Opportunities For Social Mobility Research Articles

Military Struggle and Identity Formation in Latin America: Race, Nation, and Community During the Liberal Period

Over recent decades, historians have revised earlier portrayals of Indians and Afro-Latin Americans as mere “canon fodder” for the elite. Scholars such as Florencia Mallon, George Reid Andrews, and James E. Sanders, among others, argued that not only hunger, patron-client ties, and conscription but also ideas and alliances mobilized subordinate groups. Their military participation, moreover, decisively influenced outcomes such as the enactment of racially egalitarian constitutions, the end of slavery, and the ascendancy of liberalism in much of Latin America. Military Struggle and Identity Formation in Latin America continues in this same vein while painting an even more paradoxical and multilayered picture of Afro – Latin American and Indian participation in armies and wars.The book is divided into two thematic parts, each of which spans the years 1850 to 1950. In part 1, Sanders, Justin Wolfe, Aline Helg, Nicola Foote, Richard N. Adams, and David Carey Jr. examine soldiering in a wide array of contexts. In part 2, Maria de Fátima Costa, Peter M. Beattie, Carlos Martínez Sarasola, Julia O’Hara, Joanna Crow, Vincent C. Peloso, and René D. Harder Horst focus on major interstate wars and genocidal campaigns against Indians. The authors combine archival research on social and political history with the study of representations and, in some cases, oral histories.In the first case study, Sanders finds that blacks and mulattos in Colombia sought new rights and identities by soldiering as Liberals. Indians, he argues, had more varied experiences and allegiances. Indians initially sought to protect preexisting rights and identities, though their motives and identities could be transformed. The rest of the collection largely bears out this pattern, yet the diversity of experiences recounted also demonstrates the difficulty of generalizing about subaltern choices and actions.Paradoxes abound. The editors rightly note in relation to Wolfe’s chapter on Nica-ragua that historical actors often defied “easy assumptions about what marginalized groups ‘should’ do” (p. 10). Their insight applies to most of the contributions to this collection. Some of the alliances and antagonisms revealed here are surprising. For example, Wolfe finds that Afro-Nicaraguan Liberals in León initially supported the pro-slavery filibusterer William Walker. Peloso examines why Afro-Peruvians massacred their Chinese neighbors during the War of the Pacific, while O’Hara notes that Tarahumara Indians dealt devastating blows to the Apaches during the violent pacification of northern Mexico. Adams and Crow reveal that Indians were sometimes officially designated as unfit to serve as soldiers but served anyway. Carey interviews Kaqchikel-Mayan elders in Guatemala who remember their military service under the notorious dictatorship of Jorge Ubico as a largely positive experience that simultaneously strengthened both their ties to the nation and their ethnic identities. The authors generally do a good job of analyzing the complexities of their findings without romanticizing their subjects.The editors emphasize that military enrollment and warfare could create space for “marginal people to push forward their own agenda” and express “multiple visions of nationalism” (p. 18). Yet, much of the history recounted in these essays is tragic. Time and again, Indians were massacred. Even when labeled “friendly,” or fighting on the winning side, Indians often lost more than they gained. The armed forces provided opportunities for social mobility, yet, in this volume, the people defined as “Indian” or “black” most often ended up impoverished and excluded from the full benefits of citizenship. The elite was afraid and disdainful of the poor fighters it mobilized. Blacks’ and Indians’ very participation in war was often used as an excuse to pathologize them as inherently violent and unfit for citizenship.The title of the volume emphasizes identity. Horst explores the complex ethnolinguistic labels applied to the indigenous peoples of the Chaco, while Foote concludes her chapter on Ecuador with the emergence of social movements expressing black and Indian consciousness. Sanders, Carey, and Crow all provide examples of violent struggles strengthening some indigenous identities even as other indigenous groups were decimated. However, thorny methodological questions regarding identity are elided, such as, for example, whether someone should be called “black” versus “mulatto,” or “mestizo” versus “Indian.” For the most part, a full exploration of ethnic and national identity formation and transformation through warfare remains an unfulfilled promise in this otherwise successful volume.This observation is not meant to detract from the high quality of the individual essays, which reveal myriad ways that Indians and Afro-Latin Americans contributed to nation-state formation and gained ambivalent inclusion as citizens. This ambivalent citizenship is evident in the image that graces the volume’s cover, of Kaqchikel volunteer soldiers conducting military exercises in Ubico’s Guatemala while wearing ethnic dress. In teasing out the implications of many episodes such as this one, Military Struggle and Identity Formation in Latin America advances our knowledge of subaltern participation in nation-state formation.

