Discoveries

Illegal Limbo

In 1982, the Supreme Court ruled that children of undocumented immigrants have the right to a free public school education alongside native-born children. But when these undocumented kids leave high school, they transition from protected child to illegal immigrant. That is, the laws support the undocumented child, but not the undocumented adult they’ll eventually become. Roberto G. Gonzales (American Sociological Review, August 2011) explores how these youth experience their status transformation through interviews with 150 “1.5-generation” Latinos in California.

Adolescents, Gonzales writes, first recognize their illegal status in their late teens, when their lack of a Social Security number prohibits such rites of passage as getting a part-time job or a driver’s license. Assimilation alongside their native-born peers led these kids to believe they would have more opportunities than their parents, but undocumented youth get a harsh reality check at graduation: no papers means no future. The young adults must “learn to be illegal,” which includes re-evaluating their future goals. And parents—who often believed that their children would have citizenship by the time they reached adulthood—don’t prepare them for this transition.

Despite speaking fluent English and earning high school (and sometimes college) degrees, undocumented young adults end up no better off in the labor market than their uneducated parents. Gonzales argues that the system has created a “new disenfranchised underclass”—2.1 million young adults who are stuck in what might be called “illegal limbo.” K.H.

A man and his son wave the flag of El Salvador at an immigration rally in New York City.

Let’s Talk About Sex

A conversation starter.

Especially when the conversation is about their own sexual history, most people have a hard time talking about sex. This taboo, though, has serious consequences: the failure to talk safe sex can turn into a failure to practice safe sex.

The solution? Settle in for some Sex and the City. In their June 2011 Journal of Communication article, Emily Moyer-Gusé, Adrienne Chung, and Parul Jain showed three groups of people different episodes of the HBO series: one in which the main characters discuss sexual history and STI testing, one in which there is an STI plotline but no discussion among characters, and an episode that didn’t address sexual health at all. Immediately after watching the episodes, the participants assessed their own sexual-talk activities. Two weeks later, when asked again, those participants who had watched the episode with sexual discussion were now more likely to have engaged in conversations about sexual health than the other groups.

The authors believe this isn’t only due to the social scripts TV shows offer, but also to viewers’ indentification with characters. When watching successful individuals openly discuss sexual health, research participants were motivated to begin their own discussions. This is to say, the messenger seems to matter as much as the message. S.L.

Changing Times in Sport

High school athletics. Some laud the locker room as a place where adolescents and teenagers learn the values of hard work and perseverance, while academics criticize it as a site of conservative masculine values and homophobia. Well, now one academic finds reason for hope: Eric Anderson’s recent study in Gender & Society (April 2011) finds a marked shift toward a more inclusive and supportive version of masculinity where teammates are teammates, regardless of sexual-orientation.

Anderson replicates his own research from ten years prior in conducting interviews with gay male high school athletes on their experiences coming out. In his first study, the only athletes willing to be interviewed had been boys in non-contact sports (running, swimming, and tennis) who were also the top athletes on their team. For this select group, their athleticism counter-balanced the negative stigma of being gay, though even these stars feared bullying, harassment, and violence.

The 2010 sample was composed of players of varying skill and from an array of sports (even contact sports like football). They told Anderson they faced little discrimination from their peers, and many—including a gay soccer player who said, “Gay doesn’t mean gay anymore” —felt even the derogatory terms have lost much of their homophobic sting.

While there are some limitations to the study (the boys are primarily white and middle-class) Anderson’s work clearly suggests that times are changing. For younger generations being athletic and being gay are no longer mutually exclusive. Perhaps most indicative of change is the confusion some study subjects expressed as to why teammates would care about sexuality. As a young, openly gay, high school runner expresses, “I knew it wouldn’t be a problem. Why would it be?” K.G.

An Egalitarian Anomaly

Changing gender equality attitudes

Source: Cotter, David, Joan M. Hermsen, and Reeve Vanneman, “The End of the Gender Revolution? Gender Role Attitudes from 1977 to 2008,” American Journal of Sociology (January 2011). Data from General Social Survey, 1977-2008.

Beliefs regarding women’s political ability, parenting roles, and presence in the workforce reported by the General Social Survey over the past three decades indicate an overall trend toward gender equality, but also reveal a surprising dip in the late 1990s. Looking for explanations, David Cotter, Joan M. Hermsen, and Reeve Vanneman (American Journal of Sociology, July 2011) conclude that the usual suspects—increases in women’s workforce participation, income, and years of schooling, along with broader ideological changes—cannot account for this curious pattern, as they all rose, slowly but steadily. They argue the drop in the ‘90s likely reflects cultural shifts toward support for women’s equality and choices, especially the choice to stay at home with their children. S.M.

New House on the Prairie

Continuing the dramatic changes in immigration patterns seen in the 1990s, Hispanics contributed a whopping 55 percent of all non-metro population growth in the U.S. from 2000-2007. One key aspect of this transformation has been a rapid increase in the rural Latino populations of the Midwest and Southeast. William Kandel and his fellow researchers analyze the importance of place for the economic well-being of these immigrants (Rural Sociology, March 2011).

