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Well, folks, it has been a bit of a rough week here at TSP with bad news abroad and at home. We’re thankful to be here doing what we do, though, and we’re glad to be able to share it with you. Here’s a look at what we were up to on the site this week.

The Editors’ Desk:

Refugee Realities” Doug Hartmann rounds up work on refugees from across TSP.

There’s Research on That!:

Dunce Caps and Jump Suits: Discipline and Policing in Schools.” Amber Powell and Ryan Larson look at the research on what happens when we treat students like suspects.

Discoveries:

When Visibility of Gender Nonconformity has Negative Health Consequences” by Caty Taborda. New research from Lisa R. Miller and Eric Anthony Grollman shows what daily discrimination does to the body.

 Clippings:

From Our Partners:

Scholars Strategy Network:

How the Privatization of “GED” High School Equivalency Degrees Has Created New Roadblocks for the Poor” by Janet Page-Reeves. Research shows that private education services might turn GEDs to GE-Don’ts.

Council on Contemporary Families:

What Helps Women Entrepreneurs Flourish?” Sarah Thébaud shows us how good family policy supports entrepreneurs just as much as employees.

Contexts:

Six Lessons of Suicide Bombers” by Robert J. Brym. A classic Contexts piece re-posted in light of last week’s tragic events in Paris.

Not a Snowball’s Chance for Science.” Research from Dana R. FisherJoseph Waggle, and Lorien Jasny looks at the echo chamber on climate science.

And a Few from the Community Pages:

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Map by Olivier Kugler, © New Yorker.
Map by Olivier Kugler, © New Yorker.

Last month, The New Yorker published a great, extended form piece documenting the long, complicated, terrifying, and still uncertain journey of one Syrian refugee from his homeland to a new country in Europe. “Ten Borders: One Refugee’s Epic Escape from Syria,” by Nicholas Schmidle, is certainly investigative journalism rather than social scientific analysis, but the article paints a moving, deeply human portrait of what these folks—so often marginalized, dismissed, or even demonized—are going through. Here on The Society Pages, we’ve also taken quite a few looks at different angles on migration, immigration, and the refugee experience. Here are a few pieces you may find interesting:

The Invisibility of Today’s Women Refugees,” by Katharine Donato. A TSP special feature on how female refugees’ movements are often masked by social forces that shape the timing of their moves.

‘Traditional Women’ and Modern Migration,” by Allison Nobles. Reporting new research from Anju Mary Paul in Social Forces.

Refugees and Social Instability: There’s Research on That!” by Evan Stewart and Miray Phillips. Social science on the motives and meaning of migration shows a clear difference in why refugees and migrants travel, but also how the places where they move can blur the lines between the groups.

Fifty Years of ‘New’ Immigration: Viewpoints,” by Shehzad Nadeem, John D. Skrentny, Jennifer Lee, Zulema Valdez, and and Donna R. Gabaccia. A Contexts magazine collection of essays on U.S. immigration since 1965.

And, of course, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention my latest book, Migration, Incorporation, and Change in an Interconnected World, with Contexts co-editor Syed Ali.

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Happy Friday! Be sure to stop by TSP and check out what we’ve been up to this week.

There’s Research on That!:

Prescription Drug Use on the Rise,” by Caty Taborda. How pharmaceutical companies convince us we need pills for problems we didn’t even know we had.

Discoveries:

Anti-Immigrant Rhetoric Raises Gun Sales,” by Neeraj Rajasekar. “In short, anti-immigration legislation and rhetoric can shape public attitudes, and social anxiety can predict the likelihood that locals ‘lock and load.'”

Clippings:

The Sociology of North Carolina Barbecue,” by Eamon Whalen.  John Shelton Reed talks to The New Yorker and explains how “barbecue is to the American south what wine and cheese are to Europe.”

Racial Profiling? There’s an App for That,” by Eamon Whalen. Leslie Hinkson talks to The Washington Post about the potential consequences of crime monitoring apps.

From Our Partners:

Scholars Strategy Network:

Why America’s Women of Color Have Lost Ground Since the Great Recession,” by Marion Johnson. Limited access to health insurance, minimal representation in the government, and discriminatory voter ID laws all contribute to this troubling trend.

