Goals, Constraints and Occupational Choice: The First Twelve Months in the Belfast Labour Market

A central assumption of occupational-choice theory—that young people enter the labour market with initially unrealistic occupational goals which are eventually modified by their subsequent experience of the market, changing from less to more realistic—is critically examined on the basis of data deriving from detailed interviews with 34 school-leavers between May 1978 and June 1979. Two conclusions emerge. Firstly, when one examines the occupational knowledge and experience of the working class and their own perceptions of the careers of their peers and elders, there is no reason why their goals should be described as 'unrealistic'. Secondly, although the time-scale of the data is limited, there is evidence that some school-leavers may eventually adjust their occupational horizons downwards. Equally important, however, is the evidence that some school-leavers may refuse to do this.     

Globalisation, Labour Market Transformation and Migrant Marginalisation: the Example of Transmigrant Seafarers in Germany

Globalisation has transformed the seafarer labour market. As shipping companies have flagged vessels out to open registers, they have shifted from recruiting seafarers on a local hire, frequently permanent, basis to employing seafarers from developing countries on temporary contracts via third party crewing agencies. This has diminished opportunities for seafarers in developed countries and has also impacted on less visible groups—those transmigrants who formerly travelled to European hub ports to be hired directly by companies on European terms and conditions. Using the example of shipping, this paper presents an account of how changes in global labour markets impact differentially on groups and have the potential to cause particular problems for migrant workers.     

Complexity-based Theories of Emergence: Criticisms and Constraints

In recent years, many philosophers of science have attempted to articulate a theory of non-epistemic emergence that is compatible with mechanistic explanation and incompatible with reductionism. The 2005 account of Fred C. Boogerd et al. has been particularly influential. They argued that a systemic property was emergent if it could not be predicted from the behaviour of less complex systems. Here, I argue that Boogerd et al.'s attempt to ground emergence in complexity guarantees that we will see emergence, but at the cost of rendering it either trivial or epistemic. There are three basic problems. First, neither the measures of complexity explicitly mentioned by Boogerd et al. nor the most popular measures in the literature can do the practical and theoretical work that they assign to complexity. Second, I argue that while the success of their view depends on restricting the base of information available to the reductionist, this cannot be done in a way that is metaphysically neutral with respect to emergence. Thus, their account renders emergence trivial. Third, I argue that grounding emergence in complexity can support only epistemic emergence. I conclude by considering the methodological import of their account.     

Circulating Capitals Between Poland and Scotland: a Transnational Perspective on European Labour Mobility

The paper discusses the explanatory use of the concept of transnationalism in relation to contemporary patterns of intra-European mobility, drawing on evidence from two qualitative studies of new labour migration from Poland to Scotland. It suggests that the transnational way of life of migrants is leading to the creation of a European space conceived in terms of a new kind of socio-cultural configuration. The paper draws on the concept of capitals (economic, social and cultural) derived from the work of Pierre Bourdieu. In particular, it uses these concepts to reflect on the gains and losses in capital of Polish migrants in Scotland and in their home country. It questions the classical brain drain approach to labour migration by giving more nuance picture of the migrants’ lives characterised by circulation of capitals and simultaneous commitment to more than one country.     

流动性、教育安置方式和心理弹性对流动儿童孤独感的影响:一项追踪研究

采用潜变量增长模型对426名流动儿童进行四次追踪测查,旨在考察流动儿童孤独感的变化趋势,探索不同流动性和教育安置方式的流动儿童孤独感变化的差异性以及心理弹性对孤独感变化的促进性作用。结果发现：（1）流动儿童的孤独感呈线性下降趋势;（2）打工子弟学校流动儿童的孤独感起始水平显著高于公立学校流动儿童;流动性高的儿童的孤独感起始水平高于流动性低的儿童,但流动性和教育安置方式对孤独感的发展趋势没有显著预测作用;（3）对于流动儿童来说,较高的心理弹性水平不仅能显著预测更低的孤独感起始水平,同时也能显著预测更快的孤独感的下降速率。本研究启示,增加进入公立学校学习的机会、降低流动频率和提升心理弹性对降低流动儿童的孤独感水平具有重要的意义。     

