Finding education: Stories of how young former refugees constituted strategic identities in order to access school

Educators in resettlement countries are grappling with ways to adequately engage and meet the needs of newly arrived refugee students. In this article we argue that to fully meet the needs of refugee students a deeper understanding of their educational experience as ‘a refugee’ prior to resettlement is vital. In particular we foreground the stories of three young former refugees and explore the ways in which they actively constructed new identities in order to access school in their host countries, prior to resettlement. This article discusses how the negative discursive positioning of ‘the refugee’ in the world today has limited the resources and access to education for young refugees. It concludes by arguing that as these students move into education in Australia there is a danger to quickly relabel young former refugees with deficit terms rather than opening up a discourse to include the intricate complexities of each refugee experience.     

Attitudes Toward Gay Marriage in States Undergoing Marriage Law Transformation

This study examines attitudes toward gay marriage within the context of concern over the weakening of heterosexual marriage. We use data from a three‐state survey conducted in 1998 – 2000 and designed to explore attitudes toward marriage and divorce reform (N = 976). We find that women, Whites, and younger persons are more approving of gay marriage than men, Blacks, and older persons. Nonparents with cohabitation experience are most approving, whereas parents with no cohabitation experience are most opposed. Heterosexual marriage preservation attitudes are key predictors, net of religiosity and political conservativism. We interpret these findings with theories about vested interest in upholding marriage as an institution and ambivalence resulting from conflicting core values of the sanctity of marriage versus the valorization of individualism.     

Directed Matching and Monetary Exchange

We develop a model of monetary exchange where, as in the random matching literature, agents trade bilaterally and not through centralized markets. Rather than assuming they match exogenously and at random, however, we determine who meets whom as part of the equilibrium. We show how to formalize this process of directed matching in dynamic models with double coincidence problems, and present several examples and applications that illustrate how the approach can be used in monetary theory. Some of our results are similar to those in the random matching literature; others differ significantly.     

ONE APPROACH TO REALLOCATING INSTRUCTIONAL RESOURCES: THE HOUSTON MODEL

In this paper a model for deciding which instructional departments should receive and surrender new or reallocatable resources is developed. It combines a two-dimensional assessment of resource needs based on instructional characteristics and the academic priority of the department to arrive at resource allocation priorities. Unusual features of the model are its reliance on judgments of departmental centrality to institutional mission as the discriminating variable in ascribing academic priorities and the careful avoidance of “halo effects” through independent assessment of resource needs and academic priorities. The model is sensitive enough to discriminate between competing claims for scarce resources while retaining a simplicity of logic that makes its mechanics understandable to those with little grounding in the decision sciences.