Contexts:

College Men Having Sex With Men: Are They Exclusively Tops or Bottoms? (No),” by Eliza Brown and Paula England. Research shows that most men are “versatile” rather than always one or the other.

And a Few from the Community Pages:

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Hello everyone! With the candy consumed and the early evenings setting in, we have rounded up the latest work at TSP to brighten your morning! Here is a look at what we’ve been up to:

Special Feature:

The Invisibility of Today’s Women Refugees” by Katharine Donato.

“…most of the images I have seen are of men making the trip from Syria and other countries to Western Europe…I know that the gender composition of most displaced persons and refugees generated by warfare is balanced, half men and half women. So where are the women among these refugees?”

Office Hours:

Sharmila Rudrappa on Global Surrogacy” with Sarah Catherine BillupsSharmila Rudrappa explains why India has become an increasingly popular destination for American couples searching for affordable pregnancy assistance.

The Editors’ Desk:

Social Media and Public Engagement in the Wake of Halloween.” Doug Hartmann previews his take on public sociology as Joel Best watches the death of print.

Clippings:

Morals Win Debates” by Miray PhilipsRob Willer talks to Quartz about a better way to build bi-partisan bridges.

Churches Help Criminalized Women” by Allison NoblesSusan Sered talks to Sojourners about how sacred spaces offer social support.

Why We’ll Wait in Line” by Miray PhilipsDavid Gibson explains how we worry more about the length of the line than the length of the wait at CityLab. 

Discoveries:

When and Why Arab Americans Mobilize for Protest” by Miray Philips. New research from Wayne Santoro and Marian Azab shows how political repression brings new activists into the fold.

From Our Partners:

Scholars Strategy Network:

Does It Matter For Children If Their Parents Are Married?” by Kelly Musick and Katherine Michelmore. Unmarried parents ≠ unstable relationships, and new research shows how the effects of cohabitation are changing.

School Readiness and Equal Opportunity Start at Birth” by Richard F. Doner and Kirsten Widner. Economic inequality can set a child back long before they hit the books.

And a Few From the Community Pages:

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Julian Povey//Flickr CC.
Julian Povey//Flickr CC.

This fall I’ve been working on the address I’m supposed to give as President of the Midwest Sociological Society in Chicago this coming March (23-26). Playing off of our program theme of a year ago, it is tentatively titled: “Sociology and its Publics: The Next Generation.” Among the themes I’ve been reading about and trying to think through are the social conditions and institutional infrastructures of public engagement—and very high on that list are all the new social media forms that began to appear just as the thing we call “public sociology” was beginning to be named and championed by Michael Buroway.

If you are interested in such topics, Kieran Healy has a great piece on social media and public sociology that you should take a look at. It is based on a talk he gave recently at UC–Berkeley.

Almost as if by ESP, Joel Best of the University of Delaware sent me this little reflection he wrote about the evolution of media coverage of his research on fear and Halloween over the years. It seems both timely and appropriate to share (with his permission).

“Experiencing the Death of Print.”

In 1985, I published my research on fears of Halloween sadism, first in a sociology journal and then in Psychology Today magazine. My principal finding—that I could not find any reports of children being killed or seriously injured by contaminated treats received while trick-or-treating—struck the press as newsworthy, and I wound up giving a couple dozen interviews that year.

That was the beginning of a seasonal job. For 31 years, I have fielded late-October calls from reporters at all sorts of media—a few hundred in all, I suppose. The great majority came from newspapers. Typically, a reporter would be assigned to write a story about Halloween safety and, not really knowing how to proceed, she’d often check LEXIS-NEXIS to see what other reporters wrote on the topic the previous year, find me quoted, and then give me a call.

This year had a normal amount of traffic—eight requests for interviews, which covered the usual topics. But there was one difference: I spoke to only one newspaper reporter. All the other interviews were for podcasts, websites, or other Internet-based media.

We hear a lot about the death of print: newspapers and magazines have declining circulations. Young people, in particular, prefer to get their news through electronic means. As a result, newspapers are publishing fewer pages of news and employing fewer reporters to write stories. The inevitable result is fewer feature stories about Halloween safety, and therefore fewer print journalists contacting me. Print journalism may not be dead, but it doesn’t seem that healthy. Once again, Mills has been proven right: the sociological imagination can link my personal experiences to larger public issues.

