Download or read book When Work Disappears written by William Julius Wilson and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2011-06-08 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Wilson, one of our foremost authorities on race and poverty, challenges decades of liberal and conservative pieties to look squarely at the devastating effects that joblessness has had on our urban ghettos. Marshaling a vast array of data and the personal stories of hundreds of men and women, Wilson persuasively argues that problems endemic to America's inner cities--from fatherless households to drugs and violent crime--stem directly from the disappearance of blue-collar jobs in the wake of a globalized economy. Wilson's achievement is to portray this crisis as one that affects all Americans, and to propose solutions whose benefits would be felt across our society. At a time when welfare is ending and our country's racial dialectic is more strained than ever, When Work Disappears is a sane, courageous, and desperately important work. "Wilson is the keenest liberal analyst of the most perplexing of all American problems...[This book is] more ambitious and more accessible than anything he has done before." --The New Yorker

Download or read book Off the Books written by Sudhir Alladi Venkatesh and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-06-30 with total page 460 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this revelatory book, Sudhir Venkatesh takes us into Maquis Park, a poor black neighborhood on Chicago's Southside, to explore the desperate and remarkable ways in which a community survives. The result is a dramatic narrative of individuals at work, and a rich portrait of a community. But while excavating the efforts of men and women to generate a basic livelihood for themselves and their families, Off the Books offers a devastating critique of the entrenched poverty that we so often ignore in America, and reveals how the underground economy is an inevitable response to the ghetto's appalling isolation from the rest of the country.

Download or read book Employment and the Urban Poor written by Alice E. Trost and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 1997 with total page 166 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presents a theory on poverty attempting to explain the high unemployment rates and depressed wages of low-skilled workers residing in the central cities of large metropolitan areas, located mainly in the Northeast and Midwest of United States.

Download or read book The Urban Poor in Latin America written by Marianne Fay and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2005 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: About half of the region's poor live in cities, and policy makers across Latin America are increasingly interested in policy advice on how to design programmes and policies to tackle poverty. This publication argues that the causes of poverty, the nature of deprivation, and the policy levers to fight poverty are, to a large extent, site specific. It therefore focuses on strategies to assist the urban poor in making the most of the opportunities offered by cities, such as larger labour markets and better services, while helping them cope with the negative aspects, such as higher housing costs, pollution, risk of crime and less social capital.

Download or read book Urban Poverty and the Underclass written by Enzo Mingione and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2008-09-15 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the last two decades "poverty" has moved centrestage as an issue within the social sciences. This volume, edited by one of Europe's foremost sociologists, aims to assess the debates surrounding poverty and the responses to it, exploring the ways in which the various socio-political systems and welfarist regimes are being radically transformed. The essays examine how such change is effected by failing welfare programmes and enervating social structures such as family and community which once would have provided mechanisms of social stability. The first part of the book provides reflections on urban poverty; the second part discusses the widely debated idea of an "underclass" and its meanings in Europe and in the USA, and the final part draws on concrete empirical analyses to examine the patterns of poverty thoughout Western Europe. This volume will be of first-rate importance to all serious students of politics, sociology, geography, public policy, youth and community studies, social policy and American studies.

Download or read book Urban Poverty in the Global South written by Diana Mitlin and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is compounded by the lack of voice and influence that low income groups have in these official spheres.

Download or read book Good Jobs Bad Jobs written by Arne L. Kalleberg and published by Russell Sage Foundation. This book was released on 2011-06-01 with total page 309 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The economic boom of the 1990s veiled a grim reality: in addition to the growing gap between rich and poor, the gap between good and bad quality jobs was also expanding. The postwar prosperity of the mid-twentieth century had enabled millions of American workers to join the middle class, but as author Arne L. Kalleberg shows, by the 1970s this upward movement had slowed, in part due to the steady disappearance of secure, well-paying industrial jobs. Ever since, precarious employment has been on the rise—paying low wages, offering few benefits, and with virtually no long-term security. Today, the polarization between workers with higher skill levels and those with low skills and low wages is more entrenched than ever. Good Jobs, Bad Jobs traces this trend to large-scale transformations in the American labor market and the changing demographics of low-wage workers. Kalleberg draws on nearly four decades of survey data, as well as his own research, to evaluate trends in U.S. job quality and suggest ways to improve American labor market practices and social policies. Good Jobs, Bad Jobs provides an insightful analysis of how and why precarious employment is gaining ground in the labor market and the role these developments have played in the decline of the middle class. Kalleberg shows that by the 1970s, government deregulation, global competition, and the rise of the service sector gained traction, while institutional protections for workers—such as unions and minimum-wage legislation—weakened. Together, these forces marked the end of postwar security for American workers. The composition of the labor force also changed significantly; the number of dual-earner families increased, as did the share of the workforce comprised of women, non-white, and immigrant workers. Of these groups, blacks, Latinos, and immigrants remain concentrated in the most precarious and low-quality jobs, with educational attainment being the leading indicator of who will earn the highest wages and experience the most job security and highest levels of autonomy and control over their jobs and schedules. Kalleberg demonstrates, however, that building a better safety net—increasing government responsibility for worker health care and retirement, as well as strengthening unions—can go a long way toward redressing the effects of today’s volatile labor market. There is every reason to expect that the growth of precarious jobs—which already make up a significant share of the American job market—will continue. Good Jobs, Bad Jobs deftly shows that the decline in U.S. job quality is not the result of fluctuations in the business cycle, but rather the result of economic restructuring and the disappearance of institutional protections for workers. Only government, employers and labor working together on long-term strategies—including an expanded safety net, strengthened legal protections, and better training opportunities—can help reverse this trend. A Volume in the American Sociological Association’s Rose Series in Sociology.

