Ph.D. - Sociology

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https://hdl.handle.net/10125/2159

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    The Mental Health and Social Costs of Police Encounters Among Young Adults in the United States
    (University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2023) Kohl, Noreen; Mossakowski, Krysia; Sociology
    In recent years, American law enforcement has been brought into public focus by global outrage over police killings of Black people. While high profile cases of police violence are more widely discussed in media, activists and scholars are also raising questions about less intensive interactions with police. Specifically, there is growing concern about over-policing and everyday encounters via “mass arrests” in the United States. Less severe interactions with police can adversely affect individuals beyond the time-limited interaction, potentially limiting future life chances and psychological wellbeing. Being stopped or arrested by police may have long-lasting ramifications for the life course and mental health of young adults. Therefore, this dissertation examines the implications of police encounters for mental health and life chances associated with SES among young adults, within the context of racial inequality in the United States. Data are from the U.S. National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health). The main findings reveal the harmful impact of police encounters on educational opportunities (i.e., attainment of a college degree), unmet aspirations, and mental health among young adults. My study assesses outcomes including diagnosed mental health disorders (i.e., PTSD, anxiety or panic disorder, and depression) as well as unmet educational aspirations among a national sample of young adults. Policy implications involve the replacement of zero-tolerance school policies with non-punitive approaches to “misbehaviors;” expanded access to higher education institutions; the redirection of funds from law enforcement towards social services and programs; improvements to mental health services; and reframing around the role and scope of police in the United States.
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    Adapting To Eat, Eating To Adapt: Food, Class, And Identity Of Nikkei Brazilians In Japan
    (University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2023) Hillyer, Rumika Suzuki; Steinhoff, Patricia G.; Sociology
    This study uses food as a medium through which to explore the nuanced lives and experiences of ethnically Japanese Brazilian nationals who currently live in Japan. Japan and Brazil have been intimately linked since the late-nineteenth century, when manual labor shortages in Brazil coincided with Japan’s rapid industrialization, prompting some 248,000 Japanese to emigrate to Brazil between the 1880s and the 1970s. Roughly a century later after this migration began, in the early 1990s, Japan’s own manual labor shortage prompted the provision of preferential employment visas to Japanese descendants living abroad. Thereafter, Japan’s number of Brazilian nationals of Japanese ancestry [known as Nikkei Brazilians] drastically increased, with most working in factories located in Japan’s industrial centers. Today, there are about 207,000 Brazilian nationals residing in Japan, comprising the fifth-largest non-Japanese resident population in Japan. This dissertation examines social, cultural, and economic aspects of life for Nikkei Brazilians in Japan, who have been mostly characterized in academic literature as dekasegi, or temporary factory workers. Qualitative, in-depth interviews with over 70 Nikkei Brazilians of widely varying social and cultural backgrounds reveal that they come to Japan not only to work in manual labor, but for education, career opportunities, professional development, and family ties. By focusing on food choices and taste, the dissertation explores the sociological concepts of habitus, capital, social class, and taste, and challenges how they apply to a transnational population such as Japan’s Nikkei Brazilians. Food and foodways are particularly useful avenues for exploring values, upbringing, culture, family, work, and identity within Nikkei Brazilians’ everyday lives, which have not been discussed in existing scholarship. Food-focused interviews centered on notions of taste reveal that Nikkei-Brazilian food preferences are shaped by their social class, geographic location, and social and cultural environment. Specifically, the relation between class and taste is more nuanced among Nikkei Brazilians who have experienced class shifts and occupational changes in moving between Japan and Brazil. The interview data also show that eating evokes personal and shared memories and feelings of nostalgia that facilitate sociocultural ties and a sense of belonging when in unfamiliar spaces. Moreover, “Brazilian food,” as it relates to “food from home” cited by Nikkei Brazilian interviewees, is drastically different from the mainstream Japanese imagination of Brazilian food that is appropriated and capitalized by Japan’s restaurant industry. Lastly, the study shows that contemporary Nikkei Brazilians navigate an “in-betweenness,” as being both Japanese and Brazilian, which ultimately helps them cope with their treatment as “foreigners” in Japan and “Japanese” in Brazil.
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    No Trespass Zones: Governing the Mobility of Citizens and Migrants in the Post-Civil Rights Era
    (University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2022) Rita, Nathalie; Sharma, Nandita; Sociology
    The social scientific study of migration is dedicated to understanding the experiences of peoplewho migrate, their post-migration integration, and the regulation of these processes. Despite playing a foundational role in the growth of sociology in the United States, the study of migration has recently come under critique for solely focusing on the movement of people across international boundaries, as it reproduces a state-centric definition of migration that overlooks other forms of human mobility. In response, scholars have called for the methodological de- nationalism of migration studies, recognizing that immigration is one of multiple ways in which movement is guided and constrained at different socio-political scales. This dissertation expands on recent trends in migration-related theory to understandcontemporary trends in social control. In particular, it presents three in-depth case studies of subnational governments that have enacted trespass ordinances in response to seemingly disparate social problems, including immigration, homelessness, and juvenile delinquency. By studying trespass law as a type of political border, this dissertation theoretically challenges the reproduction of state-centric definitions of migration, as it explores how mechanisms of mobility control can “illegalize” people located across the migrant/citizen divide. In turn, this work offers newfound insights into theories of citizenship, migration, and social control. However, the broader implication of this research is that it provides a framework for understanding punitive policies, which may be useful to researchers, policymakers, and community organizers who seek to unite disparate movements for social justice.
