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Papers by Jesus Hernandez

This chapter reviews California’s long dependence on Latino labor to place emphasis on the fact t... more This chapter reviews California’s long dependence on Latino labor to place emphasis on the fact that this workforce is a permanent fixture in the state’s economy; contributing to both the supply and demand of housing. Then, a series of brief stories on anti-immigrant housing policies, housing finance, smart growth, and environmental concerns will underscore the urgency to consider new ways to apply the Fair Housing Act and protect the place generations of Latino immigrants still struggle to safely call home.

In this paper we demonstrate the utility of structural violence as an analytical device to make v... more In this paper we demonstrate the utility of structural violence as an analytical device to make visible intergenerational patterns of exclusion obscured by institutional arrangements initially established to represent and defend community interests. We apply an interdisciplinary critical analysis of the history of economic and social marginalization of neighborhoods to the recent closure of seven neighborhood elementary schools in South Sacramento. By stressing the importance of distribution as an important social arrangement that can cause injury to individuals and populations, we demonstrate how disparate impact, briefly defined as the unequal distribution of resources that affect life chances, has current as well as future effects on households and neighborhoods. We argue that patterns of structural violence are not only contingent upon historical processes but are also embedded prospectively, or in other words, into the future of neighborhood stability. We find that the structural violence continuum is a phenomenon embedded in the past, present, and future in a manner that constrains the inclusion of certain neighborhoods in the social and economic life of urban settlements.

Explanations for the U.S. subprime loan crisis fail to acknowledge the high concentration of unsu... more Explanations for the U.S. subprime loan crisis fail to acknowledge the high concentration of unsustainable mortgage products in predominantly nonwhite neighborhoods. Using Sacramento, California, as a case study, I place the housing crisis within the historical context of housing discrimination, demonstrating how market preconditions were manipulated through the use of racial categories – a process fusing race with economic action. This sorting of individuals based upon racialized criteria secured market privilege and position for selected groups, while encouraging group closure. Such historically-rooted and racialized credit lending policies left segregated neighborhoods highly vulnerable to subprime lending and foreclosure. The existence of a dual credit market calls attention to the presence of such race-based rules for market conduct and access. By extending Granovetter’s claim that economic action remains embedded in social relations to include race relations, the housing crisis in Sacramento can be seen as a problem of embeddedness.

Despite decades of government reform, the American housing credit system continues to mirror long... more Despite decades of government reform, the American housing credit system continues to mirror long-standing patterns of racial segregation and inequality. Consistent with this trend, the current housing crisis reveals an unusually high concentration of subprime mortgage activity and property foreclosures in non-white residential settlements across the nation. Given the generally accepted premise of market neutrality, this case study of lending patterns in Sacramento, California, questions why US housing market exchanges continue to produce racially disparate outcomes and seeks to identify the ideological practices in which race is deployed, informs state and private economic action and shapes contemporary credit market practices.

Journal of Economic Issues

This essay adapts Commons's model of the legal foundations of capitalism to the peculiar circ... more This essay adapts Commons's model of the legal foundations of capitalism to the peculiar circumstances of the neoliberal era. So doing provides a lens for seeing the steady erosion of state capacity to protect the commonwealth, even in nations with hegemonic currency. Our focus here is on the links between the triple crisis of the 1980s and the subprime and foreclosure crisis of the 2000s. We show how Brady bonds, after being used to resolve the Latin American debt crisis in the 1980s, provided a governing contractual context for subprime lending, and as such constrained the capacity of the U.S. government to respond to a crisis that preyed on the vulnerable, undercut community life, and contracted the commonwealth.

Book Reviews by Jesus Hernandez

Mortgage redlining, the rejection of mortgage loan applications solely on the basis of place, is ... more Mortgage redlining, the rejection of mortgage loan applications solely on the basis of place, is normally seen as a form of social exclusion unique to the United States. In Place, Exclusion, and Mortgage Markets, Manuel Aalbers shows that place-based exclusion does not only happen in the ghettos of America but also shapes life in the European banlieues (France), quartieri periferici (Italy), and achterstandswijken (Netherlands). Aalbers uses the concept of mortgage redlining to get at the broader process of social exclusion and argues that treating redlining simply as an outcome misplaces our attention on distribution. Instead, viewing redlining as a process places the focus on re-lational issues like inadequate social participation, lack of social interaction, and lack of power. Redlining, therefore, should be seen as part of the broader process of social exclusion. In contrast to " blaming the victim " or other cultural explanations of individual deficiency as causes for redlining, the idea of social exclusion hinges more upon structural forces that help guide human relations. Using a sociospatial approach, Aalbers refutes studies that see urban change as the result of a natural process. Instead, he sees redlining as a practice that emphasizes the power of private actors influencing government policy, the structure of the real estate industry, and the development of place. His emphasis on agency brings people back into the analysis and emphasizes the centrality of social action and conflict in determining the shape of the built environment. Social exclusion becomes an active process of intervention that shapes market practices. The social exclusion framework, therefore, goes beyond the analysis of resource allocation mechanisms and includes power relations, agency, culture , and social identity. By viewing institutions as " general normative patterns of social action " (p. 55), Aalbers takes " redlining out of the realm of econometrical analysis and into the realm of agency and structure; that is, the realm of sociology " (p. 53). This framework " puts institutional processes at the heart of the redlining debate " (p. 18). Aalbers employs a comparative case study of redlining practices in the US, Italy, and the Netherlands to probe the decisions by banks to segment portions of the mortgage market based on location. Because lending outcomes do not always capture the actions and practices of lenders, these contrasting case studies provide a solid research

This chapter reviews California’s long dependence on Latino labor to place emphasis on the fact t... more This chapter reviews California’s long dependence on Latino labor to place emphasis on the fact that this workforce is a permanent fixture in the state’s economy; contributing to both the supply and demand of housing. Then, a series of brief stories on anti-immigrant housing policies, housing finance, smart growth, and environmental concerns will underscore the urgency to consider new ways to apply the Fair Housing Act and protect the place generations of Latino immigrants still struggle to safely call home.

