“Open to all and everybody”? The Irish Film Board: accounting for the scarcity of women screenwriters

Despite the many social and cultural changes that have occurred in Irish society since the Irish Film Board was re-established in 1993, the Irish film industry remains strongly male dominated. Specifically, Irish women constitute a minority of produced screenwriters and writer/directors. This article contributes to an understanding of the discursive resources that key decision makers in the Irish Film Board draw upon in order to talk about gender. A number of interpretative repertoires are used to rationalize its position in relation to the dearth of women screenwriters, four of which are examined here: evasion and deflection; gender neutrality; project-led funding; and a difficulty making sense of entrenched gender issues, articulated here as “I don’t know.” Within the respondents’ repertoires an ideological dilemma can be identified in the conceptualization of gender as both relevant and irrelevant.     

Diaspora Ownership and Homeland Firms' Internationalization

Although the contribution of diaspora to international business is becoming more evident, little is known about the channels used by individual firms to benefit from diaspora. In this paper, we propose equity ownership as a form of connection between the homeland firms and diasporans (i.e. diaspora members). Specifically, we draw on the literature on diaspora combined with an owners-as-resources perspective to theorize about how diaspora owners can affect the homeland firm's internationalization. We suggest that the anticipated entry costs deriving from the liability of foreignness faced by homeland firms explain how the impact of diaspora owners varies depending on entry mode. Finally, we compare diaspora owners to other types of foreign owner which we argue have lower levels of motivation and ability to help homeland firms to internationalize, and contribute relatively less to their internationalization than diaspora owners. We test and confirm our predictions using data on 2608 domestically controlled Indian firms and their internationalization in 2006–2012.     

Ethnic intermarriage in longitudinal perspective: Testing structural and cultural explanations in the United States, 1880–2011

Focusing on macro-level processes, this article combines Decennial Census and Current Population Survey data to simultaneously test longitudinal and cross-sectional effects on ethnic intermarriage using structural and cultural explanations. Covering a 130 year period, the results of our multilevel analysis for 140 national-origin groups indicate that structural characteristics explain why some origin groups become more “open” over time while others remain relatively “closed”. Ethnic intermarriage is more likely to increase over time when the relative size of an immigrant group decreases, sex ratios grow more imbalanced, the origin group grows more diverse, the size of the third generation increases and social structural consolidation decreases. Cultural explanations also play a role suggesting that an origin group’s exogamous behavior in the past exerts long-term effects and exogamous practices increase over time when the prevalence of early marriage customs declines. For some of the discussed determinants of intermarriage, longitudinal and cross-sectional effects differ calling for a more careful theorizing and testing in terms of the level of analysis (e.g., longitudinal vs. cross-sectional).     

Validation of immigrants’ prior foreign learning as a framing practice

This paper explores the attempts by public officials and caseworkers to manage an overflow of immigrants in the labour market in Sweden. I draw on notions of framing and overflowing, inspired by Michel Callon's (1998) work on the organizing of market-based exchange relationships. I argue that validation is best understood as a framing practice, aimed at creating an understanding for the vastness of foreign experience – including skills and competence – of recent immigrants to Sweden, to make this experience measurable and manageable. Validation as a framing practice thereby exemplifies the widespread trust in framing as a way to normalise overflows – to turn overflows into normal flows. However, as the ethnography-inspired study reported here shows, repeated framing does not remove overflows; instead, it produces new and different types of overflows. In the conclusions, I emphasise the heavy investments required by validation in contrast with the fragility of the results it produces in the context of migration management.     

