From Workers to Owners: Latino Entrepreneurs in Harrisonburg, Virginia

2007 ◽  
Vol 66 (3) ◽  
pp. 240-248 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Zarrugh

In the vast literature on immigrant and ethnic entrepreneurship in the United States, relatively little attention has been paid to Latino entrepreneurship, perhaps because Latinos (except Cubans) tend to be perceived as labor migrants. For the same reason, even less attention has been given to the Latino small businesses that have quickly become a ubiquitous part of new Latino settlements in the rural South over the past two decades. Based on structured interviews with over 30 Latino business owners, this paper describes the growth of Latino-owned businesses in Harrisonburg, Virginia (population 40,468 in 2000) that has occurred since 1990 in tandem with the ever-increasing size and complexity of the local Latino community. In particular, the paper examines both the "structure of opportunity" for Latino entrepreneurship outside traditional gateway cities and the social and cultural characteristics of the entrepreneurs and their businesses. The paper highlights the role of local poultry processing plants in the settlement process and entrepreneurs' work histories.

2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Amanda A. Lee ◽  
Maia Ingram ◽  
Carolina Quijada ◽  
Andres Yubeta ◽  
Imelda Cortez ◽  
...  

Abstract Background Throughout the United States, low-wage, minority workers are disproportionately affected by occupational illnesses and injuries. Chronic exposure to hazardous chemicals at work can lead to serious illnesses, contributing to health inequities. In this article, we expand on theories of ‘responsibilization’ in an occupational health context to reveal how responsibilities for workplace chemical exposures are negotiated by workers and owners in Latinx-owned small businesses. Methods We conducted semi-structured interviews with a total of 22 workers and owners in auto repair shops and beauty salons – two high-risk industries – in Southern Metropolitan Tucson. Participants were asked about their insights into workplace chemical exposures and health. A qualitative analysis team with representation from all study partner organizations collectively coded and reviewed the interview data in QSR International’s NVivo 11 and identified overarching themes across the interviews. Results We identified three primary themes: 1) ambivalence toward risks in the workplace; 2) shifting responsibilities for exposure protection at work; and 3) reflections on the system behind chemical exposure risks. Participants discussed the complexities that small businesses face in reducing chemical exposures. Conclusions Through our analysis of the interviews, we examine how neoliberal occupational and environmental policies funnel responsibility for controlling chemical exposures down to individuals in small businesses with limited resources, obscuring the power structures that maintain environmental health injustices. We conclude with a call for upstream policy changes that more effectively regulate and hold accountable the manufacturers of chemical products used daily by small business workers.


2021 ◽  
pp. 089443932110115
Author(s):  
Benoît Dupont ◽  
Thomas Holt

This volume highlights the central role of the human factor in cybercrime and the need to develop a more interdisciplinary research agenda to understand better the constant evolution of online harms and craft more effective responses. The term “human factor” is understood very broadly and encompasses individual, institutional, and societal dimensions. It covers individual human behaviors and the social structures that enable collective action by groups and communities of various sizes, as well as the different types of institutional assemblages that shape societal responses. This volume is organized around three general themes whose complementary perspectives allow us to map the complex interplay between offenders, machines, and victims, moving beyond static typologies to offer a more dynamic analysis of the cybercrime ecology and its underlying behaviors. The contributions use quantitative and qualitative methodologies and bring together researchers from the United States, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Denmark, Australia, and Canada.


2013 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 124-139
Author(s):  
Monika Jean Ulrich Myers ◽  
Michael Wilson

Foucault’s theory of state social control contrasts societal responses to leprosy, where deviants are exiled from society but promised freedom from social demands, and the plague, where deviants are controlled and surveyed within society but receive some state assistance in exchange for their cooperation.In this paper, I analyze how low-income fathers in the United States simultaneously experience social control consistent with leprosy and social control consistent with the plague but do not receive the social benefits that Foucault associates with either status.Through interviews with 57 low-income fathers, I investigate the role of state surveillance in their family lives through child support enforcement, the criminal justice system, and child protective services.Because they did not receive any benefits from compliance with this surveillance, they resisted it, primarily by dropping “off the radar.”Men justified their resistance in four ways: they had their own material needs, they did not want the child, they did not want to separate from their child’s mother or compliance was unnecessary.This resistance is consistent with Foucault’s distinction between leprosy and the plague.They believed that they did not receive the social benefits accorded to plague victims, so they attempted to be treated like lepers, excluded from social benefits but with no social demands or surveillance.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hana Shepherd

