26729 research outputs found
Sort by
International students’ work experience in London: Case of South Asian students
No full textThe number of international students is increasing in universities around the world with the growth of the internationalisation of higher education institutions (Waters and Brooks, 2011, Buckner, 2019). However, migration researchers have largely ignored the study of international student mobility. King and Raghuram (2013) highlighted that the studies on international students ignore the multiple roles of students as family members, refugees, asylum seekers and as actual or potential workers (King and Raghuram, 2013).
In the UK context, most international students work part-time during their studies in lowskilled labour markets with low wages. These international students have increased in number, and currently, they are a significant part of the host country workforce, especially in retail, hospitality, and cleaning. However, until recently, their labour role has been ignored (Nyland et al., 2009).
With the economic boom, India has a fast-growing middle class; the Indian middle-class’s spending power and the investment in education have increased (Baas, 2013; King and Sondhi, 2018). According to Power et al. (2003), middle-class families try to achieve the best positional advantage for their children because the middle class has been internally differentiated by prestige. Therefore, international education could be seen as a strategy for positional advantage and reputation (p.2).
The new middle-class families are able to arrange the financial requirements for visa application and pay their children’s first term fees. However, international students have to look after themselves in the host country, buy books, food and pay the rent. Besides the essential living costs, some students have to repay their large student loans, which are taken out to enable them to come to the UK (Baas, 2010a). While there has been some scholarly interest in international students’ work experience in Australia, there has been a relative lack of research in the UK. Therefore, this thesis addresses this important gap and answers how international students adapt to their low-skilled labour roles as middle-class international students.
The research was designed as a qualitative study and involved 25 semi-structured interviews with 2 Bangladeshi, 16 Indian and 7 Pakistani international students who were studying at Middlesex University at undergraduate or postgraduate level. 4 The thematic analysis of the interview data identified different rationales or motivations international students have for studying abroad: Duration of study (cheaper costs of tuition fees and living costs); Influence of the Family (parents’ desire for the highest level of education); London (multicultural city and student hub, childhood dream); Recognised Degree (improving their employability opportunities in the future, particularly female students) and Prestige (studying abroad is a prestigious achievement in their society).
Moreover, the thematic analysis of the data illustrates the work experience of international students: The Factors behind the working decision (finance, work experience, extra money for leisure, peer influence); low-skilled work experience; the factors behind shifting their jobs within irregular and regular work (maximising income, flexible working hours, religion) and the impact of work-life experience on international students (confidence, freedom, gender equality and life experience).
The findings of this study provide new insight into student mobility studies. The importance of the work opportunities in the host country can be integrated into the migration policies
Variations in power performance and perceptual responses to training in Olympic boxers over a 7-month training period
Get PDFPurpose: To assess the variations in power performance and perceptual training responses and compare the physical performance of national boxing athletes qualified or not qualified for the Tokyo Olympic Games over a 7-month training period. Methods: Twelve amateur boxers from the Brazilian national team were tested 6 times across 7 months. In the first assessment, boxers performed squat and countermovement jumps (CMJ); and bench-press (BP), prone bench-pull, half-squat, and jump squat power tests. In the following testing sessions, only CMJ and BP power were assessed. In addition, the rating of perceived exertion (RPE) and total quality recovery (TQR) status were assessed in 106 training sessions across the study. Independent t-test and repeated measures analysis of variance were used for data analysis purposes. Results: No significant differences (P > 0.05) were observed between Olympic and non-Olympic groups for any test variables (ES [95% CI] ranging from 0.01 [-1.13; 1.13] to 0.69 [-0.53; 1.79]). No significant changes (P > 0.05) were detected throughout the study for CMJ height and BP-power in either group (ES [95% CI] ranging from 0.01 [-1.13; 1.13] to 1.03 [-0.25; 2.14]). Overall, both groups exhibited similar variations in both RPE and TQR over the 7-month period. Conclusions: Within the same national team, power-related performance was similar between Olympic and non-Olympic boxers. The maintenance of power abilities along with the optimization of technical and tactical skills seem to be key issues to consider during the final stages of preparation for international boxing competitions
