Contextualizing Migrants' Strategies of Seeking Medical Care in Russia*

Russia is an important destination for labour migrants from the former Soviet Union republics especially Central Asian low‐income countries: Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. The life of migrants from Central Asia is characterized in Russia by scarce resources and social exclusion. Limited access to healthcare is aggravated by the negative attitudes and discrimination that migrants face when visiting state hospitals and clinics. In our study, we aim to describe the medical infrastructure available to migrants in Moscow. We investigate how migrants use formal and informal strategies to overcome the barriers to their receiving medical care in the urban environment. The study is based on the analysis of qualitative interviews with 60 labour migrants from Central Asian countries and 23 caregivers working in Moscow‐based medical facilities such as state hospitals, outpatient clinics, ambulance stations, and private medical centres including the so‐called Kyrgyz clinics.     

Training by feel: wearable fitness-trackers,endurance athletes,and the sensing of data

ABSTRACT

A wide range of wearable fitness-trackers are currently available that allow users to measure, monitor, visualize, and record numerous training metrics including moving pace, distance traveled, average heart rate, and calories burned. Using qualitative data collected through semi-structured interviews with amateur endurance athletes, this paper examines what individuals do with their wearable fitness-trackers and the data they produce. Drawing on the work of Deborah Lupton and Sarah Maslen, we take up the concepts of “data sensing” and the “more-than-human sensorium” to highlight the embodied and sensory dimensions of digital self-tracking. We argue that while much of the appeal of fitness-tracking technologies lies in their ability to generate objective readings of one’s performance, these devices do not supplant less quantifiable and more subjective ways of understanding one’s self. On the contrary, the participants in our study use the quantitative data generated by a fitness-tracker in conjunction with their own self-assessments to gain a more holistic sense of what they are experiencing during training or on race day. For many of our research participants, the fitness-tracker became a central part of their identity and daily routine. Most participants were reluctant to train without their fitness-trackers, even when not preparing for an event.     

Overcoming the mobility bias in transnational entrepreneurship

The current article contributes to the debates on immobility in migration studies. More specifically, it aims to show and challenge mobility bias in transnational entrepreneurship; the relevant scholarship appears to overconcentrate on immigrants as major driving forces of cross-border business relations while ignoring the contributions of nonmigrant populations. Based on the qualitative data collected from Central Asian migrant entrepreneurs in Russia, this research dispels the myth about the inertness of nonmigrants by demonstrating their utmost importance in establishing and sustaining transnational enterprises. Therefore, transnational entrepreneurship should be regarded as the result of joint efforts of both mobile and sedentary actors. The presented evidence suggests that mobility and immobility are integrally intertwined and mutually constitutive. This study calls for a more balanced and nuanced vision of how transnationalism occurs.     

Zooming in on Life Events: Is Hedonic Adaptation Sensitive to the Temporal Distance from the Event?

This paper analyzed the effect of major positive and negative life events (marriage, divorce, birth of child, widowhood, and unemployment) on life satisfaction. For the first time, this study estimated the effects of life events not with a precision of 12 months but of 3 months. Specifically, two questions were addressed: (1) Does the precision of the temporal localization of the event (i.e., 12 or 3 months) affect the observed trajectories of life satisfaction, and (2) is the precision of the temporal localization more important for negative life events? As expected, results showed that the precision of temporal localization allows a clearer view on hedonic adaptation, in particular following negative life events.     

THE LIMITS OF CAREER CONCERNS IN FEDERALISM: EVIDENCE FROM CHINA

Performance‐based promotion schemes in administrative hierarchies have limitations. Chinese provincial leaders, despite facing strong career concerns, make different policy decisions depending on their career backgrounds. Provincial party secretaries who have risen from low to high positions within the province they govern (“locals”) spend a higher share of budgetary resources on education and health care and invest less in construction infrastructure than party secretaries who have made their most significant career advancements in other provinces (“outsiders”). Identification comes from variation in central leadership and term limits. As the promotion mechanism rewards infrastructure investments, locals are less likely to be promoted at the end of the term. We explore various mechanisms and provide evidence that the difference between locals and outsiders is not driven by knowledge or experience. Several pieces of evidence suggest that locals cater to low‐level provincial elites, who helped them rise to power. Thus, local career trajectories limit the power of career concerns by fostering competing allegiances.     

