Refugee community organizations in Canada: From the margins to the mainstream? A challenge and opportunity for social workers

Various waves of asylum seekers and resettled refugees arriving in Canada since the 1980s reflect the eruption of war and ethnic conflicts in parts of Africa, Central America, and South East Asia. Contrary to long‐established immigrant communities such as the Greeks, Italians, and Portuguese, these newcomers have had to fend for themselves and develop their own support networks, leading to new forms of organizing and to the formation of refugee community organizations (RCOs). This article discusses the findings of a 2008–2011 study on RCOs in Canada, specifically in Montréal and Winnipeg. The objective of the study was to understand the context in which RCOs have developed, the populations they serve, and the role they play in their ethnic communities. Working within the RCO paradigm, we analyze the creation of these organizations, contrast findings with research done in the UK, and raise issues for social work practice. Key Practitioner Message: ● Innovative research in Canada documenting refugee community organizations gives fresh insight regarding community organizing practice; ● Documents the situation of asylum seekers and refugees on an individual and a collective basis in terms of needs; ● Focuses on the necessity of building bridges with refugee organizations to bring them into the mainstream.     

‘Best of Both Worlds’? A Comparison of Third Sector Providers in Health Care and Welfare‐to‐Work Markets in Britain

This article compares the welfare markets in primary health care and ‘welfare‐to‐work’ in the UK since the late 1990s. A longitudinal comparison of two different policy areas enables us to study the context in which marketization and the resulting shift of welfare provision takes place. We outline the general background of the market‐based reforms and highlight in what way policymakers have ascribed third sector organizations (TSOs) a number of positive characteristics, particularly the ability to address concerns about well‐known market failures. While consecutive governments promoted these organizations as welfare providers, case studies of two illustrative provider organizations in each policy area reveal a number of problems regarding their distinctiveness in increasingly competitive welfare markets. We conclude that the crisp distinction made by policymakers between the third and other sectors as well as the alleged advantages of the former present a rather naïve picture of a complex reality and argue for a more critical view of third sector characteristics and performance. The third sector is not only characterized by a high degree of fuzziness at the boundaries to other sectors, but even within single organizations, which often undergo significant transformations over time. As a result, policy intentions and practical outcomes are contradictory with TSOs losing their alleged distinctiveness as players in increasingly competitive markets. Furthermore, we contend that detailed longitudinal studies of organizations are essential in the advancement of the discussion of the third sector concept as they provide conceptual insights into organizational change and behaviour.     

利益、博弈与养老金改革:对养老金制度的政治社会学分析

本文运用新多元主义理论探讨养老金改革中的利益博弈和私有化改革的发展趋势。对拉美和中东欧国家的研究表明,养老金的改革得益于其特殊的政治体制、外生行动者的支持和政府的强力推动,而否决点的缺失和社会组织力量的弱小又减少了养老金改革的阻力。但对美国、英国和欧洲的分析表明,由于利益的多元化、否决点的分散,以及强大的工会力量,社会保障私有化的改革困难重重。     

The Benefits of Reducing Gun Violence: Evidence from Contingent-Valuation Survey Data

This article presents an estimate of the benefits of reducing crime using the contingent-valuation (CV) method. We focus on gun violence, a crime of growing policy concern in America. Our data come from a national survey in which we ask respondents referendum-type questions that elicit their willingness-to-pay (WTP) to reduce gun violence by 30%. We estimate that the public's WTP to reduce gun assaults by 30% equals $24.5 billion, or around $1.2 million per injury. Our estimate implies a statistical value of life that is quite consistent with those derived from other methods.     

Social Policy for Poverty Reduction in Lower-income Countries in Latin America: Lessons and Challenges

This article provides a comparative study of income transfer programmes recently introduced in lower-income countries in Central and South America, aimed at raising human development and consumption among groups in extreme poverty. The successful introduction of these programmes is challenging in these countries due to their high incidence of poverty, low delivery capacity and poor service infrastructure. The article discusses the design, implementation and impact of these programmes, as well as their institutionalization and dynamics. It concludes that these programmes can be effective in reducing persistent intergenerational poverty, but that their sustainability is undermined by weak institutionalization.     

Civic Spaces: Mexican Hometown Associations and Immigrant Participation

The study of civic participation and social capital in the United States has, until recently, been silent on the role of immigrant-serving organizations. There is a new line of scholarship, which indicates that ethnic organizations are generally disadvantaged in relation to White mainstream organizations on factors such as resources and political visibility. Our fieldwork on Mexican hometown associations (HTAs) in Los Angeles shows that transnational associations are even more disadvantaged than ethnic organizations that primarily serve the native born. However, this marginality leaves some counterintuitive advantages, namely the creation of safe spaces where undocumented immigrants, recent immigrants, and those with limited English proficiency can get involved in civic and political activities. We explore the extent to which these dynamics vary by gender and immigrant generation, and over time as Mexican hometown associations increasingly turn their attention to political issues in the United States.     