Effects of Gender and Dominance on Leadership Emergence: Incentives Make a Difference

Several decades of laboratory research have shown that high-dominant women, when paired with low-dominant men, are less likely than expected to emerge as leaders on gender-neutral tasks. The current study was designed to investigate the impact of an incentive on leadership emergence in mixed-gender pairs in which one member was high in personality dominance and one was low. Across incentive conditions, men high in personality dominance were more likely than women to emerge as leaders. Under the no-incentive condition, personality dominance relative to men did not significantly improve women’s leadership likelihood; men were more likely to emerge as leaders regardless of personality dominance. However, under the incentive condition, high-dominant women were significantly more likely to emerge as leaders than were their low-dominant male counterparts, and high-dominant men were also more likely than low-dominant women to emerge as leaders.     

The Structural Constraints and Strategic Control of Resource Allocation

Time-sharing performance was evaluated as a function of the structural configurations of the time-shared tasks and strategic resource-allocation training. A secondary task technique was employed with five task pairs that varied in their structural similarity. The primary task difficulty was time-varying within a trial. Consistent with a common finding in the literature, the global performance measures showed that the degree of task interference increased as the degree of shared resources between the time-shared tasks increased. The moment-by-moment performance, however, revealed that small task interference did not necessarily indicate that the primary task performance was consistently protected against the time-varying difficulty changes. Subjects' failure in protecting the primary task performance was attributed to two possible causes: a skill limitation in the control of resource allocation and a structural limitation inherent in the dual task configuration. This distinction was reinforced by the finding that the strategy training was successful in improving resource allocation for the structurally identical task pair only. Our data demonstrated the role of multiple resource concepts in predicting time-sharing performance in a dynamic environment.     

Social Identity and Spatial Behaviour: The Relationship between National Category Salience, the Sense of Home, and Labour Mobility across National Boundaries

This study explores the impact of manipulating the salience of national categories upon the willingness of highly identifying Scots to take up either short-term or long-term jobs in Scotland as compared to England. The results support the hypotheses (a) that high-identifying Scots increase preference for intra- over extranational locations when national categories are salient, (b) that this effect is fully mediated by "fitting in"—that is, the sense of being "at home" in Scottish as compared to English locations, and (c) that these relationships only hold for long-term as opposed to short-term jobs. We discuss these results in terms of the impact of identity definitions upon spatialised action and the economic/political importance of this relationship.     

Understanding the Labour Market Participation of Skilled Immigrant Women in Switzerland: The Interplay of Class, Ethnicity, and Gender

Switzerland has recently adopted immigration policies that give preference to skilled migrants, the assumption being that migrants with higher education will integrate easily. Our study of 57 skilled immigrant women from Latin America, the Middle East and Southeastern Europe shows that this assumption is largely unjustified. Most of the women cannot use their social and cultural capital to establish themselves in the upper segments of the labour market. A third are not integrated in the labour market and a quarter occupy positions below their skill-level. A further third work at their skill-level but only irregularly. The differentiated participation of these immigrants in the labour market is well explained by analysing the interplay of class, ethnicity and gender.     

English as a Border-Drawing Matter: Language and the Regulation of Migrant Service Worker Mobility in International Labor Markets

This multi-sited study in Canada, Mexico, and the Philippines examines how appraisals of English language competence transnationally mediate labor market entry for temporary migrant workers. Focusing on “low-skilled,” interactive service sector jobs, we show how border drawing along English language lines contributes to the regulation of access to global labor circuits and the segmentation of workers into occupational niches. Mediated by the migration industry, English linguistic capital acts as a marker of status and occupational desirability, shaping and reinforcing employer preferences and (re)defining the “properly embodied” service sector worker. This has implications for the social (re)organization of labor markets and the mobility options available to migrants and their sending states across sectors and scales.     