Latvian Bilingual Education: Towards a new approach

During the transitional period from being part of the Soviet Union, with Russian as the official state language, to an independent state within the European Union, with special language policies supporting minority languages, Latvia has developed reasonable principles of bilingual education. Nevertheless, a lot of work still needs to be done to improve teaching methods, to develop effective programmes, and to assess the multifaceted process of language use at school, including sociolinguistic and psycholinguistic analysis of educational discourse and spontaneous bilingual communication. The quality of bilingual education depends upon different factors, which are subject to various influences. Some of these are not mentioned in the models being proposed by the government, such as the pedagogical relevance of a child-centered approach, the progression in language and cultural competence of participants, mixing/overlapping/avoidance strategies of language use, attitudes of families, children and teachers, etc. The challenge for teachers of both Latvian as a second and Russian as a first language is enormous. In the future, other bilingual situations will present themselves in Latvia as well. Because of this, Latvian society must consider their entire policy towards bilingualism in the educational system.     

Supporting Primary School Children’s learning in Digital Spaces at Home: Migrant Parents’ Perspectives and Practices

Using a sociocultural perspective and a case study design, this research examined how three migrant parents in Australia viewed and supported children’s learning in digital spaces and the reasons behind these perspectives and practices. The study found that the participating parents mainly valued and actively supported technology‐based mechanical learning of print‐based literacy and numeracy basics and disregarded the development of digital literacies. The participants’ views and practices were shaped by their desire for children’s social mobility, driven by their migration status and high educational levels, and further reinforced by their interpretations of what was valued in the Australian education system.     

'It becomes almost an act of defiance’: indigenous Australian transformational resistance as a driver of academic achievement

Indigenous Australian underrepresentation in higher education remains a topical issue for social scientists, educationalists and policymakers alike, with the concept of indigenous academic success highly contested. This article is based on findings of a doctoral study investigating the drivers of indigenous Australian academic success in a large, public, research-intensive and metropolitan Australian university. It draws on the concept of transformational resistance to illuminate the forms that indigenous resistance takes and how identities of resistance performed by indigenous students complicate and speak to the students’ notions of academic success. By drawing on ethnographic data, this article demonstrates how indigenous academic success is fuelled by the idea of resistance to the Western dominance, where resistance becomes the very cornerstone of indigenous achievement.     

Why Historical Linguists Need Children: Birch Bark Letters in Light of Written Language Acquisition

Early vernacular writings reveal intriguing similarities to texts produced by modern children. This study shows that these similarities result from the fact that both text varieties are the products of incipient writing. Examining medieval vernacular Russian correspondence and letters written by contemporary Russian children, this study (a) identifies the specific similarities between the two language varieties, (b) formulates a theoretical framework for interpreting these similarities, (c) applies measures of children’s writing competence to medieval vernacular writing, and (d) reevaluates the role of oral strategies in early vernacular writings. The study’s findings provide an important tool for investigations of incipient writing.     

Some aspects of decision making under uncertainty

Two discrete-time insurance models are studied in the framework of cost approach. The models being non-deterministic one deals with decision making under uncertainty. Three different situations are investigated: (1) underlying processes are stochastic however their probability distributions are given; (2) information concerning the distribution laws is incomplete; (3) nothing is known about the processes under consideration. Mathematical methods useful for establishing the (asymptotically) optimal control are demonstrated in each case. Algorithms for calculation of critical levels are proposed. Numerical results are presented as well.