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Montclair State University

Community-Based Research

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Full-Text Articles in Family, Life Course, and Society

Local Governance Of Immigrant Incorporation: How City-Based Organizational Fields Shape The Cases Of Undocumented Youth In New York City And Paris, Stephen P. Ruszczyk Nov 2018

Local Governance Of Immigrant Incorporation: How City-Based Organizational Fields Shape The Cases Of Undocumented Youth In New York City And Paris, Stephen P. Ruszczyk

Department of Sociology Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

City-based organizations and governments play an important role in incorporating undocumented immigrant youth. This article investigates how localities sociopolitically incorporate these immigrants by examining the governance constellations and institutional logics of the organizational field that manages undocumented youth. Comparing sets of municipal and civil society organizations in different national settings, I use the two cases of New York City and Paris to ask how the ‘city-based organizational field of immigrant incorporation’ shapes citizenship experiences of undocumented youth. Data come from multi-level longitudinal ethnography over 8 years with two dozen undocumented youth and with organizations in each city as well as …

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Race, The Condition Of Neo-Liberalism, Vikash Singh Jul 2017

Race, The Condition Of Neo-Liberalism, Vikash Singh

Department of Sociology Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

This article addresses the social and historical relation between Chicago School neo-liberalism and contemporary racism, and its connections with the formations of racism in classical liberalism and its colonial character. I show the pragmatic and discursive operations of neo-racism in the context of this shift to a neo-liberal discourse, drawing particularly on Michel Foucault’s seminars, Society Must be Defended, and Birth of Bio-politics. Insofar as “race” cannot be understood as a discrete category outside its social, economic, moral, and political embeddedness in liberalism, I argue that methodological individualism and expectations of high-specialization constrain the theorization of race in U.S. scholarship. …

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Young People’S Perceptions Of Advice About Sexual Risk Taking, Christopher Donoghue, Consuelo Bonillas, Jennifer Moreno, Melissa Cheung Sep 2016

Young People’S Perceptions Of Advice About Sexual Risk Taking, Christopher Donoghue, Consuelo Bonillas, Jennifer Moreno, Melissa Cheung

Department of Sociology Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Sexual and reproductive health indicators for young people in the USA have improved in recent decades, but teenage pregnancies remain high, and large differences between Whites and non-Whites persist in teenage births, abortions, and the acquisition of sexually transmitted infections. Prior research shows that young people are receptive to communication about sex from parents and friends, but peers have been found to be more influential on sexual risk taking. In this study of 617 young people aged 13–20 years in high-risk neighbourhoods for teenage pregnancy in New Jersey, we asked whether sexually inexperienced young people differed from sexually experienced young …

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Mothering As A Life Course Transition: Do Women Go Straight For Their Children?, Venezia Michalsen Aug 2011

Mothering As A Life Course Transition: Do Women Go Straight For Their Children?, Venezia Michalsen

Department of Justice Studies Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

In this study, qualitative, in-depth interviews were conducted with 100 formerly incarcerated mothers to explore the relationship between attachment to children and desistance from criminal behavior. Exploratory data analysis revealed that mothers do believe that children play important roles in their desistance, consistent with the tenets of life course theory. However, children were also described as sources of great stress, which may in turn promote criminal behavior. Women also related desistance to reliance on self and a higher power, and to a desire to avoid future involvement with the criminal justice system. The article concludes with a call for more …

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The Percentage Of Beds Designated For Medicaid In American Nursing Homes And Nurse Staffing Ratios, Christopher Donoghue Oct 2008

The Percentage Of Beds Designated For Medicaid In American Nursing Homes And Nurse Staffing Ratios, Christopher Donoghue

Department of Sociology Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Previous analyses of the inverse relationship between a nursing home's Medicaid census and its quality of care have been based on samples limited to specific geographic regions, for-profit entities, or only skilled care facilities. The present study uses national-level data from the 1999 National Nursing Home Survey to examine the association between the proportion of beds designated for Medicaid residents and nurse staffing ratios. The results indicate that homes which designate a higher proportion of their beds for Medicaid recipients maintain lower ratios of registered nurses and nurse's aides to residents, even when key facility characteristics are controlled. It was …

