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Leapfrogging the Melting Pot? European Immigrants' Intergenerational Mobility across the Twentieth Century

By on December 17, 2021 in Articles

Kendal Lowrey, Jennifer Van Hook, James D. Bachmeier, Thomas B. Foster

Sociological Science December 17, 2021
10.15195/v8.a23

Abstract

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During the early twentieth century, industrial-era European immigrants entered the United States with lower levels of education than the U.S. average. However, empirical research has yielded unclear and inconsistent evidence about the extent and pace of their integration, leaving openings for arguments that contest the narrative that these groups experienced rapid integration and instead assert that educational deficits among lower-status groups persisted across multiple generations. Here, we advance another argument, that European immigrants may have “leapfrogged” or exceeded U.S.-born non-Hispanic white attainment by the third generation. To assess these ideas, we reconstituted three-generation families by linking individuals across the 1940 census; years 1973, 1979, and 1981 to 1990 of the Current Population Survey; the 2000 census; and years 2001 to 2017 of the American Community Survey. Results show that most European immigrant groups not only caught up with U.S.-born whites by the second generation but surpassed them, and this advantage further increased in the third generation. This research provides a new understanding of the time to integration for twentieth-century European immigrant groups by showing that they integrated at a faster pace than previously thought, indicative of a process of accelerated upward mobility.
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Kendal Lowrey: Department of Sociology and Criminology, The Pennsylvania State University
E-mail: kll289@psu.edu

Jennifer Van Hook: Department of Sociology and Criminology, The Pennsylvania State University
E-mail: jxv21@psu.edu

James D. Bachmeier: Department of Sociology, Temple University
E-mail: james.bachmeier@temple.edu

Thomas B. Foster: Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau
E-mail: thomas.b.foster@census.gov

Acknowledgments: We acknowledge assistance provided by the Russell Sage Foundation; the U.S. Census Bureau; the Population Research Institute at Penn State University, which is supported by an infrastructure grant by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (P2CHD041025); and the National Institutes of Health under the Social Environments and Population Health Training Program (T-32HD007514), as well as Peter Catron for his helpful comments on our paper at the 2021 Population Association of America research conference and the 2021 Data-Intensive Research Conference.

Disclaimer: Any opinions and conclusions expressed herein are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the U.S. Census Bureau. The Census Bureau’s Disclosure Review Board has reviewed this data product for unauthorized disclosure of confidential information and have approved the disclosure avoidance practices applied to this release. DRB Approval Number: CBDRB-FY21-039.

Supplemental Material

  • Citation: Lowrey, Kendal, Jennifer Van Hook, James D. Bachmeier, and Thomas B. Foster. 2021. “Leapfrogging the Melting Pot? European Immigrants’ Intergenerational Mobility across the Twentieth Century.” Sociological Science 8: 480-512.
  • Received: October 22, 2021
  • Accepted: November 14, 2021
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Richard Breen
  • DOI: 10.15195/v8.a23


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Collaborative Practices in Crisis Science: Interdisciplinary Research Challenges and the Syrian War

By on December 10, 2021 in Articles

Fiona Greenland, Michelle D. Fabiani

Sociological Science December 10, 2021
10.15195/v8.a22

Abstract

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Crises present the scientific community with unusual demands, including the need for rapid solutions. This can translate into a greatly compressed time frame that curtails data collection and analysis procedures used in “normal” science. Researchers cope with these demands, while maintaining professional standards and a personal commitment to producing reliable work, by engaging in what we call performed separations. These are practices that allow people to adopt an ethical epistemic position while operating within constrained and urgent research situations. We distill the core features and effects of performed separations in the case of experts working to study archaeological looting in wartime Syria. We look specifically at how different practices of control allow for varying degrees of separation and the production of knowledge claims. By extension, performed separations facilitate making ethical claims about one’s role in the production of research and use of findings.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Fiona Greenland: Department of Sociology, University of Virginia
E-mail: fg5t@virginia.edu

Michelle D. Fabiani: Criminal Justice Department, University of New Haven
E-mail: mfabiani@newhaven.edu

Acknowledgments: The authors thank Madeleine Peterson and Grant Tabler for research assistance and James Evans, William Greenland, and two anonymous reviewers for helpful comments and questions. Earlier versions of this article were presented to the Human-Machine Intelligence group (HMI) at the University of Virginia and the Technology, Knowledge, and Society annual meeting in 2020. Support for this research was generously provided by the U.S. National Science Foundation (award no. 1754992).