New faces in new spaces in new places: Residential attainment among newly legalized immigrants in established,new, and minor destinations

Immigrants at the beginning of the twenty-first century are located in a more diverse set of metropolitan areas than at any point in U.S. history. Whether immigrants' residential prospects are helped or hindered in new versus established immigrant-receiving areas has been the subject of debate. Using multilevel models and data from the New Immigrant Survey (NIS), a nationally representative sample of newly legalized immigrants to the U.S., we move beyond aggregate-level analyses of residential segregation to specify the influence of destination type on individual-level immigrant residential outcomes. The findings indicate that immigrants in new and minor destinations are significantly more likely to live in tracts with relatively more non-Hispanic whites and relatively fewer immigrants and poor residents. These residential advantages persist net of individual-level controls but are largely accounted for by place-to-place differences in metropolitan composition and structure. Our exclusive focus on newly legalized immigrants means that our findings do not necessarily contradict the possibility of worse residential prospects in new areas of settlement, but rather qualifies it as not extending to the newly authorized population.     

“Gone to work to America”: Irish step-migration through south Wales in the 1860s and 1870s

Why did the Irish-born population of Wales decline so sharply in the decade 1861–1870? This paper argues that during the 1850s and 1860s, large numbers of Irish men and women travelled to south Wales in order to finance emigration to the USA. Using the US Federal Census, this paper shows how Irish step-migration through Wales led principally to the Pennsylvania coalfields. This type of migration is termed the Knight’s-move: a sideways move from agriculture into heavy industry, in order to advance forward across the Atlantic. The Knight’s-move challenges previous assumptions about immigration into the south Wales coalfield during the nineteenth century.     

台湾新移民及其子女教育现状与未来发展

台湾地区社会在政治因素、经济政策的影响与发展下,自20世纪90年代起逐渐增加与非台湾籍通婚的现象,使得台湾在人口结构上发生了巨大变化,非台湾籍配偶及其子女己在台湾地区人口结构上成为了重要的群体,新移民子女教育也成为台湾地区教育中重要环节。从总体看,对于新移民及其子女的教育和辅导主要包括语文教育、生活适应辅导和推广多元文化活动三种类型,早期比较偏重课业辅导,教育理念具有同化倾向,伴随着多元文化理念的普及,现今教育活动中加入了学习母语和祖籍文化等多元内容。     

How important is homeland education for refugees’ economic position in The Netherlands?

We use data on refugees admitted to The Netherlands that include registration of education in their homeland by immigration officers. Such data are seldom available. We investigate the quality and reliability of the registrations and then use them to assess effects on refugees’ economic position during the first 5 years after arrival. The most remarkable finding is the absence of returns to higher education.

Determinants of recent immigrants’ location choices: quasi-experimental evidence

This paper exploits a Danish spatial dispersal policy on refugees, which can be regarded as a natural experiment to investigate the influence of regional factors on recent immigrants’ location choices. The main push factors are lack of co-nationals and immigrants. Additional push factors are lack of rental, including social, housing and lack of institutions for qualifying education, which explain why recent immigrants are attracted to large cities. Finally, placed refugees tend to leave locations with relatively high regional unemployment, and there is indirect evidence of welfare seeking.

Organizational ecology of immigrant employment and organizational buffer zones: Who leaves first when the organization gets into trouble?

Using data from the German social insurance system immigrant employment in organizational buffer zones will be investigated from an organizational ecology perspective. Theories in organization and labor market research predict higher exit rates of employees holding jobs in buffer zones. These buffer zones protect organizations from unfavorable environmental turbulences. Consequently, analyzing the impact of buffer zone employment on job stability of immigrants requires a fully dynamic approach, which goes beyond a mere identification of generally increased turnover rates of immigrants.In the first step, determinants of organizational dissolution rates will be estimated. In order to obtain a dynamic measurement of unfavorable environmental conditions, the model includes both organizational and time-varying environmental characteristics of organizational populations. This will be done by using a three-level mixed-effects hazard model controlling for observed and unobserved environmental characteristics. In the second step, dissolution rates predicted in the first step will be used as an explanatory variable. These rates indicate the degree of enactment of the flexible buffer zone. It will be shown that immigrants have indeed higher turnover rates, but they tend to remain longer in their organizations when environmental conditions deteriorate—and they are not those who leave first when the organization gets into trouble.