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Agency: The Internal Split Of Structure, Yong Wang Jul 2008

Agency: The Internal Split Of Structure, Yong Wang

Department of Sociology Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

In this article I first examine the ways in which the dual terms of structure and agency are used in sociological theories. Then, relying on Lacan’s notions of split‐subject, the formula of sexuation, and forms of discourses, and Laclau’s theory of ideological hegemony, I argue that agency in most current sociological formulations is but a posited other of the structure that dissolves if examined closely; it is similar to the Lacanian fantasmic object. To resolve the fundamental paradoxes in structure‐agency theories, I reformulate structures as paradoxical, incomplete, and contingent symbolic formations that are always partial and unstable due to their …

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Demographic Change And Response: Social Context And The Practice Of Birth Control In Six Countries, Sangeeta Parashar, Harriet B. Presser, Megan L. Klein Hattori, Sara Raley, Zhihong Sa Sep 2006

Demographic Change And Response: Social Context And The Practice Of Birth Control In Six Countries, Sangeeta Parashar, Harriet B. Presser, Megan L. Klein Hattori, Sara Raley, Zhihong Sa

Department of Sociology Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

This paper expands on Kingsley Davis’s demographic thesis of change and re- sponse. Specifically, we consider the social context that accounts for the primacy of particular birth control methods that bring about fertility change during specific time periods. We examine the relevance of state policy (including national family planning programs), the international population establishment, the medical profession, organized religion, and women’s groups using case studies from Japan, Russia, Puerto Rico, China, India, and Cameroon. Some of these countries are undergoing the second demographic transition, others the first. Despite variations in context, heavy reliance on sterilization and/or abortion as a means …

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Voluntary And Involuntary Nursing Home Staff Turnover, Christopher Donoghue, Nicholas G. Castle Jul 2006

Voluntary And Involuntary Nursing Home Staff Turnover, Christopher Donoghue, Nicholas G. Castle

Department of Sociology Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

The goal of this study was to identify nursing home characteristics that have differential associations to voluntary and involuntary turnover among formal caregivers (i.e., registered nurses, licensed practical nurses, and nurse aides). Primary data from 354 facilities from four states were merged with data from the 2004 Online Survey, Certification and Recording system. Multinomial logistic regression analyses were conducted to determine whether organizational characteristics were related to a greater probability of high or low levels of voluntary and involuntary turnover among formal caregivers. The analysis revealed that a higher ratio of nurses to beds, a smaller number of quality-of-care deficiencies, …

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Exploitation Or Fun?: The Lived Experience Of Teenage Employment In Suburban America, Yasemin Besen-Cassino Jun 2006

Exploitation Or Fun?: The Lived Experience Of Teenage Employment In Suburban America, Yasemin Besen-Cassino

Department of Sociology Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Objectivist scholars characterize typical teenage jobs as “exploitive”: highly routinized service sector jobs with low pay, no benefits, minimum skill requirements, and little time off. This view assumes exploitive characteristics are inherent in the jobs, ignoring the lived experience of the teenage workers. This article focuses on the lived work experience of particularly affluent, suburban teenagers who work in these jobs and explores the meaning they create during their everyday work experience. Based on a large ethnographic study conducted with the teenage workers at a national coffee franchise, this article unravels the ways in which objectivist views of these “bad …

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Women's Changing Attitudes Toward Divorce, 1974–2002: Evidence For An Educational Crossover, Steven P. Martin, Sangeeta Parashar Jan 2006

Women's Changing Attitudes Toward Divorce, 1974–2002: Evidence For An Educational Crossover, Steven P. Martin, Sangeeta Parashar

Department of Sociology Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

This article examines trends in divorce attitudes of young adult women in the United States by educational attainment from 1974 to 2002. Women with 4‐year college degrees, who previously had the most permissive attitudes toward divorce, have become more restrictive in their attitudes toward divorce than high school graduates and women with some college education, whereas women with no high school diplomas have increasingly permissive attitudes toward divorce. We examine this educational crossover in divorce attitudes in the context of variables correlated with women's educational attainment, including family attitudes and religion, income and occupational prestige, and family structure. We conclude …

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