Supplemental Material

  • Citation: Greenland, Fiona, and Michelle D. Fabiani. 2021. “Collaborative Practices in Crisis Science: Interdisciplinary Research Challenges and the Syrian War.” Sociological Science 8: 455-479.
  • Received: April 27, 2021
  • Accepted: June 13, 2021
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Mario Small
  • DOI: 10.15195/v8.a22


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Segregated in Social Space: The Spatial Structure of Acquaintanceship Networks

By on November 29, 2021 in Articles

Barum Park

Sociological Science November 29, 2021
10.15195/v8.a20

Abstract

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With deepening cleavages on several social dimensions, social fragmentation has become a major concern across the social sciences. This article proposes a spatial approach to study the segregation pattern of acquaintanceship ties across multiple social dimensions simultaneously. A Bayesian unfolding model is developed and fitted to the 2006 General Social Survey. Results suggests that the segregation pattern of reported acquaintanceship ties reflect consolidated socioeconomic inequalities. Furthermore, among the 13 analyzed social groups, gay and lesbian people were the least segregated group in 2006, implying that individuals with very different network compositions had similar probabilities to know someone who is gay or lesbian. Lastly, contradicting previous findings that ideology and religiosity segregate acquaintanceship networks to an extent that rivals race, it is found that race stands out as the dominant dimension that shapes the distribution of these relationships.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Barum Park: Department of Sociology, Cornell University
E-mail: b.park@cornell.edu

Acknowledgments: I am grateful to Delia Baldassarri, Siwei Cheng, Ned Crowley, Paul DiMaggio, Mike Hout, Harris Hyun-Soo Kim, Byungkyu Lee, Jeff Manza, John Levi Martin, Oscar Stuhler, and LarryWu for their invaluable comments. This article was presented in the Inequality Workshop at New York University, the Annual Conference of the Association of Korean Sociologists in America in 2018, and the American Sociological Association Annual Meeting in 2018. All remaining errors are my own.

Supplemental Material

  • Citation: Park, Barum. 2021. “Segregated in Social Space: The Spatial Structure of Acquaintanceship Networks.” Sociological Science 8: 397-428.
  • Received: August 15, 2019
  • Accepted: October 3, 2021
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Olav Sorenson
  • DOI: 10.15195/v8.a20


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The Link between Social and Structural Integration: Co- and Interethnic Friendship Selection and Social Influence within Adolescent Social Networks

By on November 22, 2021 in Articles

Georg Lorenz, Zerrin Salikutluk, Zsófia Boda, Malte Jansen, Miles Hewstone

Sociological Science November 22, 2021
10.15195/v8.a19

Abstract

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Assimilation theories argue that social ties with majority-group members enhance the structural integration of ethnic minority members, whereas under certain conditions, coethnic social ties can also benefit minority members’ socioeconomic outcomes. We examine these propositions through a social network perspective, focusing on friendship networks and educational expectations in adolescence, during which peer socialization is crucial. Longitudinal data from 1,992 adolescents in 91 classrooms allow us to investigate co- and interethnic social selection and social influence processes as well as their aggregated outcomes. In terms of friendship selection, we find that Turkishorigin minority adolescents in Germany have distinct preferences for friends with high educational expectations, among both co- and interethnic peers. In contrast, social influence on Turkish-minority adolescents’ educational expectations is not uniform: only majority-group friends exert a significant (positive) influence. Our results emphasize that bridging social capital gained from social ties with majority-group members enhances ethnic minority adolescents’ educational integration.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Georg Lorenz: Institute for Educational Quality Improvement (IQB), Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
E-mail: Georg.Lorenz@iqb.hu-berlin.de

Zerrin Salikutluk: Berlin Institute for Integration and Migration Research (BIM), Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
E-mail: Zerrin.Salikutluk@hu-berlin.de

Zsófia Boda: Department of Sociology and Institute for Social and Economic Research, University of Essex
E-mail: zsofia.boda@essex.ac.uk

Malte Jansen: Institute for Educational Quality Improvement (IQB), Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, Centre for International Student Assessment (ZIB)
E-mail: Malte.Jansen@iqb.hu-berlin.de

Miles Hewstone: University of Oxford
E-mail: Miles.Hewstone@new.ox.ac.uk

Acknowledgments: The authors acknowledge financial support from the Volkswagen Foundation (project ISONET, funding number 93 489). The responsibility for the content of this publication lies with the authors.

