Qualifications Recognition Reform for Skilled Migrants in Australia: Applying Competency-based Assessment to Overseas-qualified Nurses

The past two decades have coincided with unprecedented Australian selection of skilled migrants, in particular professionals from non‐English speaking background (NESB) source countries. By 1991, the overseas‐born constituted 43 to 49 per cent of Australia's engineers, 43 per cent of computer professionals, 40 per cent of doctors, 26 per cent of nurses, and rising proportions in other key professions. Within one to five years of arrival, just 30 per cent of degree‐qualified migrants were employed. However, few diploma holders had found work in any profession, and select NESB groups were characterized by acute labour market disadvantage. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, barriers to credential recognition were identified as a major contributing factor to these inferior employment outcomes. This paper describes the evolution of Australia's qualifications recognition reform agenda for NESB migrants, including progressive growth in support of a shift from paper to competency‐based assessment (CBA). Within this context, the paper examines the degree to which improvements were achieved in the 1990s in the field of nursing — the first major Australian profession to embrace CBA, and one promoted by the National Office of Overseas Skills Recognition as an exemplar of the reform process. Assessment protocols and outcomes are analysed within two contrasting contexts: pre‐migration at Australian overseas posts, and within Australia following overseas‐qualified nurses' (OQNs) arrival. Based on empirical data from a wide range of sources, the paper identifies the development of a major paradox. Substantial improvements in qualifications recognition were indeed achieved for NESB nurses through CBA in Australia, in particular in the dominant immigrant‐receiving states of Victoria and New South Wales. At the same time, it is argued, a significant tightening of recognition procedures was occurring at Australian overseas posts where CBA was unavailable. The Immigration Department placed pre‐migration assessment more, rather than less, exclusively in the hands of the professional nursing bodies, in a period coinciding with their harsher, rather than more lenient, treatment of NESB migrants' qualifications. Minimal improvement in recognition of overseas qualifications was achieved in other professions.     

Proposal for training of workers and researchers as from the participatory return of research results in workers' health

This study streams from a perspective of Workers' Health as a field of intervention where worker's experience on the process of illness is essential to understand and generate changes in the work process, and to contribute to develop knowledge in this area. We intended to collaborate in the training of researchers and nursing workers as a means of contributing to amplify their knowledge related to work and health conditions. As a motto to promote dialogue between researchers and workers, we organized workshops to discuss the results of an epidemiological study on the work-health relationships in nursing. Ten workshops were conducted at two federal public hospitals, in the city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The main aspects discussed during the workshops revealed (i) work nuances for which the questionnaire was not sufficiently sensitive, (ii) some associations between different aspects of the survey, dealt with in the questionnaires, and (iii) recognition that some aspects shown in the epidemiological results were experienced at work. One can appreciate that the proposal presented here contributed to the training of researchers and workers, amplifying their knowledge and contributing to the development of the activity.     

The Invisible (Inaudible) Woman: Nursing in the English Academy

Nursing is numerically a far larger academic discipline than medicine, and is situated in many more higher education institutions in England (over 50), whereas there are 21 medical schools. Like the rest of ‘non medical education and training’ it is purchased through a quasi‐market. Despite the size of this market, however, nursing education has until recently been largely invisible in policy documents and the ambitions of nursing academics to develop their subject are seen as inappropriate. This article explores this invisibility and inaudibility, with particular reference to the 1997 Richards Report, Clinical Academic Careers and the 2001 Nuffield Trust report, A New Framework for NHS/University Relations. It draws on the work of Davies on the ‘professional predicament’ of nursing, to argue that, although the move of nursing education into higher education had the aim of improving its status, nursing has difficulty finding its voice within academia. As a result, issues which are salient for nursing (as for many of the health professions), such as a poor (or relatively poor) showing in the Research Assessment Exercise and the complexities of balancing research, teaching and maintaining clinical competence, are raised as high‐profile issues only in medicine.     

The Low Status of Female Part‐Time NHS Nurses: A Bed‐Pan Ceiling?

Despite increases in female participation rates into the paid working population of Britain women remain concentrated into particular sectors of the economy. Areas of the labour market where women predominate are also characterized by high levels of part‐time employment. The significance of part‐time work is that it is lower paid and offers fewer employment opportunities for women. This article examines the careers of 643 qualified female NHS nurses. It is found that respondents working part‐time are the least likely to occupy the upper echelons of NHS nursing. Explanations for this centre on the actions and strategies of managers who use negative gender role stereotypes regarding part‐time nurses to inform recruitment and promotion decisions. Managers, however, regard the low status of part‐time nurses as a reflection of their own choice strategies, thus failing to recognize the existence of gender‐based disadvantage. The resultant outcome is one where part‐time nurses are confined to the lowest qualified clinical grades, with little opportunity to progress to the higher grades. Critical labour shortages in nursing, however, may mean that the utilization of part‐timers is re‐examined as NHS management seek to retain more qualified nurses. For such a re‐examination to be successful management attitudes also need to change.     