Their article suggests that new rural destinations don’t raise an immigrant’s likelihood of securing full-time, year-round employment, but they do offer greater chances of home ownership. It’s a trade-off: Latino immigrants may be willing to accept lower earnings if they can still build home equity in lower-cost rural areas.

Such immigrant strategies are precariously situated within the restrictive policy environments of new rural destinations, some of which curtail immigrant integration, social mobility, and economic well-being. As immigration policies increasingly fall under the purview of state and/or local level governments, the new pattern of Latino immigration will demand responsible legislative action. S.E.

Moving Up… or Just Moving?

The “Moving to Opportunity” study had a surprising result: moving out of a poor neighborhood reduced girls’ crime and delinquency, but after a few years, boys who moved had more substance abuse and property crime arrests than boys who remained in their original neighborhood. In The American Journal of Sociology (January 2011), Susan Clampet-Lundquist, Kathryn Edin, Jeffrey R. Kling, and Greg J. Duncan argue that benefits and costs of “moving up” seem to be distributed in gendered ways.

Interviews with 86 teens in Baltimore and Chicago revealed several key differences in the way girls and boys spend their time in and out of school. Girls are more likely to spend time in the neighborhoods of family members or friends from school or work or to go to “places” like the mall or downtown, often to participate in structured activities. On the other hand, boys’ leisure time is less structured and spent “on the corner.” When they moved, boys also tended to choose the most delinquent youth in their new neighborhoods as friends, while girls were more selective, typically seeking ties through school and work. Additionally, boys who relocated were the least likely of any group to be in close contact with a father figure. The different ways boys and girls “hang out” mean that a change of scenery isn’t enough to improve boys’ behavior.

The different ways boys and girls “hang out” can mean a change of scenery isn’t enough to improve boys’ trajectories.

In a related study, new research by Patrick Sharkey and Felix Elwert (American Journal of Sociology, June 2011) finds that neighborhoods can actually influence child development across generations.

Sharkey and Elwert used data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics and the 2002 Child Development Supplement to show that neighborhood inequality cannot be fully captured at a single point in a child’s life or even within a single generation. For example, an individual’s neighborhood may affect her educational attainment as a child, which then might influence her occupational status and income as an adult, which in turn may influence the environment in which she raises her own child and that child’s cognitive ability. In fact, family exposure to neighborhood poverty over two consecutive generations reduces the average child’s cognitive ability.

If some of the most powerful effects of neighborhoods stem from prior generations, it’s not surprising that programs like “Moving to Opportunity” have produced relatively small impacts thus far. Positive effects may take generations. S.M./H.N.B.

Heart Rate and Your ‘Hood

An Americorps NCCC volunteer plays double dutch with kids in Washington, D.C.

Physical activity improves your health—your gym coach wasn’t lying. But if you live in a run-down neighborhood, you might be less likely to run at all. Janne Boone-Heinonen and her colleagues (Social Science & Medicine, March 2011) set out to find the connection between neighborhood wealth and neighborhood health. Race seems to play a key role.

Members of a large heart health data set, a group of U.S. young adults, were tracked over 15 years, as researchers noted their physical activity and where they lived. Among white residents (who all had relatively high levels of both), physical activity and socioeconomic status were loosely connected. Among blacks, however, high neighborhood deprivation was incrementally connected to physical activity. In fact, black residents in the most deprived neighborhoods had 16 percent lower activity levels than those living in the least deprived areas. These findings held even when controlling for individual income and education.

Recognizing such racial and residential disparities may be essential in targeting preventive health-based initiatives. Pumping in some resources could get the right hearts pumping. A.C.

The First Class on Class

Reproduction of social inequality within the education system isn’t surprising news, but that the seemingly harmless interactions of four-year olds might widen the divide between the wealthy and the working-class demands attention.

Observing at a mixed-income preschool, Jessi Streib (Qualitative Sociology, March 2011) witnessed how the children’s class background was made evident in their linguistic styles, as early as preschool. In particular, the upper-class children spoke constantly, interrupted students and teachers, and asked for help more than working-class children. And when it came to arguing over toys, the upper-class kids were equipped with the tools to ”negotiate”—generally getting what they wanted. As Streib explains, the speech divide “effectively silences working-class students, gives them less power, and allows them fewer opportunities to develop their language skills.”

Conversations about reducing inequality often center on education, and mixed-class schools are commonly celebrated as a way to level the playing field. Unintentionally, though, the children will mirror the very inequalities that their families have experienced. By being ignored and silenced from a young age, working-class students can even develop the impression that school is not the place for them. Streib’s research points out that simply throwing everyone together in the same classroom is not itself a solution—class still happens. K.G.

Not All Publicity is Good

We know celebrities can influence people’s attitudes and behavior, so it makes sense for an organization looking to launch a public-service campaign to recruit a star as its “public face.” But does it matter if that celebrity has a skeleton or two in their closet?

