Navigating norms and structures: young mothers’ pathways to economic independence

Understanding the complex relationships between childcare, education and work is crucial to acknowledging how young mothers express agency in their pathways to economic independence. Instead of considering them as a policy target group at risk for multiple reasons, this research reverses the perspective by focusing on young mothers’ agency in school and paid employment. The study is set in the Netherlands, where economic independence has become a focal point of social policy and practice, especially for young people. It explores how young mothers navigate norms and structures of education and employment, drawing on 18 months of participant observation and 41 semi-structured interviews with young mothers. Notions of ‘everyday’ and ‘bounded’ agency are used in analysing structural limitations (e.g. irregular working hours in ‘women’s jobs’, a lack of maternity leave at school) and norms (e.g. completing higher education and finding a good job versus being primary caretakers, enjoying children and being role models). School and workplace structures reinforce contradictory discourses of motherhood and economic independence. Young mothers exhibit agency in considering their options around job security, work experience, wages, student loans and spending time with children. In doing so, they navigate structural and normative collisions of economic independence and mothering.     

Seroadaptive Strategies of Vancouver Gay and Bisexual Men in a Treatment as Prevention Environment

British Columbia’s treatment as prevention policy has provided free access to highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) to all HIV-positive provincial residents since 1996. One outcome is an increase in HIV-positive gay and bisexual men (GBM) with suppressed viral loads. Previous cross-sectional analyses indicated that some Vancouver GBM now recognize condomless anal sex with men on HAART who report a suppressed viral load as a seroadaptive strategy. To test the hypothesis that this new strategy, termed viral load sorting (VLS), is recognized and used among by GBM in the Momentum Health Study, we analyzed longitudinal data for HIV-negative/unknown (n = 556) and HIV-positive (n = 218) serostatus participants. Analyses indicated that both groups reported VLS, and that serostatus and Treatment Optimism Scale scores were significant determinants in frequency and use. Results exemplify the medicalization of sex and Rogers’ Diffusion Of Preventative Innovations Model, and they have important implications for HIV research and GBM sexual decision-making.     

The Use of Telematics Devices to Improve Automobile Insurance Rates

Most automobile insurance databases contain a large number of policyholders with zero claims. This high frequency of zeros may reflect the fact that some insureds make little use of their vehicle, or that they do not wish to make a claim for small accidents in order to avoid an increase in their premium, but it might also be because of good driving. We analyze information on exposure to risk and driving habits using telematics data from a pay‐as‐you‐drive sample of insureds. We include distance traveled per year as part of an offset in a zero‐inflated Poisson model to predict the excess of zeros. We show the existence of a learning effect for large values of distance traveled, so that longer driving should result in higher premiums, but there should be a discount for drivers who accumulate longer distances over time due to the increased proportion of zero claims. We confirm that speed limit violations and driving in urban areas increase the expected number of accident claims. We discuss how telematics information can be used to design better insurance and to improve traffic safety.     

基于数量柔性契约的双源应急物资采购定价模型

针对灾害事件发生的不确定性以及灾害发生后应急物资需求量的爆发式增长，本文设计了一个政府主导的基于数量柔性契约的双源应急物资采购模型。在存在一个现货市场的情况下，政府除了常规采购外，还会与供应方签订一份数量柔性契约，用以建立政企联合储备应急物资的合作关系。通过数理推导，本文发现灾害事件发生概率，政府自身储备量，现货市场采购价格会对双方决策产生重要影响，并给出三个影响因素在满足不同条件时政企双方的最优决策，同时进一步分析了这三个因素对政府采购成本与供应方利润的影响。最后，通过数值模拟的方式对所得结论进行了验证。本文的研究为政府与企业构建联合储备应急物资的合作关系提供了指导与依据。     

以人民为中心的理论认识与制度安排

以人民为中心的思想理念拓展了传统意义上的人民概念和创造历史伟业的依靠对象。依靠人民创造历史伟业，发展生产力，提供丰富的物质财富、精神财富和生态财富。构建劳动力资本化为劳动者股份的制度安排，合理界定劳动收入和资本收入的边界，保障劳动贡献归劳动者所得，资本贡献归资本所有者所得，为人民实现美好生活需要提供制度和收入上的保障。以人民为中心的思想理念，是对《共产党宣言》的每个人自由发展思想的继承和发展，是马克思主义中国化时代化大众化的理论成果。     