Older Women in Poverty: The Impact of Midlife Factors

This study investigates the factors contributing to older women's economic well‐being from a life course perspective, assessing the effects of both midlife characteristics and later life events on women between the ages of 66–70, and 71–85. Using the 1968–1997 Panel Study of Income Dynamics, the findings suggest that midlife characteristics such as workforce participation, income, and rural residence are strongly related to economic outcomes in old age. Late‐life events and characteristics, however, also contribute significantly to economic outcomes even when midlife factors are incorporated into analyses. In addition, both midlife and later life characteristics contribute to the persistence of poverty in old age, with many groups of ever poor women finding themselves in poverty for over 50% of their old age years.     

The Impact of Occupational Sex Segregation on Family Businesses: The Case of American Harness Racing

Previous research on occupational sex segregation agrees that the workplace is not an isolated world but instead influences, and is influenced by, other spheres of social life. Identifying specific social factors both internal and external to the workplace, and how these may interact, can provide deeper insights into how occupational sex segregation is created and maintained. This study focuses on individual family businesses in American harness horse racing, a previously unexamined and highly sex‐segregated industry, and provides insights in how vertical and horizontal sex segregation may develop in family businesses. The findings show how the belief that married couples cannot debate and resolve work‐related conflicts without undue strain on their personal relationship leads some of these couples to organize their work into gendered tasks and workspaces, contributing to the maintenance of vertical segregation in the trainer position. The implications for segregation of other solutions, such as operating separate businesses, or working for another business, are less clear.     

The role of religious networks and other factors in types of volunteer work

In view of current efforts to strengthen volunteering and promote the faith‐based provision of social services in the United States, we examine both the underlying complexity of volunteering and who performs particular types of volunteer work. This paper, drawing on a telephone interview survey of 526 randomly selected Indiana residents, considers whether religious involvement helps explain engagement in different types of volunteer work independent of such other contributing factors as family status, socioeconomic status, and community attachment. We find that religious involvement plays an independent role, but only for certain types of volunteer work.     

The sociology of grit: Exploring grit as a sociological variable and its potential role in social stratification

This paper proposes the currently fashionable psychological notion of “grit” as a potentially useful variable in sociological analysis and explores its potential for contributing to addressing sociological concerns. Grit, comprising perseverance and passion toward long‐term goals, has received growing attention within academia and from the general public as a strong predictor of achievement. Grit captures an important, noncognitive, underdeveloped aspect of agency not included in life course or stratification studies. Grit can contribute to our understanding about how the subjective beliefs that are typically treated as agency are actually translated into volitional action that constructs one's life course, a crucial potential life course mechanism. This paper suggests incorporating grit into sociological understanding of individual‐level aspects of stratification, moving beyond its current conception anchored fully in psychology, to further understand what it is, where it comes from, and why it is sociologically useful.     

The outcomes of a longitudinal study of non‐organic failure‐to‐thrive

Individuals who had failed‐to‐thrive for non‐organic reasons received psychosocial intervention which was tailor‐made to their particular needs during childhood. Their progress was followed up over 20 years later, including their physical growth and social and cognitive functioning. Not all clients showed the same outcomes. The quality of the parental relationship and the reason for the growth‐faltering were found to be related to the outcomes at 20 years. Unless they experienced a positive and sustained change in their life or circumstances, individuals who had experienced abuse showed poorer outcomes than those whose growth‐faltering had been thought due to neglect, lack of parenting or feeding dif?culties. Abuse tended to be a contributing factor to growth‐faltering more frequently in families where the parents were observed to have a poor relationship with each other. However, a signi?cant change in the quality of care given to the child and the emotional environment experienced by them resulted in positive outcomes 20 years later despite experiencing abuse during childhood. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Divide Between “Evidenced‐Based” Approaches and Practitioners of Traditional Theories of Family Therapy

Evidenced‐based approaches continue to grow in the field of family therapy. However, practicing family therapists do not always embrace these approaches. In this article, we explore factors contributing to practitioners' concerns with evidence‐based treatments and suggest a broader, more clinically palatable view of evidenced‐based treatment. We also suggest how family therapy researchers, practitioners, and educators might begin to close the researcher–clinician divide in the best interest of all concerned.     

The Good Life: Moral and Ethical Sexual Considerations

There are an enormous number of studies surrounding predictors of condom use, and an equally impressive number of prevention programs in place to decrease the rate of HIV transmission. Despite such attention, the incidence of HIV infection remains high. One contributing factor to the continued spread of HIV may be the relative absence of recognition by researchers that condoms are imbued with a social meaning that threatens two salient goals for interactants: the desires to maintain positive identities and close relationships. Recent evidence suggests that requests to use a condom may be interpreted in ways that threaten both goals. This investigation examines the roles of identity and relational maintenance goals as influences on safe‐sex decisions. Results from an experimental design confirm the importance of these goals to safe‐sex behavior. Implications are noted and suggestions for changes in prevention programs offered.     

