Debt,precarity and gender: male and female temporary labour migrants in Singapore

As one of Asia’s key hubs for transient workers, Singapore’s migration regime creates particularly gendered streams of labour, especially among lower skilled occupations, as is apparent in two key sectors – domestic work and construction work. Drawing on surveys with Bangladeshi construction workers and Indonesian domestic workers based in Singapore, as well as in-depth interviews with each group, this paper examines gendered issues of temporary labour migration, precarity and risk, as they occur against a backdrop of migrant indebtedness. In this paper, we argue that migrant indebtedness occurs along a spectrum that ranges from less visible, or what we call ‘silently’ incurred forms of debt, through to more ‘resonant’ types of debt that are acquired upfront and thus more readily quantifiable. Using this spectrum of migrant indebtedness, we aim to complicate debates about debt-financed migration by underscoring the ways in which notions of debt and unfreedom can be imbricated with both constraints and opportunities for migrants’ agency.     

Development of a Model of Holistic Reflection to facilitate transformative learning in student midwives

Background

Reflective practice is considered an essential aspect of personal and professional development, and critical reflection is considered the cornerstone of being an accountable and autonomous practitioner. Tertiary education should lay the foundations of lifelong learning by ensuring students develop into critically reflective and reflexive practitioners, who demonstrate self-awareness and an ability to reflect on personal values and beliefs and their impact on the wider healthcare system. This level of reflective practice is essential to effect change at both an individual and societal level. Reflection should therefore be embedded into education programs as a learning, teaching and assessment strategy.

Happily (n)ever after: the cruel optimism of Disney’s romantic ideal

Drawing on Ahmed’s articulation of the performativity of affect, we analyze how Disney love, as it is constructed in Disney Princess films, acts pedagogically as a “happy object” that orients the happiness of women toward the acquisition of love. We assert that the happiness we derive from loving Disney is a form of what Berlant calls “cruel optimism,” in which we become attached to fantasies of happiness and fulfillment that are unsustainable and detrimental. The cruel optimism we learn from Disney Princess films manifests as an incitement to pursue an impossible ideal of romantic love, or what Heise calls a bridal fiction, that reinforces the supremacy of a white heteropatriarchal family ideal and keeps us attached to “compromised conditions of possibility” that limit female agency and impede social progress.     

The predictive role of support in the birth experience: A longitudinal cohort study

Background

Several risk factors for negative birth experience have been identified, but little is known regarding the influence of social and midwifery support on the birth experience over time.

What works for you may not work for (Gen)Me: Limitations of present leadership theories for the new generation

Scholars and practitioners alike have recognized that younger workers, collectively known as Millennials or GenMe, are different from workers in prior generations. Employees of this generation hold different expectations regarding the centrality of work to their lives and bring different personalities and attitudes to the workforce. As the number of Millennials in the workforce grows each year, the divide between them and their older counterparts becomes more salient, posing unique challenges for organizational leaders. In this paper, we explore how these changes may force the need for reconsideration of five of the most frequently used leadership theories in an effort to understand important boundary conditions and how leadership research must evolve to keep pace with a changing workforce.     

Implementation of a responsible conduct of research education program at Duke University School of Medicine

Academic medical centers rarely require all of their research faculty and staff to participate in educational programs on the responsible conduct of research (RCR). There is also little published evidence of RCR programs addressing high-profile, internal cases of misconduct as a way of promoting deliberation and learning. In the wake of major research misconduct, Duke University School of Medicine (DUSoM) expanded its RCR education activities to include all DUSoM faculty and staff engaged in research. The program included formal deliberation of the Translational Omics misconduct case, which occurred at Duke. Over 5,000 DUSoM faculty and staff participated in the first phase of this new program, with a 100% completion rate. The article reports on the program’s development, challenges and successes, and future directions. This experience at Duke University illustrates that, although challenging and resource intensive, engagement with RCR activities can be integrated into programs for all research faculty and staff. Formal, participatory deliberation of recent cases of internal misconduct can add a novel dimension of reflection and openness to RCR educational activities.     

Domestic violence and women with disabilities: locating the issue on the periphery of social movements

Women with disabilities, like non‐disabled women, are at risk of experiencing abuse perpetrated by those closest to them. This paper reviews what is known about the domestic abuse of disabled women, explores some of the dynamics of that abuse and considers why this issue has not been high on the agenda of either the movement against domestic violence or the disabled people’s movement in the UK, taking into consideration several points that disabled women have raised. In doing so it focuses on the concept of compound oppressions as a potential explanation for the failure of this problem to have widespread recognition as a social issue.     

Decision-making by children

In this paper, we examine the determinants of decision-making power by children and young adolescents. Moving beyond previous economic models that treat children as goods consumed by adults, we develop a noncooperative model of parental control of child behavior and child resistance. Using child reports of decision-making and psychological and cognitive measures from the NLSY79 Child Supplement, we examine the determinants of shared and sole decision-making based on indices created from seven domains of child activity. We find that the determinants of sole decision-making by the child and shared decision-making with parents are quite distinct: sharing decisions appears to be a form of parental investment in child development rather than a simple stage in the transfer of authority. In addition, we find that indicators of child capabilities and preferences affect reports of decision-making authority in ways that suggest child demand for autonomy as well as parental discretion in determining these outcomes.