Accommodating ‘foreigners’: narrative accounts of Berlin's German-born Turkish Ausländer

This paper examines the discursive messages conveyed through everyday encounters among German-born Turkish Ausländer (foreigners) and ethnic Germans in Berlin. Using narrative analysis, I explore how these messages operate to maintain a series of separate and unequal social relations based on gender, ethnicity, religion, and skin colour. The personal experiences of local residents illustrate how these discourses serve to mark some Ausländer as less threatening than others, some as preferable, and others as undesirable. Some Ausländer are also considered more valuable than others, and the status of one often depends on the superior or subordinate status of the other. Through exploring these complexities as experienced by local informants, this paper shows the importance of certain interactive processes that construct Ausländerness in varying ways, while still defining people's identities in relation to norms that privilege the dominant subjects.     

Attitudes of social work students towards older people

Demographic ageing is a challenge for many countries. Even though Turkey has a relatively younger demographic composition, the proportion of the older people (65+) within the population is rapidly increasing. Within this framework, older people are becoming more important clients for both social work students and social workers in Turkey. This study aims to reveal the attitudes of social work students towards older people and determine the various factors that affect their views on older persons. In the scope of the project, Kogan's Attitude Towards Old People Scale was applied to 419 social work undergraduate students at a university located in Central Anatolia. The findings showed that social work students scored a mean of 130.96 and they generally had positive attitudes towards older people. The correlation between year of study, gender and age was not statistically significant. However, having lived mostly in urban areas was positively correlated with the mean Kogan scores and this finding was found to be statistically significant. Exposure to personal contact with older people at both the personal and professional levels was influential in shaping attitudes about the older people.     

The effects of perceived quality of organizationally provided meal service on employees’ job performance and mediating role of organizational identification

Contemporary managers are developing alternative ways to sustain their competitive advantages. Motivation-enhancing features such as high-quality meal service provided by organizations can be thought of as one of these methods. The effect of the perceived quality of meal service provided by organizations on the job performance of employees and the mediating role of organizational identification during this process is studied. Private security-sector employees working in Turkey (N?=?597) are being focused in this study. As a result of analyses (correlation and regression analyses, structural equation model), the authors find that the perceived quality of meal service provided by organizations improves employees’ job performance significantly and organizational identification has a partial mediating role on this association. The findings of this study will be of interest to key stakeholders such as public or private organizations, labor unions and the media.     

Reinforcement and erosion of traditional gender roles among young people in a poor metropolitan area of Turkey

This paper aims to contribute to the existing studies on the young women’s transition to adulthood in the case of Turkish women’s exclusion from the labour market. The issue is discussed largely within the boundaries of traditional gender restrictions that keep women out of employment. Herein, we argue that the gender-based control of young women, perceived as the reason for their exclusion from the labour market, may be used by disadvantaged women as a way of avoiding difficult and unfavourable employment situations. Similarly, the gender roles imposed on men could also not be fulfilled due to the same restrictive labour market conditions. Furthermore, we suggest that the poverty simultaneously strengthens and erodes the very base of the traditional gender structure for both young women and young men, while forcing the young women out of employment and the young men to the unstable working conditions. This argument is based on a study conducted in Alt?nda?, Ankara with a sample of 279 females and 340 males aged between 15 and 24. A mixed methodology, comprising a survey questionnaire followed by 60 in-depth interviews and 4 focus group discussions, was employed for this study.     

Local Power Analyses of Goodness-of-fit Tests for Copulas

Abstract.  The asymptotic behaviour of several goodness-of-fit statistics for copula families is obtained under contiguous alternatives. Many comparisons between a Cramér–von Mises functional of the empirical copula process and new moment-based goodness-of-fit statistics are made by considering their associated asymptotic local power curves. It is shown that the choice of the estimator for the unknown parameter can have a significant influence on the power of the Cramér–von Mises test and that some of the moment-based statistics can provide simple and efficient goodness-of-fit methods.     

Goodness-of-fit Procedures for Copula Models Based on the Probability Integral Transformation

Abstract.  Wang & Wells [ J. Amer. Statist. Assoc. 95 (2000) 62] describe a non-parametric approach for checking whether the dependence structure of a random sample of censored bivariate data is appropriately modelled by a given family of Archimedean copulas. Their procedure is based on a truncated version of the Kendall process introduced by Genest & Rivest [ J. Amer. Statist. Assoc. 88 (1993) 1034] and later studied by Barbe et al . [ J. Multivariate Anal. 58 (1996) 197]. Although Wang & Wells (2000) determine the asymptotic behaviour of their truncated process, their model selection method is based exclusively on the observed value of its L ²-norm. This paper shows how to compute asymptotic p -values for various goodness-of-fit test statistics based on a non-truncated version of Kendall's process. Conditions for weak convergence are met in the most common copula models, whether Archimedean or not. The empirical behaviour of the proposed goodness-of-fit tests is studied by simulation, and power comparisons are made with a test proposed by Shih [ Biometrika 85 (1998) 189] for the gamma frailty family.     

EFFETS DE DIFFERENTES SOLUTIONS FACTORIELLES SUR LES DIMENSIONS DE STRATIFICATION SOCIO-ECOLOGIQUE*

Factorial analysis has been widely employed in the study of the socioecological, urban stratification structure. Historically, the principal component has been the most used method even if it is not the most appropriate, considering the nature of the data available from censuses for this kind of study. A study of the socioecological stratification structure of five cities in Quebec, with data from the 1971 Canadian census, serves to illustrate the consequences of using the principal component and principal axes, ALPHA and IMAGE factoring with oblique and orthogonal rotation. No significant differences were found between the factorial solutions, but given the implicit and explicit hypotheses of the study, the ALPHA method of factoring the correlational matrix seems to be the more acceptable choice. Generally, the researcher should choose the method of factoring which is most appropriate to the hypothesis. L'analyse factorielle est une méthode couramment utilisée dans les études de stratification socioécologique des territoires urbains. La méthode par composantes principales a été historiquement la plus employée sans qu'elle soit pour autant la plus appropriée aux types de données utilisées. A partir des résultats d'une étude de la stratification socio-écologique de cinq villes du Québec, depuis dix variables prises dans le recensement du Canada de 1971, les conséquences de l'utilisation des méthodes de factorisation par composantes principales, par axes principaux, ALPHA et IMAGE avec rotation oblique et orthogonale sont étudiées. Dans le cas en espèce, aucune différence notable n'apparaît dans l'interprétation des solutions factorielles. Cependant, étant donné les hypothèses explicites et implicites de l'étude, la méthode ALPHA apparaît la plus acceptable. De façon générale, le chercheur doit baser son choix d'une méthode de factorisation en fonction de ses hypothèses.     

Marriage migration: just another case of positive assortative matching?

It is a stylized fact that marriage formation involves positive assortative matching on education. We also find this in the case of immigrants, even when they tend to “import” their spouses and potentially trade off education for other favorable characteristics. For Pakistanis, we find positive compensating differentials in terms of high education to youth having adopted host country norms, when marrying a marriage migrant. This indicates that Pakistani marriage migrants pay a premium to be able to marry and live in Denmark. For Turks, individuals having source country norms pay a premium in order to import a partner, indicating that unspoiled traditional norms are traded off for education.