Crime and Perceived Neighborhood Safety Across Racial-Ethnic Groups

Crime often increases safety concerns for residents, and safety concerns are generally associated with worse health. Despite that marginalized racial/ethnic groups are more likely than non-Hispanic Whites to live in areas with more crime, prior studies have documented that these groups differentially view crime as a threat to safety. Furthermore, older adults are more likely to report safety concerns than younger adults, despite a lesser chance of being victimized. Using multiple waves of data from the Health and Retirement Study, a representative sample of US adults aged 51 years and older (n= 11,161, mean age of 66 years), we conducted weighted repeated cross-sectional linear regressions to examine whether the association between crime and perceived neighborhood safety varies by racial/ethnic group, by age, or by wave of data collection. Study results indicated that higher crime rates consistently predicted more safety concerns among non-Hispanic Whites, Hispanics, and “Others,” but were inconsistently associated with safety concerns among non-Hispanic Blacks, adjusting for age, household wealth, and census tract-level concentrated disadvantage, population density, and racial/ethnic heterogeneity. Furthermore, among non-Hispanic Whites, greater crime predicted more safety concerns before, but not after including a measure of racial/ethnic heterogeneity. These patterns persisted across the full age span. Racial/ethnic differences in the crime-safety link could be explained by additional sociopolitical and environmental variables including diversity that vary over time. Follow-up analysis is needed to determine if the racial/ethnic differences in crime-safety links extend to health.

Global Connectivity and Ethnic Fractionalization: New Frontiers of Global Trade Agenda

International trade is an exchange that involves goods and services between countries or international territories, and it signifies a significant share of gross domestic product. Global trading provides opportunities for the country to show its products and services through imports and exports. While this international event gives rise to a world economy, global connectivity and ethnic heterogeneity play a significant role. This paper aims to determine whether the ruggedness of a country supports international trade and global connectivity and whether the ruggedness of ethnic heterogeneity supports global trading. This paper uses the non-experimental quantitative inferential design utilizing Fractal Analysis to determine the self-similarity of countries engaging in international trade in terms of their global connectivity index and ethnic fractionalization. The International Trade data provided by the World Integrated Trade Solutions and the Global Connectivity Index (GCI) data through Huawei Technologies are plotted in a histogram through Minitab Software to determine the fractality and further apply exponential logarithm. Study shows that global connectivity and ethnic fractionalization induce the fractal characteristics of the countries’ international trade ruggedness. Specific to the behavior is that countries with very high international trade also behave similarly with high global connectivity and very low ethnicity fractionalization. As countries sustain a progressive economic stance, their societies maintain very few ethnic groups to promote social cohesion, much less conflict created by many ethnic groups that vary in their concerns. This paper further explains that only countries with digital economic competitiveness and cultural homogeneity survive robust international trade.

Ethnic Differences in Context: Does Emotional Conflict Mediate the Effects of Both Team- and Individual-Level Ethnic Diversity on Emotional Strain?

Work teams are becoming increasingly heterogeneous with respect to their team members’ ethnic backgrounds. Two lines of research examine ethnic diversity in work teams: The compositional approach views team-level ethnic heterogeneity as a team characteristic, and relational demography views individual-level ethnic dissimilarity as an individual member’s relation to their team. This study compares and contrasts team-level ethnic heterogeneity and individual-level ethnic dissimilarity regarding their effects on impaired well-being (i.e., emotional strain) via team- and individual-level emotional conflict. Fifty teams of retail chain salespeople (n = 602) participated in our survey at two points of measurement. Based on the ethnic background of team members, we calculated team-level ethnic heterogeneity that applied to all members, and individual-level ethnic dissimilarity within the team that varied according to each member’s ethnic background. Multilevel path modeling showed that high levels of team-level ethnic heterogeneity were related to high levels of emotional strain via team-level emotional conflict. However, the opposite was found for individual-level ethnic dissimilarity. We discussed this difference by contextualizing individual-level ethnic dissimilarity in the team-level heterogeneity and social status of ethnic groups in society at large. Our findings suggest that the social status of the ethnic group to which team members belong may impact how ethnic diversity relates to team processes and well-being.

Crime Is Down and so Is Fear? Analyzing Resident Perceptions of Neighborhood Unsafety in Rotterdam, the Netherlands

There is little research on how resident perceptions of neighborhood unsafety develop over time and how changes in these perceptions relate to decreasing crime rates. The present study analyzes and explains trends in perceived neighborhood unsafety within the Dutch city of Rotterdam, based on survey and register data collected in the years 2003–2017 (N = 148.344, 62 neighborhoods). In addition to crime, we also assess to what extent (changes in) the economic status, level of ethnic heterogeneity, degree of residential mobility, and amount of disorder in the neighborhood play a role in how safe or unsafe inhabitants have felt in a 15-year period. We find that unsafety levels steadily declined in the years up to 2007. This decrease was best explained by changes regarding the economic status, victimization rates and disorder level of neighborhoods. After a sudden increase in feelings of unsafety between 2007 and 2008, explained by the shift towards using more self-administrated questionnaires, fear levels stabilized during the remaining years (2008–2017) although recorded crime levels continued to decrease in this period.

(Re)conceptualizing Neighborhood Ecology in Social Disorganization Theory: From a Variable-Centered Approach to a Neighborhood-Centered Approach

Shaw and McKay advanced social disorganization theory in the 1930s, kick-starting a large body of research on communities and crime. Studies emphasize individual impacts of poverty, residential instability, and racial/ethnic heterogeneity by examining their independent effects on crime, adopting a variable-centered approach. We use a “neighborhood-centered” approach that considers how structural forces combine into unique constellations that vary across communities, with consequences for crime. Examining neighborhoods in Southern California we: (1) identify neighborhood typologies based on levels of poverty, instability, and heterogeneity; (2) explore how these typologies fit within a disorganization framework and are spatially distributed across the region; and (3) examine how these typologies are differentially associated with crime. Results reveal nine neighborhood types with varying relationships to crime.

Ethnic heterogeneity of knowledge on termites and human consumption in southern Cameroon

Termites are both pests and non-conventional food resources in Sub-Saharan Africa. Many are reluctant to eat them, and the reasons for this rejection are poorly known. This study examined level of knowledge, and acceptance by members of the 10 main ethnic groups of southern Cameroon. Most respondents (86 percent) were aware of termites as food with sixteen vernacular names in the study areas. Acceptance among ethnic groups for consumption varied between 96 percent and 8 percent of people in a group. Barriers included being raised to not eat termites, not having many opportunities to eat termites, and dislike of the taste.