Upward Economic Mobility Research Articles

Self-Employment Among North Korean Migrants

Abstract In the absence of concrete ethnic differences, the division of a single Korean nation into two opposing states has led to the creation of specific types of nationhood and state building. This pseudo-ethnicity, which marks North Korean immigrants as “other” to South Koreans, results in adaptation problems and cultural difficulties. As the sociological literature considers self-employment of minorities and immigrants to be an important avenue for upward economic mobility, this paper focuses on North Korean new settlers who have established their own businesses in South Korea. By case study analysis, it was revealed that new settlers and official organisations have highly differing perceptions on the issue of North Korean self-employment. Public authorities try to discourage North Koreans from becoming self-employed, which is why a comprehensive economic support programme is lacking. However, it was discerned that a new generation of new settlers is growing, showing high motivation and entrepreneurial spirit. The result of this study showed that a tailored support programme for self-employed North Koreans, such as an adapted form of social enterprises, is needed.

Prenatal exposure to air pollution and intergenerational economic mobility: Evidence from U.S. county birth cohorts

New estimates reveal intergenerational economic mobility varies substantially across U.S. counties. The potential role of local environmental health exposures in structuring mobility outcomes has been thus far unexamined, despite mounting evidence that early life exposure to environmental pollutants has lasting impacts for individual human capital development and labor market performance. This study aims to fill this gap by estimating the impact of exposure to air pollution in the birth year on the average intergenerational mobility outcomes of children from low-income families as measured in adulthood. We do so by linking measures of intergenerational economic mobility for U.S. county-cohorts born between 1980 and 1986 to the county average concentration of total suspended particulates (TSP) in the birth year. We then estimate multivariate linear regression models that adjust for birth-cohort fixed effects, county-fixed effects and time-varying county-level covariates to address potential confounding. We find higher levels of TSP in birth year is associated with less upward economic mobility for children from low-income families: a one standard deviation increase in TSP levels is associated with a 0.14 point reduction in average income percentile ranking as measured in adulthood. Notably, we find no association for children from high income families. Our findings indicate early life exposure to air pollution may reduce the prospects children from low-income families will achieve upward economic mobility and suggest variation in environmental quality may help explain observed variation in mobility outcomes.

Convergences and dissonances within the Bismarckian welfare paradigm: a critical assessment of the impacts of Hartz-IV on the German unemployment insurance system

The paper deals with the repercussions of Hartz-IV on the German welfare system, implemented in 2005 in order to stimulate the labour market structure and to meet contemporary socio-economic and demographic challenges. Focussing on the convergences and dissonances between the historically contingent Bismarckian welfare paradigm and the Hartz-IV reform on the basis of Esping-Andersen’s typology of welfare regimes, it critically examines the modifications introduced into the system of unemployment insurance. Despite the overall reduction of the unemployment rate, the dualization between either the income-based unemployment benefit I (ALG-1), which guarantees the protection of the socio-occupational status, or the means-tested unemployment benefit II (ALG-2), providing for the strict minimum assistance to the jobless, has widened socio-economic inequalities. Evidence can be found for the introduction of recommodifying mechanisms, with regards to the tightening of eligibility criteria affecting the access to the ALG-1 and with regards to the implementation of the ALG-2 with a strong responsabilization of the recipients. Furthermore, an erosion of the principle of subsidiarity can be noticed, coupled with a formalweakening of the male breadwinner’s responsibility as the main income provider. Finally, the reforms have reaffirmed the rigidity of the social classes in Germany, thus creating structural obstacles to the economic upward mobility of the working poor. While the flexibility and greater absorbability of the employment market considerably increased German’s economic competitivity, the future yet has to prove whether the growing segment of working poor will be able to upgrade to full employment and social security coverage.
 Keywords: German Welfare System; Unemployment Insurance; Hartz-IV; Labour Market.
 
 
 Recebido em: março/2017
 Aprovado: maio/2018.

