This article brings together a range of data sources to chart cohort change in the human capital characteristics of Pakistani immigrants to the United Kingdom over the last fifty years. We demonstrate how restrictions on labor migration and family reunification have transformed characteristics of new arrivals while still maintaining some elements of chain migration patterns. Despite these changes, we note substantial consistency in the sociocultural characteristics of Pakistani-origin U.K. residents across cohorts, specifically in identity, religiosity, and social networks. We reflect on the implications of these patterns of change and continuity.
"Social scientists and health researchers often need valid and reliable health measures from survey respondents to address key research questions, whether on environmental risks, weight and nutrition, physical activity or health / risky behaviours. There are long-standing debates on the validity of self-reported measures of health status and health behaviours in representative sample surveys. Such problems are particularly acute when the health status or behaviour occurred in the past and depends on retrospective recall. Increasingly social surveys are collecting direct biomarkers to provide more precise information on health status and behaviours. While much of this biomarker collection requires clinic visits or in-home nurse visits, some biomarkers are amenable to less costly and intrusive collection. Shed milk teeth are a good example of a stable biomarker that can provide extensive information on early (including in utero) child environmental and family contexts that may shed valuable light on childhood and adult health and social outcomes. Shed milk teeth are also potentially cheap (and non-intrusive) to collect as well as to store. In this paper we report on the collection of shed milk teeth in a nationally representative sample in the UK using postal methods. We conclude that for surveys involving children and with broad geographical coverage, incorporating the collection of shed milk teeth could prove a cost-effective enhancement, providing valuable environmental, nutritional and health information." (author's abstract)
Can specific policies support the economic integration of immigrants? Despite the crucial importance of this question, existing evidence is inconclusive. Using data from the European Social Survey, we estimate the effects of integration and anti-discrimination policies, alongside social expenditure and labor market regulation, on the labor market performance of 6,176 non-European immigrants across 23 European countries. We make three contributions: 1) we investigate the distinct role of discrete policy areas for labor market integration outcomes, 2) we allow for heterogeneous effects of policies on immigrants with different characteristics, and 3) we examine immigrants' occupational attainment while accounting for their selection into employment. We find that immigrants' employment chances are negatively associated with national levels of expenditure on welfare benefits but positively associated with policies facilitating immigrant access to social security. We also find that labor market rigidity is negatively associated with immigrants' occupational attainment, but we find little evidence that policies aimed at supporting the transferability of immigrants' qualifications promote their occupational success. Our results strongly suggest that anti-discrimination policies are important for immigrant economic integration. Yet while these policies are associated with greater occupational success for all female immigrants, they seem to be only positively associated with the occupational attainment of higher-skilled and non-Muslim immigrant men. As this article suggests, anti-discrimination policies can foster immigrants' labor market success, yet these policies currently fail to reach those who face the strongest anti-immigrant sentiments — that is, unskilled male immigrants and Muslim immigrant men.
Applying latent class analysis to a unique data source of 3,500 Polish migrants in Western Europe, we develop a new typology of Polish migrants under "free movement" following the 2004 expansion of the European Union. We characterize these diverse migrant types in terms of their premigration characteristics and link them to varied early social and economic integration outcomes. We show that alongside traditional circular and temporary labor migration, European Union expansion has given rise to new migrant types who are driven by experiential concerns, resulting in a more complex relationship between their economic and social integration in destination countries.
Bullying among school-aged children and adolescents is recognised as an important social problem, and the adverse consequences for victims are well established. However, despite growing interest in the socio-demographic profile of victims, there is limited evidence on the relationship between bullying victimisation and childhood disability. This article enhances our understanding of bullying experiences among disabled children in both early and later childhood, drawing on nationally representative longitudinal data from the Millennium Cohort Study and the Longitudinal Study of Young People in England. We model the association of disability measured in two different ways with the probability of being bullied at ages seven and 15, controlling for a wide range of known risk factors that vary with childhood disability. Results reveal an independent association of disability with bullying victimisation, suggesting a potential pathway to cumulative disability-related disadvantage, and drawing attention to the school as a site of reproduction of social inequalities.
Using the UK Labour Force Survey, we study wage gaps for disabled men after the introduction of the Disability Discrimination Act. We estimate wage gaps at the mean and at different quantiles of the wage distribution, and decompose them into the part explained by differences in workers' and job characteristics, the part that can be ascribed to health-related reduced productivity, and a residual part which we can more confidently interpret as discrimination. For physically disabled workers, most of the wage gap can be attributed to differences in productivity, while for mentally disabled people we find evidence of wage discrimination.
