María B. Vélez

Contextualizing the Immigration and Crime Effect An Analysis of Homicide in Chicago Neighborhoods

Neighborhoods with concentrated disadvantage have heightened levels of crime, and since the 1980s they have seen an infusion of immigrants. The article suggests that the influx of recent immigrants should contribute to the revitalization of disadvantaged neighborhoods and thereby help to reduce violent crime. The article tests whether the effect of concentrated disadvantage on local homicide levels is attenuated by levels of recent arrivals (1985-1990). The article find that recently arrived immigrants are associated with reductions of lethal violence in disadvantaged neighborhoods. It suggest that the influx of recent immigrants in disadvantaged neighborhoods reinvigorates local economic opportunity structures and social networks, and revitalizes neighborhood organizations and institutions. However, recently arrived immigrants are associated with increases in local homicide levels in advantaged contexts. Recent immigrants appear to elevate homicide via the potential disruption they cause in local social networks and efforts at community social control.

Neighborhood Immigration, Violence, and City-Level Immigrant Political Opportunities

Using a multilevel comparative framework, we propose that politically receptive city contexts facilitate the viability of marginalized neighborhoods. To illustrate this proposition, we examine the relationship between immigrant concentration and neighborhood violence. Drawing on political process and minority incorporation theories, we argue that favorable immigrant political opportunities will strengthen the often-found inverse relationship between immigration and crime at the neighborhood level. Unique data from the National Neighborhood Crime Study (Peterson and Krivo 2010a) provide demographic and violence information for Census tracts in a representative sample of 87 large cities. We append this dataset with city-level measures of immigrant political opportunities, such as the extent of minority political incorporation into elected offices and pro-immigrant legislation. Multilevel instrumental variable analyses reveal that the inverse relationship between immigrant concentration and neighborhood violent crime is generally enhanced in cities with favorable immigrant political opportunities. We speculate that this occurs because favorable political contexts bolster social organization by enhancing trust and public social control within immigrant neighborhoods. Our findings demonstrate that the fate of neighborhoods marginalized across ethnicity and nativity are shaped by the responsiveness of political actors and structures to their concerns.

City's Racial Composition Shapes Treatment Center Characteristics and Services

ABSTRACT We assessed the extent to which a citys racial composition shapes the characteristics of substance abuse treatment centers. We utilized both the 2004 National Survey of Substance Abuse Treatment Services, which provides information on treatment center characteristics such as availability of comprehensive substance abuse evaluation, and 2000 Census data on the percentage of African Americans and Latinos in a city. We found that a citys racial composition influences treatment center characteristics and services available, but the pattern is complex in that there are inequalities in treatment for certain types of services but not in others. For instance, cities with high percentages of Latinos and African Americans provide more treatment options, such as employment and domestic violence counseling or programs for gay/lesbian clients. However, minority cities have fewer integrated treatment centers that provide comprehensive assessment for substance abuse and mental health problems. We discuss the implications of these findings for service providers, especially those working with Latino and African American clients, as well as provide avenues for future research.

Language minority achievement, family inequality, and the impact of bilingual education

Abstract Language minority students experience depressed patterns of achievement, on average, compared to their native, English-speaking counterparts—a pattern that bilingual education programs enacted since the 1960s have attempted to address. In this paper, we extend the literature by considering the background disadvantages language minority students face and the impact of bilingual education involvement. Our analyses of eighth graders, drawn from the National Educational Longitudinal Survey (NELS), suggest that a significant portion of the achievement gap between language minority students and the more general student population is explained by family background inequalities. Deficits in achievement persist, however, even once family attributes are considered. Further analyses of our language minority subsample demonstrate a strong, positive influence of early elementary bilingual program involvement on both math and reading achievement. In contrast, enrollment in later elementary grades has no apparent impact while prolonged involvement has a weak, negative influence. These findings, which are consistent for Latino, Asian, Black, Native American, and White language minority students, are discussed relative to educational stratification theory and in light of current demographic trends and federal cutbacks in bilingual education spending.

Remission from substance dependence in U.S. Whites, African Americans, and Latinos

The authors investigated remission from any type of substance dependence in Latinos, African Americans, and Whites using the 2001–2002 National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions, a national sample of community adults. Analyses focused on the 4,520 participants who indicated prior-to-last-year dependence on either alcohol or drugs. Outcome was categorized as current substance dependence or abuse, current use, or abstinence. Whites reported greater likelihood of substance dependence, and African Americans and Latinos were just as likely to remit as Whites once social support and age are controlled. The outcome variable “time to remission” produced a similar pattern of results.

The Racial Invariance Thesis and Neighborhood Crime: Beyond the Black–White Divide

Social scientists have long known that crime is higher in minority versus White neighborhoods. Predominant accounts of this pattern invoke a racial invariance thesis, which posits that (1) accounting for inequalities in structural disadvantages substantially diminishes ethno-racial gaps in neighborhood crime and (2) key predictors operate uniformly across neighborhoods of different ethno-racial types. Unfortunately, little work examines the second assertion of racial invariance, leaving conclusions about the thesis tentative. We address this omission with unique data from the National Neighborhood Crime Study that includes information on neighborhood levels of property and violent crime for majority White, Black, Latino, minority, and integrated neighborhoods nested within a representative sample of 87 large cities. Findings show notable similarity in the influence of key predictors of both violent and property crime across the five ethno-racial neighborhoods. When differences are detected, they are due generally to magnitude and not direction. On the whole our work provides healthy support for a perspective that traces ethno-racial disparity in crime across neighborhoods to the structural underpinnings of urban inequality.