Browsing by Subject "Immigration"
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Item Alien citizen : do stereotypes of undocumented Mexican immigrants generalize to Mexican Americans?(2012-12) Martinez, Mercedes Shannon 1980-; Awad, Germine H.September 11th 2001 led to an increase in the intensity of the already existing discourses surrounding what it means to be an American, with a particular focus on the Southern border of the United States and Mexican immigration as a perceived threat to national security. This study seeks to address the Latino threat narrative (Chavez, 2008) through measuring how perceptions of stereotypes and realistic and symbolic threat differ as a function of foreigness using a 2 (positive vs. negative scenario) x 4 (Mexican American, undocumented immigrant, Latino and Anglo) design.Item American emigrants: confederate, socialist and Mormon colonies in Mexico(2016-05) Kinney, Emily Rose; Bsumek, Erika Marie; Butler, Matthew; Brown, Jonathan; Cox, JamesThis dissertation discusses three different colonization schemes of Americans in Mexico—Confederates in the wake of the US Civil War and Reconstruction who refused to live under the Union government, a group of who tried to establish a utopian society, and Mormons who sought refuge from prosecution in the United States from anti-polygamy laws. In many ways, each of these groups were a far cry from the Mexican government’s ideal of colonists, but each also benefitted from the idea that Anglo-Americans were particularly well suited to the “exploitation” of natural resources and the development of an industrial capitalist economy. The Mexican government, particularly under Porfirio Díaz’s regime, was willing to grant certain freedoms to these groups that it denied to others. Thus, while millions of people across the world looked to the United States for political and economic freedoms, dissidents in the United States often turned to Mexico for the same reason. The assumptions about white Americans also worked in the colonists’ favor on a personal level. Most of these colonists had very little capital and brought nothing to invest in Mexico besides their labor. Nonetheless, they actively sought and established relationships with the Mexican elite—attending parties and hosting gatherings with some of the richest people in the region. Despite their status as privileged white American colonists, all three groups engaged in some form of justifying their presence in Mexico. The colonists were all aware that their presence in the nation was contentious. Through varying methods, all performed Mexicanidad, or Mexican identity, to prove their belonging in Mexico.Item An intercultural exploration of journalistic framing of immigration in the Mexican Press and United States press(2008-08) Madison, Thomas Phillip; Wilkinson, Kent; Chambers, Todd; Johnson, TomSince the mid-1990s, immigration through and from Mexico to the U.S. has increased. This has led to a good deal of controversy on the issue for all sectors of life, and is immediately apparent in newspaper reporting. In 2006, with proposed changes to federal immigration policy on the legislative table, hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people took to the streets and protested these changes. For this study, a sample of 1028 newspaper articles dealing with immigrants and immigration was taken from both U.S. and Mexican newspapers between October, 2005 and September, 2006. The articles were analyzed for journalistic frame, tone, attitude toward immigrants and immigration, objectivity, and number and types of news sources used by the journalists. Several differences between U.S. and Mexican journalists’ coverage of the protests emerged, and were considered as part of the larger context of a year’s worth of reporting.Item Are American communities becoming more secure? : evaluating the secure communities program(2012-08) Villagran, José Guadalupe; Menchaca, Martha; Rodriguez, Nestor P.This thesis examines the federal government’s progression in implementing the Secure Communities program. The Secure Communities program was initiated by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in 2008 as a pilot program in only fourteen jurisdictions nation-wide. As of the writing of this thesis, four years following the initiation of the program, S-Comm. has been implemented in over 1700 jurisdictions nation-wide and it is set to be implemented in all local jurisdictions nationally by the end of 2013 (Immigration and Customs Enforcement, 2012). Although local law enforcement agencies had long shared the fingerprints of those they arrested with the FBI, the FBI now forwards this information to the DHS through S-Comm. who then checks the fingerprints against the Automated Biometric Identification System known as IDENT—a fingerprint database containing information on over 91 million individuals, including travelers, applicants for immigration benefits, and immigrants who have previously violated immigration laws. ICE then supposedly reviews their records to see if the person