Each month, we select up to ten publications from those that have recently been entered into the Literature Database.

A year ago, there were approximately 7,600 citations in the Literature Database. As of June 2007, we now have over 8,750 citations.

Direct link to the Sloan Literature Update articles in the Literature Database.

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Crouter, A.C., Davis, K.D., Updegraff, K., Delgado, M.& Fortner, M. (2006). Mexican American fathers’ occupational conditions: Links to family members’ psychological adjustment. Journal of Marriage and Family, 68(4), 843-858.
This report fills a gap in the literature on the implications of parents’ work for families and children. The authors conducted home interviews with 218 Mexican American two-parent families, each with at least two adolescent children. Seventy-five percent of the parents interviewed were born in Mexico, and almost as many chose to be interviewed in Spanish rather than English. The authors examined several occupational conditions experienced by working fathers that can cause problems for the workers and, by extension, their families, including low wages, long work hours, shift work, work pressures, racism and discrimination, and underemployment. Findings suggest that fathers’ income and reports of racism at work are related to family members’ negative emotional well-being. Work hours, shift work, and work pressure did not predict family well-being in this sample.

Crowley, M., Lichter, D.T. & Qian, Z. (2006). Beyond gateway cities: Economic restructuring and poverty among Mexican immigrant families and children. Family Relations, 55(3), 345-360.
This paper uses data from the Integrated Public Use Microdata Samples and documents poverty rates among native-born and foreign-born Mexicans living in the southwestern United States as well as other regions to which many Mexican families have immigrated. The authors explore whether new settlement patterns and economic opportunities have improved Mexican families’ financial well-being. Findings reveal that Mexicans residing outside of the southwest have lower rates of poverty. However, many communities that are home to relocating Mexicans are strained by issues of language barriers, social integration, and the need for local services; the article makes several suggestions pertaining to adaptation, cultural awareness, and social and economic policies that will help meet the needs of Mexican workers and their families.

Grzywacz, J.G., Arcury, T.A., Marín, A., Carrillo, L., Burke, B., Coates, M.L. & Quandt, S.A. (2007). Work-family conflict: Experiences and health implications among immigrant Latinos. Journal of Applied Psychology, 92(4), 1119-1130.

The authors interviewed 26 workers and surveyed 200 workers, all of whom are Latinos employed in North Carolina’s poultry processing industry, to expand the understanding of culture and industry’s contributions to the experiences and outcomes of work-family conflict. The workers reported infrequent work-family conflict, suggesting that they view work and family as integrated, with work ensuring families’ well-being. This complements past research that indicates that individuals from collectivist cultures view work and family differently than those from more individualistic cultures. Results from the interviews revealed that exhaustion or fatigue is one of the more common forms of work-family conflict; the study’s measure of work-family conflict did not measure this type of conflict, possibly making the frequency of conflict appear lower than it actually is. Findings indicate that work-family conflict is highly gendered among this group of workers, with men often reporting a lack of conflict while women had many examples of their work lives interfering with their family lives. The article demonstrates the need for an expansion and modification of the traditional models of measuring work-family conflict.

Jiménez, T. (2007). Weighing the costs and benefits of Mexican immigration: The Mexican-American perspective. Social Science Quarterly, 88(3), 599-618.

The objective of this study is to understand the processes that explain how Mexican Americans calculate the costs and benefits of immigration. One hundred and twenty-three interviews and observation were conducted with later-generation Mexican Americans in Kansas and California. The respondents ranged in age 15 to 98 and were representative of a cross-section of Mexican Americans with various occupational and educational backgrounds. Based on this data, the author characterizes the attitudes of Mexican Americans toward immigration as “ambivalent,” with ideas about the costs and benefits of immigration shaped by conflicting American attitudes of anti-immigrant nativism and “market-driven” multiculturalism. Research has demonstrated that Mexican Americans who have become more integrated in the American economy will favor more restrictive immigration policies if they believe that immigration will have a negative impact on their economic or structural situation, while those who feel it will have a positive impact favor less restrictive policies. The author argues that non-economic factors are also important in understanding Mexican American attitudes toward immigration, and uses specific, commonly cited beliefs to support this assertion. (Annotated by Caitlin Sullivan, Research Assistant)

