Over the last two decades, neighborhood of residence has re-emerged as an important predictor of crime, delinquency, and problem behavior at both the macro and micro levels. Yet little research has examined whether features of neighborhood contexts differ in their effects depending on individual status characteristics, such as race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status. Further, there is no consistent theory that can be used to derive predictions about how these key aspects of status condition the effects of important contexts such as schools and neighborhoods.
In this dissertation, I address this gap. I advance and test a theory of "relative status" in which I argue that an individual's status relative to those in his or her immediate milieu conditions participation in delinquency and problem behavior. Drawing on Bourdieu's insights on distinction and Steele's concept of "stereotype threat," the relative status theory posits that individual adolescents engage in or refrain from delinquency as a way of distinguishing themselves from lower status groups to which they risk comparison.
Using data from the Los Angeles County and the City of Chicago, I consider how an individual's status as Latino, and/or a recent immigrant or child of immigrants, interacts with key aspects of neighborhood structure and neighborhood social processes to predict two outcomes: violence and arrest. I adjudicate among three theoretical perspectives: relative status theory, differential social organization theory, and segmented assimilation theory.
The results indicate that the relationship between neighborhood affluence and the likelihood of violence is curvilinear for foreign-born adolescents: as neighborhood affluence increases, the likelihood of violence for these adolescents increases, but at the highest levels of affluence, the direction of the effect becomes negative. Second, I find that the relationship between neighborhood percent foreign-born and the likelihood of arrest is also curvilinear. As percentage foreign-born increases, the likelihood of arrest for all adolescents increases up to a tipping point at which the neighborhood approximates an "enclave," and the likelihood of arrest decreases. Residence in an immigrant enclave is protective for an arrest outcome, but its effects are especially protective for U.S.-born Latinos.