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This paper begins with the following question: How do cultural producers attempt to understand what their audiences want? Using the case of the U.S. motion picture industry, this paper explores how notions of "the audience" are socially constructed by decision-makers working in the world of commercial film production. Participant observation data is gathered from a number of sites, including a Hollywood talent company and courses offered through a major film school on the business of filmmaking. The study not only looks at the content of these social constructions of the audience, but also at how these constructions are created and affirmed in the everyday world of movie production. It is argued that the processes of constructing audience attributes, behaviors, and tastes are embedded in the epistemic culture(s) of Hollywood. These notions of the audience, it is shown, are consequential in deciding what films are ultimately produced by the U.S. film industry. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on differences in economic strategies between immigrant and non-immigrant families in Los Angeles. It asks whether immigrant and native families differ in how they combine a variety of resources, including work earnings, public assistance, shared housing with kin, and other sources of economic support. In addition to describing the combinations of resources immigrant and non-immigrant families use, the paper asks whether these two groups differ in the short-term stability of their economic strategies. I ask what individual and family characteristics, other than immigration status, account for differences in the combinations of resources that families use and the stability of these strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies demonstrate that Black and Latino young men are alienated from the K-12 schooling process through a youth-control complex that relies on their criminalization, expulsion, and incarceration (Rios 2011; Rios 2017). Drawing on eighteen months of ethnographic observations and 20 interviews with youth activist (ages 14-20) from a coalition of 9 youth organizations mobilizing to dismantle the youth-control complex, I examine Latinx and Black young men's vision of transformation in South Los Angeles. Specifically, I highlight the strategies they deploy as they mobilize to decriminalize youth of color across Los Angeles County and promote their vision of social transformation. Focusing on their efforts to dismantle policies and practices that facilitate their criminalization, I find that the Latinx and Black young men are mobilizing against criminalization by centering a youth politics of intersectionality and serving as youth political quilters in Los Angeles County. This paper concludes with a discussion of implications for social movement frames and scholarship on youth activism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The logistics revolution transformed the ways that goods are produced and transported around the world producing numerous deleterious outcomes for workers, including the deterioration of wages and labor standards, attacks on unions, and the increase of precarious contingent labor conditions. A related, yet underexplored, process related to the logistics revolution has been the role of racialization in further amplifying the deterioration of working conditions across the global supply chain. Therefore, this paper explores how the racialization of labor impacts logistics workers in the greater Los Angeles metropolitan region. Drawing on case studies of low-wage, non-union Latinx workers in the warehouse and port trucking industries of Southern California, I argue racialization accelerated the negative labor impacts related to the logistics revolution across these sectors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social research on the separation of domestic and market life has focused primarily on household structure, its internal division of labor, and patriarchal ideology, leaving underexplored the role of municipal regulation in shaping household economic life. Leveraging diverse archival data, this paper explains the overlooked invention of land-use zoning in 1904, first separating residential and market life with legal force, before spreading to other cities. The largest outpost of western expansion, Los Angeles' fateful regulatory innovation was a piecemeal solution to thirty years of racial panic and distributional tensions set off by industrial development. These became expressed as conflicts among property owners, driving municipal leaders to experiment at the boundaries of nuisance law and adjust to judicial review. I characterize the reoccurring property politics that regulate this household-market boundary as a form of "predistributive conflict" over the underling market rules shaping economic insecurity and privilege--in contrast to the more visible redistribution of market incomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Immigration scholars view ethnic economy either mobility trap where immigrants with limited human and social capital are exploited by their co-ethnics or refuge that provides alternative paths for upward mobility. In either view, women in ethnic economy have been epitomized coethnic expiation both in paid and unpaid work. Using an in-depth case study of Korean immigrant In Home Supportive Service (IHSS) workers in Los Angles, this paper illuminates how the ethnic economy becomes a double-edged sword for Korean immigrant women workers. In Los Angeles, gendered immigration experience and a racialized labour market set a context in which middle-aged Korean immigrant women were funneled into publicly-funded quasigovernmental yet precarious care job in LA Koreatown, where tacit cultural norms replaced government regulations. When the IHSS operates within ethnic economy, what makes appropriate "Korean ways" of care and who can provide it become subjects of contestations. Documenting how these workers, who are pushed to care work as their last resort, utilize oppressive cultural norms around appropriate care for their labour protection and selfmobilization that center on broadly-defined Korean ethnicity, I highlight workers' capacity to develop alterative protection strategies even when they are heavily constrained in an insular community. By examining workers in publicly funded program, this case study also allows us to draw the state in the analysis of ethnic economy. Presenting how workers' perceptions of the culturally appropriateness, quality care and negotiations with their recipients becomes a core of organizing principle of their work in the stateless conditions in the publicly-funded program, I argue that the ethnic economy in LA Korean town maintains throughout the production of Koreanness. By locating the case in the nexus of gender and immigration rather than cultural particularity, this study allows us to see how the social cost of care burdens the aging ethnic communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the rise of the Chinese immigrant growth machine and its spatial embeddedness as a robust ethnic economy in the political and economic structure of Los Angeles. It emerged out of collaborative research with two scholars of Los Angeles Koreatown, Angie Chung and Sookhee Oh. While immigrant growth machines emerged as agglomerative ethnic economies in a broader metropolitan context of white flight, slow growth movements