Massey, D.S. & Akresh, I.R. (2006). Immigrant intentions and mobility in a global economy: The attitudes and behavior of recently arrived U.S. immigrants. Social Science Quarterly, 87(5), 954-971.
Using data from the New Immigrant Survey Pilot, the authors developed a model connecting immigrants’ circumstances such as earnings and property ownership to their satisfaction with the United States, their intentions to naturalize and/or settle in the United States for the long term, and behaviors such as remitting and leaving the country. The New Immigrant Survey Pilot targeted 148,987 legal immigrants who were admitted for United States residency in July and August of 1996; 1,134 of those people participated in this survey. The sample was 52 percent male with an average age of 33 and an average annual salary of $14,500; the salary range began at a few hundred dollars and ran up to $750,000. Countries of origin included Europe, Canada, Australia, Mexico, Caribbean, other Latin American countries, and Africa. Findings indicate that immigrants with a high degree of satisfaction with the United States are more likely to intend to naturalize and therefore stay in the United States long term. Immigrants with high earnings and those who own property are less likely to intend to naturalize. Those with the highest levels of education are least likely to be satisfied with the United States, but dissatisfaction does not relate to the intent to naturalize.

Obeng, C.S. (2007). Immigrants’ families and childcare preferences: Do immigrants’ cultures influence their childcare decisions? Early Childhood Education Journal, 34(4), 259-264.

This article investigates the childcare preferences of eighteen African immigrant parents living in the United States and the influence of their cultural beliefs and practices. Using personal interviews and open-ended questionnaires, the authors asked the parents about their occupations, their childcare needs, the kind of childcare they use, the ethnicity of the caregiver, their childcare preferences, and whether their childcare method would be different if their financial situation changed for better or worse. Findings indicate that the parents’ cultures, which consider childcare to be a community responsibility rather than solely that of the parents, contribute to their childcare choices. The parents in the study preferred childcare centers to home childcare, nannies and au pairs, and other options. Suggestions about how childcare centers can incorporate the cultural practices of their clients are included.

Stephen, L. (2007) Transborder lives: Indigenous Oaxacans in Mexico, California, and Oregon. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Table of Contents: Approaches to transborder lives -- Transborder communities in political and historical context : views from Oaxaca -- Mexicans in California and Oregon -- Transborder labor lives : harvesting, housecleaning, gardening, and childcare -- Surveillance and invisibility in the lives of indigenous farmworkers in Oregon -- Women’s transborder lives : gender relations in work and families -- Navigating the borders of racial and ethnic hierarchies -- Grassroots organizing in transborder lives -- Transborder ethnic identity construction in life and on the net : e-mail and web page construction and use -- Conclusions -- Epilogue: Notes on collaborative research.

Harrington, B. & Hall, D.T. (2007). Career management & work-life integration: Using self-assessment to navigate contemporary careers. Los Angeles, CA: Sage Publications.

Understanding the new career -- The self-assessment process -- Integrating your self-assessment and developing implications -- Finding ideal work -- Career development strategies -- Work and family -- Workplace flexibility -- Career development over the lifespan -- Standards of excellence index.

Wright, T.A., Cropanzano, R., & Bonett, D.G. (2007). The moderating role of employee positive well being on the relation between job satisfaction and job performance. Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, 12(2), 93-104.

The authors used Frederickson’s broaden-and-build model and surveyed 109 managers from a large, U.S. customer service organization to investigate the associations between job satisfaction, psychological well being, and supervisory performance ratings. Findings indicate that job satisfaction does have a positive effect on job performance, assuming the employee has a high level of personal well being. For those with low personal well being, there is no visible relationship between job satisfaction and job performance. Practical implications for organizations and management practice are discussed.

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