In today’s BBC News: Camden Council to move poorer families out of the borough

Center director Paul Jargowsky was quoted in an article that appeared in the Philadelphia Inquirer on Sunday, February 10, 2013, entitled: Amid crushing poverty and crime, Camden fights on

Our colleagues at the Penn Institute for Urban Research are hosting a panel discussion titled:

Place-Based Interventions: Exploring the Research and Evidence

on February 13 @ 5:30pm 

Please click here for the event flyer

Stefanie DeLuca, Ph.D.

Johns Hopkins University

“Why Poor People Move (and Where They Go): Residential Mobility, Selection, and Racial Segregation”

Thursday, January 24, 2013 – 12:20pm
Faculty Lounge, 3rd floor Armitage Hall

 

The reproduction of segregation and unequal neighborhood attainment has long been a social problem identified by scholars. Despite demonstrating high levels of residential mobility, low-income black families are less likely than any other group to escape disadvantaged neighborhoods.  These findings call for research to identify the mechanisms which work to channel families into unequal neighborhoods. Using in-depth interviews with 100 low-income African-American families residing in Mobile, AL and Baltimore, MD, we describe how the process of relocation works for the urban poor and how families engage in the process of neighborhood selection throughout their residential biographies.  In a striking departure from traditional research on mobility, we find that most families do not choose to move at all, with more than 70 percent of all most recent moves being catalyzed by forces which induce immediate, often involuntary relocation.  We show how this “reactive mobility” works to accelerate and hamper residential selection in ways that may reproduce neighborhood context. Where mobility happens voluntarily, we show how these choices are often made under circumstances which prohibit families from investigating their full range of residential options. We also show how parenting in the inner city and a lifetime of experience in violent communities sets expectations low for neighborhood quality, but high for housing unit characteristics.

The study of poverty is often dominated by sociologists and economists. Yet poverty and inequality are such a fundamental aspects of the human experience that many other disciplines have valuable contributions to make to our understanding of this phenomenon.  How has poverty been portrayed in literature, and how has that changed over time? What are the moral and ethical dimensions of poverty in an affluent? How does the experience of poverty shape individual and group identities?  Generally, what insights into the causes and consequences of poverty can be contributed by the Humanities, particularly English, history, philosophy, and religion?

To gauge the interest on campus in a broadly interdisciplinary program of activities concerning poverty, CURE sponsored a lunch with scholars from across the University.  Those attending the lunch, shown below from left to right, are Lorraine C. Minnite (Public Policy), Joan Maya Mazelis (Sociology), Carol J. Singley (English), Christopher Fitter (English), Paul Jargowsky (Public Policy), Keith Green (English), John Wall (Childhood Studies, Philosophy and Religion), and Adam Okulicz-Kozaryn (Public Policy).  Also attending was Natasha Tursi, Associate Director of CURE.  Proposals for follow up activities are under development.  Watch this space for updates.