Opportunities For Immigrants Research Articles

Front Porch

Front Porch Harry L. Watson Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 1. As corporations around the globe today compete to capture China's vast market, Nan Enstad reminds us that southern tobacco targeted that country's consumers and tapped its workforce as early as 1905, in "To Know Tobacco: Southern Identity in China in the Jim Crow Era." Shanghai, a century after the city served as the initial assignment for new southerners who came to work in China for British American Tobacco, courtesy of FC Georgio, Wikimedia Commons, under the GNU Free Documentation License. The American South has depended on foreign contacts for centuries, ever since Jamestown started down Tobacco Road. From the earliest colonial days, foreign exports propped up the southern economy, as rice, indigo, deerskins, and finally cotton followed tobacco hogsheads into the holds of trans-Atlantic vessels. The Peculiar Institution itself was a product of the global economy, for what else provided the demand for all those exports, or supplied the labor to grow them? The Confederacy learned a hard lesson in the importance of global connections when federal blockaders proved that cotton could not be king without customers. The [End Page 1] lesson sank in again after Reconstruction, when sagging world demand for cotton caused more southern poverty than carpetbaggers ever had. Exports were so important that free trade and low tariffs found a permanent place on the South's agenda in Washington—at least until southern factories started losing their trade wars with China. Despite the centrality of its international connections, the South has also had a traditional reputation for isolation, and it's not hard to see why. The colonial South was a polyglot place, with inhabitants from all over western Europe, western Africa, and the American Indian nations, but things began to change about 1800. As the plantation system strengthened its grip and spread inland, economic opportunities for free immigrants began to dry up. After 1808 the close of the Atlantic slave trade cut off contact in that direction. By 1850 the South trailed the United States in its proportion of foreign-born residents, and it would keep that status until the 1980s. For most of the twentieth century, immigration stayed so low—and racial discrimination stayed so strong—that the boast of "pure Anglo-Saxon labor" became a proud talking point for industry-hunting boosters throughout the region. Isolation bred homogeneity. For all their differences, black and white southerners developed a remarkable similarity in speech, food, and religion. Pockets of distinctiveness in the mountains, the Sea Islands, and the Cajun bayous did not disturb the South's powerful reputation for cultural unity. "If it can be said that there are many Souths, the fact remains that there is also one South," W. J. Cash famously declared in his 1940 classic, The Mind of the South, and generations of readers nodded in agreement. Back in the day, even out-of-state people were exotic in most parts of the South. In 1950 Mississippi led the nation in its proportion of residents from that state (88.5 percent), and eight of the top ten states in that category were southern. For most of the twentieth century, thousands of people moved away from the South every year, while very few moved to the South or even from state to state inside it. Most southerners were descended from people who had "always" lived there. Of all parts of the United States, the South had the most immobile population and the weakest links to a world beyond its boundaries. Today that state of affairs is suddenly as gone with the wind as the world of Scarlett and Ashley. The proportion of foreign-born southerners is now five times higher than it was at the end of World War II. In the 1970s and 1980s, a flood of European and Japanese investment brought scores of foreign companies to the Sun Belt; the collapse of global trade barriers shook the southern economy in the 1990s and afterwards, and a burst of immigration has brought us millions of newcomers from other parts of the United States and around the world. While the South has never been disconnected from...

