Madeline H. Engel

Internal migration in Brazil.

The significance of internal migration for social change is a sociological theme highly debated in Latin America today. The article that follows briefly examines internal migration in Brazil. These migrations are not new but they are increasing at the present because of a rapid process of urbanization. The author analyzes inter-regional inter-State and intra-State population movements and assesses the causes underlying them: droughts and inundations latifundia and limited opportunities in rural areas. He concludes by pointing out the social and economic consequences of internal migrations and the Government’s reaction to them. (excerpt)

Indigenous Children’s Rights: A Sociological Perspective on Boarding Schools and Transracial Adoption

A sociological analysis of policies related to boarding schools and transracial adoption of indigenous children in Canada, the U.S.A., Australia and New Zealand, between the 1860s and the 1980s, demonstrates the similarity of the outcome of these programmes. While undertaken in the name of protection and/or acculturation, these policies and programmes resulted in trauma to the children, their families, and their cultures, as well as in abuses that were in violation of children’s rights as defined by international organizations, in particular the United Nations. Examination of the profound consequences of boarding schools and transracial adoption during this historical period can serve as a guide to humane, effective, and culturally sensitive child welfare policies.

Cultural Difference and Adoption Policy in the United States: The Quest for Social Justice for Children

This article discusses the impact of cultural difference on adoption in the United States (U.S.) during three historical periods and along three dimensions: religion, race and ethnicity. The focus is on the extent to which national and international definitions of the rights of the child as put forth by the United States, the United Nations and The Hague have affected adoption policy and practice. The article questions the extent to which the failure to respond to cultural differences has diminished the rights of the child and resulted in social injustice. Although focused on the U.S., the argument has relevance for many other countries, including Sweden, Romania, Ukraine, Australia, Korea and China.

Forced Migration and Immigration Programs for Children: The Emergence of a Social Movement

As a result of industrialisation, urbanisation, and mass migrations, the problem of homeless and abandoned children emerged in urban centres. Identified by some as dangerous and threatening to the existing social order, solutions to rescue or control the children were sought, including placing-out through forced migration and immigration programs, with no plan or intention of family reunification. This article examines two experimental programs that took the form of forced migration/immigration between the mid-1800s and mid-1900s – the “Orphan Trains” in the United States and the British “Child Migrant Programme”. The dire consequences of these programs gained public attention and had a profound impact on the development of the global emerging child welfare movement and concerns for the rights of children.

SOCIOLOGY JOSEPH BRANDES, in association with MARTIN DOUGLAS. Immigrants to Freedom: Jewish Communities in Rural New Jersey Since 1882. Pp. xiii, 424. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1971.

to overcome the anti-Semitism common in schools, businesses, police precincts, and private clubs. While they sought to help Jews escape from pogroms and nazism, the backers also sought to dispel the Shylock stereotype applied to them by &dquo;preventing social imbalance&dquo; in the Jewish community-that is, by fostering a poor, rural Jewish group to counteract the image created by their middle-class, urban coreligionists. The immigrants’ motives were simpler: they sought political refuge and economic opportunity. This latter goal proved to be elusive because of their

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The persistence of ethnicity as an important variable of intergroup relations in American society has lately been re-emphasized. Although politicians have constantly kept in mind ethnically balanced tickets at election time, especially in the large urban centers, historians and sociologists have only recently started to reconsider the experience of the immigrant groups, to talk about it in their conventions and academic courses. Greelys booklet is basically a call for research on the implications of the ethnic factor in the individuals search for identity and in the groups competition for political and social power. After a brief review of sociological writings on ethnic groups in the United States, four reasons are presented that would justify a serious study of ethnicity: the uniqueness of the American experiment as a result of many diverse national groups; the urgency of solutions for integroup tensions that an understanding of ethnicity would bring about; a better insight into the problems of new immigrant groups from the knowledge of the older ones; the interest and humor ethnic studies demand. The ethnic group is seen as a combination of nostalgia for the primary relationships of the peasant village that ignored the anomie conditions of urban industrial living and of a powerful drive in man to associate with his own kind.