Going global: professional mobility and concerns for LGBT workers

The world of work has regularized the practice of people moving from one country to another to accept job assignments. Travel and relocation are stress-laden endeavours. For LGBT people, the risks can be more complicated than they are for heterosexuals. This article explores particular challenges that LGBT people face when they travel and relocate for business, both domestically and internationally. The article is contextualized with a literature review on sexual minorities and workplace issues, and uses auto-ethnographic stories of three of the authors’ lived experiences as sexual minorities relocating for professional reasons in order to examine issues related to LGBT relocation. These issues include legal, social, cultural and familial considerations. Implications and suggestions for human resource developers are presented, which include acquiring awareness around the psychological and physiological reactions to new and diverse ecologies, or ‘eco-shocks’.     

A Critical Evaluation of the Contradictions for Disabled Workers Arising from the Emergence of the Flexible Labour Market in Britain

In Britain, as in all industrialised countries 'paid work' or employment is central to the economy of the state. This perspective raises important implications for theories of disability and work, and for further research in this area. This paper attempts to provide a critical evaluation of the contradictions arising from the flexible labour market for disabled workers and how the concept of the Disabled State has been eroded along with notions of disabled people as the 'deserving poor'. Policies now demonstrate a commitment to a labour market free from restrictive practices and regulation. It appears that new technologies and specific personal communication skills, initiative, flexibility and adaptability will play an increasing part in new labour working trends. In short, theories of disability and work must change focus from 'production' to 'process'.     

Mapping social work education in the West Africa region: Movements toward indigenization in 12 countries’ training programs

This article presents the results of a systematic mapping of social work training programs in countries throughout West Africa, a region historically under‐represented in global discussions of the social welfare workforce. The research illuminates how social workers and related professionals are trained to engage in social work practice in a number of West African countries. The research was conducted in two phases. In the initial phase, the research team collected documents from 12 West African countries and conducted phone interviews with relevant individuals. The second phase included field research in five West African countries ? Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Nigeria, and Senegal ? where the research team conducted semi‐structured interviews and group discussions with 253 individuals. Framed by indigenization theory, this study describes social service training institutes in West Africa and highlights the varying degrees to which programs have been adapted to indigenous and endogenous realities in the postcolonial era.     

The National Health Act

Abstract

While increasing enrolments of international fee-paying students are a feature of the current Australian tertiary system, little research has been undertaken relating to international students studying social work. A national survey of all accredited BSW programs within Australia was undertaken in 1997 with regard to the demographic profile of international students, current provisions for them and perceptions of educators about relevant issues for consideration. The findings of this survey are presented here. Fee-paying international students represented a small proportion of total enrolments within Australian BSW programs in 1997. While educators perceived that these students did have particular educational and social challenges within Australian social work programs, few special considerations were afforded to them, although the literature would encourage us to consider this. Issues relating to the social and cultural construction of Western social work education are discussed, as well as the cultural relevance of Australian social work education for international students intending to practise social work in their countries of origin.     

Accounting for ethos or programmes for conduct? The brave new world of research ethics committees

This paper examines the operation of power and its consequences arising from the growth of new ethical bureaucracies in universities. We use the UK as a case study to illustrate more general points about the globalised nature and impact of such bureaucratisation. Our focus is on the social sciences as this is where, we argue, the impact is likely to be most marked. The paper is organised in five sections. The first introduces our concerns. Section 2 traces the genealogy of these new regimes of control in the UK. We then problematise the new ethical bureaucracies, making an analysis in terms of the shift in the locus of power away from researchers to becoming centralised in bureaucratic structures. In section 4 we explore some of the ways in which researchers might respond to the changing regimes of ethical control. Finally, we offer considerations of the ways in which ethical governance of research might be differently conducted so as to avoid the adverse consequences of new regimes of control on research practice. Our aim is to provoke debate and thereby contribute to a platform from which to reassert ways to ensure that research is ethical and that do not interfere with the production and consumption of critical social science.     

Whiteness as Stigma: Essentialist Identity Work by Mixed-Race Women

Historically, in both the social sciences and the general public, racial mixing has been stigmatized. This stigmatization was fueled by whites' desire to protect their racial privileges as well as the belief that hybridization between “pure” and superior white racial stocks and inferior non-white stocks produces an inferior being. While this view has been challenged within the social sciences, the general public's sentiment toward racial mixing remains consistently negative. The low interracial marriage rate, particularly among blacks and whites, points to the lack of popular acceptance of racial mixing. This article reveals an unusual and creative reversal of the racial mixing problem by historically stigmatized mixed-race women. The women in this study reject dominant patterns of stigma by reassigning stigma to their European ancestry. Given this reversal, women articulate and embrace non-white identities. This article explains the reversal of the racial mixing problem as well as the identity work of women as they rearticulate the meaning of race and racial belonging within dominant racial logic. The identification of macro constraints and the illustration of individual agency in the negotiation of identity extends the symbolic interactionist perspective on identity formation.     

‘Young,Fun, and Free:’ Episodic Volunteers in Ghana,South Africa and Tanzania

VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations - As scholarship on episodic volunteering expands, researchers question if episodic volunteering is similar to, and/or...     

Production scheduling for apparel manufacturing systems

In this paper, we model an apparel manufacturing system characterized by the co-existence of the two production lines, i.e. traditional, long lead time production line and flexible, short lead time production line. Our goal is to find strategies which decide: (i) the fraction of the total production capacity to be allocated to each individual line, and (ii) the production schedules so as to maximize the overall profits. In this problem, searching for the best solution is prohibited in view of the tremendouscomputing budget involved. Using ordinal optimization ideas, we obtained very encouraging results not only have we achieved a high proportion of 'good enough' designs but also tight profit margins compared to a pre-calculated upper bound. There is also a saving of at least 1/2000 of the computation time.     

Implementing Looking After Children in an English local authority

Successful training strategies in all authorities implementing Looking After Children cover the following issues: implementation at all levels of the organisation; introducing the materials as a creative work tool; and uses of the data in research and planning.