arrested is deportable. If they believe they are, or want to further interrogate them, ICE will issue a detainer. The detainer is a request to the local police to inform federal immigration authorities when the arrestee will be released from custody and to hold the individual for up to two days for transfer to ICE (The Chief Justice, 2011). This process is considered to be the most advanced form of file sharing between local authorities and federal immigration authorities yet. The focus of this endeavor is to evaluate whether this program has been effective in doing as its title maintains. If this program is one that the American people, documented or not, have to endure then it is important that we ask: has Secure Communities made American communities safer? Recent data collected on the program, reports of mass opposition to the initiative by local law enforcement officials throughout the country, and numerous personal accounts of discriminatory harassment of mostly Spanish-speaking Americans by federal immigration agents and state and local law enforcement officials participating in Secure Communities collectively demonstrate that this program has failed in making American communities more secure.Item Attitudes towards immigrants & support for government spending on health care(2010-05) Shannon, Melissa Maura; Osborne, Cynthia Anne, 1969-A steady increase of new immigrants to the United States has sparked a great debate on the financial impact the foreign born population has on public services. While the United States government has an extensive history on exclusions for potential public charges, the impact of negative attitudes towards immigrants has caused substantial changes in eligibility criteria for legal permanent residents and ultimately immigration policy at large. This report uses group threat theory, which predicts a punitive response from a dominant group when these individuals perceive a threat to their group interests to explain shifts in attitudes and corresponding changes in eligibility criteria for public benefit programs for immigrants. Additionally, this study examines how U.S. citizens’ misinformed perceptions of immigrants’ utilization of public programs may negatively influence public support for increased government spending on public health care programs. To quantify the implications of public attitudes, the study uses repeat crosssectional data on attitudes towards immigration from the General Social Survey (GSS) from 1994 (N=578), prior to Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) of 1996. The responses are compared to a similar survey conducted by GSS in 2004 (N=365) an era of steep economic growth and substantially higher health care costs.Item The Borderlanders(2009-12) Rodriguez, Marcel Bernard; Stekler, Paul Jeffrey; Perez, Domino; Ramirez-Berg, CharlesThe following report describes the pre-production, production, and post-production of the short film, The Borderlanders, set and shot in South Texas. Its story centers on an immigrant youth who tries to escape the tensions that arise in one family coming together after many years of forced separation because of current immigration policies. It is a meditation on family dynamics and the intimate politics of the border. The report discusses the thought process behind creating images of Latinos in film, the writing of the film, and analyzes the creative choices that gave shape to the film. The original screenplay is included as well as the credits.Item Brazilian immigrant women : the relationship of marianismo and acculturative stress to acculturation types(2012-05) Bessa, Luana Barbossa; Borich, Gary D.; Cokley, KevinThe proposed study will investigate how individuals of different acculturation types vary in their levels of acculturative stress and marianismo. First-generation Brazilian immigrant females will complete a demographic questionnaire, as well as measures of acculturation, marianismo, and acculturative stress. Two 1-way ANOVA analyses and one 1-way ANCOVA analysis will be conducted in order to explore the relationship between these variables. It is proposed that Brazilian immigrant women’s levels of acculturative stress and marianismo will vary by acculturation type. It is further proposed that measuring adherance to traditional gender roles as varying by acculturation type rather than level will yield a more nuanced understanding of this relationship by not confounding integrated and marginalized individuals. Implications and limitations of the study’s potential findings will be discussed. Lastly, a program evaluation perspective will be presented to further explicate the implications of the current study for mental health outcomes and the provision of mental health services to Brazilian immigrant women.Item Buddhism east and west: Chinese Buddhism in Beijing and Houston(2009-05-15) Wilson, MelindaAlthough Buddhism was introduced in the United States over a century ago, only recently has it become part of the mainstream. In addition to the exponential increase in Buddhist practitioners in the