Continental Crossroads: Remapping U.S.-Mexico Borderlands History

This collection of essays showcases the work of young, U.S.-based scholars working on U.S.-Mexico borderlands history during what the editors refer to as the region’s “formative” period, the 1820s through the 1940s. Samuel Truett and Elliott Young begin with an introduction situating the collection within existing literature. Rather than redefine the field, the editors insist that there is more to gain by seeing borderlands history as a “meeting place” for multiple fields, where Chicana/o, U.S. West, Spanish borderlands, and Mexican specialists can converse together “on their own terms” (p. 12). The essays reflect the fruits of such conversations.Many of the contributors add welcome complexity to familiar borderland subjects. In the opening essay, Raúl Ramos explores a range of attitudes held by Spanish and Mexican officials in San Antonio, Texas, regarding their powerful Indian neighbors. Locating interesting continuities in outlook and policy before and after Mexican independence, Ramos nonetheless has little to say about Indians themselves — a curious omission given the volume’s emphasis on multiple perspectives and boundary crossing. Andrés Reséndez’s excellent essay on borderlands literary cultures in the mid – nineteenth century begins with a failed attempt by Texans to extend their dominion over eastern New Mexico in 1841. Reséndez taps into fascinating differences in the ways borderlands peoples articulated corporate identity by placing sensationalized U.S. accounts of the Texan endeavor alongside the published accounts of Mexicans and pictographic calendars of Kiowa Indians. Louise Pubols presents a subtle portrait of political culture in post-1848 California. Writing against the more familiar story of elite Californios naively colluding with American newcomers and quickly losing their wealth and power, the author focuses instead on the prominent de la Guerra family of southern California and the endurance of their patriarchal political network into the 1870s.Benjamin Johnson’s essay serves as a tight précis of his important 2003 book, Revolution in Texas (Yale Univ. Press). When in 1915 ethnic Mexicans began attacking ranches and killing Anglos along the lower Rio Grande, Texas Rangers and vigilantes responded with often-indiscriminate reprisals. Johnson argues that in the disastrous aftermath of the rebellion, Tejanos came to embrace their American citizenship and fight politically for the ideal of “multiracial democracy” (p. 293). Alexandra Minna Stern explores the creation of the U.S. Border Patrol. Stern tells a tale of a hardening border, racist medical quarantines, and punitive immigration laws, all policed by a newly constituted Border Patrol service armed with extraordinary powers and inflated notions of masculinity.Other contributions enlist little-known actors to guide the reader through a complex and rich landscape of borderland dreams, schemes, and social relations. Bárbara O. Reyes explores the story of Bárbara Gandiaga, a native woman convicted in 1806 of conspiring to kill a friar at a mission in Baja California. By putting the official, Dominican account in conversation with a very different telling collected in the late nineteenth century, Reyes offers a penetrating critique of how one woman’s story became fodder for competing discourses: one Catholic and colonial, the other anticlerical and reformist. Elliott Young uses a pair of travel narratives written by the journalist and anti-Díaz revolutionary Ignacio Martínez to gesture at critiques of modernity arising out of the borderlands in the late nineteenth century. Young mines the travel narratives for Martínez’s evolving and sometimes contradictory thoughts about colonialism, development, and justice. Grace Peña Delgado explains how class structured opportunities for Chinese immigrants on the U.S.-Mexican border during the 1880s and 1890s. As exclusionary legislation complicated Chinese immigration through places like San Francisco or New York, many would-be immigrants — especially merchants — found better opportunities for life and for border crossing in northern Mexico.In one of the collection’s strongest pieces, Karl Jacoby recounts the efforts of William H. Ellis to organize an African American colony in Mexico in 1895. Billed as a nondiscriminatory haven for poor black farmers, Ellis’s colony attracted enough immigrants to panic white landowners in the U.S. South. Jacoby is at his best when discussing the complex but fascinating reasons for the project’s demise, an event that he argues prefigured growing prejudice against blacks in Mexico. Samuel Truett’s essay on Emilio Kosterlitzky, a Russian immigrant in Mexico who became a lauded military figure in northern Sonora, follows the transformation of the northwestern borderlands from a frontier zone of Indian wars to a transnational theater of labor struggle. Kosterlitzky’s eventful life, ending as a spy for the U.S. government, highlights the changing possibilities and limitations of transnational identity in the turn-of-the-century borderlands.While organized both chronologically and thematically, this collection is not (and was not meant to be) a comprehensive text for borderlands history. However, its clear, engaging essays would enrich undergraduate classes, and graduate students and professors will find in Continental Crossroads a lively tour of the region’s new and clearly flourishing historiography.