Young Adults of Maghrebi Origin from the French Banlieues: Social Mobility in Action?

A cohort of young French adults of Maghrebi origin, aged 20 to 29, who grew up in the same banlieue neighbourhood was constructed and used to observe their labour market integration. The biographical survey reviewed the pathways of these young men and women through the prism of social mobility. On the one hand, their parents' migration (from one of three Maghreb countries), low skills level and occupations are not conducive to upward social mobility; on the other, the expectation of integration, the aspiration to a better life, and education in French society are potentially positive factors. After describing the fieldwork conditions, the article presents the results as a typology comprising five types of occupational integration. These are compared with the parents' occupational status in order to define the form of social mobility. While some young adults have clearly experienced upward social mobility, others have not managed to find stable employment in the blue-collar category. This outcome can be attributed partly to the diversity of educational pathways. However, the analysis would not be complete without a discussion of the changes in the labour market, growing job insecurity and downclassing. These new trends, which affect the whole population, have a special resonance in a situation of urban segregation, generating new inequalities. The occupational statuses of these young adults highlight the deindustrialization that has taken place between their parents' generation and their own, constraining opportunities for social mobility.

The Delayed School Progress of the Children of Immigrants in Lower-Secondary Education in Italy

In Italy, foreign children are often enrolled in classes at a lower grade than that of their age group (what we term in this article ‘delayed school progress’), mainly because of language problems. On their education pathway they also encounter more difficulties than their Italian schoolmates, as evidenced by the smaller numbers of successful exam results. This brings about a widespread delay in their schooling, which grows as the education levels increase. In this paper we seek to identify the causes of this delay using data from a national survey (ITAGEN2) involving more than 20,000 lower-secondary-school students, half of whom are foreigners. The risk of such delay for the children of immigrants remains significant, even with equal resources and commitment, equal socio-economic and housing conditions of the family and relations with their peers. This clearly indicates that the integration problems experienced by immigrants’ children in the Italian school system can negatively influence their subsequent schooling progress and reduce their opportunities for social mobility in the labour market and a positive insertion in Italian society.

“To Trust in My Root and to Take That to Go Forward”: Supporting College Access for Immigrant Youth in the Global City

Increasing numbers of immigrant youth are coming of age within global cities that are characterized by growing inequalities and few opportunities for social mobility. These youth face numerous educational obstacles that complicate college and labor market access. This article draws from an ethnographic study of public high schools serving low-income, recently arrived immigrant students and explores how the schools provide students with the academic skills and social capital to support college going. It considers how the schools attempt to create new understandings and expectations of the educational possibilities available to low income immigrant students, thus creating a social imaginary that resists the racialized hierarchies of the global city. [immigrant students, English-language learners, college access, social capital, globalization]

The Press in Novels: Credit, Power, and Mobility in William D. Howells's Modern Instance and Lima Barreto's Recordações do Escrivão Isaías Caminha

