Although an extensive literature links children's self-regulation abilities with both distal (e.g., neighborhood) and proximal (e.g., parenting) contexts, scarce attention has been paid to identifying potential cultural factors (e.g., ethnic density) in this association. Methodologically, most research has utilized cross-sectional data, with few studies examining the cumulative impact of multiple contexts on children's development and adjustment. Furthermore, it is unknown how these contexts are linked with different self-regulation outcomes among Asian American children. To address these gaps in the literature, I studied 258 first- and second- generation Chinese American immigrant children, using a combination of structured interviews, questionnaire measures, and behavioral tasks completed by children, parents, and teachers. Across two waves of data collection, I investigated the mediated and interactive relations of neighborhood (disadvantage, ethnic density) and parenting style (authoritarian, authoritative) to children's effortful control outcomes. Contrary to expectations, parenting style did not mediate the relation between neighborhood disadvantage and children's effortful control. However, children of families residing in neighborhoods with a higher Asian concentration were more likely to rate their parents as using an authoritarian parenting style, which subsequently predicted lower levels of effortful control. I also found that authoritative parenting for these children had a weaker benefit on their effortful control compared to children residing in less ethnically dense neighborhoods, as rated by their teachers. Taken together, these findings suggest that use of an authoritarian parenting style is more culturally normative in ethnically dense Asian American neighborhoods and may serve as a risk factor for poorer effortful control in this population. Additionally, residing in ethnically dense neighborhoods may confer some risk to Chinese American immigrant children's development of effortful control, regardless of their parents' parenting style. As children reach middle childhood, their perception of their parents' parenting style appears to play a role in determining their self-regulation outcomes, and this extends to both home and school contexts (i.e., both child and teacher reports of effortful control).

This dissertation describes the historical development of American refugee relief before and during the Progressive Era, with special emphasis on the two transformative cases: the Great San Francisco Earthquake and Fire of 1906, and the borderland refugee crisis that attended the Mexican Revolution of 1910-1920. These catastrophes helped change notions of social obligation that had been contested in the United States for more than a century. While rare, appeals for federal relief in the Early Republic and antebellum era laid the groundwork for a new consensus about what the federal government was obligated to provide sufferers of catastrophe at home and abroad. Congressional representatives seized upon past examples of foreign aid to demand the same assistance for constituents and citizens. In so doing, they gradually domesticated foreign aid and forged a new tradition of federal disaster relief. The contours of state-sponsored relief continued to fluctuate as the boundaries of U.S. territory and citizenship dramatically expanded in the nineteenth century.

These changes culminated in the establishment of a new catastrophe relief regime established in 1906 amidst the ruin of the premier city of the West: San Francisco. As governments and people from around the world generously responded to the humanitarian crisis by sending aid to their fellow nationals and family members in distress, the United States boldly asserted sovereignty over those suffering from disasters within its borders. That precedent and innovations in international law compelled civilians, benevolent societies, federal troops, immigration agents, and local officials to respond to refugees of Mexico’s Revolution with energy and compassion only a few years later. Key architects of San Francisco’s relief program from the U.S. Army and the American National Red Cross moved from the Bay Area to the Mexican border. In the borderlands, these authorities established a refugee relief regime would have lasting consequences for the U.S.-Mexico border and for the borders of social obligation in the United States. The new refugee relief regime was contradictory; compassionate and violent, humanitarian and inhumane, it helped to produce the militarized border zone of the twentieth century.