Immigrants in a Booming Economy: Analysing Their Earnings and Welfare Dependence

Ireland’s exceptional economic growth in recent years has led to an influx of immigrants. Given the favourable economic climate into which these immigrants are arriving, it is interesting to ask how their earnings and welfare dependence compare with the native population. To the extent that strong economic growth produces good labour market opportunities for immigrants, earnings disadvantages may be lessened and any tendency towards welfare dependence may be reduced. Data from a nationally representative sample drawn in 2004 are used to assess the earnings of immigrants in Ireland relative to the native population and also the rate of welfare receipt across the two groups. Immigrants are found to earn 18 percent less than natives, controlling for education and years of work experience. However, this single figure hides differences across immigrants from English-speaking and non-English speaking countries. We also find evidence of a wage gap for immigrants with third level educations, relative to comparable natives. On average, immigrants are half as likely to have been in receipt of social welfare payments in the previous twelve months relative to natives. A difference in welfare participation remains when we control for the higher education attainment of immigrants.

Policy Networks and Immigrants’ Associations in Italy: The Cases of Milan, Bologna and Naples

This article analyses the role played by immigrants’ associations in local policy networks in Italy. The aim is to find out if differences in the political opportunity structure have an impact on the development of immigrant organisations and on their influence in the policy-making process. In the first part of the article I describe the evolution of immigrants’ associations in Italy by focusing on the institutional opportunity structure, defined here as the resources granted by national legislation to support immigrants’ associations. In the second part I focus on three cases that represent different areas of the country: Milan, Bologna and Naples. These cities have been governed by different political majorities since the mid-1980s, and are thus characterised by differences in the political opportunity structure. The question I ask is: do different configurations of power, right-wing or left-wing, provide different institutional opportunities for immigrants’ associations? And how do these different opportunities influence levels of immigrant organisation? My analysis shows that immigrants’ associations are poorly organised and play a marginal role in the local decision-making process in the three cities considered. Left-wing administrations have attempted to open some opportunities, but these were scarce and often of a contradictory nature. Local governments seem in general to prefer Italian pro-immigrant associations, especially as far as access to funding and running for public contracts is concerned. As a consequence, in all the three cities considered, national welfare associations appear to have crowded out immigrants’ own initiatives.

‘We are Irish Everywhere’: Irish Immigrant Networks in Charleston, South Carolina, and Savannah, Georgia

In the nineteenth century, Irish immigrants in Charleston, South Carolina, and Savannah, Georgia, showed a strong interest in the affairs of Ireland and its residents. Although a distinct minority in these ‘southern’ cities, they formed networks through societies, clubs, militias and Irish nationalist organisations to encourage social activities and ethnic connections among their fellow countrymen and those friendly towards Irish interests. These groups provided opportunities for upwardly-mobile immigrants to improve their social status in America, while retaining their ‘Irishness’. Charity towards new migrants was thus an important element in retaining ethnicity. Irish Protestants initially dominated these networks, but increasingly, as the century progressed, Irish and Irish-American Catholics came to prominence. Nonetheless, interdenominational networks remained strong. Class and sectarian divisions within the Irish communities of these two cities were not as deep or rigid as they were in some other Irish-American communities. Overall this study highlights the great importance of immigrant networks in assuring Irish integration into host societies.

