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AbstractThis paper reflects on the conditions that emerge as regional Australia becomes increasingly immersed in international markets, global and local political shifts, and changing environmental conditions. In the Liverpool Plains region, farmers are deeply reliant on global export markets. Meanwhile, global demand for Australian minerals continues to produce both economic development and environmental degradation. In this context, farmers are drawing on transnational and national social movements to collectively construct their knowledge of risk and "organized irresponsibility" and resist environmental risk by positioning themselves as a part of a cosmopolitan public. While consistently evaluating risks associated with a proposed coal mine, farmers see themselves as having an ethical responsibility as food producers to provide for increasing global populations in a precarious world. These conditions are productive of new risks, identities, as well as new forms of critical, collective practice.

Uganda hosts the largest refugee population on the African continent and the third highest worldwide. The country also has one of the world's most progressive refugee policies. Refugees are allowed to work and operate businesses anywhere in the country, which is uncommon in other African countries and beyond. Despite the large refugee population, their impact on employment and the associated dynamics remains poorly understood. This paper explores the impact of the presence of the refugee population on local employment opportunities and how it is connected to refugees' sociocultural and livelihoods background and local refugee policies. Drawing on in-depth interviews with local hosts, government officials, and refugee agencies, we show that hosting refugees enhances opportunities and competition for jobs. We argue that refugees' presence mainly affects unskilled locals in sectors that align with refugees' livelihood backgrounds. The locals in distant sectors and the highly educated and experienced locals face less competition in employment. Moreover, refugees' complementary livelihoods have the potential to minimize refugee-host competition for jobs.

Western cultural environments present an increasingly challenging landscape for young people's mental health. To better understand how this cultural environment may be influencing the lives of young people, we conducted 50 semi-structured interviews with young Australians, discussing participants' values, life goals, social attitudes and behaviours, and life stressors. We find that while participants tended to see factors such as maintaining strong relationships and personal growth as important to them, their ambitions, attitudes, and social behaviours were often driven by self-centred and materialistic aims. Participants also perceived outcomes specific to these drivers, including poor social support, feelings of competitiveness, and uncertainties around their future, as significant contributors to the stress they experienced in their lives. These findings help us better understand how prevailing Western cultural norms, including individualistic and materialistic practices, may influence young people's psychological wellbeing.

In this paper, we utilise Jørgensen's concept of what precarity does to make sense of stalled industrial development in a regional Australian community. In 2008–2009, a Chinese-owned multinational company proposed the development of an alumina refinery near Bowen, Queensland, offering residents the prospect of economic and local job growth, before the proposal was shelved in 2010. In direct contrast to the imagined 'secure employment' residents hoped the development would offer, past experiences of multinational developments had instead compounded economic and social precarity. Through a qualitative study of community and business perceptions in Bowen in 2008–2009, we explore how a regional community understands and resists histories and experiences of precarity. Despite recognising the changing economic and social structures that have contributed to insecurity, actors position themselves as malleable and aspirational potential workers, rather than resisting employment insecurity through collective means. This study provides a way of understanding the forces that impact aspirations of work in regional Australia and the gap between these aspirations and the tangible social impacts of a neoliberal economy.