This volume of Comparative Social Research emphasizes unsolved issues and new developments within class and stratification analysis, discussing both theoretical and methodological innovations and revisions.
Abstract This paper expands the model of rational action by introducing a new concept. rational laziness, to better understand actors' decision making. In addition to rational information processing, human beings often rely on automatic and lion-cognitive mental capacities, and I use the term mental laziness to account for information processing based on these capacities. When time is limited, supply abundant, and decisions have to be made, mental laziness might be a rational decision device. Actors' choice of rational-calculating or automatic-spontaneous mental decision devices is contingent on their locations within an opportunity structure. The empirical case studied is employers' hiring processes, and employers' activation of these action generating mechanisms are expected to cause discrimination of job applicants categorized as out-groups members.
We examine the impact of ethnic school composition on students' educational outcomes using Swedish population register data. We add to the literature on the consequences of ethnic school segregation for native and immigrant students by distinguishing social interaction effects from selection and environmental effects through one- and two-way fixed effects models. Our findings demonstrate that native and immigrant students' grades are relatively unaffected by social interaction effects stemming from the proportion of immigrant schoolmates. However, we find nontrivial effects on their eligibility for upper secondary school. Immigrants' educational outcomes are weakly positively affected by the proportion of co-ethnics in school. ; Funding agencies: European Research Council under the European Union [324233]; Riksbankens Jubileumsfond [M12-0301:1]; Swedish Research Council [445-2013-7681, 340-2013-5460, 2015-01635]; Swedish Research Council for Health, Working Life and Welfare (Forte) [2009-1350, 201 ; Segregation: Mikromekanismer och makroprocesser (RJ) ; Äpplen som faller långt från träden. Barndomens sociala kontext och dess betydelse för intergenerationell social mobilitet (VR) ; SIMSEG - Interdisciplinary Research on School Segregation (VR)
We examine the impact of ethnic school composition on students' educational outcomes using Swedish population register data. We add to the literature on the consequences of ethnic school segregation for native and immigrant students by distinguishing social interaction effects from selection and environmental effects through one- and two-way fixed effects models. Our findings demonstrate that native and immigrant students' grades are relatively unaffected by social interaction effects stemming from the proportion of immigrant schoolmates. However, we find nontrivial effects on their eligibility for upper secondary school. Immigrants' educational outcomes are weakly positively affected by the proportion of co-ethnics in school.
Spatial assimilation theory claims that immigrants' acculturation and socioeconomic progress will lead to converging neighborhood attainment relative to non-migrant natives. Recently, it has been argued that equalization of local services and life chances across neighborhoods in egalitarian welfare states may delay spatial assimilation by reducing immigrants' incentives to move out of low-income areas with many (co-ethnic) immigrant neighbors. In this article, we extend this argument to study whether neighborhood equalization also contributes to intergenerational persistence in neighborhood contexts among descendants of immigrants in Norway. Using administrative data, we find that immigrant descendants as adults often remain in neighborhood contexts that resemble their childhood neighborhoods, characterized by relative economic disadvantage and comparatively few ethnic majority residents. Intergenerational persistence in neighborhood contexts is strongest among descendants of immigrants from Pakistan, the Middle East, and Africa. The remaining immigrant–native gaps in spatial economic inequality largely reflect differences in individuals' education and earnings, family background, and childhood neighborhood context, but these factors matter less for ethnic neighborhood segregation. For both economic and ethnic dimensions of neighborhood attainment, childhood neighborhood context is the factor that matters most in accounting for immigrant–native gaps, whereas individual socioeconomic attainment is the least important. Overall, our findings point to a pattern of "uneven assimilation" among immigrant descendants, where spatial assimilation is slow despite rapid socioeconomic progress across immigrant generations in the egalitarian Norwegian welfare state.