Alien Citizens and the Canonical Immigrant: Do Stigmatized Attributes Affect Latina/o Judgment about Discrimination?

Negative elite and news media attention to Latino‐relevant issues, particularly undocumented immigration, has dramatically increased in recent years, potentially stigmatizing attributes of Latinos such as immigration status and language use. Concomitantly, immigration policy changes were leading to widespread arrests and deportation of many Latinos. Herein, we ask two questions: First, to what extent do Latinos perceive and experience discrimination? Second, to what extent do immigration status, generational status, and language use moderate beliefs about discrimination? Using Pew National Survey of Latinos data, we find that Latino beliefs about the problem of discrimination is a decreasing function of “proximity” to the “canonical immigrant”—defined here as first‐generation immigrants who are Spanish‐language dominant. Further, we demonstrate that reported rates of victimization due to discrimination exhibit no clear pattern and are flat over time. We conclude by demonstrating that discrimination beliefs have significant implications for systemic trust, anxiety, and policy preferences.     

Determinants of citizen support for community-oriented policing

The extent to which community members are willing to cooperate with the police and become involved with various community crime prevention programs depends on citizen perceptions of the police and of the community in which they reside. The purpose of the present study is to explore factors that affect support for community policing in a small rural city. Findings revealed that the majority of respondents supported community policing. Using community survey data collected from over 400 citizens in a small metropolitan area in the intermountain West, this study also explored the importance of demographic factors, community characteristics, and public perceptions and experiences with police in predicting citizens’ support for community policing. Citizen support for community-oriented policing varied somewhat by demographic factors (i.e., gender, education), and by community characteristics (i.e., disorder, social cohesion).     

Fair Trade-Organic Coffee Cooperatives,Migration, and Secondary Schooling in Southern Mexico

We explore three trends in rural southern Mexico (Fair Trade coffee, migration, and conditional cash transfers) that could explain the rapid rise in education from 1995–2005 using survey data from 845 coffee farming households in Oaxaca and Chiapas, Mexico. Results from a household fixed-effects model show that household participation in a Fair Trade-organic cooperative contributed to about a 0.7 year increase in schooling for girls. US migration opportunities appear to have even stronger positive impacts on schooling for females. Although participation in Fair Trade-organic cooperatives appears also to have increased male schooling, increased migration opportunities have had an indeterminate effect for males.     

Creating a safer working environment through psychological assessment: A review of a measure of safety consciousness

This article explores how organizations can prevent workplace accidents through the psychological assessment of employees. We present a model of employee safety consciousness consisting of personality and attitudinal variables associated with a higher risk of accident involvement. A safety conscious employee is described as one who: has an internal locus of control in matters related to workplace safety, has a high tolerance for work‐related stress, and avoids engaging in high‐risk, sensation‐seeking activities. Relevant research is reviewed and applications of the safety consciousness construct to hiring, promotion and training are discussed.     

What price fairness when security is at stake? Police legitimacy in South Africa

The legitimacy of legal authorities – particularly the police – is central to the state's ability to function in a normatively justifiable and effective manner. Studies, mostly conducted in the US and UK, regularly find that procedural justice is the most important antecedent of police legitimacy, with judgments about other aspects of police behavior – notably, about effectiveness – appearing less relevant. But this idea has received only sporadic testing in less cohesive societies where social order is more tenuous, resources to sustain it scarcer, and the position of the police is less secure. This paper considers whether the link between process fairness and legitimacy holds in the challenging context of present day South Africa. In a high crime and socially divided society, do people still emphasize procedural fairness or are they more interested in instrumental effectiveness? How is the legitimacy of the police influenced by the wider problems faced by the South African state? We find procedural fairness judgments play a key role, but also that South Africans place greater emphasis on police effectiveness (and concerns about crime). Police legitimacy is, furthermore, associated with citizens' judgments about the wider success and trustworthiness of the state.