Socioeconomic Stress and Academic Adjustment Among Asian American Adolescents: The Protective Role of Family Obligation

Socioeconomic stress has long been found to place youth at risk, with low family income conferring disadvantages in adolescents’ school achievement and success. This study investigates the role of socioeconomic stress on academic adjustment, and pinpoints family obligation as a possible buffer of negative associations. We examined direct and interactive effects at two time points in the same sample of Asian American adolescents—early high school (N = 180 9th–10th graders; 60 % female) and 2 years later in late high school (N = 156 11th–12th graders; 87 % of original sample). Results suggest that socioeconomic stress is indeed associated with poor academic adjustment, measured broadly through self-reported GPA, importance of academic success, and educational aspirations and expectations. Family obligation was positively related to adjustment, and also was found to buffer the negative effects of socioeconomic stress, but only during adolescents’ later high school years. Adolescents reporting more family obligation experienced less of the negative effects of financial stress on academic outcomes than those reporting lower obligation. Cultural and developmental implications are discussed in light of these direct and moderating effects.     

Documenting the Louisiana Sugar Economy, 1845–1917: An On-line Database Project

Documenting Louisiana Sugar (http://www.sussex.ac.uk/louisianasugar), an on-line database project rolled out in July 2008 and now freely available, provides historians and social scientists with an innovative tool for examining one sector of the plantation economy and agrarian society in the American South. Utilizing exceptionally detailed annual crop returns and additional census records, the project makes available two fully searchable databases that allow users to examine in micro and macro detail the evolution of one of America's definitive plantation crops, namely cane sugar. These are available on the project's website, which also includes census material, illustrations, bibliographies, and essays. What follows is a report describing the evolution and aims of this innovative effort to make primary sources widely available in digitized form on the internet.     

Undocumented consciousness: Citizenship and illegality in the lives of US citizen youth

This paper examines the impact of immigration law on US citizens' understanding of legal status categories. Prior research on legal consciousness has uncovered the ways in which undocumented persons make sense of and navigate their legal position in society. Less is known, however, about the paradox of US citizen children who are legally protected by their citizenship yet grow up in the context of their parents' precarious immigration statuses. Drawing on interviews with US citizen youth and undocumented parents, I conceptualize the phenomenon of undocumented consciousness to explain how US citizens make sense of parental legal status vulnerability. By witnessing their parents' blocked opportunities from work, travel, and other aspects of life, youth begin to attach meaning to citizenship and its protections, all the while forming an understanding of what it means, practically, to live in the United States with and without legal status. Findings reveal the mechanisms by which it is possible for functions of immigration law to have adverse impacts on the lives of US citizens themselves.     

Long Bone (Humerus,Femur, Tibia) Measuring Procedure in Cadavers

In this work, we present a measuring methodology for long bones of the limbs (humerus, femur, and tibia) of human corpses. Measurements of cadaveric height and long bone lengths were conducted on 72 corpses (20 females and 52 males) from the School of Medicine at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. Additionally, these measurements were compared with those taken from dry bones of a subsample of individuals. Our results show marginal differences (TEM% = 0.59) between cadaveric and dry bone measurements, resulting from different osteometric technical procedures. This note outlines the measuring methodology, which will be subsequently used to create regression formulas for stature estimation.     

Local Conflicts and International Compromises: The Sustainable Use of Vicuña in Argentina

The vicuña Vicugna vicugna is a wild South American camelid with a fiber so highly valued that the species was hunted almost to extinction. Strict conservation regulations and international treaties have been successful in causing vicuña populations to recover to a level where it is now possible to develop “sustainable use” programs. In Chile, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, and Argentina, vicuña management plans have been developed, with differing biological and socioeconomic implications. The major issue is whether vicuña are managed in the wild or in captivity. The aim of this paper is to examine the forces that have, in recent years, shaped policies concerning vicuña management, and especially the underlying conflict between economic growth and conservation. The analysis draws largely on primary data from Argentina and a report written by the U.S. Department of the Interior, Fish and Wildlife Service concerning the reclassification of vicuña from endangered to threatened. This report is important both directly (because FWS is the key advisory body to the U.S. government and the United States is a major potential market for the fiber), and indirectly, because the views of the United States and its advisers will in turn have a major influence on other actors.     

Teenage childbirth and young adult criminal convictions: A quasi-experimental study of criminal outcomes for teenage mothers

Purpose

Teenage childbirth is associated with poor psychosocial outcomes for teen mothers. One example is that teen mothers have higher rates of antisocial behavior. The extant research has not been able to determine if teenage motherhood is independently associated with criminal behavior, or if the association is due to selection factors associated with both teenage childbirth and criminal behavior.

Methods

We used longitudinal data from Swedish national registers and sibling-comparisons (both full- and half-siblings) to identify the extent to which there is an independent association between teenage childbirth and mothers’ likelihood of criminal conviction between ages 20-30, or if the association is confounded by familial (including genetic or environmental) factors that make sisters similar.

Results

Women who began childbearing as teenagers were more likely to be convicted of a crime in young adulthood compared to women who delayed childbearing. When sisters were compared, the association between teenage childbirth and criminal convictions disappeared. Multivariate behavior genetic analyses suggest genetic and shared environmental account for the association.

Conclusions

The statistical association between teenage childbirth and early adulthood criminal convictions is confounded by genetic and shared environmental factors that influence both the likelihood of teenage childbirth and risk of early adulthood criminal conviction.     

Genetic data of four X-chromosomal STRs in a population sample of Santa Catarina, Brazil

Population: A total of 184 healthy unrelated individuals (70 females and 114 males), autochthonous from Santa Catarina, Brazil.     

“Experts by Experience”: The Involvement of Service Users and Families in Designing and Implementing Innovations in Family Justice

Drawing on international research, policy, and practice, this article explores what is meant by service user involvement, how it has developed, and how it has been implemented across different areas of practice. Using examples from across the health and social care fields, it reflects on how the learning from other areas of practice in which service user involvement has been successful may be applied to the family justice field. The arguments presented highlight the value of taking a bottom‐up approach in designing and implementing innovations in family justice, which would embrace the views of family members, including children, as ‘service users.’ It is important, however, to balance both the challenges and the opportunities offered by involving those who are ‘experts by experience’ in the family justice processes, in order to lead to improved services and experiences.     

Data protection in the Asia-Pacific region

The increasing reliance on technology as a means of conducting cross-border businesses has spurred on the development of data protection and privacy laws in many countries across the globe. In Asia, however, many countries today still have no or extremely limited data protection laws. Cultural attitudes towards the concept of autonomy and the well-established right of certain governments to monitor and scrutinise its people in certain countries have been partly to blame. However, in order to remain economically viable, the businesses and government of these countries must be able to provide protections which are at least similar to those afforded by the data protection laws of their business counterparts. This article examines the effectiveness and relevance of the APEC Privacy Framework and the state of the data protection laws in eight Asia-Pacific countries today.     

Asia–Pacific news

This column provides a country by country analysis of the latest legal developments, cases and issues relevant to the IT, media and telecommunications' industries in key jurisdictions across the Asia Pacific region. The articles appearing in this column are intended to serve as ‘alerts’ and are not submitted as detailed analyses of cases or legal developments.