Pre-arrest drug use and associated risk factors among incarcerated offenders in China

ABSTRACT

Past research has consistently reported a higher rate of drug use before arrest among incarcerated inmates than that of the general population. However, there is a lack of either qualitative or quantitative research on this topic under the Chinese setting. Drawing upon survey data collected from 1,518 inmates in a Chinese province, this study attempts to fill in the research gap by assessing the connection between risk factors associated with pre-arrest use. Roughly a quarter of all inmates in the sample had the experience of drug use before arrest. Regression analysis suggested that impulsivity, volatile temper, and perceived prevalence of drug use in neighborhood were significantly related to drug use among inmates. Two control variables include offense type and stable job, were also found to be significant predictors of drug use. Implications for research and policy were highlighted in the end.     

‘Escaping’ managed labour migration: worker exit as precarious migrant agency

ABSTRACT

This article narrows in on the mundane yet extraordinary events surrounding migrant farm workers’ decisions to leave their state-approved employment and to seek a better life in Canada outside of state-managed circulatory labour migration. In so doing, this research contributes to conceptualisations of precarity, and of precarious status in particular, that are beginning to recognise its effects not only on workers’ economic survival, but also the more ordinary daily conditions surrounding workers’ sense belonging and personal autonomy. In their refusal to accept the terms of their contractual circulatory labour migration agreements through what is conceptualised here as an act of ‘escape’, workers claim a space of belonging that contradicts the precarity of their formal citizenship status. In carving out a space in which they may perform autonomy and self-determination in daily life, however, this rejection of contingent citizenship status intensifies the precarious material conditions governing workers’ relationship to the state.     

Autonomy,spontaneity and creativity in research with children. A study of experience and participation,in central Italy and North West England

ABSTRACT

Research involving children, deemed to have difficulties with conventional means of communication, can perpetuate reductive forms of representation of children’s knowledges and experiences. This article focuses on the possibilities and opportunities that visual and creative methods can offer to researching with children. Children advance their views in and through spontaneous and concrete forms of participation. Autonomy in aesthetic acts is central to this methodology; to explore practices that produce and reproduce presuppositions deriving from societal attitudes affecting research with children, their agency and self-presentation. This cross-cultural study was conducted in Central Italy and North West England: children contributed their perspectives and experiences through participation in a series of creative encounters resulting in aesthetic and embodied outcomes of sociological and educational significance. The study contributes to the debate on children’s autonomy and the value and quality of participation through artistic practice. Examples from the corpus of data, which includes a series of artefacts and over 900 photographs from each geo-cultural context, are presented. The study shows that it is possible to harmonise power imbalances in spaces of creative freedom, in research and education, where children’s choices and agency are respected.     

The paradox of illicit economies: survival,resilience, and the limits of development and drug policy orthodoxy

ABSTRACT

The illicit drug crops opium and coca are conventionally regarded as sources of instability, an ‘evil’ that breeds fragility and violence. Fragile states are supposed to be most vulnerable to their production and consequent harms. Yet by looking into the local contexts of the world’s leading opium and coca producers – Afghanistan, Myanmar, Colombia and Bolivia – these illicit crops are found to also be sources of stability, even drivers of economic growth. They enable marginalized communities and territories abandoned by the state to be reinserted into national and global markets. Within so-called ‘fragile’ and conflict-affected areas are displaced and dispossessed households adopting innovative and unorthodox strategies for coping and survival in changing and insecure environments. This paper maps out an approach, useful for examining the resilience that has emerged amidst violence and uncertainty in illicit-crop-producing territories, and which can hopefully tackle the continuing disconnect between drugs and development policy.     

Socioeconomic inequality and adjustments in children’s perceptions of their agency as they age in South Korea

This paper explores how children's perceptions of their agency, as something that is closely associated with its exercise, appear in relation to social structural factors, especially their socioeconomic positions, as they age. Using data from 862 10–18 years old in South Korea, we examine how children's expressed optimism about their ability to achieve their occupational choices can conceal the impact of structural factors on their ‘choices’ and dispositions for (non‐)action over time. Based on the findings, we argue for a more careful interpretation of children's sense of agency that recognises its propensity to continuously adjust in contexts of structural inequality.