Subjective Social Status,Immigrant Generation,and Cannabis and Alcohol Use Among Adolescents

Research indicates that subjective perceptions of socioeconomic status (SES) affect aspects of health and behavior. There has been little research attention to how objective (e.g., education) and subjective aspects of SES may differ in their influence on the substance use of adolescent immigrants. The present study examined whether the associations between subjective SES and substance use, and between parental education and substance use varied by immigrant generation. Data were derived from the 2011 Ontario Student Drug Use and Health Survey, a representative survey of students in the 7th to 12th grade. The sample for this study consisted of 9177 students 12–19 years of age; 48.4 % were female, 66.4 % were White/European, 5.2 % Black/Afro-Caribbean, 16.4 % Asian and 12 % other. Results indicated that subjective SES was more strongly associated with cannabis and alcohol use among first-generation immigrants than among adolescents of other immigrant generations even after adjusting for parental education. First-generation immigrants with low subjective SES had a lower probability of cannabis and regular alcohol use, but there was no difference in use between immigrant generations at high subjective SES. The associations between parental education and cannabis and alcohol use did not significantly vary with immigrant generation. The findings highlight the importance of status beliefs among adolescents, particularly among first-generation immigrants, and suggest that further research attention to such beliefs would enhance our understanding of SES and its links to adolescent health risk behaviors.     

The Pivotal Role of Adolescent Autonomy in Secondary School Classrooms

Student engagement is an important contributor to school success, yet high school students routinely describe themselves as disengaged. Identifying factors that alter (increase) engagement is a key aspect of improving support for student achievement. This study investigated students’ perceptions of autonomy, teacher connection, and academic competence as predictors of changes in student engagement within the classroom from the start to the end of a course. Participants were 578 (58% female) diverse (67.8% White, 25.2% African American, 5.1% Hispanic, 1.2% Asian American) high school students from 34 classrooms who provided questionnaire data both at the start and the end of a single course. Novel results from a cross-lagged model demonstrated that students who perceived their classrooms as allowing and encouraging their own autonomy in the first few weeks increased their engagement throughout the course, rather than the typical decline in engagement that was demonstrated by students in other classrooms. This finding is unique in that it extended to both students’ perceptions of engagement and observations of student engagement, suggesting a fairly robust pattern. The pertinence of this finding to adolescent developmental needs and its relationship to educational practice is discussed.     

Sexual Orientation, Partnership Formation, and Substance Use in the Transition to Adulthood

Evidence suggests that lesbian and gay young adults use substances more frequently than their heterosexual peers. Based on the life course perspective, we argue that this difference may be due to the unavailability of marriage as a turning point in the lives of lesbian/gay young adults. We use data from a nationally representative sample of youth (N = 13,581, 52.4% female, 68.6% white, ages 18—26) to examine sexual orientation differences in substance use and explore whether these differences vary by romantic partnership formation in young adulthood. We find that the formation of more serious partnerships (e.g., cohabitation, marriage) is associated with less frequent substance use among heterosexual young adults, though this pattern does not hold for lesbian and gay young adults. We conclude that the partnership options available to lesbians and gay men do not provide the same health-protective benefits that marriage does for heterosexuals.     

The Road to Pergau Dam: Aid Policy,Ideology, and the Thatcher Government

This analysis charts the changes in British aid policy under the Margaret Thatcher government (1979–1990). In particular, it examines the impact of so-called neo-liberal ideology in overseas development strategy in an era where “structural adjustment”—aid in return for market-based reforms—became World Bank and International Monetary Fund orthodoxy. There is some evidence to show British increases in multilateral aid during the 1980s supported a neo-liberal aid policy. Bilateral aid policy, however, demonstrated a subordination of aid to foreign policy and a pro-business—not ideologically pro-market or neo-liberal—alignment. One of the results of these structural changes was the Pergau Dam scandal at the end of the Thatcher years.     

The Relational Dynamics of World Bank Survey Missions

This article demonstrates that World Bank internal learning has led to significant changes in how the organization interacts with government officials through survey missions. Reviewing evidence of institutional learning and associated changes in practice and focusing on the relational modes being manifest in technical assistance, the article identifies three main phases of World Bank survey missions: general survey missions (1940s–1960s), country assistance strategies (1990s–2000s), and country partnership frameworks (2010s). Overall, World Bank reviews have repeatedly highlighted the importance of non-hierarchical interactions between Bank staff and country officials. In recent years, practice has begun to catch up with these operational insights.     

Public Service Motivation Scholarship in Africa: A Systematic Review and Research Agenda

Although several literature reviews have been published on public service motivation (PSM), none of them focused solely on Africa. Adopting a systematic review of the literature, we analyse articles on PSM scholarship in Africa published between 2005 and 2017. We found that authors in African PSM is consistently increasing with their research published in highly ranked peer-reviewed journals. The antecedents and consequences of African PSM are similar to those of Western countries. Finally, respondents of African PSM scholarship are skewed towards “managerist” and students’ perspective. We proposed agenda for African PSM research with four key interest areas.     

Flesh of the Same Flesh: A Study of Voters for the Alternative for Germany (AfD) in the 2017 Federal Election

Using the 2017 post-election German Longitudinal Election Study (GLES), this article examines the voters for the Alternative for Germany (AfD) in the 2017 German federal election. We show that AfD voters in 2017 were truly ‘flesh of the same flesh’ of the mainstream German political parties, with the AfD drawing its voters from across the political party spectrum as well as from previous non-voters in 2013. In contrast to previous scholarship, we find that in most respects AfD voters in 2017 did not differ demographically from voters for all other parties, be that in terms of gender, education, employment status, and union membership. Furthermore, we find that AfD voters were not driven by anxiety about their own economic situation: they are no ‘losers of globalisation.’ Instead, AfD voters in 2017 were driven solely by two factors: their attitudes towards immigrants/refugees and anti-establishment sentiment/satisfaction with democracy in Germany.     

Vladimir Iowa Lenin,Part 2: On Rural Proletarianization and an Alternate Food Future

In the second of our two-part review of Vladimir Lenin’s 1917 study of American agriculture, we extrapolate upon Alexander Chayanov’s neoliberal appropriation, Giovanni Arrighi’s treatment of partial proletarianization, the propagandistic “family farm,” agribusiness’s fluctuating territorial embeddedness, agriculture as an industry, and land and rent as commodities themselves. We finish by deploying Lenin’s alternate history as a Benjaminian détournement in the face of what now appear insurmountable obstacles. An alternate food future is not only possible, it is already underway.     

Can governments use Get Out The Vote letters to solve Europe’s turnout crisis? Evidence from a field experiment

Declining levels of turnout are a problem in European elections. Are Get Out The Vote campaigns the solution to the problem? While many studies have investigated such campaigns in the US, little is known about their effect in Europe. The article presents a field experiment in which encouragement to vote in an upcoming Danish election is delivered to more than 60,000 first-time voters using direct personal letters. Eight different letters are designed, based on the calculus of voting and prospect theory. The sample is randomly divided into treatment groups or the control group. Using validated turnout, small positive effects of receiving a letter on turnout are found, with little difference across letters. The letters mostly mobilised voters with a low propensity to vote and thus increased equality in participation. In sum, while letters have some effect, they are not likely to be a panacea for solving Europe’s turnout challenges.