The missing link: the need for comprehensive engagement in regions of refugee origin

Asylum policies in Britain and in the countries of its EU partners are failing to cope with the demands made upon them. With migration pressures mounting and opportunities for legal immigration to many EU states restricted, larger numbers of potential migrants are turning to alternative means of entry and access, namely irregular migration and asylum channels. The responses of states to these challenges have been to adopt more restrictive policies and practices that have considerably changed the balance between immigration control and refugee protection. While states have the right to control entry and enforce their borders, the restrictive measures that have come to dominate policy-making and recent immigration enforcement initiatives in Britain and its European partners do not sufficiently discriminate between asylum seekers and other kinds of migrants, thereby failing to safeguard the right of refugees to seek protection. Current British proposals to move asylum seekers to ‘safe areas’ in regions of origin fail to understand the burdens, pressures and priorities of countries in the regions, fail to ensure effective protection for those in need, and are unlikely to deliver the UK policy objective of substantially reducing the numbers of illegal entries to Britain. What is needed is an approach that reduces the number of individuals seeking protection in Europe while maintaining the European tradition of providing asylum to those in genuine need. The ‘missing link’ in asylum policy that would respond both to the concerns of states and to the protection needs of refugees is more comprehensive engagement in regions of refugee origin. It is in this way that western asylum countries, including the UK, may best address the challenge of providing international protection to victims of persecution and respond to their own concerns about asylum.

Smart Growth, New Urbanism and Diversity: Progressive Planning Movements in America and Their Impact on Poor and Minority Ethnic Populations

ABSTRACT Smart Growth envisions a reduction in the extension of low-density suburban subdivisions as the predominant pattern of development. New Urbanism reflects a more pedestrian-oriented European style of urban life. Growth policies that target development toward urban infill and revitalization could result in the intensification of ethnic separation. The success of the strategies carries the alternative image of gentrification and displacement of the poor. Were New Urbanism to integrate economic classes through a mixture of housing types and costs (ranging from lofts and live/work units to higher density apartments, townhouses, and even single family detached homes) utilizing adequate subsidies, local governments could provide an optimally designed stock of housing. If designed around transit, it could dramatically improve access-to jobs and other services while offering more diverse neighborhoods. America's major cities include slum housing and a stock of barely habitable shelters which have served as housing for those of very low income, particularly new immigrants. Were these slums and lower-cost shelters replaced by new and revitalized development, cities such as New York or Los Angeles might cease to serve their democratizing and incubation function and the quality of life and opportunity for new immigrants and the poor may diminish. While many European cities are the archetype of New Urbanism, others have been allowed to become unfriendly to the pedestrian and too-automobile dominated. The affluence of Europe has generated a rising middle-class that enjoys driving modern automobiles and prefers the privacy and bucolic appearance of the American suburb. Increasing development of suburban detached homes and increasing automobile trips and ownership poses a threat to the quality of European urban life. As communities grapple with developers of such housing, a New Urbanist design model may offer huge benefits to mitigate the suburban pressure. I. INTRODUCTION American growth patterns have been driven by natural and unnatural forces. Vast amounts of land tended to foster individualism, privacy, and noncontiguous non-compact land use patterns. The national transportation policy of reliance on personal automobile transport resulted in dispersed housing sites and the decline of central cities. Furthermore, American courts have endorsed the doctrine of Euclidean zoning. Euclidean zoning calls for the separation of uses: commercial facilities, offices, single-family detached homes and apartments are all physically separate. (1) This pattern results in the devotion of a substantial portion of regional land for automobile use. (2) It generates traffic congestion, (3) dependence on oil, (4) extraordinary transportation costs for families, (5) higher costs to deliver municipal services, (6) and pollution. (7) In addition to the obvious adverse effects of automobile-based planning, community life disappears under this Dumb Growth. (8) For example, pedestrian life and urban living are exchanged for individuals socializing in private homes or in a few regional destinations that offer entertainment, an ersatz European-type urban walking experience, and a reasonably safe environment--typically the shopping mall. During the past thirty years, the principal response to the effects of suburban sprawl (9) and urban decline has been the American attempt at growth management. Individual communities might utilize devices such as urban growth boundaries, (10) development moratoria, (11) the establishment of complicated systems of annual permit caps, (12) or growth systems linked to infrastructure capacity--that is, to deny permits absent adequate roads, water, sewers, and schools. (13) America's experience in the 20th century has demonstrated the value of regional and comprehensive planning. Individual local growth management initiatives, haphazardly imposed, have failed to generate rational urban design. …

Immigrant Trip Duration: The Case of Immigrants from Western Mexico

This article uses data from the Mexican Migration Project to determine the factors that affect how long Mexican immigrants stay in the United States. Based on the estimates of a discrete-time hazard model, the most important predictors of duration are the economic opportunities for immigrants in the United States, the household resources before migration, and the opportunities available at the immigrant's community of origin. The article also finds longer trip duration after the Immigration Reform and Control Act than in previous years and important differences between male and female migrants.

