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This paper reports the results of a social network survey of individuals living in an area with a long standing gang presence: the Hollenbeck Area of the City of Los Angeles. Our primary objective is to understand the patterns of relationships between and among gang members and non-gang members. Of particular interest is how members of gangs interact with one another and with non-gang members of the community. We also examine the spatial dimensions of these relationships to determine how the traditional neighborhood-based gang rivalries influence social interactions across neighborhoods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ethnographic fieldwork was conducted over a six-week long period in Downtown Los Angeles during the summer of 2005. Specifically, a tourist route to the district's main attractions mapped the projects geographically boundaries. Much research has been published on the downtown's 'carceral' and exclusionary character - with 'undesirables' serving as targets. This study, in essence, seeks to reevaluate these claims. More nuanced portraits of two features are described: 1) how 'undesirables' are removed from segregated areas - essentially, implicit and indirect tactics are used; and 2) how the role of 'law and order' symbols change to reproduce 'normal' society in each of the areas studied. New insights include: how 1) 'undesirables' have been able to create viable public-spaces in the Civic Center area; and 2) that 'undesirables' resist domination in specific ways. Problems with the research mainly involve its limitation to day-time study. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The history of urban renewal in American cities is also a legacy of "racial removal" of racial and ethnic minorities. Los Angeles Chinatown was twice subjected to clearance during the era of Chinese immigrant exclusion. Despite these challenges, the ethnic entrepreneurs and leaders of Chinatown created new Chinatowns, and periodically reached out to local business leaders and booster organizations to market Chinatown for urban tourism. Since the arrival of the "global era" in the 1960s and the liberalization of U.S. immigrant and trade laws, Los Angeles Chinatown has encountered new opportunities for growth and redevelopment. The renewal of Chinatown has been associated with the efforts of community-based artists, historians, and activists in undertakings such as ethnic heritage museums, public arts projects, cultural festivals, and preservation of landmarks and cultural sites. Chinatown is a site where the "ethnic enclave" economy increasingly intersects with the growing "creative economy" in sectors such as tourism, entertainment, and the arts. There are costs as well as benefits associated with the growth of tourism, the arts economy, and gentrification in Los Angeles Chinatown ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing upon a series of in-depth interviews with residents of a Los Angeles neighborhood, the author shows how material and ideational elements both play important but very different roles in the construction of local place images. The author formalizes these roles in a model that bridges a divide between traditionally subjective, "centered" views of place and objective, "decentered" views. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examined the variation in social network composition among newly homeless youth over time and assessed how positive and negative peers affect HIV/AIDS risk-behaviors in Los Angeles, California. Logistic regression models were used to asses the effect of baseline network characteristics and change over two years in social networks among 183 youth. There is a great deal of heterogeneity in the composition of social networks among newly homeless youth and network composition changes over time. HIV risk behaviors are reduced at two years with a greater number of peers who attend school, have a job, or have positive family relationships or if networks change over time to include more of these peers. HIV risk behaviors increase with a greater number of peers at baseline who steal, have overdosed, have been arrested, or are in a gang, or if networks change to include more of these peers. Networks of newly homeless youth contain fewer negative influences than expected. Those youth who are most likely to engage in HIV risk activities are embedded in networks with deviant peers. Engagement with positive peers reduces the chances of engaging in HIV risk behaviors. Interventions should target newly homeless youth in networks which contain deviant peers, but interventions should strive to harness the naturally occurring positive peer influences present in these networks. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In "Mobilizing the Local: The Resource Types Behind the Los AngelesTenants' Rights Movement, 1976-1979," we analyze the importance of varioustypes of resources for tenant mobilization in Los Angeles neighborhoods.We draw from multiple data sources: a survey of LA county renters,archival records of speakers at LA City Council meetings, demographicinformation from the census, and newspaper coverage of rent control in theLA Times and use binomial regression to test the significance of each ofthe following resource types (with neighborhoods as our unit of analysis):cultural resources: percent educated and percent trade union members inthe locale; social organizational resources: geographical access, thenumber of tenant organizations, neighborhood access through pro-tenantorganizations, the number of landlord organizations, and neighborhoodaccess through pro-landlord organizations in the locale; human resources:the number of speakers at the City Council meeting from the locale; moralresources: the extent of tenant identification in the locale; and materialresources: household income. We find a strong role for cultural resourcesand some social organizational resources for tenant mobilization.Landlord social organizational resources and leadership resources werefound to hamper tenant mobilization. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in three Pentecostal temples in the Pico Union district of Los Angeles, this study suggests that Central American immigrant Pentecostalism is framed by "congregational homophily"--or the tendency for individuals occupying similar social and cultural locations to congregate with each other--especially in terms of age, ethnicity, national origin, marital status, and health status. What's more, Central American immigrant congregations often innovate and re-fashion their Pentecostalism to reflect their congregational homophily--an observation that calls into question denominational understandings of Pentecostalism. This study focuses on two Pentecostal practices, healing and roommating, and explores the ways these practices are differentially incorporated into the religious praxis of Central American immigrants in Los Angeles. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores the portrayal of older women\'s sexuality in recent Hollywood films. Though more recent \"older bird\" films such as \"Something\'s Gotta Give,\" would appear to have an upbeat message about the positive aspects of older women expressing their sexuality, other recent films end up playing into the worst stereotypes of middle-aged women\'s sexuality as somehow deviant and inimical to the interests of the family. In reality, both kinds of film end up expressing a deep cultural ambivalence about what it means for older women to express their sexuality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses how the spatial changes in Los Angeles, California, have affected 3rd+ Generation Mexican Americans to negotiate their ethnic identity in their everyday lives. The 3rd+ Generation did not move into the ethnic enclave for affordable housing, somewhat they were absorbed in it. The ethnic enclave provides opportunities for self-employment which give both services to the ethnic community and create jobs for new arrivals. The ethnic enclave supports social network ties that help immigrants to navigate the labor market.

