Sociology

Despite a perceived retrenchment of exclusionary school punishment, the disciplinary alternative school has emerged as a space in which to enforce upon marginalized students the logics of neoliberal carcerality. This
article draws on the code of conduct handbooks of 15 Texas Disciplinary Alternative Education Programs to illustrate how this space seeks to reaffirm social and economic marginality for certain youth. Specific
processes in the alternative school prepare youth for a life of imprisonment, often characterized by criminal justice system involvement, but also precarious (un)employment. As such, this article situates the disciplinary alternative school as one of many ‘alternatives’ to carcerality through which the carceral state maintains its power.

Legal recourse is a vital avenue for many domestic violence victims. For lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) people, these laws have historically been heterosexist. Considering the many states that are now inclusive of same-gender relationships, an existing data set was utilized to examine the influence of sociodemographic predictors on the perceptions of domestic violence law among LGB. Our findings illustrate that nonwhite LGB and those who have negative perceptions of law enforcement have the most negative perceptions of domestic violence legal protections as they apply to same-gender relationships. These findings have implications for service providers, advocacy and outreach organizations, and future research exploring the impact perceptions of legal avenues have on LGB victims.

College students across the U.S. have been mobilizing their campuses in exposing institutional racism, biases, and curriculum structures that have historically marginalized students of color. As a response to ongoing racial justice movements such as #BlackLivesMatter, we developed a new teach-in model with the aim of creating a transformative experience for faculty and students. Our teach-in challenged faculty to incorporate topics related to #BlackLivesMatter to the discipline-specific content of their course during the same one-week period; this was followed by a campus-wide town hall event. Framed by critical race theory with the goal of creating transformative learning for faculty, we sought to assess the impact of the teach-in from the perspective of teachers. Our findings indicated that our teach-in successfully created an opportunity for faculty to interrogate their curriculum, engage students in race discussions, and develop the knowledge and professional skills needed to tackle a more inclusive social justice curriculum.

This chapter examines the social identities of Colombian and Puerto Rican software engineers that migrated to the Greater Boston area during and after the “dot com” era. The Greater Boston area (Route 128) became one of the key hubs of hardware and software research and development during this booming economic period in the United States. While the “dot com” was notorious for attracting Indian and Chinese engineers, medium and large IT companies in the Greater Boston area recruited engineers in Puerto Rican and Colombian universities during this period and have continued to do so.
Because of their socialization as skilled global workers at their hometown universities, these engineers arrived to the United States with the idea that their skills would allow them to step into a rapid upwardly mobile path in the American society. While they landed what they considered to be good engineering jobs, the barriers of racism and legality often hindered their upwardly mobile path.
Based on a comparative qualitative study, this chapter sheds light on the social identities and strategies these professional migrants use to ensure their social inclusion and their rights as migrants and workers. While Colombian and Puerto Rican engineers define themselves as global citizens as they have world-class skills and abilities that allow them to easily navigate the “Route 128” workplace, their social identities are often shaped by their delayed socially upward mobility, as well as on local political and social issues.  These constraints and events make their professional global identities clash with their emerging political “American citizen” identities. A result of these contradictory identities is the constant search of new sources of meaningful civil, economic and social integration through individualistic market and life-style based forms of sociability.

Building on Menjívar's (Am J Sociol 111(4):999–1037, 2006) concept of legal liminality, this article examines the negative effects of the transition from a temporary to a permanent legal status for Colombian migrant professionals. Drawing from thirty-one in-depth interviews with Colombian computer engineers who migrated in the 1990s, this study reveals how legal status adjustment stipulations invalidate the credentials and professional experience of these migrants, delay their economic and professional advancement and deeply affect their life-course decisions. I demonstrate that Colombian migrant professionals tolerate these repercussions in order to avoid returning to the political violence and economic crises of their home country. By comparing these findings with the experiences of Central American migrants, I argue that, regardless of their migration motivations and educational backgrounds, immigration law negatively affects the incorporation of different Latino/a migrants in similar ways.