United States, scholar Thomas Tweed argues that Buddhist images and references, devoid of religious context, have seeped into American society. The increasing popularity and prevalence of Buddhism in America is attributable to many factors including changes to the immigration laws in the 1960s and the episodic popularity of all things Eastern. This fascination with the East is epitomized by the current Dalai Lama, who has a pop-culture presence as well as political sway, as evidenced by his meeting with John McCain on July 25, 2008. Just as the pre-1965 immigration laws stifled Buddhism in the United States by limiting the number of Asian immigrants, Mao?s communist doctrines prevented the practice of Buddhism in China. As a result, in recent years Buddhism has emerged in the United States and remerged in China. By examining the state of Buddhism in Beijing and Chinese Buddhism in Houston this thesis shows that despite the comparable newness of the religion in both places, it is developing in very different ways, showing the impact region has on religion.Item Casting a crime net, catching immigrants : an analysis of secure communities' effects on the size of foreign-born Mexican populations(2013-12) Gutierrez, Carmen Marie; Kirk, David S.Following the precedent decision to expand the power of immigration enforcement set by the Immigration and Nationality Act Section 287(g), the Department of Homeland Security developed its own partnership agreement with local police to increase detection and deportation efforts through its 2008 policy, Secure Communities (S-Comm). S-Comm represents the nation’s “largest expansion of local involvement in immigration enforcement in the nation’s history” (Cox & Miles 2013, pg. 93). Although slated to enhance public safety by removing “criminal aliens” convicted of serious offenses, S-Comm has broaden its scope to achieve attrition in the undocumented immigrant population more generally by also focusing on the removal of those who violate low-level and immigration laws, as well as those who have recently entered the U.S. illegally. Its implementation and enforcement procedures, however, have been found to disproportionately target foreign-born Mexican residents relative to other undocumented individuals, which may lead to negative consequences for S-Comm’s efficacy. Has S-Comm effectively reduced the size of the Mexican immigrant population in the U.S.? Exploiting the variation in the timing of its implementation as well as the disparate levels of its enforcement, my research extends a quasi-experimental design to investigate S-Comm’s effect on the size of local Mexican immigrant populations. Testing the influence of S-Comm’s implementation and enforcement will reveal the salience of passing laws that target unauthorized migration—an empirical contribution to previous work that has only assessed state and local policies. Moreover, such results may also enhance theoretical knowledge of punitive practices formulated to produce deterrence.Item Chinese coolies in Cuba and Peru : race, labor, and immigration, 1839-1886(2010-08) Narvaez, Benjamin Nicolas; Brown, Jonathan C. (Jonathan Charles), 1942-; Hu-DeHart, Evelyn; Garfield, Seth W.; Gurdiy, Frank A.; Deans-Smith, Susan; Hsu, Madeline Y.This dissertation examines the experience of the tens of thousands of Chinese indentured laborers (colonos asiáticos or “coolies”) who went to Cuba and Peru as replacements for African slaves during the middle of the nineteenth century. Despite major sociopolitical differences (i.e., colonial slave society vs. independent republic without slavery), this comparative project reveals the common nature in the transition from slavery to free labor. Specifically, the indenture system, how the Chinese reacted to their situation, and how they influenced labor relations mirrored each other in the two societies. I contend that colonos asiáticos, while neither slaves nor free laborers, created a foundation for a shift from slavery to free labor. Elites in both places tried to fit the Chinese into competing projects of liberal “progress” and conservative efforts to stem this change, causing them to imagine these immigrant laborers in contradictory ways (i.e., free vs. slave, white vs. non-white, hard-working vs. lazy, cultured vs. morally corrupt). This ambiguity excused treating Asian laborers as if they were slaves, but it also justified treating them as free people. Moreover, Chinese acts of resistance slowly helped undermine this labor regime. Eventually, international pressure, which never would have reached such heights if the Chinese had remained passive, forced an end to the “coolie” trade and left these two societies with little option but to move even closer to free labor. That said, this work also considers the ways in which the differing socio-political contexts altered the Chinese experience. In particular, in contrast to Peru, Cuba’s status as a colonial slave society made it easier for the island’s elites to justify exploiting these workers and to protect themselves from mass