Corina Graif

Graduate Student in Sociology

Biographical Note

Corina Graif's research addresses questions related to individual socioeconomic and spatial mobility and attainment, neighborhood effects, spatial inequality and urban stratification, immigration, ethnicity and race, and research methods. She studies the long-term consequences of poverty and dynamics of trust formation, personal and community social capital and social networks; how immigration and ethnic diversity impact neighborhoods either positively, by increasing in-migration of the creative class and knowledge workers for instance, or negatively, by raising crime levels. She is interested in methodological aspects related to measuring mobility, diversity, neighborhood effects, social capital, segregation, and spatial diffusion, and in experimental and survey design and analysis.

In 2008-2009 Corina has been a dissertation fellow with the Project for Justice, Welfare, and Economics at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs and a research fellow at the Alfred Taubman Center for State and Local Government, John F. Kennedy School of Government. For 2009-2010, she received the Eliot Fellowship Award and a Fellowship from the Center for American Political Studies for dissertation completion.

EDUCATION

Ph.D. in Sociology, Harvard University, (expected) 2010.

M.A. in Sociology, Harvard University, 2007

DSA in International Law (LLM equiv.), School of Law, A. I. Cuza University, 2000

DL in Juridical Sciences (JD equiv.), School of Law, A. I. Cuza University, 1999

DISSERTATION

MOBILITY IN ISOLATION: NEIGHBORHOOD EFFECTS AND INEQUALITY IN THE MIGRATION PATHWAYS OF THE URBAN POOR

Committee: Robert J. Sampson (chair), Mary C. Waters, Christopher Winship, Peter V. Marsden, and William Julius Wilson

BRIEF SUMMARY: In a quest to better understand the social and economic factors that shape the fates of low income families in public housing in the U.S., this dissertation project aims to offer critical input on issues relevant to housing policy and initiatives affecting the welfare of the urban poor. The author argues that before we can understand the effects of neighborhoods we have to pay attention to differences in the racially and ethnically structured processes governing path-dependent residential trajectories along with spatially embedded mechanisms of integration and exclusion.

Based on longitudinal data from a large-scale field experiment, the Moving to Opportunity for Fair Housing Demonstration Program in combination with data from the Project of Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods, this project flows along the following directions of analysis:
(a) It examines racial and ethnic inequalities in inter-neighborhood residential migration pathways of the urban poor;
(b) It analyzes how neighborhood and housing inequalities are translated into differential individual outcomes such as school dropout, crime, health, and employment;
(c) It investigates the extent to which neighborhood effects are contingent on community- and individual-level patterns of spatial embeddedness;
(d) It examines the degree to which the spatially embedded social networks of the inner city poor vary across ethnic and racial groups in mediating neighborhood effects; and
(e) It analyzes the confluence of neighborhood effects with multifaceted processes of neighborhood discrimination.

These analyses aim to bring light on some of the key factors contributing to the durable and unforgiving geography of inequality that seems to block the doors of opportunity and pathways of mobility for the urban poor. They purport to advance our understanding of the role of housing policies and residential mobility in diffusing the clusters of socioeconomic disadvantage and in creating a more balanced residential distribution of urban populations by restructuring the citywide structure of inequality.

Winner of a Dissertation Research Fellowship from the Project on Justice, Welfare, and Economics for 2008-2009; a Harvard Real Estate Initiative Research Grant in 2008; and a Research Award from the Urban Policy and Governance at the A. Alfred Taubman, Center for State and Local Government, John F. Kennedy School of Government

QUALIFYING PAPER

"Creative Class and Diversity: Spatial and Temporal Dynamics in Chicago Neighborhoods"

ABSTRACT: Florida’s creative class thesis has revitalized classic debates on urban differentiation processes by emphasizing the benefits of diversity across cities. In this paper, I apply the thesis at the neighborhood level, in an attempt to reorient current conceptualizations of the role of diversity in the social stratification of neighborhoods. I argue that rather than always operating as a risk factor, diversity may also contribute to neighborhood growth by cultivating unconventional subcultures, creative lifestyles, and amenities, which over time attract larger inflows of artists and the “creative class”. Analyses are based on population and organizational data from over 800 Chicago neighborhoods between 1990 and 2000. The results indicate that, notwithstanding short-term setbacks, neighborhood diversity stimulates, over the long run, significant in-migration of creative class residents. Unlike “bohemians” and scientists, professionals however, concentrate in more homogenous neighborhoods. Overall, diversity of ethnicity, immigration, language, and regions strongly cluster together to shape the structure of neighborhood spatial inequality.

Winner of the Howard T. Fischer Award for Geographic Information Science

Oral Exam Topic: Immigration, Community Processes, and Crime

PUBLICATIONS

Graif, Corina and Robert J. Sampson. 2009. "Spatial Heterogeneity in the Effects of Immigration and Diversity on Neighborhood Homicide Rates." Homicide Studies 13(3) August, In Press.