Hong Kong’s Transition Toward a Knowledge Economy: Analyzing Effect of Overeducation on Wages Between 1991 and 2011

There is a need to transform Hong Kong’s economy from a service economy to a knowledge economy to address economic stratification and low economic upward mobility. This study used three samples of local employees for the years 1991, 2001, and 2011 to evaluate the effect of an economic environment marked by low private investment in scientific and technological innovation on the transformation of the economy and on opportunities for young adults to achieve economic upward mobility through education. The research goal was addressed by analyzing and comparing the effects of overeducation on wages in three different years. The results add a new perspective and demonstrate that Hong Kong essentially had a service-knowledge economy in those 3 years. They also indicate that although Hong Kong has made improvements in transforming knowledge into productivity between 1991 and 2011, it still has a long way to go to meet the requirements of a knowledge economy. The economic gap between occupations that are knowledge-intensive and those that are not has increased, and the economic situation of overeducated employees who fail to be employed in occupations appropriate for their education levels has worsened. The results have implications for local economic policymakers.

Disparities and Divided Growth: Ethnic Entrepreneurship in the Greater Los Angeles Area, 1980–2015

AbstractThis study employs a multilevel research design to examine business ownership across ethnic groups in the greater Los Angeles area. It finds significant divide between white and non‐white businesses along the labor market hierarchy. The entrepreneurial environment, ethnic residential communities, ethnic business spatial clustering, ethnic concentration in particular niche sectors, and ethnic diversity in local areas are all related to business ownership and disparities across ethnic groups. The results suggest that ethnically diverse neighborhoods and co‐ethnic business communities could provide a conducive institutional environment and resources for minority businesses to start. However, in contrast to white owned businesses, ethnic minority businesses' concentration in the low‐end and easy‐entry sectors may reinforce their disadvantages and hinder upward economic mobility. This study provides policy implications for community regional development through entrepreneurship especially when race and ethnicity are concerned.

African-American women's Upward Economic Mobility and Small for Gestational Age Births: A Population-Based Study.

Background The relationship between African-American women's upward economic mobility and small for gestational age (weight for gestational < 10th percentile, SGA) rates is incompletely understood. Objective To ascertain the extent to which African-American women's upward economic mobility from early-life impoverishment is coupled with reduced SGA rates. Methods Stratified and multilevel logistic regression analyses were completed on the Illinois transgenerational dataset of African-American infants (1989-1991) and their Chicago-born mothers (1956-1976) with linked U.S. census income information. Results Impoverished-born (defined as lowest quartile of neighborhood income distribution) African-American women (n = 4891) who remained impoverished by the time of delivery had a SGA rate of 19.7%. Individuals who achieved low (n = 5827), modest (n = 2254), or high (n = 732) upward economic mobility by adulthood had lower SGA rates of 17.2, 14.8, and 13.7%, respectively; RR = 0.9 (0.8-0.9), 0.8 (0.7-0.8), and 0.7 (0.6-0.8), respectively. In adjusted (controlling for traditional individual-level risk factors) multilevel regression models, there was a decreasing linear trend in SGA rates with increasing levels of upward economic mobility; the adjusted RR of SGA birth for impoverished-born African-American women who experienced low, modest, of high (compared to no) upward mobility equaled 0.95 (0.91, 0.99), 0.90 (0.83, 0.98), and 0.86 (0.75, 0.98), respectively, p < 0.05. Conclusions African-American women's upward economic mobility from early-life residence in poor urban communities is associated with lower SGA rates independent of adulthood risk status.

In Support of the Turner Hypothesis for the 19th Century American West: A Biological Response to Recent Criticisms

In 1893, Frederick Jackson Turner proposed that America’s Western frontier was an economic ‘safety-valve,’ a place where settlers could migrate when conditions in eastern states and Europe crystalized against their upward economic mobility. However, recent studies suggest the Western frontier’s material conditions may not have been as advantageous as Jackson proposed because settlers lacked the knowledge and human capital to succeed on the Plains and Far Western frontier. This study illustrates that current and cumulative net nutrition on the Central Plains improved during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, indicating that recent challenges to the Turner hypothesis are not well supported by net nutrition studies. Net nutrition improve with agricultural innovations and biotechnologies on the western frontier, and rural agricultural workers net nutrition was better than from elsewhere within the US.

The Interaction of Financial Attitudes and Financial Knowledge: Evidence for Low-Income Hispanic Families

We add to the literature on the association of financial knowledge and financial attitudes with financial outcomes by focusing on predominantly low-income Hispanic families. We examine (i) saving for emergencies, for college, and in 401(k) plans, and (ii) ownership of a home, land or rental property, and an investment account. We find that financial knowledge is strongly related to our savings measures and to owning an investment account. Financial attitudes play less of a role, but assume some importance when interacted with financial knowledge. Self-reported financial knowledge in addition to factual financial knowledge is associated with favorable financial outcomes. Our results are important for the upward economic mobility of a demographic group that has received less attention in the literature.

