Hiromi Ishizawa

Why Some Immigrant Neighborhoods are Safer than Others: Divergent Findings from Los Angeles and Chicago

Contrary to popular opinion, scholarly research has documented that immigrant communities are some of the safest places around. Studies repeatedly find that immigrant concentration is either negatively associated with neighborhood crime rates or not related to crime at all. But are immigrant neighborhoods always safer places? How does the larger community context within which immigrant neighborhoods are situated condition the immigration-crime relationship? Building on the existing literature, this study examines the relationship between immigrant concentration and violent crime across neighborhoods in Los Angeles and Chicago—two cities with significant and diverse immigrant populations. Of particular interest is whether neighborhoods with high levels of immigrant concentration that are situated within larger immigrant communities are especially likely to enjoy reduced crime rates. This was found to be the case in Chicago but not in Los Angeles, where neighborhoods with greater levels of immigrant concentration experienced higher, not lower, violent crime rates when located within larger immigrant communities. We speculate on the various factors that may account for the divergent findings.

Minority Language Use among Grandchildren in Multigenerational Households

This study attempts to answer the research question, Does living with grandparents influence minority language maintenance among grandchildren? The conventional three-generation model of language shift portrays a shift occurring from one generation to the next. However, this model overlooks the ties between nonconsecutive generations and implies that minority language loss occurs between parents and children and that grandparents are superfluous. Using the Census 2000 Supplementary Survey (C2SS), I examine the role of grandparents in minority language maintenance among their grandchildren. The findings of this study suggest that living with non-English-speaking grandparents influences grandchildrens minority language use in multigenerational households. In particular, the presence of non-English-speaking grandmothers has a stronger effect on grandchildrens minority language use than does the presence of grandfathers. This study contributes to ther understanding of the three-generation model of language shift, especially the role of grandparents in multigenerational households.

Factors Affecting Adoption Decisions Child and Parental Characteristics

As adoption of a child from abroad and from the state’s foster care system is increasingly practiced, prospective adoptive parents now have several options: private domestic, foster care, or international adoption. However, little research has been conducted on the similarities and differences in the characteristics of the child and family and the decision-making process by adoption type. We therefore ask: How are the characteristics of the child and family associated with the type of adoption? And what factors are considered important for adoptive parents in deciding whether to choose private domestic or international adoption? Using the 2007 National Survey of Adoptive Parents, we found that attributes of the child and family differ by the type of adoption, and while adoptive parents expressed a preference to resemble a biologically formed family, the emphasis was placed differently by adoption type.

Marrying into the American Population: Pathways into Cross-Nativity Marriages

Cross-nativity marriages have been a neglected dimension of intermarriage patterns in the U.S., although they provide a vehicle for the easy social and political integration of the foreign-born spouse and the couples children. We first present U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service data to show that cross-nativity marriages are common among migrants entering the country and appear to be increasing over time. The following analyses based on 2008 American Community Survey data imply several pathways into cross-nativity marriages that are strongly gendered and race specific and that involve major social institutions such as the higher educational system and the U.S. military.

IMMIGRANT NEIGHBORHOOD CONCENTRATION, ACCULTURATION AND OBESITY AMONG YOUNG ADULTS

ABSTRACT: Researchers repeatedly find that immigrants are healthier than their native-born counterparts. Among immigrant children, however, findings are mixed. Moreover, the effect of neighborhood context on obesity has not been fully examined. Using the National Longitudinal Study of Adult Health, this study investigates the linkages between acculturation, neighborhood characteristics, and obesity among young adults, including the potential for residing in an immigrant neighborhood, to mediate the adverse effects of low neighborhood socioeconomic conditions on obesity. Consistent with the unhealthy assimilation model, an immigrant health advantage is found for first generation Asians. Conversely, a greater likelihood of being obese is found for second and third and higher generation Hispanics relative to third and higher generation Whites. Further, a high concentration of immigrants and linguistically isolated households appear to work as a buffer against health risks that relate to obesity, particularly in poor neighborhoods.

Civic Participation through Volunteerism among Youth across Immigrant Generations

This study examines patterns of civic participation through volunteerism among youth across immigrant generations using the Education Longitudinal Study of 2002. This study asks the following question: Does the association between volunteerism and immigrant generational status vary by race and ethnicity, and are differences in volunteerism by race/ethnic immigrant generation status mediated by acculturation, cumulative resources during youth, and institutional opportunities? The results show that the first and second generation Hispanic youth are less likely to volunteer than third+ generation whites. The findings demonstrate that the lower levels of family socioeconomic status, parents’ civic participation, engagement in extracurricular activities, and enrollment in postsecondary institutions account for this pattern. Contrary to classical assimilation theory, having non-English-language-speaking parents is associated with a higher likelihood of volunteerism. Furthermore, an immigrant advantage is found for first generation Hispanic youth for regular volunteerism, and a second generation advantage is found for Asians for all volunteer frequencies.

