inequality

When Child Migrants Weren’t an Unwelcome Problem

Lisa Gulya and Stephen Suh on July 24, 2014

News and images of an influx of unaccompanied child migrants have swept across the nation in recent weeks. In late June, USA Today reported that since Oct. 1, 2013, “more than 47,000 migrant kids primarily from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador” have been caught entering country through the U.S.-Mexico border. More recently, government officials have estimated that this population could grow to 90,000 by the end of September. These children, many of whom have journeyed to the U.S. hoping to reunite with family, are being held in numerous southwestern detention facilities while awaiting trials to determine their fates. Most will be deported back to the countries that they fled.

Child migrants locked up and awaiting deportation, feared as future voters, pushes us to think about how the idea of “immigrant child threat” reveals the ongoing negotiation over the value of different kinds of children. So, while Clay Jenkins, a Democrat elected Dallas County judge in 2010, argues that “these are children—they are precious children,” he is expressing a contested view.

This is not the first time children have come to the U.S. based on rumors that they would be allowed to stay. Today it is cause for alarm and a desire to close borders; in the 1950s, the faulty rumors were CIA-sponsored tall tales of Communist child-eaters during Operation Peter Pan, rumors that served to get thousands of Cuban families to give up their children to foster families in Miami, never to be reunited after the Cuban Revolution.
We see how immigrant children are devalued when we compare them to another group of child migrants: transnational adoptees. Research on legislation regarding children’s citizenship argues that adoptees were granted the privilege of their adoptive parents’ citizenship while children of immigrant parents, who had arrived through official channels, could not access social citizenship rights because of their parents’ non-native status.
Society’s “value” of children changes over time and in different situations. While children were once members of household production in the 19th century—say, just another worker on the family farm—they may now be “sacralized” as priceless, if economically worthless, in the 20th century. However, as adoption scholar Laura Briggs writes on the children of deportees from the U.S., “[T]his is still a fight, a question; immigrant children are not seen as a cute, innocent, victimized population.”

For more on how immigration to the U.S. has changed over time, check out this roundtable.

Waitlists and Worse: Rebuilding VA Health Care

Amy August on June 3, 2014

Eric Shinseki resigned last Friday as head of the Department of Veterans Affairs, stating that “the VA needs new leadership”. This comes in the wake of scheduling issues at VA medical centers leading to extended delays for veterans’ healthcare—issues he now recognizes as a “systemic lack of integrity” involving a widespread cover-up. According to a new VA audit report prompted by a series of CNN investigations, deadly delays in care were being suppressed by clinics driven to meet performance targets. The VA report concluded that the 14-day wait time performance target was “simply not attainable,” and it called for a “long-term, comprehensive reset” of the broken system. While  Shinseki acknowledges these problems, how reasonable is it to expect his successor to fix them? Research shows that scheduling issues are only one barrier among many to veterans’ accessing care.

When predicting which people will seek care, sociologists take into account patients’ prior experiences with the system such as health outcomes and customer satisfaction. Poor service doesn’t just hurt the veterans who seek care—it may keep them from seeking care in the first place!
Some veterans are eligible for both Medicaid and VA services. The largest group of these vets relies on Medicaid rather than VA care or a combination of the two.
Issues with gender in the military also have an effect. Female veterans have less access to VA healthcare relative to males, with 19% of women reporting delayed health care or unmet needs. Knowledge gaps about VA care, perceptions that providers are not gender-sensitive, and a history of military sexual assault predicted women’s likelihood to delay or forgo treatment.

 

Michael Sam, Sport, and Sexuality

Stephen Suh on May 12, 2014

2014 has been a triumphant year for gay professional athletes. Earlier this year, Jason Collins was the first openly gay player to sign a contract with the NBA. More recently, Michael Sam became first openly gay player drafted into the NFL. In a team sporting culture where camaraderie and success have traditionally been tied to masculine overtones and homophobic gestures, these and other moves have undoubtedly ushered in a new era of professional sports­­–one in which a greater number of athletes, teams, and leagues are willing to take a stance against the exclusion of players based on their sexual orientation.