The Press in Novels:Credit, Power, and Mobility in William D. Howells's Modern Instance and Lima Barreto's Recordações do Escrivão Isaías Caminha Renata Wasserman (bio) In a recent New York Times column, Nicholas Kristoff lamented the disrepute into which journalism was falling and the "dwindling credibility" reporters commanded; he suggested ways of regaining not only the trust of the public but also the protections that journalists traditionally enjoyed in their pursuit of the facts and the truth. Letters to the editor in subsequent days showed agreement about the symptoms and doubts about the diagnosis and the treatment, but the implicit consensus was that journalists and newspapers had been better and more respected in the past.1 Yet distrust of journalism is not new, and appeared at much the same time as the medium gained influence—though, as usual, history does not repeat itself exactly. These days the problem for journalism is that it faces stiff competition from electronic media and from other informal and highly efficient means for the dissemination of news (ever more loosely defined) against which it needs to assert itself as much as against its institutional or individual detractors. An increase in the reach of journalism, and of public consciousness of its impact, took place at the end of the nineteenth century, as part of a larger constellation of changes, and left its mark on literature in the form of novels with journalists as main or important characters. Such novels emplotted perceived problems with the growth in the volume and acceleration in the spread of information, including its use for political or economic ends, not all of them laudable or honest; they also addressed the opportunity for social mobility offered by the increasing prominence of journalism in an era in which both social mobility and journalism were seen as desirable and [End Page 44] destabilizing. These developments were global, and the literary attention paid to them appeared in different languages, literatures, and polities. I will examine two novels, one from the United States—A Modern Instance (1882) by William D. Howells—and one from Brazil—Recordações do escrivão Isaías Caminha (1909) by Lima Barreto—that lay out for public scrutiny and discussion the relation between economics, truth, information, and life events. Both authors are key figures in the literature of their times, addressing in their works some of the more fractious problems of the period, political and domestic, and one of these was the role of the press in public life. Both wrote, or had written, for periodicals. Barreto had worked for O correio da manhã, an important newspaper in Rio de Janeiro, then the Brazilian capital, where he eventually ran afoul of the management. Howells, who had learned the business from his father, a printer and newspaperman, was a longtime editor of the Atlantic Monthly and Harper's Magazine, where he welcomed early works of novelists who later became prominent and was particularly hospitable to women and African Americans. Their careers were dissimilar and so is the history of the press in the two environments where they wrote, but their "newspaper novels" drew on their direct knowledge of the field and show that the anxieties surrounding the power of the press were similar in both places. Some historical data and a few numbers give an idea of the material background justifying the focus in the late nineteenth century on the increasing importance of journalism: in 1850 there were 1,902 weeklies in the Unites States and 8,633 in 1880. In 1880, there were also 971 dailies in the United States. Economic as well as technological changes spurred increases in production and circulation: between 1880 and 1890 the price of wood-pulp paper, which had been as high as fifteen cents per pound in 1867, fell from four cents to about one and half cents per pound in the larger cities (and the switch to wood pulp-paper after the Civil War had itself cheapened the production of newspapers). Newspaper production also became more efficient as a result of several important technical innovations introduced after the Civil War. First, the placing of type on a revolving cylinder sped...

The Social Purposes of Learning Assessment

ABSTRACT: Assessment has been studied by many researchers and educators from the prism of educational theories which means a purely instructional or pedagogical analysis of assessment. But there is an open space in which learning assessment could be further scrutinized using sociological perspective, so that we could explore and expose the social roles of assessment. This discussion is engaged in the analysis of the social consequences of assessment and its resistances from the various participants of teaching and learning process. Assessment has been widely used for accountability, control, and sorting mechanism of society to distribute the limited social positions that are available. Thus, only those students who are properly equipped with knowledge, values, and competencies are the ones who excel in the assessment devices. Students in the lower echelon of society are left with limited opportunities for social mobility and employment, due to their limited capacity to pass through this filtering machine called assessment. So, there some manifest and latent resistances that students as well as teachers about the negative consequences of assessment. Thus, assessment is not only a system to improve learning, account teachers, and schools but rather is an instrument of academic segregation and tracking. Assessment should be viewed beyond the walls of classroom by looking at the close but intricate linkage of assessment and society. Since assessment is a social fact, therefore, we need to consider how it is developed and practiced in everyday life of teachers and students. Education is never neutral, according to Paulo Freire, and also assessment is can never be neutral. It is resisted by some sector of society, but it is still a very strong mechanism to classify and rank people in a society. It serves a purpose in perpetuating a society’s present order as well as a site to perturb the existing order by its results. KEY WORD: Assessment, social roles and purposes of assessment, academic performance, and resistance of assessment. Assistant Professor Arthur S . Abulencia is a Lecturer at the Faculty of Social Sciences Education PNU (Philippine Normal University), Taft Avenue, Manila 1000, Philippine. He can be reached at: arthurpnu@yahoo.com and asabulencia@gmail.com How to cite this article? Abulencia, Arthur S. (2011). “The Social Purposes of Learning Assessment” in ATIKAN: Jurnal Kajian Pendidikan , Vol.1(1) Juni, pp.105-122. Bandung, Indonesia: Minda Masagi Press owned by ASPENSI in Bandung, ISSN 2088-1290. Chronicle of the article: Accepted (April 11, 2011); Revised (May 19, 2011); and Published (June 5, 2011).