Organizational practices are important dimensions of the social contexts that shape relationship formation. In workplaces, the formation of relationships among coworkers are resources for personal outcomes, and they can be channels through which workers might identify common grievances, form workplace solidarity, and engage in collective action. Using a unique dataset of retail workers across the United States, The Shift Project, this paper examines two potential pathways by which organizational practices common in precarious jobs in the retail industry in the U.S. might shape the formation of workplace relationships. I find evidence of the role of both pathways: practices that limit the opportunities for regular contact and practices that negatively impact the conditions of contact among employees are both associated with fewer workplace ties. I discuss the implications of these findings for the study of collective action, and network ecology.


2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 244-261
Author(s):  
Dr. Théophile Bindeouè Nassè ◽  
Naab Francis Xavier ◽  
Bismark Boateng ◽  
Nicolas Carbonell ◽  
Justice Agyei Ampofo ◽  
...  

Researchers' interest in consumer religiosity and behavior is explained by the fact that religion influences not only the social behavior of individuals, but also their consumption behavior. Most of the studies on the subject come from Western and Asian countries with a few of such studies been conducted in Africa and particularly in Ghana. The aim of this paper is to explore the concepts of religiosity and consumer behavior in Ghana, in order to consider the role of culture in the management and marketing of industrial products. Ghana is a country where religion plays an important role in shaping lives and ensuring community cohesion. However, a determined part of the believers contributes to increasing the consumption of industrial beverages, and the obliviousness in the marketing sector also seems to be a barrier that slows the production and consumption of non-alcoholic industrial beverages. The research approach is exploratory and qualitative. The collection of qualitative data is done with the aid of a SONY voice recorder through some semi-structured interviews. Then, the qualitative data are transcribed manually and verbatim analyzed. The results show that in the context of Ghana, religiosity of believers affects the behavior of the consumer and that consumer behavior towards non-alcoholic industrial beverages affects religiosity. Keywords: Religiosity, Consumer Behavior, Industrial Beverages, Consumption, Marketing, Ghana.


2021 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 047-060
Author(s):  
Sergey Ryazantsev ◽  
Elena Pismennaya ◽  
Maria Apanovich ◽  
Dzerassa Dzusova

This study has been suggested by the huge importance of labor migration for the social and economic development of the South Caucasian post-Soviet space. Confronted with an unprecedented outflow of their citizens and acutely aware of the problems associated with migration of able-bodied population to other countries, Russia among them, these countries have arrived at a conclusion that their migration policies need reforms. The article analyzes the trends of labor migration from the South Caucasian countries to Russia and other equally popular destinations. The migration trends up to and including Russia’s regions with the maximum numbers of labor migrants from the Southern Caucasus and the structure of their employment by industry are also analyzed. The paper contains statistics on the amounts of remittances sent by labor migrants from Russia to their homelands and assesses their impact on the economies of corresponding states. The cultural and economic contacts between the diasporas and the countries of their origin suggested a comparative analysis of their emergence and development. We have identified the typical industries preferred by representatives of each of the South Caucasian states in Russia, and the documents required of migrants to be employed in Russia. Conclusions related to the specifics of influence and the role of the diasporas in the structure of their employment are contained in the final part of our article along with the identified patterns and trends of these processes. Today, the situation on the market is unbalanced when it comes to job availability and the positions of members of these diasporas. The situation will remain the same as long as diasporas preserve their influence and the migration flows, their proportions. We have identified the most attractive regions in terms of job availability, the spread of migrants from the Southern Caucasus across the regions of the Russian Federation and the rivalry between Azeris, Armenians, and Georgians for jobs in various employment spheres.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jane McCamant

