Mothers and Grandmothers on the Move: Labour Mobility and the Household Strategies of Moldovan and Ukrainian Migrant Women in Italy

This article contributes to the understanding of the westward migration of Eastern European women, by comparing Moldovan and Ukrainian women in Italy – the most popular destination for both groups – where they are mainly employed as domestic workers and home carers. Focusing on the differences in their trajectories in this labour sector, we discuss the significance of their age at emigration and their role within their families of origin. These have an impact not only on their mobility patterns, but also on their choices of employment and general socio‐cultural integration in the host country.     

Professionals’ decision‐making in cases of physical punishment reported to child welfare authorities: does family poverty matter?

The influence of family poverty on professionals’ decision‐making in cases of physical punishment reported to child welfare agencies was examined. The sample was drawn from the Canadian Incidence Study of Reported Child Abuse and Neglect. The influence of five indicators of poverty on six investigation outcomes was assessed. In addition, a Poverty Index was constructed from these five variables to assess whether the family's overall poverty status influenced investigation outcomes. The outcome variables examined were case substantiation, provision of ongoing child welfare services, referrals to child and family support programmes, out‐of‐home placement, applications to child welfare court and police involvement. Together, the poverty indicators did not account for more than 6% of the explained variation in any of the outcome variables, nor did the magnitude of the Poverty Index affect the likelihood of any of the investigation outcomes. These findings suggest that family poverty does not influence professionals’ decision‐making in cases of physical punishment reported to child welfare agencies in Canada. The findings have implications for the ongoing development of policy aimed at reducing parental use of physical punishment.     

What Will You Think of Me? Racial Integration, Peer Relationships and Achievement Among White Students and Students of Color

Brown v. Board of Education (1954) emphasized that segregation in schools leads the stigmatized students to withdraw from and lower their educational and professional aspirations. I consider this process in a modern sample by examining the relationship between the number of friends students report having at school and their goals and plans and their enjoyment of achievement activities in a sample of elementary and middle school students ( N = 80). Students of color were more isolated at school, and this isolation was negatively correlated with interest in academic work. Among White students, however, no relationship between social isolation and interest in academic work was found. Discussion focuses on the role of the social climate in fostering or inhibiting achievement among students of color .     

Conceptual Tools for Research on Race and Social Problems: An Overview of Dynamic Theory and Model Development

Although interpersonal, group processes and inter-group relationships are dynamic phenomena, researchers have studied these phenomena in a static manner. This article provides an overview of system dynamic modeling to bring greater attention to the importance of dynamic theoretical formulations and presents important concepts and tools that can facilitate movement in this direction. Important concepts for theory development are delineated, and various reasons why the field has a penchant for static theoretical formulations are explored. A set of tools and concepts from system dynamics is presented to guide dynamic thinking and future theory building.     

Cry Babies and Pollyannas: Infants Can Detect Unjustified Emotional Reactions

Infants are attuned to emotional facial and vocal expressions, reacting most prominently when they are exposed to negative expressions. However, it remains unknown if infants can detect whether a person's emotions are justifiable given a particular context. The focus of the current paper was to examine whether infants react the same way to unjustified (e.g., distress following a positive experience) and justified (e.g., distress following a negative experience) emotional reactions. Infants aged 15 and 18 months were shown an actor experiencing negative and positive experiences, with one group exposed to an actor whose emotional reactions were consistently unjustified (i.e., did not match the event), while the other saw an actor whose emotional reactions were justified (i.e., always matched the event). Infants' looking times and empathic reactions were examined. Only 18‐month‐olds detected the mismatching facial expressions: Those in the unjustified group showed more hypothesis testing (i.e., checking) across events than the justified group. Older infants in the justified group also showed more concerned reactions to negative expressions than those in the unjustified group. The present findings indicate that infants implicitly understand how the emotional valence of experiences is linked to subsequent emotional expressions.     

