Immigrants’ Children’s Transition to Secondary School in Italy

Choosing a secondary school represents an important step in the lives of students in Italy, in that it has a strong bearing on their ultimate educational achievement and labor force trajectory. In this article, we analyze the effect of generational status and length of residence on the transition to secondary school among immigrants living in Italy. Using data from the ITAGEN2 follow‐up, we analyze scholastic results from the middle school final exam and the choice of secondary school among the adolescents in Italy. Children of immigrants are more likely to have inferior outcomes on the middle school exam and to enroll in vocational and polytechnic schools. Our multivariate results indicate that, after controlling for the family’s human capital and other key background factors, immigrant students show greater propensity to choose a vocational path. Differences between immigrants and natives in secondary school tracks are also manifested when previous scholastic results are taken into account.     

Lessons learned from Toulouse and Buncefield disasters: from risk analysis failures to the identification of atypical scenarios through a better knowledge management

The recent occurrence of severe major accidents has brought to light flaws and limitations of hazard identification (HAZID) processes performed for safety reports, as in the accidents at Toulouse (France) and Buncefield (UK), where the accident scenarios that occurred were not captured by HAZID techniques. This study focuses on this type of atypical accident scenario deviating from normal expectations. The main purpose is to analyze the examples of atypical accidents mentioned and to attempt to identify them through the application of a well-known methodology such as the bow-tie analysis. To these aims, the concept of atypical event is accurately defined. Early warnings, causes, consequences, and occurrence mechanisms of the specific events are widely studied and general failures of risk assessment, management, and governance isolated. These activities contribute to outline a set of targeted recommendations, addressing transversal common deficiencies and also demonstrating how a better management of knowledge from the study of past events can support future risk assessment processes in the identification of atypical accident scenarios. Thus, a new methodology is not suggested; rather, a specific approach coordinating a more effective use of experience and available information is described, to suggest that lessons to be learned from past accidents can be effectively translated into actions of prevention.     

Democratising Migration from the Bottom Up: The Rise of the Global Migrant Rights Movement

Abstract

This paper discusses the link between international migration and democratisation from an actor-oriented perspective on the basis of the mobilising efforts by key civil society actors engaged in the promotion of the rights of migrant workers through developing strategies towards movement building and by capitalising on political opportunities that have appeared on the global level. Being pitched at the global level and at organising patterns via the network form, the analytical framework developed takes as its starting point global justice perspectives and then builds upon insights from social movement and constructivist International Relations scholarship. It is argued that what is emerging are (1) movement practices in migrant rights networks which are putting forward increasingly coherent claims that transcend the conventional thinking about global governance and human rights (rights-assuming advocacy); and (2) that such practices are effectively transgressing interstate political arenas (participatory, rights-producing politics). It is on the basis of the cooperation between the 2 main protagonists, trade unions and migrant rights associations, that strategic positioning of migrant rights issues within the global policy debate is taking place, with the aim of promoting a rights-based approach (RBA) to migration and its governance. The combination of rights-producing politics and rights-assuming advocacy is expressed in the RBA to migration which involves the reframing of migrants rights as well as attempts to democratise migration governance in participatory terms.     

Turning away from the public sector in children's out-of-home care: An English experiment

This paper reports on the evaluation of an English experiment which, for the first time, moved statutory social work support for children and young people in out-of-home care from the public to the private or independent sector. Five social work practices (SWPs), independent or semi-independent of local government, were established and evaluated using a matched control design with integrated process evaluation. Social work teams in the public sector, selected to correspond to key characteristics of the SWP sites, provided control sites.     

Social Workers Can e-Learn: Evaluation of a Pilot Post-Qualifying e-Learning Course in Research Methods and Critical Appraisal Skills for Social Workers

Social workers are increasingly encouraged to become research minded and integrate research findings into their practice. However, there is a paucity of high-quality accessible training for social workers in research methods and critical appraisal skills. We developed an e-learning version of an MSc degree module to widen access to this kind of training and this paper presents the findings of an evaluation of a pilot of this e-learning course. To test the effectiveness of the e-learning environment in delivering research methods and critical appraisal skills training to social workers in comparison with a classroom group, we adopted a mixed methods approach which comprised concept mapping exercises, semi-structured interviews and evaluation questionnaires administered to the e-learners (n = 3) and a classroom comparison group (n = 12). Our analysis of the students' concept maps revealed no conspicuous differences in the quality of student knowledge changes that were a consequence of the mode of teaching delivery. The e-learners met the learning outcomes of the module to the same extent as the classroom group and were highly satisfied with the mode of delivery. Although this was a small pilot, it provided tentative evidence that social workers can use e-learning to develop evidence-based practice skills.     

Partial logistic relevance vector machines in survival analysis

The use of relevance vector machines to flexibly model hazard rate functions is explored. This technique is adapted to survival analysis problems through the partial logistic approach. The method exploits the Bayesian automatic relevance determination procedure to obtain sparse solutions and it incorporates the flexibility of kernel-based models. Example results are presented on literature data from a head-and-neck cancer survival study using Gaussian and spline kernels. Sensitivity analysis is conducted to assess the influence of hyperprior distribution parameters. The proposed method is then contrasted with other flexible hazard regression methods, in particular the HARE model proposed by Kooperberg et al. [16]. A simulation study is conducted to carry out the comparison. The model developed in this paper exhibited good performance in the prediction of hazard rate. The application of this sparse Bayesian technique to a real cancer data set demonstrated that the proposed method can potentially reveal characteristics of the hazards, associated with the dynamics of the studied diseases, which may be missed by existing modeling approaches based on different perspectives on the bias vs. variance balance.     

Local stationarity in small area estimation models

Small area estimators are often based on linear mixed models under the assumption that relationships among variables are stationary across the area of interest (Fay–Herriot models). This hypothesis is patently violated when the population is divided into heterogeneous latent subgroups. In this paper we propose a local Fay–Herriot model assisted by a Simulated Annealing algorithm to identify the latent subgroups of small areas. The value minimized through the Simulated Annealing algorithm is the sum of the estimated mean squared error (MSE) of the small area estimates. The technique is employed for small area estimates of erosion on agricultural land within the Rathbun Lake Watershed (IA, USA). The results are promising and show that introducing local stationarity in a small area model may lead to useful improvements in the performance of the estimators.     

Maximum likelihood estimation of correlation between maximal oxygen consumption and the 6-min walk test in patients with chronic heart failure

Maximal oxygen consumption (VO₂max) is the standard measurement used to quantify cardiovascular functional capacity and aerobic fitness. Unfortunately, it is a costly, impractical and labour-intensive measure to obtain. The 6-min walk test (6MWT) also assesses cardiopulmonary function, but in contrast to the VO₂max test, it is inexpensive and can be performed almost anywhere. Various medical studies have addressed the correlation between VO₂max and 6MWT in patients with chronic heart failure. Of particular interest, from a medical point of view, is the conditional correlation between the two measures given the individual's height, weight, age and gender. In this paper, we have calculated the maximum likelihood estimate of the conditional correlation in patients with chronic heart failure under the assumption of skew normality. Data were recorded from 98 patients in the Operative Unit of Thoracic Surgery in Bari, Italy. The estimated conditional correlation was found to be much smaller than estimated marginal correlations reported in the medical literature.