The effect of violent crime on economic mobility

Recent evidence has found substantial geographic variation in the level of upward economic mobility across US states, metropolitan areas, commuting zones, and counties. However, minimal progress has been made in identifying the key mechanisms that help explain why some urban areas have low rates of upward mobility while others have rates of upward mobility that resemble the most mobile nations in the developed world. In this article we focus attention on one specific dimension of urban areas, the level of violent crime. Using longitudinal data and an array of empirical approaches, we find strong evidence that the level of violent crime in a county has a causal effect on the level of upward economic mobility among individuals raised in families at the 25th percentile of the income distribution. We find that a one standard deviation decline in violent crime as experienced during late adolescence increases the expected income rank in adulthood by at least 2 points. Similarly, a one standard deviation decline in the murder rate increases the expected income rank by roughly 1.5 points. These effect sizes are statistically and economically significant. Although we are limited in our capacity to provide evidence on the mechanisms explaining the link between crime and mobility, we present suggestive results showing that the decline in the violent crime rate reduced the prevalence of high school dropouts at the county level between 1990 and 2010.

Location matters: Historical racial segregation and intergenerational mobility

This paper explores historical patterns of racial segregation and its relationship with the observed spatial variation in contemporaneous economic mobility established in Chetty et al. (2014). We combined data from the Equality of Opportunity Project with a novel measure of racial segregation developed in Logan and Parman (forthcoming) and find that past racial segregation explains a significant portion of the spatial variation in intergenerational mobility. These findings are consistent with models showing that persistent institutional factors may drive long-term outcomes across areas. Racial segregation and the environment that fosters it may diminish upward economic mobility by reducing access to networks, labor and capital markets, and political institutions. If so, then reducing the impact of these persistent processes may be key to mitigating current-day gaps in wealth, income, and overall well-being.

Started from the Bottom Now We're Where? African‐American and Latino Niching in Gulf Coast Metros

ObjectivesLabor market concentration, or niching, is a process by which individuals are concentrated in particular sectors often by racial or ethnic group, gender, or economic standing. Niching limits economic upward mobility for certain groups, particularly African Americans and Latinos, and processes encouraging niching may change over time.MethodsThis study examines African‐American and Latino occupational niching in New Orleans and Houston in 2000 and 2008–2012 using confidential microdata and in relation to both individual and neighborhood characteristics.ResultsIndividual and local human capital levels are found to play important roles in niching likelihood, in addition to other individual characteristics, such as foreign‐born status and neighborhood conditions, specifically local co‐racial and co‐ethnic population percentages.ConclusionsResults overall highlight the importance of place‐ and group‐specific approaches to both policy and research related to improving economic outcomes for racial and ethnic groups. These customized efforts are particularly important in metropolitan areas undergoing rapid economic, social, and demographic growth and restructuring such as New Orleans and Houston.

Social Mobility and Support for Redistribution: Separating the American Dream from Policy Preferences

This study examines the extent to which upward social mobility impacts beliefs about inequality and preferences for redistribution and taxation. A novel survey experiment and analysis of two national surveys (1993-2012) establish that there is little to no relationship between perceived or actual rates of social mobility and an individual's preferences for redistribution, taxation of the rich, or a variety of other policies examined, like educational spending. Despite this, local social mobility has a significant relationship with preferences for the Republican party in a county-level analysis of Presidential electoral results from 1980 to 2016, where the strong relationship between social mobility and Republican party preference surpasses that of income and income inequality and is robust to numerous specifications including population weighting, state fixed effects and an extensive battery of control variables. The connection with partisanship rather than policy is confirmed in the national survey data and the survey experiment. Importantly, this partisan effect does not interact with income: regardless of their own income, individuals are more Republican wherever low-income children do well. Finally, rather than universal overestimation, new survey evidence suggests that Americans possess relatively accurate perceptions of local rates of economic mobility. Together, these results provide an empirical rebuttal to conventional models of the Meltzer-Richard voting framework and its prospect of upward mobility (POUM) variant, which argues that preferences for redistribution depend on beliefs about future gains or losses from taxation. Instead, this evidence suggests that attitudes toward redistribution and related policies are not strongly impacted by beliefs in upward economic mobility, which implies that resistance to greater redistribution may not be driven by unmerited belief in the ‘American dream.'

