Race and Income Gaps in Academic Qualifications and SAT/ACT Taking Shape Inequalities in College Enrollment

[Click on title to download PDF]

This policy brief shows that inequalities in college enrollment start early in the process. Race- and income-based gaps in 10 key steps to enrollment (e.g., academic qualifications and SAT or ACT taking) lead to inequitable outcomes. This work has three key take-aways. First, gaps calculated using the V-statistic method differ from gaps calculated using the traditional binary approach, leading to a more nuanced understanding of the size of gaps. Second, gaps in academic qualifications are large and similar in size to gaps in college application, admission, and enrollment. Finally, gaps in academic qualifications and taking the SAT or ACT are the strongest predictors of gaps in the selectivity of eventual enrollment. Policymakers and practitioners interested in closing college enrollment gaps ought to identify interventions that specifically aim to address gaps early in the process.

Empowering Students to Build Healthier Campus Sexual Cultures

[Click on title to download PDF]

Most residential campuses today host hookup cultures that cause harm to student well-being. To enhance the student experience and protect them from harm, colleges and universities need to empower them to build healthier sexual cultures. Campuses can do so by giving students practical and theoretical knowledge, empowering marginalized populations on campus, and funding a large-scale, student-led campaign to shift the campus sexual culture.

How Religious Organizations Fail to Support Unaccompanied Indigenous Latinx Youth

[Click on title to download PDF]

Restrictionist policies and anti-immigrant and anti-Latinx hostility in the United States undermine access to refugee resettlement, increasing immigrants’ political, economic, social, and health vulnerabilities. The assumption that other organizations, like churches, will step in where governments fail urges scholars and policy makers to focus on how these organizations shape unaccompanied minors’ integration. Churches are pillars of solidarity and support within immigrant communities serving as major sources of social and economic assistance for those in need. They also provide a recreational space for youth and spiritual uplift through religious activities. Yet, unaccompanied, undocumented Central American youth describe organizational practices that unwittingly perpetuate inequality within the Latinx community, and in turn, contribute to their incorporation “retraso” or setback. To address this, federal- and state-level governments should lift refugee bars and prioritize unaccompanied minor integration; thereby alleviating the burden on local level organizations. Local organizations should be attentive to organizational practices that do not promote the well-being of today’s newcomers.

Incarcerated Women and the Transition to Adulthood

[Click on title to download PDF]

Enactment of adult roles such as parenthood, marriage, and employment has been tied to desistance (the slowing down or cessation of offending behavior) but little is known about how incarcerated women conceptualize these roles in the first place. Drawing on 35 in-depth interviews with incarcerated women, supplemented by mail correspondence with a sub-sample of these women, I explore how incarcerated women interpret their early life-course experiences when reflecting on their transition to adulthood and, subsequently, their views on adult roles and responsibilities. The women’s narratives indicate that early experiences with trauma, along with premature entries into adult roles, result in a difficult transition to adulthood. I argue that women’s accelerated transitions to adulthood shape their views on adult roles, pointing to a need to incorporate discussions of age-normative timetables in efforts to assist at-risk and incarcerated women.

Understanding the Role of Provider Racial Bias in Medical Training and Clinical Decision Making

[Click on title to download PDF]

Medical students are often taught to associate race with disease as a method to diagnose and prescribe appropriate medical treatment. Unfortunately, this often leads to inaccurate and misleading assumptions related to race being used in medical decision-making. The role of provider bias and stereotyping in the clinical decision-making process have been extensively studied and suggested as possible contributors to racial health disparities experienced by Black men. Evidence also suggests that current cultural competency programs in medical school are non-inclusive and ineffective. In this brief, I outline a three-tiered approach to address provider bias and ensure that all students are exposed to racial bias training. Intentional efforts to address bias at the institutional level can influence the culture of medical education. Efforts by the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) can serve as the model to better serve all communities.