Download or read book Neighborhood Jobs Race and Skills written by Daniel Immergluck and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-05-20 with total page 113 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally published in 1998, Neighbourhood Jobs, Race, and Skills argues that race is a powerful and persistent barrier to employment. Analysing existing literature, this book outlines how racial discrimination in hiring against African Americans appears to remain a contributor to high unemployment rates in black neighbourhoods. The book also discusses how issues such as poor schools and physical and social isolation compound employment problems, as well as changes in policy on skill requirements and the location of jobs. The book argues that combined, this is a major contributor to concentrated urban employment and poverty.

Download or read book Lone Pursuit written by Sandra Susan Smith and published by Russell Sage Foundation. This book was released on 2007-08-09 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Unemployment among black Americans is twice that of whites. Myriad theories have been put forward to explain the persistent employment gap between blacks and whites in the U.S. Structural theorists point to factors such as employer discrimination and the decline of urban manufacturing. Other researchers argue that African-American residents living in urban neighborhoods of concentrated poverty lack social networks that can connect them to employers. Still others believe that African-American culture fosters attitudes of defeatism and resistance to work. In Lone Pursuit, sociologist Sandra Susan Smith cuts through this thicket of competing explanations to examine the actual process of job searching in depth. Lone Pursuit reveals that unemployed African Americans living in the inner city are being let down by jobholding peers and government agencies who could help them find work, but choose not to. Lone Pursuit is a pioneering ethnographic study of the experiences of low-skilled, black urban residents in Michigan as both jobseekers and jobholders. Smith surveyed 105 African-American men and women between the ages of 20 and 40, each of whom had no more than a high school diploma. She finds that mutual distrust thwarts cooperation between jobseekers and jobholders. Jobseekers do not lack social capital per se, but are often unable to make use of the network ties they have. Most jobholders express reluctance about referring their friends and relatives for jobs, fearful of jeopardizing their own reputations with employers. Rather than finding a culture of dependency, Smith discovered that her underprivileged subjects engage in a discourse of individualism. To justify denying assistance to their friends and relatives, jobholders characterize their unemployed peers as lacking in motivation and stress the importance of individual responsibility. As a result, many jobseekers, wary of being demeaned for their needy condition, hesitate to seek referrals from their peers. In a low-skill labor market where employers rely heavily on personal referrals, this go-it-alone approach is profoundly self-defeating. In her observations of a state job center, Smith finds similar distrust and non-cooperation between jobseekers and center staff members, who assume that young black men are unwilling to make an effort to find work. As private contractors hired by the state, the job center also seeks to meet performance quotas by screening out the riskiest prospects—black male and female jobseekers who face the biggest obstacles to employment and thus need the most help. The problem of chronic black joblessness has resisted both the concerted efforts of policymakers and the proliferation of theories offered by researchers. By examining the roots of the African-American unemployment crisis from the vantage point of the everyday job-searching experiences of the urban poor, Lone Pursuit provides a novel answer to this decades-old puzzle.

Download or read book The Divided City written by Alan Mallach and published by Island Press. This book was released on 2018-06-12 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Divided City, urban practitioner and scholar Alan Mallach presents a detailed picture of what has happened over the past 15 to 20 years in industrial cities like Pittsburgh and Baltimore, as they have undergone unprecedented, unexpected revival. He spotlights these changes while placing them in their larger economic, social and political context. Most importantly, he explores the pervasive significance of race in American cities, and looks closely at the successes and failures of city governments, nonprofit entities, and citizens as they have tried to address the challenges of change. The Divided City concludes with strategies to foster greater equality and opportunity, firmly grounding them in the cities' economic and political realities.

Download or read book City of Shadows written by Supriya RoyChowdhury and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-05-31 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Alongside debates over rising inequalities, the stubbornness of urban poverty, globally, has emerged as a major academic and policy concern. Urban poverty policy positions are typically framed by paradigms of basic services and welfare. In the backdrop of Bangalore's evolution into India's silicon valley, the book presents research spanning old, inner city slums, new migrant settlements in urban peripheries, slum development projects, and garment export and construction workers, highlighting that intergenerationally, the urban poor remain tied to traditional low paying occupations, or, get incorporated into new urban growth channels (export industries, low end services) under highly unfavourable terms and conditions. Using the concepts of the old and the new poor, to explore channels of inclusion and exclusion, the book underscores that the poor's vulnerabilities are defined by different regimes of informality. Debates on the urban poor's political agency are used to problematize informality's complex relationship to contemporary theories of class.

