Immigrant Youth and Employment: Lessons Learned from the Analysis of LSIC and 82 Lived Stories

Finding a job has become a critical challenge to many youth. Immigrant youth, who have been a key part of the global migrants, are particularly vulnerable when entering the job market of the host country due to various structural barriers. However, in both public policy discourse and research, their labour market experience tends to be overlooked. In this paper, we report the employment experience of recently arrived immigrant youth based on an analysis of the LSIC and findings of in-depth interviews of 82 immigrant youth in four cities in Canada. Our results reveal that recently arrived immigrant youth tend to work in lower-skilled employment, experience significant delays in finding employment, have difficulties with foreign credential recognition, and have fewer means to access to job markets.     

Return Migrant or Diaspora: An Exploratory Study of New-Generation Chinese–Canadian Youth Working in Hong Kong

The circular movement of migrants between their homelands and adopted countries has problematized the previous linear understanding of return migration. However, the concept of circular migration tends to apply to migrants whose movement is enabled by their extensive pre-migration connections with their homelands. In this paper, we report findings of a study on a group of new-generation Chinese–Canadian youth working in Hong Kong. Although, like many return migrants, this group of young people had economic reasons for moving to Hong Kong (their parents' homeland), they do not position themselves as return migrants. Instead, they have kept a strong Canadian identity by maintaining unique friendship circles and perceiving Canada as a home to which they will one day return. We highlight in this paper some implications of their experiences for transnational migration studies.     

Catching up with wonderful women: The women‐are‐wonderful effect is smaller in more gender egalitarian societies

Inequalities between men and women are common and well‐documented. Objective indexes show that men are better positioned than women in societal hierarchies—there is no single country in the world without a gender gap. In contrast, researchers have found that the women‐are‐wonderful effect—that women are evaluated more positively than men overall—is also common. Cross‐cultural studies on gender equality reveal that the more gender egalitarian the society is, the less prevalent explicit gender stereotypes are. Yet, because self‐reported gender stereotypes may differ from implicit attitudes towards each gender, we reanalysed data collected across 44 cultures, and (a) confirmed that societal gender egalitarianism reduces the women‐are‐wonderful effect when it is measured more implicitly (i.e. rating the personality of men and women presented in images) and (b) documented that the social perception of men benefits more from gender egalitarianism than that of women.     

Seeking harmony in Chinese families: A dyadic analysis on Chinese parent‒child relations

Based on Leung, Koch, and Lu’s (2002) dualistic harmony model, we examined the relations of two harmony‐seeking behaviors—harmony enhancement and disintegration avoidance—to family functioning among 177 Hong Kong Chinese adolescent?parent dyads. Structural equation modeling results showed that adolescent‐rated harmony enhancement was positively related to adolescent‐rated family functioning whereas parent‐rated harmony enhancement was positively related to parent‐rated family functioning. Disintegration avoidance, however, was not related to family functioning in the two samples. Furthermore, no significant cross‐path association between harmony‐seeking behaviors and family functioning was identified, meaning that the harmony‐seeking behaviors of adolescents and their parents did not relate to each other’s perception of family functioning. Implications of these findings to our understanding of family in Chinese culture are discussed.     

Analysis of the relation between structure and the superconducting transition in YBa2 Cu3 O∼7

Abstract

It is shown that in the high-T_c YBa₂ Cu₃ O_～7 superconductor the critical temperature is a function of the orthorhombic distortion (b–a)/a of the unit cell. From the extrapolation of the (b - a)/a ratio against T_c , a maximum critical temperature of 66 K for the tetragonal phase of YBa₂ Cu₃ O_～7 was predicted. From the correlation between the transition width δT_c and the orthorhombic distortion there was deduced an upper limit for T_c , in the orthorhombic phase of YBa₂ Cu₃ O_～7 of 94·5K.     

Developmental and sex-related differences in preschoolers' affective decision making

This study investigated developmental and sex-related differences in affective decision making, using a two-deck version of Children's Gambling Task administered to 3- and 4-year-old children. The main findings were that 4-year-old children displayed better decision-making performance than 3-year-olds. This effect was independent of developmental changes in inductive reasoning, language, and working memory. There were also sex differences in decision-making performance, which were apparent only in 3-year-old children and favored girls. Moreover, age predicted awareness of task and the correlation between the latter and decision-making performance was significant, but only in 4-year-old children. This study thus indicates that there is a remarkable developmental leap in affective decision making, whose effects are apparent around the age of 4, which according to our results, also marks the age when the correlation of declarative knowledge and decision-making performance becomes significant.     

