Organizing migrant care workers in Israel: Industrial citizenship and the trade union option

The authors examine the feasibility of trade unionism for migrant care workers, based on a recent organizing drive in Israel. Distinguishing between trade unions and other civil society organizations, they re‐examine the concept of workers' collective action, looking at what constitutes a trade union and to what extent unions can address the specific concerns of migrant care workers. They conclude that, despite the numerous problems involved in organizing migrant care workers, and the vulnerabilities intrinsic to migration processes, gendered work and the occupation of care, trade unions play an important role in establishing industrial citizenship and forming political agency.     

Recognizing difference: in/visibility in the everyday life of individuals with facial limb absence

People who lack part(s) of their face have a visibly different appearance both due to their facial difference itself and the medical aids that they use to cover it (e.g. prostheses, bandages). In this article, we draw on interviews with affected individuals in order to investigate how visible difference features in their everyday experience. The visibility of their facial difference, we show, comes into play as they interact with various others in the contexts of their daily life. However, respondents’ visibility manifests in different ways, depending on whether they cover or uncover their facial difference. These different modes of visibility make for distinct ‘visibility experiences’, as participants meet others who notice – or fail to notice – their atypical appearance. By exploring these experiences, our article provides insights into the role of visibility in interviewees’ everyday life, and demonstrates how they actively negotiate their social recognition within encounters with various others.     

Changes in Youths' Perceived Parental Acceptance of Their Sexual Minority Status Over Time

This cross‐sectional, retrospective mixed‐method exploratory study examined 140 Israeli LGB adolescents' (14–21 year old) perceptions of their parents' level of acceptance at time of same‐sex identity disclosure and currently. Approximately 75% of respondents indicated that parents were moderately to fully accepting at time of disclosure. Approximately 15% said their parents were fully or almost fully rejecting at time of disclosure, with about half eventually becoming more accepting. Perceived parental acceptance of gay and lesbian children, but not bisexual daughters, improved over time. Increased parental acceptance was attributed to multiple factors including repeated adolescent‐initiated conversations about sexual identity, parental exposure to LGB individuals, and parental love and commitment to the relationship.     

Slowing time: Markov-modulated Brownian motions with a sticky boundary

We define a new family of stochastic processes called Markov modulated Brownian motions with a sticky boundary at zero. Intuitively, each process is a regulated Markov-modulated Brownian motion whose boundary behavior is modified to slow down at level zero.

To determine the stationary distribution of a sticky MMBM, we follow a Markov-regenerative approach similar to the one developed with great success in the context of quasi-birth-and-death processes and fluid queues. Our analysis also relies on recent work showing that Markov-modulated Brownian motions arise as limits of a parametrized family of fluid queues.     

Discount rate heterogeneity among older households: a puzzle?

We put forward a method for estimating discount rates using wealth and income data. We build consumption from these data using the budget constraint. Consumption transitions yield discount rates by household groups. Applying this technique to a sample of older households, we find a similar distribution to those previously estimated using field data, though with a much lower mean than those found using experiments. Surprisingly, among this older population, patience is negatively correlated with education and numeracy. This goes against the positive correlation found for younger populations in experiments and some field studies. We discuss potential explanations for this result.     

Discrimination in mortgage lending: The Home Mortgage Disclosure Act

There exists a long history of legislation at the national and state levels in the United States designed to have an impact on the home mortgage lending market. The present research makes use of data available through one national legislative act, the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act, to ascertain if some census tracts in Memphis, Tennessee are experiencing lower than expected rates of mortgage lending from conventional and governmental sources due to the percent of their population which is black. The data indicate that even after instituting objective controls, i.e., income, neighborhood conditions, and two dimensions of demand, the percent of the population which is black significantly affects (negatively) lending rates. These results are discussed in regard to (1) the implications for patterns of city growth and development, and (2) further legislative action required to make the study of such dis-crimination easier for a public charged with that responsibility.     

The Beveridge Plan: The main principles

To complete this special issue for the fiftieth anniversary of the Beveridge Plan, we felt it appropriate to reproduce an article written by the late Guy Perrin on the occasion of its fortieth. It seemed to us that his exemplary appraisal, as relevant today as it was then, amply merited republication, testifying as it does to the clearsightedness of its author. Publishing it also enables us to pay discreet homage to a colleague who will be much missed: we have no doubt, for example, that if he were still among us today he would use the Beveridge Report as a torch to illuminate for us the likely trends in social security over the next ten years. In this article, first published in 1983, Guy Perrin outlines the major principles governing the Beveridge Plan, namely those of universality, unity and what he calls integration. The many quotations and references afford an insight into the conditions under which the plan was written, enabling us to measure its impact both at the time of its publication and four decades later. It concludes by declaring that "the enduring topicality of Beveridge still exerts an impact today, in the sense that the time has come to stop following him and start imitating him". There lies a challenge which, today more than ever, is crucial for the future of social security in the world.