Gull-human interactions in an urban population of Herring Gulls Larus argentatus and Lesser Black-backed Gulls Larus fuscus
Get PDFWe conducted a study to determine how the gull population and nuisance events in Bath change across the breeding season, and to investigate gull-human interactions. We found that gull nuisance increased across the breeding season and human provisioning was negatively associated with gull nuisance
Selecting metrics that matter: comparing the use of the countermovement jump for performance profiling, neuromuscular fatigue monitoring and injury rehabilitation testing
Get PDFThe countermovement jump (CMJ) is one of the most used performance assessments in strength and conditioning. While numerous studies discuss the usability of different metrics in this test, this is often done within the context of a specific aim. However, to our knowledge, no information currently exists providing practitioners with some over-arching recommendations on which metrics to choose when the purpose of using the test differs. This article discusses how the metrics selected to monitor during CMJ testing might differ when aiming to use it as a proxy for athletic performance, as part of neuromuscular fatigue monitoring, or as part of a test battery for return to performance in injured athletes
Horizontal and vertical responsibilisation in the resettlement field
Get PDFPurpose:
The Offender Rehabilitation Act (ORA) 2014, extended post-release supervision to individuals serving short prison sentences while introducing an extended array of actors into the resettlement field. This article explores the barriers that prison practitioners and community probation workers faced in their attempts to provide resettlement support, and how in response to these barriers, these practitioners enacted particular responsibilisation strategies.
Methods:
This empirical research features the perspectives of 19 prison, probation and third-sector actors within a case-study area in England. Qualitative interviews were carried out, alongside observations and field notes of daily practice.
Findings:
Findings indicate that despite the promise of additional support, practitioners face significant barriers inhibiting their ability to provide effective resettlement assistance. The three specific barriers identified are; institutional, temporal, and political-economic. In response, practitioners enacted particular responsibilisation strategies, shifting blame vertically down to service users, and horizontally towards the other actors involved in managing these individuals.
Originality:
These findings help to expand our understanding of the responsibilisation literature, particularly how responsibilisation operates at a practitioner level, and how barriers become refracted and reframed into responsibilisation strategies. This article also draws on the ‘mass supervision’ literature to demonstrate how the introduction of multiple agencies obfuscates individual responsibility for resettlement and large caseloads erode supervisory practice.
Practical implications:
This article concludes with a brief overview of the latest iteration of resettlement practice, before exploring how a desistance-focused approach by practitioners may improve resettlement outcomes
Can online civic education induce democratic citizenship? Experimental evidence from a new democracy
Get PDFHow can democratic values and behavior be induced in new democracies? We designed and tested three original civic education interventions to answer this question, using Tunisia as a case study. Participants were recruited through Facebook and Instagram where they were randomly assigned to either one of three treatment groups or a placebo. Two treatments were derived from prospect theory, emphasizing the gains of a democratic system, or the losses of an autocratic system. A third treatment, derived from self-efficacy theory, provided practical information regarding participation in the upcoming 2019 elections. Our findings suggest that online civic education has a considerable effect on democratic citizenship, including a significant reduction in authoritarian nostalgia and increasing intended political behavior. We further find differences between the three treatments, with the loss and gain treatments having overall more consistent impact than self-efficacy, though the latter frame has notable effects on political efficacy and registration
A comparison of vertical and horizontal reactive strength index variants and association with change of direction performance