The Social Purposes of Learning Assessment

Assessment has been studied by many researchers and educators from the prism of educational theories viewed purely from an instructional or pedagogical analysis, but there is an open space in which learning assessment could be further scrutinized using sociological perspective so as to explore its social roles. The paper analyzes the social consequences of assessment and its resistances from the various participants of teaching and learning process. Assessment has been widely used for accountability, control, and sorting mechanism of society to distribute the limited available social positions. Thus only those students properly equipped with knowledge, values and competencies excel in the assessment devices. Students in the lower echelon of society, however, are left with few opportunities for social mobility and employment due to their limited capacity to pass through this filtering machine called assessment. Teachers and student demonstrate some manifest and latent resistances to the negative consequences of assessment. Hence, assessment both serves as a system to improve learning or account teachers and schools and as an instrument for academic segregation and tracking. It should be viewed beyond the walls of classroom by looking at the close, but intricate linkage of assessment to society.

The Public's Changing Perceptions of the Condition of Social Welfare in Hong Kong: Lessons for Social Development

In the aftermath of the Asian financial crisis, the Hong Kong government introduced welfare reforms to ease the pressure from fiscal challenges and swelling welfare rolls; at the same time, to maintain its development credentials, it made an effort to adhere to its colonial tradition on the provision of welfare. The government adopted various strategies to garner popular support for promoting economic development as the primary goal and for promoting social harmony under the concept of ‘helping people to help themselves’. This article examines Hong Kong people's changing perceptions of the condition of social welfare in the past decade. Using a multidimensional developmental welfare approach and data from two opinion surveys conducted in 1997 and 2008, the study finds that Hong Kong people expressed a relatively high level of satisfaction about their own lives, but varying degrees of reservation about the problem of poverty, government provision of social welfare, and opportunities for social mobility. As a result of the sectorally unbalanced welfare reforms, which are biased against the disadvantaged, some of these perceptions have become more negative in recent years. Socially vulnerable people, especially the lower classes, are now more critical of the condition of social welfare, and such feelings seem to be intensifying. It is thus suggested that special attention to the issue of class should be paid in social development programmes to ensure social equality and social justice.

The career trajectory of a Black male high school basketball player: A social reproduction perspective

Interscholastic sport in the United States is a social institution within which the social relationships and attitudes needed to sustain the existing dominant economic and class relations of the larger society could be perpetuated or reproduced. This single case study allowed us to explore the question of social reproduction by examining the nuances of how a young Black male high school basketball player helped to reproduce his social class position in society by aspiring to a career as a professional athlete. Our findings reveal that not only does this young man exclude himself from alternative opportunities for social mobility, but also in the context of pursuing hoop dreams, he lacked the cultural and social capital for navigating his way to his desired goal. Practical and research implications are discussed.

