are a last resort in return migrants’ job search, and (3) jobs found through networks for return migrants may be lower quality than jobs found through other means. This paper contributes to the literature on return migrant integration, and speaks to an important question in the literature: Will friends and family still be there for you after you’ve left? In Chapter 2, co-authored with Giovanna Merli and Ted Mouw, we study how immigrants’ personal networks are related to their migration experience and key indicators of assimilation. We draw on novel data that includes network data for over 500 immigrants and use model-based clustering to understand the assimilation of a particular case of first-generation immigrants: Chinese immigrants in a sparsely dispersed in a mixed suburban/urban area (Raleigh-Durham). We identify four Chinese immigrant typologies, Chinese Friendship Networks, Socially Embedded, Undecided Newcomers, and Economically Integrated, which are distinguished simultaneously by their social networks and their demographic characteristics. In turn, we find different clusters show different patterns in assimilation indicators. These findings contribute to a growing literature that calls for more granular study of immigrant groups so we can better understand heterogeneity in their outcomes. In Chapter 3, I study the limits of social networks for the immigrant job search. The idea that migrants draw on their networks to obtain employment upon arrival at their destination is central to the immigrant integration literature. However, despite the wealth of evidence on migrants’ use of networks, little is known about when and why migrants are willing to help newcomers find work. To study this, I deploy an online vignette experiment among Latin American immigrants to the United States. I find that immigrants are more likely to provide job search support to other immigrants from their home country but are less likely to lend support to newcomers that pose a reputational risk. I also find that tie strength is important – respondents in our sample are more likely to help a close friend than a stranger, which can help immigrants overcome the difficulties associated with a competitive labor market.

This thesis, in part, seeks to provide a foundation for understanding the Christian call to ministry with those who are poor and suffering, specifically with the asylum seeker. It is a resource and formation guide for congregations and individuals sensing a call from God to extend themselves in this way. The project provides a foundation of Christian history and Scripture that speaks to the call of Christ to deny self and follow him in ministry with the least—those who are hungry, thirsty, poor, and forgotten. Included is some guidance on how to structure a ministry of this sort, important questions to consider, and reflection upon leadership challenges that arise in this type of work. It tells the story of one congregation’s approach to developing a ministry of a hospitality house for asylum-seekers and why churches should recover the discipline of hospitality.

This cross sectional study explores migration, intergenerational influences and social isolation as determinants of early pregnancy in Lujan's rural communities, which are home to generations of migrants from neighboring nations and northern provinces. Results suggest that, even when controlling for socioeconomics, migrant families and individuals experience higher levels of social isolation than their native-born neighbors; that migrant females are more likely to have a pregnancy before the age of 17; and that although first-generation born females (daughter of at least one migrant parent) have a lower average of age at first pregnancy, first-generation born females show a stronger trend of delaying first pregnancy than native-born and migrant females, diverging from the fertility norms of their parents' place of origin, and adopting the fertility norms of Lujan.

Addressing both migrant health and adolescent health can be challenging in low-resource settings. However, as the results of this study show, addressing the determinants of social isolation, which is significantly associated with high levels of adolescent fertility and adverse health outcomes, may be as simple as extending opportunities to engage in extracurricular activities, and strengthening social networks.

A small cohort of 119 women and girls were surveyed, and a total of 26 different places of origin were represented, including many of Argentina's Northern provinces and neighboring countries. This cross-sectional study was guided by the two following hypotheses:

1) First-generation born daughters and migrants have higher odds of having an early first pregnancy than their native-born counterparts.

2) First-generation born daughters will show a higher degree of divergence in age at first pregnancy from their mothers than native-born and migrant daughters, exhibiting successful fertility assimilation.

Hypothesis one, tested using multivariate logistic regression models, was partially supported by the results. Through mechanisms unique to migration, such as the distinct implications that rurality and social isolation have on migrant communities, migrants have higher odds of having an early first pregnancy than their native-born counterparts. Results for first-generation born (daughters of at least one migrant), although not statistically significant, do suggest that they as well have higher odds of having an early first pregnancy than their native-born counterparts.

Hypothesis two, tested using modified difference in differences models, was supported by the results of this study. Overall, first-generation born show a higher degree of divergence in age at first pregnancy from their mothers than native-born and migrants. First generation are having their first pregnancies at an average of 1.18 years later than their mothers, where native born and migrants overall divergence is negatively directed, and insignificant. The analyses show that intergenerational divergence in age at first pregnancy is responsive to period conditions as well as migration and/or assimilation processes. Overall, across the time periods (age cohorts), and migration categories, divergence suggests a slow but positive direction, where girls are starting to delay their first pregnancies. Again, this trend has the strongest degree in first generation born, suggesting successful fertility assimilation. The versatility of the data collected in this study allows for exploration of inter-generational influences and migration as both separate and inter-related mechanisms by which reproductive health outcomes are affected.