Download or read book The Color of Opportunity written by Ḥayah Shṭayer and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2001-02-15 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Color of Opportunity, Haya Stier and Marta Tienda ask: How do race and ethnicity limit opportunity in post-civil rights Chicago? In the 1960s, Chicago was a focal point of civil rights activities. But in the 1980s it served as the laboratory for ideas about the emergence and social consequences of concentrated urban poverty; many experts such as William J. Wilson downplayed the significance of race as a cause of concentrated poverty, emphasizing instead structural causes that called for change in employment policy. But in this new study, Stier and Tienda ask about the pervasive poverty, unemployment, and reliance on welfare among blacks and Hispanics in Chicago, wondering if and how the inner city poor differ from the poor in general. The culmination of a six-year collaboration analyzing the Urban Poverty and Family Life Survey of Chicago, The Color of Opportunity is the first major work to compare Chicago's inner city minorities with national populations of like race and ethnicity from a life course perspective. The authors find that blacks, whites, Mexicans, and Puerto Ricans living in poor neighborhoods differ in their experiences with early material deprivation and the lifetime disadvantages that accumulate—but they do not differ much from the urban poor in their family formation, welfare participation, or labor force attachment. Stier and Tienda find little evidence for ghetto-specific behavior, but they document the myriad ways color still restricts economic opportunity. The Color of Opportunity stands as a much-needed corrective to increasingly negative views of poor people of color, especially the poor who live in deprived neighborhoods. It makes a key and lasting contribution to ongoing debates about the origins and nature of urban poverty.

Download or read book Measuring Transport Equity written by Karen Lucas and published by Elsevier. This book was released on 2019-05-30 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Measuring Transport Equity provides a range of methods with the potential to shape transport decision-making processes, thus allowing for the adoption of more equitable transport solutions. Presenting numerous applied methods and applications of transport equity assessment, this book formalizes the disciplinary practice, definitions, and methodologies for transport equity. In addition, it recognizes the different types of equity and acknowledges that each requires its own assessment methodologies. Bringing together the most up-to-date perspectives and practical approaches for assessing equity in relation to accessibility, environmental impacts, health, and wellbeing, the book sets standards for researchers, policymakers, and practitioners for conducting social impact analyses and is an ideal reference for those involved in transport planning.

Download or read book There Goes the Neighborhood written by William Julius Wilson and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2011-06-15 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From one of America’s most admired sociologists and urban policy advisers, There Goes the Neighborhood is a long-awaited look at how race, class, and ethnicity influence one of Americans’ most personal choices—where we choose to live. The result of a three-year study of four working- and lower-middle class neighborhoods in Chicago, these riveting first-person narratives and the meticulous research which accompanies them reveal honest yet disturbing realities—ones that remind us why the elusive American dream of integrated neighborhoods remains a priority of race relations in our time.

Download or read book Poverty Urbanization and Development Policy written by A. M. Balisacan and published by University of Philippines Press. This book was released on 1994 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Poverty and (under)development are the subjects of this book. While the focus is on urban poverty, the principal themes running throughout the book apply as well to rural poverty. The book traces the roots of the Philippine-poverty problem to industrialization and spatial policies that unduly encouraged concentration of infrastructure and social services in major urban centers; to trade and macroeconomic policies that severely penalized agriculture, labor-intensive exports, and small- to medium-scale manufacturing establishments; to public spending policies that accorded little attention to human capital formation for the poor; and to the lack of strong complementarity of state and market. Taking into account economic constraints and political economy considerations, the book discusses ways on how to enhance pro-poor, pro-market, and pro-growth policies, particularly those aimed at correcting disincentives against rapid employment expansion, balanced urban-rural growth, and human capital formation.

Download or read book Cities From Scratch written by Brodwyn Fischer and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2014-02-28 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of essays challenges long-entrenched ideas about the history, nature, and significance of the informal neighborhoods that house the vast majority of Latin America's urban poor. Until recently, scholars have mainly viewed these settlements through the prisms of crime and drug-related violence, modernization and development theories, populist or revolutionary politics, or debates about the cultures of poverty. Yet shantytowns have proven both more durable and more multifaceted than any of these perspectives foresaw. Far from being accidental offshoots of more dynamic economic and political developments, they are now a permanent and integral part of Latin America's urban societies, critical to struggles over democratization, economic transformation, identity politics, and the drug and arms trades. Integrating historical, cultural, and social scientific methodologies, this collection brings together recent research from across Latin America, from the informal neighborhoods of Rio de Janeiro and Mexico City, Managua and Buenos Aires. Amid alarmist exposés, Cities from Scratch intervenes by considering Latin American shantytowns at a new level of interdisciplinary complexity. Contributors. Javier Auyero, Mariana Cavalcanti, Ratão Diniz, Emilio Duhau, Sujatha Fernandes, Brodwyn Fischer, Bryan McCann, Edward Murphy, Dennis Rodgers

Download or read book Monthly Labor Review written by and published by . This book was released on 1970-06 with total page 132 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Publishes in-depth articles on labor subjects, current labor statistics, information about current labor contracts, and book reviews.