‘I can't even buy a bed because I don't know if I'll have to leave tomorrow’: temporal orientations among Mexican precarious status migrants in Toronto

This paper analyzes the links between migrant illegalization and precarious status migrants' temporal orientations. I begin by evaluating research on three research orientations in this area: (1) research that focuses on temporal contingency versus temporal teleology; (2) research about immigration status, illegalization, and time; and (3) research on the link between precarious immigration status and precarious work. I then draw on interviews with 13 Mexican migrants with precarious immigration status to discuss how immigration status affects migrants' ability to make plans, secure decent work, and experience a sense of belonging in the context of reception (Toronto, Canada). I conclude by arguing for a framework of temporal contingency when analyzing precarious status migrants' narratives of temporal orientations.     

Does it matter whether people will know that I did not vote? The role of social norms and visibility

People behave in accordance with social norms when they feel observed or when they know their behaviour is monitored or could be disclosed. Get-Out-The-Vote experiments show that individuals are more likely to vote when told that their behaviour will be disclosed. In everyday life, however, there is much uncertainty about whether people will indeed know if one turns out to vote. I argue that fear of disapproval should only mobilize citizens to vote when they expect that their (non-)voting will be visible to others. Using original survey data from Canada, I measure expectations about whether others will vote, would disapprove if the person abstains, and will know whether they have voted or not. Furthermore, I distinguish between expectations concerning the partner, family, friends, and neighbours. Results suggest that respondents who expect others to vote are themselves more likely to vote, but I find no evidence that disapproval and visibility are related to turnout in everyday life.     

What do we really know? The effect of reporting thresholds on inferences using environmental right‐to‐know data

Environmental right‐to‐know regulations require regulated entities to publicly disclose measures of environmental performance but exempt entities from these disclosure requirements if they manufacture, process, or use a chemical below some threshold level. Environmental right‐to‐know data are widely used to assess environmental performance by academics, regulators, non‐profit organizations, and the public. This paper uses data from Massachusetts to estimate the effect of reporting thresholds in environmental right‐to‐know programs on the validity of inferences using data from these programs. The analysis indicates that errors in inference introduced by reporting thresholds may be significant. Up to 40% of the observed decline in reported toxic releases in Massachusetts may be attributed to non‐reporting due to the reporting thresholds. In addition, quartile rankings of facilities may be in error up to 45% of the time when behavior around the reporting thresholds is not taken into account.     

Intelligence in war: how important is it? How do we know?

The role of intelligence in determining outcomes of battles and wars has varied dramatically across conflicts and time, contributing to wide differences in judgments about the importance of intelligence in war. Some analysts minimize the importance of intelligence while others argue it is essential. Opposing perspectives often do not engage each other’s points and generalize from small samples of conflicts. The result is a disjointed discussion of the roles and importance of intelligence in armed conflicts. This article’s aim is to partially rectify this situation by deriving an analytic framework that links intelligence to military operations and strategic outcomes.     

Should I Stay or Should I Go Now? Voluntary Retirement from Danish Local Government

Why do politicians choose to retire voluntarily from a position they have been working hard to get? It is argued in this article that the institutional setting of the elected assemblies influences the direct, as well as the alternative costs and benefits of having a political career and hence the patterns of voluntary retirement. Drawing on previous research from the United States Congress, this is explored in a new empirical setting: local government in Denmark. The results show that positions at the labour market matter as private‐sector employees are more likely to retire than public‐sector employees. Furthermore, internal institutional factors matter. Holding an institutional position such as chairing a committee makes retirement less likely. Furthermore, seniority makes the councillors more likely to retire when age is controlled for – a result not found in national studies. However, councillors who reach a high‐ranking position at an early stage are not more likely to quit with seniority than those who do not reach such a position. A high personal share of votes decreases voluntary retirement. In contrast to previous findings, the ideological distance from the ruling party does not play a role. This may be due to norms of consensus in the local councils.     

Should I Care or Should I Work? The Impact of Work on Informal Care

This paper provides novel evidence on how a sharp increase in labor force participation among older women affects the provision of informal care to their older parents. Based on data from Understanding Society – The UK Household Longitudinal Study, we use an instrumental variable approach that exploits a unique reform that increased the female State Pension age by up to six years. Our results provide evidence of a trade-off between the intensive margin of work and informal care provided outside the household: an increase of 10 hours of work per week reduces the provision of informal care by 2.1 hours a week, which amounts to roughly £2,100 of yearly care-hours lost. This reduction in caregiving is largest among women working in physically or psychosocially demanding jobs, and “sandwich generation” women who have both a living grandchild and a parent alive. Using data from the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing, we show that older parents whose daughters became ineligible to claim their pensions experienced a significant reduction in the amount of care they receive from their daughters, which was not compensated by an increase in formal care or other sources of support. Our results suggest that policies that increase older workers’ labor supply require changes in long-term care policy that compensate for the loss of informal care.     

