From Transitional to Permanent Uncertainty: Employability of Middle‐aged Workers in Hong Kong

Since the 1990s, Hong Kong has experienced increasing economic uncertainty. Middle‐aged workers, who often have little formal education and limited skills, have been the first casualties of economic restructuring. Initially, their unemployment was considered transitional. Limited government‐sponsored retraining programs were expected to improve their employability. Subsequent economic crises, however, have undercut the hopes of both workers and policy‐makers. Despite improvements in the job market since the mid‐2000s, the belief that unemployment was transitional has been replaced by a permanent state of uncertainty and consequent anxiety. Flexibility is considered the key to sustaining economic growth, and would relieve the insecurity and anxiety associated with unemployment. Policies have been modified, but they are still based on a narrowly defined concept of individual employability, which consolidates the sense of uncertainty. To address the factors contributing to the perception of permanent uncertainty among middle‐aged workers, we advocate a pragmatic approach that takes reference from the notion of flexicurity to mitigate this sense of uncertainty.     

Hope as a coping resource among parents at risk for child maltreatment

This study investigated hope as a protective factor buffering the relationships between parenting stress and well-being among a sample of parents identified at moderate to high risk for child maltreatment. Two hundred parents were recruited from a nonprofit organization providing secondary and tertiary child maltreatment prevention programs. Results of the analyses showed that parental stress was negatively associated with subjective and emotional well-being. Hope was positively correlated with well-being and negatively associated with parenting stress. Hierarchical regression analyses showed that hope had a significant incremental relationship to well-being and that the negative effects of parenting stress fell below statistical significance. These findings provide preliminary support for hope as a coping resource social workers can target when working with parents in the prevention of child maltreatment.     

Food,Memories, and Identities in Hong Kong

This article adopts a processual and relational approach to study food remembrance and investigates how different ways of appropriating food reveal the politics of identities in Hong Kong. It examines how food memories reveal relationships between the past and the present, reflect epochal transformation, and mark changing identities of various groups of people through new ways of appropriations. It takes the case study of pancai, a special banquet food for the villagers in the New Territories of Hong Kong, to examine the relationships between food and identities. This article investigates how pancai is remembered, popularized, and reinvented with different variations and embodies shifting meanings for the New Territories inhabitants as well as other Hong Kong people in changing socioeconomic and political environments. Pancai has been imbued with multiple layers of significance, involving linkages between local and national, emigration and Chineseness, urbanization and rural heritage, as well as decolonization and identity politics. As identities are by nature negotiable, situational, and fluidic, pancai's multiple layers of meanings correspond to different levels of identities—identities of the New Territories inhabitants, the rest of the Hong Kong people, and the mainland Chinese.     

Commercially arranged marriage and the negotiation of citizenship rights among Vietnamese marriage migrants in multiracial Singapore

Globalization and increased mobilities have multiplied cross-border transactions not only in the economic sphere but have also a major impact on human relationships of intimacy. This can be seen in the increased volume of differently mediated forms of international marriage, not just straddling ‘east’ and ‘west’, but within Asia and across different ethnicities and nationalities. International marriage raises a host of social issues for countries of origin and destination, including challenges relating to the citizenship status and rights of the marriage migrant. This paper examines the negotiation of citizenship rights in the case of commercially matched marriage migrants – namely Vietnamese women who marry Singaporean men and migrate to Singapore as ‘foreign brides’. While they are folded into the ‘family’ – what is often thought of as the basic building block of the nation in Asian societies – they are not necessarily accorded full incorporation into the ‘nation’ despite Singapore's claims to multiculturalism. This is particularly salient at a point when cross-nationality, cross-ethnicity marriages between Singapore citizens and non-citizens are on the increase, accounting for over a third of marriages registered in Singapore in recent years. Vietnamese women who marry Singaporeans are positioned within the nation-state's citizenship regime as dependents of Singaporean men, having to rely on the legitimacy of the marriage relationship as well as the whims of their husbands in negotiating their rights vis-à-vis the Singapore state. Drawing on interviews and ethnographic work with 20 Vietnamese women who are commercially matched marriage migrants, the paper first focuses on the vulnerable positions these women find themselves, particularly given difficulties in forging their own support networks as well as weaknesses of the civil society sector in what has been called an ‘illiberal democracy’ characterized by a political culture of ‘non-resistance’. The paper then goes on to examine the way they negotiate rights to residency/citizenship, work and children within webs of asymmetrical power relations within the family and the nation-state. We draw on our findings to show that citizenship is ‘a terrain of struggle’ within a multicultural nation-state shaped by social ideologies of gender, race and class and negotiated on an everyday basis within spheres of family intimacy.     