Globalisation and Migration in Africa

The paper argues that there is a growing interconnection between globalisation on the one hand, and migration (both intra- and interstate) on the other. In general migration in Africa is largely informal and undocumented, making accurate data on the phenomenon extremely scant. This notwithstanding, there is evidence of the phenomenal increase in the wave of migration on the continent. The conventional causes of migration, including conflicts, political oppression, economic crisis and environmental factors, have in recent years been reinforced by globalisation which unleashes fresh pressures that either facilitate or compound the already huge and seemingly unmanageable migration problematique on the continent. The paper demonstrates the various ways by which globalisation impacts on migration. Among other things, it notes the unencumbered movement of capital accompanied by capitalists across state borders, the formation of regional trading blocs as a logical response to the imperatives of globalisation, which promote the free movement of people within regions, and the deepening of disparities between countries, which spawns the movement of people from the poor to the more affluent countries. Further, the paper analyses the impact of globalisation on Africa's already fragile environment and argues that there is a growing tendency for diminishing environmental resources to generate conflicts between user constituencies. Such conflicts displace people and exert migratory pressures. It is argued further that, while globalisation promotes greater migration, most African states, especially the relatively affluent, are increasingly closing their borders to immi­ grants because of a variety of reasons, including the fear of emigrants engaging in criminal activities. The paper concludes that the imbalance between increased migration and shrinking immigration opportunities leads to the adoption of informal alternatives by emigrants to get to their destinations.

Integration of Caribbean immigrants in a welfare state city: Surinamese and Antilleans in Amsterdam

‘Blacks, who are trapped in ghetto-like urban environments and who fail to participate in society, who are not able to get a decent house and cannot get a proper job’: that is the stereotypical fearful image particularly associated with US cities. It also seems to play a major role in the political and scientific debates about integration of (black or coloured) immigrants into other countries. This is certainly true for the Netherlands, where the fear of the ghetto is frequently expressed in relation to the settlement of Caribbean, Turkish and Moroccan immigrants. However, whereas the stereotype of the ghetto may be valid for some parts of the black population in some US cities, the immigrant settlement patterns in the US and elsewhere seem to require other images. Certainly the European (and again specifically the Dutch) situation should not be referred to using labels like ‘the ghetto’, not even when it concerns black Caribbean immigrants of African origin. In this paper we analyse the level of integration of Dutch Caribbean immigrants, i.e. Surinamese and Antilleans. Integration was investigated in the spatial sphere and in the housing market and labour market contexts in the Netherlands, and more particularly in Amsterdam. Moderate levels of spatial segregation and a fairly strong housing market position indicate high levels of integration. Their position on the labour market, which initially was less favourable, has recently improved substantially, and coincides with advancement in higher secondary education among Surinamese youths. The article sets out that these achievements are likely to be associated with the wider organisation of the Dutch welfare state and with the booming economy. Since currently that welfare state is under revision, with an increase in social polarisation and a reduction of housing support among the likely effects, and since employment opportunities for many immigrants are strongly related to the business cycle, the future prospects for Caribbean immigrants are not unambiguously positive. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Comparative Demography and Diversity of Small Mammals in Precordilleran Temperate Rainforests of Southern Chile

