Labour migrants in post-Soviet Moscow: patterns of settlement*

This article explores the impact of the social and the spatial structures of Moscow on the patterns of settlement of labour migrants. It emphasizes the ways in which the structure of post-Soviet urban environment differs from the European and U.S. one, and uses interviews with guest workers from Central Asia to map out the strategies they employ in their search for accommodation in Moscow, as well as the barriers they encounter. Special attention is paid to the role played by ethnic networks in the lives of migrant workers, and the ways in which these networks are configured by the urban space. This article demonstrates how the absence of spatial segregation in the post-Soviet city, inherited from the Soviet period, affects the trajectories of social and economic integration of migrants and explains the absence of ‘ethnic areas’ in today’s Moscow.     

Educational attainment of childhood immigrants: how does immigration type matter?

This study examines the extent to which the way immigrant parents are selected and admitted matters in the educational attainment of childhood immigrants above and beyond the effects of conventional factors of immigrant vulnerability and resources. Using Canada’s 2011 National Household Survey linked with immigrant landing records, this study finds large differences by admission class in university completion rates for childhood immigrants. Children of skilled workers and business immigrants had much higher university completion rates than children of refugees who, in turn, had higher rates than children of live-in caregivers and in the family class. Advantages or disadvantages associated with the admission class of immigrant parents are passed on to their children, resulting partly from group differences in the education and language ability of parents, and partly from the unique pre- and post-migration circumstances experienced by each immigrant class.     

Progress,democracy, efficiency: normative narratives in political science EU studies

ABSTRACT

This article identifies influential political narratives in the 73 currently most highly cited political science articles on the EU. It is based on systematic analysis of expressions of normativity, which signal that European integration, or its institutions or policies, are bad, good, flourishing or declining. A normative narrative of continuous progress in integration, connected with a 1990s grand theoretical debate in EU studies, accounts for much of the positive tone of EU studies until about 1998. Narratives about the EU's democratic deficit and its impact beyond its borders help explain the subsequent negative turn in EU studies normativity.     

Authenticity or skill-oriented individualism,neutrality or managerialism: diversity officers as modern public officials

ABSTRACT

Diversity has become a new buzzword in European cities. Newly introduced diversity policies have replaced previous multicultural policies with an approach that acknowledges difference in a more general sense. Drawing on in-depth fieldwork in diversity departments in Amsterdam, Antwerp and Leeds, this article investigates how the introduction of diversity policy impacted on the recruitment and the self-representations of public officials in newly created diversity departments. Despite a proclaimed move away from recognising minority-group specificities, many officials conceive their immigrant origin as a central element of their profiles. This continuation of a multicultural logic is interpreted as misunderstanding or resistance on the part of those meant to implement these policies, indicating agency of contemporary bureaucrats as well as creative space within bureaucracies. In order to place the shift from multicultural to diversity policy in the context of welfare state transformation and neoliberalism, I assess whether diversity officers endorse diversity policies in conjunction with New Public Management policies. However, I do not find an unequivocal promotion of both policies and my study thus does not confirm the common association of diversity policies with neoliberalism.     

One narrative or several? Politics,cultural elites,and citizens in constructing a ‘New Narrative for Europe’

ABSTRACT

European Union (EU) institutions have cultivated narratives of European integration for a long time. For its 2013–2014 ‘A New Narrative for Europe’ project, however, the European Commission for the first time explicitly used the ‘narrative’ label. Drawing on non-participant observation, semi-structured interviews and qualitative discourse analysis, this article contrasts the drafting process and the resulting declaration’s narrative structure and content with its discussion by citizens in a web-based consultation. The analysis shows that participating citizens forcefully demanded a bottom-up debate and advocated pluralistic perspectives. In these circumstances, elite-driven attempts at strengthening European identity and EU legitimacy are likely to be ineffective.     