Assets and Income: Disability-based Disparities in the United States

The authors analyzed data from the 2001 Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) to determine the extent of a disability-based net worth and income gap among U.S. households. The sample included 4,154 households with an adult with disabilities and 12,365 households without an adult with disabilities. Households with an adult with disabilities had substantially reduced net worth and income as contrasted with households without adults with disabilities, regardless of family structure (married couple, single women, or single men). Policy implications are discussed. KEY WORDS: assets; disabilities; income gap; Survey of Income and Program Participation ********** Assets are resources that families can use to invest for long-term economic and social well-being (Shapiro & Wolff, 2001; Sherraden, 1991). Assets such as homes, saving accounts, and business equity provide stability and offer a cushion in difficult times. Accumulation of assets facilitates long-term financial well-being as well as opportunities for social mobility and increased pohtical participation and power (Building Assets, 2005; Wolff & Zacharias, 2007). There is disturbing evidence of asset inequality in the United States. Recent research found that the top 20% of U.S. income earners hold more than 80% of all U.S. wealth, and the bottom 40% of U.S. income earners hold less than 5% of all U.S. wealth (Wolff, 2004). Moreover, net worth trends suggest that wealth increases have occurred at the top of the income distribution. Although both median and mean net worth increased between 2001 and 2004, median income increased 1.5% compared with the 6.3% increase in mean net worth. As such, the wealthiest households gained much of this increase (Bucks, Kennickell, & Moore, 2006). At the other end of the income distribution, the poorest 15% of households have zero or negative net worth (Caner & Wolff, 2004). Millions of U.S. families have few or no assets. The United States has traditionally used an array of tools to help low-income households. U.S. programs that provide direct payments or support to individuals have tended to focus on a combination of income maintenance, consumption needs (for example, food stamps, Medicaid), and work incentives. In recent years, the idea of asset building as a strategy for social and economic development for the poor has gained serious consideration. Although there is considerable evidence about elevated income poverty rates among U.S. adults with disabilities, almost nothing is known about asset holding patterns among this population. Using a nationally representative data set, the purpose of this study was to explore whether the disability-based asset gap is comparable to the disability-based income gap for adults and to examine asset holding among different family structures. LITERATURE REVIEW Disability and Income Poverty Researchers have investigated income poverty among U.S. adults with disabilities, defined as people with substantial functional limitations or restrictions in their activities of daily living (ADLs) (Steinmetz, 2006). Although income poverty rates differ somewhat depending on the data source, there is convergence that adults with disabilities experience significantly higher rates of income poverty than nondisabled adults (Steinmetz, 2006). Ten percent of nondisabled working-age people were poor in 2000, substantially below the 19% poverty rate for same-age people with disabilities (Waldrop & Stern, 2003). Higher poverty rates for people with disabilities are related to elevated living costs (for example, costs associated with transportation, medical care, and home adaptations) and the fact that public health insurance and other assistance provided to people with disabilities do not cover a substantial portion of these costs (Elwan, 1999; GAO, 1999). The elevated living costs associated with having disabilities increases the need for income to meet these obligations. …

Race and Academic Achievement in Racially Diverse High Schools: Opportunity and Stratification

Background/Context Brown v Board of Education fundamentally changed our nation's schools, yet we know surprisingly little about how and whether they provide equality of educational opportunity. Although substantial evidence suggests that African American and Latino students who attend these schools face fewer learning opportunities than their White counterparts, until now, it has been impossible to examine this using a representative sample because of lack of data. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study This study uses newly available data to investigate whether racially diverse high schools offer equality of educational opportunity to students from different racial and ethnic groups. This is examined by measuring the relative representation of minority students in advanced math classes at the beginning of high school and estimating whether and how this opportunity structure limits the level of achievement attained by African American and Latino students by the end of high school. Setting This study uses data from the Adolescent Health and Academic Achievement Study (AHAA) and its partner study, the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health), a stratified, nationally representative study of students in U.S. high schools first surveyed in 1994–1995. Population/Participants/Subjects Two samples of racially diverse high schools were used in the analysis: one with African Americans, Whites, and Asians (26 schools with 3,149 students), and the other with Latinos, Whites, and Asians (22 schools with 2,775 students). Research Design Quantitative analyses first assess how high schools vary in the extent to which minority students are underrepresented in advanced sophomore math classes. Hierarchical multilevel modeling is then used to estimate whether racial-ethnic differences in representation in advanced math have an impact on African American and Latino students’ achievement by the end of high school, relative to the Whites and Asians in the school. Specifically, we estimate the effects of Whites’ and Asians’ overrepresentation in sophomore-year math (or Latino or African American underrepresentation) within the school on students’ senior-year grades and their postsecondary enrollment. Findings/Results Findings show that schools vary in the extent to which African American and Latino students are underrepresented in advanced sophomore math classes. This pattern of racial inequality in schools is associated with lower minority senior-year grades and enrollment in 4-year postsecondary institutions, net of students’ own background. Conclusions/Recommendations Evidence consistently suggests that schools can play an active role in the provision of opportunities for social mobility or in the exacerbation of social inequality, depending on how they are structured. It is important to consider racial stratification within schools as a mechanism of inequality of educational opportunity.

