The academic achievement of socioeconomically disadvantaged immigrant adolescents: a social capital perspective

A sizable body of literature reports that social capital, derived from relational resources embedded in micro social contexts, is crucial for student achievement. This study aimed to examine whether this applies as well to socioeconomically disadvantaged immigrant adolescents in the US. In so doing, the study first identified the types of relational features that were strongly associated with immigrant adolescents’ academic achievement, before exploring how high- and low-achieving immigrant adolescents coming from similarly socioeconomically disadvantaged backgrounds differed in terms of these relational features. To this end, the study used the dataset of the Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Study (CILS). There was a significantly positive association found between academic achievement and a number of positive characteristics of social relationships with friends and teachers. In addition, a significant disparity in these relational features was found between high and low achievers among the socioeconomically disadvantaged. The findings illuminate the salience of peer contexts and of interpersonal trust in shaping immigrant adolescents’ educational outcomes in a way that transcends socioeconomic boundaries. It is pertinent for educators and policy-makers to empower immigrant youth as independent agents capable of generating academically relevant social capital on their own outside their families and ethnic communities.     

Part‐Time Employment and Problem Behaviors: Evidence From Adolescents in South Korea

This study explores the impact of adolescent part‐time work experience on problem behaviors in the South Korean context. To achieve this, propensity score matching (PSM) analyses were employed based on data from the Korean Education Employment Panel (KEEP). Results indicate that adolescents' part‐time employment during their secondary school years had significantly undesirable effects on drinking and smoking, even after preexisting differences between the two groups (i.e., those adolescents who participated in part‐time work and those who did not) were controlled by PSM. However, an insignificant difference was detected in the likelihood of running away from home. Implications of the results are discussed in terms of changes in the meanings of adolescence and of participating in part‐time work in South Korea.     

Pensions and fertility: back to the roots

Fertility has long been declining in industrialised countries and the existence of public pension systems is considered as one of the causes. This paper provides detailed evidence on the mechanism by which a public pension system depresses fertility, based on historical data. Our theoretical framework highlights that the effect of a public pension system on fertility is ex ante ambiguous while its size is determined by the internal rate of return of the pension system. We identify an overall negative effect of the introduction of pension insurance on fertility using regional variation across 23 provinces of Imperial Germany in key variables of Bismarck’s pension system, which was introduced in Imperial Germany in 1891. The negative effect on fertility is robust to controlling for the traditional determinants of the first demographic transition as well as to other policy changes.     

An application of developmental theory to technique: The concept of resistance-like behavior

Ego psychology has offered us the theoretical framework to better understand and treat patients with less than neurotic structure. Case material chosen from the first two years of a woman's treatment illuminates one such concept; resistance-like behavior. Understanding how this differs from the more classical concept of resistance enables the therapist to provide the means to further internalization and structure building in such patients.     

Home Language Instruction in Sweden: what is the situation in 1998?

This article focuses on one of the components of education for immigrants in Sweden: home language instruction. Viewed, mainly in the 1970s, as a generous asset of Swedish social policy, foreign observers nowadays seem less eager to analyse and follow up on all of the concrete measures and ideological debate that have taken place since. However, the Swedish experience of more than 20 years in home language instruction is still worth consideration, as it has witnessed major changes in the 1990s.     

A nonprofit manager's guide to online volunteering

As access to the Internet expands, volunteer managers have the option of using this new technology to manage pools of volunteers online. Online volunteering can appear deceptively simple: post an opening, select a volunteer, and then manage them by e‐mail. However, our evaluation of an active online volunteering service used by more than three hundred organizations and ten thousand potential volunteers indicates that additional planning and management are frequently needed. Through an analysis of two years of quantitative data and interviews with more than forty volunteers and managers, we have extracted suggested practices and programmatic implications for managers in the areas of program design, volunteer selection, training, ongoing operations, and evaluation.     

Stimulating lifelong professional growth by guiding job characteristics

This article reports some findings from a broader study concerning the development of professional expertise. The aim of the part that is described in this article was to find out whether certain job-related factors situated in the domain of socio-technical systems design (STSD), that is, control capacity, job satisfaction, and learning value of the job, influence the development of professional knowledge, skills, and capabilities throughout the career. The sample consisted of 559 middle- and higher-level employees working in eight large Dutch companies. Theoretical contributions from learning theory, human resource management and work, and organizational psychology are used to conceptualize the phenomenon of professional expertise and to develop a theory of expertise development in careers. By providing insight into the relationships between several job-related factors, on the one hand, and the development of professional expertise, on the other, this research is intended to contribute to theory building in adult development and learning. Influential job characteristics that are situated in the domain of STSD seem to be of high importance in view of a further human resource development. Paying close attention to an individual's job and its content is indispensable in order to guide growth throughout the career and to enable life-long development of professional expertise.     

ON THE HETEROGENEOUS EMPLOYMENT EFFECTS OF OFFSHORING: IDENTIFYING PRODUCTIVITY AND DOWNSIZING CHANNELS

This article examines the channels through which offshoring affects employment in a representative sample of German establishments, using a difference‐in‐differences matching approach. Offshoring is measured by an increase in the share of foreign to total intermediate inputs at the plant‐level. We identify a positive productivity effect and isolate a negative downsizing effect from offshoring on employment, by exploiting differences between offshoring plants that do and do not simultaneously restructure. Furthermore, we cannot find evidence of negative indirect employment effects on domestic suppliers or competitors. (JEL F16, J23, F23, C21)     

Toward a Mediation Model of Employability Enhancement: A Study of Employee‐Supervisor Pairs in the Building Sector

This study examines whether jobs that enable competence development and a constructive leadership style enhance workers' employability or career potential through their assumed positive relationship with work‐related flow (absorption, work enjoyment, and intrinsic work motivation). The authors conducted an explorative study with 303 pairs of employees and their direct supervisors working in a Dutch building company. Results indicate that self‐ratings of learning value of the current job and transformational leadership have an indirect relationship with supervisor ratings of employability through work‐related flow.     

The micropolitics of choice in Italy: How the law affects lesbian and bisexual women’s daily life

Abstract

This article stems from three years of fieldwork (2015–2017) in the context of a five-year-long, European-Research-Council-funded research project called INTIMATE—Citizenship, Care and Choice: The Micropolitics of Intimacy in Southern Europe, a comparative qualitative study that involves three countries (Italy, Portugal, and Spain) and studies intimate citizenship and the micropolitics of daily life of LGBTQ people. The article focuses specifically on the Italian case and shows how non-heterosexual women deal with the scarce legislative protection Italy grants. Our aim is to reflect upon the reciprocal influence of different axes from public and private spaces and on how they impact the micropolitics and the daily choices of our lesbian, bisexual, and pansexual participants. More specifically, considering the lack of legal and social recognition of lesbian experiences in Italy, we will focus on the different strategies of reaction, assimilation, and resistance employed by participants in their private and public life. The three-year-long fieldwork covered the period between the proposal of the bill on same-sex civil unions and the first year after Act 76/2016 came into force. This allows us to sketch a brief diachronic analysis of its functioning, in particular from the perspective of the very subjects it impacts.