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    The Effect Of Migration Status On Children’s Academic Performance In China
    (University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2022) Liu, Lin; Zhang, Wei; Sociology
    Under China’s rapid economic development, China’s rural-to-urban migration has affected the lives of many children. 18.97 million school-aged migrant children migrate to urban areas with their parents (Ministry of Education 2017). Among the migrant population, many choose to migrate to coastal cities and metropolitan cities such as Shanghai, Beijing, and Guangzhou. Drawing upon the data of the 2013 academic year China Education Panel Study (CEPS), In this dissertation, I first compare the exam scores of rural-to-urban migrant children with non-migrant urban children and non-migrant rural children using the national sample. The findings indicate that both migrant children and rural children belong to the disadvantaged population under the current rural-urban dual structure. Under each comparison, this study examines the major factors that lead to the score differences between different groups of children. Further decomposition analyses explain that the major causes leading to the disparity in children’s academic performance consist of differences in family socioeconomic backgrounds and institutional restrictions. As the first city in China to provide free education for all its migrant children, the Shanghai case is representative and worth a closer look. Next, using the Shanghai subsample from the 2013 China Education Panel Study (CEPS), I compared the exam score between local urban Shanghai children and migrant children. Selecting the city Shanghai with a large number of migrant students allows for revealing the status of migrant children’s education and studying the impact of recent education reform and policies in Shanghai. The findings indicate that migrant children in Shanghai are the disadvantaged population compared with the local Shanghai children. Migrant children are disadvantaged in education overall, but the disadvantages vary according to localities. Though migrant children in Shanghai score significantly worse than local urban Shanghai children, their educational outcomes are better than migrant children in other non-metropolitan areas. Migrant children in Shanghai even score better in math than their urban peers in non-metropolitan cities. This dissertation also discussed the interpretation of these results, possible implications, and future policy directions.
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    Childhood and Adulthood Conditions in Relation to Mild Cognitive Impairment among U.S. and Chinese Older Adults: A Life Course Perspective
    (University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2022) Zhang, Keqing; Zhang, Wei; Sociology
    Using two nationally representative datasets, Chinese Health and Retirement Study (CHARLS) and Health and Retirement Study (HRS), this dissertation mainly examined the associations between adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), adulthood educational attainment and various domains of late-life cognitive functioning among older adults in China and United States under the life course framework. Results from cox proportional hazard models revealed that for both samples, various ACEs, for instance family SES and interpersonal relations were significantly associated with higher risk of mild cognitive impairment in later life, reconfirming the life course perspective and accumulative disadvantage theory. For the Chinese sample, childhood hunger was a strong risk factor for the mental status domain of cognitive functioning in later life, while the U.S. sample was especially susceptible to early paternal death. Following that, using adulthood educational attainment as a moderator, the detrimental effects of ACEs were buffered effectively: for both samples, having an education of middle school/high school or above could greatly reduce the risk of episodic memory impairment in later life. Moreover, dividing both samples into male and female groups, gender differences have been detected. Among the Chinese older adults, results revealed that males were more susceptible to mother-related ACEs, while females were influenced by ACEs of all aspects: childhood SES, early paternal death, hunger, and interpersonal relations. The protective effects of education were more significant for females. While for the U.S. sample, both groups suffered from the detrimental effects of various ACEs on late-life cognitive functioning, but the moderation of education only worked for females, greatly reducing the risk of mild cognitive impairment in later life. Findings of this study suggest that for older adults in both China and U.S., adverse childhood experiences could have long-lasting impacts on cognitive functioning throughout the life course, and adulthood educational attainment as an important resource is especially necessary and effective for females to buffer the effects of childhood trauma. This paper could provide reference for future research in an array of fields that can have implications for optimizing cognitive aging.
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    The Lifestyles And Worldviews Of Moms Who Choose Home Birth In Hawaiʻi
    (University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2021) Kisitu, Alexandra Anne; Mossakowski, Krysia; Sociology
    This study focuses on the worldviews and lifestyles of moms who chose homebirth in Hawaiʻi. I conducted one-on-one interviews with 59 moms who birthed outside the hospital in Hawaiʻi. Interviews were conducted between May 2018 and May 2019. The findings of this study reveal that the choice of homebirth shapes and is shaped by worldviews, health lifestyle, identity, spirituality, collectivities, and place. The findings also suggest that participants navigated social constraints as well as asserted agency in their homebirth choices. These findings contribute to health lifestyle theory in medical sociology in that spirituality and place/ʻāina with a family-centered worldview play a large role in the adoption of and influence on health lifestyles (as well as the choice of homebirth). Reclamation of birth choices and cultural practices and “taking back” of feminine power and agency reveal that participants, particularly Kānaka Maoli mothers in this study, continue to feel the effects of colonization, patriarchy, medical authority, and the occupation of Hawaiʻi. These findings also advance intersectional scholarship on racialization, Indigenous experience, and gender in terms of homebirth. Finally, this research contributes to feminist theory in terms of forging concepts of birth, identity, and the microbiome in shaping our social relationships.
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    Patterns of violence in Honolulu: a study on culture, social structure, and social situations in reference to the subculture of violence hypothesis
    (University of Hawaii at Manoa, 1986) Heaukulani, David; Sociology
    The general hypotheses of this study state that: (1) violence is not random in distribution and that it covaries with the socioeconomic characteristics of social areas; (2) nonviolent and violent offenders are associated with low violent rate and high vio