Expediting youth's entry into employment whilst overlooking precariousness: Flexi‐employability and disciplinary activation in Hong Kong

With an emphasis placed on supply‐side interventions such as skills training and incentives enhancement, active labor market polices (ALMPs) are strongly promoted by international organizations and widely adopted across different welfare regimes to boost employment rates. This article first presents the under‐examined relationship between ALMPs and employment precariousness, which has posed a challenge to the neoliberal notion of employability and activation. Youth‐focused employment policies tend to speed up employment entry whilst downplaying the risk of precariousness and the importance of job quality, and thus further reinforcing the belief that engaging in precarious employment is tolerable if not inevitable. The article then examines the case of Hong Kong, which illustrates that its relatively low rate of youth unemployment may conceal the unfavorable employment conditions confronted by youth. It is argued that the service‐led employment policies and short‐term vocational training define the employability of young workers in terms of labor flexibilities. The coined phase of “flexi‐employability” is characterized by promoting youth's readiness for, and adaptability to, the volatilities and changing demands of the labor market. Arguably, the disciplinary approach to youth activation would only strengthen the work‐first principle by enforcing young people to take up jobs available and leave welfare as soon as possible, but without thoroughly addressing the risks and insecurities generated by the labor market in undermining their well‐being.     

The role of the welfare state in supporting economic transitions following family bereavement: Comparing Britain and Israel

Despite its centrality to the experience of death and grief, it is only in recent years that the economic burden following family bereavement has been recognized by social care professionals and scholars. Based on the realization that death and bereavement are grounded in social context, and assuming this economic burden is a multifaceted phenomenon, the present study compares the British and Israeli welfare systems in three policy settings: social security, funeral services, and bereavement leave. The findings suggest that while in both systems bereavement and especially widowhood is considered a deserving category, recent pressures for restructuring the British welfare state have been successful in shifting provision from the state to the market. The findings also show that in both cases, albeit to a lesser extent in Israel, current policy measures are not fully aligned with critical scholarship on bereavement and its financial consequences, nor with socio‐economic and demographic trends. These disparities are addressed using the notion of disenfranchised grief and by emphasizing the pivotal, although often overlooked role of the welfare state in constituting it. Lastly, the differences between the two cases are discussed in terms of the powerful role of Judaism in shaping Israeli policy.     

English proficiency in Australia, 1981 to 2016

Using Australian census data, the paper examines the incidence of poor English competency in Australia from 1981 onwards. The paper examines English competency in relation to various characteristics such as sex, age, language spoken, visa type, citizenship, duration of residence and location. It finds that there was a sharp rise in the numbers of people not speaking English well between the 2011 and 2016 Censuses and special attention is given to this rise in the paper. Recently, the Australian Government unsuccessfully legislated for the introduction of a requirement of English competency at the level of IELTS 6 (the commonly used university entrance level) as a condition for the award of Australian citizenship. The paper argues that this test would have led to a very large number of disenfranchised Australian permanent residents and this would be a highly undesirable result. Nevertheless, employment and social participation are strongly influenced by English competency and residents with poor English are disadvantaged. The policy suggestion is made that participation in a course of English language training for those without functional English skills could be made a precondition of the award of permanent residence—without the application of a passing grade.     

现行就业政策的支点管窥

"积极就业政策"应该有五大支点,每个支点都有相应的基础.文章从劳动密集型产业、第三产业、民营经济、中小企业及灵活就业五个支点出发,指出只有找准支点,夯实基础,才能把"积极就业政策"落到实处,从而进一步缓解"十一五"时期的就业压力.     