Discourses of Love,Compassion, and Belonging: Reframing Christianity for a Secular Audience

Religious plurality has implications for religious organisations active within the public realm. Using semi-structured interviews, I examine how Christians and Christian organisations are framing faith discourses so that they resonate with religiously neutral discourses dominant in the public sphere. There are indications of a shift towards the use of profane terms instead of sacred terms to explain aspects of the Christian faith and Christian teachings of love, compassion, and belonging are amplified to counter criticisms that Christianity is a threat to liberal rights and beliefs. This article conceptualises these discourses as two social action frames: the ‘Love Frame’ and the ‘Inclusivity Frame’. I do not refute claims that the social significance of religion is declining but argue that Christians and Christian organisations are working within the confines of secular discourses to disseminate their messages in order to build credibility as egalitarian public service providers.     

Systems and Solutions: The Discourses of Brief Therapy

The author describes how brief therapy has evolved in the past 10 to 15 years from ecosystemic to solution-focused brief therapy. SFBT is characterized as a radically constructivist approach to personal problems which emphasizes how troubles and solutions are socially constructed realities.     

The Capitalist Cage: Structural Domination and Collective Agency in the Market

This article develops and defends a triadic account of structural domination, according to which structural domination (e.g. patriarchy, white supremacy, capitalism) is a triadic relation between dominator(s), dominated, and regulator(s)—the constitutive domination dyad plus those roles and norms expressively upholding it. The article elaborates on the relationship between structure and agency from the perspective of both oppressor and oppressed and discusses the deduction of the concept of the capitalist state from the concept of capitalism. On the basis of these definitions, it shows that structural domination under capitalism presupposes collective power but no joint agency or shared intentions on the part of the dominators.     

Unequal Chance of Obtaining a Secure Job: Marriage Migrant Women in the Korean Labor Market

This study aimed to empirically analyze the magnitude of discrimination within the South Korean labor market between immigrant and native women in light of different employment patterns. Using an extended version of the Oaxaca decomposition method, special analytical attention was paid to the heavy concentration of immigrant women in the informal sector of the labor market rather than the formal sector. The extensive data for the study came from the Korea National Survey of Multicultural Families and the 12th wave of the Korean Labor and Income Panel Study, both conducted in 2009. Overall, the results presented a strong case that immigrant women are more susceptible to discrimination than their native counterparts in terms of obtaining a secure job in the formal sector. After controlling for a range of individual characteristics, a significant proportion of this employment disparity remained unexplained, giving credence to the existence of systematic discrimination endemic in the labor market.     

Moral Responsibility: The Difference of Strawson,and the Difference it Should Make

P.F. Strawson’s work on moral responsibility is well-known. However, an important implication of the landmark “Freedom and Resentment” has gone unnoticed. Specifically, a natural development of Strawson’s position is that we should understand being morally responsible as having externalistically construed pragmatic criteria, not individualistically construed psychological ones. This runs counter to the contemporary ways of studying moral responsibility. I show the deficiencies of such contemporary work in relation to Strawson by critically examining the positions of John Martin Fischer and Mark Ravizza, R. Jay Wallace, and Philip Pettit for problems due to individualistic assumptions.Thanks to an audience at Carleton University for helpful discussion.     

Emergence: logical, functional and dynamical

Philosophical accounts of emergence have been explicated in terms of logical relationships between statements (derivation) or static properties (function and realization). Jaegwon Kim is a modern proponent. A property is emergent if it is not explainable by (or reducible to) the properties of lower level components. This approach, I will argue, is unable to make sense of the kinds of emergence that are widespread in scientific explanations of complex systems. The standard philosophical notion of emergence posits the wrong dichotomies, confuses compositional physicalism with explanatory physicalism, and is unable to represent the type of dynamic processes (self-organizing feedback) that both generate emergent properties and express downward causation.     

The Intersections of Dominant Discourses Across Race,Gender, and Other Identities

A discussion of dominant discourses across race, gender, and other identities is provided, especially in terms of consequences. Distinctions are made between consequences of social constructions and identity. An example of a counselor working with a client is provided to illustrate several points made by the author.