Small mammals were studied in two southern Chilean temperate rainforests in the precor-dillean Andes during 2 low-rainfall years following the 1982 El Niño event. Forests had somewhat different levels of canopy, shrub, and herbaceous cover, and species richness of trees but most of the same plants. Most captures were of four sigmodontine rodents, Akodon olivaceus, Abrothrix longipilis, Abrothrix sanborni, and Oligoryzomys longicaudatus; five other species and a putative hybrid were recorded. Maximum numbers were in January–July (late summer to winter) and lower numbers in August–December (late winter to early summer). All species had seasonal reproduction in September–April (spring to autumn). A. olivaceus and A. longipilis generally were long-lived, whereas survival rates were low for O. longicaudatus. Responses after the 1982 El Niño were small, and some populations increased during 1984. Populations of A. olivaceus fluctuated more than those of A. longipilis; those of A. sanborni were low and O. longicaudatus was sporadic and irruptive. Lower-elevational Chilean and precordilleran Argentine forests have similar species composition, but differences in demography and dominance of the former by more widespread, omnivorous A. olivaceus, animalivorous-fungivorous Abrothrix, and granivorous O. longicaudatus. Opportunities for immigration may explain greater homogeneity of populations of small mammals in Chilean rainforests relative to Argentine ones. Although responses to El Niño and subsequent droughts were weak, flowering episodes of bamboo (Chusquea) can have strong effects due to increased availability of food.

Confronting the logic of the new right

In the early 1990s, I was involved with community organizing efforts in Los Angeles. I worked with a broad‐based group of local activists who came together to defend access to abortion clinics, promote universal health care coverage, lobby for anti‐discrimination protections for gays and lesbians, oppose the privatization of public schools and campaign against the restriction of rights and opportunities for immigrants. Many of my fellow activists had spent several years in the clinic defense movement, organizing thousands of volunteers to defend women's health clinics against demonstrators who blocked clinic entrances in attempts to physically and verbally dissuade women from obtaining abortions.

Fire and Birds in a Western Australian Heathland

SummaryThe complexity of avifaunal response to fire is illustrated using long-term demographic data for passerines at Gooseberry Hill, Western Australia, that has experienced an average of one fire every two years in the 41 years since 1957. During a 26 year period from 1972 to 1997, when three major and eight minor fires occurred, the density of Splendid Fairy-wrens Malurus splendens ranged from a high of 105 adults/100 ha in 1985 to 20 adults/100 ha in 1994. Both of these extremes followed periods of similar fire frequency (five fires in preceding 10 years). However, in the ten years before 1985, all fires were of limited extent, whereas the ten year period up to 1994 began with an extensive 100% hot summer burn, closely followed by two smaller reburns. The aftermath of the major fire in 1985 and subsequent minor fires had a major detrimental impact on populations of Splendid Fairy-wrens, Western Thornbills Acanthiza inornata, Scarlet Robins Petroica multicolor and Yellow-rumped Thornbills A. chrysorrhoa, all of which declined during the following eight years, even though the vegetation had nearly recovered to 1985 conditions. This continued decline in bird densities was related to increased mortality of breeding birds and lowered productivity, due to temporary cessation of breeding by Western Thornbills and to increased nest predation and parasitism in Splendid Fairy-wrens. In addition, the broad extent of the 1985 fire reduced opportunities for immigration from elsewhere. Understanding this avifaunal response to fire would not have been possible without an extended period of study. Any fire management plans based on just two or three years data might have yielded recommendations quite detrimental to the fauna they were designed to protect. For the species and habitats studied here, small, patchy burns on a well-spaced rotational basis are to be preferred over regular ‘fuel reduction’ burning of entire habitats, particularly in isolated areas where immigration is unlikely to occur. Once an entire area has been burnt, special care should be taken to prevent a reburn within at least the next 8–10 years.

