Inaugural Seminar of the New U.S. Census Federal Statistical Research Data Center Series on 3/31

, , ,

             

 

 

 

“The Micro-Level Determinants of White-Black Segregation: Beyond Spatial Assimilation and Place Stratification”

Presented by Amber Crowell

March 31st @ 1:00 pm ET, 10:00 am PT

Dr. Amber Crowell is Assistant Professor of Sociology at California State University, Fresno. Her research focuses on residential segregation, housing, and social inequality.

Abstract: In this study we undertake a quantitative analysis of the locational attainments of Black households in metropolitan areas of the United States using restricted-use microdata and new methods for segregation analysis. Using a superior reformulation of the separation index, a well-known measure of residential segregation, we disaggregate the index into individual locational outcomes and analyze the household-level characteristics that affect Black locational attainments and directly predict overall White-Black segregation in 25 of the largest metropolitan areas. The advantage of disaggregating the separation index is that we can not only micromodel segregation, but we can also perform regression standardization and decomposition analysis to test prevailing theoretical arguments on the microlevel determinants of segregation. We find that while some factors, such as education and income, affect Black locational attainments in ways that align with the spatial assimilation hypothesis, race group membership is a major primary contributor to overall levels of White-Black segregation, which lends support to the place stratification framework. Additionally, we find that contrary to traditional assimilation theory, U.S.-born Black householders experience more segregation from White householders than foreign-born Black householders. We argue that this finding could potentially be understood through segmented assimilation theory, which posits that there are multiple assimilation trajectories in a racially stratified society. For Black households, spatial assimilation can mean increased residential separation from White households.

The details about this lecture are listed below:

Login Details
Webinar link:
https://uscensus.webex.com/uscensus/onstage/g.phpMTID=ef6d2c40cd3604e4a2a008d021d95ea72
For Phone Audio
Dial-in number: 1-800-779-0641
Participant passcode: 5574602 #

For Computer Audio
For 1-way listen only computer audio, please click Audio Broadcast button in WebEx. If it does not connect, please use the telephone audio above.

Event number:  199 061 5244
Event password, if requested:  #Census1
*This password may be required when using certain mobile devices.

 

The UCLA Census Research Data Center is part of a growing network of Federal Statistical Research Data Center data centers across the United States that is hosting data from an increasing number of U.S. and state government agencies. To help build a network of users and inform potential users of ongoing research and new data developments, the new seminar series will bring together users and interested researchers from across the U.S.

/by

CPL’s New Research Finds Sharp Increase in Share of Unemployed/Under-Employed Workers Who Receive UI Benefits in CA

, , , , , ,

The UCLA California Policy Lab (CPL) recently released a new analysis of California unemployment insurance (UI) claims as part of a policy briefs series publishing research conducted in partnership with the Labor Market Information Division of the California Employment Development Department.

Overview
Historically, the share of unemployed workers receiving regular UI benefits (recipiency rate) in California has been relatively low (as has also been the case in other states). This Data Point combines administrative data from California’s Employment Development Department (EDD) with monthly Current Population Survey (CPS) data to construct an improved recipiency rate to measure the extent to which unemployed and underemployed Californians are receiving regular UI benefits.

Dr. Till von Wachter, a co-author of the analysis, UCLA economics professor and faculty director at the California Policy Lab, says about this new analysis, “The share of unemployed workers receiving UI benefits tends to rise during economic downturns, but even during the Great Recession, we didn’t approach the high rates that we’re seeing now.”

Three key findings from this new research:
1) The recipiency rate in California has increased dramatically over the course of the crisis, from about 50% in April to nearly 90% in December.  
The analysis found that over 2.5 million unemployed Californians were not receiving regular UI benefits in April and May 2020, and while some of these workers likely received benefits under the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) program, at least 500,000 workers did not. As the share of workers receiving regular UI benefits increased, the number of workers not receiving regular UI benefits decreased, hovering at around 250,000 in the last four months of 2020.
2) There are geographic disparities in the rates of UI benefit collection that correlate with income, race and ethnicity, access to technology, and other social and economic factors. In counties with higher median household incomes, a larger share of their unemployed workers tended to receive UI benefits, while a smaller share of unemployed workers received benefits in counties with higher poverty rates.
3) CPL’s Recovery Index highlights substantial county-level differences in the economic recovery. Higher-income counties have recovered more quickly than lower-income counties, while counties with a higher share of Black and Hispanic residents have seen slower recoveries than counties with more White residents.

