26729 research outputs found
Sort by
Decolonising midwifery education: shaping the future of midwifery
No full textCollaborative work within the Middlesex midwifery teaching team on decolonising the midwifery curriculum, utilising the RCM decolonising framework
Gendered dynamics of international labour migration: migrant women working in Pakistan
Get PDFOverview
There are nearly 8.5 million migrant workers working across different regions of Pakistan, which include both internal and foreign migrant workers. Forty-five per cent of these workers are engaged in informal activities including day labourers, construction workers, domestic helpers, factory workers, informal restaurants, and beauty salons. Pakistan has received a mass influx of people fleeing conflict. The Afghan community is among the largest among undocumented migrants living in the country ( 500,000 as per recent estimates ), followed by a combined population of Bengali, Bangladeshi, and Burmese nationals.
Pakistan in not a signatory of the 1951 Refugee Convention and its 1967 Protocol. Additionally, the country lacks a national refugee law, and has therefore been able to avoid granting Afghans clear and defined rights, legal integration, and citizenship. The domestic service sector is one of the largest informal employment sectors in Pakistan. Middle and upper-class households employ women domestic workers, primarily Pakistani domestic workers. However, there are several women workers groups of migrant origin involved in the domestic care industry, for example, such as the ‘Hazara’ in Baluchistan and the Pakistani Bengalis who are Pakistani citizens of Bangladeshi heritage.
Pakistan has become an employment destination for Migrant Filipino Domestic Workers (MFDW) , who constitute one of the largest groups among the estimated over 2,000 Filipinos living in Pakistan and of the over 1,000 Filipinos holding a working visa . Despite having a written contractual agreement – that national domestic workers do not hold – literature has shown the absence of labour protections and economic security.
Key findings
This study is part of a multi-country research project ‘Gendered Dynamics of International Labour Migration’ also involving Turkey, Lebanon, and the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI), which investigated drivers of migration, incorporation into the labour market, experiences of work and living in Pakistan, agency and coping strategies and use of public space. Overall, 22 individual, semi-structured interviews were conducted, predominantly in Islamabad, with adult migrant women with different skill levels, nationalities, and migration experiences. The majority of participants consists of highly skilled and educated migrant women of diverse nationalities who migrated from the Philippines, Canada, China-Korea, Uganda, Germany, Egypt, and Somalia.
Among these highly skilled migrants, a good number hold a PhD and/or have professional degrees and worked in formal sectors, i.e., in teaching and as development professionals in international NGOs/UN agencies. Notably, they came to Pakistan for different reasons: family reunification, marriage, independent work and for education and professional opportunities. Of the seven female migrants who worked in domestic and care work, six were MFDW and one was from Tanzania. Most of them, in fact, wanted to find either a job – if they were housewives in their country of origin – or a better paid one, highlighting the lack of opportunities. Most of them had children and providing for them was the chief motivation behind seeking a higher income. Other personal motivations included the desire to escape an unhappy marriage.
All Afghan participants worked in the semi-skilled sector as self-employed workers in the service industry, such as beauty salons and carpet-weaving. Gender-based discrimination rooted in social norms, such as those normalising child marriage, or the difficulty of finding the desired employment out of the house, and that are exacerbated by the Taliban regime, is a key driver of migration. A few research participants worked independently as business owners or in service industries.
Gender-based discrimination in Pakistan was not openly reported by the migrant women workers who participated in this study, despite those who are married to a Pakistani reporting instances of clashing gender norms. Nearly all describe their living and working conditions in positive terms.
Besides the MDWs, a recurrent issue reported is the challenging system in relation to their legal status, which poses several and continuing challenges to obtain and renew their permit. Many migrant workers detailed instances of obstacles that they encountered in their daily life because they were not in possession of the national ID card. On the negative end, there is the case of the undocumented Afghan refugees, living in hiding, and deskilled, who feel socially discriminated against and not integrated in the hosting society. The only two cases of post-migration upskilling are those of two Filipina women both of whom have BAs, one went from being a MDW to establishing her own job agency business (hiring MFDWs), and the other became a swimming coach.
Despite the diversity of living and working experiences, including the type of accommodation and living arrangements, most women said that they move around the city freely, using cars or taxis, that they go to restaurants, malls, and markets. For MDWs their process of acquainting with the host country and ‘going out’ to public spaces is filtered by the family they live with, and, to a certain extent, necessarily hampered by their home-based work. The agency of the migrant women in this study can be grasped in all the realms of drivers and processes of migration, the experiences of discrimination at home, their living and working and moving around in Islamabad city, as well as seen as connected to the past, the present and the future as envisaged by the migrant women. Their coping strategies consist in making choices, taking actions, and creating narratives that can mitigate the hardships of their situation in different realms, from the domestic to the workplace.
The impact of COVID-19 varied according to the type of work migrant women undertook. It ranged from the possibility of loss or severe reduction of income for those with businesses, being forced to stay inside or working remotely, especially for the group of professionals. For some MFDWs, the workload increased considerably, for others the situation remained unchanged.