A qualitative analysis of migrant social workers’ work experiences and perceived prejudice from an empowering acculturative integration approach

An increasing number of migrant social workers are employed in the UK social work sector. This article explores the acculturative integration experiences of a small group of migrant social workers. We critically observe that research on migrant professionals’ trajectories should adopt theories that emphasise people’s empowerment and potential for agency. We use a framework drawing on liberation psychology for analysing the autobiographical narratives of a sample of migrant social workers employed in England. Findings indicate that the participants perceived prejudice on a number of occasions and circumstances. Even though in their narrative of survival they talked about activating several psychosocial resources, they were skeptical about their professional development and dissatisfied at work. The paper discusses the emerging findings while highlighting the framework’s relevance for understanding these experiences from an empowering acculturation perspective and suggesting ways of improving migrant social workers’ acculturative integration by addressing systemic barriers.     

Cointegration in Fractional Systems with Unknown Integration Orders

Cointegrated bivariate nonstationary time series are considered in a fractional context, without allowance for deterministic trends. Both the observable series and the cointegrating error can be fractional processes. The familiar situation in which the respective integration orders are 1 and 0 is nested, but these values have typically been assumed known. We allow one or more of them to be unknown real values, in which case Robinson and Marinucci (2001, 2003) have justified least squares estimates of the cointegrating vector, as well as narrow‐band frequency‐domain estimates, which may be less biased. While consistent, these estimates do not always have optimal convergence rates, and they have nonstandard limit distributional behavior. We consider estimates formulated in the frequency domain, that consequently allow for a wide variety of (parametric) autocorrelation in the short memory input series, as well as time‐domain estimates based on autoregressive transformation. Both can be interpreted as approximating generalized least squares and Gaussian maximum likelihood estimates. The estimates share the same limiting distribution, having mixed normal asymptotics (yielding Wald test statistics with χ² null limit distributions), irrespective of whether the integration orders are known or unknown, subject in the latter case to their estimation with adequate rates of convergence. The parameters describing the short memory stationary input series are √n‐consistently estimable, but the assumptions imposed on these series are much more general than ones of autoregressive moving average type. A Monte Carlo study of finite‐sample performance is included.     

Statistical data integration using multilevel models to predict employee compensation

This article considers the case where two surveys collect data on a common variable, with one survey being much smaller than the other. The smaller survey collects data on an additional variable of interest, related to the common variable collected in the two surveys, and out-of-scope with respect to the larger survey. Estimation of the two related variables is of interest at domains defined at a granular level. We propose a multilevel model for integrating data from the two surveys, by reconciling survey estimates available for the common variable, accounting for the relationship between the two variables, and expanding estimation for the other variable, for all the domains of interest. The model is specified as a hierarchical Bayes model for domain-level survey data, and posterior distributions are constructed for the two variables of interest. A synthetic estimation approach is considered as an alternative to the hierarchical modelling approach. The methodology is applied to wage and benefits estimation using data from the National Compensation Survey and the Occupational Employment Statistics Survey, available from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Department of Labor, United States.     

叙事有序如何可能——何心隐道统叙事的先验法则

在对儒家正统思想脉络的道统叙事中,“数”确保叙事有序,它内在于“事”的展开变化,也显现于承祧道统的次第。明代泰州学派学者何心隐的道统叙事吸收南宋理学大儒蔡沈的范数易学,“数”是人的在世体验进入叙事所遵循的先验形式法则,也是哲学意义上对一切演变的量化表达图式。“数”分“奇”“偶”：《周易》象偶,以“二”为进阶表示稳定性和对立转化,在对立稳定中蕴含隐蔽的关联;《洪范》数奇,代表变化的绝对性和渐进性,故而连续不断的变化以“三”为进阶。叙事之所以有序,依赖于“数”在奇偶交错阵列中推进,其中太极数“九”、皇极数“五”象喻连贯叙事的价值极点或转捩点。“数”中包孕“史”或“事”渐变发展之理,契合“经”中之理“仁”,是明代经史合一的重要中介范畴。