To see the map which tracks the Labor Market Recovery, click HERE.

To see table code of County Level Measures of Economic Recovery and UI Recipient Rates, click HERE.

To read CPL’s latest policy brief on this issue, click HERE.

/by

UCLA Big Data and Politics Seminar Series Presents “Political Coalitions and Social Media: Evidence from Pakistan” on 3/19

, , ,

UCLA Big Data and Politics Seminar Series

Political Coalitions and Social Media: Evidence from Pakistan

 

Paul Staniland
Associate Professor of Political Science
University of Chicago

 

 

Asfandyar Mir
Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow
CISAC, Stanford University

 

 

Tamar Mitts
Assistant Professor of International and Public Affairs
Columbia University

 

Friday, March 19, 12 PM – 1:30 PM PT

Zoom link: https://ucla.zoom.us/j/95120128333?pwd=ZmE1L2QwYkFQQnlyb2xGZ0owVTRaQT09

Meeting ID: 951 2012 8333 / Passcode: 962226

(Users must sign in to Zoom to access the meeting.)

Abstract: We offer a new conceptualization of social media politics that emphasizes the importance of studying coalitions among political actors, especially in contexts where multiple state and non-state actors interact in murky ways and pursue a broad range of tactics for broadcasting their messages. We present new data on the politics of social media in the run-up to and aftermath of Pakistan’s 2018 general election. The campaign involved both intense, large-scale electoral mobilization and recurrent, credible allegations of influence by the country’s politically powerful army. We analyze millions of Twitter and Facebook posts in English and Urdu by major political actors and their followers before and after the 2018 election to identify patterns of normal mobilization and coordinated manipulation. In addition to descriptive patterns, we identify alignment of narratives between political actors, as well as coordinated activities used to push out particular messages across multiple types of clusters, from dissidents to the military to major political parties.

/by

LA Social Science Book Series on Masculinity and Disability with Professor Salih Can Açiksöz

, , ,

In Sacrificial Limbs: Masculinity, Disability and Political Violence in Turkey, UCLA Anthropology Professor Salih Can Açiksöz examines the relationship between masculinity and disability with the stories of disabled veterans of Turkey’s Kurdish war. By chronicling the everyday lives of these veterans, Dr. Açiksöz captures the complexity of the state’s role in shaping how the veterans’ political activism unfolds.

Interview Chapters:

0:04​ – Intro

0:52​ – What is the main argument of the book?

3:43​ – How does this book lead to a more nuanced account of the relationship between masculinity and disability?

7:47​ – What do the disabled veterans’ lives tell us about their relationship to the state and their political activism?

10:51​ – How is this book relevant to contemporary times? Why should it be read/assigned?

To learn more, check out Professor Açiksöz‘s book, Sacrificial Limbs: Masculinity, Disability and Political Violence in Turkey.

 

Subscribe to LA Social Science and be the first to learn more insight and knowledge from UCLA’s Division of Social Science experts and other faculty about upcoming video/audio sessions and posts about current issues.

/by

LA Social Science Women’s History Month Take-Over Featuring Dr. Noble and Dr. Roberts

, , , ,

This Women’s History Month Take-Over features Dr. Safiya Noble, Associate Professor in the Graduate School of Education & Information Studies, African American Studies, and Gender Studies, and Dr. Sarah Roberts, Associate Professor in the Graduate School of Education & Information Studies and Labor Studies at UCLA. They are the co-founders and co-directors of the UCLA Center for Critical Internet Inquiry (C2i2). They discuss the importance, now more than ever, of social science research at the intersection of technology and society. Follow the center on Twitter @C2i2_UCLA and visit www.c2i2.ucla.edu for more information about the center’s cutting-edge research on the effects of social media and internet platforms on vulnerable communities and tech workers.

Happy Women’s History Month!

 

Subscribe to LA Social Science and be the first to learn more insight and knowledge from UCLA’s Division of Social Science experts and other faculty about upcoming video/audio sessions and posts about current issues.

