Investing in the Homeland: Foreign Assets and Patterns of Immigrant Economic Incorporation

This dissertation consists of three separate studies that examine patterns of immigrant incorporation in the United States. The first study tests competing hypotheses derived from conflicting theoretical frameworks−transnational perspective and cross-national framework− to determine whether transnational engagement and incorporation are concurrent processes among Chinese, Indian, and Mexican immigrants. This study measures transnational engagement and incorporation as home and home country asset ownership using multi-panel, nationally representative data from the New Immigrant Survey (NIS) collected in 2003 and 2007. Results support a cross-border framework and indicate that transnational asset ownership decreases among all immigrant groups, while U.S. asset ownership increases. Findings from this study also indicate that due to disadvantaged pre-migration SES and low human capital, Mexican immigrants are less likely than other immigrants to own home country assets during the year after receiving their green card.

The second study examines the doubly disadvantaged position of elderly immigrants in the U.S. wealth distribution by applying the life course perspective to the dominance-differentiation theory of immigrant wealth stratification. I analyze elderly immigrant wealth in respect to U.S.-born seniors and younger immigrant cohorts using two data sets: the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) and the New Immigrant Survey (NIS). The Survey of Income and Program Participation (2001 to 2005) is a nationally representative survey of U.S. households. The first series of analyses reveals a significant wealth gap between U.S.- and foreign-born seniors which is most pronounced among the wealthiest households in my sample; however, U.S. tenure explains much of this difference. The second series of analyses suggests that elderly immigrants experience greater barriers to incorporation compared to their younger counterparts.

In the third study, I apply a transnational lens to the forms-of-capital and opportunity structure models of entrepreneurship in order to analyze the role of foreign resources in immigrant business start-ups. I propose that home country property use represents financial, social, and class resources that facilitate immigrant entrepreneurship. I test my hypotheses using survey data on Latin American immigrants from the Comparative Immigrant Entrepreneurship Project. Findings from these analyses suggest that home country asset ownership provides financial and social capital that is related to an increased likelihood of immigrant entrepreneurship.

Understandings of transnational families in debates on Migration and development

International migration sets in motion a range of significant transnational processes that connect countries and people. How migration interacts with development and how policies might promote and enhance such interactions have, since the turn of the millennium, gained attention on the international agenda. The recognition that transnational practices connect migrants and their families across sending and receiving societies forms part of this debate. The ways in which policy debate employs and understands transnational family ties nevertheless remain underexplored. This article sets out to discern the understandings of the family in two (often intermingled) debates concerned with transnational interactions: The largely state and policydriven discourse on the potential benefits of migration on economic development, and the largely academic transnational family literature focusing on issues of care and the micro-politics of gender and generation. Emphasizing the relation between diverse migration-development dynamics and specific family positions, we ask whether an analytical point of departure in respective transnational motherhood, fatherhood or childhood is linked to emphasizing certain outcomes. We conclude by sketching important strands of inclusions and exclusions of family matters in policy discourse and suggest ways to better integrate a transnational family perspective in global migration-development policy.

INTERGENERATIONAL SUPPORT AND WELL-BEING OF OLDER ADULTS IN CHANGING FAMILY CONTEXTS

This dissertation consists of three papers that examine the complexities in upward intergenerational support and adult children’s influence on older adults’ health in changing family contexts of America and China. The prevalence of “gray divorce/repartnering ” in later life after age 55 is on the rise in the United States, yet little is known about its effect on intergenerational support. The first paper uses the life course perspective to examine whether gray divorce and repartnering affect support from biological and stepchildren differently than early divorce and repartnering, and how patterns differ by parents’ gender. Massive internal migration in China has led to increased geographic distance between adult children and aging parents, which may have consequences for old age support received by parents. This topic has yet to be thoroughly explored in China, as most studies of intergenerational support to older parents have focused on the role of coresident children or have not considered the interdependence of multiple parent-child dyads in the family. The second paper adopts the within-family differences approach to assess the influence of non-coresident children’s relative living proximity to parents compared to that of their siblings on their provision of support to parents in rural and urban Chinese families. The study also examines how patterns of the impact are moderated by parents’ living arrangement, non-coresident children’s gender, and parents’ provision of support to children. Taking a multigenerational network perspective, the third paper questions if and how adult children’s socioeconomic status (SES) influences older parents’ health in China. It further examines whether health benefits brought by adult children’s socioeconomic attainment are larger for older adults with lower SES and whether one of the mechanisms through which adult children’s SES affects older parents’ health is by changing their health behaviors. These questions are highly relevant in contemporary China, where adult children have experienced substantial gains in SES and play a central role in old age support for parents. In sum, these three papers take the life course, the within-family differences, and the multigenerational network perspective to address the complexities in intergenerational support and older adults’ health in diverse family contexts.