Culture-related communication — An opportunity for elderly immigrants to access a more satisfying healthcare

This study explores communication patterns between nurses and elderly patients in two different care settings. In a sample of 181 video-taped nursing encounters, involving 47 nurses and 109 patients, a study was made of nurse-patient communication. The video recordings were observed using an adapted version of Roter's Interaction Analysis System, which yields frequencies of 23 types of verbal behaviours. These data were analyzed using correspondence analysis, to reduce them to a smaller number of verbal categories, in which two socio-emotional categories and three categories with task-related communication, could be distinguished. For each encounter five summary statistics corresponding to these categories were calculated.Using analysis of variance, it was shown that the amount of socio-emotional interaction in both settings appeared to be higher than was reported in previous studies into nurse-patient communication. Compared with the home for the elderly, communication was more task-related in home care.

Immigrant involvement in the informal economy: The Portuguese case

This article demonstrates how Portugal, despite appearing to be being a country which would be unattractive country to immigrants, is rapidly becoming a country of immigration. The existence and extent of opportunities for immigrants in Portugal is assessed with this objective in mind. On the basis of an analysis of the country's labour market, the immigrants’ economic profiles and the Portuguese informal economy—and the interaction of these factors—it is concluded that the Portuguese economy is currently generating labour demands which the immigrants are satisfying. In some cases they complement and in others they substitute for the domestic labour force. While the mismatch in the highest segments of the labour force between the skills which are in demand and those which are on offer is creating numerous opportunities for highly qualified immigrants—who come mainly from Europe and Brazil—the spread of economic informality in the lowest segments of the labour market is also generating plenty of opportunities for unqualified or poorly qualified immigrants. This latter group primarily come from Portuguese Speaking African Countries.

Immigration Challenges and Opportunities in a Post-Transition Cuba

Immigration Challenges and Opportunities in a Post-Transition Cuba

Balancing obligations and self-interest: humanitarian program settlers in the Australian labor market.

"Technological and structural changes in the Australian economy have led to a decline in unskilled and semi-skilled employment and this has had a marked effect on labor market opportunities for immigrants.... This paper reviews the labor market experience of humanitarian program arrivals and considers the policy implications of high levels of unemployment among this group. It is suggested that humanitarian obligations do not end with entry to Australia, and it is in the interests of the receiving society and humanitarian program arrivals for greater public investment in skills development to help improve labor market outcomes among this group."

Problems and Prospects of Self-Employment as an Economic Independence Option for Welfare Recipients

As the welfare reform debate rages, it is important for social workers to participate fully in the debate by advocating programs and policies that will improve the material well-being of poor families. Social workers can provide effective leadership in changing social welfare policy only when they are informed about a wide range of policy and program options and their consequences. Self-employment development is among the policy options that merit attention. Social policymakers have begun to explore self-employment development, also known as microenterprise, as a route off welfare, but the profession of social work has paid little attention to this economic independence option. With the passage of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (P.L. 104-193), it is important for social workers to understand the benefits and the limits of self-employment development. With this knowledge, social workers can more effectively influence the shaping welfare reform in the states. Self-Employment and Disadvantaged Groups Many people who are poor, unemployed, or socially marginal may pursue self-employment or informal sector activities because jobs are not available, not accessible, or not adequate in providing a living wage. For poor women, barriers such as the lack of child care and transportation, as well as little education and few job skills, further limit their employment opportunities (Hagen & Lurie, 1993; Miller, 1990). Although women must frequently deal with competing family and employment responsibilities, employment options for poor women rarely offer the ability to control their time to adequately handle the dual roles of parent and employee (Keeley, 1990; Raheim & Bolden, 1995). For recent immigrant and refugee populations, other kinds of obstacles exist. Language and other cultural barriers may make mainstream employment inaccessible. Discrimination and labor market segregation often limit employment opportunities for immigrants and refugees, people of color, and women. For members of marginalized and oppressed groups, self-employment can provide a level of freedom and flexibility, as well as an option for earning a living wage, that the labor market may not provide (Keeley, 1990; Raheim & Bolden, 1995). Unfortunately, the same factors that encourage members of marginalized groups to pursue self-employment may contribute to their economic marginalization as entrepreneurs (Brush, 1990; Keeley, 1990; Light, 1972). For some families, self-employment is their sole source of support. For others, income from informal sector activities is an important part of the family's total income package, which may include income from jobs or welfare benefits (Clark & Huston, 1993). A recent study by Spalter-Roth, Soto, and Zandniapour (1994) based on the 1984, 1986, 1987, and 1988 panels of the Survey of Income and Program Participation revealed that over 100,000 women were supporting their families through a combination of self-employment income and welfare benefits. In addition, almost 500,000 former welfare recipients were supporting themselves through self-employment. Barriers to Self-Employment Despite the number of low-income people engaged in self-employment activities, numerous barriers exist to starting and operating a viable business for people receiving public assistance. The primary obstacles are lack of business knowledge and skills, lack of access to capital and other resources, social welfare policy barriers, and psychosocial barriers. Lack of Business Knowledge and Skills The ability to start and operate a profitable business has been linked to business knowledge and skills, such as finance and marketing, as well as previous employment experience (Brush, 1990). When microentrepreneurs do not have the knowledge and skills needed to operate effectively and efficiently in the marketplace, their businesses may not generate sufficient income to support themselves and their families. …

