School choice from a household resource perspective: Preliminary findings from a north of England case study

This paper seeks to widen the conceptual lens of school choice debate and analysis to account for multiple, intersecting economies, cultures, and infrastructures of daily life. Preliminary findings are presented in the case of primary school enrolment in the north of England city of Newcastle upon Tyne. The national context is one in which public service delivery has been influenced by the language of ‘choice’, notably a parent's ‘right to choose’ a school other than that nearest to their child's home, and ‘responsibility’ to exercise choice as self-determined consumer-citizens. At the metropolitan level this translates as market-led competitive enrolment and a tendency for more children to travel longer distances to school and for there to be greater variation in journey length, as some parents are able to use superior transport and personnel as leverage in their quest for a better choice of state school. Findings are presented from a multi-method pilot study combining daily diary, resource audit, and biographic analysis for a sample of 18 families drawn from two case study schools. One school (Town) attracts pupils from an area of low-income population, to which most children journey on foot; the other school (Woodland) attracts pupils from further away, situated within a largely middle-class area, to which most children are driven in their parent's car. The findings show how the market model assumes and rewards a particular mode of choice-making which fails to recognise that some parents seek less instrumentally for their child to be happy. Discussion combines theory, empirical findings, and critical analysis to expose the subtle inequities of school choice in relation to neo-liberal thinking.     

Cashless stores and cash users

The emergence of cashless stores has led several cities and states to ban such stores. This article investigates this policy issue by characterizing consumers who pay cash for in-person purchases and banked and unbanked consumers who do not have credit or debit cards. Using a random utility model, I simulate the effects on consumer welfare caused by a hypothetical complete transition to cashless stores. The simulations show that the burden from this transition on consumers with no credit or debit cards is seven times higher than the burden on consumers who have both cards. The conclusion lists policy options for alternatives to cash that may be needed before all brick-and-mortar stores become cashless.     

社会养老保障一体化：嵌入农民流动的新变量——以浙江省为例

中国特别是浙江省城乡社会养老保障体系发展的重点,已经开始由城乡统筹迈向城乡一体化发展的新阶段,农民流动也已呈现出多元化的新特点。社会养老保障作为影响劳动力资源市场化配置的一种重要机制,将深深嵌入农民流动之中,一体化的社会养老保障体系对农民流动的意愿、能力和过程都将产生深刻影响,成为嵌入农民流动的新的变量因素。通过加快小城镇化建设,减少农村人口总量和比例,促进农民向市民转化;深化传统城乡户籍管理制度改革,取消基于身份和人群划分的制度规定;创新社会养老保障关系转续机制,推进一体化的制度并轨和管理整合,构建一体化社会养老保障体系,促进农民流动。     

科学发展进程中社会管理的理念选择

在中国社会急剧转型,逐步走上科学发展轨道的进程中,社会治理、社会管理正经历市场经济的严格选择。由于科学发展规律的作用,旧的、根深蒂固的与小农经济、自然经济、计划经济体制相吻合的控制型治国理政理念,必然转向以科学精神、市场竞争为核心的法治德治相结合相统一的崭新理念。随着整个社会治理的法治化推进,道德伦理信念的养成,人的综合素质的提高,社会交往中人的自由自觉本性及其全面自由发展,社会主体的自治自为,将在社会管理中发挥越来越明显的独特作用。     

Breaking the in‐group out‐group: shifting boundaries in transnational partner choice processes of individuals of Moroccan,Tunisian, Algerian,Turkish, Punjabi Sikh,Pakistani and Albanian descent in Belgium

The ongoing popularity in some second and third generation migrants in Western Europe of marrying a partner from the countries of origin of their (grand)parents is considered to be problematic for micro and macro level societal integration of some migrant populations. Partner choice and marriage practices in migrant communities are problematized in public, media and political discourses by discriminating them from marriage practices in the ‘native’ population on the basis of three related dichotomies: (1) agency versus structure, (2) us versus them and (3) romantic versus instrumental marriage intentions dichotomies. By means of in‐depth qualitative research methodologies on the partner choice processes of women and men of Turkish, Moroccan, Algerian, Tunisian, Punjabi Sikh, Pakistani and Albanian descent in Belgium and an intersectional theoretical approach, this article aims to deconstruct popular and simplifying dichotomous representations of partner choice processes in these migrant populations. Our study reveals how religious, gender and social class boundaries are stretched to meet personal/individual desires and preferences. Individuals do experience social restrictions when it concerns social group boundaries and the potential partners that they can look for. At the same time individuals are never fully determined by their social environment, they creatively develop strategies to by‐pass certain restrictions and to some extent are able to meet their personal needs while being sensitive to the desires of their social environment.     

In search of the mechanisms conducive to class differentials in educational choice: a mixed method research

This paper inquires into the mechanisms conducive to social class differentials in educational choice in Flanders (the Northern, Dutch‐speaking part of Belgium) using both quantitative data gathered from parents (N = 1339) and qualitative data gathered during two focus groups with pupils (N = 16). Unlike most of the previous studies, this study takes into consideration all three theoretical perspectives that have driven research on class differentials in educational choice so far, namely cultural reproduction theory, rational action theory and the notion of social capital. Logistic regression analysis shows that self‐selection does also occur in Flanders and that the effect of parental SES cannot be explained by a specific measure of cultural capital centred on knowledge of the educational system, nor by measures of social capital. What emerges most clearly from this study is that pupils' perception of their choice process is powerfully framed by deep‐rooted conceptions about the educational alternatives available to them. Furthermore, children's choices seem to be delimited by parents' opinions of which educational alternatives were acceptable, and which ones not. Our study calls for future research to take the wider context of decision‐making processes more explicitly into account.     

Examining the differences between the use of wearable cameras and traditional cameras in research – a research note

Abstract

Photographic images allow data to be captured from an alternative perspective. Traditional, manual cameras are the most common method of recording photographic data, however, innovative technology is changing the way in which photographs can be collected. Wearable cameras enable a vast amount of photographic images to be captured, automatically, without user interaction. It is often assumed that photographic research methods are used for a similar purpose, engage participants in a similar way and yield a similar outcome, however, there are various differences between the use of traditional, manual cameras and innovative, wearable cameras. This research note offers a unique contribution to the literature by highlighting the differences between the use of traditional, manual cameras and wearable, automatic cameras within research.     

An Analysis of Welfare Participation: Rational-Choice Perspective and Group-Threat Hypothesis

ABSTRACT

This secondary data analysis examined the impacts of human capital, child care, fringe benefits, child support, ethnicity, county economy, and county minority-population size on participation in Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) by parents living at or below the federal poverty threshold. Longitudinal records of 1,789 such parents were extracted from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (1996–2008). Multilevel mixed-effects linear regression showed that having personal/family problems, being African American, and residing in a county with widespread unemployment were associated positively with TANF receipt. TANF receipt was associated negatively with employment offering a retirement plan, full-time employment, part-time employment, and residence in a county with a large Hispanic population. Future research might explore the relationship between subpopulations’ sizes and states’ TANF policies.     

Constrained Optimization Approaches to Estimation of Structural Models

Estimating structural models is often viewed as computationally difficult, an impression partly due to a focus on the nested fixed‐point (NFXP) approach. We propose a new constrained optimization approach for structural estimation. We show that our approach and the NFXP algorithm solve the same estimation problem, and yield the same estimates. Computationally, our approach can have speed advantages because we do not repeatedly solve the structural equation at each guess of structural parameters. Monte Carlo experiments on the canonical Zurcher bus‐repair model demonstrate that the constrained optimization approach can be significantly faster.