ABSTRACT: This paper examines the connection of immigration and diversity to homicide by advancing a recently developed approach to modeling spatial dynamics—geographically weighted regression. In contrast to traditional global averaging, we argue on substantive grounds that neighborhood characteristics vary in their effects across neighborhood space, a process of “spatial heterogeneity.” Much like treatment-effect heterogeneity and distinct from spatial spillover, our analysis finds considerable evidence that neighborhood characteristics in Chicago vary significantly in predicting homicide, in some cases showing countervailing effects depending on spatial location. In general, however, immigrant concentration is either unrelated or inversely related to homicide, whereas language diversity is consistently linked to lower homicide. The results shed new light on the immigration-homicide nexus and suggest the pitfalls of global averaging models that hide the reality of a highly diversified and spatially stratified metropolis.

Sampson, Robert J. and Corina Graif. 2009. “Neighborhood Social Capital as Differential Social Organization: Resident and Leadership Dimensions”. American Behavioral Scientist 52(11):1579-1605.

ABSTRACT: This paper treats social capital as endogenous and consisting of multiple dimensions along which neighborhoods are differentially organized. We assess this notion by linking two original surveys carried out in Chicago—one based on community residents and the other based on positional leaders representing six organizational dimensions. We also examine the structural predictors of neighborhood social organization. The results from three methods of analysis converge in suggesting that the social capital of a community encapsulates clearly distinct dimensions both at the residents’ level as well as at the leadership level. In fact, leadership-based social capital is for the most part inversely related to resident-based social capital. Communities cluster into distinct groups characterized by what we call Cosmopolitan Efficacy, Urban Villages, Institutional Alienation, and Conduct Norms. Overall the findings caution future research against the notion that a coherent index can appropriately capture neighborhood-level social capital and suggest directions of differentiation at the residents and leadership levels.

Sampson, Robert J. and Corina Graif. 2009. “Neighborhood Processes and Networks of Trust.” In Who Can We Trust? edited by Karen Cook, Russell Hardin, and Margaret Levi. New York: Russell Sage Foundation Press.

ABSTRACT: This paper suggests that low levels of trust and collective efficacy beget long term cycles of further mistrust and ineffective institutional response. Levels of concentrated poverty in 1970 predict multiple dimensions of (mis)trust some thirty years later. Not only does poverty predict residents’ mistrust in institutions such as law enforcement, it heightens leaders’ mistrust in residents themselves. Moreover, residents’ mistrust in their own neighbors seems to lead over time to leadership’s mistrust in residents as well. Another finding is that spatial proximity to “mistrust traps” is related to lower levels of trust in focal neighborhoods despite indigenous characteristics, highlighting a remarkable, yet little documented, contextual characteristic of neighborhood trust: its spillover across space and time. Finally, structural variations in dense networks among community leaders predict future variations in trust specific to leaders in their communities. These findings are consistent with the idea that the structural dynamics of concentrated urban poverty set in motion systemic processes that contribute to the marginalization of urban neighborhoods and a further deepening of poverty. On the more positive side, cohesive networks of leadership may signal hope as a viable lever of social change.

Lucas, Jeffrey W., Corina Graif, and Michael J. Lovaglia. 2006. “Misconduct in the Prosecution of Severe Crimes: Theory and Experimental Test.” Social Psychology Quarterly, 69(1):97-107.

ABSTRACT: Prosecutorial misconduct involves the intentional use of illegal or improper methods for attaining convictions against defendants in criminal trials. Previous research documented extensive errors in the prosecution of severe crimes. A theory formulated to explain this phenomenon proposes that in serious cases, increased pressure to convict encourages misconduct; further, serious cases increase perceptions of the suspect's guilt, which facilitate justification of the misconduct. A controlled laboratory experiment allows tests of theoretically derived predictions while controlling for extraneous factors common in naturally occurring settings. University undergraduate participants were assigned randomly to prosecute a contrived case of murder or assault; otherwise the two cases were identical. Results showed that participants improperly withheld exculpatory evidence from the defense more often in the murder case than in the assault case. Further, participants prosecuting the murder case expressed a stronger belief in the defendant's guilt than did participants in the assault case. Implications for future research in naturally occurring settings are discussed.

Lucas, Jeffrey W., Corina Graif, and Michael J. Lovaglia. 2007. "Prosecutorial Misconduct in Serious Cases: Theory and Design of a Laboratory Experiment" Pp. 119-136 in Experiments in Criminology and Law. A Research Revolution, edited by Christine Horne and Michael J. Lovaglia. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Pub Inc.

