Cognitive Cultural Intelligence and Life Satisfaction of Migrant Workers: The Roles of Career Engagement and Social Injustice

This paper examines the mediating effect of career engagement on the relationship between cognitive cultural intelligence (CQ) and life satisfaction among international migrant workers in Australia. It also examines the moderating effect of perceived social injustice on the cognitive CQ–career engagement relationship, as well as on the indirect cognitive CQ–life satisfaction relationship via career engagement. Using survey data from four hundred and sixty-two migrant workers in Australia, it was found that cognitive CQ was positively related to life satisfaction and that career engagement mediated this relationship. Social injustice moderated the impact of cognitive CQ on career engagement such that the impact was stronger among those perceiving a higher rather than a lower level of social injustice. Furthermore, the indirect effect of cognitive CQ on life satisfaction via career engagement was also stronger for those perceiving higher social injustice. These findings provide new insights regarding the antecedents of life satisfaction as well as reveal a vocationally relevant mechanism underlying the relationship between cognitive CQ and life satisfaction. The results inform potential practical strategies to enhance the career progression and life satisfaction of international migrant workers.     

Immigrant over-education: evidence from Denmark

This paper uses register-based panel data to examine over-education amongst immigrants in Denmark. Foreign-educated immigrants are found to be more prone to over-education than both native Danes and immigrants educated in Denmark. Labour market experience reduces this risk, whereas periods of unemployment make a person more likely to accept a job for which he is over-qualified. Over-educated workers earn slightly more than their adequately matched colleagues, but less than if they had been appropriately matched in a higher level job. Foreign-educated immigrants gain the least from over-education.     

Precarious work among young Danish employees - a permanent or transitory condition?

There is broad agreement that precarious work is a growing problem, and that it is highly prevalent among young employees. The financial crisis in 2008 has reinforced the need for knowledge about how precarious work affects young employees. This paper explores how the concept of precarious work may apply differentially to different groups of young people at work and whether this challenges the term ‘transition’, which until now has been one of the core elements within contemporary youth research. We examine discursive representations of precarious work, vulnerability and risks among young Danish employees aged 18–24 in the healthcare sector, the metal industry and retail trade captured in 46 interviews involving 74 participants. Results are discussed taking into consideration the Nordic welfare model with an active labour marked policy. We conclude that precarious work is not, in fact, simply a characteristic of young employees’ work as such, but rather it is related to their position in the labour market and the type of jobs in which they are employed. While some are in transition, others are at risk of being trapped in precarious and risky working conditions.     

Emotional labor in social workers' practice

The meeting between service users and social workers is emotional, since it is centered on significant challenges and changes in the service users' lives. Emotions are thus always at play in social work, but are managed in various ways by the professional. In an explorative qualitative case study at two Danish social services departments, we identified three types of emotional labor: (1) when the social worker shuts off emotions both during and after the meeting; (2) when the social worker defers emotions and processes them at a later time; and (3) when emotions dominate, and a case gets ‘under the skin’ of the social worker. Emotional labor can have both positive and negative effect on the work, and knowledge about different kinds of emotional labor can aid professional discussion about emotions at the work place as well as the psychosocial working environment for the social workers, factors which help improve practice. The study showed that emotional labor is a multidimensional concept, hence it is not just managed in different ways by social workers; it is always related to the specific emotion culture and the community of practice at the work place.     

Offshore but on track? Hypermobile and hyperflexible working lives

In the spring 2011, and again during summer 2012, the small coastal town of Hirtshals (approx. 6000 inhabitants) on the north-western shore of Denmark was home to two spectacular symbols of the success of an emergent offshore sector in the region, namely the upgrading and overhauling of two gigantic oil rigs. Providing temporary work for an estimated 800 persons who literally worked day and night for the 100 days each rig was at dock, these events affected the entire community. The paper presents evidence from seven biographical interviews with local men whose working lives were directly or indirectly affected by these events. As the interviews illuminate, respondents are often extremely mobile and flexible in terms of their jobs, in some cases ‘bungy jumping’ through working life in an apparent effort to retain local ties while pursuing global opportunities. The paper contributes to qualifying more general sociological discussions about the push for increased mobility and flexibility in a presumably increasingly globalising labour market reality. Ultimately, it seems that the multiple ways in which Hirtshals is marked as marginal – in terms of geography, socio-economic profile and discourse – may serve to normalise demands for flexibility and mobility, at least amongst parts of the local working population.     

