Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Cohabitation X Adaptation, 2100: A Climate Change Epoch, Kyle Andrews

Masters Theses

Some seventy-seven odd years in the future, the world as we know it will only be recognizable by those who are willing to accept it. The bustling metropolis of Boston Massachusetts has been transformed to appease the tides of Mother Nature as a consequence of human intervention. In the decades prior, humanity viciously fought to contain the effects of climate change, until many realized the colossal undertaking of such a battle. Municipalities across the globe had begun to accept that fighting the earth was no longer an option. Instead, the only hope forward was to adapt to a reality in …

Latinos In Massachusetts: Boston, Phillip Granberry, Phillip Granberry, Vishakha Agarwal

Gastón Institute Publications

As the largest city in the Commonwealth, Boston is home to an estimated 135,757 Latinos. This is the largest Latino population in the state, though in several smaller cities (Lawrence, Chelsea, and Holyoke for example) Latinos make up larger shares of their population. In Boston, Latinos represent about one-fifth of the city’s population, a smaller share than for Whites and Blacks but a greater share than for Asians. The Latino share in Boston is also larger than Latinos' statewide share, which is 11%.

Aging Strong For All: Examining Aging Equity In The City Of Boston, Jan Mutchler, Caitlin Coyle, Nidya Velasco Roldán, Paul Watanabe, Cedric Woods, Lorna Rivera, Quito Swan, Elena Stone, Laurie Nsiah-Jefferson

Center for Social and Demographic Research on Aging Publications

The experience of being and becoming older differs substantially based on one’s race, ethnicity, and gender. In the City of Boston, it has never been more critical to strategically pursue greater equity in the aging experience of residents. According to data from the US Census Bureau, the number of Boston residents aged 60 or older increased by more than a third just since 2010 and persons of color now make up half of Boston’s older adults. As well, stakeholders share a growing recognition of the powerful ways in which inequity, racism and discrimination shape health outcomes and the aging experience, …

Talking About Casino Gambling: Community Voices From Boston Chinatown, Carolyn Wong, Giles Li

Institute for Asian American Studies Publications

This pilot study examined the casino gambling practices of residents and workers in Boston Chinatown. The aim was to learn about the trajectory and life context of individual participants’ gambling activity, including how individual participants describe their motivation, nature and frequency of gambling, and its effects on self and family. The research was conducted by a university based research team in partnership with the Boston Chinatown Neighborhood Center, and with the assistance of the Massachusetts Council on Compulsive Gambling.

The stories told by participants illustrate multiple and overlapping risk factors for problem gambling. Our conceptual approach took into account the …

Latinos In Massachusetts: Dominicans, Phillip Granberry, Krizia Valentino

Gastón Institute Publications

Since the early 1980s, there has been a notable increase in the number of Dominicans in Massachusetts due at first to international migration and later due to nativity. Dominican migration is primarily circular. Dominican migrants embody the notion of transnationalism, that is, they have ties to both the United States and the Dominican Republic. Now after several decades, nearly half of their population is native born. The largest Dominican populations in the state are in Lawrence and Boston. The social and economic analysis that follows paints a mixed picture of their incorporation into Massachusetts. Dominicans have higher labor force participation …

2019/2020 Lrsp: Lindsay M. Cutler, Lindsay M. Cutler

Library Research Scholars Program

The incidence rate of homelessness in the United States has been trending positively over the last decade. The Department of Housing and Urban Development attributes this growth primarily to the West-Coast. States in this region particularly responsible for the rise in rates have significantly large concentrations of both homelessness and high-paying innovation-sector jobs in major cities–known as superstars for the extreme demand to live there. Dispersion between higher and lower-income residents is noted to be significantly higher in superstar cities. In light of the recent interference of an unprecedented pandemic, COVID-19, economists predict a significant increase in the incidence rate …

The People’S Planning Initiative Of Allston Brighton Community Development Corporation, Cassondra Y. White

Community Engagement Student Work

This program evaluation looks at the Community Planning and You workshop of the Allston Brighton Community Development Corporation in Boston, MA. The literature review explores the effects and responses to racialized housing policies, including the development of the community development field and its use of neighborhood organizing. The evaluation is grounded in the frameworks and theories of Arnstein’s (1969) Ladder of Citizen Participation, Putnam’s (1994) social capital, and Freire’s (2018) use of popular education to develop Critical Consciousness. There are three key evaluation questions: 1) if participants increase their knowledge of the Article 80 process; 2) if participation in community …