Comorbid mood and adjustment disorders among pathological gamblers seeking treatment in Hong Kong

Research findings on comorbidity and pathological gambling are non–existent in Chinese communities. The objectives of this study were to: (a) determine the prevalence of comorbid mood and adjustment disorders among pathological gamblers seeking treatment in Hong Kong; (b) compare demographic profiles and clinical features in pathological gamblers with and without comorbid mood and adjustment disorders; and (c) explore the association and temporal relationship between pathological gambling and comorbid mood and adjustment disorders. Assessment instruments included demographic data, BSI, SCID-I, ASI and LIFE-RIFT. Results showed that about two-thirds (63.7%; n = 128) of 201 participants reported lifetime comorbid psychiatric disorders. Most common comorbid disorders were mood disorders (29.4%; n = 59) and adjustment disorders (20.9%; n = 42). Pathological gamblers with comorbid mood or adjustment disorders showed more severe levels of psychopathology, impairment in psychosocial functioning and gambling problems. This study is important because it is the first scientific comorbidity study among pathological gamblers in a Chinese context.     

History,Culture and Organization Studies

Research by Barley, Meyer and Gash (1988) showed that the publication of Peters and Waterman's In Search of Excellence (1982) coincided with culture becoming a popular and acceptable topic for organization theorists. This helped establish the dominance of a conception of culture that proffered an instrumental view of the relation between managerial practice and management knowledge, Barley, Meyer and Gash (1988) suggested. They saw this as a relatively recent occurrence. While we do not deny the possibility of the instrumental relation as depicted in Barley, Meyer and Gash (1988), we do not concur with their judgement that the study of culture is a relatively novel interruption of previously more academic concerns. On the contrary, we suggest that, while the relationship between practice and knowledge is borne out by a genealogical analysis of culture, the time period for such analysis should be drawn both more widely and more deeply to be an adequate test of Barley, Meyer and Gash's (1988) hypotheses. We argue that the relationship postulated in the hypothesis supported by their research - that academic research on culture has increasingly been prejudiced by instrumental concerns that developed in the lead up to, and in the wake of, the 'excellence' studies - defies social science traditions. We show this by enlarging the canvass of culture. The purposeful use of organizational culture as a management tool returns culture to those origins revealed by genealogical analysis that uncovers its etymology and sociology.     

Searching for a Capacity Building Model in Social Work Education in China

This paper contains our reflections about our experiences in employing a capacity building model for training social workers to conduct community development work in rural China. Unlike the conventional approach to social work practicum, our approach advocates an educational practice of capacity building; not only for local people and learners, but for educators as well. It stresses that the educator should assume a non‐expert role in relating to his/her students so that the students will do the same with local people. We challenge the concept of the social work educator as an expert because it gives a teacher the power and authority to dominate students, which disempowers students during the learning process. In the same vein, we challenge the desire of social work students to become experts in rural development, which in turn disempowers local people from taking charge of the future direction of their lives in rural China. The capacity building approach subscribes to a critical pedagogy that calls for a re‐invention of self by challenging tradition and culture, and by developing academic knowledge, the habit of inquiry and critical curiosity about society, power, inequality, and social change.     

Work rehabilitation for migrant workers with work injury--the magic of Chinese paper cutting

As China has gradually transformed from agricultural economy into industrial economy since 1978, occupational injuries and diseases become a serious social problem in China. For occupational rehabilitation professionals, helping workers with occupational injuries and diseases, return to work and re-integrate to community are the ultimate goals of occupational rehabilitation. This article reports a new indigenous initiative with cultural notions in occupational rehabilitation piloted by Guangdong Provincial Rehabilitation Center. Case studies reflected that by learning and practicing traditional Chinese paper cutting, workers with occupational injury and disease could regain their self confidence, identity their strengths, learn more vocational skills as well as to re-integrate into community.     

The functional capacity of healthcare workers with history of severe acute respiratory distress syndrome (SARS) complicated with avascular necrosis--case report

Two years after the SARS outbreak in Hong Kong, 128 healthcare workers continued to present with musculoskeletal complaints and 38 workers were diagnosed with avascular necrosis (AVN) in different joints. 13 healthcare workers were referred to six designated Physiotherapy Departments of the Hospital Authority for a tailor-made standardized Functional Capacity Evaluation (FCE) from 2004 to 2005 on a voluntary basis. Job analysis, workers' self-perceived disability and functional capacity, non-material handling tests, and the cardiopulmonary fitness test were performed. Retrospective review of the FCE data showed that there were 17 AVN of hips, 16 AVN of knees, 3 AVN of shoulders. All patients had AVN of lower limb joints. Nearly full ranges of movement (ROM) were observed in the knees involved, but the hip range was decreased for most subjects suffering from hip AVNs. Most workers (n=12) could not complete the cardiopulmonary test due to intolerable joint pain. Six workers' self-perceived physical demands level (PDC) matched with the physical demands level identified by the FCE. 12 healthcare workers attained a sedentary physical demands level and were unable to match with their previous job demands. One staff was classified as light physical demands and managed his original duty. Four workers had returned to work at the time FCE was performed. The tailor-made FCE added information to facilitate the return-to-work planning for the staff. Four more workers returned to work with modified duties one year after the FCE.