Supplemental Material

  • Citation: Lorenz, Georg, Zerrin Salikutluk, Zsófia Boda, Malte Jansen, and Miles Hewstone. 2021. “The Link between Social and Structural Integration: Coand Interethnic Friendship Selection and Social Influence within Adolescent Social Networks.” Sociological Science 8: 371-396.
  • Received: March 3, 2021
  • Accepted: May 19, 2021
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Arnout van de Rijt
  • DOI: 10.15195/v8.a19


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Yes, Denmark Is a More Educationally Mobile Society than the United States: Rejoinder to Kristian Karlson

By on November 17, 2021 in Articles

Stefan B. Andrade, Jens-Peter Thomsen

Sociological Science November 17, 2021
10.15195/v8.a18

Abstract

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In this rejoinder to Kristian Bernt Karlson (KBK), we maintain that there are substantial differences in intergenerational educational mobility between Denmark and the United States. In fact, when we include additional parental information from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 (NLSY97) for the United States, as suggested by KBK, the gap between Denmark and the United States increases. To confirm our findings, we show that the same conclusion about markedly higher educational mobility in Denmark holds when data from the General Social Survey are substituted for the NLSY97.
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Stefan B. Andrade: The Danish National Centre for Social Science Research
E-mail: sba@vive.dk

Jens-Peter Thomsen: The Danish National Centre for Social Science Research
E-mail: jpt@vive.dk

Supplemental Material

  • Citation: Andrade, Stefan B., and Jens-Peter Thomsen. 2021. “Yes, Denmark Is a More Educationally Mobile Society than the United States: Rejoinder to Kristian Karlson.” Sociological Science 8: 359-370.
  • Received: September 19, 2021
  • Accepted: September 21, 2021
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Filiz Garip
  • DOI: 10.15195/v8.a18


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Is Denmark a Much More Educationally Mobile Society than the United States? Comment on Andrade and Thomsen, "Intergenerational Educational Mobility in Denmark and the United States" (2018)

By on November 17, 2021 in Articles

Kristian Bernt Karlson

Sociological Science November 17, 2021
10.15195/v8.a17

Abstract

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I evaluate Andrade and Thomsen (A&T)’s (2018) study, which concludes that Denmark is significantly more educationally mobile than the United States. I make three observations. First, A&T overstate the difference in educational mobility between Denmark and the United States. Both in international comparison and compared with differences in intergenerational income mobility, A&T’s reported country differences in educational mobility are negligible. For example, whereas income mobility estimates reported in the literature differ by 300 to 600 percent between the two countries, the corresponding educational mobility estimates that A&T report differ by 10 to 20 percent. Second, I provide evidence suggesting that A&T’s use of crude categorical education measures leads them to overstate these negligible differences. Third, A&T’s empirical analyses of the U.S. data contain several statistical and data-related flaws, some so severe that they potentially undermine the credibility of their analyses. In sum, A&T’s results are perfectly consistent with the existence of a mobility paradox very similar to what Sweden–United States comparisons show: although Denmark and the United States are dissimilar with respect to income mobility, they are similar with respect to educational mobility. Understanding the nature of this paradox should be a key concern for future mobility research.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Kristian Bernt Karlson: Department of Sociology, University of Copenhagen
E-mail: kbk@soc.ku.dk
Supplemental Material

  • Citation: Karlson, Kristian Bernt. 2021. “Is Denmark a Much More Educationally Mobile Society than the United States? Comment on Andrade and Thomsen, ‘Intergenerational Educational Mobility in Denmark and the United States’ (2018).” Sociological Science 8: 346-358.
  • Received: June 11, 2021
  • Accepted: July 11, 2021
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Filiz Garip
  • DOI: 10.15195/v8.a17


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Filial Intelligence and Family Social Class, 1947 to 2012