Get PDFThis study sought to investigate the inter-relationship between different vertical and horizontal variants of reactive strength index (RSI) and change of direction performance. Thirty-one male volleyball players (age: 22.4 ± 3.9 years), performed bilateral drop jumps (DJ), bilateral and unilateral countermovement jumps (CMJ), and triple hops for distance. The RSI was calculated as the ratio of jump height and contact time (DJ), jump height and time to take off (CMJ), and flight time or hop distance and contact time (triple hop), and 505 change of direction test. RSI obtained from DJ and CMJ tasks exhibited excellent trial-to-trial reliability (ICC = 0.91-0.94), while triple hop based RSI had only moderate reliability (ICC = 0.67-0.74). The relationships among different RSI variants were moderate to high (i.e. DJ to CMJ: r = 0.57-0.69; p ≤ 0.004; DJ to triple hop: r = 0.54-0.66; p ≤ 0.021 and CMJ to triple hop: r = 0.42-0.63; p ≤ 0.037). For the triple hop, the associations between RSI based on hop flight time and RSI based on hop distance were high for hop 1-2 (r = 0.77-0.83; p < 0.001) and very high for hop 2-3 (r = 0.91-0.92; p < 0.001). All RSI variants were in small to moderate negative correlation with 505 test performance (r = -0.38 to -0.45; p ≤ 0.042). The agreement in inter-limb asymmetry direction between in RSI from unilateral CMJ and triple hop RSI variables was slight to moderate (Kappa coefficient = 0.06-0.36). In conclusion, although inter-relationships between RSI variants were moderate to high, the direction of inter-limb asymmetry was inconsistent, highlighting the notion of movement variability in limb dominance
'Trying to make it matter': the challenges of assimilating a resettlement culture into a 'local' prison
Get PDFAs part of the Transforming Rehabilitation reforms, 70 ‘local’ prisons in England and Wales were re-designated as resettlement prisons, in order to provide additional through-the-gate support to individuals serving short sentences. Drawing on staff and prisoner interviews in one case study resettlement prison, this paper considers what challenges were involved with implementing a resettlement culture in a local prison. Findings firstly outline factors inhibiting the resettlement status of the prison, these include: a tension between attempts to implement a more expansive resettlement remit into the prison, while also fulfilling more longstanding core institutional duties; the size and churn of the prison population; wide-scale apathy caused by change fatigue; and government austerity policies which caused significant difficulties in the day-to-day staffing of the prison. This paper then turns to practitioner responses to the re-designation, finding that practitioners interpreted resettlement in two limited ways: top-down managerial attempts to instil a wider resettlement culture into the prison, and resistance from prison officers who felt unwilling or unable to expand their roles beyond custodial and security concerns. This paper concludes by outlining how this set of inter-related barriers frustrated staff and prisoners alike, eroding a sense of hope and purpose and impeding true cultural change
The resettlement net: ‘revolving door’ imprisonment and carceral (re)circulation
Get PDFThe Offender Rehabilitation Act (ORA) 2014 has extended post-release supervision to all individuals serving short sentences in England and Wales – a cohort who previously faced neglect within the criminal justice system. This empirical study uses a case study approach to explore the resettlement experiences of individuals subject to this new legislation, understanding how individuals circulate and re-cycle between a range of services and agencies in the community, further illuminating upon the reality of repeat ‘revolving door’ imprisonment. Drawing upon Cohen’s ‘net widening’ analogy, this article posits that collectively the array of services involved in an individual’s resettlement form a ‘resettlement net’, which segregates individuals in the community through control and surveillance functions, extending the carceral boundary of the prison firmly into the community. Welfare-orientated organisations become compelled to ‘braid’ welfare responses alongside penal functions in order to operate within the resettlement net. This article also explores some of the difficulties that individuals experience as they navigate the resettlement net, including informal forms of exclusion, and the wear and tear of the net, which undermines the rhetoric of care envisioned by this legislation, and drives individuals deeper into the mesh of carceral control
Multiple multi-tier sustainable supply chain management: a social systems theory perspective
Get PDFA multi-tier supply chain is a complex system as it covers a focal company and multiple tiers of suppliers in a complex supply chain network. This study explores the complexity in multi-tier sustainable supply chain management (SSCM) through a social systems theory perspective. We carried out a case study on IKEA China’s sustainable cotton initiative and examined its five cotton-textile supply chains. The primary data were collected through 22 semi-structured interviews with managers of IKEA China and their multi-tier suppliers. The findings suggest that in order to cope with environmental complexity in implementing multi-tier sustainable initiatives, focal companies tend to create both internal complexity and collaborative complexity in a variety of governance mechanisms. In addition, environmental overlap and available collaborative complexity increase in this process and can feed back into systems to facilitate further creation of requisite variety. We contribute to the multi-tier SSCM literature through providing an in-depth understanding of nuanced mechanisms of managing different tiers of suppliers to cope with complexities by adopting a social systems theory perspective. We also contribute to multi-tier supply chain governance mechanisms from an evolution perspective