and declining consensus for growth in Los Angeles, I examine how the Chinese immigrant growth machine has navigated interracial and political conflicts over land-use development at the regional and neighborhood level in the San Gabriel Valley suburbs. Census and field interview data help to depict the spatial and political configuration of the Chinese San Gabriel Valley suburbs. While earlier waves of immigrants were more spatially embedded in local political and economic structures there is some shifting to more affluent transnationals whose investments are more disembedded from the ethnic economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Existing research finds that workers in stigmatized jobs attempt to fashion positive occupational identities for themselves. However, these strategies are premised on stable and continued engagement with stigmatized employment. How might workers manage occupational stigma in comparably unstable and temporal lines of work? In this paper we examine the "stickiness" of occupational stigma on work careers - the degree to which facing stigma in one's line of work shapes other occupational pursuits and informs distinct strategies of stigma management. Using qualitative data on two differently stigmatized worker cohorts in Los Angeles - sex workers and restaurant workers - we show that the strategies individuals employ to manage stigma in their work lives varies by the type of stigma they face. Whereas sex workers try to normalize their "dirty" labor and bundle together temporal jobs within the same industry, restaurant workers attempt to downplay their service jobs and bundle jobs outside the industry. We close by discussing how variation in stigma stickiness can affect individual work careers in an era of increasingly unstable employment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This project seeks to understand how Latinx femmes and women living in and around Los Angeles negotiate intersecting forms of marginality in their everyday lives to attain their goals. More specifically, I focus on how everyday forms of resistance intersect with sexuality for these particularly positioned people of color. Like other populations of color, Latinx people have been dealing with systematic and everyday forms of oppression embedded in white supremacy and the legacies of U.S. colonization and imperialism. Moreover, Latinx femmes and women must negotiate the historical and ongoing socio-political climate surrounding immigration and citizenship; the essentializing representations of Latinxs by US popular culture that frame them as deviant; and the various forms of marginalization that exist within (and not just against) Latinx communities, e.g. sexism, colorism, nationalism. I center the political-economy and cityscape of Los Angeles. That is, I seek to understand resistance within a region facing a reduction of social services, class inequality, heteronormativity, a reduction of spaces for queer people of color, and gentrification and displacement. Ultimately, this project seeks to understand how Latinx femmes and women use resistance to attempt to make their and their community's lives better. After outlining the framework of this project, this paper reviews preliminary data exploring the ways in which Latinx women use the social media platform of Instagram to represent and express themselves and their opinions about larger political and social issues that affect them and their community. I discuss how they use their art, music careers, businesses, online blogs, modeling careers, etc to talk about themselves as Latinx women and how they negotiate multiple racialized, classed, sexed, and gendered positions. I conclude with considerations for future research, i.e. understanding how these forms of agency may intersect with a politics of everyday resistance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Low-income Black and non-Black Latinx urban city residents often rely on public transit as their sole means of transportation. Typically, passengers remain unacquainted with their fellow passengers regardless of identity. They accomplish this by maintaining norms of polite behavior among strangers, also known as paying each other civil inattention. I interrupt this narrative through using ethnographic fieldwork on Los Angeles bus, light rail, and subway trips to trace the process where two or more strangers decide to shift from polite non-interaction to what I term as witnessing. Witnessing is an identity-informed decision to see and be seen in public spaces where the participants are the minority. More than a passing glance, witnessing includes mutual consent, a temporary social contract, and situational performance. Using the case study of Black passengers--a racial group that face increased people-surveillance in public--this paper further defines Black witnessing. Black people in public spaces perform witnessing through sustained eye contact, intentional head nods, and continued engagement. These findings advance the salience of race in everyday life through an examination of how unacquainted strangers use witnessing to subvert surveillance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This, paper draws from my dissertation research which is a mutli-sited ethnographic study of sexual identity formation among queer men in Mexico City and Cuernavaca and queer Mexican immigrant men living in Los Angeles. Based on interviews and hundreds of hours of participation, this paper explores the migratory and settlement processes of the immigrant participants to illuminate the ways in which sexuality, gender, migration and ethnicity intersect in their identity formation processes. I show that the "sexual migrants" (Carrillo 2004) - migrants whose migratory and settlement processes are structured largely by their sexuality - in this study are contributing to, what I call, a "delicate" cultural of migration among queer Mexican men. I argue that for all the immigrant participants, while their sexual identities as gay men are central to the sense of selves, their ethnic and immigrant identities also profoundly impact their subjectivities. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws on my dissertation which is a mutli-sited ethnography of sexual identity formation among queer men in Mexico City and Cuernavaca and queer Mexican immigrant men living in Los Angeles. Based on interviews with the immigrant and non-immigrant participants and hundreds of hours of participant observation, this paper explores the potential impact that the Internet has on the development of sexual identities and transnational queer communities for the men in my study. I show that the men in my study, through their use of the Internet, are part of a transnational Pan-Latino gay culture since most of their virtual contact takes place with other queer Spanish-speaking Latinos worldwide I argue that the Internet acts as an agent of socialization where certain ideas and discourses about what it means to be gay as well as certain established norms and practices shape the sexual subjectivities and queer communities of the informants. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Animals can be classified as wild or tame and as sacred or profane, as in the Durkheimian sense. Where do American urban dwellers of today place dogs in this matrix and how does it determine their identity in urban communities? Changing cultural value-systems play a significant part in community identity, decision-making and policing regarding the use of public space, urban amenities and concomitant resource allocations. Cities need to take account of these cultural value-systems - in addition to socio-economic status or race and ethnicity factors - in order to minimize organizational ineffectiveness, inefficiencies, and unnecessary urban conflict, in addition to best serve the needs of animals and communities. First, this paper seeks to determine the modern human-animal boundary when for the first time in the history of mankind more than 50% of the world's population resides in urban, rather than rural, environments. In the United States, more than 80% of the population was comprised of urban dwellers in 2005. This switch from rural to urban living recasts the location of animal actors in human society. Second, this paper clarifies cultural differences between the dog-ownership practices of select social classes and ethnic groups in urban environments. Finally it begins to identify weaknesses in the city response to these cultural differences that negatively impact the well being of dogs and caregivers in urban communities. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper begins with a broad question: How do cultural producers attempt to understand their audiences? Using the case of the U.S. motion picture industry, this paper explores how notions of "the audience" are socially constructed by decision-makers working in the world of commercial film production. Drawing on a wide range of data, including archival sources, interviews with Hollywood decision-makers, as well as particpant observation at a Hollywood talent firm, at a entertainment research firm, and at entertainment industry conferences, I argue that Hollywood film production is increasingly involved in processes that are epistemic. New, "scientific" understandings of audiences within the Hollywood film industry have intensified over the last several decades, stemming largely from this world's increasing reliance on market research. I briefly explore how these epistemic processes are productive, generating new audience categories and dividing media consumers into distinct groups that are seen as having definite properties. Examples of a few of these categories are identified, including those involving particular demographic groups, as well as the recent birth of the "mobile" and "customizing" movie consumer. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we examine how socio-economic features of neighborhoods shape sustaining environments and thus impact the adaptation and resistance strategies of persons experiencing homelessness in greater Los Angeles County. First, we conduct a cluster analysis of Los Angeles's census tracks based on socioeconomic characteristics such as race/ethnicity, receipt of welfare, poverty, immigration, housing conditions, and education to distinguish three types of sustaining environments. These are prime spaces occupied by largely white, high-income, well-educated and native-born inhabitants; marginal spaces occupied by largely non-white, high-immigrant, low-education and low-income inhabitants; and transitional areas are the 'in-between' areas of lower-middle class inhabitants. Next, we analyze how services used by persons experiencing homelessness are distributed according to type of sustaining environment. We find marginal spaces to be the most concentrated with such services, reflecting the power of community opposition to segregate services for the homeless. We then examine how survival strategies and resistance to homelessness of 25 persons distributed throughout the County are varied and shaped by type of sustaining environment. We find experiences of homelessness to be patterned according to type of sustaining environment-with informants in prime spaces primarily white, middle-aged, with few vulnerabilities, and living on the street and receiving welfare episodically; informants in transitional spaces nonwhite, middle aged, receiving government aid, and engaging in shadow work; and informants in marginal spaces nonwhite, younger, receiving government aid, and living in a shelter. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the role of the Home Owners Loan Corporation (HOLC) has been cited by many as a major force in the establishment of racially encoded housing markets, and by extension, increasing segregation in American cities, much of the existing debate has centered on its presence in older manufacturing cities. This focus situates the debate over housing and segregation in the context of African-Americans in a white dominated housing market, although there is also ample evidence from the maps and files prepared by HOLC in the 1930s that ethnic identity and stereotypes were also common. This paper is the beginning of an examination of the activities of HOLC in Los Angeles during a period of rapid urban growth. Our focus here is on the narratives that were attached to the neighborhood-by-neighborhood assessment done for the city in the late 1930s. While these narratives provide insights into the operation of racial codes in the marketing of housing in a multi-racial context, they also suggest that the locational context of cities and their attendant development histories create major differences in the ways that "standardized" real estate appraisal emerged. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Children residing in two-parent households have been found to fare better than those in single-parent families. However, few studies analyze the different types of single-parent families and fewer still evaluate cohabiting and other non-traditional family forms. Moreover the implicit assumption that children fare better in two-parent families as they have twice the income, twice the support, and twice the love begs the question of whether these resources are unique to biological parents or whether others may fill the role of a nonresident parent or of a less invested nonbiological stepparent or cohabiting partner. Little research exists as to the effect of coresidential and noncoresidential kin and nonkin on the wellbeing of children and few studies have simultaneously evaluated the impact of family structure and the availability of other parent-like figures on the wellbeing of children. This paper uses data from the first wave of the Los Angeles Family and Neighborhood Survey to investigate the effect of family structure on children's academic and behavioral outcomes and whether the availability and quality of children's ties to kin and nonkin both inside and outside the household mitigate any of this difference. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the nature and degree of spatial integration across generations among young adults of Mexican origin in metropolitan Los Angeles. Drawing on a new, unique data set that covers more than four generations of persons of Mexican origin, the research tests the extent to which residential settlement patterns follow two potential models: traditional spatial assimilation into the middle class, with economic and ethnic integration regularly across generations and in tandem, or working-class assimilation, in which spatial mobility is delayed by a generation or more and ethnic and economic integration are less tightly combined. Evidence supports both models. While spatial integration increases across generations, the change is most pronounced between the second and third generations. Moreover, the change in proportion Anglo outstrips the change in median income. This latter result suggests that Mexican working-class assimilation involves an additional early phase of group economic incorporation compared to the experience of many other immigrant groups. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 1920 the implicit and explicit urban model of growth in the United States has been that of concentric growth, the "Chicago Model." Recently, this model of urban growth and change has come under attack by the "Los Angeles" school of urban studies, which postulates that urban growth is now much less patterned spatially and instead can be seen as nucleated and random. Based upon more recent growth patterns, it relies much more upon the experience of the West, including Los Angeles, but also Las Vegas and other cities. With the advent of data from the National Historical Geographical Information System (NHGIS), small area (census tract level) data on the development of about 60 urban areas now exist for the decennial censuses from 1940 to 2000, some 19 of these from 1930, and some 10 from 1920, and some limited information back to 1910 for eight of these cities. Using this newly available data this paper examines the actual pattern of urban growth in the United States from the early 20th Century to 2000. Though growth through 1940 was mainly outward as population increased, even then it was not completely uniform. From 1940 to 1970 growth largely continued outward, but with even less uniformity. Since 1970 growth is much less patterned. Both the concentric Chicago Model and the unpatterned Los Angeles school should give way to a more nuance and complex analysis of urban growth taking into account both the period and the place where growth or decline is occurring ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper utilizes research done soon after 9/11 at LAX which observed and sought to understand security measures and attitudes in the airport environment. While the level of concern and efforts to heighten security standards are genuine, as illustrated by new rules regarding access to airport terminals and movement limits as well as increases in security personnel on site, the performative aspect of security appears equally important; that is, creating and maintaining an air of seriousness and diligence which is relayed to the traveling public inside the airport. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mosaic, a large Southern Baptist church in Los Angeles, has drawn the attention of scholars, pastors, and media journalists in recent years as an organizational representative of a vibrant religious social movement in church revitalization. The goal of this paper is to demonstrate how the nuances of Mosaic’s theology stimulate and promote the stream of innovations emanating from this increasingly influential church. Data on Mosaic’s theology and practices were collected using in-depth interviewing, participant observation, and printed resources. Specifically, Mosaic’s rejection of dispensationalism premillennialism laid the groundwork for a different view of time and the agency of human beings. Moreover, in change-oriented systems like Mosaic catalytic leaders are welcomed and given influence. Mosaic constructs a distinctive leadership role, apostolic leader, responsible for continual innovation in pursuit of the church’s mission. Churches like Mosaic highlight the strategic management of religious creativity among the broadest and more mainstream currents within contemporary Christianity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Whereas widespread homelessness has become prevalent and persistent in leading cities throughout the world, little is understood in terms of how individuals escape the condition. This paper analyzes the experiences of 14 persons attempting to exit homelessness using a transitional housing facility in Los Angeles. A multi-scalar approach is used to analyze the role of barriers and strategies operating at global, national, local, institutional, and individual scales. Qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) is used to examine how these factors combine and interact to shape three housing outcomes-conventional housing, single room occupancy hotels, and rescue missions. Fewer barriers and more strategies result in housing with more privacy and autonomy. Barriers operating at scales from the global to individual, including a paucity of living wage employment opportunities and public income supplements, discrimination because of homeless status, conflicts with program staff, and drug relapses, shape pathways to the three housing outcomes. Various strategies, primarily operating at the institutional and individual scale such as good relationships with case managers, mental health care, and social capital, also shape housing outcomes. Understanding how barriers and strategies operate at multiple scales sheds light on the necessity of measures at various scales to facilitate moves out of homelessness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I draw on my comparative ethnographic research to describe how three policy-induced trajectories of exclusion either foreclose or delay exit from homelessness in Berlin and Los Angeles in search for an answer to the question why the characteristics of homelessness are similar in both places and durations of homelessness longer in Berlin despite Germany?s more comprehensive welfare system. Specifically, ?legal exclusion? pertains to homeless people?s need to generate income and delineates how insufficient public cash assistance results in the performance of informal survival strategies which are met with increasing displacement and criminalization. ?Social exclusion? relates sub-standard shelter provision and the containment of homeless service facilities in deprived urban areas to personal deterioration and increasing social alienation. ?Economic exclusion? links insufficient referrals to market opportunities to homeless people?s inability to access local labor and housing markets. I show that while legal and social exclusion is more evident in Los Angeles resulting in worse social and environmental conditions homeless people live in, economic exclusion is more pronounced in Berlin which ultimately explains the longer durations of homelessness. Ultimately all three forms of exclusion intersect in ways that decrease homeless people?s exit chances over time and intensify their personal problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In American society, living apart from parents is widely regarded as a marker of adulthood. Focusing on the nation?s two largest metropolitan areas, this paper examines the age-specific likelihood that young people will reside with parents or live apart. IPUMS data from Census 2000 show that there are not only marked racial-ethnic differences, but also differences between the two cities. Young people living in the New York CMSA are much more likely to share a home with parents than their counterparts in the Los Angeles CMSA. The CMSA differences are particularly remarkable for whites in their early 20s. Further analysis confirms that residential arrangements are related to other adult social roles and personal resources. Controlling for roles and resources, however, has little effect on either place or race effects on parental co-residence. Racial-ethnic differences in parental co-residence are affected by immigrant generation status, however. Compared to their native-born counterparts, the first generation is less likely to live with parents while the 1.5 generation is more likely. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The literature on transnationalism suggests that immigrants continue to maintain ties with the homeland even after they settle in a new country. This paper explores the extent of transnationalism among Iranian exiles living in Los Angeles by examining the role of the sending and receiving state, the number and quality of networks in Iran, and language maintenance among the 1.5 and second-generation. I draw on the general body of literature on immigration and transnationalism, the few studies that have been done on Iranian immigrants, and short vignettes to examine the relationship between transnationalism and exile communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Suburban Chinatowns are intriguing subjects for study and comparison. These ethnic suburbs have emerged to coexist or compete with the older downtown Chinatowns traditionally found in American central cities. Chinese ethnoburbs are the end result of convergent historical and urban processes. Historical shifts include the civil rights movements of the 1950s and 1960s, United States immigration policy reform, and the globalization of the world-economy. Urban level trends include Chinese upward mobility leading to migration out of traditional Chinatowns, general processes of U.S. suburbanization, and the phenomenon of white flight to the outer city. Their emergence and perpetuation since the 1960s challenges many basic assumptions regarding spatial and cultural assimilation into U.S. society, and deepens our understanding of global processes in American cities. In this paper, we examine recent growth trends in the Chinese ethnoburb of the San Gabriel Valley region of Los Angeles County, through analysis and mapping of U.S. Census data from 1960 to 2000, and consider the implications for our understanding of homeownership, the suburbs, and the future of the American city. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I examine the incorporation of Mexican, Salvadoran and Guatemalan undocumented immigrants into the Los Angeles commercial real estate janitorial industry through social networks in order to illustrate the need to examine who benefits from social networks, to what degree and under which circumstances. Scholars have argued that social networks are a form of social capital that is widely available to immigrants, focusing on the benefits of social networks in the job search process. However, the use of social networks in this case took place within an informalization of employment relations that brought negative consequences for the workers. Combining quantitative analysis of census data with qualitative analysis of work history interviews, I illustrate how social networks facilitated cohort succession and organized the recruitment process in ways that unequally benefited building owners, supervisors and workers and among workers, men and women. I then link the recruitment process to changes in the labor process, explaining how supervisors extracted more labor from workers by violating labor laws. This exploitation was centrally aided by parallel processes of feminization and racialization as the supervisors assigned a greater set of more menial tasks to both women and men and threatened workers based on their precarious citizenship status. This case study suggests that scholars should pay more analytical attention to the relationship between recruitment efforts and changes in the labor process as well as the broader economic and political context within which social networks are deployed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the rise of immigrant growth machines that initially emerged when the traditional Los Angeles growth machine was confronting slow-growth movements and declining regional political consensus for growth. We find immigrant place entrepreneurs are more established players now, forging new foci of growth and private/public partnership in Koreatown and the San Gabriel Valley (SGV) suburbs, and more recently in the redevelopment of downtown LA and the ongoing reinvention of the traditional growth machine. We present population and housing data and testimony from field interviews in nuanced comparisons of the immigrant growth machines and the different political opportunity structures they confront. While the Korean growth machine operates as an auxiliary partner in the City of Los Angeles, the Chinese growth machine(s) work with more autonomy in the smaller suburban SGV cities. The Chinese in the SGV have faced more contentions from slow growth interests than in Koreatown where second generation voices have emerged promoting managed growth. Ongoing flows of transnational capital from China and South Korea signal continuing growth and higher-density development in Koreatown and the SGV suburbs. Immigrant leaders have become more active brokers of use and exchange values in the political economy of place in LA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines three welfare rights campaigns involving SEIU and community organizations that occurred in Los Angeles in the wake of the implementation of neoliberal restructuring of welfare and social services, which illustrate various forms of labor-community collaboration. The first was a campaign for workfare workers rights that emerged in response to the expansion of welfare-to-work programs. The second was a campaign against efforts to privatize welfare services, while the third was a campaign to expand and protect child care services. While union investments in these welfare rights campaigns were limited, these case studies nevertheless illustrate the promises of community-labor collaboration in the struggle against neoliberal welfare state restructuring. Each campaign led to policy improvements or halted proposed cutbacks in social services, despite a relatively hostile political climate towards public investments in welfare spending. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines generation effects and migrations effects on Korean's collective memory of Korean history in the last century. Two hundred sixteen subjects from South Korea and the U.S. were asked to identify three important events in Korean history, and to provide reasons for their selections. This study contributes to the literature in the sociology of collective memory by examining a non-western, culturally homogeneous population in a homeland, and comparing them with their emigrant counterparts. This study confirms the generation effect identified in previous collective memory studies, and the discussion highlights the differences in reasons for selecting events as reflective of respondents' direct or indirect experience of historical events. The study explores the emigration effect on collective memories, and offers suggestions for how future studies might account for the effect of migration patterns on collective memory. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

