E. Paige Borelli, a 3rd year sociology Ph.D. student received the 2013 Himes Graduate Student Paper award from the North Carolina Sociological Association. Borelli received the award for her second year paper "The Limits of Solidarity: Bounded Solidarity and Immigrant Wealth in the U.S.", which uses the New Immigrant Survey to examine how group processes affect immigrant asset ownership and wealth attainment.
Paper Abstract:
Immigration scholars often use bounded solidarity, a source of social capital that emerges when a minority group experiences similar hardships, to explain differential patterns of immigrant economic incorporation. This article examines between group processes, specifically bounded solidarity, and immigrant wealth attainment in the U.S. I use the New Immigrant Survey (NIS), a nationally representative sample of immigrants who are Legal Permanent Residents, to test the relationship between bounded solidarity and immigrant wealth. I analyze whether bounded solidarity indicators predict bank account and home ownership and I investigate the relationship between five bounded solidarity indicators and immigrant net worth. Results demonstrate that the relationship between bounded solidarity and wealth varies significantly by region of origin and educational attainment. Immigrants with lower educational attainment rely more on bounded solidarity than those with higher educational attainment. Bounded solidarity has a stronger and more negative association with the wealth of less-educated immigrants than it does with more highly educated immigrants, indicating that immigrants using bounded solidarity are doubly disadvantaged. This research provides important insights into the diverse effects of group-level processes on immigrant wealth specifically and immigrant economic outcomes in general.
Department of Sociology