Digital Charlotte: A Case Study of the Relationship between Digital Inclusion and Economic Mobility

The ability to access online communication touches almost every institution and industry the American public interacts with including education, healthcare, social services, government, and news media. In fact, economic mobility (or the lack thereof) is a common theme in this year’s presidential campaign, yet the discussion often ignores the importance of affordable Internet access and digital skills for financial and social stability in favor of securing employment. The gap between those that can afford high-speed, at-home, online access (and possess the critical skills to navigate digital environments (Hobbs, 2010)) impacts virtually every aspect of one’s life, but the digital divide is often overlooked in these discussions. This omission contributes to the increasing disparity between the digital — and economic — “haves” and “have nots.” In this paper, using Charlotte, North Carolina as the case study, we pose the question: what is the relationship between upward economic mobility and the digital divide? Charlotte is one of the fastest growing cities in the United States by population (Wilson, 2015) and recently formed a city-wide “digital inclusion taskforce” (comprised of organizations, civic and business leaders, academics, and local politicians). The taskforce worked to ensure that Google’s forthcoming fiber rollout includes neighborhoods affected by the digital divide. Using multiple data sets, we analyze and map the relationship between economic mobility and the digital divide in Charlotte. The first data set is from a recent report by Harvard University and the National Bureau of Economic Research. Charlotte ranked 49th out of 50 cities in potential upward mobility for residents earning a median income within the bottom 25th percentile. Among the 100 largest counties in the U.S. by population, Mecklenburg County (where Charlotte resides) ranked 100 out of 100 for potential upward mobility among residents in the bottom 25th percentile for median income (Chetty & Hendren, 2015). The second data set is Charlotte’s Digital and Media Literacy Index (DML). This large-scale city-wide survey (MarketWise, Inc., 2012) mapped local residents' digital and media literacy. Based on our initial analyses, some of the residents with the lowest digital and media literacy scores also live in the most economically disadvantaged areas. A deeper and more comprehensive look into this relationship provides a unique opportunity to explore the relationship between digital inclusion and economic mobility. Further unpacking this issue will allow us to propose a set of policy recommendations for the city and county to pursue in developing economic and digital opportunities for all citizens, but specifically ones geared towards the depressed areas of the city and county. Preliminary recommendations include the following: 1) DML resources within a geographic area need to be considered when deploying a new social service. 2) Citizens from economically depressed areas will continue to be further removed from the economy without a supportive DML infrastructure. 3) Simply having broadband access is not sufficient in making sure citizens can use digital tools. 4) Economic mobility initiatives need to consider the availability of high speed Internet, the tools to access them, and the training in using them. References Chetty, R., & Hendren, N. (2015). The Impacts of Neighborhoods on Intergenerational Mobility: Childhood Exposure Effects and County-Level Estimates. Retrieved from http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/hendren/files/nbhds_paper.pdf Hobbs, R. (2010). Digital and media literacy: a plan of action : a white paper on the digital and media literacy recommendations of the Knight Commission on the information needs of communities in a democracy. Washington, D.C.: Aspen Institute. MarketWise, Inc. (2012). Knight School of Communication 2012 Digital and Media Literacy Survey of Adults in Mecklenburg County, NC Final Report (p. 76). Charlotte, NC: Knight School of Communication. Wilson, J. (2015, March 5). Charlotte ranks No. 2 among fastest-growing large cities, new U.S. Census report shows. Charlotte Business Journal.

Comparing the Chinese Dream with the American Dream

Comparison of the Chinese Dream with the American Dream reveals that the Chinese Dream has four main themes: national rejuvenation, common prosperity, democracy, and the people's happiness; whereas, the American Dream emphasizes personal liberty, individual success, and upward social and economic mobility. Investigation of the historical origins and development of the two dreams, conjoined with an account of their aims and purposes, shows that full realization of the Chinese Dream is achieved by successfully building socialism with Chinese characteristics; the American Dream, by contrast, serves as an ideological prop for a particularly aggressive, predatory, and imperialistic form of capitalism. Furthermore, a comparison of each dream in actual practice shows that the Chinese Dream of fully developed socialism has been more successful at promoting common prosperity and peaceful, sustainable development, while the American Dream of unbridled capitalism encourages unsustainable development, growing poverty and inequality, and imperialist wars. Finally, an enumeration of the fundamental differences between the Chinese and American Dreams concludes that the Chinese Dream is fundamentally benign, whereas the American Dream is basically malignant. In order for the American Dream to shed its harmful characteristics, it must reject its capitalist underpinnings and adopt socialism as its ultimate goal.

