Archive: Nov 2014

Racial and ethnic minorities are more likely to be incarcerated and are given longer sentences relative to majority groups. However, to what extent are non citizens punished differently than citizens? Michael Light, Michael Massoglia, and Ryan King, using federal court data from the United States Sentencing Commission, find that some of the incarceration disparity attributed to ethnicity/race is due to citizenship status.

Controlling for numerous factors, such as criminal history and offense type, the researchers find that “noncitizen offenders are over four times more likely to be incarcerated,” and that noncitizens receive roughly an additional 3.5 months of additional prison time.  Further, the effect of citizenship on incarceration is larger than other factors such as race, offense type, and gender. The researchers also find that while the odds of incarceration for both documented and undocumented immigrants are raised, it is the undocumented individuals who are at a higher odds of being imprisoned relative to documented immigrants. The effect of citizenship on incarceration has in fact increased steadily from 1992-2008, which was a time of heavy immigration into the United States.

So noncitizens are more likely to be incarcerated and for longer periods when they are indeed convicted. But why? The authors suggest a few reasons – First, legal officials often have limited time and imperfect knowledge surrounding a case, and may resort to factors such as citizenship  to aid in their decision making process. Second, less integrated groups, like immigrants, have less knowledge and power when it comes to navigating America’s social structures and are more prone to disparate treatment by institutions. Finally, the dominant group (legal citizens) may perceive minority groups (immigrants) as a threat to their superior social position, and incarceration is used as a strategy to keep immigrants in a powerless position. Overall, the research here highlights how citizenship proves to be an important factor in incarceration decisions, above and beyond the usual suspects of race and ethnicity.

When disaster strikes a community, sociologists have shown that people who feel personally victimized and those who empathize strongly with victims are the most likely candidates to lend a hand. But what happens when damage crashes down on an ecosystem, rather than a city? Who comes to the rescue in an environmental crisis, and how do they focus their energies?

In a new study, sociologist Justin Farrell examines voluntary responses to the Deepwater Horizon explosion in 2010, when 2.52 million gallons of crude oil flooded the Gulf of Mexico. He uses longitudinal data from the Science of Generosity Survey to trace the actions of a nationally representative panel of adults before, shortly after, and one year past the spill. Although the oil spread over an enormous region, it did not directly harm any single community. Without a face to put on the disaster, Farrell notes that volunteers were largely unable to focus their energies on any one project. Instead, he shows that the Deepwater Horizon spill produced a general spike in voluntary contributions to a wide array of seemingly unrelated environmental projects.

Farrell argues that this case explains a great deal about what motivates volunteers in an ecological crisis. His data show that voluntary effort following the Deepwater Horizon spill was led by a strong push from environmentalists, Democrats, and people who identify strongly with community values. Farrell argues that these three groups harbor an identity rooted in caring for shared resources and the environment. For these people, failure to do something after the spill would have contradicted the values most central to their identity. In many ways, the threat becomes not only an assault on the environment, but a challenge to the volunteers’ identity. By simply acting, regardless of a central cause, the volunteers can maintain their sense of self by feeling that they contributed to a solution.

After activists targeted the company’s labor practices, Nike’s swoosh became a symbol of the ills of the global economy. But, when nearly all major clothing brands produce their wares overseas in under-supervised but certainly less expensive factories, why did Nike take the hit?

Tim Bartley and Curtis Child examine how certain corporations become the target of social movements. By focusing on the anti-sweatshop movement of the 1990s, they show that activists strategically select corporate targets, tending to focus on larger and more powerful firms and popular brands, such as Walmart, for strategic and symbolic reasons. These companies have a greater impact through their purchasing power and their iconic brands rely on public image. The bigger the target, it seems, the more vulnerable activists believe it will be, translating into more results: improved labor practices, better wages, and peer pressure on competitors.

The authors gathered data on 151 major companies in the apparel industry and thousands of media and trade journal reports on actions by advocacy groups (these included protests, leafleting, and lawsuits) meant to change labor practices in the industry from 1993 to 2000, the heyday of the anti-sweatshop movement. Smaller firms that did not have active advertising campaigns and did not have positive images were unlikely to be targeted. On the other hand, companies that already had active social responsibility initiatives, advertising campaigns, and positive public images were more likely to face the ire of activists. Further, once these “shamable” companies were targeted, they became more likely to be the focus of advocates in the future.

Bartley and Child conclude that activist’s strategies consider the cultural prominence of corporations as well as the company’s position in the global economy, determining their target’s potential to leverage social change. In this way, protest is an active social process rather than a haphazard, passionate reaction to the problems of globalization.