The United States has seen tremendous growth since it has achieved a population of 300 million. Interestingly, events like this mask the heterogeneity of fertility behavior particularly along racial/ethnic lines. Unfortunately, despite the voluminous literature examining the dynamics and differentials of fertility, extant studies suffer from several limitations including the treatment of racial/ethnic groups as homogenous, the cross-sectionality of their analyses, or their focus on either current or cumulative fertility ultimately underplaying the complexity of fertility behavior. Therefore, this dissertation investigates the fertility behavior of Mexican American and white women paying particular attention to race/ethnicity and social mobility by conducting a quantitative analysis of current and cumulative fertility behavior of women at three different points in their life course. The findings demonstrate the significant effect that socioeconomic characteristics and race have on explaining the higher fertility of Mexican American women in the United States thus, encouraging the adoption of a racial/ethnic stratification framework in studies of fertility.

The United States has seen tremendous growth since it has achieved a population of 300 million. Interestingly, events like this mask the heterogeneity of fertility behavior particularly along racial/ethnic lines. Unfortunately, despite the voluminous literature examining the dynamics and differentials of fertility, extant studies suffer from several limitations including the treatment of racial/ethnic groups as homogenous, the cross-sectionality of their analyses, or their focus on either current or cumulative fertility ultimately underplaying the complexity of fertility behavior. Therefore, this dissertation investigates the fertility behavior of Mexican American and white women paying particular attention to race/ethnicity and social mobility by conducting a quantitative analysis of current and cumulative fertility behavior of women at three different points in their life course. The findings demonstrate the significant effect that socioeconomic characteristics and race have on explaining the higher fertility of Mexican American women in the United States thus, encouraging the adoption of a racial/ethnic stratification framework in studies of fertility.

Massive recruitment of foreign labour occurred in all Gulf States since the beginning of oil exploitation in 1973. In the United Arab Emirates (UAE) the foreign population accounted for up to 75 per cent of the total population and up to 90 per cent of the labour force in 2000. Even though the migration system is of temporary character, many foreign workers spend dozens of years in the country.This study aims to reveal two fundamental issues. On one hand, it will be shown why a sample of migrant workers came to the United Arab Emirates. Contemporary theories on international migration will be presented to analyze the results of the field study undertaken during four weeks in the emirate of Dubai. On the other hand, living and working conditions for those migrant workers in the UAE are presented. Formal regulations and international conventions are compared to the actual practices in the UAE. Special focus will be given to formal regulations and widespread informal practices that easily generate irregularity.