Racial Variations Flashcards
Gonzalez 2011 – Learning to be Illegal: Undocumented Youth and Shifting Legal Contexts in the Transition to Adulthood
Conducted 150 interviews with undocumented young adults to understand how their “transition to illegality” took place, the mechanisms which exacerbated their problems, and the mechanisms which mediated the harms of the transition. At about 16-17, youth first come to terms with their illegality due to the blocked processes (driving, working, etc.) that require a social security number. Before then, schools shelter them from their status. During the transition to adulthood (19-24), youth either come to terms with their illegality (those who don’t go to college and work low-wage jobs) or youth continue to foresee economic opportunities if they make it to college. In the final stage (25-29) youth either learn to live with their status or they first come to terms with it after leaving college. Helpful adults mediated the transition to college for some youth. Discovery, learning, coping. In addition, financial resources could buffer the transition, as low SES kids had to financially support their parents and could not attend college.
Joyner and Kao 2005 – Interracial relationships and the Transition to Adulthood
They use AddHealth and the National Health and Social Life Survey to test whether interracial relationships (all types) change across age and period (not cohort bc of linear relaitonship). They find that interracial marriages are less likely than other relationships for two reasons: first, interracial relationships tend to occur earlier in the life course, before people typically get married. Second, interracial relaitonships are more likley at later periods, when younger people have yet to be married. Interracial relaitonships were less likely to develop into marriages.
Mihoko Doyle and Kao 2007 – Are Racial Identities Stable? Changing Self-Identification Among Single and Multiple Race Individuals
They use add-health to test what predicts whether young people list multiple races or not, as well as shifts in racial categorization across waves. They predict this with: mother’s education, skin tone, interviewer reported race, and gender. Mother’s education predicts race, where higher education predicts a multiracial status. Skin tone also predicts race, where whiter minorities (Native American and Asian) are more likely to be multi-racial whereas dark skinned minorities are more likely to be multiracial. Interviewer-reported race predicts the multiracial vs monoracial divide. This paper adds evidence to the idea that identities continue to develop throughout adolescence and young adulthood, which supports my ideas. It also shows how social factors influence one’s racial identities, a stronger claim than Saperstein and Penner’s piece.
Mollenkopf, Waters, Holdaway, and Kasinitz 2004 – The Ever Winding Path: Ethnic and Racial Diversity in the Transition to Adulthood
They conduct a survey of over 3000 second-gen immigrants in the NYC area of various backgrounds (Puerto Rican, West Indian, black, Russian, and Chinese). They compare their pathways to adulthood (parenting, education, leaving home, employment, and marriage) to natives. They find 2nd gen immigrants are much more likely to have higher rates of education, but there are major disparities across immigrant groups. Chinese are exceptional for their high achievement even when parent’s education is relatively low. This is due to good home conditions (stable parent marriage, low number of siblings, and ethnic enclaves), low likelihood of early parenthood, and stereotypes of high achievement. Puerto Ricans have surprisingly bad outcomes: low education achievement, high likelihood of early parenthood, and worse employment outcomes. All for the opposite reasons of the Chinese. Parenthood is associated with worse employment and education outcomes regardless of a group membership. Generally, though, kids whose parents have college degrees are more likely to have higher degrees themselves. Neighborhood context is vitally important, and can help or hurt kids.
Zhou and Gonzalez 2019 – Divergent Destinies: Children of Immigrants Growing Up in the United States
review immigration literature (specifically the 1.5/2nd gen in the US). They focus on segmented vs straight-line assimilation, pointing out that the reference group is very important. Relative to the 1st gen, 2nd gen people fare better. Relative to the native population and/or sending communities, it depends. Hyperselectivity refers to groups that fare better than both parties (Chinese), where hyposelectivity refers to groups who fare worse than both parties (Mexicans). They go on to talk about how documentation status overrides all other possibilities.
Taylor and Turner 2002 – Perceived Discrimination, Social stress, and depression in the transition to adulthood: Racial Contrasts
study the effects of discrimination and stress on health outcomes using a dataset containing Florida kids (transitioning to adulthood 19-21), their reports of discrimination, stress, and SES. They find SES predicts mental health, along with stress, and that discrimination plays a role in that. They only include black and white kids (not hispanic). They propose that race, like ethnicity, entails a lived experience more than a biological condition and they present results to support that idea.
“These analyses indicate that both individually and in tandem, the two measures of discrimination employed here are related significantly to depressive symptomatology. In addition, these measures account for approximately 20 percent of the observed class differences in depression. Thus some portion of the association between SES and depression appears to arise from SES differences in perceived discrimination.”
