Thesis (Ph.D.)--Brite Divinity School, Texas Christian University, 2006. / Title from dissertation title page (viewed Sept. 13, 2006). Includes abstract. "Dissertation presented to the Faculty of the Brite Divinity School in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Biblical interpretation." Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M. A.)--Rice University. / "May 2006." Title taken from title screen (viewed October 22, 2007). Includes bibliographical references (p. 68-70).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2006. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ed. D.)--University of North Texas, May, 2007. / Title from title page display. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Brite Divinity School, 2006. / Typescript (photocopy). Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 207-220). Also available via the World Wide Web.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Boston University. / The "wetback" and bracero episodes of 1930-1960 had their origins in the Quota Act of 1921. The Act, as amended, limited immigration to 150,000 annually and established quotas based on the national origins of the population of the United States. It thereby cut off large-scale immigration from Southeastern Europe. The "wetbacks" who gained their name from their surreptitious and successful attempts to ford the Rio Grande and thus slip illegally into the United States, occasioned no serious problems in the 1930's; during the depression years only a few Mexicans crossed the border and sought work in American fields at harvest time. The American involvement in World War II, however, impelled a substantial displacement of American farm workers; the "wetback" traffic accelerated proportionately. The War's end did not check the swelling influx of illegal entrants. The number grew steadily, prior to 1954, until it approximated 1,200,000 annually. Most members of the migratory labor force, remaining in the United States only during the crop-growing season, returned each year to their homeland. Not more than a small percentage attempted to remain permanently north of the border. [TRUNCATED]

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The literature sees community members of Mexican ancestry as persons who are denied full participation in matters of school policies and practices. It also cites that forty percent of children of Mexican ancestry who enter school drop out before they graduate from the twelfth grade. In view of these perceptions, this study was designed to examine what relationship existed among three factors: (1) the goals of a school district; (2) student academic achievement as indicated by GPA; and (3) the intra- group variability among Chicano, Mexican American and Mexican students. This study assumed that if students, parents and teachers prioritized goals congruently, students would do better in school than if there was not a congruity of ranking. However, data results revealed that the existence or nonexistence of goal -ranking congruence among students, parents and teachers made no practical significant difference in student GPA. The research sample included 267 middle school age students of Mexican ancestry, their parents and 74 teachers. The three groups of students, that is, Chicano, Mexican American and Mexican, each ranked communication, work skills, logical thinking, critical thinking skills, study of one's own heritage and other ethnic groups, and accomplishing one's own potential among the seven most important goals. It is recommended that school districts develop their goals with representative input from the total community and that goals be coherently and consistently publicized among professional and lay people in order that the purpose and consistency of school practices be underscored.

In the literature on immigrants, the focus has been mostly on the migrants themselves or the way receiving societies react to their arrival. In sociology, there is also a long tradition dedicated to studying how residential contexts and neighborhoods impact the opportunities of the disadvantaged. Less attention, however, has been paid to the connection between these two areas of study. Despite the obvious parallel challenges that immigrants face for achieving social mobility in America’s cities and towns, we know less about how arriving to particular places impacts immigrant integration. This gap has grown larger by the tendency to recurrently study immigrant life in exceptionally populous and diverse cities like New York and Los Angeles, or in equally exceptional small, rural destinations. This dissertation seeks to answer one key question: How do different aspects of local context affect immigrant life chances and their ability to fully participate in the social life of their places of residence? The first chapter of my dissertation shows that the literature in migration studies is not fully examining the range of immigrant destinations. I show these tendencies in the literature by conducting a bibliometric analysis of integration studies published in major immigration journals and books from 2008 to 2018. To address the conceptual problems created by this tendency, I propose a framework that moves past populational criteria for case selection and focuses instead on components of context that existing research shows matter for intergenerational mobility and integration. I also introduce a typology of contexts based on possible combinations of these components and offer some hypotheses of how these types might affect integration. This first chapter sets up the principles that guide the rest of the dissertation. In the second, third and fourth chapters, I introduce an original survey and interview study (MATIS) examining the impact of one aspect of context – institutions – on Mexican integration in Albuquerque, New Mexico and Tucson, Arizona. These cities are selected because they are maximally similar with respect to relevant contextual features other than their institutions, and have comparable flows of Mexican immigrants. The study surveys 1.5 and second-generation Mexican immigrants in both cities, and triangulates this data with follow-up interviews on a subsample of second-generation survey respondents with low and high educational attainment. The results reveal that the generosity of college funding that exists in New Mexico through the lottery scholarship, a program that does not have an analogue in Arizona, facilitates entry and completion of college degree for the children of Mexican immigrants. Respondents in both cities explained their educational attainment in a variety of ways, including as a result of their parent’s education, their relationships in their communities and schools, and events in their lives, but only the generosity of college funding stood out as being different across cities. These explanations, and others, are explored using regression analysis which finds that Mexicans that attended high school in New Mexico are more likely to complete college than their counterparts in Arizona even when accounting for individual and family characteristics. Beyond demonstrating the important part that contextual features of place, in this case local institutions, can have on the mobility outcomes of immigrants these empirical findings have clear policy implications. The immediate finding is that increased generosity in educational funding for immigrants in college has direct and observable returns on college attainment, a finding which is aligned with a vast literature connecting college affordability and completion. Additionally, I discuss how the structure of the lottery scholarship, which de-emphasizes merit aid, may have egalitarian consequences for disadvantaged groups.