New England Slave Trader: The Case Of Charles Tyng, Paul J. Michaels

Master's Theses

Charles Tyng has been heralded as an American hero after the posthumous publication of his memoir, Before the Wind: The Memoir of an American Sea Captain, 1808-1833, in 1999. Recent research involving British Treasury report books from the nineteenth century suggest otherwise – that Tyng actively promoted and was engaged in the illicit trade of African captives. A Boston Brahmin, Tyng applied the lessons of his time at sea with Perkins & Company, the opium trading firm, to his occupation as an agent of notorious slave trading firms in Havana. This paper uses as evidence records of the captures …

An Exploration Of Artist Housing In Greater Boston, Ma, Clairessa Morrow

Honors Projects

Boston is a city bursting with art and culture. However, many of the artists and craftspeople who create this environment are being driven out by external factors. This project examines the personal experiences of artists in the Boston area to gain their insight on present issues and their perceptions for the future.

Older Workers In Boston: An Age-Friendly Perspective, Jan Mutchler, Brittany Gaines, Ping Xu, Caitlin Coyle

Center for Social and Demographic Research on Aging Publications

As this report makes clear, work challenges experienced by older people are not uncommon in Boston. Retraining and upgrading skills are required for some people to retain or secure employment. For those who have not participated in job search for some time, support with job seeking strategies may be necessary. Programs that also offer socioemotional support are helpful to some older job-seekers. Yet while training and job search support is an important part of the solution, these are not the only targets of intervention required. Employers need to be educated about successful strategies that will help them to retain their …

Asian Americans In Massachusetts Including Boston And Other Selected Cities: Data From The American Community Survey, Shauna Lo, Institute For Asian American Studies, University Of Massachusetts Boston

Institute for Asian American Studies Publications

The data in this report are drawn from three U.S. Cenusu Bureau datasets: the 2014 American Community Survey 1-year estimates, the 2010–2014 American Community Survey 5-year estimates, and the 2010-2014 American Community Survey 5-Year Public Use Microdata Sample (PUMS). Each are distinct data sets with different samples and estimates. The dataset used for each table and chart is indicated.

Population data from the 2010 Decennial Census may be found in the Institute for Asian American Studies report from October 2012. The American Community Survey is not intended to be used for accurate population counts.

Gender Inclusion Activities In Entrepreneurship Ecosystems: The Case Of St. Louis, Mo And Boston, Ma, Banu Ozkazanc-Pan, Karren Knowlton, Susan Clark Muntean

Management and Marketing Faculty Publication Series

Women-owned businesses have an economic impact of nearly $3 trillion in the U.S. Despite the tremendous opportunity for economic growth they present, women entrepreneurs lag behind their male counterparts in terms of number of start-ups and scaling of businesses. To understand how and why this may be taking shape, we focus on the role of entrepreneur support organizations (ESOs) or those organizations that act as intermediaries between the resources of a local ecosystem and entrepreneurs. All organizations that have as their proverbial mission to serve, support or partner with entrepreneurs can be categorized as ESOs. Given their role as decision …

The Silent Crisis Ii: A Follow-Up Analysis Of Latin@ Participation In City Government Boards, Commissions, And Executive Bodies In Boston And Chelsea, Massachusetts, James Jennings, Jen Douglas, Miren Uriarte

Gastón Institute Publications

This report provides an update on the participation of Latin@s in city government in Chelsea and Boston. Since 2001 several studies have documented a severe underrepresentation of Latin@s in policy-making bodies in government institutions that affect their lives (e.g., Hardy-Fanta, 2002; Uriarte, Jennings, & Douglas, 2014). The Silent Crisis, the 2014 study (Uriarte et al., 2014) commissioned by the Greater Boston Latin@ Network, found significant under-representation of Latin@s in the city governments of Boston, Chelsea, and Somerville. In each of the three cities, the representation of Latin@s in the population far outpaced their role in the municipal governments.

Lgbt Student Experiences In Boston Public Schools: A Case Study, David Geyer

Honors College Theses

While the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT) community has overcome great obstacles in its fight for equality, the newest challenge has become the poor mental health of the LGBT youth. In this study, the experiences of a recently graduated LGBT Boston Public Schools student were investigated through qualitative research methods. Interviews with the student were analyzed to determine what factors contributed to his overall positive experiences and mental health as a bisexual student attending Boston Public Schools. The showing of support from his mother and peers, along with the presence of a Gay-Straight Alliance club at his school positively affected …

2016 Elder Economic Security Standard Index™ For Boston, Yang Li, Ping Xu, Jan Mutchler, Center For Social And Demographic Research On Aging, University Of Massachusetts Boston