My paper elaborates on Putnam's (2000) assertion that working class voluntary associations serve as "schools for democracy" by developing the civic capacity of their members. Drawing on original survey and qualitative data gathered from Latino immigrant parents who belong to a Los Angeles labor union, I will discuss how labor union participation, within the context of a revitalized labor movement, relates to parents' civic engagement in their children's schools. Regression analysis of survey data reveals that labor union participation is positively associated with political forms of school-based civic engagement, namely involvement in school decision-making meetings and school improvement efforts. Meanwhile, qualitative data show how labor union participation provides Latino immigrant parents with confidence and problem-solving, advocacy, and organizing skills that enable them to act upon their interests and concerns within the school context. Findings suggest that labor union participation contributes to the political incorporation of Latino immigrant parents and helps them overcome barriers to civic engagement. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much of the recent scholarship on the incorporation process of the children of immigrants has moved away from a discussion of eventual assimilation, towards one that more fully appreciates the importance of the contexts of reception. While much of this scholarship finds inter-generational gains made by the children, less optimistic accounts link impoverished urban residence to downward trajectories. Finding some overlap with the incorporation literature, studies of urban poverty posit that one's environment and relationships lead urban youth to engage in illicit activities. However, the growth in a settled unauthorized population has generated new concerns, as rising numbers of unauthorized children find family poverty and legal status issues to be deterrents in their own trajectories. What does it mean to be poor, out of school and without legal status? Incorporating 60 in-depth interviews with unauthorized 1.5 generation Mexican young adults with minimal schooling in the Los Angeles Metropolitan Area, this paper explores the ways in which immigration laws, family dynamics, and community institutions shape their experiences and decisions. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chronically homeless men and women in Los Angeles are drawn to certain neighborhoods in the city because of their reputations and resources. Yet, homeless connections to places are not as tangible as those who own homes or rent apartments. The categorical distinction between housed and un-housed often leads the homeless to be labeled as "out of place," resulting in political and legal attempts to target certain public behaviors and regain control of public spaces. At the same time, homeless men and women develop and utilize local knowledge about the spatial layout of the neighborhood in order to create privacy and protection. Over time, some establish meaningful social connections with housed residents, nurturing strong bonds to the neighborhoods in which they reside, thus challenging presumptions about homeless transience and social isolation. This paper, part of a six year neighborhood ethnography in Los Angeles, examines how people identified as 'out of place' can transcend this label, build local knowledge, and develop an enduring sense of place. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on ethnographic fieldwork and interviews, this paper delineates a process through which members of an Orthodox Jewish neighborhood in Los Angeles unintentionally delegate boundary work and membership-identification to anonymous others in everyday life. Living in the midst of a non-Jewish world, orthodox men are often approached by others, both Jews and non-Jews, who categorize them as "religious Jews" based on external marks such as the yarmulke and attire. These interactions, varying from mundane interactions to anti-Semitic incidents, are then tacitly anticipated by members even when they are not attending to their "Jewishness"—when being a "Jew" is interactionally invisible. Through this case, I argue that in addition to conceptualizing boundaries and identifications as either emerging in performance or institutionally given and stable, the study of boundaries should also chart the sites in which members anticipate categorization, and the way these anticipations play out in everyday life. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper begins with an analysis of how local political institutions, through the lens of Los Angeles City Neighborhood Councils, have responded to the rise of Latino immigration. The central thesis of this chapter can be summarized by the phrase "playing the same old game with a few new players". This phrase aptly captures the dominant and pervasive manner in which city politics in South L.A. have been shaped by ethnic change. The phrase implicitly denotes what has persisted and what has changed. Three key elements of South L.A. politics which have persisted, include: 1) ideology, 2) the traditional players and 3) the framing of policies in black and white. The chapter concludes that the biggest change in local politics has been the gradual emergence of new Latino players in tandem with the emergence of the newly established L.A. City Neighborhood Councils. I suggest that these two factors have had the most noticeable effect in transforming politics in South L.A. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the ways in which the informal workplace culture of a group of Mexican immigrant gardeners provides an outlet for the expression and reaffirmation of a particularly Latin American masculinity. Ethnographic field notes and informal interviews on the job provide a window into the men's daily interactions, workplace values and practices, and work-family connections. These themes are explored as they relate to the literature on masculinities and prevailing theories of men, work, and families. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The degree to which children grow up in crowded housing conditions is a neglected but potentially important component of social inequality and children's wellbeing. This paper uses a large sample of children from the Los Angeles Family and Neighborhood Survey to explore the effects of household crowding on a variety of child outcomes, including academic achievement, behavioral problems, and physical health. We examine the gross effects of crowding as well as the net effects, controlling for social and demographic factors. We seek to determine whether there are significant net effects of household crowding on separate components of children's wellbeing, as well as overall wellbeing. This study can enhance our understanding of how one aspect of a child's living environment, housing crowding, may affect other key areas of their life. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Parental school involvement can positively impact student academic outcomes and the quality of educational programming available in schools. This paper examines the associations of parental employment, socio-economic background, race, and immigrant characteristics with the level of parental school participation in a Latino-dominated metropolitan context. The 2001 Los Angeles Family and Neighborhood Study is used to identify patterns of parental school involvement among a representative sample of primary caregivers in Los Angeles County. Findings show that for parents, working full-time or more is associated with less participation in children's school activities, but working part-time shows no link to differences in the level of school participation in comparison to not working. Higher levels of education have an anticipated effect of being positively associated with the level of parental school participation. Results show no racial differences in school participation, but they do indicate that immigrants who have lived in the U.S. longer have higher levels of parental school involvement than the native-born population, net of other factors. Being a monolingual Spanish speaker appears to present barriers to participation, but being an undocumented immigrant is not associated with the level of school involvement after controlling for immigrant and individual characteristics. