‘Surrounded with so much uncertainty’: asylum seekers and manufactured precarity in Australia

In Australia, nearly 30,000 asylum seekers have the legal right to work, but their temporary and conditional migration status exposes them to work-related precarity. This article draws on a small qualitative study that examined asylum seekers’ experiences of seeking work and achieving economic security. Over an 18-month period, 29 semi-structured interviews with asylum seekers who had work rights in Australia were conducted. It provides insights into how restrictive immigration policies manufacture precarity through short-term, conditional visas, resulting in employer risk aversion, segmentation into insecure work, and in-work instability and mistreatment. Asylum seekers manage their experiences and feelings of pervasive insecurity through individual coping and survival strategies.     

The reliance on recognition and majority vote heuristics over privacy concerns when selecting smartphone apps among German and US consumers

The smartphone app market is a prime example of a digital market where consumers are tasked with selecting one option among a plethora of alternatives, at times indistinguishable from one another. Building upon findings on information processing and decision-making, we postulate that consumers follow simple (rather than complex) heuristic rules to navigate the app market. In particular, we focus on two such strategies: the recognition heuristic and the majority vote heuristic. App privacy information was also considered as a potentially salient cue in the decision-making process, given the personal data stored on smartphones. Results of a mixed-method design (behavioral analysis and think-aloud protocols) study with German (N?=?18) and US (N?=?25) students find a dominance of the recognition heuristic. Decisions are further supported by majority vote heuristics. Privacy information is largely disregarded, particularly by US participants. Implications for app market design and engagement are discussed.     

Reexamining the moving to opportunity study and its contribution to changing the distribution of poverty and ethnic concentration

For the past decade and a half a concerted effort has been undertaken to determine whether policy interventions in residential location can solve the problems of inner-city poverty and racial concentration. Studies based on data from the Gautreaux litigation and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)-sponsored Moving to Opportunity (MTO) program have provided an overall optimistic interpretation of the possibilities of improving inner-city lives via mobility vouchers and counseling. A reanalysis of the data from the MTO program, focusing specifically on African American households, suggests greater caution in the interpretation of the findings from either Gautreaux or the MTO program. No statistically significant difference exists between the percentage of poor or the percentage of African Americans in the current neighborhoods between MTO and Section 8 experimental groups. In some cases, there is no statistically significant difference between those who move with a voucher and those who move without any assistance at all. Although there is some evidence that MTO programs have brought specific gains for individual families, claims for the MTO program as a whole need to be treated with a great deal more caution than they have been to date.     

Anthropological Theories of Low-Wage Work

This review assesses the use of anthropological theories in the examination of low-wage work. Due to the vast differences existing between different cultures in low-wage work, this review focuses on theories that have been applied in Western, and mainly American, contexts. There are primarily three fields from which this literature is drawn: economic anthropology, gender and race anthropology, and theories of power—the last integrates all these theories. Differences and controversies over the applicability of these theories are also highlighted. The review concludes with a conceptual map describing the interrelatedness of these theories and how they explain the realities of low-wage workers.     

Famine Mortality in Nineteenth-Century Japan: The Evidence from a Temple Death Register

Economic and demographic historians who have studied Japan's early modern period argue that preventive checks to fertility were the primary cause of Japan's stationary population in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and that the role of ‘positive’ checks was negligible. This paper presents evidence and a claim that mortality crises – famines in particular – also played an important role in checking population growth during this period. It analyses data from the death register of Ogen-ji, a Buddhist temple in the Hida region of central Japan. These data provide a remarkably detailed picture of the short-term demographic consequences of Japan's last great famine, the Tenpō famine of the 1830s. ‘Normal’ mortality patterns, by age and sex, are compared with patterns of mortality during the famine. Mortality of males rose considerably more than that of females, with the greatest rise occurring among young boys aged 5–14 and adult men aged 30–59. A surprising finding was that mortality at ages 0–4 rose relatively little, in part a consequence of a marked fall in the number of births during the famine. The Tenpō subsistence crisis was not the sole cause of population stagnation in the Ogen-ji population, but it was a prominent feature of the ‘high mortality regime’ that this population experienced during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.     

Evaluation of the parameters of su by rational fractions

A rational fraction approximation is given for a function of one of the parameters defining Johnson's S_UError assessment for a segment of the domain of validity shows remarkable accuracy.     

Selection of cost-optimal 2k−p fractional factorials

Selecting an optimal 2^k?pfractional factorial is structured as a mathematical programming problem. An algorithm is defined for the solution, and the case of additive costs is shown to have a known solution for resolution III designs.     

Marital Aspirations,Sexual Behaviors,and HIV/AIDS in Rural Malawi

We explore how marital aspirations are related to the sexual behaviors of adolescents and young adults in Malawi, where HIV/AIDS prevalence among adults exceeds 10%. We also consider whether the specter of AIDS is shaping ideals about marriage. By combining survey data (N = 1,087) and in‐depth interviews (N = 133) with young Malawians from the Malawi Diffusion and Ideational Change Project, we show that looking for and finding a suitable spouse are linked to sexual behaviors and, thus, HIV risks. Moreover, concerns about contracting HIV are closely tied to the ideal characteristics of a future spouse. Our findings draw long‐overdue attention to the importance of marital aspirations in understanding adolescent sexual behaviors and risks in the era of AIDS.