Center for Social and Demographic Research on Aging Publications

The Elder Economic Security Standard^TM Index (Elder Index) is a measure of the cost of living for older adults age 65 or older living independently in today's economy. The Elder Index defines economic security as the income level at which elders are able to cover basic and necessary living expenses and age in their homes, without relying on benefit programs, loans or gifts. The Elder Index defines an “economic security gap” as having incomes between the Federal Poverty Line and the Elder Index. Older adults living “in the gap” have incomes too high to qualify for many means-tested public …

How We Care: Provider Perspectives On Services For Vietnamese Elderly In Boston’S Dorchester Neighborhood, Loan Thi Dao

Institute for Asian American Studies Publications

The need for culturally competent care for the elderly is of growing concern for Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) communities and health providers. In 2012, a preliminary study was conducted to ascertain the perspectives of service providers about the cultural competency of services for elderly Vietnamese Americans in Boston, Massachusetts. The study includes interviews with key informants representing the five major community health centers (CHC) programs in Boston’s Vietnamese enclave in the Dorchester neighborhood. Secondary data collection from field observations and informal communications with other staff and elderly clients also inform the findings. While the study recognizes the value …

From Disinvestment To Displacement: Gentrification And Jamaica Plain’S Hyde-Jackson Squares, Jen Douglas

Trotter Review

In this essay, I offer a place-based history of socioeconomic and demographic change in Hyde Square and nearby Jackson Square (henceforth “Hyde-Jackson Squares”). I document the area’s ongoing gentrification and describe the distribution of gentrification pressures. I situate this contemporary process against the socio-spatial patterns carved out by the area’s historical rise as an industrial suburb, its struggle amid decades of disinvestment, and the community efforts that ultimately stabilized the neighborhood. In these sequential transformations is the story of how Latinos and Blacks entered, departed, and have strived to remain in the neighborhood.

“Separatist City”: The Mandela, Massachusetts (Roxbury) Movement And The Politics Of Incorporation, Self-Determination, And Community Control, 1986–1988, Zebulon V. Miletsky, Tomás González

Trotter Review

November 4, 2016, marks 30 years since the historic referendum in which close to 50,000 citizens of Boston living in or near the predominantly Black area of “Greater Roxbury” voted on whether the area should leave Boston and incorporate as a separate municipality to be named in honor of former South African president Nelson and Winnie Mandela, or remain a part of Boston. The new community, what planners called “Greater Roxbury,” would have included wards in much or all of the neighborhoods of Roxbury, Dorchester, Mattapan, Jamaica Plain, the Fenway, the South End, and what was then known as Columbia …

Community Land Trusts: A Powerful Vehicle For Development Without Displacement, May Louie

Trotter Review

In the Great Recession of 2007–2009, Boston’s communities of color were hit hard. A 2009 map of foreclosures looked like a map of the communities of color—Roxbury, Dorchester, and Mattapan. The one island of stability was a section of Roxbury called the Dudley Triangle—home to the community land trust of the Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative (DSNI).

Originally established to respond to the community’s vision of “development without displacement,” the land trust model was adopted to help residents gain control of land and to use that control to prevent families from being priced out as they organized to improve their neighborhood. …

Gentrification As Anti-Local Economic Development: The Case Of Boston, Massachusetts, James Jennings

Trotter Review

Activists and political leaders across the city of Boston are concerned that gentrification in the form of rapidly rising rents in low-income and the poorest areas are contributing to displacement of families and children. Rising home sale prices and an increasing number of development projects are feeding into this concern. There is also a growing wariness about the impact that this scenario can have on small and neighborhood-based businesses and microenterprises whose markets are represented by the kinds of households facing potential displacement. This potential side-effect suggests that gentrification could actually emerge as anti-local economic development in Boston. It can …

The Tourist Experience In Boston, 1848-1910: American History, Middle-Class Leisure And The Development Of Urban Tourism, Hillary Corbett

Hillary Corbett

This project analyzes a selection of representative guidebooks produced between 1848 and 1910, to illustrate the development of a tourist industry in Boston and to indicate how the changing nature of the city influenced a similar change in the tourist experience. It also provides the necessary context in which to place this narrative. Part I introduces two key elements essential to understanding the relevance of urban tourism in Boston: the city’s experiences with the national phenomena of electrification and urban planning in the mid- to late-nineteenth century, and Boston’s distinctive role in nineteenth-century America’s developing national identity and history. In …

Age-Friendly Boston: Assessing Need And Charting A Course Of Action, Jan Mutchler, Caitlin Coyle, Hayley Gleason