Who Arrived First? The Timing of Arrival among Young Immigrant Wives and Husbands

The strongest predictor of immigrants’ adaptation to the American context is the length of time that they have lived in the United States. Scholars often assume, however, that immediate members of foreign-born families, especially husbands and wives and their foreign-born children, all arrive in the US at the same time and thus have lived there for the same length of time. Using the 2000 US census data, we investigate this assumption and analyse the sequence of migration among young married immigrant husbands and wives. Results show that over a half of married foreign-born men and women had arrived in the US in different years and that the sequence is gendered, with men more often arriving before the women. These patterns differ by country of origin. In general, the earlier arrival is older, and more likely to be employed than the later arrival, whether the earlier arrival is the husband or the wife.

Ethnic Neighbourhoods in Auckland, New Zealand

Using the 2006 New Zealand Census data, we examine the spatial clustering of the four largest ethnic minority groups—Chinese, Indian, Māori and Samoan—in Auckland. To guide our analysis, we employ three theoretical models—the immigrant enclave, ethnic community and place stratification models—that have helped explain the residential patterns of ethnic minority groups in immigrant destination countries. The results of spatial autocorrelation analysis show that all four ethnic minority groups form ethnic neighbourhoods. Indian neighbourhoods are more reflective of the immigrant enclave model as these neighbourhoods are socio-economically impoverished and have a higher percentage of foreign born. On the other hand, Chinese neighbourhoods are better explained by the ethnic community model, which describes an ethnic neighbourhood based more on preference than economic necessity. While the overall findings conform to patterns found in other countries, the severely socially deprived characteristics of Samoan and Māori neighbourhoods are reflective of the place stratification model.

Volunteerism Among Mexican Youth in the United States The Role of Family Capital

This study investigates patterns of volunteerism within a rapidly growing segment of the population, Mexican immigrant and Mexican origin youth, using data from the Education Longitudinal Study of 2002. These data show that volunteerism varies by immigrant generational status. Contradicting classical assimilation theory, first-generation Mexican immigrant youth are found to be more likely to engage in volunteerism compared with their third-plus-generation counterparts. This difference is most pronounced at the lower end of the family income spectrum. The study also analyzes the effects of components of family capital, family income and parental education, on youth volunteerism. Family income and parental education both have a positive effect on volunteerism, but the former is associated with volunteerism of any frequency and the latter with regular volunteerism.

Contemporary Chinese America: Immigration, Ethnicity, and Community Transformation by Min Zhou

Santa Cruz is a medium-sized city on the Pacific Ocean between mountains and beaches. After a recent visit there, I had the impression that the city was a laid-back outpost of playful freedom. The first few pages of The Leftmost City: Power and Progressive Politics in Santa Cruz quickly corrected my impression. Beneath the placid surface lay some 40 years of political organization, struggle, and conflict as a progressive coalition of neighborhood advocates, social welfare liberals, environmentalists, and socialist-feminists squared off—and won—against the business community for control of land use and development in the city. The Leftmost City offers the details of the struggle. It is a brilliant piece of sociological/political/urban planning research that offers both a rigorous case study of the politics of the community and a critical analysis of urban political theory. It is also a framework for exercising effective political action against entrenched business interests. In most American communities of the 20th century, the organized business community sets the community’s priorities and policies, but not in Santa Cruz, where the business community has lost on every major development proposal since 1968. Plans to widen local highways, build a convention center, expand downtown, and build market-rate housing on vacant green space have all gone down to defeat at the hands of the progressive coalition. It has held together, governed the city, raised necessary revenues, and moved Santa Cruz further to the left for longer periods of time than any other city in the United States. The book begins with an overview of recent history in Santa Cruz and continues with an account of the four major theories of urban power: Marxist urban theory, public choice theory, growth coalition theory, and regime theory. The authors summarize the similarities and differences among the four theories. Each chapter following recounts how strategies and maneuvers by the progressive bloc or the growth coalition support or contradict the four theories of local power. Chapter 2 gives an overview of critical moments in the history of the downtown growth coalition from its inception in the 1840s. During that period, business leaders controlled the local agenda with little opposition. Chapter 3 picks up at the end of WWII, describing how the growth coalition made ambitious plans for a much larger city including a