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"On Shifting Ground examines how it is to become a man in a place and time defined by economic contraction and carceral expansion. Jamie J. Fader draws on in-depth interviews with a racially diverse sample of Philadelphia's millennial men to analyze the key tensions that organize their lives: isolation versus connectedness, stability versus 'drama,' hope versus fear, and stigma and shame versus positive, masculine affirmation. In the unfamiliar cultural landscape of contemporary adult masculinity, these men strive to define themselves in terms of what they can accomplish despite negative labels, seeking to avoid 'becoming a statistic' in the face of endemic risk"--

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Preface -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- 1. No Love for the Brothers: Youth Incarceration and Reentry in Philadelphia -- 2. "Because That Is the Way You Are": Predictions of Failure and Cultural Assaults Inside Mountain Ridge Academy -- 3. "You Can Take Me Outta the 'Hood, But You Can't Take the 'Hood Outta Me": The Experience of "Reform" at Mountain Ridge Academy -- 4. "Nothing's Changed but Me": Reintegration Plans Meet the Inner City -- 5. "I'm Not a Mama's Boy, I'm My Own Boy": Employment, Hustling, and Adulthood -- 6. "I Just Wanna See a Part of Me That's Never Been Bad": Family, Fatherhood, and Further Offending -- 7. "I'm Finally Becoming the Person I Always Wanted to Be": Masculine Identity, Social Support, and Falling Back -- 8. "I Got Some Unfinished Business": Fictions of Success at Mountain Ridge Academy's Graduation Ceremony -- Conclusion -- Notes -- Index -- About the Author

AbstractThis study employs in‐depth interviews (n = 45) with men 25–34 years in age who live in a Philadelphia neighborhood heavily impacted by mass incarceration. It asks the following: 1) How do they perceive risk? 2) How do they organize their daily routines in response to it? 3) Are there racial differences in perceptions and adaptations to risk? Nearly all of the men of color in the study reported staying in their houses and avoiding public spaces, viewing them as unpredictable and posing an unacceptable level of risk. They worried about "drama" or the potential for interactions with others to lead to attention by the police. Their practice of "network avoidance" often meant a complete lack of engagement in their community. Network avoidance is a racialized adaptation to the expansion of the criminal legal apparatus and the unpredictable nature of men's interactions with its agents and enforcers. It reproduces the effects of incarceration by essentially turning their homes into prisons. Network avoidance effectively erases young men of color from the public sphere in the same way that incarceration removes them from their communities, with considerable costs for the men themselves and for their neighborhoods.

This study draws on interviews with 20 drug sellers in Philadelphia to explore their subjective perceptions of risk and reward within the modern context of increased police scrutiny and few illegal or legal opportunities for social mobility. Most respondents earned little, viewed drug sales negatively, and perceived the next generation of drug sellers to be unpredictable and prone to risk. They sought exit opportunities, associating continued participation in drug sales with childhood and wishing to participate more fully in the mainstream economy. Half of the sample worked in legal employment, and many argued that this was both necessary and beneficial to reducing risk. The findings suggest that traditional theories explaining participation in drug sales may need to be re-examined in light of changes in the landscape of the drug economy. Moreover, they may provide context to understanding why deterrence-based policies have generally failed to disrupt drug markets.

This article offers an ethnographic examination of a graduation ceremony from 'Santana School', a reform school targeting youthful drug offenders. After returning to the facility with five former residents, I contend that ceremony was a rare opportunity for these young men to reclaim the carceral experience on their own terms. Wearing their own clothing, using their own language, and playing their own music, they affirmed both their personal choices and the legitimacy of their cultural identities as Black men and its compatibility with success. Returning to the place where they had been held against their will offered them the chance to actively shape the staff's collective memories of them and who they could become, as well as transforming their own narratives of the place and their time there. However, unlike most status passages, Santana's graduation ceremony failed to confer the concrete privileges of a truly new status. I analyze the meaning of the experience for the young men in my study in light of Maruna's call in this issue for the provision of redemption rituals which could strip the stigma from incarceration and restore the offender's status in the community.

AbstractThe last two decades have witnessed a rapid growth in research and theorizing about the desistance process, namely the causal mechanisms behind the termination or slowing of offending that frequently accompany adulthood. This flurry of scholarly activity has been spurred by both the ascendance of the life course paradigm of criminology, which examines patterns of criminal offending over the life span, but also by the very real practical demands of supporting the transitions of over 700,000 former prisoners released to their communities each year.The field of desistance theory has expanded upon its original formulations that were largely (although not exclusively) based on White males and has recently turned to examining (1) the potential invariance of desistance processes for members of other groups and (2) the unique experiences of reentry and pathways to desistance for sub‐groups. In this essay, we review these recent developments, particularly as they relate to women, persons of color, and incarcerated youth. Finally, we turn to the intersectionality framework, which examines the social location of individuals within interlocking systems of oppression (e.g., race, class, gender, age, sexual orientation, and ability, among others). We conclude with some suggestions for how intersectionality could be used to expand the conceptual and practical boundaries of research on desistance and reentry.

This article uses census microdata to address key issues in the Mexican immigration debate. First, we find striking parallels in the experiences of older and newer immigrant groups with substantial progress among second- and subsequent-generation immigrants from southern and eastern Europe and Mexican Americans. Second, we contradict a view of immigrant history that contends that early–twentieth–century immigrants from southern and eastern Europe found well–paying jobs in manufacturing that facilitated their ascent into the middle class. Both first and second generations remained predominantly working class until after World War II. Third, the erosion of the institutions that advanced earlier immigrant generations is harming the prospects of Mexican Americans. Fourth, the mobility experience of earlier immigrants and of Mexicans and Mexican Americans differed by gender, with a gender gap opening among Mexican Americans as women pioneered the path to white–collar and professional work. Fifth, public–sector and publicly funded employment has proved crucial to upward mobility, especially among women. The reliance on public employment, as contrasted to entrepreneurship, has been one factor setting the Mexican and African American experience apart from the economic history of most southern and eastern European groups as well as from the experiences of some other immigrant groups today.