Pathways to adulthood and their precursors: Roles of gender and race

Research on the transition to adulthood dates back nearly four decades, but a growing body of research has taken a new approach by investigating multiple demographic markers in the transition to adulthood simultaneously. Using the life course perspective, this dissertation is built on the literature by first examining contemporary young adults’ pathways to adulthood from ages 18 to 30 and their differences by gender. Data for this study were drawn from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997; the final sample included 2,185 men and 2,086 women. The college-educated single workers pathway, the college-educated married working parents pathway, and the high-school-educated single parents pathway were identified in both genders. For men, the study also identified the high-school-educated single workers pathway and the high-school-educated married working parents pathway. For women, the study also identified the high-school-educated workers pathway and the high-school-educated married parents pathway. Not only did the definitions of some pathways differ by gender, but even in the pathways with the same definition, gender differences were found in the probabilities of being married, of being a parent, or of being employed full-time. Based on the pathways to adulthood identified, this research examined the family and adolescent precursors and whether race moderates the associations between family structure experiences and young adults’ pathways to adulthood. Parental education, family structure, GPA, delinquency, early sexual activity, and race/ethnicity were the family and adolescent precursors that distinguished among pathways taken by the youth. Two interactions between race and family structure/instability were identified. The positive association between growing up in a single-parent family and the odds of taking the high-school-educated single workers pathway compared to the college-educated married working parents pathway was weaker for Black males than for White males. The positive association between family instability and the odds of taking the college-educated single workers pathway compared to the college-educated married working parents pathway was weaker for Black females than for White females. This dissertation accounted for changes in the multiple statuses related to becoming an adult by following contemporary young adults for 12 years. More research on contemporary young adults’ pathways to adulthood and subgroup differences in the effects of precursors are recommended. Limitations and implications of this study are discussed.

The resilience of West Sumatran women: historical, social and cultural impacts

In 1965–66, an effort by the central government to eradicate the Indonesian Communist Party and its sympathizers resulted in the killing of thousands of people across Indonesia who were suspected of being members of the party as well as others who were associates of known members. The violence witnessed or experienced by those whose family members were targeted was a major force in shaping their later experience. This paper discusses the experience of women in West Sumatra, Indonesia who experienced the events of 1965–66 from a life course perspective and focuses on their efforts to adapt in the following years. Many of these women displayed considerable resilience in overcoming the social constraints that resulted from being labelled a Communist or Communist sympathizer. The paper, based on ethnographic research in West Sumatra, discusses the formation of resilience among these women and describes the ways in which they were able to adjust to the social and historical context in which they found themselves.

Young adults' management of type 1 diabetes during life transitions

Aim. To identify life transitions likely to impact diabetes self-care among young adults with Type 1 diabetes and their coping strategies during transition events.

Background. Relationships among psychosocial stress, adjustment, coping and metabolic control affect clinical outcomes and mental health. Life transitions represent major change and are associated with stress that temporarily affects individuals’ problem-solving, coping abilities and blood glucose levels.

Design. A qualitative interpretive inquiry.

Method. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 20 young adults with Type 1 diabetes and a constant comparative analysis method. Data and analysis was managed using QSR_ NVIVO 7 software.

Results. Participants identified two significant transition groups: life development associated with adolescence, going through the education system, entering new relationships, motherhood and the workforce and relocating. Diabetes-related transitions included being diagnosed, developing diabetes complications, commencing insulin pump treatment and going on diabetes camps. Participants managed transitions using ‘strategic thinking and planning’ with strategies of ‘self-negotiation to minimise risks’; ‘managing diabetes using previous experiences’; ‘connecting with others with diabetes’; ‘actively seeing information to ‘patch’ knowledge gaps’; and ‘putting diabetes into perspective’.

Conclusions. Several strategies are used to manage diabetes during transitions. Thinking and planning strategically was integral to glycaemic control and managing transitions. The impact of transitions on diabetes needs to be explored in larger and longitudinal studies to identify concrete strategies that assist diabetes care during life transitions.

Relevance to clinical practice. It is important for health professionals to understand the emotional, social and cognitive factors operating during transitions to assist young adults with Type 1 diabetes to achieve good health outcomes by prioritising goals and plan flexible, timely, individualised and collaborative treatment.

Children’s Play in Cross-Cultural Perspective: A New Look at the Six Cultures Study

A qualitative and quantitative reanalysis of the Six Cultures data on children’s play, collected in the 1950s, was performed to revisit worlds of childhood during a time when sample communities were more isolated from mass markets and media than they are today. A count was performed of children aged 3 to 10 in each community sample scored as engaging in creative-constructive play, fantasy play, role play, and games with rules. Children from Nyansongo and Khalapur scored lowest overall, those from Tarong and Juxtlahuaca scored intermediate, and those from Taira and Orchard Town scored highest. Cultural norms and opportunities determined how the kinds of play were stimulated by the physical and social environments (e.g., whether adults encouraged work versus play, whether children had freedom for exploration and motivation to practice adult roles through play, and whether the environment provided easy access to models and materials for creative and constructive play).