In this paper we demonstrate the utility of structural violence as an analytical device to make v... more In this paper we demonstrate the utility of structural violence as an analytical device to make visible intergenerational patterns of exclusion obscured by institutional arrangements initially established to represent and defend community interests. We apply an interdisciplinary critical analysis of the history of economic and social marginalization of neighborhoods to the recent closure of seven neighborhood elementary schools in South Sacramento. By stressing the importance of distribution as an important social arrangement that can cause injury to individuals and populations, we demonstrate how disparate impact, briefly defined as the unequal distribution of resources that affect life chances, has current as well as future effects on households and neighborhoods. We argue that patterns of structural violence are not only contingent upon historical processes but are also embedded prospectively, or in other words, into the future of neighborhood stability. We find that the structural violence continuum is a phenomenon embedded in the past, present, and future in a manner that constrains the inclusion of certain neighborhoods in the social and economic life of urban settlements.

Explanations for the U.S. subprime loan crisis fail to acknowledge the high concentration of unsu... more Explanations for the U.S. subprime loan crisis fail to acknowledge the high concentration of unsustainable mortgage products in predominantly nonwhite neighborhoods. Using Sacramento, California, as a case study, I place the housing crisis within the historical context of housing discrimination, demonstrating how market preconditions were manipulated through the use of racial categories – a process fusing race with economic action. This sorting of individuals based upon racialized criteria secured market privilege and position for selected groups, while encouraging group closure. Such historically-rooted and racialized credit lending policies left segregated neighborhoods highly vulnerable to subprime lending and foreclosure. The existence of a dual credit market calls attention to the presence of such race-based rules for market conduct and access. By extending Granovetter’s claim that economic action remains embedded in social relations to include race relations, the housing crisis in Sacramento can be seen as a problem of embeddedness.

Despite decades of government reform, the American housing credit system continues to mirror long... more Despite decades of government reform, the American housing credit system continues to mirror long-standing patterns of racial segregation and inequality. Consistent with this trend, the current housing crisis reveals an unusually high concentration of subprime mortgage activity and property foreclosures in non-white residential settlements across the nation. Given the generally accepted premise of market neutrality, this case study of lending patterns in Sacramento, California, questions why US housing market exchanges continue to produce racially disparate outcomes and seeks to identify the ideological practices in which race is deployed, informs state and private economic action and shapes contemporary credit market practices.

Journal of Economic Issues

This essay adapts Commons's model of the legal foundations of capitalism to the peculiar circ... more This essay adapts Commons's model of the legal foundations of capitalism to the peculiar circumstances of the neoliberal era. So doing provides a lens for seeing the steady erosion of state capacity to protect the commonwealth, even in nations with hegemonic currency. Our focus here is on the links between the triple crisis of the 1980s and the subprime and foreclosure crisis of the 2000s. We show how Brady bonds, after being used to resolve the Latin American debt crisis in the 1980s, provided a governing contractual context for subprime lending, and as such constrained the capacity of the U.S. government to respond to a crisis that preyed on the vulnerable, undercut community life, and contracted the commonwealth.

Mortgage redlining, the rejection of mortgage loan applications solely on the basis of place, is ... more Mortgage redlining, the rejection of mortgage loan applications solely on the basis of place, is normally seen as a form of social exclusion unique to the United States. In Place, Exclusion, and Mortgage Markets, Manuel Aalbers shows that place-based exclusion does not only happen in the ghettos of America but also shapes life in the European banlieues (France), quartieri periferici (Italy), and achterstandswijken (Netherlands). Aalbers uses the concept of mortgage redlining to get at the broader process of social exclusion and argues that treating redlining simply as an outcome misplaces our attention on distribution. Instead, viewing redlining as a process places the focus on re-lational issues like inadequate social participation, lack of social interaction, and lack of power. Redlining, therefore, should be seen as part of the broader process of social exclusion. In contrast to " blaming the victim " or other cultural explanations of individual deficiency as causes for redlining, the idea of social exclusion hinges more upon structural forces that help guide human relations. Using a sociospatial approach, Aalbers refutes studies that see urban change as the result of a natural process. Instead, he sees redlining as a practice that emphasizes the power of private actors influencing government policy, the structure of the real estate industry, and the development of place. His emphasis on agency brings people back into the analysis and emphasizes the centrality of social action and conflict in determining the shape of the built environment. Social exclusion becomes an active process of intervention that shapes market practices. The social exclusion framework, therefore, goes beyond the analysis of resource allocation mechanisms and includes power relations, agency, culture , and social identity. By viewing institutions as " general normative patterns of social action " (p. 55), Aalbers takes " redlining out of the realm of econometrical analysis and into the realm of agency and structure; that is, the realm of sociology " (p. 53). This framework " puts institutional processes at the heart of the redlining debate " (p. 18). Aalbers employs a comparative case study of redlining practices in the US, Italy, and the Netherlands to probe the decisions by banks to segment portions of the mortgage market based on location. Because lending outcomes do not always capture the actions and practices of lenders, these contrasting case studies provide a solid research