The objective of this research proposal is to examine the process of day labor in the United States. Contingent work and day labor are becoming a common form of employment in U.S. metropolitan areas with rapidly growing Mexican, Central American, and South American communities. Contingent workers such as day laborers, often lack legal U.S. residency and are thus vulnerable to exploitation from employers. I intend to conduct a comparative analysis of day labor workers in Detroit, Michigan and Los Angeles, California. Both cities attract undocumented labor, however each is in a unique stage of urban development. Detroit is a post-industrial city in economic decline while Los Angeles is the prototype of the new global city. Given these facts, my research will focus on the everyday lived experiences of day labor workers and how the process of day labor functions within distinct urban structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on an ethnography of Latina/o immigrants in the Los Angeles Justice for Janitors union movement, I argue that the move from servicing to organizing among many immigrant-dominated, American unions has the potential to challenge unequal gendered relations of power and meaning at work. In Los Angeles, Justice for Janitors is organizing the predominately Mexican, Salvadoran, and Guatemalan immigrant workers to enforce the union contract through displays of solidarity at work. However, achieving cross-gender solidarity is a labor intensive project. When this project fails, women and men often resist class relations by re-inscribing gender inequality. I illustrate the impact of solidarity projects on gender relations by comparing two workplaces. At Wilshire, workers themselves became the union and enforced the contract through a series of victorious projects of cross-gender solidarity. At South Bay women and men workers engaged in opposite strategies of resistance that re-inscribed unequal gendered relations of power and meaning. The division of labor had some influence on the mode of resistance but the degree to which the workers were active in the initial unionization was also a crucial factor. This study suggests that more just relations of gender are possible in work sites where there is an active struggle to create solidarity between women and men workers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents information on Mexican immigrant entrepreneurs in Los Angeles, California. It reports that Mexican immigrants in the United States have had significantly lower levels of entrepreneurship as compared to other immigrants. This study is an attempt to find out the reason behind this fact. For the purpose of this study the researchers collected original survey data from 100 Latino, mostly Mexican, small business owners in multiple cities in and around Los Angeles in 2003. The study shows a pattern namely that an overwhelming percentage of Mexican immigrants rely on either their personal or their spouse's savings for their start-up capital.

The article presents information on the impact of social policy on the life courses and exit chances of homeless people in Berlin, Germany and Los Angeles, California. Homelessness in the U.S. is a severe and growing problem, and there are numerous well documented deficiencies in the public policy response to homelessness in the U.S. The study found that the determinants of exit are quite similar in both Los Angeles and Berlin with the exception of the role of employment, as longer durations of homelessness in Berlin are primarily associated with almost insurmountable market barriers.

