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This article criticizes the 'ethnic' conception of organized crime and puts forward an alternative view that does not put ethnicity first, but rather social networks and situational context. It focuses upon Chinese organized crime, a phenomenon where the preoccupation with ethnicity is paramount, and compares findings from extensive research into two different transnational criminal activities that are carried out by Chinese offenders in the Netherlands. The first topic, human smuggling, is well researched, whereas research into the second topic, trafficking in precursors (the basic ingredients for the production of synthetic drugs), is largely lacking. The article highlights the major theoretical and empirical similarities and differences between these two criminal activities and discusses the relevance of the main findings for theory and research.

National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) recommendations for further research often focus on access, prevention and health promotion, and include population groups traditionally excluded from clinical trials, such as children and minority ethnic groups. NICE and its advisory bodies are starting to work with the National Institute for Health Research to promote research into the clinical and cost-effectiveness of public health interventions. More streamlined interaction between public funders and policy makers could help drive public R&D (Research & Development) investment towards under-researched areas such as prevention, equity and access, and strengthen the evidence base that underpins NICE guidance and broader clinical and public health practice in the UK.

Abstract
The existence of glass ceilings and sticky floors suggests that disadvantaged workers will be under-represented in some parts of the income distribution, and over-represented in others. We present a representation index that measures the prevalence of population subgroups in different regions of the income (or any other) distribution. Our representation index is easily generalized to condition on characteristics (such as age, education, etc). Further, it generalizes naturally to an index of the severity (or cost) of under-representation to group members, which is based on dollar-weighted representation. Both representation and severity indices are easily calculated via existing regression techniques. We illustrate the approach using Canadian Census data on the earnings of ethnic minorities.

Drawing examples from ethnic and popular music as well as from folk art, the paper explores the multivalence of expressive forms as local and European, even global aesthetic resources, whose territorial or ethno-national connection is - due to the power of aesthetic affect - but one among many possibilities of identification. It is argued first that the resource dimension of cultural expression has been furthered by the documentation and classification techniques of ethnological and folkloristic knowledge production, which in turn also facilitated circulation in multiple context. Second, the paper encourages that scholarship expand from recognising a political identification and instrumentalisation of aesthetic resources to understanding the economic appropriation of the production and consumption of such resources.

Citizenship encompasses legal status, rights, participation, and belonging. Traditionally anchored in a particular geographic and political community, citizenship evokes notions of national identity, sovereignty, and state control, but these relationships are challenged by the scope and diversity of international migration. This review considers normative and empirical debates over citizenship and bridges an informal divide between European and North American literatures. We focus on citizenship within nation-states by discussing ethnic versus civic citizenship, multiculturalism, and assimilation. Going beyond nation-state boundaries, we also look at transnational, postnational, and dual citizenships. Throughout, we identify methodological and theoretical challenges in this field, noting the need for a more dynamic and comprehensive understanding of the inter-relationships between the dimensions of citizenship and immigration.

Studies of school violence have been generally been informed either by social disorganisation or social control theory. However applications of social disorganisation theory to school violence sometimes make little attempt to control for individual differences in propensity to violent behaviour. This study of 2,616 Australian high school students uses multilevel modelling techniques to see whether various characteristics of the school (e.g. lack of clarity about school rules, school responsiveness to racism, school size, ethnic composition) are related to the risk of physical violence between students, once individual and family risk factors for violent behaviour have been taken into account. The results suggest that school characteristics and developmental factors both play an important role in shaping the risk of violence at school.

This paper examines the impact of the political party
structure on the incentives for politicians to focus on patronage versus
service delivery improvements in Pakistan. By analysing inter-provincial
variations in the quality of service delivery in Pakistan, the paper
argues that the more fragmented, factionalised, and polarised the party
systems, the greater are the incentives for patronage, weakening service
delivery improvements. Fragmentation and factionalism both exacerbate
the information problems that voters have in assigning credit (blame)
for service delivery improvements (deterioration), thereby creating the
incentives for politicians to focus on targeted benefits. Polarisation,
particularly ethnic polarisation, reduces the ability of groups to agree
on the provision of public goods, again causing politicians to favour
the delivery of targeted benefits.

