Speaker

January 13

TO BE HELD AT 11:00 in
SS 109

Roberto Gonzales
School of Social Service Administration, University of Chicago

Learning to be Illegal: Undocumented Youth and the Confusing and Contradictory Routes to Adulthood

The recent reintroduction of the DREAM (Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors) Act in the 112th Congress has once again raised awareness of the untenable situation facing more than 2.1 million undocumented immigrant children and young adults who have lived in the U.S. since childhood. Each year, tens of thousands of undocumented youngsters leave American high schools to embark upon uncertain futures. But until now, very little has been known about the ways in which these young people come of age and how legal barriers shape their adolescent and adult trajectories. This presentation will examine the critical transition to adulthood among undocumented 1.5 generation young adults (i.e., those who immigrated to the U.S early in life). Drawing from four and one half years of fieldwork and 150 life history interviews with 20-34 year old undocumented young adults living in the Los Angeles metropolitan area, Professor Gonzales finds that conflicting and contradictory laws move undocumented youth from experiences of belonging and inclusion to rejection and exclusion. “Learning to be illegal” tremendously impacts these young people’s coming of age, identity formation, friendship patterns, aspirations and expectations. While these transitions differently impact undocumented college goers and those who exit the school system early, by their mid-twenties, the overwhelming majority has very few legal options.

January 27

Graeme Hugo
Geography, Environment and Population, University of Adelaide

Climate Change and Population Mobility in Southeast Asia

The talk will focus on the Southeast Asian region to examine the potential effects that climate change is likely to have on internal and international migration in the region.  This is done by selecting a number of case studies which represent four main types of hot spot areas.  In each area the current patterns of internal and international migration are examined.  Future migration scenarios, as a result of climate change, are then developed.

February 3

Jennifer Johnson-Hanks
Demography, University of California-Berkeley

Aggregation Problems

Social science relies heavily on aggregation, that is, on moving from individual cases or instances to higher-order categories. This chapter begins by arguing that how we aggregate matters: there are basic theoretical claims embedded in how we make up the aggregates that we study. Using three examples, the chapter then shows that many important phenomena look radically different at different levels of aggregation. Aggregates have certain characteristics that are apply only at that aggregate level, and that cannot be reduced to the characteristics of the constituent parts. Other times, the apparent characteristics of the aggregate are artifacts of a bad process of aggregation — that is, what look like relationships are not in fact relationships at all. There is considerable variation in how relationships at the micro level are reflected at the macro, and vice versa. Finally, the chapter seeks to show that this variation is systematic and meaningful. That is, when we know something about the causal processes behind the variables that interest us, we can predict what kinds of macro-micro patterns will emerge as we move across levels of aggregation.

February 17

Jacob Young
School of Criminology and Criminal Justice, ASU

Life-Course Trajectories and Peer Friendships: A Test of Moffitt's Mimicry Hypothesis

Moffitt's (1993) Dual-Taxonomy theory has been among the most researched theories of crime and delinquency in recent years. A variety of evidence has supported the argument that life-course persistent youth have tenuous relationships with peers during early-life. However, few studies have examined the hypothesized social network relationships of troubled youth during adolescence. This study improves upon the current literature by focusing on the role of peer relationships for life-course persistent youth using group based trajectory modeling and examining global network properties using exponential random graph models. Using data from four waves of the National Longitudinal Survey of Adolescent Health, my findings suggest that life-course persistent youth do not become popular during adolescence as predicted by Moffitt's theory. Specifically, being a member of the life-course persistent group does not lead to more friends nor is the taxonomic classicfication of respondents a salient characteristic of peer groups within the AddHealth data.

February 24

David Shapiro
Economics, Penn State University

Enduring Economic Hardship, Women’s Education, and Fertility in urban Africa

This talk examines fertility transition in Kinshasa, capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and second-largest city in sub-Saharan Africa.  Shapiro (1996) documented the onset of fertility transition in the city, using data from 1990.  Women’s education was strongly inversely related to fertility, beginning with secondary schooling, and increases in women’s education were important in initiating fertility transition in the city.  This paper uses data from the 2007 Demographic and Health Survey in the DRC to examine fertility in Kinshasa and assess fertility transition since 1990, a period characterized by severe adverse economic conditions in the DRC.  We find that fertility transition has continued at a strong pace.  In part this reflects increased educational attainment of women, but it appears also to be a consequence of enduring economic hardship.  The ongoing fertility decline has been accompanied by delays in entry to marriage and childbearing, likely reflecting adverse economic conditions.

March 2

Jointly sponsored by the Center for Social Dynamics and Complexity

Steven Goodreau
Anthropology, University of Washington

March 9

Jointly sponsored by the School of Human Evolution and Social Change

Thomas McDade
Anthropology, Northwestern University

March 16

Tom Rex
W.P. Carey School of Business, ASU

March 30

Eileen Diaz McConnell
School of Transborder Studies, ASU

April 13

PAA Practice Talks

April 27

TO BE HELD AT 11:00 in
SS 109

Nathan Martin
School of Social Transformation, ASU