Research and Data Priorities for Improving Economic and Social Mobility Proceedings of a Workshop (2022) / Chapter Skim
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5 Studying Mobility by Race, Ethnicity, and Immigration Status
5 Studying Mobility by Race, Ethnicity, and Immigration Status
Pages 51-68
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From page 51... ...
The second presentation examined how researchers can measure concepts such as structural racism and institutional discrimination, and identified research challenges and opportunities in this area. The third presentation considered immigration status and mobility, while the fourth focused on the diversity of the Asian American population.
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From page 52... ...
One of the central difficulties is "bouncing between" attempting to measure an outcome of structural racism and a component of structural racism. Studying social mobility by race and class, said Darity, can mean looking at how social groups fare over the life course, or what happens intergenerationally for these groups.
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From page 53... ...
What is particularly noteworthy, said Darity, is the fact that the White working class has a net worth that significantly exceeds the net worth of professional class families who are Black or Latinx. He shared a graph that illustrates this "striking" disparity (see Figure 5-1)
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From page 54... ...
However, these approaches operate under the "untenable assumption" that racism does not shape economic decisions and the acquisition of human capital in the first place. With this evolution in understanding, it is becoming clear that focusing solely on individual factors leads to an incomplete and biased understanding of the drivers of racial inequities and social mobility.
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From page 55... ...
Fourth, the impact of structural racism on mobility patterns should be estimated by linking contextual structural racism measures with geocoded data on mobility. Finally, he said, building a publicly available data infrastructure on structural racism could lower barriers to this type of research and catalyze research on differential mobility processes.
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From page 56... ...
Brown shared details of his recent work that aims to measure structural racism in ways that align with structural theories. Brown and his colleague used nine indicators of structural racism to develop a latent measure of structural racism, using confirmatory factor analysis to measure the extent to which structural racism across domains is reflective of an underlying latent construct.4 Brown conveyed his hope that these sorts of approaches to capturing and measuring structural racism will provide a proof of concept to "get empirical traction on the drivers of racial inequalities." 4 Ibid.
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From page 57... ...
To test the utility of the latent measure of structural racism, Brown and his colleague linked it to geocoded health and demographic survey data. The results revealed that state-level structural racism is predictive of an array of health outcomes; specifically, exposure to higher levels of structural racism at the state level is associated with worse health outcomes for Black people, but not White people.5 There is a growing body of research on developing novel measures of structural racism in the population health literature, said Brown.
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From page 58... ...
Further research, said Brown, should explicitly test the extent to which contemporary social mobility is affected by historical racism -- for example, how variations in exposure to slavery, Jim Crow laws, or racialized voter suppression impact mobility. 7 Agénor, M., Perkins, C., Stamoulis, C., Hall, R.D., Samnaliev, M., Berland, S., and Bryn, A.S.
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From page 59... ...
This study could serve as a springboard and potential data source for similar studies aimed at understanding how intersectional oppressions shape mobility. STUDYING MOBILITY BY IMMIGRATION STATUS Studying mobility among immigrant populations continues to have relevance, said Tomás Jiménez (Stanford University)
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From page 60... ...
The third important characteristic about today's immigrant population is that immigrants are distributed across the country "in ways that we have never seen before." There are still significant concentrations of immigrants in California, the eastern corridor, the southern part of Florida, and the U.S.-Mexico border, but there are now new areas of concentration in the Midwest and the South. In spite of these changes, the approach for studying mobility among immigrant populations still involves a close examination of the differences between immigrant generations, said Jiménez.
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From page 61... ...
There are also intellectual challenges in immigration studies, he said, such as the common distinction that is made between race and immigration scholarship. Jiménez argued that this is a false distinction, and that "one cannot begin to understand race in the United States today and mobility without understanding differences in immigrant generations, and one cannot begin to understand differences in immigrant generations without understanding race." Another challenge is an increasing tendency to homogenize ethnoracial groups and to treat them as if they are "hermetically sealed units" that do not change internally.
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From page 62... ...
; the percentage of Asian Americans in the United States nearly doubled between 2000 and 2020, and is expected to double again by 2060. Unlike some other ethnoracial groups, the population of Asian Americans is growing primarily through immigration, and by 2055, Asian Americans will surpass Hispanic Americans as the largest immigrant group in the country.
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From page 63... ...
For example, data collection instruments should be linguistically and culturally appropriate in order to serve a population in which two-thirds are immigrants and one-third is limited in English language proficiency. Fourth, Lee emphasized the importance of building institutional trust among Asian Americans; this involves including community leaders and scientific experts at all stages of data collection, as well as creating scientific advisory committees and community advisory committees.
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From page 64... ...
Mobility in Immigrant Populations Harris asked Lee and Jiménez to elaborate on what past mobility research in immigrant populations has shown, and where the research should go moving forward. Jiménez responded that the patterns of mobility for immigrants today look similar to the patterns of 100 years ago, and for some measures, upward mobility is happening faster.
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From page 65... ...
Lee told workshop participants about her work with the STAATUS (Social Tracking of Asian Americans in the United States) index, and its questions about perceptions of Asian Americans.
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From page 66... ...
When considering the life course perspective for immigrant populations, said Lee, there are two major factors that impact mobility. First, limited English language proficiency is a critical issue for some immigrant populations, and directing resources to this area is necessary to help them have the resources to be "a part of our society." Second, a pathway to
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From page 67... ...
Brown responded that the structural racism measure includes factors that are particularly acute in Northeast and Midwestern states, such as inequalities in education, housing, political domains, employment, and criminal justice. While the reasons for these inequalities are not completely understood, scholars posit that the contemporary structural racism in the North has its roots in institutionalized policies and practices that were created in response to the Great Migration.
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From page 68... ...
Brown responded that he thinks of the multifaceted scale of structural racism as reflecting a hidden or latent complex system. In this system, there are an array of pathways through which structural racism impacts outcomes, including health, economic capital, autonomy, power, and risk.
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