In research reported in Social Psychology Quarterly (March 2011), Siegwart Lindenberg, Janneke F. Joly, and Diederik A. Stapel, social scientists in the Netherlands, conducted experiments distinguishing between two groups of celebrities: “untarnished” celebrities (people who were congenial and well-liked or athletes in the midst of a winning streak) and “tarnished” celebrities (say, Hollywood and TV’s “bad boys” or unsuccessful athletes). The researchers used images of these celebrities to create advertisements promoting an anti-littering campaign. Experiment participants who were shown advertisements with untarnished celebrities reported feeling a heightened obligation to pick up after themselves. This pattern did not hold for the tarnished celebrities: respondents who saw their images were less responsive to—or even disdainful of—the campaign’s message.

While Charlie Sheen and Lindsay Lohan have unparalleled fame, that notoriety can’t be counted on for public service messages—you’ll need someone squeaky-clean to get the good works done. C.W.

Prodigal Sons and Daughters

Parents work to find whatever will help their kids.

When kids get in trouble with the law, parents also tend to dish out some punishment. Tightening the purse strings might seem like an obvious move, but according to Sonja Siennick (Criminology, February 2011), young adult offenders receive more financial assistance from their parents than their peers—and even siblings—who don’t break the law. It’s not that these kids are in more dire financial straits; rather, they face a variety of other life circumstances that trigger parental assistance.

Often, being a young offender also means being unmarried, having prior experiences in the justice system, living at home, and having health problems. These circumstances may prompt parents to recognize that these growing children are struggling more and making slower progress toward successful adulthood than their other children. Helping out with money, at that point, seems a small price to pay to support their kids. S.L.

Hollywood’s Faculty

It’s a far cry from 8 am lecture.

Tweed jacket with elbow patches: check. Glasses dangling around the neck by a chain: check. Avuncular desk-perching: check. Most students enter college with preconceived notions about higher education, and those include expectations of how their professors will act or look. In a recent article (Teaching Sociology, 2011) Mari Dagaz and Brent Harger explored 48 popular films released between 1985 and 2005 to indentify just how professor characters are portrayed—and taught.

Even when depicting the often-progressive world of academia, Hollywood usually resorted to perpetuating traditional gender norms. According to the researchers, female professors in the films were pitched as sensitive nurturers teaching “soft” subjects in the social sciences, humanities, and arts. The only times a female professor escaped from these feminine confines was if she was shown in male-dominated fields like law and medicine. Conversely, male profs were depicted as disinterested in being a teacher and sometimes incapable of filling a nurturing role. These men were generally linked to masculine views of dominance, intelligence, and physical strength.

While some of the films in Dagaz and Harger’s sample are far from “high-brow” (think Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2: The Secret of the Ooze), the academics in them definitely contribute to the perception of professors in the broader public sphere. If Intro to Soc students arrive expecting either Indiana Jones or The Nutty Professor, they’re sure to be disappointed. A.C.

Immigrants Are Good for Women

Immigration is blamed for a lot in the U.S., but scholars have recently pointed out a number of benefits that immigrants can bring to communities. Emily M. Wright and Michael L. Benson’s findings (Social Problems, 2010) add to that list by showing that neighborhoods with a large number of immigrants have lower reported rates of intimate partner violence.

Examining survey data from the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods (1994-1997), Wright and Benson argue that the lower rates in largely immigrant neighborhoods are related to certain cultural norms, like a belief that family fighting is not a private matter, as well as and friendship ties that immigrants bring with them to their communities.

This finding illustrates the “immigrant paradox.” That is, even though low-income immigrants are subject to many of the same poor social and economic conditions as their neighbors, their outcomes are generally better than their native-born counterparts. In fact, a high immigrant presence in neighborhoods actually seems to buffer against intimate partner violence. This is one social problem for which native-born Americans can take all the credit. K.H.

Quit Pickin’ on Me!

Avid Oprah viewers and most parents know that school bullying poses risks for today’s youth. While common conceptions of bullies produce images of individual hooligans, Kirk Williams and Nancy Guerra (Social Problems, 2011) reveal that the amount of bullying in a school is really a social product.

To explain the connection between a bounded school context and bullying, Williams and Guerra applied the notion of collective efficacy—the perceptions of cohesion, trust, and willingness to act on behalf of the group—which has typically been used to explain a similar relationship between neighborhoods and crime. For two years, fifth, eighth, and eleventh graders in rural and urban Colorado schools answered questions about how well they “get along” with their peers and teachers, whether their peers and teachers would “help out” if they saw bullying, and the extent of their own brow-beating behaviors.

The authors compared changes in collective efficacy and bullying between the fall and spring, considering a school’s initial level of bullying in the fall semester. In the school context, a sense of togetherness and trust, as well as peer and teacher informal controls, all worked to inhibit schoolyard meanies from their menacing ways. S.M.