rebellion. My dissertation places the histories of Cuba and Peru into a global perspective. It focuses on the transnational migration of the Chinese, on their social integration into their new Latin American host societies, as well as on the international reaction to the situation of immigrant laborers in Latin America.Item Citizenship and global mobility : the international value of national identity(2013-12) Rennick, Elisabeth Neal; Givens, Terri E., 1964-In the past twenty years, a great deal of literature has been produced as to the value of citizenship in the global era. Some scholars insist that globalization has decreased the value of citizenship with the growth of human rights. Others believe that such claims are premature. Though these authors bring up important points as to the degree civil, political, and social rights have been granted to non-citizens around the world, they all fail to adequately address mobility rights. Primarily granted to citizens, mobility rights are going to become increasingly important with higher rates of international mobility, work, and residence. As such, these rights, the extent of which is defined by one's national citizenship, will play a significant role in determining autonomy and the capacity of an individual to determine one's own destiny. In this paper, I will explore inter-national and intra-national citizenship and immigration policies with the hopes of demonstrating the continued importance of citizenship in an increasingly globalized world. After laying out my theory, I will measure the value of U.S. citizenship inter-nationally and intra-nationally with regards to mobility rights.Item Citizenship constructions : rhetoric, immigration, and Arizona's SB 1070(2013-05) Ruiz De Castilla, Clariza; Brummett, Barry, 1951-On April 23, 2010, Arizona Governor Jan Brewer signed Senate Bill 1070 ("Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act") into law. This legislative effort raised questions about how political and legal thought are immersed in talk of citizenship in our present time. While the Supreme Court rejected the majority of this law two years after it was signed, concerns over issues of legality, law enforcement, and citizenship still remain. The main questions posed in this dissertation are the following: How are Latinos portrayed as citizens by media? What types and tones of citizenship are advanced in SB 1070 news coverage? To learn more about citizenship constructions, I analyzed newspaper coverage of SB 1070 by using a critical approach that combines quantitative and rhetorical analyses. I examined the following six newspapers were examined: Los Angeles Times and La Opinión (Los Angeles); Miami Herald and Diario Las Américas (Miami); Arizona Republic and Prensa Hispana (Phoenix). They were reviewed over a six month period, specifically from December 1, 2009, to May 31, 2010. I searched each edition by using physical copies, microfilm, and internet databases, for stories on immigration, Latinos, and citizenship as it related to SB 1070. After these newspapers were collected, a content analysis was conducted followed by a close textual analysis. The data reveals three major findings. The first finding is that both English and Spanish newspapers tend to frame citizenship as legal status. The second finding is that Spanish newspapers require their news consumers to translate between languages (specifically English and Spanish), as well as consider different cultures (American and Latino customs) and diverse politicians (international political figures). The third finding is that Spanish newspapers provide many more photos, especially of protests against this legislative effort. The two main conclusions of this dissertation are (1) that Spanish newspapers require their readers to have a double-consciousness, and (2) that there is value in using more than one kind of methodology.Item Comparative population policy(2011-05) Hardy, David McGrath; Wilson, Robert Hines; Stolp, ChandlerIn the last thirty years an increasing number of governments are taking an interest in the growth rate and age structure of their populations. The chief concern among advanced economies is that pay-as-you-go pension and health care systems for the elderly will be unsustainable as the ratio of younger workers to older beneficiaries shrinks from aging populations. Resistance to reforms such as reduced or delayed benefits, or higher taxes has focused attention on a third option, growing the working-age population. There is a growing consensus on the economic benefits of population growth, a reversal from the 1960s through 80s. Governments try to grow the population through incentives for more children and/or accepting more immigrants. This report compares the population policies of Singapore, the United States, France, and Japan to analyze governments' motives and policy outcomes. Middle-income nations like China and Brazil can learn from the experiences of developed nations to avoid the same predicament in the future. Each government's mix of fertility incentives, immigrants, and guest workers is a product of their economic and political circumstances. The surest way to grow the population, accepting immigrants, is usually the least popular. The most popular is the most unproven, providing benefits for larger families. There is no consensus what the most effective fertility incentives are. Population policy has never been just about the economy, it is steeped in political and cultural visions. Shedding that political baggage is a prerequisite to a more rational, sustainable policy approach to demography.Item Contesting mobility : growers, farm workers, and U.S.