By on October 20, 2021 in Articles

Lindsay Paterson

Sociological Science October 20, 2021
10.15195/v8.a16

Abstract

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Intelligence, or cognitive ability, is a key variable in reproducing social inequality. On the one hand, it is associated with the social class in which a child grows up. On the other, it is a predictor of educational attainment, labor-market experiences, social mobility, health and well-being, and length of life. Therefore measured intelligence is important to our understanding of how inequality operates and is reproduced. The present analysis uses social surveys of children aged 10 to 11 years in Britain between 1947 and 2012 to assess whether the social-class distribution of intelligence has changed. The main conclusions are that, although children’s intelligence relative to their peers remains associated with social class, the association may have weakened recently, mainly because the average intelligence in the highest-status classes may have moved closer to the mean.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Lindsay Paterson: School of Social and Political Science, University of Edinburgh
E-mail: lindsay.paterson@ed.ac.uk

Acknowledgments: The research was funded by a Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship (grant number MRF-2017-002). I am grateful to Professor Ian J. Deary, director of the Lothian Birth Cohorts, University of Edinburgh, for data from the 1947 survey; to the Medical Research Council (MRC) Unit for Lifelong Health and Ageing, University College London, and the principal investigators of the MRC National Survey of Health and Development (doi: 10.5522/NSHD/Q101), for data from the 1957 survey; and to the UK Data Archive for data from the 1969, 1980, and 2012 surveys. I thank the study participants in all these surveys for their data, and also members of the scientific and data collection teams who have been involved in the data collection. I am grateful to Ian J. Deary and Roxanne Connelly for comments on a draft of the article.

Supplemental Material

  • Citation: Paterson, Lindsay. 2021. “Filial Intelligence and Family Social Class, 1947 to 2012.” Sociological Science 8: 325-345.
  • Received: August 13, 2021
  • Accepted: August 25, 2021
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Richard Breen
  • DOI: 10.15195/v8.a16


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Crisis and Uncertainty: Did the Great Recession Reduce the Diversity of New Faculty?

By on October 14, 2021 in Articles

Kwan Woo Kim, Alexandra Kalev, Frank Dobbin, Gal Deutsch

Sociological Science October 14, 2021
10.15195/v8.a15

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The demographic composition of the U.S. professoriate affects student composition and, thus, the pipeline for professional and managerial jobs. Amid concern about the effects of the COVID-19 crisis on the labor market, much remains unknown about how economic downturns affect faculty hiring and the demographic makeup of hires. We examine the effects of the Great Recession on faculty hiring. That crisis walloped the U.S. academic labor market. Tenure-track hires in four-year colleges and universities declined by 25 percent between 2007 and 2009, recovering slowly through 2015. Hires of black, Hispanic, and Asian American faculty declined disproportionately. Public institutions and research-oriented institutions, which faced the greatest resource challenges and uncertainty about the future, made the biggest cuts in the hiring of people of color. Our findings suggest that financial uncertainty led to a reversal in progress on faculty diversity. Faculty and administrators making hiring decisions in the years following the COVID-19 crisis should be aware of this pattern.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Kwan Woo Kim: Department of Sociology, Harvard University
E-mail: kwanwookim@fas.harvard.edu

Alexandra Kalev: Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Tel Aviv University
E-mail: akalev@tauex.tau.ac.il

Frank Dobbin: Department of Sociology, Harvard University
E-mail: frank_dobbin@harvard.edu

Gal Deutsch: Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Tel Aviv University
E-mail: galdeutsch@mail.tau.ac.il

Acknowledgments: We thank the National Science Foundation (DGE-1444586) and Alfred P. Sloan Foundation (2013-10-26, G-2019-12369) for funding. Direct correspondence to KwanWoo Kim, Department of Sociology, Harvard University: kwanwookim@fas.harvard.edu.

Supplemental Material

  • Citation: Kim, Kwan Woo, Alexandra Kalev, Frank Dobbin, and Gal Deutsch. 2021. “Crisis and Uncertainty: Did the Great Recession Reduce the Diversity of New Faculty?” Sociological Science 8: 308-324.
  • Received: June 11, 2021
  • Accepted: July 3, 2021
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Sarah Soule
  • DOI: 10.15195/v8.a15


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