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Challenging many common perceptions, this is the first book fully dedicated to understanding a major new phenomenon-the large numbers of skilled urban workers who are now coming across the border from Mexico's cities. Based on a ten-year, on-the-ground study of one working-class neighborhood in Monterrey, Mexico's industrial powerhouse and third-largest city,Metropolitan Migrantsexplores the ways in which Mexico's economic restructuring and the industrial modernization of the past three decades have pushed a new flow of migrants toward cities such as Houston, Texas, the global capital of the oil industry. Weaving together rich details of everyday life with a lucid analysis of Mexico's political economy, Rubén Hernández-León deftly traces the effects of restructuring on the lives of the working class, from the national level to the kitchen table.

In a story that spans from the founding of immigrant parishes in the early twentieth century to the rise of the Chicano civil rights movement in the early 1970s, Roberto R. Trevino discusses how an intertwining of ethnic identity and Catholic faith equipped Mexican Americans in Houston to overcome adversity and find a place for themselves in the Bayou City. Houston's native-born and immigrant Mexicans alike found solidarity and sustenance in their Catholicism, a distinctive style that evolved from the blending of the religious sensibilities and practices of Spanish Christians and New World indigenous peoples. Employing church records, newspapers, family letters, mementos, and oral histories, Trevino reconstructs the history of several predominately Mexican American parishes in Houston. He explores Mexican American Catholic life from the most private and mundane, such as home altar worship and everyday speech and behavior, to the most public and dramatic, such as neighborhood processions and civil rights marches. He demonstrates how Mexican Americans' religious faith helped to mold and preserve their identity, structured family and community relationships as well as institutions, provided both spiritual and material sustenance, and girded their long quest for social justice.

Beginning after World War I, Houston was transformed from a black-and-white frontier town into one of the most ethnically and racially diverse urban areas in the United States.Houston Bounddraws on social and cultural history to show how, despite Anglo attempts to fix racial categories through Jim Crow laws, converging migrations-particularly those of Mexicans and Creoles-complicated ideas of blackness and whiteness and introduced different understandings about race. This migration history also uses music and sound to examine these racial complexities, tracing the emergence of Houston's blues and jazz scenes in the 1920s as well as the hybrid forms of these genres that arose when migrants forged shared social space and carved out new communities and politics.This interdisciplinary book provides both an innovative historiography about migration and immigration in the twentieth century and a critical examination of a city located in the former Confederacy.

Data from an ethnically diverse sample of middle school (Grades 6–8) students (n = 5,423) are analyzed for ethnic differences in major depression. The point prevalence of major depression was 8.4% without and 4.3% with impairment. Data were sufficient to calculate prevalences for nine ethnic groups. Prevalences adjusted for impairment ranged from 1.9% for youths of Chinese descent to 6.6% for those of Mexican decent. African and Mexican American youths had significantly higher crude rates of depression without impairment, but only the latter had significantly higher rates of depression with impairment. Multivariate (logistic regression) analyses, adjusting for the effects of age, gender, and socioeconomic status (SES), yielded significant odds ratios for only one group. Mexican American youths were at elevated risk for both depression without (OR = 1.74, p < .05) and depression with impairment (OR = 1.71, p < .05). There was no significant interaction of ethnicity and SES in relation to depression. Females had higher prevalences of depression with and without impairment, as did youths who reported that their SES was somewhat or much worse off than their peers. The data add to growing evidence that Mexican American youths are at increased risk of depression, and that community intervention efforts should specifically target this high‐risk group.

Objective. We explore the increase in citizenship applications in the mid-1990s in order to test popular explanations for them, such as the consequences of IRCA legalization, fear of loss of public benefits, and effects of citizenship outreach programs. Methods. We rely on a nonrandom sample of 526 lawful permanent residents in four Texas cities. About half had applied for citizenship and all were taking affirmative steps via participation in citizenship or English-language classes. Results. Having received amnesty under IRCA predicts rapid application for citizenship upon eligibility but is not associated with greater mastery of the naturalization process or better English skills. Fear of losing eligibility for public benefits and campaigns promoting naturalization motivated about one-quarter of citizenship applicants. Much larger proportions cite their desire to participate fully in American life, to sponsor the immigration of relatives, and to ensure opportunities for their children. The main obstacle they identify is limited English proficiency. Conclusions. Although factors peculiar to the political environment of the 1990s affected many permanent residents, most cited traditional incentives having to do with investment in opportunities for themselves and their families. Our data suggest that the most effective way to facilitate naturalization is to devote more resources to English-language training.

Based on the concepts of empowerment of indigenous women through unity, validation of women as key health promoters, and the acceptance of a community's ability to identify and redress its own health needs, the de Madres a Madres Program was started in a Houston inner-city Hispanic community. The program has become a strategy for mobilizing a total community for health. Indigenous volunteer mothers learned how to provide information to increase access to health care. Information was provided through community coalitions the mothers formed with health clinics, social service agencies, local businesses, schools, churches, elected officials, and the media. Outcome data identified the covert functions of the program to be the enhancement of individual women's self-esteem and power, and the collective enhancement of community self-esteem, power, and economy. The concept of a community economy and a theoretical basis of empowerment of women are discussed in terms of community empowerment for community health.

A primary prevention program, the Houston Parent-Child Development Center, directed towards infants and their parents, has effectively reduced the frequency of behavior problems for these children 5 to 8 years after the program's completion. Teacher ratings showed significantly fewer acting-out, aggressive behaviors for program children. Ratings of classroom behaviors found program children significantly less hostile and more considerate than control boys. This appears to be the first primary prevention program to have demonstrated effectiveness in reducing behavior problems over such a long time.

Examines ethnic differences in rates of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) in female adolescents (N=205) receiving care at two family-planning clinics; new infection and reinfection rates were also examined. Black teens had a higher rate of past STDs than Hispanics or Whites; however, there were no differences in rates at the time of the clinic visit. (Author/MKA)