Community Stakeholder Perspectives Around the Strengths and Needs of Unaccompanied Immigrant Minors

Unaccompanied immigrant minors (UIM) are youth who lack lawful immigration status and who are without a parent or guardian in the U.S. who can provide custody and care. By all accounts, UIM experience stressful and traumatic circumstances before, during and postmigration. Most UIM left their home countries due to economic stagnation, poverty, crime and gang-related violence (Kandel et al., 2014); almost half described fleeing societal violence and one in five described experiencing domestic abuse (UNHCR, 2014). During migration, UIM are vulnerable to human trafficking, kidnapping, and other abuses (Kandel et al., 2014). Upon resettlement, UIM sometimes experience extended stays in detention centers, community violence exposure in resettlement areas, and an uncertain future in the U.S., all without family support to buffer these stressors (Alvarez & Alegria, 2016). Not surprisingly, UIM are at increased risk for mental health problems compared to accompanied immigrant youth (Derluyn & Broekaert, 2008; Huemer et al., 2009). Research on protective factors is emerging, but scarce.This presentation describes community stakeholder perspectives around the strengths and needs of UIM. Stakeholders include academic researchers with experience working with UIM; key decision makers in agencies serving UIM; professionals with insider knowledge (e.g., immigration attorneys, psychologists with expertise in asylum evaluations); and community members participating in immigrant-focused coalitions. Stakeholder interviews identified significant need for support for UIM. They noted that UIM need emotional support before, during and after legal interviews when youth must recount traumatic events. Families need support during periods of separations and reunions, which can lead to uncertainty and unanticipated conflict, and foster families sponsoring UIM need parenting support for raising children facing difficult circumstances. Stakeholders also noted role conflicts that arise when simultaneously addressing the legal and mental health needs of UIM and the emotional toll that this work takes on professionals serving UIM

Is a Theory of the Problem Sufficient for a Theory of the Solution? Negotiating Tensions among Research, Practice, Advocacy and Activism in Serving Immigrant Communities

The lives of members of immigrant communities are inevitably shaped by U.S. laws, rapidly-shifting immigration policy, institutional policies and practices (e.g., in schools), and how immigrants are welcomed (or not) by members of host communities (Portes & Rumbaut, 2001). These and other aspects of the context of reception have important implications for immigrant integration, education and employment, and mental health. Accordingly, there have been significant calls for psychologists to take active roles in advocacy and activism, which resonates deeply with many of us. Roundtable organizers are community psychologists working with immigrant communities and seeking to negotiate the tensions that can arise at the intersections of research, practice, advocacy and activism. For example: • APA’s Toolkit for Local Advocacy defines advocacy as sharing information within a system with the assumption that the information will help the system respond effectively; activism, on the other hand, is more likely to indict systems perceived as unjust, perhaps from the outside. How does one choose between--or balance--advocacy and activism? What are the advantages and disadvantages of each for trying to solve specific problems in different contexts? • How does one balance social science and research goals that presumably could provide valuable information in working with immigrant communities with advocacy and activism goals? Can we have one without the other, and if so, should we? • If we integrate these roles, do we run the risk of being perceived as less objective on one hand and less invested in communities (or complicit in injustice) on the other? • Is a theory of the problem sufficient for a theory of the solution? Is it possible to move from problems to solutions without the insight and influence that insiders can provide? Participants will share the (imperfect) ways they have balanced research, practice, advocacy and activism in their work

Proceedings of the 50th Annual Adult Education Research Conference

This document contains the full text proceedings of the Adult Education Research Conference (AERC) held at National-Louis University in May 2009

Confronting Discrimination and Inequality in China

Confronting Discrimination and Inequality in China focuses on the most challenging areas of discrimination and inequality in China, including discrimination faced by HIV/AIDS afflicted individuals, rural populations, migrant workers, women, people with disabilities, and ethnic minorities. The Canadian contributors offer rich regional, national, and international perspectives on how constitutions, laws, policies, and practices, both in Canada and in other parts of the world, battle discrimination and the conflicts that rise out of it. The Chinese contributors include some of the most independent-minded scholars and practitioners in China. Their assessments of the challenges facing China in the areas of discrimination and inequality not only attest to their personal courage and intellectual freedom but also add an important perspective on this emerging superpower

Background Examples of Literature Searches on Topics of Interest

A zip file of various literature searches & some resources related to our work related to exposure after the Chernobyl accident and as we began looking at helping in Semey Kazakhstan----a collection of literature reviews on various topics we were interested in... eg. establishing a registry of those exposed for longterm follow-up, what we knew about certain areas like genetics and some resources like A Guide to Environmental Resources on the Internet by Carol Briggs-Erickson and Toni Murphy which could be found on the Internet and was written to be used by researchers, environmentalists, teachers and any person who is interested in knowing and doing something about the health of our planet. See more at https://archives.library.tmc.edu/dm-ms211-012-0060