Abstract The history of American public education has generally been considered as a steady transition from religious and sectarian to secular and pluralist, with the role of science in education increasing as the role of religion decreased. This article examines a conception of the role of religion in education that does not fit this narrative, the “social religion” of theorists of moral and character education in the 1920s. Relying on ideas of religious naturalism and with an orientation toward the practical effects of religious belief, this community of scholars asserted a concept of religion that would allow it to be at the heart of the common school project, uniting all under the common morality of the social good. Influenced both by liberal Protestant humanism and the scientific worldview pervasive in education reform at the time, these character educationists’ ideas remind us of the historical contingency of categories like “religious” and of the antiquity of ideas we might classify under the heading of spirituality in American culture.


Forests ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (6) ◽  
pp. 708
Author(s):  
Giampiero Branca ◽  
Irene Piredda ◽  
Roberto Scotti ◽  
Laura Chessa ◽  
Ilenia Murgia ◽  
...  

Today, a forest is also understood as a real social actor with multiple-scale influences, capable of significantly conditioning the social, economic, and cultural system of a whole territory. The aim of this paper is to reconstruct and interpret the population’s perception of the silvicultural activities related to traditional use of forest resources of the southwestern Sardinian Marganai State Forest. The “Marganai case” has brought to the attention of the mass media the role of this forest and its silviculture. The research was carried out via semi-structured interviews with the main stakeholders in the area. The qualitative approach in the collection and analysis of the information gathered has allowed us to reconstruct the historical-cultural and social cohesion function that the forest plays in rural communities. The results highlight that the main risks concern the erosion of the cultural forest heritage due to the abandonment of the rural dimension (mainly by the new generations, but not only), with the consequent spread of deep distortions in the perception, interpretation, and necessity of forestry activities and policy.


2014 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 38-52 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nathan W. Moon ◽  
Paul M.A. Baker ◽  
Robert G.B. Roy ◽  
Ariyana Bozzorg

In the United States, planning education is frequently concerned with problems and solutions associated with the physical environment rather than socioeconomic barriers and solutions, including issues of workforce/workplace, community inclusion and participation, and e-democracy. Legislation such as the 1973 Rehabilitation Act and the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act, generally place more emphasis on accessibility in the physical landscape than on social and economic barriers faced by people with disabilities. Through a longitudinal survey of selected university planning programs in the United States (in 2005 and again in 2013), this article discusses how the lack of attention to disability issues in planning literature may be linked to the education of planners and planning curricula. It also suggests possible areas of progress as an emerging group of planners have become concerned with the role of technologies such as telecommuting in facilitating the inclusion of people with disabilities into the social environment.


2019 ◽  
Vol 26 (7) ◽  
pp. 1387-1405 ◽  
Author(s):  
Petteri Uusitalo ◽  
Olli Seppänen ◽  
Antti Peltokorpi ◽  
Hylton Olivieri

Purpose Although prior studies have noted the importance of trust for project performance, research remains scant on describing the role of trust when using lean design management (LDM) in projects. The purpose of this paper is to explore the connection between LDM and interpersonal trust in solving construction projects’ design management problems. Design/methodology/approach A qualitative study was conducted that included 29 trust- and LDM-themed semi-structured interviews in the USA (California), Brazil and Finland; 11 focus group discussions were also organized to validate the interview findings. Findings The study reveals how LDM contributes to solving design management problems through two distinct but interconnected mechanisms: improved information flow; and improved trust among project team members. A conceptual framework was crafted to illustrate the mechanisms in building trust by means of the social domain of LDM concepts. Research limitations/implications The conceptual framework requires testing through an international survey or through multiple case studies. Practical implications The results indicate that design management would benefit from trustful environments and that trust may be the catalyst for actors’ engagement with LDM. Managers in charge of design within projects can use the conceptual framework when selecting the appropriate LDM tools, which should include both the social and technical domains. Originality/value The study emphasizes the importance of the social domain of LDM concepts. Previous studies have focussed on information flow aspects of LDM but have overlooked the value of interpersonal trust in solving design management problems.


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