-Mexico border enforcement during the twentieth century(2011-12) Salinas, Cristina; Green, Laurie B. (Laurie Beth); Zamora, Emilio; Limon, Jose E; Sidbury, James; Martinez, AnneThis dissertation examines an important, but understudied period in Mexican-U.S. migration history during the 1940s and early 1950s. The joint introduction and sanctioning, by the U.S. and Mexican governments, of the bracero program also initiated a large illegal migration of agricultural workers to the United States. This was a period characterized by high levels of temporary legal migration and illegal migration, as well as intense levels of immigration enforcement. These simultaneous processes confound a simplistic view of U.S. history as a sequence of alternating periods of immigration expansion and restriction. U.S. immigration law and policy does not resemble a pendulum swinging first one way then the other; rather, both expansion and restriction characterized the 1940s and early 1950s. This study focuses on South Texas and El Paso, both border regions with dominant agricultural economies as well as a significant presence of Border Patrol officers. By focusing on these border regions, this dissertation examines the relationship between immigration laws and policy and the agricultural labor relations between growers and workers on the ground. This dissertation is concerned with state formation on the U.S.-Mexico border, and its relationship with labor mobility. The process of state and border formation did not originate in the central seats of federal authority, Washington, D.C., and Mexico City, to be applied and exerted on the furthest reaches of their territories. Growers and workers created, negotiated, and experienced and challenged the power and meaning of the border in the agricultural fields during daily interactions. Individual Border Patrolman made the border every day in the choices they made about where and where not to patrol, and which friendships to make and maintain. The border was simultaneously a federal and a local space. As the introductory anecdote suggested, the different sites of power were continually at work and intertwined. The Border Patrol did not have to be present to have an effect on the power dynamics in the moment. These interconnecting authorities, each shaping the other, and workers negotiations of such dynamics are what I term the social space of agriculture on the border. Growers often projected themselves in opposition to the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) and government intervention, arguing that it disrupted their access to Mexican laborers. In truth, the presence of the Border Patrol, and the threat of deportation the police force carried, was crucial in shaping the social space of agricultural production and securing growers’ undocumented labor force.Item Conversation with an Apple : play development as movement-building against mass incarceration(2015-05) Goodnow, Natalie Marlena; Gutierrez, Laura G., 1968-; Alrutz, Megan; Jones, Omi Osun Joni L.This reflective practitioner research project explores if and how viewing and responding to drafts of my original solo play in development, "Conversation with an Apple," contributes to efforts to build a movement against mass incarceration, with a particular focus on dismantling the school-to-prison pipeline. I draw upon Michelle Alexander's theorization of mass incarceration in the United States, social movement theory elaborated and archived by contemporary activists, and theories in performance and affect studies to contextualize my investigation. I describe how I utilized Liz Lerman's Critical Response Process to elicit audience responses to staged readings of "Conversation with an Apple," and also how I employed modified grounded theory techniques to analyze those responses. I then explain how insights gained through these methodologies informed revisions of the "Conversation with an Apple" script and my plans for future post-show workshops. I conclude with an evaluation of the usefulness of these play development and research methodologies in my artistic practice. I find that both Liz Lerman's Critical Response Process and the modified grounded theory analysis I utilized, along with a return to my guiding theoretical frameworks, contributed meaningfully to my reflective practice, yielding several key insights. First, I discovered that the play does seem to have the potential to raise consciousness among audience