Lives in limbo: Temporary Protected Status and immigrant identities

The United States formulates much of its immigration and refugee policy to match economic and political circumstances. We interpret these policy shifts as a set of graduated positions on immigration and refugee flows that attempts to discipline the lives of newcomers and, in so doing, shapes immigrant identities. In this article, we analyse the interplay between the US government and Salvadoran asylum applicants negotiating procedures that grant only temporary relief from deportation via the policy of Temporary Protected Status (TPS). We find that each policy shift results in the strategic renegotiation of asylum applicants’ identities so as to achieve the best opportunity for a successful outcome. Based on Foucault’s ideas of governmentality and Ong’s concept of flexible citizenship, we argue that what appears more superficially as a patchwork strategy of immigration laws and asylum practices may be theorized more deeply as a set of flexible responses by the state that turn on identity construction at different scales, and that aim to mediate transnational relations.     

Estimation from Zero-Failure Data

When performing quantitative (or probabilistic) risk assessments, it is often the case that data for many of the potential events in question are sparse or nonexistent. Some of these events may be well-represented by the binomial probability distribution. In this paper, a model for predicting the binomial failure probability, P , from data that include no failures is examined. A review of the literature indicates that the use of this model is currently limited to risk analysis of energetic initiation in the explosives testing field. The basis for the model is discussed, and the behavior of the model relative to other models developed for the same purpose is investigated. It is found that the qualitative behavior of the model is very similar to that of the other models, and for larger values of n (the number of trials), the predicted P values varied by a factor of about eight among the five models examined. Analysis revealed that the estimator is nearly identical to the median of a Bayesian posterior distribution, derived using a uniform prior. An explanation of the application of the estimator in explosives testing is provided, and comments are offered regarding the use of the estimator versus other possible techniques.     

It's written all over their faces: Preschoolers' emotion understanding

Emotion understanding is a multifaceted construct made up of several components. To identify how several common components of emotion understanding relate to one another, five emotion understanding tasks were compared within the same group of children. Fifty‐four preschool children (M = 3.81 years, SD = 0.40) were asked to display the typical facial expression of six emotions after hearing their corresponding emotion label. They were then read six vignettes and asked to: “use your face to show how [the protagonist] would feel,” provide an emotion label for the main character, and “choose a picture of a face that would look like [the main character].” Finally, they were asked to provide a label for emotions presented to them in photographs. For all tasks, six emotions were examined: happiness, sadness, anger, fear, surprise, and disgust. With the exception of the two modeling tasks, results show correlations among the emotion understanding tasks. There was a significant interaction between task and emotion category for emotion understanding accuracy. However, there was some consistency in the pattern of discrete emotion categorization emergence across the tasks. Additionally, accuracy scores (representing emotion understanding) across tasks were not equivalent. Findings are discussed in the broader context of emotion understanding.     

Academic economists behaving badly? A survey on three areas of unethical behavior

This article measures the degree to which academic economists have engaged in unethical behavior and the degree to which academic economists believe the profession as a whole engages in unethical behavior. Three main types of unethical behavior are examined: (1) falsification of research; (2) expropriation of graduate student research or including an undeserving co-author on a research paper; and (3) exchange of grades for gifts, money, or sex. Using a unique data set gathered at the 1998 American Economic Association (AEA) meetings, we find that there is a significant amount of misconduct, particularly in the second category.     

Are mating strategies and mating tactics independent constructs?

This study explored the constructs of mating tactics and mating strategy. These constructs are conceptually related but distinct. In current research, the measurement of one of these constructs is often viewed as being indicative of the other. Therefore, an exploration of these constructs will enhance understanding of study outcomes in this research area. Self-report measures of mating tactics and strategies were administered to 183 female participants, aged 18-45 years. The Escalating Sexual Encounters Questionnaire (ESEQ, Greer & Buss, 1994), the Derogatis' Sexual Experience Scale (Derogatis & Melisaratos, 1979), the Sexual Strategies Measure (SSM, Schmitt, 1996), the Sociosexual Orientation Inventory (Simpson & Gangestad, 1991), and two questions assessing age at menarche and total number of sexual partners were administered. Exploratory factor analysis with oblique rotation produced two distinct factors reflecting a "tactic"-based factor and a "strategy"-based factor. This finding is consistent with viewing mating tactics and mating strategies as distinct and varying independently. An important implication of this study is that measurement of mating tactics is not indicative of underlying mating strategies in women. Further, four patterns of female mating style emerged upon review of participant factor scores and are discussed within an evolutionary context.