Collins and Sam are bringing to light a public issue that sociologists have seen coming in a wide range of sports and social settings.
These athletes’ stories are a particularly important development in a social arena which is traditionally dominated by men and masculinity.

These trends also reflect broader shifts in gender and sexuality over the past few years. For more information on shifting norms regarding sexual orientation in other institutions, check out Kathleen Hull’s recent TSP white paper on the changing public perception of same-­sex marriage in the US.

 

Women at Work: When Self Help Isn’t Help Enough

Penny Edgell on May 8, 2014

There have been a spate of new books lately advising women how to turn inward, change their behavior, and remake themselves to be more successful and ‘leap over’ gender barriers in the workplace. If a woman is not paid what she is worth, passed over for promotion, or even harassed, the solution, it seems, is to lean in – because eventually (soon, in fact) everyone will realize that women really should rule the world. The latest is a book by Katty Kay and Claire Shipman, The Confidence Code, in which the authors argue that the primary barrier to women’s success is not sexism but rather women’s own lack of confidence. And in one way, they are right. Confidence is gendered. Women are less confident than men (and men tend to be over- confident relative to their abilities). Of course confidence matters. But trying to solve a problem of structural sexism with a good night’s sleep, a self-help book, and a smile is a losing proposition.

In their focus on the therapeutic and their emphasis on self-help, these books foster the kind of high-cost, alienating emotional labor sociologists have been writing about since the early 1980s.
These books either completely ignore or actively downplay the structural causes of the confidence gap, including the way that primary schools teach girls that their opinions aren’t as valuable as boys’ opinions.
They also turn a blind eye to the fact that rational actors engage in behavior that is rewarded. Women who show the kind of confidence that men show, and who “negotiate like a man,” are often punished, not rewarded, in America’s workplaces.
Thus, authors like Kay and Schipman are encouraging women to fight with the weapons of the weak instead of helping us all to tackle the more difficult task of breaking down the structural barriers to women’s real and durable success.

Penny Edgell is a Professor in the Sociology department at the University of Minnesota. She studies culture, religion, gender, family, symbolic boundaries, and inequality. 

Affirmative Action and Racial Inequality

Evan Stewart on April 24, 2014

This week’s Supreme Court decision to uphold Michigan’s ban on affirmative action in college and university admissions stirred up a lot of legal controversy, and will likely lead to more court cases about these policies in other states. In the wake of conversations about constitutionality, however, it is often easy to miss the problems that affirmative action is meant to be correcting.

Racial inequality, especially in the workplace, is very real. Employers regularly make decisions based on race which clash with existing civil rights law.
Most Americans tend to think of diversity in very general, open and optimistic terms, but this “happy talk” often makes it difficult to directly address underlying racial attitudes—and the inequalities they produce—with policy changes.

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Remembering Rwanda 20 Years Later

Rahsaan Mahadeo on April 7, 2014

Beginning on April 6, 1994, the Rwandan genocide lasted nearly 100 days leaving an estimated 500,000-1,000,000 dead.  While the campaign to exterminate the Tutsi-minority was led by Hutu extremists, it would be a mistake to hold a single group responsible for this mass atrocity.  Comparative studies of other conflicts show that it would also be a mistake to consider genocide an anomaly.

While we often see the conflict as a clash of racial or ethnic groups, the cycle of violence is often part of larger structural forces that form political identities through privileged rule.
Sexual and racialized violence are some of the most well-known parts of genocide, but conflicts over property and the political construction of difference are also elements which occur earlier and may act as warning signs.
Comparative studies of atrocities in other contexts can also show how societies remember suffering.

For further reading, check out this TSP feature on The Crime of Genocide.

New Nutrition Labels—A Healthier Choice?

Jacqui Frost on April 3, 2014

The Food and Drug Administration recently proposed a slew of changes to the nutrition labels on packaged foods. The first to be made in over 20 years, these changes will include placing a bigger emphasis on total calories and added sugars as well as highlighting certain nutrients, such as Vitamin D and potassium. They are also proposing to make changes to the serving size requirements, making them more “realistic” about what portions of a product people actually consume in a single sitting. The purported goal of these changes is to help consumers “make healthy food choices”, but sociologists show that these choices are not necessarily available to everyone.

