Subjective Invulnerability,Optimism Bias and Adjustment in Emerging Adulthood

The relationship between subjective invulnerability and optimism bias in risk appraisal, and their comparative association with indices of risk activity, substance use and college adjustment problems was assessed in a sample of 350 (M _age = 20.17; 73% female; 93% White/European American) emerging adults. Subjective invulnerability was measured with the newly devised adolescent invulnerability scale (AIS). Optimism bias in decision-making was assessed with a standard comparative-conditional risk appraisal task. Results showed that the danger- and psychological invulnerability subscales of the AIS demonstrated strong internal consistency and evidence of predictive validity. Subjective invulnerability and optimism bias were also shown to be empirically distinct constructs with differential ability to predict risk and adjustment. Danger invulnerability and psychological invulnerability were more pervasively associated with risk behavior than was optimism bias; and psychological invulnerability counter-indicated depression, self-esteem and interpersonal problems. Results support recent claims regarding the “two faces” of adolescent invulnerability. Implications for future research are drawn.     

‘Illegal Migrants’, Gender and Vulnerability: The Case of the EU’s Returns Directive

Feminist legal efforts to make sense of the external migration policies of the European Union (EU) have focused almost exclusively on the EU’s initiatives against trafficking in women. This article examines one of the more neglected areas of EU immigration policy—the return of ‘illegal immigrants’. It analyses the so-called 2008 Returns Directive in the light of the multidimensional inequalities experienced by migrant women, which affect their migration status and expose some of them to the threat of removal. Owing to insecurities over external migration, the Directive constructs even the most vulnerable migrants as a threat to be controlled and is likely to result in detrimental consequences for many migrants, and in particular already vulnerable women who are likely to be further disadvantaged by it.     

Thoreau in the 21<Superscript>st</Superscript> Century

Laura Dassow Walls’s superb biography of Henry David Thoreau is the most important study of this author thus far in the twenty-first century. Beautifully written, and packed with rich detail and subtle interpretation, Walls’s book teaches us much that is new about Thoreau and, furthermore, prompts us to think more deeply about and reassess this complex person and challenging writer—a writer whose range and mass of published and unpublished work, produced during his all too brief life (he died at age 44), is astounding. Thoreau is an inspiring radical voice for personal change and social reform, yet he is, at the same time, extremely self-centered and highly skeptical about the capacity of readers and audiences to bring about the transformations that he advocates.     

On Jordan Peterson,Postmodernism, and PoMo-Bashing

Jordan Peterson says that postmodernists say no interpretation is better than another. I would no sooner identify Peterson’s adversaries as those who have been misled by “postmodernism” than I would identify them as misled by “sustainability,” “diversity,” “multiculturalism,” or “intersectionality.” Such fare is mainly symptomatic. “Postmodern” invocations are often like “sustainability” invocations: inessential. This piece is not a defense of postmodernism. It is a critique of PoMo-bashing.