Immigration in wild groups of golden lion tamarins (Leontopithecus rosalia).

Seventeen territorial groups of wild golden lion tamarins were monitored for periods of 10-76 months. Immigration into established groups was rare (0.48 immigrating individuals per group per year) and occurred mostly in the context of replacement of breeding individuals. Nonreplacement immigration events usually occurred in conjunction with some other change in group composition (e.g., an emigration or another immigration). Aggression by resident tamarins toward potential immigrants appeared to be the proximate factor limiting movement into groups. Most such aggression was intrasexual, but potential female immigrants were sometimes chased by male as well as female residents. Immigration was highly male biased (85% of individuals). Factors possibly contributing to this bias were inheritance of breeding positions by adult daughters (reducing female and increasing male immigration opportunities), ability of males but not females to join groups already containing a same-sex breeding individual, and the fact that potential female immigrants appeared to face some intersexual as well as intrasexual aggression. Male and female roles in the maintenance of a monogynous mating system are considered in light of these results. Contrasts with data from intruder studies on captive golden lion tamarins [French & Inglett, Animal Behaviour 37:487-497, 1989] are discussed. © 1996 Wiley-Liss, Inc.

Self-employment among Immigrants: A Test of the Blocked Mobility Hypothesis

This paper investigates the differential self-employment propensities between the native-born immigrants with Canadian education and immigrants with no Canadian education. The blocked mobility or relative disadvantage thesis argues that relative disadvantages experienced by immigrants in the labor market in the host society cause many to turn to self-employment as an alternative to wage labor. Many immigrants are unfamiliar with the social economic and legal structures of the host society and encounter problems with languages non-recognition of their credentials and discrimination. Immigrants may therefore find it difficult to land a job in the core sectors of the economy especially if they do not have additional education or training in the host country. They therefore consider self-employment. Previous research into this issue has failed to distinguish between self-employment in professional and non-professional occupations. This paper reports findings from a study using 1986 census data for 8719 self-employed small business owners in non-professional occupations 7588 self-employed professionals and 128375 wage-earners. The data support the thesis with regard to immigrants with high educational credentials obtained from home countries. Such individuals are more likely than those of similar educational level among either the native-born or immigrants with Canadian education to become self-employed in non-professional occupations. At lower levels of education immigrants overall also have higher self-employment propensities in non-professional occupations than native-born Canadians. The authors point out that immigrants may have informal resources such as cheap and loyal ethnic labor the ability to make transactions in the native languages of immigrants information on immigrant preferences and links with the origin countries of immigrants which help in the establishment and running of small businesses. These findings suggest that self-employment represents real economic opportunity for immigrants.