Female employment from the household. Towards a comprehensive analysis of work-life articulation

Research on women’s employment has proliferated over recent decades, often under a perspective that conceptualizes female labour market activity as independent of male presences and absences in the productive and reproductive spheres. In the face of these approaches, the article argues the need to focus on the couple as the unit of analysis of work-life articulation. After referring to the main theoretical arguments that, from a gender perspective within labour studies, have pointed out the relevance of placing the household as the central space for the analysis of the sexual division of labour, the article reviews different empirical contributions that have incorporated such perspective in the international literature. Next, the state of the art in the Spanish literature is presented, before arguing the desirability of applying such framework of analysis to the study of employment and care work in Spanish households, which are at present undergoing major transformations.

Addressing obesity in the management of knee and hip osteoarthritis - weighing in from an economic perspective

BACKGROUND: Obesity is one of the only modifiable risk factors for both incidence and progression of Osteoarthritis (OA). So there is increasing interest from a public health perspective in addressing obesity in the management of OA. While evidence of the efficacy of intereventions designed to address obesity in OA populations continues to grow, little is known about their economic credentials. The aim of this study is to conduct a scoping review of: (i) the published economic evidence assessing the economic impact of obesity in OA populations; (ii) economic evaluations of interventions designed to explicitly address obesity in the prevention and management of OA in order to determine which represent value for money. Besides describing the current state of the literature, the study highlights research gaps and identifies future research priorities.

METHODS: In July 2014, a search of the peer reviewed literature, published in English, was undertaken for the period January 1975 - July 2014 using Medline Complete (Ebscohost), Embase, Econlit, Global Health, Health Economics Evaluation Database (HEED), all Cochrane Library databases as well as the grey literature using Google and reference lists of relevant studies. A combination of key search terms was used to identify papers assessing the economic impact of obesity in OA or economic evaluations conducted to assess the efficiency of obesity interventions for the prevention or management of OA.

RESULTS: 14 studes were identified; 13 were cost burden studies assessing the impact of obesity as a predictor for higher costs in Total Joint Arthroplasty (TJA) patients and one a cost-effectiveness study of an intervention designed to address obesity in the managment of mild to moderate OA patients.

CONCLUSION: The majority of the economic studies conducted are cost burden studies. While there is some evidence of the association between severe obesity and excess hospital costs for TJA patients, heterogeneity in studies precludes definitive statements about the strength of the association. With only one economic evaluation to inform policy and practice, there is a need for future research into the cost-effectiveness of obesity interventions designed both for prevention or management of OA along the disease spectrum and over the life course.

Domestic labour relations in India : Vulnerability and gendered life courses in Jaipur

This study explores labour relations between domestic workers and employers in India. It is based on interviews with both employers and workers, and ethnographically oriented field work in Jaipur, carried out in 2004-2007. Combining development studies with gender studies, labour studies, and childhood studies, it asks how labour relations between domestic workers and employers are formed in Jaipur, and how female domestic workers trajectories are created. Focusing on female part-time maids and live-in work arrangements, the study analyses children s work in the context of overall work force, not in isolation from it. Drawing on feminist Marxism, domestic labour relations are seen as an arena of struggle. The study takes an empirical approach, showing class through empiria and shows how paid domestic work is structured and stratified through intersecting hierarchies of class, caste, gender, age, ethnicity and religion. The importance of class in domestic labour relations is reiterated, but that of caste, so often downplayed by employers, is also emphasized. Domestic workers are crucial to the functioning of middle and upper middle class households, but their function is not just utilitarian. Through them working women and housewives are able to maintain purity and reproduce class disctinctions, both between poor and middle classes and lower and upper middle classes. Despite commodification of work relations, traditional elements of service relationships have been retained, particularly through maternalist practices such as gift giving, creating a peculiar blend of traditional and market practices. Whilst employers of part-time workers purchase services in a segmented market from a range of workers for specific, traditional live-in workers are also hired to serve employers round the clock. Employers and workers grudgingly acknowledged their dependence on one another, employers seeking various strategies to manage fear of servant crime, such as the hiring of children or not employing live-in workers in dual-earning households. Paid domestic work carries a heavy stigma and provide no entry to other jobs. It is transmitted from mothers to daughters and working girls were often the main income providers in their families. The diversity of working conditions is analysed through a continuum of vulnerability, generic live-in workers, particularly children and unmarried young women with no close family in Jaipur, being the most vulnerable and experienced part-time workers the least vulnerable. Whilst terms of employment are negotiated informally and individually, some informal standards regarding salary and days off existed for maids. However, employers maintain that workings conditions are a matter of individual, moral choice. Their reluctance to view their role as that of employers and the workers as their employees is one of the main stumbling blocks in the way of improved working conditions. Key words: paid domestic work, India, children s work, class, caste, gender, life course

