This dissertation addresses the central question- How are parenting methodologies across the sending and receiving nations shaped by larger macro forces embedded in economy and labor market forces? In order to answer this key question this project analyzes interviews with 59 middle-class mothers in Edison, New Jersey and Kolkata, India. This project contributes to the larger scope of immigration and transnational studies while placing them at the cross section of globalization of economy, labor market and education. The first chapter examines extensively the schooling systems in Edison and Kolkata and the ways it shapes parenting methods in these two locations. The key argument in this chapter focuses on the influence of the education system upon mothers in Edison and Kolkata and the ways they maneuver the schools. In the subsequent chapters I compare and contrast between support groups and community networks that help mothers in Edison and Kolkata navigate everyday child rearing challenges. The central puzzle that these chapters solve is: why immigrant mothers in an individualistic society resort to community and on the contrary mothers in Kolkata that belong to a more traditional society resort to commercial parenting schools instead of extended family to support everyday child rearing? The primary reason is embedded in the globalization of the labor market and economy. The immigrant mothers in Edison, who immigrated to the US as spouses of elite professionals in a globalized economy were confronted with the challenges of parenting in a foreign country. They resorted to community support to help them negotiate everyday parenting challenges. On the other hand in Kolkata the rapid changes in the field of employment an education had forced mothers to resort to commercial agencies for parenting support. Finally the dissertation concludes by returning to the central research questions and briefly states the central findings along with raising avenues for future research.

The recent proliferation of administrative data sources has made it possible to examine numerous longstanding questions related to labor market functions. I make use of these data sources to provide new insights into three such questions; the extent of firms' market power in labor markets, the nature of gains from workers' skill specialization, and the role of job search networks in the locational choices of immigrants. In Chapter 1, I examine labor market monopsony, the extent to which markets deviate from perfect competition. Prior literature suggests two methods to estimate the extent of monopsony: studying the degree to which firms adjust wages in response to desired changes in employment growth, and measuring the degree to which workers' voluntary separations are sensitive to their own wages. Existing studies have found widely varying answers to these two questions in different contexts. I leverage unique features of Brazilian administrative data to demonstrate that these approaches provide very different results even on the same sample of employees, and I rule out a variety of alternative empirical explanations. These results suggest that labor market monopsony is primarily a function of workers' attachment to their current employers. In Chapter 2, I study the wage premium associated with skill specialization. While standard models predict that more technologically-advanced firms will hire more specialized workers, I show that higher-ability individuals may actually sort into less specialized occupations within firms. I test these predictions by constructing occupation-level measures of skill specialization from the U.S. O*NET database, matched to Brazilian administrative data. While I find that specialization among production skills is associated both with higher wages and with employment at higher-wage firms, I find no evidence of specialization premia in cognitive skills. Finally, in Chapter 3 I study the extent to which job search networks influence new immigrants' decisions to locate in ethnic enclaves. Using detailed data from the New Immigrant Survey, I show that immigrants to the U.S. who arrive without job offers are significantly more likely to locate in enclaves, even after accounting for a wide range of pre-migration and time-invariant characteristics.

Yes / Purpose – The extant gastronomy literature has rarely examined a connection between authentic gastronomic experiences and destinations. Specifically, ethnic enclaves, which are unique gastronomic and cultural destinations providing ethnic cuisine and cultural experiences to visitors, have been under-researched. Thus, the current study aims to address this knowledge gap. Design/methodology/approach – Employing a 2 (history: long vs short) x 2 (location: Central Business District [CBD] vs rural; main street vs alleyway) x 2 size/ownership type (big vs small; chain vs independent) between-subjects design, two experiments were conducted using a sample of 557 British consumers to test the effect of history, location, and size of ethnic enclaves and ethnic restaurants on consumers’ authentic cultural and gastronomic experiences in a UK context. Findings – In Study 1, ethnic enclave’s size affected consumers’ authentic cultural experiences. In Study 2, restaurants’ history and ownership type positively influenced consumers’ authentic gastronomic experiences. Both studies consistently reported the positive relationship between authentic experiences and behavioral intentions. Practical implications – For ethnic enclaves, the management team may consider expanding the size of ethnic enclaves to increase consumers’ authentic cultural experience. For those ethnic restaurants within the ethnic enclave, any independent or old ethnic restaurants should actively promote both characteristics in their marketing materials to create a feeling of offering authentic gastronomic experiences to customers. Originality/value – This study identified important ethnic enclave-related factors and ethnic restaurant-related factors forming consumers’ authentic cultural and gastronomic experiences.

Few studies have examined the relationships among personal factors, acculturative stress, coping resources, and depression of Korean immigrant elders residing in areas without any Korean ethnic enclave. Based on the stress and coping model and the sociocultural model of stress, coping, and adaptation, this cross-sectional study examined the relationships among acculturative stress, coping, and depression in 111 non-institutionalized Korean immigrant elders aged 60 and older residing in areas without any Korean ethnic enclaves in three neighboring states of Southwestern Ohio, North Central Region of Kentucky, and Southern Indiana. A majority of convenience and snowball sample participated in self-administered mailed surveys, and a remaining few used phone surveys and personal interviews. Multiple regression analyses indicate that social support is the strongest predictor of depression, followed by somatization and acculturative stress. Principal component analysis indicates that the participants appraised limited English proficiency as the most stressful aspect of acculturative stress. Path analyses further reveal that acculturative stress had the largest total effect on depression and partially mediated the effect of the level of acculturation on depression. The results also show that social support had the large direct effect on depression and partially mediated the effect of acculturative stress on depression. Unexpectedly, religiosity was not a predictor of depression and did not have any effect on depression. Interestingly, somatization had the positive direct effect on depression. This study suggests that the level of acculturation, socioeconomic status and social support may influence acculturative stress and depression negatively; however, acculturative stress is the most significant risk factor for depression among the participants, decreasing coping efficacy of social support and increasing somatic symptoms. Implications for future research and practice are examined on social support from family and friends and on acculturative stress. It seems that culturally relevant programs and services are important vehicles through which to enhance personal resources and social support and reduce lingual and cultural barriers among Korean immigrant elders residing in areas without any Korean ethnic enclave.