Homelessness places women at high risk of physical assault and rape. However, previous research on violence against homeless women has focused mainly on individual rather than environmental risk factors. We estimated the association of neighborhood characteristics with physical assault and rape in a probability sample of homeless women. Participants were interviewed at 78 shelters and meal programs in Los Angeles in 1997. Through the zip codes of the survey sites, community-level data from regional land use files and the U.S. Census were linked to the interview responses. To identify neighborhood and individual characteristics associated with victimization in the previous year, we fitted two multivariate logistic regression models in which intercepts were allowed to vary randomly by zip code. Controlling for histories of drug abuse, commercial sex work, and other individual characteristics, results showed that assault was associated with living in areas with high-density poverty and industrial land use; rape was associated with high densities of men aged of 18 to 39 years. To reduce violent victimization of homeless women, service providers should consider the characteristics of the neighborhoods in which they locate their facilities. Community economic development programs may also contribute to decreased victimization of homeless women in high-risk neighborhoods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Religious social service agencies operate within a complex organizational framework, responding to the demands of both legal and religious constituencies. Current social climate has led to increased scrutiny of religious discourses of service, accompanied by contestation over boundaries between church and state. Such dilemmas have prompted this research, an ethnographic exploration of one agency?s attempt to preserve the integrity of the religious act while remaining true to legal standards and a pluralistic context of service. Interviews with employees of Los Angeles Catholic Charities? Immigration and Refugee Services Department suggest that discourses of service are ambiguous and contested, negotiated between parallel discourses of religiosity and secularity and variable along organizational level. Analyzed through the lens of organization and secularization theories, findings demonstrate how competing authorities compel organizations to develop an adaptive discourse combining both religiosity and secularity. A complex organizational field funnels two competing discourses down to the ground level of service provision, where new meanings of religion emerge, selectively accommodating the organizational field. Both secularity and religiosity are intertwined and re-defined in service provision, imploring a new language for faith-based social service within a non-religious functional domain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Building on the work of Jack Katz in ?Pissed Off in LA?, the following analysis draws on both personal experiences and a variety of literature concerning personal space, privacy, and crowding to compare the experience of being on the Los Angeles freeway to being on the New York subway. There are both obvious similarities and obvious differences in these experiences; both are means by which individuals battle the rush hour commute with masses of strangers, however individual separation and individual-level control are vastly different. The role of obligations, expectations and the resulting consequences are also distinct. In spite of the physical space differences, individuals on the freeway are arguably more forced into a state of interaction than are individuals on the subway. Being a passenger on the subway grants permission to be completely engrossed in one?s own thoughts, yet a driver on the freeway has obligation to observe and adjust to the actions of others. Freeways, with Los Angeles being an extreme, represent a rare state of simultaneously having too much and too little privacy; individuals are too separated to effectively communicate, but are forced into a continual state of interaction that prevents any true privacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research will improve understanding of immigrant redistribution and adaptation by studying flows and economic adaptation strategies of foreign-born residents who out-migrate from New York City and Los Angeles to secondary destinations in the U.S. urban system. Two broad questions frame this research. First, to what extent are immigrants ?churning? through these gateway cities and where do they go, domestically, when they leave? Second, when immigrants out-migrate from these gateway cities to other nodes in the U.S. urban system, do they take their local ?ethnic economies? with them, that is, do they cluster in similar types of employment in major receiving areas as they do/did in NYC and LA? The primary source of data for this research is the 1980 and 1990 PUMS (also the 2000 PUMS, if available in time for analysis). Preliminary results indicate substantial gross foreign-born outmigration from NYC and LA, which points to the need to better understand how immigrants from these gateway centers insert themselves in new labor market contexts throughout the country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines factors that influence immigrants' racial attitudes towards Blacks. Modeled after research on whites' racial attitudes towards Blacks, this study explores the effects of education, age, gender, and political perspective on immigrants' racial attitudes. In addition, this study also explores the effects of immigrants' race, social networks, and neighborhood characteristics, as well as interview language and interview race-matching, on immigrants' attitudes towards Blacks. Using the Los Angeles subset of the Multi-City Study of Urban Inequality, the key findings of a linear regression model indicate that social networks and interviewer race-matching have a significant effect on immigrants' racial attitudes. Neighborhood quality and problems also have a significant, though weaker, effect on immigrants' racial attitudes towards Blacks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines interactions at a legal clinic in South Central Los Angeles where clients receive assistance to expunge criminal records. Expungement in California conceals minor criminal convictions from employers, mitigating the "collateral consequences" or "life-course effects" of incarceration. To qualify for this clean slate, clients are sometimes required to write a letter to the judge admitting guilt and demonstrating remorse and rehabilitation. But some refuse to offer this account, arguing instead that they were wrongfully convicted. Using ethnographic research, I show how neither legal workers' attempts to solicit the truth nor their suggestions to act instrumentally convinces these clients to alter their account. I examine this conflict over narratives - recognized by legal scholars - to see what it can tell us about how these individuals interpret their convictions and how they now seek to address its consequences. I show that accounts of wrongful conviction include not only claims of innocence, but also being cajoled to do wrong deeds for others or taking the fall for a loved one. For these individuals, the value of maintaining their claim of wrongful conviction or merely preserving their reputation among the clinic's staff is greater than the value of receiving post-conviction legal relief. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The number of fruit vendors working on street corners in Los Angeles has risen dramatically in the last few decades. This is due in part to the increased international and internal migration of undocumented labor migrants facilitated by kinship and paisano ties and to saturated occupational sectors where undocumented laborers might find work. In a city where street vending is prohibited, the rising number of vendors has increased visibility and risks. How do vendors maneuver through these risks? Based on over four years of ethnographic research, in-depth interviews, and participant observation with groups of fruit vendors, this paper examines the use and reliance on kinship and paisano networks. Social networks allow everyday problems and more serious risks to be mollified and function as financial safety nets after countywide crackdowns occur. However, because risk cannot be completely eliminated, the crackdowns that do occur are not only financially debilitating for the fruit vendor who experiences them but also for the network of which he or she is a part. This contributes to a cycle of low income, high debt, and minimal to no upward mobility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws on longitudinal interview research among persons living in transitional housing programs in Tokyo and Los Angeles to explore how experiences of the stigma of homelessness are shaped culturally. I find that a stronger stigma of homelessness in Japan combines with generational factors and rigid gender norms (the "male breadwinner" role) to prevent individuals experiencing homelessness to turn to friends and family for assistance in trying to exit homelessness. Also, the stigma of place in terms of residence in a program for the homeless serves as a greater barrier to employment in Tokyo. While drawing on familial and friendship ties is a primary means to exit homelessness in Los Angeles, in Tokyo individuals most often fend for themselves in the low-wage labor market. This renders exits more tenuous there given unstable work and a lack of social support. This comparative analysis contributes to the study of culture and poverty by demonstrating how stigma attached to disadvantaged statuses can vary across cultures via how it affects access to social capital and employment. It also informs urban sociology by bringing to the fore the role of culture in shaping local manifestations of inequality amid globalization, and highlighting how the stigma of place can vary according to locale. Last, it criticizes studies of homelessness by demonstrating that efforts to exit homelessness represent the major focus in addressing stigma of the condition rather than more accommodative management strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides an in-depth and complex look at Latina/o resident's experiences and daily struggles to negotiate race, class and gender within a low-income housing project in Los Angeles County. I argue that housing projects are formed in and through a matrix of gender, race, class, and sexuality. The interactions and conversations that emerge in three key spaces--gym recreation center, study hall, and local resident's kitchen--within the housing project are examined. It is within these spaces that people learn to define and contest ideologies that in turn impact their choices, preferences, and practices (Britton, 2003). The structure of the housing project provides boundaries for people's interactions and reproduces individuals, ideas, and inequalities along race, class, and gender dimensions. These processes are shaped by the intersection of structure, individual agency, and culture, as well as an individual's age and length of residency in the housing projects. Language or word-choice become essential race, class and gender tools used to degrade, humiliate, illegitimate, "mark," disempower, emasculate and/or (de) feminize others. The race, class, and gender "work" done by youth and adults in the community contributes to the "making" and "remaking" of race, class and gendered bodies (West & Fenstermaker, 1995); to the keeping of one gender in power; to the reproduction of class and racial hierarchies and inequalities. Residents use their own personal experiences, as well as experiences of others around them to explain and give legitimacy to their thoughts and ideas--to understandings of how their social worlds operate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws on longitudinal interview research among persons living in transitional housing programs in Tokyo and Los Angeles to explore how experiences of the stigma of homelessness are shaped culturally. I find that a stronger stigma of homelessness in Japan combines with generational factors and rigid gender norms (the "male breadwinner" role) to prevent individuals experiencing homelessness to turn to "family reunification" as a means to exit homelessness. Also, the stigma of place in terms of residence in a program for the homeless serves as a greater barrier to employment in Tokyo. While re-stitching ties to family is a primary means to exit homelessness in the Los Angeles, in Tokyo individuals most often must fend for themselves in the low-wage labor market. This renders exits more tenuous there given unstable work and a lack of social support. This analysis contributes to the study of culture and inequality by demonstrating how stigma attached to disadvantaged statuses can vary across cultures via how it affects access to social capital and employment. It also informs urban sociology by bringing to the fore the role of culture in shaping local manifestations of inequality amid globalization, and highlighting how the stigma of place can vary according to locale. Last, it criticizes studies of homelessness by demonstrating that efforts to exit homelessness represent the major focus in addressing stigma of the condition rather than more accommodative management strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gentrification offers an interesting case of neighborhood change because it is characterized by an influx of capital, rapid upgrades to the built environment, and physical and social displacement of residents and institutions. The simultaneous and relatively rapid transitions that occur during gentrification make accounting for duration of exposure particularly important when exploring the relationship between gentrification and individual well-being. Though a large literature explores how the residential context, as well as the timing and