Interview snapshots
An upskilled Filipino migrant woman described becoming more religious and how this led her to fall in love with her Pakistani husband, get married, start their own family of which she is proud, and enjoy her marriage and her new family life. An Afghan migrant woman came instead from a very conservative family, and she was a victim of child and arranged marriage. In Islamabad, she first started working in the family bakery, then as beautician, to end up managing her own salon. A highly educated Algerian migrant woman recounts also a situation of humiliation within the family on behalf of her Pakistani husband’s brother-in-law. In fact, she is very critical of the strong bond that exists between mother and son in the country, and of the patrilocal custom whereby the wife is expected to move in with her in-laws and become their domestic helper.
Recommendations
More research is needed to understand the conditions and the experiences of women migrant communities, from refugees to professionals, in Pakistan, both in relation to their social and economic contribution to the hosting society, as well as in relation to their internal dynamics and further migration aspirations.
Government departments in Pakistan dealing with migrants could be invited to cooperate and compile documents for circulation where they collate their data on migrant communities. ILO, IOM and UNHCR, and other INGOs, could also share their statistics to support delineating a clearer picture of the complex reality of migrants in the country.
Evidence-based and migrant-centred programmes of intervention to support the employability and wellbeing of the Afghan community, and other migrant communities, in Pakistan should be strengthened in view of local integration and resettlement. Economic empowerment, legal protection, job security, access to health and social care, social norms changes should be enhanced, in particular targeting hard-to-reach, rural and undocumented communities, and within those, women.
The Pakistani government should re-consider signing the 1951 Refugee Convention and its 1967 Protocol. Additionally, the government should work at the drafting of a refugee law.
The Pakistani government should revise regulations and policies in relation to the assignment of ID cards to migrant workers, in conjunction with the third sector and employers, to make the permit system more accessible and inclusive
Regulation of online speech in the UK
Get PDFOnline speech in the UK is already being chilled due to the provisions and/or operation of a variety of laws. In statutes dealing with defamation, terrorism, data protection, privacy, and more, ‘notice and take-down’ regimes and state mandated content moderation are to be found aplenty. This has reached such saturation that instead of thinking of speech as ‘free’ one could be forgiven to observe that the adjectives that more accurately describe the situation in the UK nowadays is ‘restricted’, ‘permitted’, ‘proscribed’ and ‘censored’. What you can say now very much depends on who you are, what you are saying, and where you are saying it.
Against this background, the newly enacted Online Safety Act goes even further. Instead of the usual notice and takedown regime, corporations will be placed in charge of and legally required, to proactively seek out and limit online content. The likely result of outsourcing public duties like this would be censorship by algorithm. Various established principles of the law are being stretched or outright violated. This paper analyses the likely effects of the new law by comparing it to current domestic and select laws from other similar jurisdictions, and concludes that it will not operate in a transparent or accountable manner but will instead be anti-democratic and it will violate the rule of law
Characteristics and circumstances of rail suicides in England 2019-2021: a cluster analysis and autopsy study
Get PDFBackground
Around 4 % of all suicide deaths in Great Britain occur on the railways. This exploratory study was designed to increase understanding of the individuals that take their lives in this way, and the circumstances of their death.
Method
Data were obtained from fatality investigation files compiled by the British Transport Police (BTP) relating to suspected suicides on the mainline railway in England from April 2019 to March 2021. Cluster analysis was carried out to identify grouped associations of characteristics and circumstances relating to rail suicide.
Results
A total of 436 files were analysed, representing 93 % of all suspected railway suicides during this period. Cluster analysis identified four groups of almost equal size, distinguished principally by age, living arrangements, employment status and location of death. The study is novel in the way it integrates individual characteristics and circumstances of death. The identified clusters may provide a multidimensional way of conceptualising suicide risk that could inform more targeted interventions at rail locations.
Limitations
A high proportion of missing data means that the findings need to be interpreted with caution. It also restricted the multivariate analysis to those categories of information for which sufficient information was available.
Conclusion
The characteristics and circumstances of suicide deaths on the railways are complex and multifaceted. The typology identified in this study may help to target preventative strategies prior to the incident as well as at different location types
Health-related quality of life of children and adolescents with sickle cell disease
Get PDFChildren and adolescents with sickle cell disease (SCD) may experience physical symptoms and psychosocial problems compared to healthy peers. This includes lower academic achievement due to frequent absence from school, and increased illness or pain. Sociocultural factors may exacerbate psychosocial issues. These factors may include perceived stigmatisation, reluctance to disclose, cultural and religious beliefs, family dynamics and financial hardship. Thus, SCD is likely to impact on health-related quality of life (HRQL). HRQL is a broad, multidimensional concept of well-being which considers a person’s physical, social, emotional and school/work functioning. Scales such as the Pediatric Quality of Life Inventory (PedsQLTM) are often used to assess HRQL and can be completed by children or their parents by proxy. Child self-reports of HRQL are generally higher than parent proxy-reports, but children with SCD often report lower levels of HRQL compared to healthy peers. Lower HRQL in children with SCD has been linked to demographic indicators, such as being from a single-parent family, disease-related problems, like the frequency of vaso-occlusive crises, and psychosocial factors such as depressive symptoms. The limited qualitative research in this area suggests that pain, or attempts to prevent vaso-occlusive crises, may interfere with children’s lives and undermine HRQL. However, there may be little discrepancy between children’s perceived current and ideal selves suggesting they have normalised and adjusted to SCD. Problem-focused coping strategies including engaging in some health-related behaviours may be useful. Research has focused on Western countries and more research is needed in Sub-Saharan Africa, especially due to differences between nations in culture, economics, healthcare, education and employment which are all likely to impact HRQL
Book Review: Mine Doğantan-Dack (Ed.), Rethinking the musical instrument
Get PDFIn this review I examine the volume "Rethinking the Musical Instrument" edited by Mine Doğantan-Dack
What is evidence-based practice in strength and conditioning?
