December 2006
David Fitzgerald, University of California-San Diego, and David Cook-Martin, University of California-Irvine, $5,500, Race and Immigration in the Americas. This study investigates the factors that explain racial and national origin preferences and quota systems in the Americas over the last 150 years. It employs a of a database consisting of racial and national origin preferences in 22 countries’ immigration laws. The PIs find that liberal regimes had more racialized policies compared to authoritarian regimes especially when interest groups are involved in the process.
Norma Fuentes-Mayorga, Fordham University, $5,467, The Role of Moroccan Mothers on the Education Choices and Work Trajectories of their Daughters in Amsterdam. The purpose of this project is to understand how immigrant Moroccan mothers in Amsterdam influence the educational and work activities of their daughters. The PI examines a variety of situations such as the role of immigrant mothers as “brokers” for their daughters rather than their sons.
Erik Larson, Macalester College, $5,500, Coup or Commission? Legal Consciousness, Political Contention, and Reconciliation in Fiji. The PI interviews political elites and ordinary citizens in Fiji, the site of a recent coup and ongoing ethnic tensions to understand the ways that law affects social and political change and popular thinking, especially when racial and ethnic tensions are a significant part of the context.The PI found that members of the public understood law and politics as distinct from the state.
Patricia Madoo Lengermann, The George Washington University, and Gillian Niebrugge, American University, $3,100, Professing Sociology: A Study of the ASA Teaching Resources Manuals. The goals of this project include recovering missing early editions of the ASA’s Teaching and Resource Manuals; constructing a history of the project including its reception by the sociological community; and an analysis of the relation of the manuals to the functioning of the discipline. This analysis will cover issues of continuity and change in sociological subfields, in intellectual skills seen as important for the socialization of new members of the discipline, pedagogical practices and technologies used by sociologists, and the characteristics of sociologists who publish their syllabi in these sets.
Virag Molnar, The George Washington University, $5,500, The Great Budapest Rat Massacre: A Case Study in Urban Public Health. This is an historical and sociological case study of a massive rat control project undertaken in Budapest, Hungary in 1971 and 1972 and its aftermath. It focuses on institutions, policies, and historical events that explain the city’s 30-year success in improving public health despite its resource-poor condition.
Ebenezer Obadare, University of Kansas, $5,500, Miss Bell’s Girls: Gender Emigration and the Socio-Cultural Aspects of the Decline in Health Services in Nigeria. This study relates the efforts of the British Colonial Government in Nigeria to recruit, train, and raise the competence and status of Nigerian nurses to the degradation of the Nigerian public health care system. As a result of the transformation from the nursing profession as menial labor to a profession for the elite, the nurses were able to emigrate from Nigeria and withdraw their contribution from the state and civil society.
Dina G. Okamoto, University of California-Davis, $5,500, The Civic and Political Incorporation of Immigrants in Non-Traditional Gateways. This study integrates the sociology of immigration with the sociology of social movements. Okamoto examines patterns of collective action among new immigrant groups, especially in non-gateway cities—Charlotte, NC, Atlanta, GA, and Salt Lake City, UT—and builds a theoretical framework that moves beyond individual adaptation of immigrants.