members regarding multiple manifestations of mass incarceration as it affects young people, although I decided that a few key mechanisms of mass incarceration might be more fully elaborated through script revisions. Second, I found that when audiences responded to the play, the shared experience of viewing the performance functioned as a springboard for conversation about other shared experiences in their lives, thus building a sense of community in at least a small way. I also theorize that the act of transmitting heightened affect together while viewing this play built community. Finally, my analyses revealed that although some audience members felt outraged at the realities of mass incarceration and inspired to make a change, many felt hopeless after viewing the play. These analyses informed my most significant revisions to the "Conversation with an Apple" script and plans for post-show workshops.Item Costly citizenship : the supply and demand of political membership in Europe, 1970-2014(2016-08) Graeber, John David; Moser, Robert G., 1966-; Givens, Terri E., 1964-; Freeman, Gary P; Chapman, Terrence; Maxwell, Rahsaan DAs Europe has struggled to adapt to the modern reality of mass migration in recent decades, the question of citizenship has emerged as an increasingly salient political topic across the continent. Numerous scholars have begun to analyze the evolution of citizenship regimes in Europe, the politics of citizenship policymaking, and the consequences of such policies for citizenship acquisition and immigrant integration. This dissertation advances a new theoretical understanding of citizenship policymaking and citizenship acquisition together within a framework of supply and demand. According to the theory, naturalization rates, and the corresponding level of integration required to naturalize, are the equilibrium result of the interaction between the political forces supplying citizenship and the varying determinants of immigrant demand for citizenship. This dissertation examines both in turn. On the supply side, I first argue that citizenship policy in Europe results not simply from the influence of radical right parties, but from broader modes of party competition that provide electoral incentives to either liberalize or restrict access to citizenship. Using a new quantitative measurement of citizenship policies across sixteen European countries from 1970 to 2014, I reveal how left party competition is associated with more liberal citizenship policy change, while right party competition and radical right electoral threats engender more restrictive policies. I then utilize my citizenship policy index alongside other political, economic, and social variables on the demand side to examine the aggregate level structure under which citizenship acquisition occurs across European countries and across time. Finally, through a combination of quantitative and qualitative evidence gathered on two federal countries in Europe, Germany and Austria, I show that these same aggregate level variables operating at the national level may also operate within them.Item Cycles of denial : US reception of drug-war refugees from Mexico through the asylum system(2014-05) Romero, Lynn Elise; Rodriguez, NéstorThis thesis will focus on the recent increase in the number of Mexican nationals applying for asylum in the United States and the disproportionate denial of their claims. It will help clarify national debates regarding asylum, shed light on bi-national socio-political conditions, and raise important questions about the human rights of asylum seekers, including the United States’ obligations regarding those rights. It is also work that adds a rarely considered perspective to the scholarship on Mexican migration by focusing on migrants who are motivated by violence rather than economic factors.Item Denizen politics : a comparative analysis of opposition to immigration in the European Union(2014-08) Mohanty, Peter Cushner; Gregg, Benjamin Greenwood, 1954-; Givens, Terri E., 1964-; Luskin, Robert C.; Jessee, Stephen; Murer, JeffreyThis dissertation presents a series of observational studies of opposition to immigration (OI) in the European Union. A substantial portion of the public seems to prefer a more exclusionary form of democracy, but how large, how vocal, and how organized that portion is varies considerably. I investigate exclusionism, a dimension of individual belief about how extensive political membership should be that tends to reflect how denizens prioritize political and cultural aspects of membership. In situating exclusionism, I shed light on three puzzles: Which of an individual’s concerns are the strongest determinants of OI? Which national developments are the strongest determinants of an individual’s OI? How are the effects of an individual’s concerns shaped by national context? Exclusionism predicts OI in more countries in the EU than do ideology or religion. Post-9/11 conflicts increase OI but not as dramatically as do increases in the Muslim population (suggesting perhaps that Islamophobia