The media, as well as most consumers, see diet and eating habits as a personal choice. However, research shows that not all consumers are financially, or even geographically, able to make conscientious decisions about the calories they consume.
The choices made at the federal level about dietary guidelines and labeling are not just about making sure we all get the right amount of Vitamin D. The food industry is a profit-making business just like any other, and its influence on government nutrition policies runs deep.
The media coverage of this proposal is largely positive, framing it as a step towards curbing America’s “obesity epidemic”. This kind of media coverage furthers the intense stigmatization of obese people and reinforces norms that equate thinness with moral virtue and social worthiness.

For more on culture and obesity, check out Abigail Saguy’s “Office Hours” interview where she discusses her book What’s Wrong with Fat?

 

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NYC Gets with the Program on Pre-K

Amy August on March 31, 2014

These days, if kids learn all they really need to know in kindergarten, it means they’re a year behind their preschool-educated peers. Fortunately for children in NYC, Mayor Bill de Blasio managed to secure $300 million in state funding to provide free prekindergarten citywide. Although the mayor’s pre-K proposal carried the day, the public education debates in New York echo nationwide controversy over which policies promise the best long-term outcomes. Sociologists wonder, who benefits most from programs like Head Start?

Though policy debates continue, the positive impacts of preschool have been known for a long time. These programs prevent learning difficulties, promote healthy development, and decrease the likelihood of incarceration for urban and low-income kids.
One caveat to this trend, though: a rapid expansion in pre-K access might also mean increased misdiagnoses of ADHD in young children.

For more on how children’s mental health labels change when institutions change, check out this recent TSP Reading List post on autism.

E-Cigarettes and “Acceptable” Substance Use

Jacqui Frost on March 14, 2014

As e-cigarettes are fairly new to the market, there is little research on their long-term effects, but their recent popularity has sparked debates about their use and regulation—are they healthier than combustible tobacco, should they have the same restrictions in terms of age and public use, and are they a “gateway” to real tobacco for teen smokers? While a majority of the e-cigarette conversation focuses on whether they are better for you, the desire for healthy lungs is not the only factor contributing to these debates. The e-cigarette debates are the newest chapter in a long history of substance use regulation that is as much about social stigma as public health.

These debates are also influenced by social factors such as unemployment, youth populations, political battles for and against government regulation, and a much broader, but more subtle, process of stigmatization when cigarette smoking— which was once perfectly acceptable in society—slowly slides out of favor.
As smoking loses favor in public opinion, so do smokers. While these debates are about health on the surface, the underlying message to smokers is that they are deviant. Research has found that smoking, and substance use in general, occurs in higher numbers among lower income and minority groups, revealing much deeper power dynamics influencing smoking policy and the public image of smokers.

 

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Comcast and Time Warner Joining Forces?

Rahsaan Mahadeo on March 10, 2014

Last month Comcast announced its plans to merge with Time Warner Cable, and internet subscribers may have to choose Comcast as their broadband provider even if they don’t want cable in the near future. With rising cable rates, the merger is stoking fears and outrage among the public, and politicians like Senator Al Franken. The deal has yet to be finalized and the FCC may instruct Comcast and Time-Warner to pump their brakes before merging.  If the deal succeeds, however, the nation’s two largest cable and broadband providers are sure to become a behemoth on the information superhighway.

While profit is a big motive for acquisitions and takeovers, companies also try to take over close members of their social networks to reduce competition. Monopolies and oligopolies are especially likely in industries with only a few major players and close ties.
What does this mean for women, people of color, and low income communities? Rising prices for internet access would expand an already-large “digital divide” in who can use the web and who gets represented on it.

Also, check out Eszter Hargittai’s “Office Hours” interview where she discusses the expanding gaps and inequalities in the level of internet skills possessed by so-called “digital natives.”

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