Military Invasion and Women's Political Representation

The bodies produced by the violent practice of suicide bombing are a source of horror and disgust. They are, in feminist psychoanalyst Julia Kristeva's concept, abject: that which defies borders and is expelled to create the self. As ‘abject bodies’, suicide bombers' bodies frustrate attempts at calculation and rational control of security risks, and, in their mutilated flesh, expose as unstable the idea of the body as a whole with clearly defined boundaries between inside and outside. Female suicide bombers, whose bodies are already considered ‘abject’, produce a politics of the body that exceeds narratives of victimhood, and whose very monstrosity symbolically threatens the foundations of the nation-state. Attempts at constructing subjects out of the mutilated bodily remains of victims and perpetrators of suicide bombings are key practices in the production of the state and gendered subjects. The practice of suicide bombing and efforts to recover and resignify bodies reveals how power molds and constitutes the border of the body and state simultaneously. The explosive body of the suicide bomber thus has destabilizing effects beyond the motivations of its perpetrators and exposes the political work necessary to maintain the illusion of secure, bounded bodies and states.     

Painful Passages: Traumatic Experiences and Post‐Traumatic Stress among U.S. Immigrant Latino Adolescents and their Primary Caregivers

Using data from a stratified random sample of 281 foreign‐born adolescents and their parents in the United States, this study provides data on migration‐related trauma exposures and examines how the migration process influences the risk of experiencing trauma and developing posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). We find that 29 percent of foreign‐born adolescents and 34 percent of foreign‐born parents experienced trauma during the migration process. Among those that experienced trauma, 9 percent of adolescents and 21 percent of their parents were at risk for PTSD. Pre‐migration poverty combined with clandestine entry into the U.S. increased the risk of trauma and the subsequent development of PTSD symptoms. Post‐migration experiences of discrimination and neighborhood disorder further exacerbated this risk, while social support and familism mitigated it. Our results emphasize the importance of understanding how factors prior to, during, and after migration combine to influence the health of immigrants.     

Opportunity,Context, and Action: Understanding the Divergent Strategies of Two Mexican Social Movement Coalitions in a Time of Tremendous Change

Evidence suggests collective action success is aided by organizations working in conjunction. Recent scholarship has refocused attention on what factors foster or impede coalition work. This article builds on the literature to show how the context in which coalitions emerge and act may be multiple and contradictory. Using data from extended field research, we examine two Mexican NGO coalitions to analyze how the intersection of national and local opportunity structures influenced their emergence and strategic action. We find that the impact of such influences may be contradictory. Democratization posed both threats and opportunities for the coalitions, providing impetus for their emergence, but limiting strategic choices as co-optation and neoliberalism undermined the opportunities created by democratization. We argue that the coalition members' interpretation of the local political context explains the divergent paths the two coalitions took over time.     

Importing Trachoma: The Introduction into Britain of American Ideas of an ‘Immigrant Disease’, 1892–1906

This article examines how the American perception of trachoma as a disease prevalent among East European Jewish migrants was adopted in Britain in the years immediately preceding the passing of the 1905 Aliens Act. Increasingly rigorous immigration law in the United States meant that a proportion of migrants who arrived were refused entry and were subsequently forced to return to Europe. Steamship companies' interests, however, meant that a number of those migrants debarred from America were returned not to European frontiers but to the United Kingdom. One of the most potent ramifications of this was that trachoma, the reason why 87 per cent of migrants were rejected from America on health grounds, was considered in Britain to embody Britain's role as the destination for those migrants not fit for settlement in America. The disease was picked up by the growing anti-immigration lobby, who used it as symbol of the ‘undesirability’ of the immigrant in Britain.     

Parental bereavement: a panoramic view

This study is aimed at identifying central themes of bereavement. A qualitative approach was employed in the analyses of interviews with 22 bereaved parents. The analyses yielded four central issues or themes of bereavement, each with its own set of sub-themes or categories, as the narrative demanded. The first of these themes, pertaining to the life of the family before the death of a child had taken place, was named the risk factor. Circumstances leading up to the death, surrounding the death, the cause of death, and the events following the death were coded as bereavement circumstances. The grief reactions codes were divided into categories of emotional, physical, behavioral, relational, spiritual, and cognitive reactions, as described by the participants. Finally, the mourning codes described the mechanisms employed by the participants in their attempts to survive and continue living after the death. These findings can be used in the training of support workers and the development of bereavement interventions.     

