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This dissertation adopts a quantitative approach to investigate the determinants of residents’ perceptions of neighbourhood crime, focusing specifically on a series of structural factors at the community level, in accordance with the social disorganisation model. Using different statistical models, including correlations, linear regression, multilevel models and spatial regression analyses, and several Spanish data sources, in particular the 2001 Population and Housing Census and a nationally representative survey conducted in 2006, the research confirms the relevance of its exogenous sources in explaining perceived neighbourhood crime. These include classical variables, such as neighbourhoods’ socioeconomic status, residential stability, ethnic diversity, family disruption and degree of urbanisation, but also other features related to the time, skills and resources deployed by residents in their residential areas such as commuting time to work, the number of working hours and the availability of a second home. For its part, other local conditions traditionally associated specifically with perceived neighbourhood crime, such as social incivilities and physical decay, act as mediators of other contextual effects, in particular of the number of retail shops and offices. The research also demonstrates the urban nature of the social disorganisation theory. That is, that the local conditions typically associated with social disorganisation, urban unease and the various social problems that can affect neighbourhoods, are better predictors of residents’ perceptions of crime in town and large cities than in rural areas, operationalized as municipalities of less than 5,000 inhabitants. Small municipalities seem particularly successful in controlling their younger residents for neither the proportion of adolescents and young adults, nor the number of children per family exert an important effect on residents’ perceptions of neighbourhood crime. Among these local conditions, special attention has been devoted to measures of diversity and immigration demonstrating that their effect on residents’ perceptions of neighbourhood crime, except for the positive impact of Asians, is not necessarily robust to different model specifications and statistical methods. This erratic immigrant effect is surprising given how consistent the belief in a crime-immigration nexus is among Spaniards. Precisely on this point, the dissertation has investigated why the belief in a crime-immigration nexus varies significantly between individuals and across communities. Three variables have been identified as determining factors: contextual parochialism, right-wing ideology and the media. In rural areas with high residential stability, a significant presence of elderly population and a low socioeconomic status, residents are more likely to unconsciously associate immigration and crime, even when individual attributes are adjusted for and, more importantly, even if few migrants live in the surroundings. Not surprisingly, right-wing residents are more likely to associate both phenomena yet, in contrast to many statements by scholars and pundits, the media in Spain seems to exert a moderator effect.

This thesis aims at systematically investigating intergenerational class mobility in contemporary China between 1996 and 2006, a period of time that largely overlaps the third decade of the country’s reform era. The study seeks answers to the following questions: 1) to what extent Chinese are found in class positions that differ from their class origins; 2) whether the amount of intergenerational mobility increased during the decade in question; 3) whether China has become a more equal society in terms of social mobility; 4) what are the overall patterns of social fluidity in China; and, 5) how mobility outcomes are affected by work-life mobility and various demographic and socioeconomic characteristics, such as gender and the household registration (hukou) background.This research uses nationally representative survey data from three surveys – the Life Histories and Social Change Survey (1996) and the Chinese General Social Surveys (CGSS 2005 and CGSS 2006). I adopt the class structural approach and the EGP (Erikson-Goldthorpe-Protocarero) class schema. Various statistical methods are employed to explore the above issues: descriptive analysis for changes of China’s class structure, absolute rates of mobility and work-life mobility from the first job class to class of destination; log-linear and log-multiplicative analysis for trends and between-group differences in relative mobility; the Hauser-type density levels model and the core model of social fluidity for patterns of social fluidity; and the Stereotype Ordinal Regression Model for multivariate analysis of mobility outcomes. During the decade, China has become a more ‘mobile’ society in an upgraded structural context. While the relative size of the agricultural sector contracted substantially, there is a significant increase in the non-agricultural ‘room’ for occupational attainment, especially in the routine non-manual class and manual working classes. However, the analysis of relative mobility shows that the significant increase in total mobility and upward mobility has resulted mainly from structural changes. Between 1996 and 2006, the origin-destination association net of structural effects has been largely stable. Hence, the study provides little evidence in support of a more equal Chinese society. As regards gender differences, Chinese women are less socially mobile than men, and their mobility outcomes tend to be more affected than men by their social origin.In fitting the density levels model and the core model of social fluidity to the pooled data, I show that the highest likelihood of occurrence lies with the self-inheritance of peasants as well as small business owners. In contrast, mobility between the agricultural sector and non-manual classes displays the lowest likelihood of occurrence. While relative chances of mobility for both men and women are heavily affected the boundary between agricultural and non-agricultural sectors, women are further subject to the hierarchical effect that hinders long-range mobility. In the final part of the empirical analyses, I reveal the decisive role that the first job class plays in mobility processes in China. The results of the multivariate analysis also indicate that the institutional barriers imposed by the hukou system have a striking negative effect on mobility chances.