Second generation Caribbean black male youths discuss obstacles to educational and employment opportunities: a critical race counter-narrative analysis

This study explores obstacles to navigating the high school-to-labor market transition experienced by Second Generation Caribbean Black Male Youth (CBMY) living in Canada's Greater Toronto Area (GTA). Drawing upon interviews with ten CBMY between the ages of 18–27, the article uses a qualitative phenomenological methodology to understand barriers to education and employment from their perspectives. Studies show that 45% of CBMY drop out of high school while 52% are precariously employed in the GTA [Allahar, A. L. 2010. “The Political Economy of ‘Race’ and Class in Canada’s Caribbean Diaspora.” American Review of Political Economy 8 (2): 54; James, C. E. 2012. Students “at Risk” Stereotypes and the Schooling of Black Boys. Urban Education 47 (2), 464–494.; Lewchuk, W., and M. Lafleche. 2014. Precarious Employment and Social Outcomes. Just Labour: A Canadian Journal of Work and Society, 22, 45–50.; Block and Galabuzi 2011. Canada’s Color Coded Labor market: The Gap for Racialized workers. Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives?=?Centre Canadien de Politiques alternatives]. The ten interview subjects provide retrospective and introspective counter-narratives that expose the race, class and gender-based barriers that frustrate their efforts to secure stable employment. The study utilizes Critical Race Theory (CRT) and the concept of White Supremacy to challenge the view that educational and employment success is based on color-blindness, merit and hard work. The CBMY counter-narratives examined in this study offer profound insight into dominant ideologies and practices that perpetuate racial biases, and present many valuable suggestions, explicit and implied, regarding how to improve the opportunities, inclusion and well-being of CBMY.     

Complex home care: challenges arising from the blurring of boundaries between family and professional care

Over the last 50 years, increasingly complex care (such as tracheostomy management, dialysis or enteral feeding) has shifted from hospital to home, with a concomitant rise in patient self-management and care given by family members. Recognition of the importance of the contribution of family care to the health system is also growing. This article reports the findings of a New Zealand study which explored the experiences of family carers who manage technical health procedures at home. It then draws attention to some broader issues raised by shifting complex care from professional management in hospital settings to family care at home, namely the ways in which complex home care blurs the boundaries between professional and family care (creating the ambiguous position of the expert carer) and questions of safety and responsibility in family care. We also discuss the implications for policy around family caregiving in New Zealand. Given the potential physical and mental health impacts of caring, it is time for renewed consideration of what family carers should be expected or allowed to manage and how the health system can support them in their important role.     

Predictors of Problem Gambling in the U.S.

In this article we examine data from a national U.S. adult survey of gambling to determine correlates of problem gambling and discuss them in light of theories of the etiology of problem gambling. These include theories that focus on personality traits, irrational beliefs, anti-social tendencies, neighborhood influences and availability of gambling. Results show that males, persons in the 31–40 age range, blacks, and the least educated had the highest average problem gambling symptoms. Adults who lived in disadvantaged neighborhoods also had the most problem gambling symptoms. Those who attended religious services most often had the fewest problem gambling symptoms, regardless of religious denomination. Respondents who reported that it was most convenient for them to gamble had the highest average problem gambling symptoms, compared to those for whom gambling was less convenient. Likewise, adults with the personality traits of impulsiveness and depression had more problem gambling symptoms than those less impulsive or depressed. Respondents who had friends who approve of gambling had more problem gambling symptoms than those whose friends did not approve of gambling. The results for the demographic variables as well as for impulsiveness and religious attendance are consistent with an anti-social/impulsivist pathway to problem gambling. The results for depression are consistent with an emotionally vulnerable pathway to problem gambling.     

Forensic Evaluation of Deaf Individuals: Challenges and Strategies

ABSTRACT

Forensic evaluation of deaf individuals presents unique challenges due to many examinees’ fund of information deficits, potential for language deprivation, and examiners’ frequent lack of creativity regarding communication methods. This article describes challenges most frequently encountered in competency to stand trial and criminal responsibility evaluations and offers strategies for overcoming them. The value of employing multiple communication methods, especially the use of illustrations, is emphasized. Suggestions also are offered regarding preparing evaluation reports and effectively communicating “key deaf fundamentals” to legal personnel. Encouragement is offered for qualified, sign-fluent professionals to engage in forensic work.     

Changes in the gender structure: Inequality at the individual,interactional, and macro dimensions

As a society, we've made tremendous progress toward gender equality over the past several decades. Yet there remains significant inequality between women and men. Furthermore, when we look closely at some of the progress made toward gender equality, we find it considerably less impressive than surface appearances. In this article, we review the updated framework of Risman's (2017) gender structure theory and argue that it can help us make sense of the progress we've made as well as analyzing inequality as it persists between women and men. Using gender structure theory, we then show how gender is simultaneously reproduced and contested across the individual, interactional, and macro levels of society within 3 major social domains: work, family, and gender identity.     

The ‘digital glimpse’ as imagining home

This paper proposes the concept of the ‘digital glimpse’, which develops the existing framing of imaginative travel. Here it articulates the experiences of mobile workers digitally connecting into family life and everyday rituals when physically absent with work. The recent embedding of digital communication technologies into personal relationships and family life is reconfiguring how absence is experienced and practiced by workers on the move, and through this, new digital paradigms for life on-the-move are emerging. This paper explores how such social relationships are maintained at-a-distance through digital technology – using evidence from qualitative interviews with mobile workers and their families. Digital technology now enables expressive forms of ‘virtual travel’, including video calling, picture sharing, and instant messaging. This has implications for the ways in which families can manage the social and relational pressures of being apart. Experiences of imaginative travel created through novel media can enrich the experience and give a greater sense of connection for both those who are at home and those who are away. While technology is limited in its ability to replicate a sense of co-presence, ‘digital glimpses’ are an emergent set of sociotechnical practices that can reduce the negative impact of absence on family relationships.     

Assessing the Tongzhi Label: Self-Identification and Public Opinion

Tongzhi is one of several Chinese terms that refer to individuals who are attracted to the same sex. Using data from two different surveys in Hong Kong, this research note examines how the term tongzhi coexists with other terms. We investigate the prevalence of self-identification as tongzhi, and we explore the extent to which using the term tongzhi influences public attitudes toward gay people and gay rights. Activists began popularizing the term tongzhi in the late 1980s, but less than one third of the participants in our 2008 survey of sexual orientation minorities (n = 728) described themselves as tongzhi. Using a split-ballot experiment in a 2013 public opinion poll (n = 831), we found that attitudes toward gay people and gay rights were not significantly impacted by whether questions were phrased in terms of tongzhi or the main alternative term tongxinglianzhe. We discuss how our findings can enrich understandings of earlier research and illuminate avenues for future study.