Opportunities for making ends meet and upward mobility: differences in organizational deprivation across urban and suburban poor neighborhoods

Objectives. Given the recent rise of poverty in U.S. suburbs, this study asks: What poor neighborhoods are most disadvantageous, those in the city or those in the suburbs? Building on recent urban sociological work demonstrating the importance of neighborhood organizations for the poor, we are concerned with one aspect of disadvantage—the lack of availability of organizational resources oriented toward the poor. By breaking down organizations into those that promote mobility versus those that help individuals meet their daily subsistence needs, we seek to explore potential variations in the type of disadvantage that may exist.Methods. We test whether poor urban or suburban neighborhoods are more likely to be organizationally deprived by breaking down organizations into three types: hardship organizations, educational organizations, and employment organizations. We use data from the 2000 U.S. County Business Patterns and the 2000 U.S. Census and test neighborhood deprivation using logistic regression models.Results. We find that suburban poor neighborhoods are more likely to be organizationally deprived than are urban poor neighborhoods, especially with respect to organizations that promote upward mobility. Interesting racial and ethnic composition factors shape this more general finding.Conclusion. Our findings suggest that if a poor individual is to live in a poor neighborhood, with respect to access to organizational resources, he or she would be better off living in the central city. Suburban residence engenders isolation from organizations that will help meet one's daily needs and even more so from those offering opportunities for mobility.     

A comparative analysis of pension reforms and challenges in Ghana and Nigeria

Ghana and Nigeria recently joined a number of countries that have incorporated fully‐funded defined contribution pension programmes into their national social security arrangements. Contemporary analyses of pension reforms, however, continue to focus on middle‐income countries in Latin America and Central and Eastern Europe, as well as on Member States of the Organisation for Economic Co‐operation and Development, thereby marginalizing recent pension policy reforms in sub‐Saharan African countries. This article examines the complete and partial shifts to defined contribution pension programmes in Nigeria and Ghana respectively, and points to a number of contextual and contingency factors that challenge the use of defined contribution schemes as a means to address problems of benefit adequacy in the sub‐Saharan African context.     

The Greater Complexity of Lived Race: An Extension of Harris and Sim*

Objectives. Harris and Sim (2002) recently demonstrated the complexity of lived race by exploring patterns of racial self‐identification. They raised important sociological questions about the role of context in racial self‐identification, but offered an incomplete picture of ethnic fluidity by excluding Hispanics from their analyses. We address this limitation with data on Hispanics from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health). Methods. Our social‐psychological approach, using compositional analysis, focuses on the lived experience of race and ethnicity as qualitatively similar conceptual categories. Results. Informed by the cognitive process of social categorization, we find that considerably more individuals show fluidity in racial and ethnic self‐identification across contexts than suggested by Harris and Sim. Conclusions. Harris and Sim's thesis is even more strongly supported by these findings than in their original analysis, and our findings reinforce their challenge to the assumed stability of racial and ethnic measurement in sociology. We conclude by proposing a change in the measurement of race/ethnicity in America.     

Organization communication regarding ISO 26000 practices in South Korea: focusing on the enlarged scope

ISO 26000, issued on November 1, 2010, has enlarged the scope of social responsibility (SR) from corporations to all types of organizations. This article examines how organizations that traditionally have not been concerned with this term, such as public or governmental institutions and nonprofit organizations, interpret this new standard and the notion of SR, especially in the South Korean context. For this research, we observed the SR-related reports and media activity of seven Korean organizations: Korean Standards Association (KSA), the Ministry of Knowledge Economy (MKE), Gangdong-gu Office (GDG), Christian Ethics Movement of Korea (CEMK), LG Electronics Union (LGEU), Collective Action (CA), and Working Together Corporation (WTCO). We also carried out interviews with experts in these organizations, who largely work on the subject. Using the organizing theory frame (enactment–selection–retention) of Karl E. Weick, we analyzed three elements of the organizational communication of these institutions: strategy, ISO 26000 messaging, and receivers of the information. ISO 26000 was first actively used in public organizations (e.g., KSA, MKE, and GDG) as a policy tool to expand the concept to all aspects of Korean society, and was later used in certain nonprofit organizations (e.g., LGEU and CEMK) as a new paradigm, creating new concepts such as union SR and churches’ SR that partially accept the international standard in different contexts. Some civil societies, such as CA and WTCO, observe the phenomenon in a passive way to see if it could promote the social values of their organizations. Lastly, in spite of the scope enlargement, we note that SR is still in the range of corporate SR, and the application process in South Korea shows that the social aspect is more easily ignored than the economic and environmental aspects.     

