Post-war refugees in Great Britain

Between 200,000 and 300,000 refugees have been admitted to the United Kingdom under various schemes since the end of the Second World War, and their absorption into the British economy has been quite satisfactory, their establishment being facilitated by an initial period of practically full employment, and their determination to become self-supporting. They have, however, failed to settle down and to develop the necessary sense of security.

Three years of directed labour, the continuing preferential treatment of British workers in respect of promotion and placement in skilled jobs, and the provision that foreign workers have to be dismissed first in case of redundancy of labour, have kept awake the “refugee complex” and have promoted the wish to emigrate further to the New World, where the refugees hope to find complete equality and freedom.

The acute housing shortage has added to the difficulties of settling down, especially in the southern regions of England, where up to the present time it has been impossible to close the Polish Family Hostels and the workers' hostels which had been established in 1946 and 1948 as a temporary measure to house the refugees when they were admitted to this country in larger numbers.

Unpreparedness of the British population and of the refugees through insufficient information about the policy underlying their admission, difference of language, habits and temperament, coupled with the isolation of the refugees in the hostels, has made mutual understanding and appreciation almost impossible and although conditions are gradually improving, the gap is being bridged only slowly after so many years of misunderstanding and apprehension, and it will probably be closed only by the next generation growing up together in England.     

Engaging diverse experts in a global environmental assessment: participation in the first work programme of IPBES and opportunities for improvement

The need for interdisciplinary expert groups from different regions of the world to be involved in the fields of sustainability science and environmental change research is increasingly recognised. The Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IBPES) was established in 2012 as a science-policy interface and has gone beyond previous initiatives in its articulation of a clear commitment to inter- and transdisciplinary approaches that mandate a diversity of genders, disciplines and regional backgrounds within its expert groups. The first IPBES work programme, carried out between 2014 and 2018, has been supported by 17 expert groups, comprising over 1000 experts, who have been selected from over 2000 government and stakeholder nominations through formal procedures. In this paper, we present and critique the framework through which IPBES identifies and selects experts to participate in its processes. In addition, we synthesise and carry out a quantitative analysis on the expert nomination and selection data relating to the first assessment activities of IPBES. Identifying that the balance of regions, genders, disciplines and knowledge systems represented within these expert groups is still disproportionally dominated by male natural scientists from the Global North, the paper makes recommendations of how to better engage knowledge holders from different disciplines and diverse knowledge systems in future iterations of the IPBES work programme.     

Family resilience in low income communities: A case study of an informal settlement in KwaZulu-Natal,South Africa

Many of the people who are most vulnerable to the effects of poverty and deprivation reside in informal settlements in Africa. While there is growing evidence of the importance of family resilience, there is little documented evidence of how collective actions undertaken by families in African communities can contribute to this. In-depth interviews and focus-group sessions were conducted with single mothers residing in an informal settlement in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa to delineate the factors that contributed to their resilience. We examined the influence of social ties, self-efficacy and networks they had established beyond their immediate community on enhancing family resilience. Three key themes are discussed: determination to survive, rising above harsh economic conditions and establishing networks within and outside the community. We conclude that the foundation for building strong female-headed families lies in positive social ties, self-empowerment initiatives and tapping on established networks within and outside low income communities.     

Feminism,the state,and the centrality of reproduction: abortion struggles in 1970s Italy

This article analyses an episode of intense socio-political conflict over the question of abortion in 1970s Italy. Considering the shifting positions of feminist groups and other pro-legalization actors on the one hand, and institutions, political parties and the Church on the other, it offers a new analysis of social mobilization, leading to parliamentary debate and legal change. It presents an original approach to an understanding of feminist challenges to patriarchal cultures and institutions, and of the latter’s immediate responses. Focusing on Italy but referring to developments in other industrialized countries, the article inscribes the history of the battle for reproductive rights in 1970s Italy within a framework centred on the Foucauldian notion of biopolitical power. It is argued that the legal settling of the issue came to be seen by state actors as central to the wider socio-political stabilization of the country. For feminists, the question of abortion was less straightforward than is often assumed. Italian feminist debate, while visibly impacting on wider society, was marked by dilemmas around the private and the public, the relationship to the state, and concerns around centring the feminist agenda on reproduction.     

Estimating the Number of Block Boundaries from Diagonal Blockwise Matrices Without Penalization

In computational biology, numerous recent studies have been dedicated to the analysis of the chromatin structure within the cell by two‐dimensional segmentation methods. Motivated by this application, we consider the problem of retrieving the diagonal blocks in a matrix of observations. The theoretical properties of the least squares estimators of both the boundaries and the number of blocks are investigated. More precisely, the contribution of the paper is to establish the consistency of these estimators. A surprising consequence of our results is that, contrary to the one‐dimensional case, a penalty is not needed for retrieving the true number of diagonal blocks. Finally, the results are illustrated on synthetic data.     

Creating Community: Offering a Liberation Pedagogical Model to Facilitate Diversity Conversations in MFT Graduate Classrooms

Creating a safe place for open classroom engagement on topics of multiculturalism and diversity requires intentionality and honesty. Unless all, professor and students alike, feel safe talking about related issues, the attempt will result in a politically correct exercise in futility. This article focuses on how intentional pedagogical efforts can create a classroom environment conducive to therapeutic self-reflection and result in personal and professional transformation. Offerings include personal reflections, theoretical and pedagogical ideologies and practices, a classroom paradigm as exemplar, critical redefinitions, a survey of other pedagogical endeavors, a template for multicultural instruction, and recommendations.     

The 193 call center, a meaningful public service!

This article is the first part of an on-going ergonomic work analysis with the emergency services call center set up by the Fire Department of the Military Police of S?o Paulo. The final objective of the research is to identify the prescribed task, the real work executed and strategies used by workers to meet the demands of the job. Starting by identifying the tasks and activities developed, this article analyzes the work of the emergency services call center which is of vital importance to the organizational structure, since it is the start point for the process that results in fulfilling the corporation's mission.