Challenges and boundaries in implementing social return on investment: An inquiry into its situational appropriateness

Nonprofit organizations (NPOs) and social enterprises are increasingly under pressure to justify their use of resources and report their impact on society. Frameworks that monetize social value such as social return on investment (SROI) have emerged as a response. The existing literature highlights many benefits and technical challenges of SROI, but largely ignores strategic and organizational learning aspects. This paper explores the use of SROI in an NPO conducting cultural heritage preservation. By analyzing the challenges managers face in agreeing on a reliable (“correct”) computation of SROI and in assessing the validity and relevance (“appropriateness”) of SROI, we seek to understand the challenges and boundaries of SROI. Challenges with a reliable computation of SROI are identifying stakeholders, the choice of proxies, the time horizons, and deadweight factors. Challenges with an appropriate SROI calculation are comparability, subjectivity, legitimacy, and resource utility. We argue that SROI calculations might not be reliable or appropriate in organizations with fuzzy purposes, broad value creation goals, broad target groups, very individual or subjective proxies, strongly lagged outcomes, complex or unobservable causality, and with lack of legitimacy among stakeholders. Organizations should not trustingly adopt SROI without being aware of these limitations.     

Boundary and Bias Correction in Kernel Hazard Estimation

A new class of local linear hazard estimators based on weighted least square kernel estimation is considered. The class includes the kernel hazard estimator of Ramlau-Hansen (1983), which has the same boundary correction property as the local linear regression estimator (see Fan & Gijbels, 1996). It is shown that all the local linear estimators in the class have the same pointwise asymptotic properties. We derive the multiplicative bias correction of the local linear estimator. In addition we propose a new bias correction technique based on bootstrap estimation of additive bias. This latter method has excellent theoretical properties. Based on an extensive simulation study where we compare the performance of competing estimators, we also recommend the use of the additive bias correction in applied work.     

An optimization interpretation of integration and back-fitting estimators for separable nonparametric models

We provide an optimization interpretation of both back-fitting and integration estimators for additive nonparametric regression. We find that the integration estimator is a projection with respect to a product measure. We also provide further understanding of the back-fitting method.     

Student-faculty sexual relationships: An empirical test of two explanatory models

Media reports, stereotypes in popular literature, and a limited number of research studies describe student-faculty sexual relationships as either an exchange of sex for grades (initiated either by a lascivious professor or a self-serving student) and/or as the result of the psychological process of transference. Results from in-depth interviews with 11 students and 14 faculty members who had had student-teacher sexual affairs show only minimal support for either the exchange or transference models. We present two case histories that are typical of the student-faculty sexual liaisons we studied; they illustrate that these relationships are in many ways like other sexual relationships insofar as they are based on mutual attraction, as well as sex-related, power-discrepant roles. Student-faculty relationships are problematic (i.e., unethical) not so much because of the power discrepancy between a (usually male) professor and a (usually female) student, but because there is a confounding of public and private roles. This study contributes to this largely unresearched subject area in that it seriously questions the validity of negative sex stereotypes explicit in the exchange model and examines student-faculty relationships in sociological terms.     

Wellbeing Among Indonesian Labour Migrants to Malaysia: Implications of the 2011 Memorandum of Understanding

A spate of media attention has focused on the harsh conditions endured by Indonesian labour migrants in Malaysia. In June 2009, human rights abuses led to a ban by Indonesia on recruitment of Indonesians for domestic service in Malaysia. This ban was overturned on May 30th 2011, with the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the two nations on migrant employment conditions. Against this backdrop, this paper reports on the findings of a survey administering the Personal Wellbeing Index (PWI) among a sample of Indonesian labour migrants. The aims of the study were: (a) to determine the degree to which Indonesian labour migrants to Malaysia are satisfied with their lives; (b) to contribute the first psychometric data for the PWI for this migrant group; (c) to compare results to existing studies for other labour migrants in Asia; (d) to examine whether the PWI responses fall within the narrow range predicted by the ‘Theory of Subjective Wellbeing Homeostasis’; and (e) to determine the contributions of sets of perceived macroeconomic conditions, perceived institutional factors and perceived social conditions to the prediction of wellbeing over and above the contribution of demographics. Results indicated a high level of personal wellbeing and the PWI demonstrated good psychometric properties. In particular, the sample reported very high satisfaction with religiosity. The PWI full score narrowly exceeded the normative range for non-Western countries and was within the narrow band predicted by the ‘Theory of Subjective Wellbeing Homeostasis’. Sets of perceived macroeconomic conditions, institutional factors and social conditions added incrementally to the prediction of wellbeing over and above demographics, suggesting that current attempts inherent in the MoU to stem abuse and improve conditions for Indonesian labour migrants might have benefits to subjective wellbeing in this migration context in the future.