Survey of manufacturing curricula from around the world

In the manufacturing organization cost or more specifically cost reduction is an everyday obsession with managers and engineers. To compete globally and win new contracts, manufacturing firms need to learn how to be responsive, lean and efficient. On the other hand, in order to retain and motivate workers, improve systems efficiency and conform to various regulations including health, safety and the environment, manufacturing firms need to continuously invest. Both opposing pressures create a challenging environment for manufacturing managers and engineers. This paper introduces research into how the manufacturing environment is changing and in particular the type of issues that manufacturing managers and engineers need to learn. The paper presents the first results of a study being conducted by a number of academic institutions and industries from around the world into manufacturing education issues. The principle aim of the research consortium is to anticipate the needs of manufacturing organization of the future and to provide a framework for curriculum development within universities that meet these needs. This paper specifically outlines the results of a study of existing manufacturing curricula from around the world and takes an in-depth look at four recently developed masters programmes.     

Women’s work and “women’s work”: LDS dual-earner couples and the work–family nexus

In the context of religious expectations that their primary obligations should be child care and maintenance of the home, how do Church of Latter-day Saint (LDS) women and their spouses view the relationship between women’s work and the family? Are these perceptions similar or dissimilar for men and women? This study addresses the work–family nexus by examining associations among religiosity, traditional gender ideology, work-to-family spillover, and family cohesion using data from a random sample of dual-earner LDS couples. Our findings indicate that for LDS men, women’s work outside the home is negatively associated with perceptions of family cohesion. However, this relationship is not significant for women. Gender, therefore, is a key factor in how women’s work is perceived among dual-earner Latter-day Saints.     

STAUNCHING EMIGRATION FROM EAST GERMANY: AGE AND THE DETERMINANTS OF MIGRATION

Following the unification of Germany in 1990, eastern wages and unemployment both rose rapidly. I demonstrate that rising wages reduced eastern emigration greatly, while rising unemployment had little effect. This reflects the behavior of the young, who are very sensitive to source region wages, and relatively insensitive to source unemployment. I show that most of the effect of source unemployment comes from the contemporaneous effect on those laid‐off, who are more likely to be older. I find that, compared to stayers, young emigrants are much more skilled, older emigrants are slightly more skilled, and commuters are not more skilled, as measured by education and pre‐move wages. My conclusions are based on a comparison of results from aggregate inter‐state migration data and individual data from the eastern sample of the German Socio‐Economic Panel for 1990–2000. (JEL: J61, P23)     

Roadmap to recovery: Reporting on a research taskforce supporting Indigenous responses to COVID‐19 in Australia

In April 2020 a Group of Eight Taskforce was convened, consisting of over 100 researchers, to provide independent, research‐based recommendations to the Commonwealth Government on a “Roadmap to Recovery” from COVID‐19. The report covered issues ranging from pandemic control and relaxation of social distancing measures, to well‐being and special considerations for vulnerable populations. Our work focused on the critical needs of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities; this paper presents an overview of our recommendations to the Roadmap report. In addressing the global challenges posed by pandemics for citizens around the world, Indigenous people are recognised as highly vulnerable. At the time of writing Australia's First Nations Peoples have been largely spared from COVID‐19 in comparison to other Indigenous populations globally. Our recommendations emphasise self‐determination and equitable needs‐based funding to support Indigenous communities to recover from COVID‐19, addressing persistent overcrowded housing, and a focus on workforce, especially for regional and remote communities. These latter two issues have been highlighted as major issues of risk for Indigenous communities in Australia It remains to be seen how governments across Australia take up these recommendations to support Indigenous peoples' health and healing journey through yet another, potentially catastrophic, health crisis.