Reconceptualizing Context: A Multilevel Model of the Context of Reception and Second-Generation Educational Attainment

This paper seeks to return scholarly attention to a core intellectual divide between segmented and conventional (or neo-)assimilation approaches, doing so through a theoretical and empirical reconsideration of contextual effects on second-generation outcomes. We evaluate multiple approaches to measuring receiving country contextual effects and measuring their impact on the educational attainment of the children of immigrants. We demonstrate that our proposed measures better predict second-generation educational attainment than prevailing approaches, enabling a multilevel modeling strategy that accounts for the structure of immigrant families nested within different receiving contexts

Beyond the Sidestream: The Language of Work in an Immigrant Metropolis

This paper is a by-product of a study designed to focus on the mechanisms of competition between immigrant and African-American workers at the low-skilled end of the Los Angeles labor market. Language was, unaccountably, of barely incidental interest. But the employers interviewed talked about language extensively. Initially, their comments on language seemed relevant to an understanding of the proficiencies that employers demanded, and of the qualities they sought in their workers. It became clear from working with the data, however, that the discussion of language was sufficiently rich and novel to provide material for a story in its own right. In the end, this paper essentially confirms the conventional wisdom: exposure to influences outside the immigrant community propels the process of language shift. But the paper does suggest one revision: work need not be the domain of initial change. The massive entry of immigrants into the workforce, combined with the strangehold of immigrant networks over the hiring process, yields a type of social closure that yields linguistic accommodation with a twist as bosses and supervisors accommodate to the linguistic needs and preferences of the newcomers -- and not the other way around

Social Capital or Social Closure? Immigrant Networks in the Labor Market

This paper offers a reconsideration and reconceptualization of the role of immigrant social networks in the labor market. As the literature suggests, and as I show, the social connections among workers, and between workers and employers, facilitate economic action; network recruitment is so pervasive because it improves the quality and quantity of information that both workers and employers need, and also shapes the employment relationship by imparting a set of understandings common to workers and employers. But once imported into a workplace, immigrant networks can be turned to other ends; the social closure potential of immigrant networks can also serve as an instrument for reallocating resources from management to labor, while simultaneously increasing opportunities for one group of ethnically distinctive workers at the expense of another. This effort to increase rewards by restricting access to resources and opportunities to a limited circle of eligibles generates an expansionary thrust, extending the penetration of immigrant networks beyond the range defined by considerations of an efficiency sort. I apply the neo-Weberian concepts of "exclusionary," "usurpationary," and "dual" closure to demonstrate how immigrant networks expand their reach