The 1990 Violent Disturbance In Trinidad & Tobago: Some Perceptions

(2008). The 1990 Violent Disturbance In Trinidad & Tobago: Some Perceptions. Caribbean Quarterly: Vol. 54, No. 4, pp. 129-139.

Escaping poverty and securing middle class status: how race and socioeconomic status shape mobility prospects for African Americans during the transition to adulthood.

This article draws on extant research from the disciplines of psychology, sociology, and economics to identify linkages between individual, family, community, and structural factors related to social mobility for African Americans during the transition to adulthood. It considers how race and class together affect opportunities for social mobility through where African Americans live, whom they associate with, and how they are impacted by racial and class-related stigma. Of particular interest is social mobility as accomplished through academic achievement, educational attainment, employment, economic independence, and homeownership. Research on five issues is reviewed and discussed: (a) the unique vulnerabilities of newly upwardly mobile African Americans, (b) wealth as a source of inequality, (c) racism and discrimination, (d) the stigma associated with lower-class status, and (e) social and cultural capital. The article concludes with a summary and directions for future research.

Does hukou still matter? The household registration system and its impact on social stratification and mobility in China

户籍制度是中国社会一项基本的制度安排， 它把户口作为资源配置和利益分配的重要凭据， 对社会分层和流动产生了较大的影响。在改革开放近三十年后， 中国的户口还起不起作用， 以及起着怎样的作用？通过对综合社会调查数据的分析， 发现中国社会分层具有城乡户口差别和城市户口等级差别并存的特点， 户口转变和迁移的开放性程度与个人社会流动机会获得有正相关关系。市场转型虽带来了较多流动机会， 但户口等级差别以及户口对体制内流动所起的结构性影响依然存在。鉴于户籍制度的强粘附性生成了社会差别， 改革这一制度的基本方向是推行户口一元化和迁移自主化。 The household registration system has been a basic institutional arrangement in Chinese society. Under this system, registered residence (hukou) plays an important role in resource allocation and interest distribution, and thus exerts a significant impact on social stratification and mobility. After nearly three decades of reform and opening up, does it still play a role, and, if so, what is this role? Drawing on data from the China General Social Survey, we find that China's social stratification is characterized by the simultaneous existence of differentiation between urban and rural hukou and hierarchy within urban hukou; furthermore, there is a positive correlation between one's opportunities for social mobility and the possibility of changing and transferring one's hukou. Despite the increasing social mobility ensuing from market‐oriented transformation, the hukou hierarchy and its structural influence on mobility within the institutional framework persist. The strongly conglutinative nature of the household registration system has given rise to social disparities. The basic direction for reform of the system should be unification of hukou and free choice of movement from one place to another.

The Emergence and Evolution of Urban Māori Authorities: A Response to Māori Urbanisation