Economic Insecurity and the Fertility Intentions of Italian Women with One Child

The present study addresses the issue of economic insecurity and its relationship with the reproductive plans of 5,358 Italian women in couples who have recently had their first child. Data were sourced from the ISTAT Sample Survey on Births, 2005 edition. This article’s originality lies in the conceptualization of economic insecurity and the investigation of its effects on fertility intentions. We propose to capture economic insecurity by considering both the insecurity associated to the two partners’ employment status and a variety of aspects that contribute to the household’s ability to cope with possible unpredictable future events. Then, we investigate whether and how economic insecurity shapes the fertility intentions of women over their entire reproductive life span. With specific respect to women who intend to have one additional child only, we also observe the effect of economic insecurity on their intention to give birth sooner (i.e., within the next 3 years) or later. Our data show the existence of a critical factor in the passage from the generic fertility intentions to the contingent plan to have a child in the next 3 years: only half of women with one child who intend to follow the two-child family model feel ready to plan to have a second child in the next 3 years. The study also reinforces an argument that is frequently made: fertility intentions over the entire lifetime are less conditioned upon contingent constraints, and are often more closely related to individual traits and/or preferences.     

Descriptive study of older adults encountered by crisis intervention team (CIT) law enforcement officers

Increasingly, older adults who experience a mental health crisis come to the attention of crisis intervention team (CIT) law enforcement officers. These encounters are due largely to a lack of local mental health care resources. With few options available, individuals call 911 for assistance when an older adult exhibits alarming behavior. This article provides a profile of older adults encountered by CIT officers, identifies the reasons for the 911 call for assistance, and finds what predictors are associated with outcomes of those encounters. We found that these older adults were mostly female, Caucasian, diagnosed with depression, and attempting or threatening suicide.     

Waqf in Historical Perspective: Online fatāwā and Contemporary Discourses by Muslim Scholars

Since the beginnings of Islam, awqāf or religious endowments have been the medium through which various public services (i.e. schools, hospitals, and mosques) have been provided to communities. Historically, endowments were both insulated from state authority and an emanation of imperial and/or state power. Modern day Muslim scholars have taken a renewed interest in waqf, particularly as Muslim societies look to revive those indigenous institutions which promote cultural sustainability. This paper examines perceptions of the role of waqf in Muslim society as evidenced in current online fatāwā and writings by Muslim scholars. These sources are drawn from English-medium, Muslim web organizations and sites which have particular appeal among Muslims living in the West. This literature propagates a historical narrative of waqf which highlights the institution's moral significance, civic identity, and economic efficiency, and plays down its pre-nineteenth-century links to state power and its potential inefficiency. According to modern day scholars, endowments, with the proper legal framework in place, can promote civil society and sustainability. In a bid to examine these issues, the paper analyzes how online sources address the historical development of waqf and legal mechanisms shaping the regulation of endowments.     

The hidden majority/minority consensus: Minorities show similar preference patterns of immigrant support as the majority population

The acceptance of new arrivals has become an important topic regarding the social cohesion of the receiving countries. However, previous studies focused only on the native population's drivers of attitudes towards immigrants, disregarding that immigrant-origin inhabitants now form a considerable part of the population. To test whether the drivers for the willingness to support immigrants are the same for natives and immigrants and their descendants, we rely on a vignette study conducted in a representative German online panel (N = 3149) which contains an overrepresentation of immigrant-origin respondents. We presented participants with three vignettes of potential immigrants, varying, amongst other factors, economic prospects, safe and war-ridden countries of origin (to capture deservingness), as well as religious identity. While we find that minority members are generally slightly more welcoming towards immigrants than majority members, at their core are the same factors that drive attitudes to immigrants in both groups: economic cost, cultural similarity, and deservingness. However, we observe differences at the margins: Immigrant-origin respondents take into account economic prospects to a lesser degree than majority members do, and by trend, they are less likely to distinguish between immigrants from war-ridden and safe countries of origin. Furthermore, we can show that the preference for immigrants with the same religious identities not only occurs among majority members but also among minority members.     

Testing lumpability for marginal discrete hidden Markov models

When some states of a Markov chain are aggregated (or lumped) and the new process, with lumped states, inherits the Markov property, the original chain is said to be lumpable. We discuss the notion of lumpability for discrete hidden Markov models (DHMMs) and we explain why, in general, testing this hypothesis leads to non-standard problems. Nevertheless, we present a case where lumpability in DHMMs is a regular problem of comparing nested models. Finally, some simulation results assessing the performance of the proposed test and an application to two real data sets are given.