duration of exposure to relatively stable neighborhood conditions, affects health, little is known about how duration of exposure to gentrification is linked to the health of longtime residents. Using restricted, longitudinal data from the Los Angeles Family and Neighborhood Survey, I ask (1) how is duration of exposure to gentrification linked to individual health? (2) How is gentrification differentially linked to individual health outcomes across ethnoracial groups? Results demonstrate that a longer duration of residence in a gentrifying neighborhood is associated with improved self-reported health. This analysis suggests that efforts must be made to allow longtime residents to remain in their neighborhoods as they undergo change to ensure that these residents are able to reap the health benefits of the neighborhood improvements that accompany gentrification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Border Queers/Queer Borders I discuss how Border Queer communities challenge theoretical and constructed (dominant) borders for cultural value through bodily practices, thereby providing the possibility necessary for empowering different conceptions and interpretations of/for identity. Border Queer communities are not interested in maintaining only binary understandings of gender and basic conceptual schemes rooted in reductive universals; they instead are focused on a galaxy of possibilities for thinking and practicing identity and embodiment, and actively build through their reflexive experiences of self and community queer possibilities for understanding varied bodies. In this chapter, an analysis of drag activism associated with The Los Angeles Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence provides an example of a border queer community, where theoretical conceptions of abject/object bodies, thought projects for the body, and also material possibilities for the existence of varied queer bodies/embodiments can be viewed, experienced, interpreted, and used as a springboard for one's conception of the self through example and community validation. I argue that within border queer communities and collectives, empowerment is constructed reflectively to the practice of possibility, and where the consequence of such communities is the actual queer(ing) of borders for body and identity conceptualization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highly skilled parents deploy distinct strategies to cultivate their children's development, but little is known about how parental cognitive skills interact with metropolitan opportunity structures and residential mobility to shape a major domain of inequality in children's lives--the neighborhood. We integrate multiple literatures to develop hypotheses on parental skill-based sorting by neighborhood income and school quality, which are then tested by analyzing an original follow-up of the Los Angeles Family and Neighborhood Survey. These data include over a decade's worth of residential histories for households with children that are linked to census, geographic information system, and educational measures. We construct a discrete choice model of neighborhood selection that accounts for heterogeneity among household types, incorporates the unique spatial structure of Los Angeles County, and includes a wide range of neighborhood factors. Our results show that parents' cognitive skills interact with neighborhood affluence to predict neighborhood selection after accounting for, and confirming, the expected influence of race, income, education, housing market conditions, and spatial proximity. Moreover, among middle and upper-class parents, cognitive skills predict sorting on K-12 school quality, specifically, rather than neighborhood status generally. We thus reveal skill-based contextual sorting as an overlooked driver of urban stratification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Surveillance of Muslim communities has become a normalized feature of state security in the United States and the United Kingdom. While research on the surveillance of Muslim communities has highlighted the deleterious consequences of such state practices, there is an implicit assumption that men have been most impacted by these developments. However, as surveillance has become more far reaching and a routinized feature of state security, women are not only impacted by this via family members, universities, workplaces, and while travelling, but are key organizers against such state sponsored Islamophobia. This research draws upon 75 in-depth qualitative interviews with young Muslim women activists living in the United States and the United Kingdom. The findings of this research point to the importance of linking both race and gender in the production of surveillant practices, as well as the strategies women use to resist such ongoing targeting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current study seeks to examine the extent to which objective social status (OSS) and subjective social status (SSS) predict changes in depressive symptoms over time in a population-based cohort of southern California adolescents. Data were collected as part of the Happiness and Health Study, a longitudinal survey of substance use and mental health among students from ten participating high schools in the Los Angeles metropolitan area. First, this study will examine the influences of OSS and SSS on the trajectory of depressive symptoms during adolescence. Second, it will examine the unique dimensions of school SSS and societal SSS on the trajectory of adolescent depressive symptoms. This study is novel in that it is seeking to understand how multiple dimensions of subjective status may be stronger predictors in adolescence of mental health outcomes across time in comparison with conventional measures of objective social status. This study has important public health implications. Depression continues to rise in this country, particularly among adolescents. This has long term consequences on the socioemotional development of youth. Subjective elements of status may be more malleable than objective dimensions of status. Understanding the mechanisms through which SSS transmits psychopathology risk may provide us with additional tools for mental health interventions early in the life course. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article documents stable racially-integrated suburbs in the United States, their racial and ethnic composition, and the structural features that they share. The goal is to understand where raciallyintegrated communities are located and the conditions that shape residential integration's persistence as the US grows increasingly diverse. Using the information theory index (H) and cutoffs of racial and ethnic composition, I identify multiethnic integrated cities and suburbs that are stable across the 2000 and 2010 censuses. Integrated places largely cluster in highly-diverse, coastal metropolitan areas like DC, Los Angeles, and Miami. Through multilevel regression analysis, I find that residential integration almost entirely occurs within the suburbs and is strongly patterned along racial lines. Reflecting the anti-Black nature of segregation, rates of Black-white integration remain remarkably low (10.5%), but in multiethnic communities with Asians and Latinxs, this probability nearly quadruples (40.1%). Several critical ecological factors of place are positively associated with integration: military, public sector, and university employment; new housing stock; and metropolitan political fragmentation. While prior studies often focus on urban neighborhoods as multiethnic spaces, this study shows the suburbs as the leading edge of American diversification and integration. Further, in an era of public racial animus, this study illuminates the co-existence of contrary realities where American society transgresses many persistent forms of racial discrimination and provides evidence that integration can be durable across time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How does financialization impact the governance of natural resources and what does it mean for environmental stewardship? The expansion of largescale water infrastructure beginning in the early 1900's enabled explosive population growth and development in the arid Los Angeles basin and surrounding areas. Water supply organizations control assets worth billions of dollars, have taxing authority, are democratically elected, make far-reaching environmental and economic decisions, and, also, I argue, engage heavily in a variety of financial endeavors. On one hand water agencies invest surplus moneys on financial markets, and on the other they issue debt through municipal bond instruments. Analysis of archival documents of the largest municipal water wholesaler in California suggests that financial investment activities, even if yielding dwindling returns over time, are deployed to obtain favorable credit ratings and interest rates on their bonds. However, the pursuit of financial objectives potentially undermines democratic accountability and sustainable resource governance. Overall, this article identifies financialized public governance as a challenge to environmental sustainability, underscores how quantification influences public policy and social life, and suggests reforms for more sustainable management of natural resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While social movement scholars consider countermovement mobilization to be important for social movement success, empirical analyses rarely simultaneously measure the impact of movement and countermovement characteristics on movement mobilization. Here we offer a comprehensive empirical analysis of the determinants of social movement mobilization, with serious consideration of countermovement leadership and infrastructure on terms comparable with those of the movement. We examine the role of resources, infrastructure and leadership in the mobilization of tenants in the Los Angeles Tenant Rights Movement between the years 1976 and 1979. Using survey and census data along with archival materials, we compare neighborhoods across Los Angeles in order to consider how the collective resources available to the movement and countermovement within the different neighborhoods impacted local levels of tenant mobilization. Binomial regression models reveal a significant role for resources, infrastructure, and leadership, and that countermovement infrastructure and leadership are more important to renter mobilization than movement infrastructure and leadership. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a case study of the $2.5 billion L.A. Live project, currently the largest project under construction in downtown Los Angeles, I examine the establishment of the community benefits agreement (CBA) and political power. One of the key issues is how Latin American immigrants and low-income residents, groups that research consistently portrays as politically weak, became an effective political force. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To revitalize the union movement, some labor scholars propose a strategy they call "social movement unionism," examples of which include union involvement in immigrants' rights and union-community coalitions. My research explores how social movement unionism works in practice: 1) how do unions transform internally to make the historic shift to supporting immigrants' rights, and 2) how do unions work within immigrants' rights coalitions? My research focuses on recent local union involvement in immigrants' rights coalitions in Los Angeles and includes seventeen ethnographic interviews and participant observation of eight union-community coalition meetings. I find that the motivation for union involvement in immigrants' rights is based in organizational pressures of member representation and accountability. Specifically, my findings show that: 1) not only do unions maintain their organizational characteristics when engaging in social movement activities but their organizational structure facilitates unions' engagement in immigrants' rights; 2) as immigrant workers become members of unions, they elect leaders who represent them and their interests; 3) to represent their members, newly elected leaders then develop political action programs that include immigrants' rights issues, which are sometimes implemented from the top, down; and 4) the ways in which unions are involved in social movement unionism - the strategies and allies they choose - are informed by their organizational need to represent and be accountable to their members. In revealing the organizational characteristics of social movement unionism, I argue that unions embody organization and social movement characteristics that are relational and mutually shaping. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The goal of this project is to test theoretically assess the relevance of social capital theory in understanding the overall academic achievement and attainment for Latino students in Los Angeles. I do this in two important ways. First, drawing on previous research, I provide a critique of theories which heavily draw on the assumptions that a high degree of familism among Latino families may not fully account for the diverse outcomes for these youth. I examine other structural factors, including mobility and occupation, to understand the outcomes for these students. Lastly, I challenge the creation of monolithic Latino as a category of analysis. Los Angeles' growing diversity requires a reassessment of the centrality of Mexican American students used to represent Latino students as a whole. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I discuss how the nature and perception of violence by Latino immigrants and their young adult male sons differed in two urban neighborhoods in Los Angeles, one predominantly Latino immigrant and the other Latino and African American. I focus on the role of violence in these two neighborhoods because I find that it structured Latino youth male behavior and peer relations, including race relations and acculturation. Residents in immigrant context understood the nature of violence in there neighborhood was gang related. Parents and youth discussed how this affected there sense of safety and how they navigated the urban context. While Latino residents in the Latino/Black context also understood violence there to be gang related, they often conflated gang violence with Black violence. This reflected, in part, Latinos preconceived notions of Blacks as violent, as well as, the fact that most established gangs there were Black. Latino residents interpreted the decline in violence to the changing demographics in the city, thus, attributing the nature of violence to race. Youth understood the nature of violence as mostly gang related in both contexts. Yet, in the Black/Latino context where armed robberies were reported at higher rates than in the immigrant context, youth, like adults, often perceived these acts of violence to be racially motivated. A such, Latino residents' sense of safety was closely tied to race in the Black/Latino neighborhood. The nature and perception of violence help explain underlying racial tension and the periodic "race riots" that erupt in this mixed urban neighborhood. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on ethnographic research of the lives of Japanese expatriate mothers and children in Los Angeles, this study uncovers a "way of being transnational" that has not been studied fully in the literatures on assimilation and transnationalism. Deeply concerned about the children's reintegration into Japan's competitive educational system, the mothers and children develop "mental transnationalism", which I define as imagining, planning, and strategizing a return home trajectory based on bicultural knowledge. This study examines how the mothers maintain and enact mental transnationalism to facilitate their children's acquisition of bilingual and bicultural skills that are beneficial to both their adaptation to the present American educational context and the Japanese educational context to which they return in the future. It finds that embeddedness in a resourceful transnational social field, part of which is composed of institutionalized preparation rituals during the pre-departure period and a well-established Japanese community in Los Angeles are the crucial factors sustaining mental transnationalism. It also finds that child-rearing based on mental transnationalism requires mothers' intensive labor, which contributes to children's successful return home yet takes its toll on mothers' emotion. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractWhat do Black and Latino relations look like in multi-racial urban ghettoes? Using neighborhood change theory, we examine two Black/Latino ghettoes in California, Oakland and South Los Angeles. We find that there are three modes by which Black/Latino relations are structured in the Black/Latino ghetto: avoidance, conflict and cooperation. These relations tell us something about the structures of new multiracial urban formations. Selecting commonalities across cases we analyze data from extensive ethnographic projects conducted in Oakland, California and South Los Angeles during 2003. This rich enthnographic data examines multiple outcomes supplementing quantitative research that has previously examined single dominant outcomes in Black/Latino relations. By observing under what conditions cooperation, conflict and avoidance are produced we provide empirical evidence that shows a further need to reconceptualize multi-racial neighborhood change. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACTAttitudes Toward Poverty at the California State University, Los AngelesByCharity Perry-TurnerIn the economic history of the United States, there have been individuals and groups who do not fully participate in the economic life of groups around them, despite their desire to be regarded by everyone as full and equal human beings. These persons are vulnerable to poverty; therefore they are vulnerable to social exclusion. The general hypotheses predict that age and gender affect a person's attitudes toward people in poverty. Previous research has indicated there is no difference in attitudes toward poverty by gender and age, yet, this study seeks to examine this further. Data from a survey at California State University, Los Angeles is examined to assess whether gender affects attitudes toward gender and age affect attitudes toward poverty as well as trends in poverty attitudes over a period of 5 years. Results show that age is considered to be a determinant in attitudes toward poverty, however, gender is not; nor does a persons attitude toward those in poverty change based on the yearly events discussed within the scope of this research (2002-2007). Limitations of the present study and avenues for future research are also discussed. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Venice, a neighborhood in Los Angeles California, is the site of my onging research concerning neighborhood change. When new public identities emerge in Venice, they are often inclusive of the collective memory of the place, yet socially exclusive of many of the residents that helped support and sustain these memories. Abbot Kinney Boulevard, a commercial artery that runs through the center of Venice, serves as a recent case in point. Individuals who arrive to open businesses here adapt their stores to the thematic "anti-commercial" commercialism of the street. Meanwhile storeowners, viewed collectively, modify the overall identity of the street in order to coordinate with the larger structural changes in the neighborhood, such as those relating to population demographics, land values, and other effects of gentrification. This symbiotic process -- between individual and street, between street and neighborhood -- enforces new symbolic boundaries between different segments of the neighborhood population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies of alternative cultural spaces conceptualize them by external structures to the neglect of the internal workings, actions and understandings of participants on their own terms. This study considers how participants in two radical community centers in Los Angeles engaged a local community. Members defined themselves in three categories, those of "activists," "organizers" and "community members." While activists were white, idealistic and flighty, organizers were Latino, practical and grounded. Although marginal participants, community members - the local, Latino population - were important to the goals of the organization. This led to conflicts, as organizers saw the activists as a liability, alienating the local people and impeding their progress. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

