The life-course demography of convict transportation to Van Diemen’s Land

ABSTRACT

This paper reports on a sample of 16,953 male and 7,783 female convicts transported to Van Diemen’s Land between 1818 and 1853 whose life courses have been reconstructed as much as possible from cradle to grave to explore the effects of critical life stages and the impact of a shared exposure to a stress regime of penal servitude, forced labour and exile. It uses survival and family formation of a lineage as the key measures of life outcomes. It finds that male convicts, while not producing many descendants because of sex imbalances, did well biologically out of being transported, while female convicts, entering servitude under a greater burden of previous abuse and deprivation, continued to suffer a severe gender penalty in survival and significant secondary infertility after sentence. Early life effects from the social environment, or crime economy, into which men were born remained remarkably persistent, while the previous history of prostitution and/or alcohol abuse dramatically shortened the lives of women. These were the embodied effects, over generations, of structural violence against women in the most deprived and dangerous neighbourhoods of from the late-eighteenth century through to the 1840s in Great Britain and Ireland, and transported with them to the Australian colonies.     

Beyond Truth and Integrity in State Budgeting: Why State Governments Use Budget Balancing Maneuvers (or Gimmicks)?

This study investigates the influence of political, structural, economic, and other factors on state governments’ use of maneuvers to balance budgets and eliminate deficits from FY 15 to FY 18. Budget maneuvers are unsound and nonsustainable strategies, such as using borrowed funds to finance operations and underfunding pensions. These practices were documented and graded by The Volcker Alliance for all states and years in collaboration with faculty and students at multiple universities. Consistent with prior research that uses an adaptation framework to explain the strategies government officials use to balance budgets, this research finds that state financial condition has the strongest effect or one of the strongest effects on states’ use of such budget gimmicks.     

Feasibility and Acceptability of an Impact of Crime Group Intervention with Jail Inmates

The current study evaluated the feasibility and acceptability of a manualized Impact of Crime (IOC) group intervention implemented with male inmates (N = 108) at a county jail. Facilitator adherence to the intervention and participant attendance, homework completion, and feedback were assessed. On average facilitators covered 93.7% of each manual topic. Victim speaker recruitment was a challenge—43.5% of relevant sessions lacked victim speakers. Findings suggested significant participant engagement—67.3% attended at least 75% of sessions and 93.3% of homework assignments were submitted on time. Overall, participants indicated satisfaction with the intervention. Successful strategies, challenges, and potential enhancements are discussed.     

Strategies to Address Weight-Based Victimization: Youths’ Preferred Support Interventions from Classmates,Teachers, and Parents

Weight-Based Victimization is a frequent experience for adolescents who are overweight or obese, and is associated with numerous psychosocial and physical consequences for those who are targets of victimization. Assessing targets` preferences for different types of support and intervention has been absent in the context of weight-based victimization, but is needed to help inform potential interventions, motivate action, and identify strategies to help adolescents cope with experiences of weight-related teasing or bullying. Adolescents (14–18 years, N = 361, 40 % female, 71 % Caucasian) enrolled in national weight-loss camps completed an on-line survey. Participants who reported previous experiences of weight-based victimization were surveyed about their preferred interventions from peers, friends, teachers, Physical Education (PE) teachers/coaches, and parents. Participants indicated their preferences for specific strategies pertaining to target support, bullying intervention and prevention (e.g., inclusion in peer activities, confronting the bully, telling an adult, and improving anti-bullying policies). Friends (66 %) and peers (58 %) were the most highly preferred intervention agents followed by teachers (55 %), PE teachers/coaches (44 %), and parents (43 %). Participants who experienced more weight-based victimization expressed increased desire for intervention. The frequency of victimization, social support from friends and family, and perceived likelihood and helpfulness of intervention significantly influenced participant preferences for certain types of intervention, although preferences were generally consistent across participants’ characteristics. The current study is the first to document youth’s preferences for interventions in response to weight-based victimization. The findings have important implications for encouraging appropriate intervention and informing bystanders, which may help to reduce the prevalence, recurrence, and consequences for youth who are targets of weight-based teasing or bullying.     