The missing and needed male nurse: Discursive hybridization in professional nursing texts

The role of men in nursing has been of ongoing interest to gender and work scholars who examine the processes that maintain or challenge occupational gender segregation. Drawing on professional nursing texts, the current study moves beyond individual men to investigate organizational practices within nursing that discursively construct the male nurse. Using the rhetoric of ‘equality’ and ‘diversity’, texts frame men in nursing as a missing and needed antidote to projected worker shortages and a homogenous workforce. Taking a critical lens to these arguments, analysis of professional discourse reveals an appropriated disenfranchisement that masks men's gendered privilege. Professional leaders frame men in nursing as equivalent to women in traditionally male occupations with little attention to the ways in which US men, particularly white and heterosexual men, are advantaged currently and historically. The findings trace a process of discursive hybridization through which organizational leaders appropriate rhetoric from historically disenfranchised groups to benefit predominantly white, middle‐class men.     

Performing Women: The Gendered Dimensions of the UK New Research Economy

This article explores the development and maintenance of familiar gendered employment patterns and practices in UK universities, which are exemplars of new modes of knowledge production, commodification and marketization. After discussing in detail the evidence of gender discrimination in UK higher education and the changes in the academic labour process consequent to the incorporation of universities, at least at the policy level, into the ‘knowledge economy’, institution‐specific data is used to highlight the gendered aspects of the research economy from the three intermeshing perspectives of research culture, research capital and the research production process. This nexus is constructed in such a way as to systematically militate against women's full and equal involvement in research. Lack of transparency, increased competition and lower levels of collegiate activity coupled with networking based on homosociability are contributing to a research production process where women are marginalized.     

Global Governance,neoliberalism and national responses: The case of Bangladesh’s ready‐made garment (RMG) sector

This article on the ready‐made garment (RMG) sector of Bangladesh shows how over‐reliance on foreign capital for development financing and deregulated investment—a hallmark of neoliberal economic arrangements—undermines the incorporation of SDGs’ and INGOs’ equity principles, contributing to biased policy responses yielding unequal outcomes. The article cautions that while countries prioritize economic growth over social and environmental nourishment and continue to adopt neoliberal economic policies to promote economic growth, inequity is unavoidable, if not inevitable. Thus, the way forward may be to shift the focus of ‘development’ from the economy to society, to building ‘good societies’ where institutions and strategies, including those that contribute to economic growth, are organized such that these complement not compromise the evolution of such societies.     

The Gay 90s?: Models of Legal Decision‐Making,Change and History1

Abstract Using legal rulings on gay marriages from two periods in the U.S., I analyze the ability of dominant approaches to legal decision‐making to explain the rulings, their content, and changes from one period to the next. I show that no single dominant approach can address all three concerns. Instead, an approach that blends existing “attitudinal” and new institutionalist models within a structuration framework is developed and defended. In addition to contributing to a specific debate about legal decision‐making, the paper compares the power of cross‐sectional models to more temporally sensitive approaches and develops on Sewell's (1992 ) structuration theory.     

Post‐Socialist Restructuring and Population Redistribution in Hungary*

Abstract This research focuses on pathways by which national level macro‐social transformations are transmitted to local communities. Our case is Hungary where we examine the relationship between post‐socialist economic restructuring, widespread industrial dislocations, and urban‐rural migration. Using secondary data from the Hungarian Central Statistical Office (KSH) and survey data from a study of 49 villages in 4 distinct rural regions, we demonstrate that post‐socialist population deconcentration involved both suburbanization and net movement to villages, especially villages that are located relatively close to cities. Contrary to our expectations, movement to villages was from nearby settlements, not from large industrial centers. Moreover, migrants to villages were substantially better off than longer term village residents in terms of their human capital and attachment to the labor force. Consequently, post‐socialist population deconcentration is not contributing to rural poverty as feared by some scholars.     

‘You Can't Have Well‐being If You're Dead…or Can You?’ Children's Realistic and Logical Approach to Discussing Life,Death and Wellbeing

Well‐being is a popularised and regularly considered aspect of an individual's life. Whilst frequently theorised across disciplines interested in childhood, children's perspectives on well‐being are often missing. This article presents children's views on well‐being, focussing on the extent they consider well‐being to exist after death or near‐death experiences. Through focus‐group discussion, children's conversations reflect their ability for deep philosophical, abstract thinking and contributing to clearer understandings of well‐being across different contexts. Children's pragmatic responses about death when considering well‐being provide a valuable contribution to understanding fear of death whilst arguing for collaborative approaches between adults and children when considering complex issues.     

Conversations of Care: A Narrative Review of Collaborative Care Systems for Foster and Kinship Care

This paper reviews the literature on human relational factors and their impact on complex care systems for a highly vulnerable population of children and young people in out‐of‐home care (OOHC). Factors contributing to the functioning of collaborative OOHC systems are reviewed from theoretical and contextual perspectives. The authors posit that secondary traumatic stress and vicarious trauma are central to understanding the impact of relational trauma and the experience of individuals, families, teams, and the wider ecology of collaborative care systems. Given the challenges of working collaboratively across interpersonal, family, and systems boundaries to support traumatised children in OOHC, further research is required.