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Happy Halloween weekend all! Before you put on your costumes, turn on your favorite scary movies, and embark on a self-induced candy coma, check out the treats we have for you over at TSP this week.

There’s Research on That!:

#ShoutYourAbortion Shouts Back at Stigma,” by Amber Powell and Jacqui Frost. Sociological research details why women have generally felt compelled to stay silent about having abortions and the potential benefits of speaking up.

Fantasy Sports and the Culture of Fandom,” by Evan Stewart and Alex Snidarich. Thinking of trying your luck on a fantasy sports website? Find out what they offer beyond the promise of money.

Clippings:

The Context of Cult Violence,” by Miray PhilipsBernadette Barton talks to Broadly Vice about the recent violence in an upstate New York church and how isolated religious groups get away with and justify abuse.

The Missing Women of Wikipedia,” by Eamon Whalen. Julia Adams talks to The Atlantic about the gender imbalance of Wikipedia’s editors.

Discoveries:

Check out “The Personal (Financial) is Political” by Evan Stewart to put Wednesday’s Republican debates in context.

From Our Partners:

Contexts:

Regulating Unpredictable Schedules to Cut Down the Chaos.” Naomi Gerstel and Dan Clawson suggest much needed changes to shift some of the burden of unpredictable schedules off of employees and onto employers.

Scholars Strategy Network:

Can Pro-Choice and Pro-Life Activists Recognize the Socioeconomic Realities of Abortion?” by Hannah Phillips. Why the two sides of the abortion debate need to come together and agree to be “pro-women.”

Council on Contemporary Families:

Promoting Marriage among Single Mothers: An Ineffective Weapon in the War on Poverty,” by Kristi Williams. What is effective? Supportive social and economic family policies.

And a Few From the Community Pages:

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Hello, everyone! TSP has been buzzing with everything from elections abroad to academics at home this week. Here’s a look at our latest work.

There’s Research on That!:

Is #MasculinitySoFragile?” Allison Nobles and Aisha Upton look at the research that makes this hashtag resonate.

Mass Incarceration’s Challenges for Black America: Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Edition.” Amber Powell rounds up research from the sociologists featured in Coates’ latest article for The Atlantic.

Discoveries:

Fact or Fiction: NFL Players More Criminal than General Population” by Amber Powell. Research from Wanda Leal, Marc Gertz, and Alex Piquero shows the answer may surprise you!

Give Methods a Chance:

Vinnie Roscigno on Mixed Methods Research. “I feel more confident when I can pull off this blending of methods…this type of sociology is poignant. It’s powerful.”

Clippings:

Men Who ‘Wait for Marriage‘” by Amber Powell. Sarah Diefendorf talks to The Huffington Post about her research on male abstinence support groups.

An Academic Bind: ‘Publish or Perish’ Means Playing It Safe” by Miray Philips. A study on the sociology of studies. So meta.

Surviving Gun Violence” by Eamon Whalen. “Getting shot really changes a person’s social world”

From Our Partners:

Scholars Strategy Network:

The Complexities of Black Youth Suicide” by Kimya N. Dennis

Contexts:

Would you empty your bank account for…” Take the poll and tell us who you would rescue!

Something’s Going on North of the Border, Eh?” Howard Ramos gives us a look at the Canadian elections this past week.

And a Few from the Community Pages:

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Happy Friday everyone! We’ve got lots of great new stuff on the site this week, so be sure to stop by and check it out!

There’s Research on That!:

In “The Politics of Pink,” Sarah Catherine Billups reviews research that complicates the “pink culture” surrounding breast cancer awareness campaigns.

Discoveries:

‘Traditional Women’ and Modern Migration” by Allison NoblesAnju Mary Paul finds that, despite what looks to be a break from traditional gender norms, migrant women often frame their movement as a means to fulfill their roles as mothers and wives.

Office Hours:

Joanna Kempner talks to Matt Gunther about the “Gender Politics of Migraine.”

Clippings:

Discrimination Harms Transgender Health,” by Allison NoblesLisa R. Miller and Eric Anthony Grollman talk to US News about the disproportionate discrimination trans people experience and how that relates to poor health outcomes.

