Racial/Ethnic Minority Vocational Research Trends: An 11‐Year Update

This study extends Flores et al.'s ( 2006 ) 36‐year analysis of racial/ethnic minority (REM) career research to identify recent trends in choice of topics and leading individual and institutional contributors. The authors identified 166 articles on REM career research published from 2005 to 2015 in the Journal of Vocational Behavior, The Career Development Quarterly, the Journal of Career Assessment, and the Journal of Career Development. Of these studies, 92% were empirical, with more than three quarters of these using quantitative rather than qualitative methodology. Most frequently, the empirical studies (n = 153) were based on samples of high school (30.7%) or undergraduate (34.6%) students. The authors discuss the implications of their findings and suggest ways to expand REM career research in the future.     

Perception of HIV risk and the quantity and quality of children: the case of rural Malawi

The empirical literature on the impact of HIV on the quality (Q) and quantity (N) of children provides limited and somewhat mixed evidence. This study introduces individual HIV risk perceptions, as a predictor of mortality, into a Q–N investment model. In this model, higher maternal mortality predicts lower N, while higher child mortality predicts lower Q. Thus, the two effects together make likely negative associations between HIV and both Q and N. Based on longitudinal micro-data on mothers and their children in rural Malawi, our results suggest that higher mothers’ reported HIV risk reduces both child quality, as reflected in children’s schooling and health, and child quantity, when the perceived risk is already moderate or high. The effects are sizable and, in the case of Q (schooling and health), are found for children and teenagers, both boys and girls, while in the case of N, they are found for young and mature women.     

Europe's failed ‘fight’ against irregular migration: ethnographic notes on a counterproductive industry

Despite Europe's mass investments in advanced border controls, people keep arriving along the continent's shores under desperate circumstances. European attempts to ‘secure’ or ‘protect’ the borders have quite clearly failed, as politicians themselves increasingly recognise – yet more of the same response is again rolled out in response to the escalating ‘refugee crisis’. Amid the deadlock, this article argues that we need to grasp the mechanics and logics of the European ‘border security model’ in order to open up for a change of course. Through ethnographic examples from the Spanish-African borders, the article shows how the striving for border security under a prevailing emergency frame has generated absurd incentives, negative path dependencies and devastating consequences. At Europe's frontiers, an industry of border controls has emerged, involving European defence contractors, member state security forces and their African counterparts, as well as a range of non-security actors. Whenever another ‘border crisis’ occurs, this industry grows again, feeding on its own apparent ‘failures’. This vicious cycle may be broken, the article concludes, once policy-makers start curtailing the economies of border security underpinning it – yet the challenges are formidable as the industry retrenches along with the political response to the drama it has itself produced.     

M-Estimates of regression when the scale is unknown and the error distribution is possibly asymmetric: A minimax result

Huber (1964) found the minimax-variance M-estimate of location under the assumption that the scale parameter is known; Li and Zamar (1991) extended this result to the case when the scale is unknown. We consider the robust estimation of the regression coefficients (β₁,…,β_p) when the scale and the intercept parameters are unknown. The minimax-variance estimates of (β₁,…,β_p) with respect to the trace of their asymptotic covariance matrix are derived. The maximum is taken over ?-contamination neighbourhoods of a central regression model with Gaussian errors (asymmetric contamination is allowed), and the minimum is taken over a large class of generalized M-estimates of regression of the Mallow type. The optimal choice of estimates for the nuisance parameters (scale and intercept) is also considered.     

PREFERENCES FOR REDISTRIBUTION AND PERCEPTION OF FAIRNESS: AN EXPERIMENTAL STUDY

We conduct a laboratory experiment to study how demand for redistribution of income depends on self‐interest, insurance motives, and social concerns relating to inequality and efficiency. Our choice environments feature large groups of subjects and real‐world framing, and differ with respect to the source of inequality (earned or arbitrary), the cost of taxation to the decision maker, the dead‐weight loss of taxation, uncertainty about own pretax income, and whether the decision maker is affected by redistribution. We estimate utility weights for the different sources of demand for redistribution, with the potential to inform modeling in macroeconomics and political economy     

Capital,conflict and convergence: a political understanding of neoliberalism and its relationship to capitalist transformation

ABSTRACT

In this article we argue against influential analyses of neoliberalism that prioritize variegation and the role of ideas as key theoretical foci relevant to understanding neoliberalism’s diffusion into myriad national and political settings. Rather, we contend that crucial to understanding neoliberalism is the role of politically-produced convergence around market rationality that reflects two core processes: the reorganization of production and the ascendency of financialization. We present a theorization and analysis of neoliberalism’s political production and diffusion over time, explaining its contested evolution and impact across diverse settings (both ‘North’ and ‘South’) and emphasizing its ever-intensifying symbiotic relationship with the consolidating world market in which the former has increasingly come to serve as the latter’s operating system (OS). Further, we posit that neoliberalism’s form, function and impact demand analytically prioritizing the leverage of constellations of ideological and material interests within the contradictory context of consolidating relations of production and financialization. Our analysis thus challenges many previous expositions of neoliberalism for their failure to locate neoliberalism’s manifestation as arising out of social conflict within particular junctures that privilege certain social forces and ideas over others. We also distinguish our position by highlighting how manifestations of neoliberalism in various settings have combined to yield a greater world market in which variegation has gradually given way to ever-intensifying disciplinary pressures towards market-policy conformity (mono-policy). While current populist movements may well turn out to be important counter movements to neoliberal hegemony, especially if they can internationalize, the disciplining effect of the world market renders many nationally-oriented policy alternatives costly and politically fraught.     

Hand-Hygiene Mitigation Strategies Against Global Disease Spreading through the Air Transportation Network

The risk for a global transmission of flu-type viruses is strengthened by the physical contact between humans and accelerated through individual mobility patterns. The Air Transportation System plays a critical role in such transmissions because it is responsible for fast and long-range human travel, while its building components—the airports—are crowded, confined areas with usually poor hygiene. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and World Health Organization (WHO) consider hand hygiene as the most efficient and cost-effective way to limit disease propagation. Results from clinical studies reveal the effect of hand washing on individual transmissibility of infectious diseases. However, its potential as a mitigation strategy against the global risk for a pandemic has not been fully explored. Here, we use epidemiological modeling and data-driven simulations to elucidate the role of individual engagement with hand hygiene inside airports in conjunction with human travel on the global spread of epidemics. We find that, by increasing travelers engagement with hand hygiene at all airports, a potential pandemic can be inhibited by 24% to 69%. In addition, we identify 10 airports at the core of a cost-optimal deployment of the hand-washing mitigation strategy. Increasing hand-washing rate at only those 10 influential locations, the risk of a pandemic could potentially drop by up to 37%. Our results provide evidence for the effectiveness of hand hygiene in airports on the global spread of infections that could shape the way public-health policy is implemented with respect to the overall objective of mitigating potential population health crises.