The Cancer Genetics Network (CGN) is one of a growing number of large-scale registries designed to facilitate investigation of genetic and environmental contributions to health and disease. Despite compelling scientific and social justice arguments that recommend diverse participation in biomedical research, members of ethnic minority groups continue to be chronically underrepresented in such projects. The CGN studies reported in this issue used strategies well documented to increase minority participation in research activities, including use of community-targeted materials, addressing community trust concerns, and the adoption of personalized and flexible research protocols. Here, we review the outcome of these efforts to increase minority recruitment to the CGN, and ask what lessons the findings suggest for future minority recruitment initiatives.

Abstract: Governance in Africa is in a state of transition, or some would say, suspension. Two powerful trends vie for dominance. One is the longstanding organization of African politics and states around autocratic personal rulers; highly centralized and overpowering presidencies; and hierarchical, informal networks of patron-client relations that draw their symbolic and emotional glue from ethnic bonds. The other is the surge since 1990 of democratic impulses, principles, and institutions. From the experience of a small but growing number of better-functioning African democracies, we know that the continent is not condemned to perpetual misrule. The challenge now is for international donors to join with Africans in demanding that their governments be truly accountable.

We use the 2006 immigrant-rights protests as a point of departure to test whether political opportunity structures aligned to spur widespread immigrant mobilization in new immigrant destinations. The existing immigrant mobilization scholarship would predict the absence of protest in areas of new migration because of their low levels of immigrant civic infrastructure. Through a detailed study of the immigrant-rights protests and their aftermath in Nebraska, we find that the unifying effect of the anti-immigrant legislation on immigrant-ethnic communities nationally allowed immigrants and their leaders to seize the opportunities presented by shifting local politics, new communications technologies, and the growing migrant civil societies in new destinations to spur widespread, if short-lived, mobilization.

In this paper, we investigate the extent to which parents affect attitudes of their children and to what extent these parental influences vary with family characteristics. We use a Dutch survey with a representative sample and study attitudes toward three issues: euthanasia, homosexuality and the presence of ethnic minorities in the Netherlands . We include information from primary respondents, their parents and their siblings in structural equation models. We find that parents exert a large influence on their adult children's attitudes, even when we control for structural similarities between parents and adult children. Families that the children perceive as emotionally warm are more successful in influencing children's attitudes than families that are not supportive. The effects of parents' attitudes diminish as respondents get older.

The starkly different histories and institutions in the eastern and western member states of the European Union (EU) suggest different roles of being non-native in these two regions. In this paper we study the roles of foreign origin and citizenship in the comparative East-West perspective. Our results indicate that while it is immigrant status that is of key importance in the western EU member states, both immigrant status and citizenship matter in the eastern EU member states, their roles depending on gender. We find some evidence that it is the Russian ethnic minority in Estonia and Latvia that drives the relationships between being non-citizen and labor market outcomes that we find in the eastern EU member states.

We often observe minority ethnic groups at a disadvantage relative to the majority. Why is this and what can be done about it? Efforts made to assimilate, and time, are two elements working to bring the minority into line with the majority. A third element, the degree to which the majority welcomes the minority, also plays a role. We develop a simple theoretical model useful for examining the consequences for assimilation and harassment of growth in the minority population, time, and the role of political institutions. Over time, conflicts develop within the minority group as members exhibit different interests in assimilating and in maintaining their cultural identity. We discuss how this affects the minority's position over time and the influence of public policy.

How have conceptualizations of "culture" been incorporated into sociological studies of class, racial/ethnic, and gender inequality? This article first reviews the development of American scholarship on social inequalities during the past half century and the role of cultural analysis in this development. It goes on to consider culture-related responses to three central questions in the subdiscipline and closes with an examination of currently contentious issues. Likely future developments include movement toward more fluid, contextually contingent conceptualizations of class, race, and gender and an increasing prominence of analyses that explore the dynamic interplay between individual, interactional, and institutional processes of inequality.