Refugees and Migrants, Migrants and Refugees. An Ethnological Approach

This essay addresses the cultural dimension of the concepts refugee and migrant in order to better define their practical validity and authenticity. Examples are drawn from doctoral research and field work with South-East Asian refugees both in camps and in France.     

Understanding material deprivation: A comparative European analysis

In this paper, taking advantage of the inclusion of a special module on material deprivation in EU-SILC 2009, we provide a comparative analysis of patterns of deprivation. Our analysis identifies six relatively distinct dimensions of deprivation with generally satisfactory overall levels of reliability and mean levels of reliability across countries. Multi-level analysis based on 28 European countries reveals systematic variation in the importance of within and between country variation for a range of deprivation dimensions. The basic deprivation dimension is the sole dimension to display a graduated pattern of variation across countries. It also reveals the highest correlations with national and household income, the remaining deprivation dimensions and economic stress. It comes closest to capturing an underlying dimension of generalized deprivation that can provide the basis for a comparative European analysis of exclusion from customary standards of living. A multilevel analysis revealed that a range of household characteristics and household reference person socio-economic factors were related to basic deprivation and controlling for contextual differences in such factors allowed us to account for substantial proportions of both within and between country variance. The addition of macro-economic factors relating to average levels of disposable income and income inequality contributed relatively little further in the way of explanatory power. Further analysis revealed the existence of a set of significant interactions between micro socio-economic attributes and country level gross national disposable income per capita. The impact of socio-economic differentiation was significantly greater where average income levels were lower. Or, in other words, the impact of the latter was greater for more disadvantaged socio-economic groups. Our analysis supports the suggestion that an emphasis on the primary role of income inequality to the neglect of differences in absolute levels of income may be misleading in important respects.     

Estimating Risk Attitudes using Lotteries: A Large Sample Approach

Attitudes towards risk play a major role in many economic decisions. In empirical studies it is quite often assumed that attitudes towards risk do not vary across individuals. This paper questions this assumption and analyses which factors influence an individual's risk attitude. Based on questions on lotteries in a large household survey we first semiparametrically estimate an index for risk aversion. We only make weak assumptions about the underlying decision process and our estimation method allows for generalisations of expected utility. We then estimate a structural model based on Cumulative Prospect Theory. Expected utility is strongly rejected and both the value function and the probability weighting function vary significantly with (among other things) age, income, and wealth of the individual.     

Income,deprivation and economic stress in the enlarged European Union

At risk of poverty indicators based on relative income measures suggest that within the enlarged EU societies located at quite different points on a continuum of affluence have similar levels of poverty. Substantial differences in levels of income between societies do not in themselves invalidate this approach. However, the relative income approach fails to capture the fact that, if countries are grouped in terms of level of GDP, between economic cluster differences in life-style deprivation are sharper at lower income levels. Support for the argument relating to restricted reference groups is found in relation to the contrast between the twelve most affluent EU countries and all others. The limitations of relative income poverty lines have little to do with the process of enlargement as such. Instead the major problem involves the weak association between income and deprivation in the more affluent countries. However, as a consequence of such difficulties, such indicators do not provide entirely meaningful comparisons of levels of disadvantage across economic clusters. The current analysis, rather than supporting the alternative of a focus on absolute income or an EU wide poverty line, suggests that we should take the argument for adopting a multidimensional approach to the measurement of poverty more seriously.     

Commentary: The media in 2045—Not a forecast, but a dream

The mass media continue to be among the most crucial instruments for the practitioner of public relations, and, to be sure, among the most frustrating. How are the media changing? How will those changes affect public relations? And should there be new public policies about mass media in a twenty-first century where technical, political, social, and economic realities will be radically different from previous centuries, including the twentieth?Although most public relations professionals have shied away from public criticism of the media, and have not been vocal advocates for changing public policies about media, nevertheless they need answers to the questions raised above. In this thoughtful essay, Claude-Jean Bertrand looks at a possible mass media half a century from now and provides a dream scenario.Unfortunately, Professor Bertrand describes some “twentieth-century” public relations practices as part of the “old” problems and “dreams up” some changes in those practices, as well. It may be that a public relations professional or professor should write an essay devoted to a dream scenario for public relations in 2045. The Public Relations Review invites such commentary.     

A rapid survey technique for ‘Appropriate technology’ ecological indicators in developing urban areas

For planners, providers and evaluators of vital services in urban areas of developing nations, the availability of sufficient environmental data is oftentimes a major stumbling block. The authors here present a low-cost, rapid survey technique for gathering information on the urban ecology. The effort is developed from and validated in a research program correlating urban neighborhood (barrio) characteristics with infant and child mortality in Cali, Colombia. The technique establishes a minimal set of indicators exhibiting variance with respect to other social indices by utilizing the combined results of a random sample questionnaire and a secondary data set gathered from various public sources. The subset of efficient indicators of quality of life is derived from the total data set by utilizing a system of ridit weights.     

论建构旅游社会学的纲领性要素

近二十年来,旅游研究文献数量倍增,英语国家学术界在传播和扩大旅游研究的影响力方面处于优势地位。旅游研究领域的核心刊物都是英文期刊,如《旅游研究纪事》（Annals of Tourism Research）和《旅游管理》（Tourism management）。载于这些期刊的论文作者大多来自美国、澳大利亚、新西兰、加拿大和英国。尽管反映于期刊层面的学术研究的国际化程度较弱,但并不妨碍研究人员、学术概念、研究方法和理论在北美、英国、欧洲其他国家、澳大利亚以及中国等国之间的流通。这种流通是如何实现的？旅游研究是否存在一种如布尔迪厄所称的“子场域”（sous-champ）？假使存在,这种“子场域”属于国际层面抑或仅限于国家层面？这些问题,需先确定一个理论和方法论上的框架,以便理解被称为“旅游研究”的这个领域的产生、发展和建构的过程。从旅游学术圈、旅游市场及不同层级（地方的、国家的、国际的）旅游组织的一个融合案例出发,分析全球旅游学界正在发生中的重构。对全球旅游研究的分析基于三个互补的角度:研究的角度、认知角度、受众及知识用途的角度。为串联这三个角度,尝试推出一些概念,运用一些文献统计分析法,以求勾勒旅游研究的理论框架。