Mexican Origin Youths’ Trajectories of Perceived Peer Discrimination from Middle Childhood to Adolescence: Variation by Neighborhood Ethnic Concentration

Developmentally salient research on perceived peer discrimination among minority youths is limited. Little is known about trajectories of perceived peer discrimination across the developmental period ranging from middle childhood to adolescence. Ethically concentrated neighborhoods are hypothesized to protect minority youths from discrimination, but strong empirical tests are lacking. The first aim of the current study was to estimate trajectories of perceived peer discrimination from middle childhood to adolescence, as youths transitioned from elementary to middle and to high school. The second aim was to examine the relationship between neighborhood ethnic concentration and perceived peer discrimination over time. Using a diverse sample of 749 Mexican origin youths (48.9 % female), a series of growth models revealed that youths born in Mexico, relative to those born in the U.S., perceived higher discrimination in the 5th grade and decreases across time. Youths who had higher averages on neighborhood ethnic concentration (across the developmental period) experienced decreases in perceived peer discrimination over time; those that had lower average neighborhood ethnic concentration levels showed evidence of increasing trajectories. Further, when individuals experienced increases in their own neighborhood ethnic concentration levels (relative to their own cross-time averages), they reported lower levels of perceived peer discrimination. Neighborhood ethnic concentration findings were not explained by the concurrent changes youths were experiencing in school ethnic concentrations. The results support a culturally-informed developmental view of perceived peer discrimination that recognizes variability in co-ethnic neighborhood contexts. The results advance a view of ethnic enclaves as protective from mainstream threats.     

Playing in the sandbox: state building in the space of non-recognition

For unrecognised states in the international system recognition of sovereign statehood is the ultimate goal. Not being ‘a state’ means being excluded from global networks. However, even in the most basic definitions and criteria for unrecognised states there is a period of relative autonomy accorded due to non-recognition. This is a period when political actors can use isolation to establish the state’s narrative, identity and structure. It is this period that provides the foundations for external interaction. It is in this period that the state is born. This article examines another side to the politics of recognition: the politics of non-recognition. Drawing on the contemporary examples of Somaliland and Kurdistan, the article assesses the benefits as well as the costs of non-recognition.     

Resource Wealth,Democracy and Mobilisation

The impact of resource wealth on society remains highly contested in the literature. Some perspectives suggest that resource wealth is associated with political apathy, while others indicate that resource wealth fosters violent civil conflicts. We leverage these seemingly contradictory impacts of natural resources on society by expanding the scope of inquiry to explore different types of resource wealth (oil and minerals) as well as other dimensions of political life (protest). Utilising a global dataset for the period 1950–2006, we test the impact of resource wealth on mobilisation. We find that while oil wealth demobilises citizens in all regime types, mineral wealth strongly correlates with higher levels of mobilisation in democracies, though not in autocracies. In addition, using survey data, we examine individual-level attitudes toward protest participation in two resource-rich states, Peru and Ecuador. The results indicate that an individual living in a mineral-rich country like Peru is more likely to participate in a protest compared to an individual living in an oil-rich country like Ecuador. Our findings highlight the contributions of the resource activism framework for understanding the connection between natural resources and mobilisation.     

Women,information ecology,and political protest in the Middle East

Does internet usage increase the likelihood of political protest, and is the effect larger among women than men? Using data from three waves of the Arab Barometer Survey, historical research and interviews with women activists, this paper contributes to the growing body of literature on information ecology and contentious politics in the Middle East. We hypothesized that the internet increases public protest for all individuals but differentially enhances women’s involvement in public protest in the Middle East. We find that there are substantial gender gaps in internet usage and political protest, and that internet usage increases political protest of adults, on average, regardless of gender. However, internet usage does not differentially increase public protest among women (including during the Arab Spring). Our paper problematizes the notion that the internet is a low-cost and safe space for women’s political activism.