Family Relationships,Social Connections,and Depressive Symptoms Among Chinese Older Adults in International Migrant Families

This study explored whether and how family relationships and social connections influence depressive symptoms of older migrants and older adults in transnational families using the data gathered from a cross-sectional survey in Los Angeles, California, United States, and Beijing, China. Regression results showed that the older migrants reported significantly higher levels of depression than the elders in transnational families. The findings highlight the importance of maintaining close family relations and having large friendship networks for older adults in international migrant families.     

‘More like a daughter than an employee’: the kinning process between migrant care workers,elderly care receivers and their extended families

ABSTRACT

This paper explores the intersections of formal and informal care in the relationships that develop between elderly care receivers and their families and migrant domestic care workers and their families. The domestic migrant care literature has tended to focus on two main ‘hidden costs’ of this ‘care-chain’: the ‘care exploitation’ of paid carers by their employers and the ‘care drain’ impact on the family members left behind by the migrant. In this paper, we employ a care circulation framework to examine the process of becoming kin-like – or ‘kinning’, which remains relatively under-explored and warrants further research. An analysis of this process of kinning helps to highlight how the domestic space of care receiver homes are transformed – through the negotiation of relationships with migrant care workers – into transnational social fields that bring the diaspora worlds of the migrants into the everyday worlds of the locals.     

Transnational migration and the commodification of eldercare in urban Ghana

ABSTRACT

Over the past 20 years, organizations to provide commercial nursing services, mainly to the sick and debilitated elderly, have sprung up in Accra, Ghana. This article assesses the degree to which transnational migration has generated social changes in ageing at the level of everyday practices. It argues that a range of social actors differently involved in transnational migration has created and sustained a market for home nursing agencies in Ghana through diverse processes involving the imagination of care work abroad, complex negotiations between the elderly at home and their anxious children abroad, increased financial resources among the middle class and the evaluations of western eldercare services by return and current migrants. These dynamics illustrate the complexity of the role of transnational migration in generating social change and highlight the significance of the needs of local families and the role of the imagination in shaping social remittances from abroad.     

When ERM Met Alma: The Intricacies of Content Management in a Shared Consortia Landscape

ABSTRACT

In 2013, after nearly two decades of operating in a distributed legacy Integrated Library System (ILS) environment on local servers, the Orbis Cascade Alliance, a consortium of public and private academic libraries in Washington, Oregon, and Idaho, began a two-year-long process to migrate its 37 members to a shared implementation of Ex Libris's cloud-based Alma library management system (LMS) and Primo discovery interface. Although much has been written on electronic resource management (ERM) functionality at an institution level, little has been written on serials and ERM functionality and workflows within a shared consortial environment. This article discusses the challenges and opportunities of implementing a consortial-based LMS, with particular emphasis on serials and ERM functionality. Key migration issues related to serials control, acquisitions, licensing, administration, cataloging, statistics, and interoperability are examined at the institutional and large-scale networked levels. Benefits and limitations of using a shared consortial cloud-based LMS are explored, and the overall capabilities of the Alma LMS for electronic resource management are reviewed.     

Empirical Uncertain Bayes Methods in Area‐level Models

Random effects model can account for the lack of fitting a regression model and increase precision of estimating area‐level means. However, in case that the synthetic mean provides accurate estimates, the prior distribution may inflate an estimation error. Thus, it is desirable to consider the uncertain prior distribution, which is expressed as the mixture of a one‐point distribution and a proper prior distribution. In this paper, we develop an empirical Bayes approach for estimating area‐level means, using the uncertain prior distribution in the context of a natural exponential family, which we call the empirical uncertain Bayes (EUB) method. The regression model considered in this paper includes the Poisson‐gamma and the binomial‐beta, and the normal‐normal (Fay–Herriot) model, which are typically used in small area estimation. We obtain the estimators of hyperparameters based on the marginal likelihood by using a well‐known expectation‐maximization algorithm and propose the EUB estimators of area means. For risk evaluation of the EUB estimator, we derive a second‐order unbiased estimator of a conditional mean squared error by using some techniques of numerical calculation. Through simulation studies and real data applications, we evaluate a performance of the EUB estimator and compare it with the usual empirical Bayes estimator.     

Labor Market Disparities Between African Americans and Afro Caribbeans: Reexamining the Role of Immigrant Selectivity

Black immigrants from the Caribbean have long attained greater labor market success than African Americans. The most recent studies show that Afro Caribbeans have earnings that are approximately 16% greater than African Americans and that Afro Caribbeans are as much as 21% more likely to be employed than African Americans. The most prominent explanation for greater Afro Caribbean success is that, because they have chosen to migrate, Afro Caribbeans are positively self‐selected on characteristics that are key for success in the U.S. labor market. Proponents of immigrant selectivity argue that migrants have greater levels of both hard and soft skills than nonmigrants. Using data from the National Survey of American Life—the first social survey to provide a nationally representative sample of both African Americans and Afro Caribbeans—this study finds that Afro Caribbeans have greater hard skills than African Americans but split the difference on two measures of soft skills: African Americans and Afro Caribbeans are matched on John Henryism, but African Americans have greater personal mastery than Afro Caribbeans. Contrary to expectations, controlling for differences in hard and soft skills does not provide for a meaningful reduction in labor market disparities between African Americans and Afro Caribbeans.     