Can Being Buried Alive Be a Good Thing?” by Neeraj RajasekarMargee Kerr talks to ABC News about the benefits of overcoming our fears.

From Our Partners:

Scholars Strategy Network:

Are Gender Stereotypes A Problem For Female Candidates?” by Nichole Bauer.

Contexts:

Pete Wells: Nytimes Food Critic, Accidental Sociologist,” by Josh Page.

What 5 Disciplines (Not Sociology) Say About Ex-offender Re-entry,” by Brittany Dernberger

And a Few from the Community Pages:

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Hello everyone! Here’s a look at what TSP has been up to this week.

The Editors’ Desk:

Thoughts on immigration policy and race,” by Doug Hartmann, on the 50th anniversary of the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act.

There’s Research on That!:

Corporate Deviance” Ryan Larson and Amber Powell look at what Volkswagen can teach us about how organizations decide to cheat the system.

Catholic Culture and the Papal Politics of Social Justice” by Jack Delehanty. The Papal visit highlights long-standing political divides in the Catholic Church.

Discoveries:

Higher Education Lowers Depression” by Sarah Catherine Billups. New work from Shawn Bauldry captures the difference a degree makes for disadvantaged populations.

Clippings:

Over-conforming to Masculinity? Don’t Shoot” by Miray Philips. In the wake of a shooting at Oregon’s Umpqua Community College, Tristan Bridges talks to The Christian Science Monitor.

The Influential Yet Forgotten Filipino DJs Of The Bay Area” by Eamon Whalen. Oliver Wang recaps his dissertation work for Vice.

Polls Produce, Rather Than Simply Reflect, Trends in Religious Identification” by Jacqui Frost. Robert Wuthnow discusses his new book over at Religion Dispatches. 

From Our Partners:

Scholars Strategy Network:

How Erratic Schedules Penalize Workers.” by Naomi Gerstel. “Just-in-time” scheduling is great for employers, but just not enough for working families that need a stable workday.

Contexts:

Black in Black Rock City.” Steven Thrasher explores race at Burning Man.

And a Few From the Community Pages:

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President Lyndon Baines Johnson signing the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 on Liberty Island (Lyndon B. Johnson Library Collection/Yoichi R. Okamoto)
President Lyndon Baines Johnson signing the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 on Liberty Island (Lyndon B. Johnson Library Collection/Yoichi R. Okamoto)

This weekend marked the 50th anniversary of the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act (also known as the Hart-Cellar Act). In the week ahead we are going to recognize this transformative piece of legislation–not only was it a complete overhaul of immigration policies and patterns of migration, it has had huge, if often not fully appreciated impacts on American culture and society–by highlighting a series of recent postings, commentaries, and reflections from sociologists and other social scientists that have appeared of late on the TSP homepage and through our social media. These will include great contributions from sociologists including Richard Alba, Nancy Foner, Douglas Massey, and John Skrentney, as well as Minnesota’s own superstar historian Erika Lee.

Many of these folks, it turns out, will also be gathered here in Minnesota at the Immigration History Research Center (IHRC) for a conference reflecting on all this later in the month. I myself have been asked to be on a panel entitled “An Assessment of the 1965 Immigration Act and Future Immigration Policy.” I’m a little nervous about this because I think of myself as more of a dabbler on immigration than an expert. That is, I’m someone who relies heavily on the work of others and whose own research on the topic is limited and operates mainly around the edges and margins of the field–race, culture, collective identities, assimilation theory.

With this in mind, I’ve been trying to pull together my ideas and reflections on immigration policy past and present by thinking “through a racial lens.” There are several reasons I’m working on this angle.

Perhaps the most basic is that the original 1965 policy was motivated by in large part by the desire to eliminate racism and discrimination from the American immigration system. Passed in the immediate aftermath of the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts of 1964 and ’65, immigration reform was intended to abolish old, restrictive quotas and outright bans against migrants from Asia and Africa as well as to overhaul the Bracero which was seen as exploitation of Mexican laborers. In diversifying the sources of immigration and placing a premium on skills and family ties, in fact, the new law was supposed to establish a more equitable, racially just policy and society.

There are three racial angles I’m planning to focus on: demography, culture, and incorporation.