我国中性财政政策选择解析

从一国经济的可持续发展来看,积极财政政策的实施只能是阶段性、暂时性的,随着一国经济形势的发展变化应适时适度做出相应调整,才能更加科学地调控宏观经济布局和结构,使其沿着健康、稳定的发展运行轨道前进。伴随着我国积极财政政策的连续实行,经济增长加速效应突出,国民经济领域产生了许多结构性的问题和矛盾,这迫使我国财政政策的选择有必要由扩张性向中性转移。把握积极财政政策向中性的财政政策逐步过渡的“火候”,就要充分适应经济形势的不断变化,在调控目标、调控方式、调控手段和方法组合上进行适时调整,采用更为适合我国国情的科学的宏观调控财政手段。     

Driven by politics: agenda setting and policy-making in Hungary 2010–2014

Studies on media and politics generally find an effect of the media on the symbolic policy agenda. Analysing data from the Hungarian Comparative Agendas Project, we demonstrate that this effect is extremely weak in the Hungarian policy-making process. We identified those issues that received greater than average coverage in the media. However, we found that in the majority of cases governmental initiatives or decisions preceded the media coverage – that is, instead of the media agenda pulling the policy agenda, the general logic is the opposite: the media are talking about the policy initiatives of the government. The ambition of the paper is twofold. First, our findings reinforce those claims in the literature that point to the many institutional and political factors affecting the media-politics nexus. This suggests that policy-making might be very different in new(er) democracies. Second, our research analyses the policy-making side of Viktor Orbán’s governance. Changes in the polity, democratic backlash and illiberal tendencies are usually the focus concerning the political changes in Hungary since 2010, but no attention has been devoted to how this type of governance is reflected in policy-making. Our paper seeks to make a contribution also in this respect.     

Large,But Adaptable? A Successful Population Policy and Its Long Term Effects

A restrictive population policy led to almost doubling the number of newborns from one year to another in Romania in the 1960s. Twenty years later, this large generation (of women) enters a marriage market with few eligible older mates, in a society where marriage is a must. In this article, I analyze this social experiment within the broader frame of the marriage squeeze/two sex models. Using various data from censuses and surveys, I argue that the marriage market is flexible even when is confronted with disproportionately large cohorts. If the social pressure toward marriage is strong, the marriage rates do not necessarily fall, but the mating age patterns change.

Quality_Family Deployment: A New Perspective in Determining Priority Importance for Improving Work Performance in Organization

Determining priority importance is a matter of concerns among the organization to improve their performance. One of the important aspects that should be considered by the organization is management of human resources, comprising of members who have their own family life. In this paper, we deliver a new perspective for organization to provide priority importance for their members with respect to family matters in order to inculcate the sense of belonging in the organization. To be effective in considering family matters in the organizational policy making, closer look of family characteristics are required. The idea of translating several family characteristics as quality variables and applying the quality function deployment (QFD) method to these variables could present a new way of improving the decision making in the organization by considering the process of decision in the family. Quality function deployment for family (QFDF) produces a friendly interpretation of a highly complex and intangible matters around family life; thus, making the assessment of a family easier. QFD is applied on the data gathered from a questionnaire survey based on 1,213 families in West Malaysia, Malaysia. Twelve variables are identified as voice of family, where seven of them are found to have the highest priority of importance. These variables could also be translated into quality variables in the context of organization, the strategy of improvement for the family could be interpreted as strategy for improvement in the organization. Furthermore, the results of this study provide suggestion to improve actions for managing human resource. In the discussion, three most high ranked variables from both perspectives of family and organization are considered.     

透析实施生育保险制度的局势

从社会学视角对实施生育保险制度的必要性进行探讨,分别从宏观(包括人口转变规律、经济体制改革、提高人口素质的需求三个方面)、中观(包括社会支持网络的变迁、保障女性群体地位、保障企业平等竞争三个方面)和微观层面(包括生育观念的转变、生育的风险性、体现女性的生育价值三个方面)进行层层剖析,说明实施和拓宽生育保险制度势在必行。     

外来工子女留守与流动的教育状况比较

在教育公共政策转型的社会背景下,经济因素和外来工家庭凶素是影响其子女在城乡之间进行就读选择的重要原因。外来工子女进入城市上学的成本是留守在农村的两到三倍;外来工子女流入城市就读的主要因素并非是农村的教育质量问题;外来工子女流入城市比留守在农村老家更容易失学。