Should I stay or should I go? An experimental study on voter responses to pre-electoral coalitions

Abstract.  Pre-electoral coalitions (PECs) are one of the most often used methods to coordinate entry into the electoral market. Party elites, however, do not know how voters will respond to the coalition formation at the polls. In this article, the authors report on an experimental study among 1,255 Belgian students. In order to study voter responses to the formation of PECs, respondents were presented with two ballots: one with individual parties (party vote condition) and one with coalitions (coalition vote condition). The aim of this experiment is to predict under what conditions party supporters will follow their initially preferred party into the coalition and vote for the PEC, and under what conditions they would desert the PEC at the polls. The decision whether to follow the coalition or not can be traced back to four considerations: dislike of the coalition partner; ideological congruence between coalition partners; size of the initially preferred party; and being attracted to a specific high-profile candidate. (Dis)liking the coalition partner is independent from the ideological congruence between the two coalition partners. The study's results also show support for an adjustment effect, as respondents became more loyal toward cartels over the course of the 2003–2005 observation period.     

Should I stay or should I go? Explaining variation in nonstate actor advocacy over time in global governance

The past decades have been characterized by a growing number of nonstate actors (NSAs) involved in global governance. However, despite this growth, only a small number of NSAs have been able to maintain a prolonged global presence over a substantial period of time. To explain why some NSAs are more active, we rely on resource dependence theory. We demonstrate that sustained advocacy over time can be explained by a density dependence mechanism, namely the more NSAs mobilize, the lower the chance that individual NSAs will prolong their global advocacy efforts. Analysis of data stemming from a unique data set of 5,627 NSAs active at the global climate conferences demonstrates that much advocacy in this field is indeed of an incidental nature, namely a large number of groups attend once and never return.     

British intelligence and the middle east, 1900–1918: how much do we know?

Primary sources available in British and Israeli archives (first and foremost – the Public Record Office) allow serious study of the British intelligence apparatus in the Middle East and its contribution to the military operations and diplomatic-political process there, prior to and during the First World War. Yet, existing knowledge focuses on military intelligence, as documentation on the Secret Service and the Security Service (both in the form of EMSIB) as well as on army and naval signal intelligence operations in the region is barely available – destroyed or still classified. Examination of hitherto unexplored foreign depositories may serve as an indirect approach to overcome this paucity of material, owing to the close wartime cooperation between British, French, Russian and Italian intelligence on the Ottoman Empire.     

Who am I? How is my Soul Stirred?

The key mythology for landscape and identity today is that of nation. The nation dreams itself, escapes from its sobriety or cruelty, from its banality, in the adulation of national moments. Affect is powerful in these evocations of the international landscape as a level playing field. Nations all have anthems. This paper investigates the evocation of place as home, so as to honour not the unquestioned devotion of patriotism, but rather the interrogation of that devotion and its worthiness. Through personal and particular instances, in this case concerning Australian identity, the ethics of heartscape and soulscape are invoked in the hope that reflection might point us towards ethical alternatives.     

Do consumers know enough to assess the true value of art? A study of beliefs and attitudes toward the NEA

Contemporary society tends to ascribe economic value to works of art, often neglecting the inherent cultural and social value of art in favor of an aesthetically driven conceptualization of “value.” The largest single financial supporter of nonprofit arts and arts education in the United States—the National Endowment of the Arts—is charged with supporting arts of all types, and not just those that the general public decides are of aesthetic or monetary value. This paper compares how the government of the United States funds nonprofit art initiatives through the National Endowment of the Arts, with how members of the American public perceive the importance and value of art being funded. It provides evidence of beliefs held by the general public about the inherent role and value of the arts in contemporary society. It also offers suggestions for how marketing principles and techniques might be engaged to reduce gaps in the public's knowledge about the arts.     

Telling more than they can know? Does the most important issue really reveal what is most important to voters?

Recent British Election Studies have asked respondents to nominate ‘the most important issue’. Responses to this question have been used to explain individual vote decisions and characterise the issue-component of those elections. This paper, however, finds limited evidence that individuals place more weight on those issues that they report as ‘most important’ when they vote. It also finds that aggregate responses to the MII question broadly match the estimated ‘average’ impact of those issues on voters. This suggests that even if voters have a limited understanding of what issues matter to themselves they have some understanding of what makes their fellow voters tick.     