An exploratory study on the impact of an early years' preschool intervention programme in the Republic of Ireland

Early years’ education has increasingly been identified as a mechanism to alleviate educational disadvantage in areas of social exclusion. Early years’ intervention programmes are now a common government social policy for addressing social problems (Reynolds, Mann, Miedel, and Smokowski, 1997). In particular, state provided early years’ programmes such as Head Start in the United States and Early Start in Ireland have been established to combat educational disadvantage for children experiencing poverty and socio-economic inequality. The focus of this research is on the long-term outcomes of an early years’ intervention programme in Ireland. It aims to assess whether participation in the programme enhances the life course of children at-risk of educational disadvantage. It involves an in-depth analysis of one Early Start project which was included in the original eight projects established by the Department of Education and Science in 1994. The study utilises a multi-group design to provide a detailed analysis of both the academic and social progress of programme participants. It examines programme outcomes from a number of perspectives by collecting the views of the three main stakeholders involved in the education process; students who participated in Early Start in 1994/5, their parents and their teachers. To contribute to understanding the impact of the programme from a community perspective interviews were also conducted with local community educators and other local early years’ services. In general, Early Start was perceived by all participants in this study as making a positive contribution to parent involvement in education and to strengthening educational capital in the local area. The study found that parents and primary school teachers identified aspects of school readiness as the main benefit of participation in Early Start and parents and teachers were very positive about the role of Early Start in preparing children for the transition to formal school. In addition to this, participation in Early Start appears to have made a positive contribution to academic attainment in Maths and Science at Junior Certificate level. Students who had participated in Early Start were also rated more highly by their second level teachers in terms of goal-setting and future orientation which are important factors in educational attainment. Early Start then can be viewed as providing a positive contribution to the long-term social and academic outcomes for its participants.

Age Effects in Cultural Life Scripts.

Life scripts are culturally shared expectations about the timing of life events in an idealized life course. Because they are cultural semantic knowledge, they should be known by all adult age groups including those who have not lived through all events in the life script, but this has not been tested previously. Young, middle-aged and older adults from the Netherlands were therefore asked in this online study to imagine an ordinary Dutch infant and to name the seven most important events that were likely to take place in the life of this prototypical child. Participants subsequently answered questions about at what ages these events were expected to occur and about their prevalence, importance and valence. We found that the cultural life script was similar for young, middle-aged and older adults and for adults with different educational attainment.

The normative and the personal life: individual differences in life scripts and life story events among USA and Danish undergraduates.

Life scripts are culturally shared expectations about the order and timing of life events in a prototypical life course. American and Danish undergraduates produced life story events and life scripts by listing the seven most important events in their own lives and in the lives of hypothetical people living ordinary lives. They also rated their events on several scales and completed measures of depression, PTSD symptoms, and centrality of a negative event to their lives. The Danish life script replicated earlier work; the American life script showed minor differences from the Danish life script, apparently reflecting genuine differences in shared events as well as less homogeneity in the American sample. Both consisted of mostly positive events that came disproportionately from ages 15 to 30. Valence of life story events correlated with life script valence, depression, PTSD symptoms, and identity. In the Danish undergraduates, measures of life story deviation from the life script correlated with measures of depression and PTSD symptoms.

The trade unions membership dynamics and union members’ trajectories

This text presents an analysis of aggregated membership’s dynamics for Spanish trade unions, using ECVT data, as well as union memberships’ trajectories, or members’ decisions about joining the organization, permanency and responsibilities, and subsequent attrition. For the analysis of trajectories we make use of information of the records of actual memberships and the record of quitting of CCOO, and of a survey-questionnaire to a sample of leavers of the same union. This study allows us to confirm a linkage between the decision and motivations to become union member, to participate in union activities, the time of permanency, and the motives to quit the organization. We also identify five types of union members’ trajectories, indicating that, far from views that assert a monolithic structure, unions are complex organizations.

Measuring health-related quality of life after stroke: A brief tool.

Routine assessment of health-related quality of life (HRQoL) can be time consuming and burdensome for a person with stroke. Therefore the aim of this study was to develop and test a brief instrument for assessing HRQoL among people with stroke. The Quality of Life after Stroke Scale (QLASS) was constructed from items within the Quality of Life Index-Stroke Version and the Chronic Respiratory Disease Questionnaire. It was administered to 92 people with stroke at three points in time: immediately after discharge from hospital, 6 months and 12 months later. Results suggest that the QLASS has 19 items which represent three factors: emotional functioning, mastery and fatigue which correlate with valid measures of health status and activities of daily living. The QLASS is proposed as a brief, valid HRQoL tool for use among people with stroke.