Student Number : 9603019J - MSc dissertation - School of Architecture and Planning - Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment / The aim of this research report is to determine the viability of the hypothesis that ethnic enclaves have the potential to contribute positively to urban regeneration. This research is motivated by the importance that is placed on regenerating cities at present and by the fact that many cities around the world, including Johannesburg, are intensely diverse and are composed of a significant number of ethnic minority groups. The Johannesburg Inner City area of Fordsburg has been chosen as a case study. The area has for many years been closely associated with the Indian community of Johannesburg and appears to be showing signs of renewed interest and rejuvenation. Secondary research has been employed as a means to structure the theoretical base of the report and to explain current debates regarding urban regeneration and ethnic enclaves. Quantitative and qualitative criteria have been applied in analysing the findings regarding the scenario in Fordsburg. According to the theory, even in the modern contemporary metropolis, members of society still ascribe to ethnic identities and organise themselves spatially into ethnic enclaves within cities. It is also revealed that urban regeneration can be achieved through several means and that initiatives that target and include ethnic minorities have the potential to produce coherent and desirable results. This includes meaningful input from public sector, private sector and members of community. In analysing Fordsburg, it is shown that the area could definitely be considered as an ethnic enclave and is undergoing a certain amount of regeneration. This regeneration has been mainly driven by the private sector and members of community who identify with the Indian/South Asian enclave. While public sector input has been less significant in Fordsburg’s regeneration, it is nevertheless asserted that ethnic enclaves do have the potential to positively promote urban regeneration.

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No description available.

Since the second half of the 20th century the Philippines have supplied the world with migrant workers. Today, almost one tenth of the population is residing abroad. Labour migration has become an important source of revenue to both state and private actors through remittances, for the Philippines, and a source of cheap labour battling labour shortage, in the receiving countries. Today, the global labour market is a distinct and important part of what we call globalisation. This is portrayed in this thesis through the lens of Philippine-Korean labour migration. The purpose of this thesis is to illustrate the emergence of migrants as a commodity for export, the institutionalised creation of migrants, the normalisation of labour migration, and containment of migrants through legal and spatial constraints, in Manila and in Seoul. This thesis look at the ways in which labour migration, as an economic policy, is internalised and transformed into a culture of migration. I argue that the effects of a culture of migration is felt not just by the labour migrants themselves, but also by their families and by the Philippines as a whole. As such, the reliance on remittances as a source of income has transformed domestic and global infrastructures as well as norms and social behaviour. Moreover, this thesis aims to add to the discussion on migration and remittances by exploring social dimensions and consequences of the globalisation of the labour market.

Sweden has once been an emigration country, but as the years went by and as the world is in constant change, it turned into an immigration country. One of the most debated questions politically and economically is the employment gap between immigrants and natives. The available studies have mainly described the employment gap between immigrants and natives by human capital factors and discrimination on the labour market. The goal of this paper is to discover the correlation between the local factors and the employment gap between European, non-European immigrants and natives, on municipality level while controlling for education level and gender. Using data from Statistics Sweden and SKR, and an OLS multiple linear regression, we could capture this effect. The local factors studied are the unemployment rate, share of immigrants, share of low-skilled jobs and the size of the municipality. The overall results suggest that the region of birth does have an impact on the employment gap between immigrants and natives, where the biggest gap is between the non-European immigrants and the natives, which is in line with previous studies. Furthermore, both Europeans’ and non-Europeans’ employment rate is mostly correlated with the municipality size followed by the local unemployment rate. Taking the limitations of this paper into account, these results are only an indication and further studies need to be made to further insure the correlation between the local factors and the employment rate.

In an attempt to practice inclusive planning, this research project explores whether Broadway Avenue functions as an ethnic commercial strip and identifies social, physical, and economic components that contribute to the Latino neighborhood/ barrio. Using pilot studies Loukaitou-Sideris (2000), Loukaitou-Sideris (2002), Rojas (1993), Manzumdar et al. (2000), Main (2007), and Fernando (2007) as a foundation, this research uses a single case study in addition to several research methods: 42 random surveys, literature review and analysis, site observations/pictures, and land use survey. Various scholars write that barrios have unique physical, social, economic, and political attributes. A new aesthetic, art, symbols, type of businesses, music, community events, and vendors all add to social ambiance and physical design of the neighborhood (Rojas,1993). The findings reported in this case study highlight that the majority of the people who are present at any given time on Broadway Avenue are Latino immigrants from a lower socio-economic background. They visit Broadway’s Latino commercial strip from across Los Angeles County to shop, work, and for leisure purposes. Broadway Avenue is a festive, popular, spiritual, and political public space for many Latino immigrants. Many of the study participants are attracted to Broadway’s diversity, architecture, aesthetics, culturally themed stores and restaurants; showing that this Latino commercial strip possesses deep social, physical and economic significance. Contributions of this study include a detailed description about Broadway Avenue beyond the existing literature review. Survey results provide valuable information about what study participants would like to be preserved for Broadway’s future. This information provides user-driven recommendations for preservation and change on Broadway Avenue. Broadway Avenue between Second Street and Olympic Boulevard in downtown Los Angeles is the focused area of this thesis project to provide a qualitative description of the environment of a Latino commercial strip. This thesis provides recommendations to urban planners as they attempt to preserve cultural elements of Broadway’s Latino commercial strip.