Coping with the Libyan migration crisis

ABSTRACT

This article discusses the EU's response to the recent Libyan ‘migration crisis’. The central Mediterranean migration route, via Libya, is now the principal route for mixed flows into the EU – primarily owing to the non-existence of a Libyan state to enforce migration controls in collaboration with the EU. The situation in Libya itself is dire, with extensive human rights violations committed against mostly African migrants. While the EU's efforts to curb migration from Libya through enhanced maritime patrol operations have been largely unsuccessful, the recent Italian–Libyan collaboration seems to have led to a significant reduction in the number of migrants departing from Libya's shores. In addition, the EU has also been enlisting transit countries further south – Niger, in particular – in its migration control efforts, with the provision of financial and other resources for capacity-building in migration management. Overall, the EU persists with buttressing its fortress, continues to push for the external hosting of refugee populations within the region and intensifies its collaboration with countries with a dismal track record in terms of respecting the rights of migrants and refugees.     

Gaining Satisfaction? An Exploration of Foster-Carers' Attitudes to Payment

The payment of foster-carers has long been controversial, reflectingboth philosophical debates as to whether fostering should bea voluntaristic or professional activity and concerns aboutplacement provision and service delivery for children. Althoughmany research studies have touched upon the question of foster-carers’satisfaction with payments, this has not been explored in anydepth. Drawing on findings from a study involving 1,181 foster-carersin twenty-one agencies, this article attempts to provide suchan analysis with four main objectives. These comprised: examiningassociations between attitudes towards payment and demographic,socio-economic and fostering career variables; comparing responsesbetween carers based in local authorities (grouped accordingto levels of payment and performance criteria) and independentagencies (IFAs); gauging the influence of carers’ ‘orientations’towards foster-care as a ‘professional’ task; andanalysing payments in terms of their different components, suchas fees, maintenance and certain designated expenses. Amongmany detailed findings to emerge were the generally low levelof satisfaction among local authority carers, especially incomparison with their IFA counterparts and the growing supportamong carers for salaried status. There was mixed evidence onlinks between attitudes towards remuneration and the performanceof agencies.     

Intellectual Property Abuses: How Should Multinationals Respond?

This article illustrates the causes of piracy and pinpoints piracy associated with registrations and with production and distribution. Based on interviews with British and American multinational managers working in China, the authors elaborate 10 corporate actions to counter the spread of the ‘inevitable curse’. In order to implement these 10 strategies, the authors recommend that firms treat piracy as a challenge, be corporately proactive, be aware of the repertoire of possible strategies, investigate co-operative action with other companies, agencies and government and be continuously alert to the dynamic nature of piracy. The problems reflected here are common to multinationals operating businesses around the world, and the destructive nature of piracy is likely to encourage more academic study to yield further insights for practice.     

Clients’ perceptions of marriage and family therapists’ way‐of‐being: a phenomenological analysis

Previous research highlights the influence of therapist factors on treatment outcomes. One therapist factor proposed as fundamental to the process of therapy is the therapist's way‐of‐being, a relational concept that refers to how the therapist regards a client—either as a person or object (Fife et al., [2014] Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, 40, 20–33). Although this case has been made conceptually, there is little empirical research on therapists’ way‐of‐being with clients. The primary purpose of this research is to investigate clients’ perceptions of their therapists’ way‐of‐being. Utilizing a common factors perspective, the study seeks to explore: (a) how clients experience their therapists’ way‐of‐being and (b) the influence therapists’ way‐of‐being has on clients’ engagement. Phenomenological methods were used to gain a nuanced understanding of the phenomenon. Qualitative data were collected through semi‐structured face‐to‐face interviews with clients (N = 10) who received individual therapy from a marriage and family therapist. Results were organized into two main themes: core tenets (attunement, congruency, and aligning with clients) and operational tenets (providing affirmation and validation, balancing flexibility and structure, and accomplishing goals). Findings are used to make a case for adding the concept of way‐of‐being as an overarching construct for several well‐established therapist factors. Clinical and training implications are discussed.     

ESTIMATION OF THE NUMBER OF PEOPLE IN A DEMONSTRATION

It is of interest to estimate the size of a crowd in a demonstration. We propose a practical method to obtain an estimate of the size of the crowd and its standard error. This method has been implemented in practice and, compared with other counting methods, is found to be more efficient, more timely and have less scope for bias. The method described in this paper was motivated by the annual 1 July demonstrations in Hong Kong, and data from the 2006 demonstration are used as an example of the proposed method.     

Mixtures of regressions with changepoints

We introduce an extension to the mixture of linear regressions model where changepoints are present. Such a model provides greater flexibility over a standard changepoint regression model if the data are believed to not only have changepoints present, but are also believed to belong to two or more unobservable categories. This model can provide additional insight into data that are already modeled using mixtures of regressions, but where the presence of changepoints has not yet been investigated. After discussing the mixture of regressions with changepoints model, we then develop an Expectation/Conditional Maximization (ECM) algorithm for maximum likelihood estimation. Two simulation studies illustrate the performance of our ECM algorithm and we analyze a real dataset.     

Contribution of Motion Information to Maternal Face Discrimination in Infancy

The contribution of motion and feature invariant information in infants' discrimination of maternal versus female stranger faces was assessed. Using an infant controlled habituation–dishabituation procedure, 4‐ and 8‐month‐old infants (N = 62) were tested for their ability to discriminate between their mother and a female stranger in 4 different conditions varying whether motion or feature information about the faces was available. The faces were presented in a still or dynamic video image with either a positive or a negative contrast. In each condition, infants habituated to a stranger's face and then viewed, in 3 pairs of alternating novelty test trials, either a new stranger or their mother's face. Results show that motion information contributes to the 8‐month‐old infants', but not the 4‐month‐old infants' discrimination of maternal faces. These results are interpreted in relation to recent findings and models in the adult literature suggesting that there is an enhanced contribution of dynamic information in face recognition when the face is familiar. Our data confirm that from the outset, there is a complex interplay of feature and motion information in the discrimination of the mother's face when the viewing condition is not optimal.     

The philosophical bogeyman: misunderstanding the relation of theory and method

When my article ‘The relation of theory and method: causal relatedness, historical contingency and beyond’appeared in The Sociological Review August 1988, it was followed by two critical responses in the same issue by Platt and Bulmer. In my opinion both of these responses seriously misrepresent and profoundly misunderstand my arguments. In what follows I identify the more salient of these errors and attempt to rectify them.