Migration and the “Second Wife” in South China: Toward Cross‐Border Polygyny1

Rapid industrialization in southern China has brought together two types of migrants: young women from towns and villages seeking work and upward mobility and affluent men from Hong Kong sojourning in the coastal provinces to supervise or service export‐oriented industries. The result is that many married Hong Kong men who cross the border regularly on business have taken “second wives” or mistresses in China. We analyze this phenomenon using government statistics, selected court cases, and personal interviews. We show that the emergence of the “second wife” phenomenon among migrants in southern China is consistent with recent studies on the causes of polygyny, and we make some predictions about the likelihood of this type of polygyny among migrants.     

Change and Continuity in Australian International Migration Policy

Almost half Australia's population are an immigrant or the child of an immigrant. This paper traces changes in Australia's immigration policy over the postwar period and relates them to changing global and national developments. While Australian postwar immigration policy changes are similar in many ways to those in other “traditional” migration countries there are a number of distinctive elements. The effectiveness of those policies in achieving government goals is assessed and it is concluded that most objectives of policy have been successfully achieved. Nevertheless there are a number of challenges which Australian policy makers face over the next decade.     

Using a “child's‐eye view” of social success to understand the importance of school readiness at the transition to formal schooling

Recent research into school readiness has highlighted the importance of not only children's cognitive and socio‐emotional skills, but also the degree to which they have family support in the home. The current study examines the association between social success upon school entry and teacher‐ratings of school readiness as assessed by the Brief Early Skills and Support Index (BESSI), controlling for language ability. Importantly, social success was assessed using a “child's‐eye view” with peer‐reported assessments of both social preference and reciprocated friendships. A total of 244 children (131 boys, M_age = 61 months, SD = 4.78 months) in their first year of formal schooling participated. Child school readiness was found to be important for social preference, with the association being more marked for boys versus girls. Family support was the only independent predictor of children's reciprocated friendships. The use of the BESSI, with its broad scope compared to other measures of school readiness, highlights the importance of focusing both on a child's cognitive and socio‐emotional skills at school entry and their family support when exploring the association of school readiness to children's social success at the transition to formal schooling.     

Gambling and Sport: Implicit Association and Explicit Intention Among Underage Youth

This study examined whether an implicit association existed between gambling and sport among underage youth in Australia, and whether this implicit association could shape their explicit intention to gamble. A sample of 14–17 year old Australian participants completed two phases of tasks, including an implicit association test based online experiment, and a post-experiment online survey. The results supported the existence of an implicit association between gambling and sport among the participants. This implicit association became stronger when they saw sport-relevant (vs. sport-irrelevant) gambling logos, or gambling-relevant (vs. gambling-irrelevant) sport names. In addition, this implicit association was positively related to the amount of sport viewing, but only among those participants who had more favorable gambling attitudes. Lastly, gambling attitudes and advertising knowledge, rather than the implicit association, turned out to be significant predictors of the explicit intention to gamble.     

Breaking Bad: Comparing Gambling Harms Among Gamblers and Affected Others

This article examines gambling harms from both gamblers and affected others’ perspectives. Participants (3076 gamblers and 2129 affected others) completed a retrospective survey that elicited information on harms they experienced from gambling across their lifetime. Their responses were analyzed through testing measurement invariance, estimating item-response theoretic parameters, calculating percentages, confidence intervals, and correlations, as well as regressions. The results indicated large commonalities in the experience of harms reported by gamblers and affected others. Further, gamblers appeared to ‘export’ about half of the harms they experienced to those around them. The findings also provided detailed profiles of evolving harms as problem gambling severity varies.     

A Multi Sited Approach to Analysis of Destination Immigration Data: An Asian Example

There has been a bias in standard international migration data collection and research toward immigration and destinations while emigration origins have been neglected. This has hampered our ability to provide a substantial empirical base for migration and development policy decision making in origin areas. While improvement of migration data collection in origin countries remains an important priority, this paper argues that much can be learned about emigration from low income countries from immigration data in high income destinations. Migration stock and flow data from Australia are used to provide information on the scale and nature of movement between Asia and Australia. It establishes that there are important but different flows in both directions which belie traditional conceptualisations of south‐north migration and this has significant implications for the effects of migration on economic development.