Enacting modesty in Chinese culture: The joint contribution of personal characteristics and contextual features

This research revealed the joint impact of personality traits, social axioms, role relationships and the privacy of social situations on the enactment of three types of modesty, namely, avoiding attention, self‐effacement, and enhancement of others, among Hong Kong Chinese teenage females. The modest personality trait was found to relate positively to these modest behaviours. An individual's belief in reward for application significantly predicted self‐effacement, and the belief in social cynicism significantly predicted avoiding attention and enhancement of others. Contextual variables as measured by the role relationships and the privacy of the social setting also significantly affected the levels of these modest behaviours.     

Emotion-induced retrograde amnesia and trait anxiety

Emotional arousal can both enhance and impair memory. Considering that both emotional memory and trait anxiety (TA) have been associated with adrenergic activity, the authors investigated whether there is an association between 2 opposite emotional memory biases and the TA. The authors used a procedure recently put forward by B. A. Strange, R. Hurlemann, and R. J. Dolan (2003) to elicit an emotion-induced retrograde amnesia (ERA) coupled to an emotional memory enhancement (EME). The authors contrasted the association between these emotional memory biases and the TA in several conditions involving different levels of encoding and types of recall. The results presented here indicated a significant interaction of the TA with EME and ERA and the dependency of these biases on the consciously controlled use of memory.     

Emotions induced by operatic music: psychophysiological effects of music, plot, and acting: a scientist's tribute to Maria Callas

Operatic music involves both singing and acting (as well as rich audiovisual background arising from the orchestra and elaborate scenery and costumes) that multiply the mechanisms by which emotions are induced in listeners. The present study investigated the effects of music, plot, and acting performance on emotions induced by opera. There were three experimental conditions: (1) participants listened to a musically complex and dramatically coherent excerpt from Tosca; (2) they read a summary of the plot and listened to the same musical excerpt again; and (3) they re-listened to music while they watched the subtitled film of this acting performance. In addition, a control condition was included, in which an independent sample of participants succesively listened three times to the same musical excerpt. We measured subjective changes using both dimensional, and specific music-induced emotion questionnaires. Cardiovascular, electrodermal, and respiratory responses were also recorded, and the participants kept track of their musical chills. Music listening alone elicited positive emotion and autonomic arousal, seen in faster heart rate, but slower respiration rate and reduced skin conductance. Knowing the (sad) plot while listening to the music a second time reduced positive emotions (peacefulness, joyful activation), and increased negative ones (sadness), while high autonomic arousal was maintained. Watching the acting performance increased emotional arousal and changed its valence again (from less positive/sad to transcendent), in the context of continued high autonomic arousal. The repeated exposure to music did not by itself induce this pattern of modifications. These results indicate that the multiple musical and dramatic means involved in operatic performance specifically contribute to the genesis of music-induced emotions and their physiological correlates.     

Tailoring Gratitude Interventions. How and for Whom Do They Work? The Potential Mediating Role of Reward Processing and the Moderating Role of Childhood Adversity and Trait Gratitude

Outcomes of gratitude interventions are encouraging, but inconsistent across studies. In addition, both mechanisms of change and effect modifiers for these interventions are largely unknown. Recent data point toward potential candidates and suggest reward processing may be a promising mechanism underlying these interventions, while childhood adversity (CA) and trait gratitude may impact on them. However, existing research aimed at investigating these hypotheses is scarce. Building on these, we examined the effectiveness of a gratitude intervention for decreasing depressive symptoms and negative affect and increasing positive affect. We also investigated changes in reward processing following intervention and explored differences in adherence and drop-out between groups. Finally, we investigated the moderating role of CA and trait gratitude.

Participants (N=237, ages between 18–56) were randomly allocated to a gratitude or active control condition (14 days). Following intervention, findings indicated a significant decrease in depressive symptoms and negative affect in both conditions. While positive affect remained stable, a significant time effect emerged for reward processing. CA severity, but not multiplicity, moderated the effectiveness of the intervention, adherence and drop-out. Trait gratitude moderated the effectiveness of the gratitude intervention only on depressive symptoms.

Gratitude interventions may not be the best fit for everyone. Thus, we recommend tailoring interventions, especially in individuals reporting a history of severe CA.