‘La Lenin is my passport’: schooling,mobility and belonging in socialist Cuba and its diaspora

Based on an ethnographic study of transnational networks of alumni of an academically selective boarding school in Havana, this article explores the nexus between mobility, schooling and belonging in the context of socialist Cuba and its diaspora. Drawing on Goffman’s work, I argue that the boarding school experience was transformative; it facilitated or consolidated social mobility for its pupils, which later, for many, led to geographic mobility in the form of study and work outside Cuba. After graduating, alumni continue to identify with the school and to reproduce their alumni identities. The affective webs of belonging forged through family links and friendships fostered at the school constitute emotionally sustaining networks that also provide material support after migrating. I propose that the school represents a site of identification for a globally dispersed non-national diaspora and argue that migration scholars need to embed international migration within people’s lives more broadly.     

Gendered forms of responsibility and control in teenagers' views of alcohol

There has been a shift in the most recent UK Government's Alcohol Strategy (2012) from personal responsibility towards a model of shared responsibility for young people's drinking. On closer examination of the strategy, however, it appears that rather than exonerating young people from blame, governance is merely extended to include wider partners. Using findings from nine focus groups with young people in Liverpool, UK, we explore who they believe are responsible for their drinking behaviours and how they learn to become ‘good drinkers’. Our findings show that while teenagers were aware of dominant alcohol-related messages and maintained a moral position as responsible citizens; they also negotiated and resisted norms about teenage drinking. Although both boys and girls agreed that parents were the primary responsible authority for regulating their drinking, there was gendered disagreement about personal responsibility. The girls described how they were ultimately responsible for any adverse consequences if they drank too much whilst the boys considered a wide range of partners who would be implicated. However, unlike the girls, the boys described a willingness to either abstain or moderate their alcohol intake in order to remain in control and avoid any alcohol-related trouble or harm.     

Social-economic context of parent care: explaining Chinese caregivers' psychological and emotional well-being

This paper explores Chinese familial caregivers' depression and subjective burdens among the current caregivers. Data were collected in 1997-1999 with 110 caregivers who were then taking care of physically dependent parents or parents-in-law. Regression analyses were conducted to assess the factors that influence caregivers depression and subjective burden. Findings suggest that family and individual economic conditions are related to caregivers' depression. Caregivers' involvement in caregiving tasks is associated with caregivers' subjective burden. Poorer self-perceived health is related to higher report of caregivers' depression. The author argues that poorer health and unemployment at the time of drastic social and economic changes in China may have created psychological and emotional anxieties and depression for caregivers. The lack of financial and social stability may have deleterious effect for current caregivers in the future when they grow older and have to be cared for by their one-child generation children.     

Dissemination to research subjects: operationalizing investigator accountability

Recent articles have argued from principles of bioethics for the right of research subjects to receive the results of the studies in which they have participated. We argue that accountability is a powerful tool of meso-level analysis appropriate to reasoning about answerability in research ethics, and that it captures the responsibility of researchers to disseminate study results to research subjects. We offer the following features of the research situation as relevant to the manner of dissemination to study subject, in addition to factors already proposed in the literature (risk and impact on health outcome): (a) features of the research subject in relation to identity, personal investment, disease, and community; (b) characteristics of the research study and field of inquiry in relation to certainty and significance; and (c) relationships among the research subjects and the healthcare workers involved in their care and in the research.     

New Zealanders returning from overseas: how their experiences of xenophobia could help us respond to superdiversity

ABSTRACT

This article draws on qualitative interview data with 42 New Zealanders returning to New Zealand after living overseas, finding they feel more like a ‘migrant’ than someone coming ‘home’. This is in part because New Zealand people and institutions demonstrate an intolerance to difference, theorised here as a form of xenophobia that inhibits the economic, social and political integration of participants. However, the same experiences and ideas that lead many New Zealanders to frame returnees as an ‘out-group’ can be regarded as a national resource. The article concludes that we should embrace – not ignore or disparage – returnees' awareness of integration issues, transnational networks and cross-cultural experiences as we attempt to maintain social cohesion in an increasingly superdiverse world.     

Does Privatization Protect Natural Resources? Property Rights and Forests in Guatemala

Objectives . Property rights are central to debates about natural resource policy. Governments traditionally have been seen as the appropriate custodians of natural resources for their citizens. More recently, many argue the privatization of property rights will ensure that users have incentives to manage their resources well. Common property, to the extent it is discussed at all, is seen as leading to the tragedy of the commons. We evaluate these claims by assessing property rights and forest conditions in two private and three communal forests in Guatemala. Methods . Data on biological and social phenomena from five forests (151 plots) and their associated communities were collected using the International Forestry Resources and Institutions Research Program protocols. Ordinary least squares regression was used to analyze four models. We examined t -scores for differences in coefficients for the different models. Results . The models demonstrate that de jure property rights are not a powerful predictor of variations among the sampled forests. Conclusions . We argue that de facto institutions and their enforcement are much more important than de jure property rights to forest management. Communities holding a forest in common can, under certain circumstances, create institutions to manage their resources as successfully as—or more successfully than—private owners.     

Neoliberalism,Inequality and Politics: The Changing Face of Australia

Since the early 1980s Australian public policy has undergone the most major transformation since Federation. This transformation has been underwritten by two key principles: liberalism – the view that citizens are autonomous individual actors whose interests are best served when they are free from coercive government interventions into individual action; and marketisation – the belief that free markets are arenas which best enable individual autonomy and produce efficient economic outcomes. These principles define ‘neoliberalism’ or ‘hard liberalism‘. After summarising the major policy changes identified with neoliberalism in Australia, the paper introduces a new research project that examines its impact on socioeconomic inequality, gender inequality and politics and culture. Inspection of relevant data indicates that there are important trends in inequality, public opinion and political behaviour that warrant this investigation.     

TRUSTING THE TAX OFFICE: DOES PUTNAM'S THESIS RELATE TO TAX?

Data from the Community Participation and Citizenship Survey are used to explore the factors that influence people to place trust in strangers and impersonal others. We use Putnam's social capital thesis to explore whether civic engagement and associational membership are major factors in the development of generalised or social trust, and whether this kind of trust is generalisable to trust in government institutions, specifically the Tax Office. There is partial support for Putnam's thesis that civic engagement develops social trust. More important is affective trust developed in the family and through familiar others. We find that trust is generalisable, being extended to strangers and to the impersonal others in government institutions. It is trust that builds trust — and government institutions like the Tax Office begin their task with benefits accrued through generalised trust.     

A Comparison of On-Campus and Off-Campus (or Distance) Social Work Education

Abstract

This study explored the differences between on- and off-campus social work education focusing on student demographics, academic achievements, and student satisfaction. The study focused on a cohort of recent graduates from Monash University Bachelor of Social Work course. The study is quantitative with a small amount of qualitative data used to illustrate some of the quantitative findings. Data were collected using a telephone questionnaire/survey and student records. The data were analysed using the statistical computer package, Statistical Package for the Social Sciences. The study found differences in the demographics of on- and off-campus recent graduates but minimal differences in terms of general satisfaction and grades. However, while off-campus recent graduates were generally satisfied with their course, they tended to be less satisfied with their off-campus mode of study. It seems that they often studied off-campus because it was the only, or the most convenient, choice open to them. It is concluded that off-campus social work education meets the needs of a particular group of students and as such is an important option for social work education.