Inter-Agency Cooperation to Raise Awareness on Human Trafficking in Vietnam: Good Practices and Challenges

Awareness-raising tactics are arguably the first priority in the prevention strategies in Vietnam at present. Awareness-raising campaigns are implemented through two kinds of communication methods: community-based activities and mass media. Although anti-trafficking activities in Vietnam have achieved some successful results, recent evidence suggests that a lack of clear progress in the areas of trafficking awareness-raising still remains. The quality and extent of collaboration between authorised agencies are key factors in anti-trafficking activities, including raising awareness on human trafficking. However, to date, there has been no systematic research on inter-agency cooperation in awareness-raising activities in Vietnam. This paper first reviews the nature of human trafficking and legal framework on raising trafficking awareness in Vietnam. The paper then presents successes and challenges of current inter-agency collaborative activities undertaken to implement the awareness-raising strategies.     

Do Natural Disasters Open a Window of Opportunity for Corruption?

This study explores the link between natural disasters and corruption at the local government level. We examine whether a natural disaster affects official households more favourably than non-official households. We find that natural disasters decrease nonofficial household expenditures significantly, however, they have negligible effect on official household expenditures. Meanwhile, both kinds of households experience similar reduction in incomes, and have much the same disaster coping strategies. Together, the results imply that local officials may receive unobserved monetary compensation – we define as corruption – in the aftermath of natural disasters.     

The Effects of a Housing Mobility Experiment on Participants’ Residential Environments

We used the Moving to Opportunity (MTO) housing experiment to inform how Housing Choice Vouchers and housing mobility policies can assist families living in high-poverty areas to make opportunity moves to higher quality neighborhoods, across a wide range of neighborhood attributes. We compared the neighborhood attainment of the three randomly assigned MTO treatment groups (low-poverty voucher, Section 8 voucher, control group) at 1997 and 2002 locations (4–7 years after baseline), using survey reports, and by linking residential histories to numerous different administrative and population-based data sets. Compared with controls, families in low-poverty and Section 8 groups experienced substantial improvements in neighborhood conditions across diverse measures, including economic conditions, social systems (e.g., collective efficacy), physical features of the environment (e.g., tree cover) and health outcomes. The low-poverty voucher group, moreover, achieved better neighborhood attainment compared with Section 8. Treatment effects were largest for New York, New York, and Los Angeles, California. We discuss the implications of our findings for expanding affordable housing policy.     

Coping with Precariousness: How Social Insurance Law Shapes Workers' Survival Strategies in Vietnam

This article examines the role of social insurance law in the survival strategies of factory workers in Vietnam, especially when they are faced with pressing family needs and an uncertain future. Despite the official discourse of the law which encourages employees to accumulate social insurance for their pension benefits, workers in this study have considered their social insurance fund as a form of saving and opted to gain early access to it when they are in desperate need of money. Workers understand and use the law in a way that answers to their needs; however, such action simultaneously puts them outside the protection of the law. In workers' daily struggles, law generates a moral tension between rights and needs, and ultimately perpetuates their precarious, vulnerable condition. The article demonstrates how workers' legal consciousness varies according to their perception of their precariousness, a precariousness generated by the fragile nature of their work and underpinned by their traditional familial moral obligations. This research advances our understanding of the way state law in postsocialist regimes informs social action and consciousness in ways that oftentimes contradict the spirit of the law.     

Rural-urban migration in Vietnam and China: gendered householding,production of space and the state

The transition from state socialism to market socialism in Vietnam and China has been characterized by unprecedented rural-urban migration. We argue that this migration is integral rather than incidental to the gendered reproduction of state and society. A review of the emerging literature on trans-local householding explores the process whereby the reflexive engagement of the state and the household remakes rural-urban differentiation in ways that are deeply gendered and classed. As such, state regulation and control of migrants are part of a process of reconfiguring state-society relations in which the production of space and the symbolic valuation of ruralness and urbanness have become a central trope.     

Does the Cost‐Cutting Strategy of Closing Public Schools Provide Financial Benefits? Evidence From Ohio

From 1995 through 2014, 15 percent of school districts nationwide closed at least one school without opening any new school. Although budgetary constraints have been claimed as a major reason to close a public school, no empirical study has examined the financial benefits of school closures. This study finds that Ohio school closures reduce an average district's total operating expenditures by $278–$285 per pupil, and that savings come primarily from cuts in classroom instructional services, including teachers. This study provides empirical evidence on the financial implications of school closings needed for stakeholders involved in a school closing process.     

The Vietnam Women's Movement for the Right to Live: a non-communist opposition movement to the American war in Vietnam

This article examines the political and diplomatic struggles in urban South Vietnam from the perspective of women in the Vietnamese Women’s Movement for the Right to Live (WRL) during the Vietnam War. This movement was a timely response to the American war of aggression, which had destroyed the fabric of South Vietnamese society and drastically diminished women’s position within it by 1970. Under the leadership of Mrs. Ngô Bá Thành, the WRL fought for peace and women’s liberation through political action and shrewd diplomacy. Unlike female guerrilla fighters, the WRL maintained political autonomy and neutrality throughout the conflict. As a result, it was violently repressed by the Saigon government and quickly disbanded after the communist victory in 1975. Nevertheless, studying these politically sophisticated women’s anti-war efforts is crucial to understanding the symbiotic yet destructive relationship between Third World women and American imperialism during the twentieth century. It also helps dismantle essentialist assumptions about Asian women as inherently submissive and politically naïve. The WRL is a sterling example of Vietnamese women’s ingenuity in their dual struggle for national liberation and gender equality.     

GEORGE W. BUSH AND ASIA: IN THE SHADOW OF 11 SEPTEMBER

Traditionally seen as a President consumed by the war on terror, George W. Bush is frequently portrayed as being relatively uninterested in Asia, and unable to outline a vision or a strategy to China, America’s Asian allies and Asian multilateral mechanisms. This article will revisit Bush’s policy on Asia and show a president who guided the United States with a policy that balanced the need to combat global terrorism and locate a focus on Asia. He faced the dilemmas of building cooperative relations with a rising China while trying to foster American alliances and partnerships in Asia, and managing the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Utilizing qualitative content analysis as the main research method, the article will demonstrate that the Bush administration had not a lack of focus on Asia and that Bush’s diplomacy to Asia should be recognized as one of the most significant achievements of his presidency.     

Regulating balance sheet audit: A game theoretical analysis

Summary  The decision situation implicit to balance sheet audit is modelled as a game theoretical model and examined for its behavioural implications. Possible types of decisions are identified as Nash equilibria. The basic game model is characterized by an equilibrium in mixed strategies. Its properties are discussed in detail with respect to alternative scenarios of statutory audit. The regulatory propositions of separation between audit and consulting, on the one hand, and the rotation of auditors, on the other, are analyzed in the context of the game. It turns out that these measures may have contradictory effects on the quality of the balance sheet audit and it depends on the specification of regulatory details and the reaction of the agents whether the one or the other effect dominates in the end. Another proposition to enhance the audit performance is the extension of the liability of statutory auditors. Prerequisites for the success of this measure are that either no professional liability insurance exists or that, if otherwise, deductibles are calculated as a fixed percentage of the loss. The examples refer to German legal rules, however, similar legal rules are valid for most of the developed market economies.