1) First-generation born daughters and migrants have higher odds of having an early first pregnancy.

2) First-generation born daughters will show more deviation in age at first pregnancy from their mothers than native-born daughters.

Through logistic regression analyses, both hypotheses were tested. Hypothesis one was supported by the results. Through mechanisms unique to migration, such as a unique experience of rurality and social isolation, migrants and daughters of migrants have increased odds of having an early first pregnancy. Hypothesis two was not supported by the results of this study, and show that native-born females have a strong and negative deviation in age at first pregnancy from their mothers, migrants have a strong positive deviation in age at first pregnancy from their mothers, and first-generation born have no significant deviation.

While not initially intended, this study allows for exploration of inter-generational influences and migration both separate and inter-related mechanisms by which reproductive health determinants are affected.

This dissertation consists of three separate studies that examine patterns of immigrant incorporation in the United States. The first study tests competing hypotheses derived from conflicting theoretical frameworks−transnational perspective and cross-national framework− to determine whether transnational engagement and incorporation are concurrent processes among Chinese, Indian, and Mexican immigrants. This study measures transnational engagement and incorporation as home and home country asset ownership using multi-panel, nationally representative data from the New Immigrant Survey (NIS) collected in 2003 and 2007. Results support a cross-border framework and indicate that transnational asset ownership decreases among all immigrant groups, while U.S. asset ownership increases. Findings from this study also indicate that due to disadvantaged pre-migration SES and low human capital, Mexican immigrants are less likely than other immigrants to own home country assets during the year after receiving their green card.

The second study examines the doubly disadvantaged position of elderly immigrants in the U.S. wealth distribution by applying the life course perspective to the dominance-differentiation theory of immigrant wealth stratification. I analyze elderly immigrant wealth in respect to U.S.-born seniors and younger immigrant cohorts using two data sets: the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) and the New Immigrant Survey (NIS). The Survey of Income and Program Participation (2001 to 2005) is a nationally representative survey of U.S. households. The first series of analyses reveals a significant wealth gap between U.S.- and foreign-born seniors which is most pronounced among the wealthiest households in my sample; however, U.S. tenure explains much of this difference. The second series of analyses suggests that elderly immigrants experience greater barriers to incorporation compared to their younger counterparts.

In the third study, I apply a transnational lens to the forms-of-capital and opportunity structure models of entrepreneurship in order to analyze the role of foreign resources in immigrant business start-ups. I propose that home country property use represents financial, social, and class resources that facilitate immigrant entrepreneurship. I test my hypotheses using survey data on Latin American immigrants from the Comparative Immigrant Entrepreneurship Project. Findings from these analyses suggest that home country asset ownership provides financial and social capital that is related to an increased likelihood of immigrant entrepreneurship.

The West Michigan Dutch enclave of the Christian Reformed Church has made private, Christian education a centerpoint of its tradition. While Horace Mann was advocating for national common schools, forming youth into civil religious adherents, this group chose to be separatist. What began with one school in 1856 has now become a network (Christian Schools International) of nearly 500 Reformed Christian schools enrolling 100,000 students. When Grand Rapids Christian High School was founded as a spin-off from Calvin College and Seminary in 1920, there was a clear theological mission steeped in a Kuyperian worldview. Although there have been numerous studies of schools in America, none focus on the significance of mission statement (its evolution over time and its implementation within the educational community). This school developed in a city whose racialized geography allowed the community to prosper as white American Protestant citizens insofar as they were willing to assimilate. This school currently displays American capitalism and an evangelicalism which extends beyond strict Calvinism. Although it began as an insular site for ethnic and religious formation, Grand Rapids Christian High School now aims to prepare American Christians for success and servant-leadership in the world.

This dissertation seeks to describe the historical, sociological, and theological foundations of Grand Rapids Christian Schools and to trace changes over time; to observe the formational practices which occur in this educational community; and to consider which theological and pedagogical precepts might be useful in this particular context. This project involves an ethnographic study at Grand Rapids Christian High School and a constructive theological and pedagogical response. Along with data gleaned from historical archives about the school’s founding and development, there are daily observations and interviews. The goal is to explore the explicit manifestations of the school’s theological vision and the implicit practices that reinforce or undermine it. Potential results include heightened awareness of the school’s theological vision throughout the school community and increased connectivity between theory and praxis. By using the microcosm of one school, this research will highlight the place of myriad Christian schools in the American educational landscape. My work brings history, theology, and pedagogy together in order to trace the cultural forces that shape learning communities.