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Immigrant Organizations Survey - North American Transnational Communities: The nation has seen a tremendous increase in its immigrant communities. Between 1990 and 2000 the number of immigrants in the United States grew by forty percent. While the growth of the immigrant population is well documented, much less is known about the ways in which immigrant communities have organized themselves civically, economically and culturally. In particular, immigrant groups, organizations, and service providers play a central role in the migration process. These groups, often organized as community based organizations (CBOs), offer various forms of support and information to newly arrived immigrants, provide social services related to the incorporation of immigrants, serve as advocates for their ethnic groups, and act as liaison between immigrant communities and their various countries and regions of origin. In addition, these groups are instrumental in maintaining transnational relationships to the immigrant’s home county. This study will break new ground by documenting and providing visibility to the significant role community-based organizations play in supporting immigrants locally and transnationally.
Four Universities, the University of Illinois-Chicago, University of Notre Dame, University of California-Los Angeles, and Baruch College-City Universities of New York are collaborating to conduct this study in three cities: Chicago, Los Angeles and New York City.
See the project announcement for more detailed information.
Geographic Skills Mismatch and Racial Differences in Search and Employment - Major American cities continue to be characterized by racial residential segregation and job decentralization, in particular of those jobs that require few skills. The implications of these factors is that the persistent employment difficulties of African American workers, in particular those of whom are low-skilled, maybe compounded by prohibitive geographic search costs that prevent them from attaining and retaining suburban low-skill jobs. Moreover, the attainment of low-skill employment in central cities may be difficult as a result of increasing concentration of high-skill employment there. This paper seeks to investigate whether African Americans' search patterns and employment opportunities are affected by racial residential segregation and geographically uneven skill requirements of jobs. Individual level (which includes data on job search) and employer data from the Los Angeles and Atlanta components of the Multi-City Study of Urban Inequality (MCSUI) will be used to examine these relationships. Finally, comparisons between Atlanta and Los Angeles will be made to examine city differences in these relationships.
Employer Demand for Ex-Offenders in Los Angeles - This research project proposes to examine the determinants of demand for male workers with criminal backgrounds using employer data. Given the recent and rapid expansion of the criminal justice system, a large fraction of non-institutional, low-skill men are likely to have spent some time in prison. At current incarceration rates, the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS, 2000) estimates that approximately 9 percent of men will serve time in state or federal prison at some point in their lives. The BJS also estimates that the median time served for prisoners released during the late 1990s was less than two years. For certain sub-groups of the population, in particular black and Latino males, the proportion with past criminal convictions that have served time is quite large, especially in comparison to that of whites. Indeed, these trends are particularly acute in California. Taken together, this information suggests that at any point in time a large minority of non-institutionalized men have served prison sentences. But little is known about whether and to what extent males with criminal records face employment barriers in the labor market. The study will use a recent and representative dataset of firms in Los Angeles and statistical analysis to examine the firm and job level factors that are associated with employment for male workers with criminal backgrounds. Among others, these factors include the firm's size, industry, and labor demand, and whether the jobs that are available require tasks that engender employer trust of workers. A variety of employment measures will be used, including prospective and actual employment of such workers, and whether employment opportunities vary with the type of crime with which the worker was charged (i.e., violent vs. property), and the recency of imprisonment.
Perceived Criminality, Criminal Background Checks and the Racial Hiring Practices of Employers - High criminal conviction rates among certain sub-groups of the population may indirectly affect the labor market prospects of members of that population who do not have criminal histories. When information is imperfect, employers are likely to infer the likelihood of a past criminal conviction based on such traits as gender, race, and age. To the extent that employers are reluctant to hire workers with criminal histories, employers may statistically discriminate against individuals from demographic groups with high incarceration rates. Under such circumstances, the effect of employer-initiated criminal background checks on the hiring of groups with disproportionately high rates of past criminal convictions is theoretically ambiguous. In this project, we analyze the effect of employer-initiated criminal background checks on the likelihood that employers hire African-Americans. It is likely that employers who investigate the criminal background of their potential employees are more likely to hire African-Americans than those who do not. We will also investigate whether this pattern holds by establishment size category, such as for smaller establishments.
National Day Labor Research Project - CSUP is awaiting notification of pending resources for a national study of day laborers to complement my work in Los Angeles and New York. This project would include survey and in-depth interviews across different cities where concentrations of day laborers gather to solicit temporary work on a daily basis.
The Project on Devolution and Urban Change is a research effort designed to understand how devolution and the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) block grants play out in four large counties: Cuyahoga (Cleveland), Ohio; Miami-Dade, Florida; Los Angeles, California; and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Focusing on neighborhoods in these counties where welfare receipt and poverty are highly concentrated, the goal of the study is to understand how cities, poor neighborhoods, and low-income families are affected by fundamental changes to the income support system.
The Day Labor Research Project investigates laborers who congregate at street corners throughout Los Angeles to solicit temporary day work. The study seeks to understand the individuals who work as day laborers, the labor market characteristics that bring day laborers and their employers together, and the social integration of day laborers in the labor market and society in general. Four data collection efforts were undertaken: 1) random sample of 481-day laborers surveyed across 87 hiring sites in Los Angeles and Orange County, 2) in-depth interviews of 46 day laborers, 3) in-depth interviews of 29 employers of day laborers, and 4) case studies of 10 different hiring sites.
Day Labor Survey- Metropolitan New York is a random sample survey of 289-day laborers surveyed across 54 different hiring sites in metropolitan New York and Newark. The survey was completed July 21, 2002.
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