Segmented pathways of educational mobility: English language schools,working holidays,and divergent prospects among South Korea's global youth

Using participant‐observation and 58 in‐depth participant interviews, this study examines South Korean youth who undertake overseas English language acquisition across the Philippines, United States, New Zealand, and Australia. This research introduces a concept I call ‘segmented pathways of educational mobility’, which describes the multi‐dimensional and complex levels of stratification within regional educational mobility flows that reinforce existing class inequalities for many migrants. However, segmented pathways also reveal that while resource‐constrained youth understand that their migration choices are more limited, they seek to accrue alternative cultural resources across varied destinations to gain the experiences and credentials necessary to advance in the South Korean labour market. Despite increased opportunities for English study abroad via market liberalization, this research contends that it also produces more levels of stratification within and among youth migrants.     

The Use of a Modified Repertory Grid Technique for Assessing the Self-Concept of Children in Local Authority Foster Care

Dr. C. Hicks, School of Continuing Studies, University of Birmingham, P.O. Box 363, Birmingham, B15 2TT. Summary Two studies were carried out using a modified form of the repertorygrid technique to investigate the self-esteem of children inLocal Authority Care. The aim of the first study was to comparethe self-perceptions and self-esteem of Children in Local AuthorityCare with a group of matched controls. Two groups of ten subjectswere given a modified repertory grid task, which involved presentingeight pictorial elements and eight bipolar constructs, and askingthe subjects to rank order the elements according to their perceptionof each construct. The results indicated that children in Local Authority Carea) have significantly lower self-esteem scores (t=2.25, p<0.025)and b) have significantly fewer positive constructs about themselvesoverall (X²=7.07. p<0.01). The second study used a correlational design and looked at therelationship between the number of caretaker changes and self-esteem,in a single further group of eleven children in Local AuthorityCare. The same technique for assessing self-esteem was used as inStudy 1. The results showed a significant negative correlation(r=–0.638, p<0.025) suggesting that the more movesa child experiences, the lower the self-esteem is likely tobe. The results of both these studies are discussed in terms oftheir implications for Local Authority Child Care policy andfor the use of the repertory grid technique as a procedure forassessing self-esteem.     

Competing Orientations in Child Abuse Management

Summary This case study illustrates some of the problems which occurwhen different professionals are involved in the managementof child abuse cases.     

Model Hong Kong malls and their development in mainland China: consumer iconicity and the trans/national capitalist class

Relational geographies of capital and consumption between Hong Kong and mainland China have been forming through tourism engagement in Hong Kong and the development of model Hong Kong malls in China. This analysis of urban restructuring for the consumer economy identifies how landmark Hong Kong malls are reproduced in major cities of China by networks of Hong Kong property firms and mainland elites. Adapting Leslie Sklair's formulation of architectural iconicity in the culture‐ideology of consumerism, this economic relationship, which restructures urban space, constructs iconic built forms and develops Chinese consumerism, marks hegemonic opportunities of a national capitalist class, suggesting how Chinese state capitalism and its Hong Kong networks limit and incrementally engage transnational capital while instantiating Hong Kong‐style consumer iconicity. New malls in mixed‐use developments in China often occupy sites of historical markets and thus affirm Sklair's prediction that iconic architecture increasingly proclaims consumer space while claiming historic forms of public space.     

The demography of American Indian families

This paper uses data from the decennial censuses to examine family structure and changes in family structure over time among American Indians. The information about the national Indian population indicates that the trends in family structure among American Indians are parallel in many respects to those in the general US population. That is, the percentage of young American Indian women who have never married has increased over time, the percentage of American Indian women who are divorced has increased over time, and the percentage of American Indian children who reside with a single parent has increased as well. The percentage of American Indian women who have never married and who are divorced and the percentage of American Indian children who live with a single parent are higher than those among the general population. The incidence of children living with single parents is especially high on some reservations which also have high levels of poverty and unemployment. Family patterns, however, vary considerably across reservations in ways that are not easily explained by differences in other demographic characteristics. These variations may be due to cultural and historical differences that are not captured in data collected in the censuses.