Chain migration through the social network: experience of labour migrants in Kuwait

Labour migration to the Gulf countries is predominantly contract based and a majority of workers fall below the salary ceiling necessary for sponsoring family members. Despite this, social networks have expanded in Kuwait, primarily in the form of sponsorship of additional labour migrants by those already in the country.
The objectives of the article are to describe how the process of arranging sponsorship works, to delineate the predictors of moving through a friend or relative, or arranging sponsorship for a subsequent labour migrant, and to assess the "multiplier" effect of the above process. The article is based on a survey among 800 South Asian skilled and unskilled male migrants, 200 each from Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.
About 34 per cent of all respondents moved through friends or relatives, 50 per cent through agents and 16 per cent through direct hiring or the government bureau. Logistic regression analysis indicated that the factors most likely to predict a move through the social network consisted of being a Pakistani or Indian, being a Muslim, and possessing some skills.
One-quarter of all migrants had arranged the visa for another migrant since they came to Kuwait. Logistic regression analysis showed the respondent's duration of stay in Kuwait to be an exceptionally important predictor for arranging sponsorship for an additional migrant.
Monthly income, being married and being a Muslim were also positively associated with arranging sponsorship. In terms of the multiplier effect, about 0.78 visas had been arranged per migrant. Pakistanis, who had the longest average duration of stay in Kuwait, arranged the maximum number (1.6) of visas on average.     

Drug addiction as a lifestyle

Drug addict rehabilitation programs receive a small proportion of the funds made available through the social welfare system. Emphasis has traditionally been placed on the pathological rather than the salutogenic elements of an addicted lifestyle. A new test of a person's sense of coherence in life (Antonovsky's 9-item Sense of Coherence scale) may be of interest in rehabilitation work with drug addicts, and in focusing more attention on this aspect of addiction treatment. Thirty drug addicts in treatment and rehabilitation and 10 former drug addicts were interviewed using the 9-item Sense of Coherence scale. The results obtained were compared to a well known test of distress, the 24-item Symptom Checklist. Drug addicts in treatment facilities had significantly lower mean scores on the 9-item Sense of Coherence scale (2.3) and higher scores on the 24-item Symptom Checklist (2.3) than both drug addicts in rehabilitatively oriented institutions (3.3 and 1.6) and the long-term rehabilitated non-using former drug addicts (4.2 and 1.5 respectively). The differences between the group in rehabilitation and the former drug addicts were also statistically significant. The levels of the two psychometric tests suggested a gradual movement towards normal values and an increased sense of meaning in life among the former drug addicts, contrary to findings by other researchers. The length of time before these tests return to normal values may exceed the observation period often used in follow-up at treatment facilities. Increased social welfare may follow if a disclosure of salutogenic possibilities in drug addicts is obtained. Further prospective research is, however, necessary to confirm our findings.     

The relationship between formal planning and performance in nonprofit organizations

A study of 240 YMCA organizations revealed that regardless of organization size, those organizations that used a formal approach to strategic planning had higher levels of financial and social performance than those with less formal processes. The better performers also assigned the responsibility for planning to a strategic planning subcommittee of the board rather than to the board's executive committee or to an outside consultant.     

Dropouts and continuers in Gamblers Anonymous: Life-context and other factors

The design, aims and rationale are outlined of a follow-up study of dropouts from Gamblers Anonymous. A cohort of those attending for the first time and dropping out after more than one meeting was contacted and the cooperators given a structured interview examining factors which may have contributed to decisions to dropout. A comparison group of continuers from the same meeting who had been totally abstinent for at least a year were given the same structured interviews. This first of four parts examines life context factors making it more difficult to maintain attendance, commitment to the treatment program, perceived pre-meeting expectations and reasons for coming, impacts of the first meeting, effects of pressures to maintain attendance and the influence of spouses.     

Social compromise and social metrics

In the context of constitutional design, a committee of citizens' representatives proposes (social choice) axioms. The outcome should not necessarily be the aggregation rule, or rules, satisfying each of the axioms. Alternative procedures are recommended for aggregating a set of axioms into a single summary axiom. The summary axiom generates a single social decision function when a social metric is applied.     

Influence of an Anonymous Stranger on a Routine Decision to Act or Not to Act: An Experiment in Conformity*

The purpose of the study was to investigate the impact of law-adhering and law-violating contexts on subject-behavior in a potentially law-violating situation in which the probability of negative sanctions was slight. Observations were made on subjects who had to make a decision either to violate or to adhere to a “Don't-Walk’ signal at the intersection with sparse traffic. The three specific conditions included the control-condition in which no model was present and the experimental conditions in which an anonymous male stranger, the experimenter's confederate, acted either as a law-adhering model or as a law-violating model. The presence of a law-adhering model significantly increases the rate of pedestrian-adherence to a minor legal restriction on the part of both males and females. After the ceiling effects arising from the design of the experiment were factored out, the results showed that a law-violating model has greater influence on subject-behavior than the law-adhering model does. In both the law-adhering and the law-violatin contexts, the model influences the behavior of females slightly more than he does the behavior of males.