Risk factors for preterm,low birthweight and small for gestational age births among Aboriginal women from remote communities in Northern Australia

Objective

To identify the risk factors for preterm birth, low birthweight and small for gestational age babies among remote-dwelling Aboriginal women.

Partnership and participation: contradictions and tensions in the social policy space

Partnerships and participation seem to be the order of the day. Yet, for many community organisations, this way of ordering the social policy space is contradictory, creating practice tensions that increase the complexity of local service systems. Such changes impact community organisations in a politics that needs to be made visible if they are to be able to act in the interests of their members and service users. We therefore outline the social policy space currently constituted by four major discourses: neo‐liberalism, managerialism, new paternalism and network governance as they intersect and interact chaotically, reshaping participation and partnerships between government, community service organisations and local communities. We then examine how policy as a technology or set of mechanisms is discursively creating contradictions and practice tensions within which community organisations engage for social justice.     

The immigration–crime relationship: Evidence across US metropolitan areas

Despite popular commentary claiming a link between immigration and crime, empirical research exploring this relationship is sparse. Especially missing from the literature on immigration and crime is a consideration of how immigration affects rates of crime at the macro-level. Although individual-level studies of immigrant criminality and victimization tend to demonstrate that immigrants typically engage in less crime than their native-born counterparts, the effect of immigration on aggregate criminal offending is less clear. In this research, we attempt to address this weakness in the literature by examining the effects of aspects of immigration on crime rates in metropolitan areas. We combine 2000 US Census data and 2000 Uniform Crime Report data to explore how the foreign-born population influences criminal offending across a sample of metropolitan areas. After controlling for a host of demographic and economic characteristics, we find that immigration does not increase crime rates, and some aspects of immigration lessen crime in metropolitan areas.     

Redefining Welfare: Australian Social Policy and Practice

The present paper outlines and analyzes Australia's welfare reform policies as they have been implemented over the past decade. While there have been numerous social policy initiatives over this period, welfare reform provides an interesting site for analysis and review. This suite of policies and programs is of particular importance from several standpoints. First, its target groups – those needing income security assistance, including the unemployed, people with disabilities, and single parents – are historically and traditionally of concern to social work and social welfare. Second, welfare reform policies have had significant impact on social welfare agencies, and the social workers and welfare workers employed in them. Finally, welfare reform has had a wider impact on inequality in Australia and our attitudes to those in need. This paper first provides a brief overview of the context of Australian social policy and welfare, its origins and current situation. It then outlines the key operational elements of welfare reform and how it has been implemented. The third section of the paper offers a critical analysis of these policies and programs and finally poses some questions and issues requiring further discussion and research.     

The im/mobilities of ‘sometimes-migrating’ for abortion: Ireland to Great Britain

ABSTRACT

This paper furthers the concept of im/mobilities through an investigation of the reproductive mobilities of women migrating for abortion from Ireland (north and south) to Great Britain. Where more often the focus of reproductive mobilities concerns the movement of people and matter in order to reproduce, there is less (although some) attention to movement aligned with the prevention of reproduction. We consider the variegated im/mobilities of conception not brought to birth, in the frictional movement of people, things, ideologies and imaginations in staying with and moving beyond the dichotomy of mobility and immobility. We engage in transdisciplinary dialogue between mobilities and migration studies. Hence, underlying this exploration is the concept of the ‘sometimes-migrant’, used to challenge binary oppositions between mobility and immobility, broader conceptualisations of ‘migrants’ as ‘exceptional’, and more specifically the notion of travelling for abortion as ‘abortion-tourism’. We adopt the call to focus on different incarnations of the ‘sometimes-migrant’ in the form of women travelling temporarily across national borders of intermittent porosity in order to seek care that is not available in their own country. Intersections of migration and mobilities reveal the ways women are im/mobilised through geopolitical and cultural practices at local and global scales.     

Team factors that predict to sustainability indicators for community-based prevention teams

Because they often set out with a guarantee of only short-term funding, many community partnerships will face a threat to their sustainability almost as soon as the first money runs out. Research into the factors that enable some coalitions and partnerships to meet the challenge when others fail is limited. This study begins to fill this gap in our understanding by examining influences on the process of sustainability planning in the context of a collaborative partnership focused on youth development. We report on a longitudinal examination of the quality of planning and attitudes underpinning the sustainability of PROSPER community prevention teams whose members implement evidence-based programs designed to support positive youth development and reduce early substance use and other problem behaviors. The current research concentrates on a particular dimension of partnership effectiveness to establish whether perceptions about team functioning in play at 6 and 18 months predict the quality of sustainability planning at 36 and 48 months. How well teams functioned in the early stages was found to be strongly related to the quality of their later preparations for sustainability. Recruitment and integration of new team members, and the encouragement they subsequently received were also found to be key factors. The results strengthen the argument for providing technical assistance to meet the needs of those who promote prevention partnerships, and they provide longitudinal empirical data to support the hypotheses of other researchers who have similarly found a correlation between effective sustainability and early planning and support.     

Immigrant Settlement Patterns: The Role of Metropolitan Characteristics*

Immigration continues to change the social, economic, and political landscapes of urban America. Consequently, scholars, as well as the general public, are interested in the internal migration patterns of immigrants. In this research, we identify and explain the characteristics of metropolitan areas that have the strongest effects on the percentage change in the foreign‐born population between 1990 and 2000. Using lagged independent variables and a sample of 150 metropolitan areas, we find that settlement patterns among immigrants are diverging from traditional patterns. That is, those metropolitan areas that had moderately high levels of globalization and lower costs of living as well as lower disadvantage indicators (e.g., percentage poverty) in 1990, had larger increases in percentage foreign‐born between 1990 and 2000 compared to areas with lower levels of globalization and higher costs of living and disadvantage. These trends suggest the increasing importance of second‐tier metropolises such as Atlanta, Phoenix, and Las Vegas in understanding where immigrants settle.