When considering cultures and peoples in virtually any context, there can be an underlying tendency to compartmentalise these groups and make assumptions about their features and characteristics that are not necessarily borne out in practice. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the analysis of the dichotomy of traditional and modern societies presented in the writings of the American economists Walt Rostow and Neil Smelser. Rostow and Smelser both cast traditional, non-European communities as having rigid hierarchical systems, limited opportunities for social mobility, fixed limits on productive capacity, low formal educational attainment, and a generally static state of development. 1 A challenge to this depreciatory portrayal was made by the Latin American economist Andre Gunder Frank, who methodically dismantled these stifling classifications of traditional societies. Frank pointed out that constructs used by Rostow and Smelser were essentially a European-imposed perception of how traditional communities operated, and ignored the substantial capacity of these commuities for development – a capacity that would only materialise if such communities were given sufficient self-determination. The debate about the perception, nature, and capacity of so-called traditional societies in the modern world has a direct bearing on the expectations and understandings of urban Maori in Aotearoa/New Zealand. This chapter explores several themes arising out of an examination of some of the social and structural aspects of Maori urbanisation. These lead to the conclusion that the emergence of Maori urban authorities are now a permanent feature in Maori society, and are an entirely legitimate form of association, in both a structural and cultural sense.

The Melodramatic Nation: Integration and Polarization in the Argentine Cinema of the 1930s

The Melodramatic Nation: Integration and Polarization in the Argentine Cinema of the 1930s

Fertility Behaviors of Rural-to-Urban Migrants in China

This study deals with the fertility behaviors of migrants in China. Based on fieldwork carried out in migrants' current community in Beijing and their home villages in Henan province, the study examined how culture and practices shaped in their home villages and urban influences bear on migrants' fertility behaviors. Findings from the study confirm the results of previous quantitative studies. Under current social conditions in China, it is unrealistic to expect any drastic changes in migrants' fertility patterns. The factors that brought down the fertility of urban residents, such as old-age pension and opportunities for social mobility, are not available to migrants. Overall, migration per se has no significant impact on migrants' fertility behaviors.

Pre‐Revolutionary in Form, Soviet in Content? Wartime Educational Reforms and the Postwar Quest for Normality

The war and the postwar years were an important and generally underestimated phase in the history of theSoviet educational system, since the school system created during this period continued to the end of the regime with some modifications. Although many of the reforms were discussed and planned during the 1930s, the war proved an ideal time for sweeping reforms—far less resistance to some of the more controversial and economically inefficient changes. The reforms included selective rehabilitation of features of the pre‐revolutionary schools, a policy with a number of high‐level supporters and promoters. The combination of reforms and funding patterns reflected the Soviet state's ideological and economic priorities, as it used the school system to enshrine and perpetuate a particular vision of the new Soviet social order, one characterized by hardening social barriers when it came to quality of life, access to education and other social mobility opportunities.

Distributional conflict, the state and peace building in Burundi

Burundi's successive conflicts are rooted in an unequal distribution of wealth and power which has strong ethnic and regional dimensions. It is therefore clear that, if the new Burundian leadership is serious about building peace, it must engineer institutions that uproot the legacy of discrimination and promote equal opportunities for social mobility for all ethnic groups and regions. Education is an especially important sector in this regard, and actions to decentralize secondary education, thereby improving access, and to subsidize loans for students attending public universities, could do much to reduce an important source of social exclusion and marginalization. The international community can assist demobilization and use debt relief and aid to support the reduction of inequality and the containment of sectarian tendencies on all sides.

From the Marginality of the 1960s to the “New Poverty” of Today: a LARR Research Forum

This paper derives from a LARR-sponsored forum at the LASA 2003 Congress held in Dallas in March 2003. Targeted at younger scholars, a panel of leading researchers whose early work was shaped by marginality and dependency thinking of the 1960s were invited to reflect cross-generationally about how paradigms analyzing poverty in Latin American cities have shifted from that time to the present. Specifically, each of the authors compares “marginality” as it was construed more than three decades ago with contemporary constructions of poverty and social organization arising from their more recent research. While there are important continuities, the authors concur that the so-called “new poverty” today is very different, being more structural, more segmented and, perhaps paradoxically, more exclusionary than before. Moreover, the shift from a largely patrimonialist and undemocratic state towards one that, while more democratic, is also slimmer and downsized, thereby shifting state intervention and welfare systems ever more to local level governments and to the quasi-private sector of nongovernmental organizations. If earlier marginality theory overemphasized the separation of the poor from the mainstream, today's new poverty is often embedded within structures of social exclusion that severely reduce opportunities for social mobility among the urban poor.