Confronting Discrimination and Inequality in China

Confronting Discrimination and Inequality in China focuses on the most challenging areas of discrimination and inequality in China, including discrimination faced by HIV/AIDS afflicted individuals, rural populations, migrant workers, women, people with disabilities, and ethnic minorities. The Canadian contributors offer rich regional, national, and international perspectives on how constitutions, laws, policies, and practices, both in Canada and in other parts of the world, battle discrimination and the conflicts that rise out of it. The Chinese contributors include some of the most independent-minded scholars and practitioners in China. Their assessments of the challenges facing China in the areas of discrimination and inequality not only attest to their personal courage and intellectual freedom but also add an important perspective on this emerging superpower

The Radical Relationality of Complex Partnerships: Community-Member Experiences in Critical Community-Based Learning

Through a radical relationality within the social-ecological systems that sustain us, critical community-based learning (CBL) in higher education offers a praxis for engaging the demanding pedagogical and community challenges we face. When CBL is implemented as both a critical and sustainability pedagogy, as a strategy for social change, the relationships created by CBL partnerships have the potential to generate transformational outcomes for all partnership agents. Using a critical complexity theoretical framework, a bricolage of complexity science and critical theory, this critical qualitative study sought to understand the systemic patterns and behaviors of a community-based learning partnership by elevating community-member voices. Situated within a CBL partnership engaged with the Capstone Program at Portland State University, this study\u27s methods included dialogical engagement with CBL community-members, university Capstone students, and partnership leaders in reflexive focus groups, and ethnographic participant-observation. The results revealed the primacy and centrality of relationships in the CBL partnership. Further, three emergent outcomes for partnership agents were generated by partnership relationality, including: emergent identity development, ethical agency, and a dynamism of belonging and alienation. These emergent agent outcomes across all stakeholder groups were influenced by four key factors: the dynamism of the partnership system, place as a partnership agent, information sharing, the cultivation of relational awareness. The strategies suggested by this study’s findings attempt to (re)orient the field of community-based learning towards the complexity of our CBL partnerships, encouraging a radical relational paradigm shift in the partnership work happening between universities and their communities

Workplace health and safety in the Australia coal mining industry: mistrust, management and regulation

Over the last 10 to 15 years, Australian coal mining companies have implemented sophisticated management systems designed to substantially improve workplace heath and safety (WHS). This has led to a distinctive WHS ‘architecture’ across the industry, and has coincided with steadily declining fatality and injury rates. In conjunction with these developments, government regulators have progressively modified the external regulatory framework. In particular, new forms of regulation have shifted away from prescription towards ‘management-based’ initiatives. The expectation is that companies will go ‘beyond compliance’ to achieve WHS improvements greater than that required by law. The combination of internal company WHS architecture and external managementbased regulation has coincided with substantial improvements in WHS outcomes across the Australian coal mining industry. Since the mid 1990s, fatalities have fallen substantially, along with other recorded injuries. However, in the last few years it appears that these earlier gains have not been sustained. Further, WHS outcomes vary widely between individual mine sites of the same company. Against this backdrop, the thesis addresses two overriding research questions. First, what factors have hindered the continued and consistent improvement in WHS outcomes across mine sites? Second, and from a normative perspective, what policies and strategies may be employed to overcome such factors? In answering these questions, the thesis addresses several inter-related themes, namely: the implementation of corporate-wide WHS management systems; the role of culture, especially mistrust, in influencing the operation of such internal WHS management systems; the role of mistrust in undermining the operation of external regulation, including management-based regulation; the tendency of WHS codes of practice to be used as a form of creeping prescription; and the competencies, capacities and enforcement strategies of WHS regulatory agencies. The thesis draws on interview-based fieldwork, desktop research and literature reviews competed between 2007 and 2012. Face-to-face interviews were conducted at three Australian coal-mining companies, as well as with regulatory officials across Australia and officials from national and state mining industry associations and trade unions. In addition, phone-based interviews were conducted with WHS management from over 20 metalliferous and coal mining companies. The thesis also draws on a range of safety statistics, both from the public domain and internal company records. Finally, interviews and statistical data were supplemented by reviews of both the domestic and international literature. The thesis’ findings suggest that WHS management systems may be, to a considerable extent, subservient to the culture into which they are received. And high levels of organisational mistrust, in particular, are more prevalent in those mine sites that appear to have resisted most strongly the imposition of corporate wide WHS management systems and standards. Beyond internal culture, the tools, behaviour and attitudes of mining inspectorates also influence WHS behaviour and outcomes. As such, the thesis considers how mining inspectorates should interact with mining companies in seeking to enforce WHS compliance, what inspectoral competencies, characteristics and behaviours should they possess, and what enforcement guidelines should they operate under. In this respect, the findings of the thesis may resonate beyond the Australian coal mining industry