Center for Social and Demographic Research on Aging Publications

Boston’s population of residents age 60 and older is rapidly growing in size as well as racial and ethnic diversity. In response to these demographic features and as a means of assuring Boston’s commitment to current and future older residents, Mayor Martin J. Walsh announced in 2014 that the City of Boston would join the World Health Organization’s Age-Friendly Cities Network, in cooperation with the Massachusetts AARP. Boston’s Age-Friendly Initiative promotes eight domains of age-friendliness: outdoor spaces and buildings, transportation, housing, social participation, respect and social inclusion, civic participation and employment, communication and information, and community supports and health services. …

Doc Wayne Youth Services, Inc. Capstone Project Youth Employment And Mentoring, Bongani T. Jeranyama, Zhengjun Liu, Sarah Parsons

School of Professional Studies

In Boston, Massachusetts, young adults age 16-19 who have dropped out of high school have a very high unemployment rate of 43.8%. Additionally, in the United States of America the difference between a young adult with a high school diploma as opposed to a young adult without a high school diploma in terms of weekly income is $180 USD; between a young adult with a high school diploma versus a young professional with a bachelor’s degree is $433 USD. These numbers demonstrate the need for services that improve academic achievement, job readiness and preparedness, and youth mentorship for struggling young …

Commonwealth Compact: Using Research To Promote Diversity, Robert Turner

New England Journal of Public Policy

Commonwealth Compact is a statewide initiative of the University of Massachusetts Boston launched in 2008 with a primary focus of promoting diversity—especially racial and ethnic diversity—in the workplace. In addition to conducting workshops, sponsoring forums, and creating job placement tools, Commonwealth Compact has conducted research, which is the central focus of this article.

Three rounds of Benchmarks reports, using data from 2007, 2008, and 2011, showed that the reporting Massachusetts employers generally weathered the recession fairly well but that efforts to improve racial diversity lagged far behind those for gender diversity.

Data from two national surveys, produced for Commonwealth Compact …

Important Places (2005), Shaun O’Connell

New England Journal of Public Policy

The author talks about his time and associations with the University of Massachusetts Boston. He also describes Ireland and his family's roots there and how it connects with Boston as well as his life in New York.

Reprinted from New England Journal of Public Policy 20, no. 2 (2005), article 10.

Latinos In Massachusetts Selected Areas: Boston, Phillip Granberry

Gastón Institute Publications

This report provides a descriptive snapshot of selected economic, social, and demographic indicators pertaining to Latinos in Boston. As the largest city in the Commonwealth, Boston is home to an estimated 124,061 Latinos. This represents the largest Latino population in the state, though several other cities have greater concentrations of Latinos. They represent about one-fifth (19.2%) of the city’s population, a smaller share than for whites and blacks but greater than for Asians.

Research And Education In Parallel: Scientific Outreach Through On-Site Experiments At The Museum Of Science Boston Living Laboratory, Vivian Ciaramitaro, Hiu-Mei Chow

Office of Community Partnerships Posters

Our world is multisensory, as is our perception of it: we see lips move while we listen to what is being said, we smell food as we taste it, we touch a surface as we feel its texture as we look at. Cross-modal sensory processing, the way information from our different senses interacts and influences our conscious perceptual experience is ubiquitous in everyday life, yet, it is not well understood, compared to unimodal sensory processing, processing information from a single sensory system. One of our research goals is to standardize a set of computer-generated stimuli and procedures to study sound-shape …

Success Boston: College Completion Initiative, Liliana Mickle

Office of Community Partnerships Posters

Success Boston provides intensive coaching support and wraparound services to Boston Public Schools students and graduates to ensure they are Getting Ready, Getting In, and Getting Through college so they are equipped to lead productive lives after graduation.

Study Of Sexual Exploitation In Boston, Megan Klein-Hattori, Jackie Lageson, Julianne Siegfriedt, Kate Price

Office of Community Partnerships Posters

This project helps policymakers target resources and implement policies to facilitate the exit of prostituted individuals from sexual exploitation, and to deter those who facilitate the sale of sex and those who buy sex (“Johns”) from engaging in this exploitive behavior. This study interviews members of the Boston Police Department, survivors of sexual exploitation, Johns, and facilitators of the sale of sex. Boston is aiming to decrease demand for prostituted individuals by 20% over the next two years, and this research is the first step in that initiative.

Center For Social Policy: Reshaping Poverty Policy For And With Families And Communities, Julia Tripp, Mary Coonan, Priyanka Kabir, Susie Devins

Office of Community Partnerships Posters

The Center for Social Policy is a research and evaluation think tank of choice for policy makers, funders, and business leaders focused on the root causes of poverty. Our research and evaluation work helps organizations adapt to changing needs in a changing world. Our recommendations and technical assistance lead to community-driven systems change and improved program and business practices.