Tausig, Mark, Rudy Fenwick, Steven L. Sauter, Lawrence R. Murphy, and Corina Graif. 2004. “The Changing Nature of Job Stress: Risk and Resources.” Research in Occupational Stress and Well Being, 4:93-126.

ABSTRACT: The nature of work has changed in the past 30 years but we do not know what these changes have meant for worker job stress. In this chapter we compare data from three surveys of the quality of work life from 1972 to 2002. At the most general level, work today is less stressful than it was in 1972. Workers report fewer job demands, more decision latitude, less job strain, more job security and greater access to job resources and job support. However, these changes have not affected all workers equally. Women, those with less education, non self-employed workers, blue collar workers and workers in manufacturing industries showed the greatest decreases in job stress although levels of job stress remain higher than for comparison groups (men, college educated, white collar, service workers). Changes were not always linear across time suggesting that some aspects of job strain are sensitive to economic cycles.

RESEARCH PRESENTATIONS

Forthcoming

Graif, Corina. 2009. "Pathways of Residential Mobility and Neighborhood Attainment: Racial and Ethnic Inequalities among the Urban Poor." (Dissertation article). Accepted for presentation at the American Sociological Association Meeting in San Francisco, Section on Housing and Housing Policy, organized by Samantha Friedman.

Graif, Corina and Robert J. Sampson. “Spatial Heterogeneity in the Effects of Immigration and Diversity on Neighborhood Homicide Rates”. Accepted for presentation at the American Sociological Association Meeting in San Francisco, Section on Crime, Law, & Deviance, Session on Communities and Crime, organized by Charis Kubin and Lee Slocum.

Selected Past Presentations

Graif, Corina. 2009. "Spatial Networks of Neighborhood Mobility: Racial and Ethnic Differences among the Urban Poor." Presented at the Capturing Context: Bridging Spatial and Network Analyses Conference, Columbia University, New York City, June 12 - 13, organized by Gina Lovasi, jimi adams, and Peter Bearman. Sponsored by the Robert Wood Johnson's Health and Society Scholars Program.

Graif, Corina. 2009. “Modeling Neighborhood Ecologies in Space and Time”. Workshop on Spatial and Temporal Analysis, Center for Geographic Analysis, Harvard University, April 10th, 2009.

Tran, Van, Corina Graif, and Alison Denton Jones. 2009. “Participation in Context. Neighborhood Diversity and Organizational Involvements in Boston”. March 2009, Inter-Ivy Sociology Symposium, March 28th, Columbia University, New York City.

Graif, Corina, Alison Denton Jones, Mario L. Small, Van C. Tran, Christopher Winship. 2008. “The Role of Nonprofits in the Lives of Urban Dwellers”, September 5, 2008, Urban Scholars Conference, Harvard University, Sept 4 – 5, 2008

Sampson, Robert and Corina Graif. 2008. “Political Networks and Community Structures” Networks in Political Science Conference, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, June 14th, 2008, organized by David Lazer and James Fowler.

Sampson, Robert and Corina Graif. 2007. “Network Flows of Criminal Propensity.” American Society of Criminology 59th Annual Meeting, November 14-17, 2007, Atlanta, Georgia. Discussant: Andrew Papachristos.

Graif, Corina. 2007. “Creative Class and Diversity: Spatial and Temporal Dynamics in Chicago Neighborhoods". Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association. New York. Section on Community and Urban Sociology, Session on Multi-Ethnic Cities. Organized by Eric Fong. Discussant John Iceland.

Graif, Corina. 2007. “Immigration, Diversity and Residential Segregation: Spatial and Temporal Patterns of Neighborhood Growth”. Summer Workshop on Immigration and Social Change in Britain and the U.S. Organized by Mary C. Waters, Robert Putnam, Robert Sampson, June 25-July 6, 2007 University of Manchester, UK.

Graif, Corina. 2006 . "Conceptualizing and Measuring Diversity and its Benefits across Neighborhoods: A Multi-Method Spatial Approach". Graduate Student Conference on Embracing Diversity: Latino Immigration and the Transformation of American Society, Sponsored by Mary C. Waters and Jennifer Hochschild, Harvard University, October 13-14.

Graif, Corina. 2005. “Spatial Inequality and Community Wellbeing”. GIS and Population Science Workshop, Population Research Institute and Center for Spatially Integrated Social Sciences, UCSB 2005 June 19-July 2, Santa Barbara, CA.

TEACHING EXPERIENCE

Crime, Justice, and the American Legal System

Advanced Quantitative Research Methods

Sociology of Organizations

Introduction to Sociology

DEPARTMENTAL SERVICE

Graduate Admissions Committee

Colloquium Committee

06/19/2009

Research Interests: Social stratification and urban spatial inequality, neighborhood effects, residential mobility, migration and immigration, race and ethnicity, crime, social capital and networks, experimental and survey research methods.