  1. Demography. I don’t think it is hard to argue that the immigration reform opened the doors to massive amounts of new immigration and the immigration of people from countries and cultures that previously had been restricted or severely limited.  My main goal will be to highlight and discuss how this new immigration has dramatically transformed the racial and ethnic composition of the populace, remaking colorlines and categories of identification in the process. For what it is worth, I might also note that these changes and their implications will continue to evolve and change in coming years, driven not only by continued migration but also by differential birth rates, changing patterns of identification, and shifts in ethnic intermarriage.
  2. Culture. The expansion and diversification of migration to the United States that resulted from 1965 immigration reform was, whether intentionally and directly or not, associated with a whole series of shifts and changes and challenges to established racial heirarchies, shifting race relations, and racial attitudes associated with the movements we talk about as the Civil Rights movement. This includes the decline and discrediting of assimilation as an ideal or goal; the recognition and expansion of minority rights; the enrichment and diversification of lifestyles and culture more generally; the emergence of a politics of multiculturalism; and the virtual enshrinement of the discourse of diversity.
    I myself have written the most about multiculturalism and the discourse  of diversity. In a recent paper, I summarized these into several different arguments. One is that Americans are, nowadays, quite open and optimistic about diversity–not only on race and immigrant lines but on issues ranging from religion and sexuality to gender, disability, and age. “We are,” as Nathan Glazer put it almost twenty years ago, “all multiculturalists now.” The second major point cuts against the first: it is that talk about diversity is often marked by a series of underlying tensions and misgivings–about the relationship between group rights and individual freedoms, about ideals and hopes versus realities; about ideals versus actual structural conditions; about ideals versus inequalities. indeed, for as much as Americans tend to start with the positives about diversity, when it comes down to it, they often talk about the problems and conflicts and inequalities that go along with social difference in actual social life. And one of the biggest of these problems has to do with race. This is my third and perhaps most important point: that however open and far-reaching and general talk about diversity might be, the bulk of this discourse is deeply informed and determined–over-determined, I have suggested–by attitudes and understandings and experiences having to do with race in the United States. And the crux of the matter here is that this highly abstract and overly optimistic and entirely dominant discourse about diversity makes it very, very difficult to own up to the real problems and challenges of difference in the United States–especially those having to do with race. There’s a lot to say here–the persistence of racial inequities, the emergence of deeply racialized politics and policies and a paradoxically related colorblindness; the intractability and even invisibility of white privilege, colorblind racism–but my most important will be that all of this has particular bearing on immigrants.
  3. Incorporation. The perverse politics and culture of race that I have been talking about all has particular bearing on immigrants–not only in terms of the policies they encounter but also the stereotypes and biases they create. It helps explain some of the prejudicial attitudes against immigrants that scholars have documented. Yet this does not hit home evenly or equally on all American immigrants, and presents an especially pronounced challenge for darker skinned migrants, those associated with African Americans and blackness more generally. This is one of the reasons I’ve always been drawn to research and writing from Alejandro Portes and his colleagues on “segmented assimilation.” At least in theory, it puts race at the center of any account of the differential incorporation experiences of migrants and their children. The implications here are massive and range from the unique ways in which these new Americans understand and identify themselves to the opportunities for mobility and success that they and their children will encounter.

For the panel where I am planning to present some version of all this, we are supposed to talk about implications for public policy. I assume the idea is to focus on policy related to immigration. I don’t know how much I have to say about that. Like many scholars, I agree that we need a real policy on immigration. I think it is important that our policy, whatever it is, focus not only on who gets in (or not), but also on how all of our new arrivals are treated once in this country, what kind of needs they have and supports we can provide. And I agree with Doug Massey’s that we need a policy that is not driven only by utopian ideals or abstract fears, but by an actual, realistic understanding of social and economic processes that motivate migration. I guess I’d simply add that the realities of race and racism in contemporary America are a big and quite distinct part of this social package as well.

Anyway, that’s what I will be thinking about and working on over the next couple of weeks. If any of you have any ideas or advice, I’d welcome it. And even if not, you are all invited to come to Minneapolis later in the month to get a much bigger, more comprehensive big on immigration history, politics, and policy that this topic deserves. I hear the weather will be beautiful.