DRUG POLICY AND INTERGENERATIONAL INCOME MOBILITY IN THE UNITED STATES

A conviction for drug possession blocks some of the most common pathways through which individuals from low income families achieve upward economic mobility in the United States, such as access to higher education, entry-level employment, and military service. These considerations are of growing importance because the number of drug-related arrests have nearly quadrupled since 1980. This article estimates the effect of a conviction for drug possession on earnings mobility using a sample of individuals born between 1980 and 1984, some of the first cohorts to come of age in the context of intensive U.S. drug criminalization and enforcement. To distinguish the effect of a drug conviction from the effect of drug use or general criminality, 1 compare mobility among individuals with drug convictions to control groups who self-report significant drug use and who have had interactions with the criminal justice system that did not lead to a drug conviction. I find that relative to these groups, a drug conviction reduces the probability of transitioning upward from various points in the lower half of the income distribution by 10-15 percentage points, or as much as 50%, and that these effects are substantially stronger for non-whites than for whites. These findings suggest that a policy of decriminalizing nonviolent drug possession would substantially increase intergenerational mobility among low income populations, and this effect should be weighed alongside more conventional costs and benefits in formulating optimal drug policy. (JEL J38, J15, K42) I. INTRODUCTION Major earnings gains from one generation to the next are a relative rarity in the United States, especially at the lower end of the income distribution. Recent definitive estimates from Chetty et al. (2014) using administrative tax records indicate that individuals born to parents in the bottom quintile of the income distribution have a 33.7% chance of staying in the bottom quintile of the income distribution themselves, a 71.9% chance of staying in the bottom half, and only a 7.5% chance of attaining the top quintile. (1) A large theoretical and empirical literature has investigated possible mechanisms through which parents transmit economic status to their children, such as the genetic inheritance of traits associated with earnings and parental investments in their children's human capital (see Black and Devereux 2010 and Solon 1999 for reviews). However, even taking these biological and family-level transmission processes as fixed, both common sense and existing research suggest a few basic pathways through which individuals coming from the lower portions of the income distribution effectively achieve improved earnings. In particular, children of low income parents who realize improved economic status frequently do so by increasing their educational attainment, particularly at the postsecondary level by obtaining entry-level employment that offers human capital acquisition and internal promotion opportunities or by serving in the military, which often includes on the job training as well as access to educational financing. This study is motivated by the observation that these basic strategies for realizing upward mobility are severely hampered by a conviction for drug use. Specifically, in the United States, individuals with a drug conviction are typically ineligible for federal student aid, introducing a potentially important credit constraint for higher education. Criminal convictions have also been shown to disrupt early life human capital accumulation more generally (Aizer and Doyle 2013; Azarnert 2010), and a drug conviction makes it difficult or impossible for an otherwise qualified individual to enlist in the military. Large literatures additionally find that criminal convictions directly reduce entry-level employment opportunities, where a clean criminal record is often a primary qualification (Grogger 1995; Kling 2006; Waldfogel 1994a, 1994b; Western 2002). …

Economic mobility moderates the effect of relative deprivation on financial gambling motives and disordered gambling

This study examined whether a positive association between personal relative deprivation and disordered gambling severity is mediated by the motivation to gamble for financial gain. We hypothesized that this would occur specifically among people who perceived a low personal capacity for upward economic mobility via conventional means of advancement. A sample of community gamblers (N = 196) completed measures of personal relative deprivation, perceptions about upward economic mobility, gambling motivations (financial, coping, enhancement and social) and disordered gambling severity. The predicted moderated mediation model was observed – among people who perceived a low capacity for upward economic mobility, relative deprivation predicted disordered gambling severity via the motivation to gamble for financial gain. This indirect effect did not hold among people who perceived a high capacity for upward mobility. These findings suggest the importance of addressing beliefs about upward economic mobility in gambling prevention and intervention strategies. Among gamblers who feel relatively deprived, it may be advantageous to highlight feasible avenues for upward economic mobility that do not involve gambling.