/by

Lost in Translation “en el Fil”

, , , , , ,

Conducting a focus group with Mixtec farmworkers in Madera, California, 2018. Photo by Leopoldo Peña.

by Sayil Camacho, Peabody College of Education and Human Development, Vanderbilt University; and Gaspar Rivera-Salgado, Project Director, UCLA Labor Center

The California Labor and Workforce Development Agency (LWDA) contracted with the UCLA Labor Center to evaluate the LWDA’s educational resources on workplace rights and health and safety for California farmworkers. The goal was to ensure that those resources were accessible to Mexican immigrant and Indigenous populations who may have limited or no English or Spanish literacy.

Most California farmworkers are Mexican immigrants (68%), and a third of those are Indigenous. They are multi-ethnic and multilingual; Spanish is not their first language, and they are more likely to be fluent in Mixteco, Zapoteco, Triqui, or Mayan. The Labor Center developed an evaluation system that allowed us to assess the literacy levels, language barriers, and accessibility of LWDA educational resources to identify the communication barriers that made Mexican immigrants and Indigenous people more vulnerable at work. In addition, we presented LWDA with a series of recommendations guided by the lived experiences of Mexican immigrants and Indigenous people: (1) support workplace rights and access to health and safety information; (2) build coalition-based support within the workforce and in collaboration with community advocacy groups; and (3) translate educational resources into oral-based languages.

Our goal was to understand why Indigenous farmworkers experience higher levels of poverty and more discrimination within and outside of the workplace and how those experiences create communication barriers. More specifically, we sought to understand the ways that power functions to disenfranchise Indigenous people politically, socially, and economically and exacerbates linguistic and cultural barriers. The examination of power within communication is referred to as a “structural humility” approach, which obliges researchers to recognize and affirm the human dignity of immigrant and Indigenous people. Our research challenged standard cross-cultural competency methods by operationalizing Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed and critical race theory.

Using a structural humility approach grounded in the lived experiences of Indigenous migrant workers, we were able to identify the forces that determine workplace vulnerabilities, the shift in attitude required by the LWDA to reduce the number of worker rights violations and on-the-job injuries and deaths, and the practices needed to make LWDA’s educational materials truly accessible.

The process of creating academic knowledge has historically failed to center the experiences and voices of Indigenous peoples or break down the hierarchy of knowledge production between researchers, organizations, stakeholders, and historically marginalized populations. Collaborative research must do the extra work to identify the structures that separate academics from community collaborators and research participants. As the Zapotec intellectual Odilia Romero explained, “Bene shtill shla gune ratgr gushalgshu disha chego concha bi gat disha checho da bguan bene gurase checho, le kate gat disha cha, ka na gat neda [White people have to open the path and talk to us so that our word will not die, because when my word dies, I will die too].”

 

Access the full article “Lost in Translation ‘en el Fil’: Actualizing Structural Humility for Indigenous Mexican Farmworkers in California” HERE.

Sayil Camacho (PhD, University of California, Los Angeles) is the inaugural director of the master’s in leading organizations program in the Peabody College of Education and Human Development at Vanderbilt University. Her research interests aim to actualize transformative reform for oppressed and repressed populations.

Gaspar Rivera‑Salgado (PhD, University of California, Santa Cruz) is a project director at the UCLA Labor Center, where he teaches classes on work, labor, and social justice in the United States, and immigration issues.

/by

Dr. Edward Walker Talks “Astroturfing” and the Rise of Misinformation Campaigns

, , ,

UCLA Sociology Professor Edward Walker, was recently featured in a video chronicling the increase in misinformation campaigns across the country that have been particularly visible since the pandemic began. The video by Scripps Media will be used as a tool for their ongoing NewsLit media literacy project. As an expert on social movements, Dr. Walker says: “Astroturfing is an effort to mobilize the mass public in a way that distances that mobilization from the person who is sponsoring it or the organization that’s sponsoring it.”

To learn more, watch the full video HERE.

 

/by

UCLA Sociology Professor Discusses “Millenials and the Great Reckoning on Race”

, ,

Dr. S. Michael Gaddis, assistant professor of sociology at UCLA, recently wrote an op-ed published in The Hill titled “Millennials and the Great Reckoning on Race.” He writes that although Millenials appear to support “post-racial” attitudes, their “…actions speak louder than words.”  Dr. Gaddis writes: “Unfortunately, the actions of Millennials in recent research I conducted, with Raj Ghoshal of Elon University, suggest that Millennials still engage in racial discrimination and hold deep-seated racial prejudices and stereotypes. Let’s hold off on passing out the participation trophies for a moment.”

