Negative impact induced by foreign workers: Evidence in Malaysian construction sector

Though foreign workers served to overcome the labor shortage in the Malaysian construction market, over-dependence on foreign workers and the negative impacts induced have become a serious social problem. The aims of this research are to identify those negative impacts induced by foreign workers in the Malaysian construction market and to determine strategies in minimizing these negative impacts. Data were collected through a structured interview and survey. The questionnaires were delegated to professionals in construction projects who have direct contacts with foreign workers. Only respondents from those companies registered under the CIDB grade G7 were chosen for this survey. There were 117 sets of questionnaires completed and analyzed through the structured interviews. The three principal factors attracting foreign workers to the Malaysian construction market are “Preference of the employers”, “Lifestyle and working conditions”, and “Unattractiveness of the career pathway”. The main negative impacts induced by foreign workers are “Over-dependence on foreign workers”, “Increment in criminal activities or social problems”, and “Existence of illegal workers”. This research proposes that strategies such as “Attract local workers into the construction industry”, “Industrialized Building Systems”, “Eliminate illegal migration”, and “Improve governance structure” would be successful in minimizing negative impacts induced by foreign workers.     

Cross-national co-operation and human mobility: an introduction

This special issue contains four chapters that are part of the results produced within the IGU Commission on Global Change and Human Mobility by a wide network of researchers from a hundred-odd countries on every continent. International collaboration in the social sciences is part of a tradition that began 50 years ago on the initiative of UNESCO. Cross-national co-operation projects are a basic prerequisite for the global spread of knowledge and innovation. Human mobility – an element of synergy and overlap between migration and tourism – is a key research theme for social scientists worldwide. People flows are both the cause and consequence of the flow of capital, goods, and culture.

The complexity of the phenomenon and the lack of data to adequately illustrate it require the ‘innovative’ use of traditional statistical indicators.     

Internal communication: Definition,parameters, and the future

As an organizational function, internal communication is gaining in importance, meriting a special issue on the topic. This importance is evident in many recent efforts among practitioners in Europe and the US to seek recognition of this field as an independent domain. Scholarship on internal communication has not kept pace with these initiatives. This introduction to the special issue addresses several key issues related to this topic and presents findings from a Delphi study of the leaders of European associations on internal communication. Results of the study are fuzzy: respondents see internal communication as interdisciplinary management function integrating elements of human resources management, communication and marketing, but at the same time they see it primarily as a part of the organization's communication function that is simultaneously managerial and technical. However, they contend that internal communication is an independent research field.     

Internal communication as power management in change processes: Study on the possibilities and the reality of change communications

Literature on change management has changed over the years. Under the umbrella of change management today frequently holistic approaches are discussed. The special significance of soft factors results from the area of tension of subjective/personal risk assessment of certain groups of actors, which entail comprehensive changes. As change projects depend on implementation by executives and employees, change communications is a form of (internal) strategic stakeholder management. Change communications can be identified as the single part of change management, which focuses on the soft factors that are activated through the change of hard factors. With the management of soft factors the aim is to make a contribution to the enforcement of change goals, i.e. to secure or to regain the management's power. For this purpose 60 PR-agencies in Germany have been polled, as to how they assess the possibilities and reality of change communications. The result illustrates a torn of the agency scene between service and consulting claims, which emphasizes the question, if (internal) communication means the organization of messages and its delivery or also becomes part of behavioral economics with the idea to control the power of management.     

Valuing internal communication; management and employee perspectives

Effective internal communication is a prerequisite for organisational success. Organisations need to evaluate and improve communication especially in increasingly difficult economic pressures. Assessment instruments enable organisations to monitor communication effectiveness. This review of academic and consultancy studies found over reliance on measuring satisfaction with the communication process. The analysis found management-centric rather than employee-centric approaches to assessment. This indicates a need to develop new approaches to assessing internal communication. A conceptual model is proposed here to encourage focus on employee communication needs in terms of content as well as channel. Future approaches to assessment should draw on a wider theoretical and conceptual framework. Assessment instruments need to reflect advances in practice. They need to assess the value of internal communication to employees as well as their organisations.     