The Making of Politically Conscious Indonesian Teachers in Public Schools, 1930-42

This paper deals with the emergence of political consciousness among Indonesian teachers and students in public Dutch-Indonesian teacher training schools (Hollands ( Inlandse Kweekschool, HIK) during the last colonial decade up to the beginning of the Japanese occupation in 1942. Most of the Indonesian teachers and students, who pursued careers and education respectively in government schools, had initially embarked from personal expectations of upward economic mobility. Yet, in the course of the 1930s, they grew in deliberate willingness and perception to engage in a wider scope of social dynamics without limiting themselves to the area of power politics. In this paper, the manner in which these students and teachers gave meaning to their daily lives inside and outside of school is identified and analyzed as the factor that critically contributed to the emergence of political consciousness among them. Although the transformation that the teachers underwent in their view of school education was a radical leap when seen from the perspective of the Indonesiacentric historiography of the 1930s, it did not actually show a process of transformative pedagogy. The sense of citizenship that the teachers shared in the 1930s, albeit a dramatic shift from the motivation that had originally propelled them, did not reflect the notion of public education as an independent practice of cultural upbringing irrelevant to the state and state-formation ideology.

Invasion of Educational Universe by Neo-Liberal Economic Thinking: A Civilizational Casualty?

The early 1960s witnessed attempts at a constrictive re-interpretation of the role and purpose (and hence philosophy) of education solely in terms of the ideological premises, concepts/categories and methodology of the mainstream (neoliberal) economics, with the ‘economics of education’ simultaneously being founded as a new sub-branch. In this newly founded economic discourse, education is seen as a vehicle for ‘human capital formation’, a key to the avowed sustained growth of aggregate economy as well as to the upward economic mobility of individuals/households. An increasing dominance of this relatively narrow (neo-liberal) view of education in course, and aftermath, of the Cold War has (arguably/evidently) undermined the long-standing hold of the (pre-existing) broader vision and liberal view of education wherein education is a means not only to material progress but, perhaps more importantly, to higher level of civilizational ethos and enlightenment and democratic citizenship. The present paper argues that the hegemonic dominance of the (neoliberal) economic paradigm of education, with the latter’s concomitant ‘dumbing down’ effects exacerbated, inter alias, by sprees of privatisation and marketization in educational universe, has been cognizably instrumental to a deepening debilitation of academic standard, rigour, sanctity, and related intellectual, ideational, liberal vibrancy crucial for sustenance of the perennial flow of civilizational progression.

Immigrants and entrepreneurship

Immigrants are widely perceived to be highly entrepreneurial, contributing to economic growth and innovation, and self-employment is often viewed as a means of enhancing labor market integration and success among immigrants. Accordingly, many countries have established special visas and entry requirements to attract immigrant entrepreneurs. Research supports some of these stances, but expectations may be too high. There is no strong evidence that self-employment is an effective tool of upward economic mobility among low-skilled immigrants. More broadly prioritizing high-skilled immigrants may prove to be more successful than focusing on entrepreneurship.

The Ambiguous Practices of the Inauthentic Asian American Woman

The Asian American identity is intimately associated with upward class mobility as the model minority, yet women's earnings remain less than men's, and Asian American women are perceived to have strong family ties binding them to domestic responsibilities. As such, the exact class status of Asian American women is unclear. The immediate association of this ethnic identity with a specific class as demonstrated by the recently released Pew study that Asian Americans are “the highest‐income, best‐educated” ethnicity contrasts with another study that finds Asian American women have the highest suicide rates in the United States. To understand these contrasting statistics, this article explores Asian American women's sense of authenticity. If the individual's sense of authenticity is intimately related with one's group identity, the association of the Asian American identity with a particular class ambivalently ensnares her as dichotomously inauthentic—as both the poor Asian American woman who fails to achieve economic upward mobility and the model minority Asian American woman who engages in assimilation practices. Feminist philosophers understand that identities change, but exactly how these transformations occur remains a mystery. The article ends with three speculations on the difficulties for practicing and recognizing individual acts that transform one's group identity.