SOCIAL CAPITAL WITHIN ETHNIC COMMUNITIES:THE CASE OF INDIGENOUS MEXICANS IN LOS ANGELESDaniel Melero MalpicaSonoma State UniversityABSTRACTIndigenous Mexicans form the largest share of the new Mexican migrants arriving to the United States. Better job opportunities and more attractive wages coupled with severe unemployment and exploitative conditions at home have encouraged indigenous people to migrate in search of employment to the United States. As a result, indigenous Mexicans have come to el norte in record numbers and have reshaped Mexican communities in the United States. In this study, I explore how social capital and its networks facilitate the social and economic incorporation of indigenous Mexican migrants into the United States. In particular, I examine what kind of work indigenous Mexicans do, how they find work, and how they struggle to work in the new low-wage economy, raise families, and move ahead. Based on ethnographic fieldwork and in-depth interviews with Zapotec indigenous migrants from Oaxaca (Mexico) who are living in Los Angeles, the study seeks to shed light on the dynamic processes of family and ethnic networks in contemporary labor markets. The research highlights that indigenous Mexicans can count on social networks, family ties, and communities to mobilize resources more easily and effectively, including the ability to find work. Zapotec migrants rely on their networks and communities; in so doing, they strengthen these institutions and thereby accumulate social capital. This ethnographic analysis pays particular attention to how indigenous Mexicans generate social capital to obtain resources for survival and social mobility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"That's what SANA is. It helps us do something with our emotions." These words were spoken by the director of the Salvadoran American National Association in response to a question about what his organization is and does. On the surface, SANA is an organization that has created the Salvadoran Day event and movement in Los Angeles. Three years of ethnography reveals that the actions of the organizers are deliberate, strategic and instrumental; they are working for representation towards social change, and they know how to use their symbolic and social capital to rally people behind their cause. But behind the scenes, a different story unfolds: it less about strategic interests and more about a form of collective healing and empowerment cultivated in the process of working towards recognition and change. It is a story not about the formal "outcome" of mobilizations and collective organizing but about what comes out of the process itself. I draw two points from this exploration: that the materiality of trauma and social closure serve as crucial explanatory factors in understanding instrumental activism; that while the public recognition and social relationships developed through activism may serve as a vehicle for reconciliation, such recognition simultaneously creates the conditions for a reproduction of the divisions and social closure of the past. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The impact of HIV on the poor is exacerbated when such individuals are also homeless. This study analyzed associations of homelessness, health care access and utilization, and drug use with undetectable viral load (VL) in a respondent-driven sample. HIV status was measured using saliva, confirmed by blood, and VL counts were obtained on all confirmed seropositives. Of the 576 participants enrolled into a larger study, 168 (29.2%) were infected with HIV, and they reported high rates of health care access and utilization. After adjusting for potential confounders, self-reported homelessness doubled the likelihood of having detectable VL compared to those who were not homeless (OR 2.32; 95%CI 1.02, 5.27). Despite high access and utilization of care, among seropositives, being homeless, having low income, using methamphetamine, or any injection methods was associated with detectable VL. Interventions that address both HIV and methamphetamine use while providing stable housing must be considered. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Los Angeles, and the United States in general, the defining trend of economic redevelopment projects has been the displacement of low-income communities. Considering this history, the 2001 Community Benefits Program - an agreement between a developer and a coalition of community groups and unions - involving the $1 billion Sports and Entertainment District Project next to the downtown Staples Center, represents a fundamental change in the relationship among developers, city officials, and community organizations and residents. The developer agreed to living wage jobs, local hiring, affordable housing, housing for displaced families, and park space.One of the consistent findings in research examining levels of political activity among individuals and groups, is that higher levels of socioeconomic factors contribute to higher levels of political participation. Research on immigrants shows that issues of citizenship, language, and knowledge of U.S. institutions and politics affect political involvement. Given that this research predicts that low-income immigrants would not be politically active, how did immigrants become an effective group in the successful effort to establish the Benefits Program?Unions are losing membership nationwide. Los Angeles has a strong anti-union history. Unions have a history of excluding racial minorities and union leaders have long believed that immigrants could not be organized. Given this history, why are unions now organizing immigrants and minorities in Los Angeles? How have unions become a political force in shaping the city's economic redevelopment policies and community benefit agreements? ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How have spatial changes in Los Angeles affected how 3rd+ Generation Mexican Americans negotiate their ethnic identity in their every day lives? Presently, many live in cities transformed by the globalization process that contributed to massive influxes of immigrants from all over the world including Mexico (Kiel 1998, Scott & Soja 1996). The effect of immigration on neighborhood dynamics has had a profound effect on how the 3+Generation negotiate space within the community. It is within this context that the 3rd+ Generation find themselves as "old timers" among other new immigrants and second generation "co-ethnics". This ultimately creates a platform to make and dispute claims of "Mexicaness"/ethnicity. Often literature on neighborhoods does not take into account the various experiences of the 3rd+ Generation within and outside the ethnic enclave. While ethnic succession is not new, the difference here is that many Working Class 3rd+ Generation Mexican Americans cannot afford to leave the ethnic enclave. Many Middle Class respondents are part of an emerging class who still possess strong ties to their working class neighborhoods. However, when one leaves the ethnic enclave they often experience being "othered" and racialized more profoundly. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]