“Because I am who I am and my mother is Scottish”: neoliberal planning and entrepreneurial instincts at Trump International Golf Links Scotland

Focusing on the establishment of the first European Trump Golf development – on the Menie Estate along the Scottish North Sea coast – the paper contends that neoliberal planning, understood as state interventions to allow individual entrepreneurs to realise their visions, reshapes both planning practice and the socio-ecologies governed by planning in problematic ways. Neoliberal mindsets here cause politicians to depart from previously established practices. The paper analyses how governance becomes tied up in questions of entrepreneurial freedom and with beliefs in the capacity of an individual entrepreneur to steer the fate of the region.     

‘I am an American’: protesting advertised ‘Americanness’

How are citizenships and nationalisms constructed, connected, and contested in the post-9/11 USA – performatively, affectively, and visually – and how do their relationships figure ‘Americanness’? This article takes up this question (1) by tracking how Americanness was advertised in the American Ad Council's ‘I am an American’ campaign and (2) by introducing the multimedia project ‘I am an American’: Video Portraits of Unsafe US Citizens, which engages the Ad Council's campaign as a practice-based protest of the Ad Council's advertised ‘Americanness’. The article traces how the Ad Council's campaign advertises what Evelyn Alsultany calls ‘diversity patriotism’. It also constructs a complex, mobile system of differentiation that marks some citizens as ‘safe’ and others as ‘unsafe’, which runs counter to the idealized notion of a unified ‘Americanness’ that it advertises. The article then examines how the practice-based protest project ‘I am an American’ takes these ‘unsafe citizens’ – US citizens who either will not or cannot make their differences normatively conform to the national ideal of the ‘One’ composed of the ‘Many’ propagated by the Ad Council's campaign – as its point of departure to reflect upon how citizenship protests function for and against citizenship, nationalisms, and various figurations of Americanness.     

I’m Not Voting for Her: Polling Discrepancies and Female Candidates

Although there is a large literature on the predictive accuracy of pre-election polls, there is virtually no systematic research examining the role that a candidate’s gender plays in polling accuracy. This is a surprising omission given the precipitous growth of female candidates in recent years. Looking at Senate and Gubernatorial candidates from 1989 to 2008 (more than 200 elections in over 40 states), we analyze the accuracy of pre-election polls for almost the complete universe of female candidates and a matched sample of white male cases. We demonstrate that pre-election polls consistently underestimate support for female candidates when compared to white male candidates. Furthermore, our results indicate that this phenomenon—which we dub the Richards Effect, after Ann Richards of Texas—is more common in states which exhibit traits associated with culturally conservative views of gender issues.     

‘These are your Title I students’: Policy language in educational practice

Based on a qualitative study of the United States federal compensatory education policy, Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, this article uses interpretive policy analysis to investigate the ways in which policy language influences practitioners' understanding of students who are eligible for policy-funded services. Focusing on the situated interpretations of practitioners in nine urban elementary schools, the study shows how policy-generated categories shape practitioners' conceptualizations of students as they determine how to provide services. The aricle considers possible consequences of policy labels on teacher expectations and ends with an appeal for the collective, reflective interrogation of policy language in educational practice.     

Where will I sleep tomorrow? Housing,homelessness, and the returning prisoner

Abstract

This year, over 630,000 prisoners will be released from state and federal prisons across the country—more than four times as many as were released in 1980. In this article, we examine the scope of the prisoner reentry issue—what is known about the intersection of housing, homelessness, and reentry and about the barriers returning prisoners face in securing safe and affordable housing.

Although the housing challenges are formidable, progress is being made on numerous fronts. We seek to frame the dynamics of the reentry housing discussion by highlighting the promising strategies that are emerging. These strategies, taken to scale, could help create a very different national policy on prisoner reentry. Ultimately, effective reentry strategies have the potential not only to reduce re‐arrest and increase public safety, but also to reduce homelessness.     

‘I have so many successful stories’: framing social citizenship for refugees

The current US refugee resettlement system reflects the US government's agenda of having refugees acquire quick employment with low state welfare dependence and minimal fiscal and cultural disruption to the receiving communities. The non-governmental organizations (NGOs) assisting refugees hold broader goals for refugees, including feeling a sense of belonging in the USA. These goals represent a framing of social citizenship rights for refugees, and how NGOs frame social citizenship varies depending upon the NGOs contractual relationship with the US welfare state. Using data from 57 in-depth interviews, I describe how resettlement and assistance NGOs currently frame social citizenship for refugees in relation to market citizenship, and how their relationship with the federal government shapes this framing. Findings illustrate the role of NGOs in creating a discursive space for expanding the social citizenship rights of refugees and the ways such framing is highly constrained by the definitions of belonging that emerge from market citizenship.