Chicago, Illinois - University of California, Davis, sociology faculty and students will present about 20 papers at the American Sociological Association annual meeting in Chicago August 22 – 25, with much scholarship focusing on issues of the poor and under-represented.

Among the paper topics:

• low-wage workers' strategies for managing employment insecurity
• the permanent population of undocumented migrants caused by tighter border controls
• policies that prevent a poor neighborhood from receiving redevelopment funding
• the experience of women engineers in Silicon Valley.

“The annual meeting is where thousands of sociologists come together and share their work,” said Victoria Smith, chair of the sociology department. “We encourage our graduate students from the start to submit papers and take part.“

Smith and graduate student Brian Halpin will present a paper about employment strategies used by people doing janitorial, restaurant, landscaping and construction work in the Napa and Sonoma areas. They learned that these workers use the same networking and self-promotion techniques as those in middle and higher income jobs.

“They understand the importance of making contacts and emphasizing their ability to learn new skills and other positive qualities,” Smith said. “They are strategic in their job seeking.”

But even using such strategies, these workers often have low education levels, uncertain work schedules and hold several jobs, making it difficult for them to move into the middle class, she said.

The paper will be presented Aug. 23 at 8:30 a.m. Location to be determined.

Professor Bruce Haynes and Jesus Hernandez, a lecturer in sociology who earned his doctorate at UC Davis, examine how recent infusion of federal funding for cities has not made its way to a poor Sacramento neighborhood.

The study focuses on North Franklin Street, an area with a large population of under-represented people with high levels of poverty and unemployment. The neighborhood doesn’t have the connections to get recently available funding for streetscaping, sidewalks and other amenities, researchers said.

“The money is going to areas that already have redevelopment happening,” said Hernandez.  “Franklin Street is a place that everyone has ignored and continues to ignore.”

Presentation Aug. 25 at 10:30 a.m. Location TBD.

A paper by Erin Hamilton, assistant professor, and doctoral student Jo Mhairi Hale, uses a decade’s worth of data to show that tighter security on the U.S.-Mexico border has led to a permanent population of undocumented migrants and their children in the United States.

In earlier times, Mexican agricultural works, usually men, followed crop harvests then returned to their families in Mexico.

“Because tighter border control makes crossing so costly and risky, many simply don’t return home,” Hale said. “My perspective is it is creating a problem that didn’t exist before.”

Paper will be presented Aug. 24 at 4:30 p.m. Location TBD.

Graduate student Chris Caldeira explores the “stark gender imbalances” in the high tech world. Caldeira’s paper “Women in High Tech: Negotiating the Experience of Being Outnumbered” looks at the experiences of women engineers in Silicon Valley where eight out of 10 engineers are men.

“There are remarkable few ethnographic studies that offer insight into the on-the-ground experiences of women in high tech,” Caldeira said.

Presentation Aug. 25 at 12:30 p.m. Location TBD.

The ASA conference is being held at the Hilton Chicago, 720 S. Michigan Ave. and Hilton Palmer House, 17 E. Monroe St.