Nonprofit Advocacy Organizations: Their Characteristics and Activities*

Objectives. In this article we examine political advocacy by nonprofit organizations. Relatively little is known about the types of organizations that participate in advocacy, their characteristics, the issues for which they advocate, and the resources they devote to it. This is especially the case for nonprofits that operate at the state or local level. Methods. Using data from a large survey of Indiana nonprofit organizations, we use logistic and multinomial regression to determine which organizational characteristics relate to participation in varying levels of advocacy. Results. We find that the size of the organization, its access to information and communication technology, its charitable status, and, in some cases, the field of activity in which it operates all help predict nonprofit advocacy. The age of the organization, its reliance on government funding (except when substantial), and its proximity to the state's major economic and political center do not generally help differentiate nonprofits that advocate from those that do not. Conclusions. Our findings suggest that most nonprofits are ambivalent about advocacy. Some do no advocacy at all; many participate in some form of it although it does not constitute their primary purpose or mission; and only a small minority devotes considerable resources to it. However, these patterns differ systematically by type of nonprofit.     

The performance of social security contributory and tax‐financed pensions in Central America,and the effects of the global crisis

Over the last 30 years, Latin America has pioneered structural pension reforms. This article focuses on a representative regional sample of seven Central American countries with diverse levels of development (Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Panama) studying contributory and tax‐financed pensions as well as recent pension reforms. It comparatively assesses system performance regarding five social security principles: unity; universal coverage; adequacy of benefits; equal treatment, solidarity and gender equality; and financial sustainability. It also evaluates the impact of the world crisis on these pension systems, highlighting the differences between public and private pensions, and extracts lessons and suggests policies for the future.     

Does inflation targeting lower inflation and spur growth?

Over the last few decades several countries have turned to inflation targeting as a policy choice for instilling stability into their economies. Prior studies have shown that inflation targeting has reduced inflation in those countries without significantly impacting GDP. This study seeks to improve upon these results by identifying the impact of timing on the policy decision as well as its impact as related to specific regions of the world. The focus is on developing countries across six regions. We find significant regional variation in developing countries in our sample in terms of the direction of changes in inflation following a switch to the inflation targeting policy. Moreover, although the impact of inflation targeting on real GDP is minimal overall, there is a statistically significant increase in real GDP among developing countries in certain regions only, namely, Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East.     

对宗教组织之信任的探索性研究——以上海数据为例

本文利用上海市的调查数据,从宗教归属、人口学变量、社会经济地位因素、社会信任、社会参与和其他机构信任等方面对宗教组织信任进行分析,了解人们对宗教组织信任的现状及影响因素,并对相关的研究进行回应。结果显示,与对其它机构的信任相比,民众对宗教组织的信任处于一个较低水平;宗教归属、社会信任、组织参与和对世俗机构的信任对宗教组织信任的影响最大;阶层、社会参与也有一定的影响;性别、年龄、受教育程度和政治面貌等无影响。     

Interest rate setting at the ECB: Individual preferences and collective decision making

We investigate whether the members of the Governing Council of the European Central Bank take into account the specific economic conditions of their states of origin, to set the interest rates for the euro area. Testing the national-based view against the Europeanist perspective is a challenging issue, because voting inside the Governing Council is secret, and the final outcome depends both on the individual preferences and the procedures followed by the Governing Council to arrive at a decision. Accordingly, we model interest rate setting as a two-stage process: first, each member of the Governing Council sets his/her preferred rate, and next the Governing Council meets and decides the actual figure. Our empirical analysis shows that domestic developments play a major role in determining the preferred interest rate of the each member; and that some members exert agenda setting power, that precludes some interest rate policies to be considered at the meeting.     

Debt threshold for fiscal sustainability assessment in emerging economies

This paper explores the debt threshold for fiscal sustainability assessment for 14 emerging economies during the period 1999–2016. The threshold point is identified as the level which, if exceeded, promptly raises sovereign risk to an unsustainable level. As such, we employ a panel threshold analysis to the determination of debt limit, which can serve as a distinctive feature from other studies on fiscal sustainability. Our results demonstrate that non-Latin American economies are considered to be sustainable in the short run, as their debts remain below the threshold bounds of 40–55% of GDP. However, the long-run sustainability risk may emerge from a continuous upward trend in debt paths, implying the need for rebuilding fiscal buffers. It is important to emphasize that fiscal sustainability is far more challenging for most Latin-American economies. This is indicated by their debt accumulation beyond the threshold level of roughly 35% of GDP which is relatively lower than that estimated for the other countries. Indeed, during times of high debt, emerging countries in Latin America also face higher default risk since their sovereign risk premium respond more strongly to debt rise. Their paths toward fiscal sustainability, hence, requires an immediate imposition of strict fiscal discipline to relieve the debt pressure.     

Cross-cultural research on euthanasia and abortion

Based on cross-cultural studies of euthanasia and abortion, we hypothesized that attitudes toward euthanasia and abortion were socioculturally determined. Using a 2 x 2 factorial design, we examined the effects of culture (America and China) and type of death (infanticide and geronticide). We found that students from the American culture were less likely to favor infanticide than those from the Chinese culture, and that students from the People's Republic of China believed infanticide to be more common and more prevalent than geronticide in Chinese society. Finally, we found that education, judgment of population density, and traditional family values were related to attitudes toward euthanasia, abortion, and female infanticide in the Chinese, but not in the American, culture.