Oiling the wheels? Flexible labour markets and the migration industry

ABSTRACT

The growing commercialisation of migration, often through a multiplicity of labour market intermediaries, is an issue of increasing academic interest. We seek to contribute to an emerging research agenda on the migration industries by exploring how one of the key actors that constitutes it, recruitment agencies, sits at the nexus between flexible labour market structures and migrant labour. Interviews with U.K. labour providers and low-wage employers form the evidence base for an analysis of the strategies developed by recruiters to derive commercial gain from connecting the so-called ‘supply’ and ‘demand’ sides of the flexible international labour market. We seek to contribute to understandings of the analytical categories within migration systems by illustrating how the migration industry interacts with other key stakeholders to structure international migration.     

Strategic Learning and the Topology of Social Networks

We consider a group of strategic agents who must each repeatedly take one of two possible actions. They learn which of the two actions is preferable from initial private signals and by observing the actions of their neighbors in a social network. We show that the question of whether or not the agents learn efficiently depends on the topology of the social network. In particular, we identify a geometric “egalitarianism” condition on the social network that guarantees learning in infinite networks, or learning with high probability in large finite networks, in any equilibrium. We also give examples of nonegalitarian networks with equilibria in which learning fails.     

Knowledge Brokering: The missing link in the evidence to action chain?

Transferring health care research into policy and practice is a messy and complex process which both policymakers and researchers can struggle with. A potential solution is to use individuals or organisations as knowledge brokers. Using a range of literature, this paper explains the theory behind knowledge brokering, identifies three models of brokering and explores the challenges of brokering. We suggest that clarifying these factors is a significant step towards planning well designed and rigorously evaluated brokering interventions. We also suggest that a clearly defined theoretical framework could help us to find out more about how brokering works and its effectiveness.     

Regression from another angle

This paper presents a simply viewed framework that brings together various concepts of regression, prediction, and principal components. Several new concepts related to prediction are introduced, and then the interrelationships of these concepts are established. The generalizations are examined in detail and are illustrated in the context of a well known data set.     

Gorbanevskaia and Poland: From Pol’sha to Novaia Pol’sha

Natal’ia Gorbanevskaia is primarily known as a poet and leading human rights activist, as well as for her role as author and editor at Kontinent and Russkaia mysl’. One important and substantial aspect of her life that is not well known outside of limited circles is the formative influence of Polish culture and thought on her as well as her extensive contribution to Polish culture and its dispersion, and the promotion of mutual understanding between Poles and Russians. This article traces this relationship and situates it within the context of a broader pattern of Polish influence on Russian culture beginning in the mid-1950s as well as connecting Gorbanevskaia to the seminal figure of Giedroyc, both directly and by virtue of shared concerns and interests. The period beginning with her emigration to Paris in 1976 sees her fully committed to expanding access for Russians, in exile and at home, to cultural, political, social and other texts and information about Poland. Chronologically, the nominal limits of this narrative are the popular interest journal Pol’sha which had a huge appeal for many Soviets beginning from 1956, and the journal Novaia Pol’sha of which she is a member of the editorial board, and which has been published in Russian in Warsaw since 1999 with the goal of establishing thoughtful dialogue between Poles and Russians.     

The Determinants of Retail Productivity: A Critical Review of the Evidence

This paper discusses the literature on the established determinants of productivity in the retail sector. It also draws attention to some neglected strands of research which provide useful insights into strategies that could allow productivity enhancements in this area of the economy. To date, very few attempts have been made to integrate different specialisms in order to explain what drives productivity in retail. Here this paper rectifies this omission by putting together studies from economics, geography, knowledge management and employment studies. It is the authors’ view that quantitative studies of retail productivity should focus on total factor productivity in retailing as the result of competition/composition effects, planning regulations, information and communications technology, the multinational operation element and workforce skills. Further, the fact that retail firms possess advantages that are transferable between locations suggests that investment in strategies enhancing the transfer of explicit and tacit knowledge between and within businesses are crucial to achieve productivity gains.     

Simultaneous confidence band for the difference of segmented linear models

Consider comparing between two treatments a response variable, whose expectation depends on the value of a continuous covariate in some nonlinear fashion. We fit separate segmented linear models to each treatment to approximate the nonlinear relationship. For this setting, we provide a simultaneous confidence band for the difference between treatments of the expected value functions. The treatments are said to differ significantly on intervals of the covariate where the simultaneous confidence band does not contain zero. We consider segmented linear models where the locations of the changepoints are both known and unknown. The band is obtained from asymptotic results.     

A future for the humanities?

The future of the humanities is an extremely complex question as it bears upon the status of a particular form of knowledge in society, the flexibility of a set of academic disciplines and institutions, the openness of political leaders to changing conceptions of education, and a host of other difficult issues. In order to illuminate these problems, it is necessary to focus upon the peculiar character of humanistic knowledge, why such insight is indispensable to individual and collective self-understanding, how the humanities as they are conventionally practised contribute to their own malaise and why the humanities must be accorded pride of place among the studies of human action. There is, in fact, a considerable demand for humanistic knowledge and the fruit of humanistic scholarship in our technological culture, especially in the area of adult education. The discussion ends with several examples of various ways in which that demand is being met.