Appropriateness and acceptability: Employee perspectives of internal communication

Internal communication underpins organisational effectiveness since it contributes to positive internal relationships by enabling communication between senior managers and employees. Paradoxically, internal communication can also pose a threat to organisational relationships, as poor communication can be counter-productive. The potential benefits of internal communication rely on appropriate messages reaching employees in formats useful and acceptable to them. Consequently, insight into employee preferences for mediated internal communication is required. The paper investigates employee views on the format of internal publications, contrasting acceptable attributes with elements which attract criticism. The single-case study contributes consideration of fresh data on an under-researched topic. It adopts a stakeholder approach with an employee-centric emphasis on employee preferences, in contrast to much previous research which focuses on manager perceptions of internal communication. Contributions include consideration of practical implications of the findings together with suggestions for avenues of further research.     

Mother’s,Household, and Community U.S. Migration Experience and Infant Mortality in Rural and Urban Mexico

This study explores rural and urban differences in the relationship between U.S. migration experience measured at the individual, household, and community levels and individual-level infant mortality outcomes in a national sample of recent births in Mexico. Using 2000 Mexican Census data and multi-level regression models, we find that women’s own U.S. migration experience is associated with lower odds of infant mortality in both rural and urban Mexico, possibly reflecting a process of healthy migrant selectivity. Household migration has mixed blessings for infant health in rural places: remittances are beneficial for infant survival, but recent out-migration is disruptive. Recent community-level migration experience is not significantly associated with infant mortality overall, although in rural places, there is some evidence that higher levels of community migration are associated with lower infant mortality. Household- and community-level migration have no relationship with infant mortality in urban places. Thus, international migration is associated with infant outcomes in Mexico in fairly complex ways, and the relationships are expressed most profoundly in rural areas of Mexico.

中国农村女性劳动力迁移的实证分析

本文利用中国健康与营养状况调查数据,通过统计描述与计量模型分析了农村女性劳动力迁移的影响因素。结果表明,农村女性劳动力在由农村向城市迁移的过程中明显受到来自家庭和性别因素的制约,在是否获取迁移机会中存在着性别差异,其根源在于女性自身的特点及其家庭、社会地位。     

Anglophone marriage-migrants in Southern Europe: a study of expat nationalism and integration dynamics

Today marriage-migration remains the dominant form of naturalization in Italy and Greece, even for women from such high-income countries as the USA. Pilot studies of intra-OECD female migrants to Southern Europe show that the majority of them marry local men, consider their matrimony a mistake, and feel isolated. Unfortunately, there is no comprehensive knowledge about dynamics of their socio-cultural integration or expat nationalism (although scholarship generally acknowledges a strong relationship between these two processes). Based on narrative-biographic interviews with 60 Anglophone female expatriates married to Italian and Greek men, our study explores the women's negotiation of culture within the context of their Italian and Greek families, and looks at emerging challenges for their integration. We show that these women are nationalistic and culturally stringent actors, who often find it extremely difficult fully to learn and integrate to the new cultures of Southern Europe.     

Migrant voices addressing social work: listening to Italian women in Germany

The research presented here aimed to give voice to Italian women who emigrated to Germany in the 1960s by giving an authentic account of their experiences and their coping abilities through participatory research approaches and the analysis of in-depth biographic interviews conducted 2012/2013 in the South of Germany. This type of interviewing itself often enabled the women, for the first time to reflect on their migration story, on their attachment to ‘Italy’, on their relationship with the host country, its language and culture. They usually realised late in life that an originally provisional project had become permanent. Their thinking in ‘habitual patterns’ is not to be taken as a sign of failed integration but reveals a differentiated strategy of managing the ‘in-between situation’. The higher quality of services in the host country is invariably a key factor in the decision to stay. The results indicate the benefits of recognising individual strengths in personal modes of adapting to multiple and often conflicting demands in the negotiation of multi-layered value structures. Differentiated listening skills to such voices and sensitive support strategies have far-reaching implications for both research and intervention methods in social work, and not just with migrants.