日本无障碍环境建设理念及推进机制分析

作为世界上人口老龄化最严重的国家,日本在满足老弱病残等弱势群体出行的无障碍环境建设方面走在了世界前列。日本无障碍城市环境体系由设施、系统规划、导向和服务4个要素构成:完备、合理的无障碍设施建设构成这一体系的基础,注重与环境融合的系统性规划将设施有效联通,以全方位的通用设计理念指导信息导向系统设计,并用服务进一步为环境建设查遗补漏。日本无障碍环境建设背后的推进机制以完善的国家无障碍设计法规体系为基石,以优先推动重点发展区域的无障碍建设为实施手段,同时提升国民无障碍环境建设意识、逐步营造良好的社会环境氛围。有效的机制建设是促进日本无障碍城市环境建设的重要推动力量。     

Investing in Leaving: The Greek Case of International Migration of Professionals

In the last twenty years, the ‘international migration of professionals’ from Greece has increased. This paper is based on an extensive survey of Greek professionals who work or have worked in another country. It is the first ever research on the topic in Greece and the first one in the international literature to include participants who are currently abroad or have repatriated. The aim of the paper is threefold. First, it presents the main characteristics of this phenomenon. Second, to explain why Greece, alongside other peripheral countries, suffers from migration of its professionals: in contrast to a dominant view insisting on an allegedly abundant supply of highly skilled labour, it is argued that the phenomenon is primarily due to their low demand in the Greek labour market. Third, to argue that such migration can have positive implications for a country, not only when these people return but also when they stay abroad.     

Videoconferencing: A Viable Teaching Strategy for Social Work Education?

The findings of a study that examined students' reports about their experience with ITV are presented. The results are based on two different courses with different instructors and different composition of students. Results show that students in both sites report that the use of technology does not compromise their learning but they dislike it. Strategies for future research to understand the nature of the reaction are suggested.     

Immigrant Integration Through Mediating Social Institutions: Issues and Strategies

With nearly 40 million foreign-born residents, the United States is the country with the largest immigrant population in the world (Nwosu, Batalova, & Auclair, 2014). This amounts to 13% of the current US population and has fueled debates about the role of immigrants in American society and about what it means to be American (Batalova & Lee, 2012; Hing, 2004). The issue of immigrant integration is at the center of this debate and is also the focus of this study, which examines immigrant integration in two U.S. cities: San Francisco, California and Chicago, Illinois. This study is part of a larger 2007 multi-country study of immigrant integration practices conducted by CeiMigra, a migration research institute based in Valencia, Spain. This study analyzes data collected in the two U.S. study sites, which consists of 19 extensive qualitative interviews with politicians, policy makers, labor leaders, and nongovernment (NGO) and migrant association leaders regarding issues that affect and strategies that facilitate immigrant integration. The interviewees identified two primary points of integration: the economy and local communities. Common barriers affecting both documented and undocumented immigrants were identified, as well as local strategies that promote integration into the economy and the community. Study participants noted the burden on local communities to address immigrant incorporation and called for stronger and more systematic integration programs and policies at the federal level.     

A generalized binomial distribution determined by a two-state Markov chain and a distribution by the Bayesian approach

For dependent Bernoulli random variables, the distribution of a sum of the random variables is obtained as a generalized binomial distribution determined by a two-state Markov chain. Asymptotic distributions of the sum are derived from the central limit theorem and the Edgeworth expansion. A numerical comparison of the exact and asymptotic distributions of the sum is also given. Further a distribution of the sum by the Bayesian approach is derived and its asymptotic distributions are provided. Numerical results are given.     

Truthful Equilibria in Dynamic Bayesian Games

This paper characterizes an equilibrium payoff subset for dynamic Bayesian games as discounting vanishes. Monitoring is imperfect, transitions may depend on actions, types may be correlated, and values may be interdependent. The focus is on equilibria in which players report truthfully. The characterization generalizes that for repeated games, reducing the analysis to static Bayesian games with transfers. With independent private values, the restriction to truthful equilibria is without loss, except for the punishment level: if players withhold their information during punishment‐like phases, a folk theorem obtains.     

The Micropolitics of Victim–Offender Mediation

Victim–offender mediation is one of the most widely used practices of restorative justice encounter in the United States. We report findings from research on a victim–offender mediation program sponsored by an American juvenile court. Our specific concern is with power relations at the micro level of the mediation session. Restorative justice has been alternately criticized for controlling its participants too much and for controlling them too little. Some critics point to the silencing of participants, especially those of low social status like youth. Others point to the failure of restorative justice participants to effectively challenge attitudes conducive to crime. We consider the extent to which lay participants were silenced and/or challenged during mediation sessions. Our data suggest that power is diffuse in restorative justice encounters with juvenile offenders and that it is creatively deployed to achieve a variety of purposes. Consistent with restorative justice theories, which consider crime causation broadly, attitudes conducive to crime were not systematically addressed. The analysis underscores the complexity of both restorative justice and its evaluation.