Educator and School-based Personnel’s Advocacy for Undocumented Youth in K-12 Settings

[Click on title to download PDF]

Undocumented youth face significant barriers to academic and social mobility along with significant isolation within the school context. Yet, educators are potentially critical advocates for undocumented youth and their families. Drawing on three longitudinal mixed-methods research projects and interviews with over 100 students and educators, the author describes the factors that inhibit school-based personnel’s advocacy for undocumented youth in K-12 settings. This research suggests that state and local policy should be aimed at increasing SBP’s policy knowledge and providing SBPs with the resources and professional discretion needed to effectively advocate for undocumented youth and their families.

Deportation Discretion: Where are County Jails Most Likely to Cooperate with Federal Immigration Officials?

[Click on title to download PDF]

In 2008, the Secure Communities enforcement program extended deportation capacity throughout the nation by creating greater cooperation between federal, state, and local law enforcement. However, despite claims that the program would help enforce immigration law in a neutral manner, evidence from the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) own data reveal that deportations were much more common in some locations than in others. Examining program data between 2008 and 2013 across 2,669 counties, I found that counties with the smallest (less than 20 percent) and largest (over 40 percent) concentrations of Hispanic and Latinx residents would routinely turn noncitizens over for deportations. By contrast, counties with 20-40 percent Hispanic and Latinx residents were least likely to cooperate with DHS. Notably, ‘sanctuary’ designation did not necessarily translate into tangible protections for noncitizen arrestees. This disparity in enforcement has profound implications for the supposed impartiality of U.S. immigration policy.

The Importance of Anticipatory Stress in the Lives of People in Same-Sex Relationships

[Click on title to download PDF]

Fears about the future, like other types of stress, can diminish well-being and increase anxiety. Minority populations uniquely anticipate challenges and hardships based on the stigmatization of themselves or of their relationships. Policymakers should not simply react to what is known to be stressful in the moment; they should also seek deeper understandings of stress experience within life course contexts, including the stress that people anticipate. Indeed, existing data suggest there may be public health benefits associated with policy changes that reduce the impact of “stress that awaits.” For example, the legal recognition of same-sex relationships is associated with better mental health among sexual minority persons—even if they did not get married. Still, some anticipate that the legal recognition of same-sex marriage will be reversed in the future, and this possibility can be a source of stress as well. By identifying anticipatory stressors, we expand our knowledge of people’s stress universes and better account for the cumulative stress burden that can lead to greater health disparities.

The Case for Open Borders

Like most nations, the United States imposes substantial restrictions on immigration. If you want to move to the United States, you have to obtain visas and other travel documents, pay various fees, and wait possibly years before you are allowed to immigrate. Although such immigration restrictions are nearly universal, there is another option. In this brief, I argue that nations should adopt a policy of “open borders,” where movement between countries is easy and regulations are light. An open borders policy has a number of benefits. First, the lives of migrants are improved by immigration. An open borders regime would allow people to immigrate in search of better jobs, higher wages, and safety from violence. Second, migration improves the destination country. Migrants tend to have low crime rates, they often perform low status jobs that native workers do not want, and they increase the productivity of the destination country. Finally, contrary to popular myth, studies show that migrants do not displace native workers. Given the benefits of migration and relatively low cost, migration should be made “safe, legal, and common.”

[Click on title to download PDF]

Criminal and Immigration Laws Shape Health Outcomes of Racial and Ethnic Minorities

[Click on title to download PDF]

Over the last several decades, criminal and immigration laws in the United States have disproportionately burdened marginalized racial and ethnic minorities such as African Americans and Latinos. This policy brief reviews the sociological and public health research on the health effects of various criminal and immigration laws, policies, and practices. We argue that scholars and policy makers should understand the law as a fundamental cause of health disparities operating through two broad mechanisms: (1) primary effects on those who hold a stigmatized legal status; and (2) spillover effects on racial and ethnic in-group members, regardless of their own legal status.  We conclude that the massive expansion of punitive legal control should be treated as a public health crisis. To address this, policy should reduce the material and stigmatic burdens of criminal and immigration statuses on those directly impacted, as well as their legally-unmarked families and communities.