Being Working Poor or Feeling Working Poor? The Role of Work Intensity and Job Stability for Subjective Poverty

Social Indicators Research - Low work intensity and high job instability are crucial micro-determinants of in-work poverty. Importantly, they might also affect subjective poverty in households that...     

Access to social services as a rite of integration: Power,rights, and identity

Access to social services is a multifaceted and multifactorial process, involving social policy lines, services organization, and professional front line practices. It appears to have a crucial role in how personal social services work: depending on the way the process is handled, access to social services could provide a bridge to an inclusive and solidarizing community or worsen discrimination and marginalization. Many underline how studying the actual encounters between citizens and practitioners can provide a privileged site to highlight the interconnections between the abovementioned factors. This is the focus of our research that explored access in a specific Italian region using a case study strategy. After a pilot study, the main points of access to social services were identified, and three units were selected as best examples of different approaches. The three units were explored using mainly qualitative methods inspired by ethnography. We were able to gain in depth understanding of three cultural approaches to access, defined as the “ethical duty,” the “good organization,” and the “professional approach” and reach an in‐depth understanding of their impact on access. There is a vast literature on the power of street‐level bureaucrats, seen as similar to gatekeepers. However, our research suggests that specific organizational cultures also play an important part: different organizational cultures may impact the implementation of local social policy, the organizational procedures, and social workers' practices.     

Discovering associations between players' performance indicators and matches' results in the European Soccer Leagues

The application of data mining techniques and statistical analysis to the sports field has received increasing attention in the last decade. One of the most famous sports in the world is soccer, and the present work deals with it, using data from the 2009/2010 season to the 2015/2016 season from nine European leagues extracted from the Kaggle European Soccer database. Overall performance indicators of the four roles in a soccer team (forward, midfielder, defender and goalkeeper) for home and away teams are used to investigate the relationships between them and the results of matches, and to predict the wins of the home team. The model used to answer both these demands is the Bayesian Network. This study shows that this model can be very useful for mining the relations between players'' performance indicators and for improving knowledge of the game strategies applied by coaches in different leagues. Moreover, it is shown that the ability to predict match results of the proposed Bayesian Network is roughly the same as that of the Naive Bayes model.     

Testing a Model of Trade Union Behaviour: An Application of a Multivariate Cointegration Analysis to UK Aggregate Wage Data

ABSTRACT The first part of the paper considers a behavioural model of trade unionism. Wages and employment are characterized as the outcome of a process by which the union maximizes an objective function containing wages and employment as arguments, and is constrained by a trade-off between these two variables as represented by the firm's labour demand function. In the second part, the model's equilibrium predictions for wages are estimated in the framework of a multivariate error correction model and tested for cointegration with data from Britain's manufacturing sector from 1967 to 1986.     

Discrimination and Well‐Being: Perceptions of Refugees in Western Australia

This paper reports the apparent paradox of high levels of discrimination experienced by humanitarian migrants to Australia, in the labor market and everyday life, yet simultaneous reporting of positive well‐being. How can people feel discriminated against, yet still be relatively satisfied with life? The study draws on quantitative and qualitative data from a study of 150 refugees from the former Yugoslavia, the Middle East, and Africa. Possible reasons for the level of well‐being are explored, including “relative deprivation theory,” as well as various resiliency and mitigating factors, including personal and social supports. The notion of eudaimonic well‐being – whereby experiences of difficulty produce positive well‐being – is also applied to the findings. The negative experiences and perceptions appear to map onto low‐level dissatisfaction or disgruntlement, and specifically directed or contained disappointment, rather than serious dissatisfaction with life generally, orientation to Australia, or negative subjective well‐being.     

Russia and the Kyoto Protocol: The Long Road to Ratification

The Russian Federation played a crucial role in the Kyoto Protocol's ratification. Indeed, after the United States withdrawal, its ratification turned out to be indispensable for the Protocol to become legally binding. In early 2002, Russia decided to initiate the ratification process. However, the country long hesitated to fulfil its promises, and for the last two years it sent numerous contradictory signals with respect to its position on climate policy. Consequently, the factors that shape Russia's behaviour in the context of climate negotiations have received increasing attention. The main focus has been on the economic and international aspects motivating the Russian strategy. This paper attempts to complete this analysis by concentrating on a further feature that significantly contributed to Russia's final decision, namely, domestic forces. These factors have often been overlooked in the discussion of the Russian strategy. In order to fill this gap, this paper reconstructs the Russian ratification process, trying to identify the main domestic players and their role.     

An ergonomic comparison between mechanical and manual patient transfer techniques

Multiple studies have concluded that manual patient transfer and repositioning techniques are a significant cause of low back injuries. The objective of this study was to compare the low back stresses resulting from the use of two different mechanical patient transfer assist devices with the use of traditional manual transfer techniques. The mechanical transfer systems used were the Barton Patient Transfer System and a Sling-Suspension Lift similar to a "Hoyer Lift". The back compressive forces derived using the Michigan 3D Static Strength Model (Version 4.0) and electromyography (EMG) of the muscles of the low back were compared. This study found that the mechanical assist devices placed less stress on the low back and were more desirable to use than the traditional manual techniques. The Barton System was found to be, in general, less hazardous and more preferred than the Sling Suspension Lift.     

Synesthesia,transformation and synthesis: toward a multi-sensory pedagogy of the image

Clinical synesthesia is commonly defined as the experience of having perceptions in one sensory modality triggered by a stimulus from another. This paper adopts a particular orientation toward synesthesia, exploring it as a cultural phenomenon common to us all, as an ability that can be learnt instead of an accidental neurological condition. If synesthesia is both a capacity that we are not fully aware of and a way to access what is stored in memory even at the unconscious level, can art help us to bring this awareness back? Bearing upon a close reading of selected artworks created by Johannes Deutsch, a multi-media artist who has been experimenting with synesthesia, the paper argues that synesthesia can become a tool in the hands of contemporary artists to revitalize the Wagnerian ideal of a “total work of art”. This is to be understood as a politics of the senses based on communality rather than individualism, not as an ideology of totalitarian tendencies. Ultimately, the transformative potential of certain art resides in its capacity to foster a pedagogy of the image that is based upon multi-sensoriality, memory and history.     

Reminiscing Style During Conversations About Emotion‐laden Events and Effects of Attachment Security Among Italian Mother–Child Dyads

Previous research has established that mothers' and children's elaborative/evaluative styles during conversations about emotion‐laden events are associated with a range of social‐cognitive accomplishments, and this has prompted researchers to identify factors that predict stylistic differences in conversation styles. The study explored whether patterns and variations in reminiscing styles reported in other cultures would be observed in an Italian sample (N = 40 dyads). Attachment security, assessed using the Adult Attachment Interview for mothers and the Q‐Sort for children, were tested as possible sources of variation in conversation style. The two reminiscing styles identified through a clustering procedure were consistent with those displayed by dyads from other cultural groups; moreover, these were significantly related to both mothers' and children's attachment security. These results extend knowledge on reminiscing conversations during early childhood to a different cultural context and contribute to an understanding of how individual differences in attachment affect partners' participation in such conversations.