outpaces security risks). OI is highest in new countries of immigration, but polarization is most pronounced in older countries of immigration, where ongoing national developments have created unusually large generational gaps, religious differences, and disagreements about exclusionism. Political interest is key for explaining large differences in opinion, too. Exclusionism increases OI, even in low-immigration countries, among individuals with little interest in politics but only slightly; at high levels of individual interest and immigration, exclusionism’s effects are substantial. My findings reveal major challenges to integration policy in high-immigration countries: migrants and natives are unlikely to see eye-to-eye at any level of political interest, and there is near complete disagreement on immigration policy between politically-interested Muslims and politically-interested Christians. Methodologically, I introduce techniques to analyze polarization, and my findings have implications for best practices in cross-national survey research.Item Domestic violence on undocumented Latina women in Texas(2015-05) Higuera Florez, Silvia Andrea; Alves, Rosental C.; Bock, Mary A.Domestic violence is a steadily growing problem and a source of major concern all over the country. Texas is not the exception, and, not surprisingly, different organizations have advocated for the adoption of resolutions declaring freedom from domestic violence as a human right. The City of Austin Council and Travis County adopted resolutions of this kind in 2014. Even though the topic has captured the attention of authorities, the situation is more complicated when it comes to undocumented Latina women, since they are forced to face other obstacles alongside being in an abusive situation. Such obstacles are the difficulties of accessing the legal system because of their lack of knowledge, or because of language barriers -- all circumstances occurring in a context of fear and threats by the perpetrator of the violence. In some cases, women and children are abused by United States citizens or legal permanent residents, who take advantage of their legal status and protection that the women and children lack. This report tells the stories of some women in Texas and tries to raise awareness of this matter within the community. The report also explains different legal remedies the women can use, such as the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), through which they may obtain lawful permanent residency.Item Essays in labor economics with applications to Germany(2011-05) Yaman, Firat; Abrevaya, Jason; Hamermesh, Daniel S.; Trejo, Stephen J.; Freitas, Kripa M.; Brucker, HerbertThis dissertation consists of three essays in Labor Economics. The first chapter estimates the costs for establishments of hires and separations for a panel of German establishments. The panel records the start and the termination of the employment of all employees in the surveyed establishments, allowing estimation of adjustment costs under different assumptions of how frequently establishments revise their labor demand. Under the assumption that establishments revise their labor demand every month, estimates suggest hiring costs per employee of approximately 5,000 Euros, and costs of separations of 1,000 Euros. Hiring costs vary considerably between skilled (8,000 to 28,000 Euros per hire) and unskilled (4,000 to 8,000 Euros) labor. Spatial aggregation (large establishments) is associated with lower cost estimates, and only monthly adjustment frequencies yield estimates consistent with theoretical predictions. The second chapter analyzes the role of regional ethnic capital - defined as the average years of schooling of ethnic groups - in the educational attainment of young second generation immigrants in Germany using information on naturalization and country of birth in a nationally representative survey. I find evidence for externalities of ethnic capital for ethnic groups. A higher average education of ethnics makes attendance of higher-quality secondary schools more likely. Moreover, the effect is mainly mediated through the ethnic concentration in the region. However, if higher than regional aggregates are used for the measurement of ethnic capital, no externalities are detected. The third chapter analyzes the impact of regional own-ethnic concentration on the language proficiency of immigrants in Germany. It solves the endogeneity of immigrants' location choices by exploiting the fact that guest-workers in Germany after WWII were initially placed by firms and labor agencies. We find a robust negative effect of ethnic concentration on immigrants' language ability. Simulation results of a simultaneous location and learning choice model confirm the presence of the effect and show how immigrants with high learning cost select into ethnic enclaves. Under the counterfactual scenario of a regionally equal distribution of immigrants the share of German-speakers increases only modestly.
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