Judicial review is of growing importance to public administration in the United Kingdom but its role in relation to government remains highly contentious. There is much debate over the extent to which it is a threat that imposes costs and impairs service delivery or a positive resource that helps secure improvements in service quality. In this article, we consider the findings of the first comprehensive quantitative study of the relationships between levels of judicial review litigation and the quality of local government services. The findings indicate that judicial review may be making a positive contribution to local government in England and Wales. The article also considers the way local government officials perceive judicial review and argues that reactions to judicial review cannot be wholly understood in terms of incentives. Judicial review makes a positive contribution to public administration and does so at least partly because it promotes values that are central to the ethos of public administration and assists officials in resolving tensions between individual and collective justice that lie at the core of their responsibilities. Adapted from the source document.
Measuring ethnic identity in social surveys has traditionally been problematic, often using a single question and allowing the respondent to choose one category from a pre-defined list. In this paper we discuss the rationale for and limitations of measuring a complex and multi-dimensional concept with a simple, uni-dimensional question. We propose that operationalising ethnicity as multi-dimensional requires multiple questions to capture the complexity of the concept. Giving researchers a number of different measures enables them to focus on the dimensions of interest to them, and has the potential to open up the rich resources of theoretically-robust survey research to researchers from a range of disciplines concerned with questions of ethnic identification.
In this paper we consider the relationship between levels of judicial review litigation and the quality of local government services. The findings indicate that judicial review may be making a positive contribution to local government in England and Wales. The paper also considers the way local government officials perceive judicial review and argues that reactions cannot be wholly understood in terms of incentives. Judicial review makes a positive contribution to public administration at least partly because it promotes values that are central to the ethos of public administration and assists officials in resolving tensions between individual and collective justice.
This paper raises some of the key issues that have emerged from our study of the impact of judicial review litigation on the quality of local government services in England and Wales. Judicial Review is the High Court procedure by which those with a sufficient interest can challenge decisions of public authorities on the grounds that authorities have failed to meet their legal obligations, including human rights obligations; or have acted unfairly or exceeded or abused their legal powers (or threatened to do these things). The paper discusses whether or not a greater engagement with public law litigation, as experienced in the UK in recent times, may be leading to improvements or declines in access to services and in service delivery for individuals and classes of services user, to improvements in the clarity and accountability of processes within local authorities, and to greater levels of legal awareness, including the furtherance of the practical application of the rule of law. We focus on two areas of local authority activity: housing and homelessness and childrens services; and we distinguish in the paper between the impact of challenges, and the impact of judicial decisions. The paper draws on a series of qualitative interviews with key informants in local authorities; and presents analyses of judicial review decisions of national significance in the area of childrens services. Our conclusions at this stage are tentative and indicate areas that we intend to pursue further. Our most general observation is that judicial review is a significant aspect of an environment that over the past two decades has subjected local authorities to an increasing range of external regulatory and controlling mechanisms. Against this background, we observe that judicial review is distinctive in various ways. We identify several potentially distinctive features of judicial review from a quality perspective, including its focus on individual problems, its ability to subject decisions to close scrutiny and its ability to provide authoritative statements as to local authorities duties. We also consider the circumstances under which decisions are likely to have most (or least) impact on the working and quality of local authority services.
This is the post-print version of the paper (with comments by reviewers). Full access in: http://jpart.oxfordjournals.org/content/20/suppl_2/i177.full%20 ; Judicial review is of growing importance to public administration in the UK but its role in relation to government remains highly contentious. There is much debate over the extent to which it is a threat that imposes costs and impairs service delivery or a positive resource that helps secure improvements in service quality. In this paper we consider the findings of the first comprehensive quantitative study of the relationships between levels of judicial review litigation and the quality of local government services. The findings indicate that judicial review may be making a positive contribution to local government in England and Wales. The paper also considers the way local government officials perceive judicial review and argues that reactions to judicial review cannot be wholly understood in terms of incentives. Judicial review makes a positive contribution to public administration and does so at least partly because it promotes values that are central to the ethos of public administration and assists officials in resolving tensions between individual and collective justice that lie at the core of their responsibilities.
The employment rates of both disabled people and those from minority ethnic groups are subject to substantial UK policy attention. In this paper we set out to enhance understanding of the relationship with the labour market for those living with long-term illness and their family members. We explore the role of family caring responsibilities and ethnicity in shaping patterns of employment participation. We do this by investigating the experiences of those from four different ethnic groups and using a mixed qualitative and quantitative approach.