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Much of migration theory has come to revolve around the category of the “labor migrant,” without taking into account labor, like home-making, that remains unrecognized by the market. Drawing from qualitative interviews with thirty one Chinese migrants in different stages of making a move from Beijing to Vancouver, we attempt to bring better visibility to how the labor involved in home-making intersects with migration. Defining home-making as work in the pragmatic-existentialist context of the stabilization of everyday routines, we uncover three themes to home-making work: settling in, settling down, and settling for. Discussion of these themes reveals two important issues for migration theory: settlement relies upon the work of home-making and the work of home-making in many cases motivates migration. For these reasons, the work of home-making should be more carefully studied within the migration literature.

Homelessness & Health in Canada explores, for the first time, the social, structural, and environmental factors that shape the health of homeless persons in Canada. Covering a wide range of topics from youth homelessness to end-of-life care, the authors strive to outline policy and practice recommendations to respond to the ongoing public health crisis. This book is divided into three distinct but complimentary sections. In the first section, contributors explore how homelessness affects the health of particular homeless populations, focusing on the experiences of homeless youth, immigrants, refugees and people of Aboriginal ancestry. In the second section, contributors investigate how housing and public health policy as well as programmatic responses can address various health challenges, including severe mental illness and HIV/AIDS. In the final section, contributors highlight innovative Canadian interventions that have shown great promise in the field. Together, they form a comprehensive survey of an all too important topic and serve as a blueprint for action.

Two problems are noted in the process of measuring material inequality and linking it to health across cultural boundaries. First, comparative measurements may be used as the basis for policy making which ends up disciplining cultural minorities. In this way, policies intended to relieve disparities can actually have the effect of extending the power of the dominant group to define the appropriate cultural understanding of the world for the minority group. Second, comparative measurements may inaccurately inform theories of how inequality works to influence health and wellbeing. To the extent that culture mediates the relationship between inequality and outcomes of interest to researchers, those ignoring cultural differences will fail to adequately assess the impact and significance of material inequality. In this paper we discuss and illustrate these problems with reference to the study and measurement of overcrowding and its effects on health and wellbeing for Inuit communities in Nunavut, Canada.

We suggest that new forms of family households, especially same-sex couples and single parents, are likely to face discrimination in their interactions with rental markets. Following the contact hypothesis, we hypothesize that the geographic distribution of discrimination is likely to vary. Specifically, in places with more new family households we are likely to find less discrimination against these households. We investigate these issues in the metropolitan area of Vancouver, Canada, through analysis of 1,669 inquiries made about one and two bedroom apartments. Using a field experimental design similar to audit studies, we analyze landlord responses to five different two-person household scenarios, including one heterosexual couple, two same-sex couples, and two single parents. Evidence suggests that male same-sex couples, single mothers, and single fathers all face significant discrimination relative to heterosexual couples. The contact hypothesis was supported for male same-sex couples, but not for single parents. This could indicate that single parents are facing discrimination primarily based upon their economic marginalization rather than other forms of prejudice.

Current approaches to the link between family and housing tend not to closely examine cultural change. In this paper I attempt to provide a theoretical framework, rooted in symbolic interaction, dramaturgy, and critical theory, well-suited to the study of cultural change. I apply this critical dramaturgical framework to explore the changing link between housing as a stage prop and the privileged performance of motherhood. I argue that redefinition of the proper performance of motherhood by the privileged constitutes an important aspect of cultural change, making positive evaluations of motherhood more difficult to achieve without a proper house. This results in an increase in stage fright, or women avoiding motherhood because they feel ill prepared to perform it properly, and an increase in the devaluing of certain categories of mother. I use US census data collected through the IPUMS project to provide evidence of these trends, where available, and suggest further avenues of research.

In this paper I redefine the concept of sexual revolution and suggest two new measurements for the process. I review prior definitions and measurements of sexual revolution. I redefine sexual revolution in response to a Victorian script linking the public statuses of marriage and childbearing to the privacy of sexual experience. I measure sexual revolution as resistance to this script. In particular, women break the link between sex, marriage, and childbearing, and make sexual behavior public by being wives without children or being mothers without ever marrying. I demonstrate the historical relevance of these measurements in the United States by using IPUMS census data from 1880-2000. I compare metropolitan and nonmetropolitan populations, black and white populations, and the populations of four metropolitan areas (Boston, Richmond, Indianapolis, and San Francisco) with respect to sexual revolution. The results indicate that these new measurements of sexual revolution both correspond with and confirm past research on sexual revolution and point towards the possibility of further research., Minnesota Population Center Working Paper Series

Some researchers suggest that non-marital cohabitants behave like a subcategory of roommates, while others find non-marital cohabitants behave like new families. If non-marital cohabitants behave like roommates, then more access to housing would make young adults more likely to remain single. If non-marital cohabitants behave like families, then more access to housing would make young adults more likely to cohabit. In this paper I directly test these two competing hypotheses with life course data from the Swedish Family Survey of 1992. I find that better access to housing significantly increases the likelihood of entering non-marital cohabitation and for men, those entering non-marital cohabitation in Sweden are increasingly behaving like new families rather than roommates over time., Minnesota Population Center Working Paper Series