Who needs Cantonese,who speaks? Whispers across mountains,delta, and waterfronts

This essay digs into the ‘dirtiness’ of cultural studies to prioritize praxis, or as the way my mountain folks collect summer lotus: putting our feet in the muddy water, and finding ways to get the stems underneath the smooth leaves. Using Cantoneseness as a case to locate such ‘dirtiness’, I draw on personal/familial histories as well as research projects to tell how conjunctures of Cantoneseness are politically and unevenly lived. This complex journey travels roughly from my childhood in the Yuebei mountains of northern Guangdong through my teenage and early adult years in the Pearl River Delta (PRD) to my current location as a temporary resident in the East Pacific port of Vancouver. I selectively emphasize and speak on three different locations: first, the rural inland Cantonese location of Yuebei mountains – the borderland and hinterland experiences of my family and myself living what the mountains would offer and how these have changed; second, the industrial superior Cantonese location of PRD in Shenzhen and Guangzhou – my personal experiences and identities as a migrant youth, combined with a case study including interviews with migrant peasant-workers and their children; and third, the western transnational Cantonese location of East Pacific waterfronts in Vancouver and Richmond – my personal engagement with social activism as an ethnicized, international student, combined with a narrative study including interviews with social activists with different Cantoneseness and migration routes. While this mix of whispers speaks in its own way towards using cultural studies with more seriously (global) space-sensitive and (social justice) praxis-sensitive approaches, the primary focus is more modestly on my autobiographical accounts and research efforts as a specific case: to show some strategic locations of ‘Cantonescape’ on the one hand, and to invite wider conversations around cultural-spatial politics on the other.     

Comparing the Experiences of Highly Skilled Labor Migrants in Sweden and Japan: Barriers and Doors to Long-term Settlement

As labor markets become increasingly global, competition among industrialized nations to attract highly skilled workers from abroad has intensified. Spurred by concerns over future economic needs caused by the demographic challenges of an aging population, both Japan and Sweden have joined this global competition. This article examines Japanese and Swedish immigration policies for highly skilled migrants and compares the highly skilled migrants’ experiences in the two countries through interviews with these migrants. Despite Japan and Sweden's completely different approaches to immigration itself, both countries’ policies, as well as the experiences of the skilled migrants, are strikingly similar. Highly skilled migrants experience language barriers and prejudice in both countries, making it difficult to build social networks with natives. Career development seems to be perceived as a common problem, although less so in Sweden, where labor markets are more flexible. Overall, these issues reduce both Japan's and Sweden's ability to retain skilled migrants. While they share similarities, Sweden's famed work–life balance and gender equality give it an edge in the competition for skilled migrants, which Japan does not share. This comparison identifies which social conditions facilitate or impede skilled migrant settlement.     

Rethinking the Individualized Education Plan process: voices from the other side of the table

Parent involvement in the process of creating an Individualized Education Plan (IEP) is authorized under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, a federal law in the United States that ensures children with disabilities have the opportunity to receive a free appropriate public education alongside their peers without disabilities in the least restrictive environment. Yet much research has shown that parents often feel like outsiders during the process. To understand parent perspectives about how educators might help make the IEP process more collaborative and inclusive, this study collected qualitative data from 35 parents of students with disabilities who have worked to develop an IEP with a school team. Our findings provide insight into parent experiences and evidence that parents have many suggestions for how educators can improve the IEP process. In our discussion section, we provide educators with strategies to address parent suggestions.     

Too sick to move: distant ‘crisis’ care in transnational families

This paper examines the crisis of acute and chronic illness, death, and dying in transnational families. These are the stages in the family life-course when physical co-presence is required to deliver hands-on care and intimate emotional support for the sick family member. It is a time when distant kin feel they need ‘to be there’, including for their own sense of well-being. This period of ‘crisis’ (in the anthropological sense) makes visible all of the impediments to transnational family caregiving that often remain hidden during those periods when ‘routine’ forms of distant care are adequate. Of particular relevance are the macro-level factors generated by national borders and the policies that define them, including those that govern employment, travel, visa, health, and aged care provisions. It is in these family life phases of crisis that nation-state structures can work to constrain individual agency and rights, making compellingly evident the growing need for transnational structures and policy. At issue are the largely invisible (in a policy sense) but increasingly common micro-level responses of family and individuals that characterize ‘crisis distant care’, which are characterized by the urgent need to visit and to intensify use of ICTs. The paper examines the experiences of migrants living in Australia who are trying to care for acutely unwell family members abroad.