Get PDFAs the field of strength and conditioning (S&C) continues to grow, there are noticeable increases in jobs, salaries, research, and media coverage of malpractice; it is therefore prudent to define evidence-based practice (EBP) for S&C coaches. In line with clinicians and medical practitioners, this will help guide best practice and inform stakeholders on the design process of the various training and testing interventions implemented, to improve the physical capacity of athletes. Thus, the aim of this paper was to define EBP in S&C, and in doing so, the following definition was provided: In strength and conditioning, evidence-based practice involves integrating scientific research with coach expertise such that the individual needs of athletes are met in terms of physicality, values, preferences, and constraints
Issues in sustainability reporting assurance: evidence from interviews
Get PDFPurpose
This paper examines the processes of sustainability reporting assurance (SRA) and the influence they have on shaping perception from disclosures. Given the evidence of inconsistencies and ambiguities in assurance processes, this paper examine how legitimacy is attained and maintained at different stages of SRA.
Design/methodology/approach
Evidence collected from 23 semi-structured interviews with assurance providers (APs), consultants, professionals and NGOs (non-APs) was used to conduct a thematic analysis from the perspectives of interviewees.
Findings
Assurance Providers (APs) and non-Assurance Providers (non-APs) are united in recognising the value of SRA, although, perspectives on transparency between the two groups differ. Experience and industry knowledge are essential to SRA delivery with non-APs preferring accounting APs. Nevertheless, non-APs are concerned about the role of companies in deciding assurance scope as it can affect scrutiny. APs favour data accuracy (as opposed to data relevance) assurance due to team dynamics and internal review influences with the latter also restricting assurance innovation. APs are interested in accessing better evidence and stakeholder engagement evaluations. Providing advisory services was not rejected by all APs. The perspectives of APs and non-APs demonstrate how progress in SRA has gained pragmatic legitimacy with noticeable gaps that serve to undermine attainment of moral legitimacy.
Research limitations/implications
SRA is a developing practice that will adopt changes as it continues to mature, some of these changes could impact findings in this research. General perspectives on SRA was sought from interviewees, this affected the ability for an in-depth focus on any of the range of interesting SRA issues that arose over the course of the research. Interviews were conducted with relevant parties in the SRA space that operate in the UK. Perspectives of parties outside the UK were not solicited.
Practical implications
Companies make an important decision to commission SRA, findings in this research have highlighted specific non-APs issues of concern that can be useful in structuring operations and reporting regimes to facilitate assurance procedures. The findings will also be helpful to APs as they can direct more emphasis on stakeholder concerns towards demonstrating greater stakeholder accountability. Regulatory and standard setters can enact appropriate policies that can potentially drive the practice forward for assessment of cognitive legitimacy.
Originality/value
This research demonstrates the applicability of financial audit quality indicators in SRA processes; extends the debate around the effectiveness of new audit fields and highlight the challenges of maintaining legitimacy with different audiences. Social implications (limit 100 words) The findings provide relevant account of stakeholder voices on the quality of corporate disclosures that has a direct effect on the wellbeing of communities and sustainability of societies. Collective stakeholder input on expectations can shape sustainability discourse
Effects of task structure and confirmation bias in alternative hypotheses evaluation
Get PDFWe empirically examined the effectiveness of how the Analysis of Competing Hypotheses (ACH) technique structures task information to help reduce confirmation bias (Study 1) and the portrayal of intelligence analysts as suffering from such bias (Study 2). Study 1 (N = 161) showed that individuals presented with hypotheses in rows and evidence items in columns were significantly less likely to demonstrate confirmation bias, whereas those presented with the ACH-style matrix (with hypotheses in columns and evidence items
in rows) or a paragraph of text (listing the evidence for each hypothesis) were not less likely to demonstrate bias. The ACH-style matrix also did not confer any benefits regarding increasing sensitivity to evidence credibility. Study 2 showed that the majority of 62 Dutch military analysts did not suffer from confirmation bias and were sensitive to evidence credibility. Finally, neither judgmental coherence nor cognitive reflection differentiated
between better or worse performers in the hypotheses evaluation tasks
Active energy: creating change through citizen engagement
No full textThe story of a project that illustrates how when you consult people on what they need that you can come up with innovative and surprising ideas of ways to meet local challenges