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Overall, studies of social movements focus upon the strategic, goal-oriented and extraordinary, even when discussing the mundane, maintenance-oriented and ordinary. This paper considers the everyday activities, what I call "radical routines," of the Zapatista movement in Los Angeles. Radical routines are a different style of collective action than protest. While protest activities generally focus upon confrontation, strategic and linear action and short-term time frames, radical routines are practices grounded in consensus, mundane and circular action and long-term projects. These two styles are not opposites as much as symbiotic, relying upon each other for material, as well as symbolic, support. With the Zapatistas, participants categorized themselves as tending toward protest, as "activists," or radical routines, as "organizers" who are engaging the local community. Such categories help explain the local and enduring nature of radical routines, as well as the ethnic and class positions of their participants. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is widely thought that there is an inherent mismatch between flexible services and economic security for the workers providing those services. However, the conflict between flexibility and security may be due to the conflation of flexible service-work and flexible employment. Part of a larger, qualitative study comparing public and private home care models in different locations, this paper examines the conflict between flexibility and security in the private home care market in the Greater Los Angeles Area. Using in-depth interviews with 20 owners and managers of home care companies, flexibility in service-work - that is, what, where, when, and how services are provided -- are analyzed alongside flexibility in employment relations -- namely the status of the workers as contractors or contractors and the temporary form of employment. The findings suggest that the conflict between flexibility and security stems from owners' and managers' use of flexible employment to secure their profit in a highly competitive market, rather than an inherent incompatibility between flexibility for clients and security for workers. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I examine the relationship between place and self. In contrast to most theories of place and self which argue that place is instrumental in forming conceptions of personal identity, I argue that identity and self are instrumental in creating descriptions of place. Specifically, my claim is that place is often autobiographical. To illustrate my points I draw on interviews of residents living in a Los Angeles neighborhood called Palms. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the global apparel industry, state deregulation and geographic mobility over the past two decades have left government regulators with little control over factory conditions and workers with even less. Brands have adopted corporate codes of conduct to boost their images among consumers, and activists have demanded factories be held accountable for upholding the codes' commitment to workers' rights. This study of factory monitoring for workers' rights focuses on one newly-expanded code of conduct, comparing its implementation in a factory in Los Angeles and one in San Salvador. By specifying freedom to unionize as workers' inalienable right and making presence of at least some kind of workers' association a factory requirement, the worker advocates who designed the new code hope to leverage brands' legitimacy concerns and the threat of activism to open a space for workers to empower themselves.Two linked questions focus this research: When workers have the formal right to organize in a union, under what conditions does this right on paper translate into actual worker organization in some form; and how, if at all, does this vary cross-nationally? Comparing implementations of the new code in the US and El Salvador enables an exploration of sociological theories of the diffusion of "rights." Simultaneously, the research engages two debates about factory monitoring: whether the practice supports or displaces union and other worker organization, and whether rights-based social movement strategies must focus their demands specifically on nation-states in order to be effective. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing from two years of ethnographic fieldwork, I describe the everyday hustles and career goals of aspiring rappers in South Central Los Angeles. Three points emerge in my analysis. First, I analyze the different money-making hustles individuals do while trying to 'blow up' (get discovered and signed by a record label). In particular, aspiring rappers drift in and out of the formal and underground (informal, illicit) economies to finance the production of their music. Second, while working in the underground economy, aspiring rappers create networks and learn skills that help them in the formal economy. Many describe how street networks help them get formal work, while 'street smarts' help them excel at their jobs in the formal economy. Third, I show how seemingly oppositional and deviant career moves can be understood in the context of trying to 'blow up'. Although the career paths of aspiring rappers seems to confirm negative stereotypes of inner-city black men, closer examination shows a more complicated picture. Indeed, several understand that their opportunities for blowing up are slim, and thus take calculated risks to chase their rap dreams. Ultimately, this paper expands existing research on inner-city work and Hip Hop by showing how networks and skills used in the underground economy complement and often feed into the formal sector. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Crime presents a threat to the stability of neighborhoods, and researchers often attempt to measure this indirect cost of crime in terms of the impact on housing values. This paper argues that those models likely underestimate the true costs of crime because prices may not represent an accurate metric of changes in housing demand in housing sub-markets characterized by very low demand or high elasticity of supply. To help address this, we measure the impact of violent, property, and overall crime and changes in crime on the rate of housing transactions across three neighborhood classifications in Los Angeles between 1993 and 1997. We find that the same crime-induced demand shock can lead to differential impacts on the rate of housing transactions depending on the level of housing vacancies in a neighborhood. This provides further evidence that policies to encourage home ownership need to take into account the impact of crime. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As labor scholars search for answers to reverse the long decline in labor movement power, the analytic orthodoxy of labor studies treat union density as the sole measure of movement strength. This assumption leads to treating trade unions as the constitutive movement organization and to the exclusion of alternative forms of movement organizations operating outside of the traditional collective bargaining framework. Through an in-depth examination of the Garment Worker Center in Los Angeles this paper explores the potential of one alternative organizational form and assesses the role organizations like it might play in revitalizing the US labor movement. Based on preliminary analysis of data gathered from participant observation and interviews with staff and workers I conclude that the Center's effort to build community raise political consciousness and address the immediate material needs of workers, represents a viable movement-building strategy deserving of our attention as labor shifts to a social movement footing. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Black street culture is portrayed as "dangerous" and "violent" in popular media. These images are most prevalent in mainstream Hip Hop, where black "gangsta rappers" celebrate: "killing", "getting high", and "pimping". Departing from these representations, my project shows that urban black men involved in Hip Hop culture do not fit these stereotypes; instead, urban black men regularly participate in non-violent street activities. This paper draws from participant-observation, audio, and video recordings of black street corner interactions in South Central Los Angeles. In particular, I identify the ways that young black men (ages 18-26) use the "rap cipher" (a local term for group rap sessions) to negotiate "face" with one another. This paper builds from previous work on the role of competitive face-to-face interactions in the everyday lives of urban blacks. While these studies provide an important starting point for further research, they ignore the cooperative aspects of these face-to-face interactions. Ultimately, this paper critiques popular representations of urban black men, and shows the high levels of cooperation in black street culture. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While recognizing that the spatial anchoring of social networks continues to erode in general, a recent ethnographic study of five neighborhoods in Hollywood (Los Angeles) has revealed that place still matters a great deal in the everyday experiences and practices of urban residents. In this paper, I present a newly developed model of four "natural" zones of local community that emerged from the communal orientations, neighborly interactions and daily activities of local informants. I differentiate between (1) "micro-communities" which thrive in sub-sections of residential blocks, for instance courtyard apartment buildings, (2) "block communities" that are distinguished by mutual identification and the development of traditions among their residents, (3) "walking-distance communities," i.e. vernacular and partly institutionalized versions of what is often called neighborhoods, and (4) "geographically-anchored symbolic communities," larger habitats that foster the locals' collective identification with "peers" and provide for the fulfillment of various practical needs. The paper concludes with comments on the interconnection and functional equivalency of these identified zones of local community in urban areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By the mid-2000s, ethnic supermarket chains primarily targeting Latino consumers made up 10% of the overall supermarket market share in Southern California. The expansion of the Latino supermarket niche in Southern California has come hand in hand with the expansion of the Latino population over the past 30 years. While chains like those examined in this paper have begun to spring up in other regions in the United States, the Los Angeles metropolitan area is the incubator for this new wave of large scale ethnic entrepreneurship. The birth and growth of these ethnic supermarket chains mirror the social, demographic, political, and economic conditions in Los Angeles over the past few decades, conditions that have provided ethnic entrepreneurs with the opportunity to build grocery empires with revenues in the hundreds of millions each year. What impact do these chains have on ethnic entrepreneurship by individuals? How do communities react to outside ethnic enterprises? How do these chains become part of the local ethnic community? This paper will explore these questions through case studies of three communities in which supermarket chains have set up shop. The first is an upper middle class northwestern Los Angeles county suburb (Santa Clarita) that has recently become increasingly Latino. The second is a traditionally working class Latino community in Anaheim, California. Finally the third is inner city and recently increasingly Latino area of South Los Angeles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the work experiences of the children of immigrants from Mexico and Central America, ages 10-21, who work with their parents in the informal sector of the economy as street vendors in the Los Angeles area. In this paper I demonstrates how adolescent street vendors contribute to household decisions. Drawing on participant observations and 20 in-depth interviews, this paper extends the scholarly literature on household dynamics, most of which has been devoted to understanding family-work balance and spousal relations. Based on several principal findings, I argue that children in street vending families exercise power in the household because of their: 1) "American cultural resources " such as English language skills, citizenship, and technology and culture knowledge, all valued by their parents and useful for the family street vending business; 2) contributions to their family's income; and 3) involvement in business negotiations and decision-making processes. These findings advance our understanding of street vendors and household dynamics through a much-needed focus on second generation children who work with their parents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much scholarly and policy debate exists to date on the negative relationship between poverty, racial/ethnic minority status and environmental quality. During the past decade, we have seen a growing scholarly and policy-focused literature on the analysis of race, class, and environmental inequalities, and the ways in which grassroots organizations have mobilized to address environmental pollution in poor and ethnic/racial minority communities, particularly Latino neighborhoods in large American cities. Building on the interdisciplinary works of sociologists and environmental studies scholars, this paper seeks to examine how poor urban Latinos have organized to contest environmental inequality and planned their communities in a sustainable manner. Drawing from interviews, document analysis, and participant observation with two advocacy organizations in Los Angeles, California, this paper examines 1) the organizational development, tactics, financial resources, and policy impacts of Latino environmental justice organizations active in poor neighborhoods; and 2) how these organizations have impacted urban environmental planning and policy-making. The paper concludes with a series of theoretical propositions and practical lessons from the Los Angeles case studies to inform future analysis and comparison of Latino environmental justice organizing in U.S global city-regions. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]