To read his informative and thoughtful essay, click HERE.

To learn more about his research, check out this article written by Jessica Wolf for UCLA Newsroom, “Are millennials really as ‘post-racial’ as we think?”

 

 

 

 

 

/by

E. Victor Wolfenstein Memorial Lecture “Reckoning with Global Racism” Presented by VC Anna Spain Bradley on March 16

, , ,

Michael Chwe

Chair and Professor

UCLA Department of Political Science

invites you to attend the

E. VICTOR WOLFENSTEIN MEMORIAL LECTURE

Reckoning with Global Racism

presented by

Anna Spain Bradley

UCLA Vice Chancellor for Equity, Diversity & Inclusion

Professor of Law

followed by a conversation with

Lorrie Frasure

Acting Director, Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies

Associate Professor, UCLA Departments of Political Science and African American Studies

***

Tuesday, March 16, 2021 at 3:00 p.m. PST

Live streaming via Zoom

RSVP HERE

To see the invitation, click HERE

Please submit your questions in advance of the webinar via email to:

hnadworny@support.ucla.edu by Thursday, March 4 at 3:00 p.m.

Instructions to join the webinar will be provided once your registration has been confirmed.

About the discussion: Drawing upon her scholarship and experience as a Legal Expert

to the UN Ad Hoc Committee on the Elaboration of Contemporary Standards, Vice

Chancellor Spain Bradley will discuss the need for a global effort in combating racism,

the lack of a definition of racism under international law, and how human rights systems

both frustrates and advances this cause.

/by

RSVP Now for the UCLA/Getty Program’s Distinguished Speaker Series featuring Dr. Gabrielle Tayac on March 5

, , ,

Dr. Glenn Wharton

Chair, UCLA/Getty Program in the Conservation of

Archaeological and Ethnographic Materials

invites you to attend

UCLA/Getty Program’s Distinguished Speaker Series

featuring

Dr. Gabrielle Tayac

Associate Professor of Public History, George Mason University

Former Curator at the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian

Speaking on

Ancestors Speaking:

Objects and Cultural Sovereignty in Native America

with opening remarks by

Dr. Darnell Hunt

Dean, UCLA Division of Social Sciences

Professor of Sociology and African American Studies

***

Friday, March 5, 2021 at 11:00 a.m. PST

Live streaming via Zoom

RSVP HERE

To see the invitation, Click Here

Please submit your questions in advance of the webinar via email to:
hnadworny@support.ucla.edu by Thursday, March 4 at 3:00 p.m.

Instructions to join the webinar will be provided once your registration has been confirmed.

About the lecture: A family of baskets. A library in a shell. A vow breathing through stone. For diverse indigenous communities across the Americas, material objects connect to a wider web of cultural relationships. These pieces are part of people’s lives, with essences that may be considered kin through time and space. They merge humans together with each other, spirit, and the seen natural world over generations.  Colonialism purposefully and relentlessly unleashed actions to repress and even eradicate indigenous peoples for centuries – along with their beloved objects. Late 20th  century policies shifted to open conditions for Native communities to innovate culture in multiple ways, including reconnections to ancestral material culture. In this lecture, Dr. Gabrielle Tayac will share learnings that she’s experienced across the continent with knowledge keepers who know how to amplify their ancestors’ voices.

About the speaker:  Dr. Gabrielle Tayac, a member of the Piscataway Indian Nation, is an activist scholar committed to empowering indigenous perspectives. Gabi earned her Ph.D. and M.A. in Sociology from Harvard University, and her B.S. in Social Work and American Indian Studies from Cornell University. Her scholarly research focuses on hemispheric American Indian identity, multiracialism, indigenous religions, and social movements, maintaining a regional specialization in the Chesapeake Bay. Gabi served on the staff of Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian for 18 years as its first education director and then as a historian and curator. She engages deeply in community relationships and public discourse with audiences from kindergarten classes to the (Obama) White House. She recently returned from a two-year journey to uplift the voices of indigenous elder women leaders and help them preserve their treasured cultural legacies, sponsored by Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors. Gabi is now an Associate Professor of Public History at George Mason University.

/by