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Yvette M. Young

Postdoctoral Researcher With Vietnam Health and Aging Study, University of Utah
Chapter Member: Utah SSN

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About Yvette

Young's most recent research focuses on the economic integration of former refugees living in Utah. She looks at labor market participation, occupational prestige and mobility, and livable wages for people of refugee background. Key themes in Young's work include contextual impediments to the employment opportunities of refugees, intersectional disadvantage in the labor market, and creative forms of discrimination against "conspicuously foreign" workers. Young also researches social capital and participation in voluntary associations. Key themes include gender imbalances in social capital and voluntarism, as well as qualitative differences in the composition of social capital in countries with different levels of social and economic development. 

In the News

Yvette M. Young quoted on women refugees and the employment sector by Marjorie Cortez, "Women Refugees in Utah Encounter Greater Challenges to Resettlement, U. Panel Says" KSL.com, December 9, 2015.

Publications

""Making Do” in the Land of Opportunity—A Quantitative Exploration of the Economic Integration of Refugees in Utah" Journal of International Migration and Integration 21 (2019): 611–631.

Discusses how the economic integration of refugees is a multidimensional process. Mentions how existing research predominantly assesses economic integration unidimensionally as rapid employment or as wage level. Examines refugees’ long-term prospects for earning a livable wage.

"State-Level Social Safety-Nets for Families Coping with Job Loss" (with Megan Reynolds and Ashley Fox). Poverty & Public Policy (Forthcoming).
"Building Walls or Opening Borders? Global Immigration Policy Attitudes across Economic, Cultural, and Human Security Contexts" (with Peter Loebach and Kim Korinek). Social Science Research 75 (2018): 83-95 .

Explores the effects of economic context, cultural context, and national security events on immigration policy attitudes. Proposes a theoretical framework incorporating three overarching contextual domains.

"Social Context and Social Capital: Governance, Inequality, and the Individual Experience" International Journal of Sociology 44, no. 2 (2014): 37-62.

Uses a three part concept of social capital that incorporates structural elements, cognitive elements, and collective action, to explore cross-national variation in social capital. Discusses how the forms and levels of social capital can be influenced by individual characteristics, such as gender and education level, and by macrolevel social factors such as polity type, quality of governance, inequality, and corruption.

"The Gender of Joiners: A Global Perspective on Gender, Development, Inequality, and Membership in Voluntary Associations" (with Claudia Geist). Sociology of Development 3, no. 4 (2017): 346-376.

Examines membership in voluntary associations globally and thereby the national characteristics that drive the gender disparity. Argues that two theories researchers have used to explain individual-level memberships—the resource perspective and homophily theory—also apply to contextual influences on joining associations.