The stages of mass mobilization: separate phenomena and distinct causal mechanisms

The notion that mass mobilization has analytically important stages is underappreciated in the literature. This paper proposes an approach that decomposes mass mobilization into three main phenomena: origins, protest and outcome. Each stage is characterized by unique factors and mechanisms. Accordingly, the research questions pertaining to each stage are dealt with by multiple levels of analysis and alternative explanations, allowing theory testing and theory development. The paper highlights separate causal mechanisms that operate in the emergence of grievances and protest motivation during the origins stage; mechanisms involving different forms of pressure, organization, psychological processes, and external forces during the protest stage; and mechanisms pertaining to key players and strategies that determine outcomes of mass mobilization. We illustrate that certain factors and mechanisms which are key in one stage have little or no causal relevance in the other stages. Other factors and mechanisms may also dramatically change in content, meaning or configuration between the stages. This theoretical approach facilitates the integration of a large and diverse body of scholarship into a structured analysis of mass mobilization that allows for both a detailed case study as well as comparison of stages across mass protests. The analysis of stages and causal mechanisms is illustrated across cases of democratization, revolution, and protest within democracy.     

International Migration and Development in Asia: Exploring Knowledge Frameworks

There is revived interest and debate on the relation between international migration and development, with Asia emerging as one important locus for such deliberations. A number of institutions, journals, people and organizations have emerged as key players in these discussions but so far there have been few attempts to investigate the information gathered from the perspective of “knowledge production”. This paper’s objective, therefore, is to outline some of the ways in which knowledge about migration and development is being produced in Asia. We focus on selected aspects of knowledge production to identify the lenses through which much of the work is currently generated and the research imagination resulting from existing approaches.     

From wage rigidity to labour market institution rigidity: A turning-point in explaining unemployment?

In this paper we offer a critical discussion about the concept of labour market rigidity in the light of recent theoretical approaches that have aimed to provide sound micro-foundations to the presence of unemployment in market economies. We point out that the concept of labour market rigidity usually referred to in such theories has changed over time, involving in succession the rigidity of wages, contracts and labour market institutions. We also appraise the factors that lead labour market institutions rigidity, stressed by the search literature, to challenge the more widespread explanation of unemployment grounded on wage rigidity. Moreover, we analyse some theoretical and empirical issues that cast doubt on the ability to deal with unemployment, disentangling the role of institutional rigidities from that of wage stickiness.     

Family Trajectories and Health: A Life Course Perspective

This paper investigates the role of family trajectory, i.e., the whole sequence of family events during the life course of early adults in shaping their health outcomes. Union formation and childbearing are jointly considered, since the two life domains are highly connected and their intersections may have an effect on health outcomes. Data come from wave I and wave IV of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) in the United States. The paper is divided in two parts. The first part focuses on family transitions and investigates if changes in timing (when events happen), quantum (what and how many transitions), and ordering (in what order), have an effect on the health of young women. In the second part, life course trajectories are classified into six groups representing different ideal-types of family trajectories and the association of these trajectories with health outcomes is explored. Results suggest that family trajectories play an important role on different health outcomes. Controlling for selection and background characteristics, precocious and “non-normative” transitions are associated with lower self-reported health and higher propensity of smoking and drinking.     

Curriculum Change as Viewed by Students: A Three Year Study

Abstract

This article reports on a three-year study of curriculum change contrasting MSW students enrolled in a new, integrated curriculum with students who had taken earlier method sequence programs. Considerable stability was found in student practice interests and perceived skill levels. Shifts in familiarity with social work practice literature were responsive to the new curricular goals. Modifications of field learning experiences were less visible. Achieving such change is clearly more challenging. The implications of these findings for curriculum design and monitoring are discussed.     

Local stationarity in small area estimation models

Small area estimators are often based on linear mixed models under the assumption that relationships among variables are stationary across the area of interest (Fay–Herriot models). This hypothesis is patently violated when the population is divided into heterogeneous latent subgroups. In this paper we propose a local Fay–Herriot model assisted by a Simulated Annealing algorithm to identify the latent subgroups of small areas. The value minimized through the Simulated Annealing algorithm is the sum of the estimated mean squared error (MSE) of the small area estimates. The technique is employed for small area estimates of erosion on agricultural land within the Rathbun Lake Watershed (IA, USA). The results are promising and show that introducing local stationarity in a small area model may lead to useful improvements in the performance of the estimators.     

Illegitimate tasks as a source of work stress

Illegitimate tasks represent a task-level stressor derived from role and justice theories within the framework of “Stress-as–Offense-to-Self” (SOS; Semmer, Jacobshagen, Meier, & Elfering, 2007). Tasks are illegitimate if they violate norms about what an employee can properly be expected to do, because they are perceived as unnecessary or unreasonable; they imply a threat to one's professional identity. We report three studies testing associations between illegitimate tasks and well-being/strain. In two cross-sectional studies, illegitimate tasks predicted low self-esteem, feelings of resentment towards one's organization and burnout, controlling for role conflict, distributive injustice and social stressors in Study 1, and for distributive and procedural/interactional justice in Study 2. In Study 3, illegitimate tasks predicted two strain variables (feelings of resentment towards one's organization and irritability) over a period of two months, controlling for initial values of strain. Results confirm the unique contribution of illegitimate tasks to well-being and strain, beyond the effects of other predictors. Moreover, Study 3 demonstrated that illegitimate tasks predicted strain, rather than being predicted by it. We therefore conclude that illegitimate tasks represent an aspect of job design that deserves more attention, both in research and in decisions about task assignments.     

Contact Between Birth and Adoptive Families During the First Year Post-Placement: Perspectives of Lesbian,Gay, and Heterosexual Parents

Despite growing visibility of lesbian- and gay-parent adoption, only one qualitative study has examined birth family contact among adoptive families with lesbian and gay parents (Goldberg, Kinkler, Richardson, & Downing, 2011). We studied adoptive parents’ (34 lesbian, 32 gay, and 37 heterosexual; N = 103 families) perspectives of birth family contact across the first year post-placement. Using questionnaire and interview data, we found few differences in openness dynamics by parental sexual orientation. Most reported some birth mother contact, most had legally finalized their adoption, and few described plans to withhold information from children. We discuss implications for clinical practice, policy, and research.