Funding for Health and Basic Education Programs for Children and Youth in Southern Africa: An Analysis of a Sample of Grants Made Between 2001 and 2005 By Primarily U.S. Funders

This study examined funding for health and basic education programs for children and youth in ten Southern Africa countries between 2001 and 2005. Included in the study were 41 US funders and two European funders

Constructing Categories, Imagining a Nation: A Critical Qualitative Analysis of Canadian Immigration Discourse

Immigration and population diversity are hot topics in Canadian society. Canadian immigration discourses include widespread debates over the value of immigration to Canada, the structure of the immigration program, and the impact of immigrants with ‘non-Canadian’ traditions and practices on Canadian society. Representations deployed in these discourses operate to socially construct the Canadian nation, and symbolically define immigrants’ place in Canada’s national imagined community. The present thesis elaborates on theoretical understandings of the social construction of the Canadian national community in the contemporary era of international migration by providing a qualitative critical discourse analysis of three types of Canadian immigration discourses: (1) media discourse (focusing on news media coverage of marriage immigrants); (2) policy discourse (addressing materials produced by Citizenship and Immigration Canada); and (3) official measurement of immigrants (in the form of the Longitudinal Survey of Immigrants to Canada and its accompanying analytical reports). The thesis reveals that these dominant immigration discourses serve to co-construct immigrants, Canadians, and the Canadian state in the imagining of the Canadian national community. These representations reveal that contemporary immigration to Canada is a major source of tension and uncertainty. This ambivalence manifests as inconsistent representations of immigrants (in general, and different groups of immigrants, in particular), involving co-existing, contradictory discourses of inclusion, marginalization, and exclusion. These representations inconsistently gender and racialize immigrants, often in the context of immigration categories of admission. These varied representations are interpreted in the thesis in terms of the convergence of historical patterns of discrimination, the growth in immigration from non-European source countries, contemporary national and international concerns (e.g., economic stability; terrorism), and rhetorical pride in Canada as a multicultural nation. Overall, the present study contributes to theoretical work on Canadian immigration and imagined communities by furthering understandings of the various ways in which immigration discourses operate as conceptual spaces wherein what it means to be Canadian is articulated, and the place of immigrants in the Canadian nation is defined and contested

The Youth Labour Market in New Zealand - A Comparison to the Pre-Recession Situation

Historically, youth have difficulties in succeeding in the labour market. They can struggle with successfully making the transition from school to work and securing a decent job. The problem of competing and succeeding in the labour market for youth has worsened since the recession in 2008. This paper describes the labour market performance of youth prior to and after the recession. The suite of labour market indicators for youth – including the youth not in employment, education or training (NEET) indicator – derived from the cross-sectional Household Labour Force Survey is used to describe and analyse changes before and after 2008. The description is complemented by highlighting significant risk factors in the youth labour market. The overview of the New Zealand youth labour market together with the odds ratio analysis provides an understanding of the changing labour market situation for youth as well as an insight into which sections of youth particularly struggle in the labour market

Labour Underutilisation in New Zealand

The purpose of this paper is to introduce a preliminary measure of labour underutilisation in New Zealand using data from the Household Labour Force Survey (HLFS). Underutilisation measures add value to the suite of labour market indicators already available from the HLFS. In particular, the underutilisation rate complements the unemployment rate by providing a broader picture of unmet demand for paid employment in New Zealand. The concept of underutilisation and the necessity to measure underutilisation is based on recommendations of an International Labour Organization (ILO) Working Group on Underutilisation made in 2008. The Working Group recommended that ‘... the statistical community should devote serious efforts to introduce, at a par with unemployment, a supplementary concept which measures the employment problem as experienced by individual workers.’ The development of underutilisation measures is also important to mirror changes in increasingly transitional labour markets and to enable analysis and evaluation of these changes

Deconstructing Media in the College Classroom: A Longitudinal Critical Media Literacy Intervention

While many studies have addressed the impact of media literacy interventions on knowledge of specific topic areas, few have explored improvements in media literacy skills as outcome measures. This study analyzed the impact of a media literacy intervention on participants’ critical thinking skills and understanding of media literacy principles by addressing the topics of body image and media representations of gender and race. A two-group, longitudinal experimental design was implemented using college-aged student participants across multiple course sections (n = 198) at a public university in the southeast. Results were significant for several media literacy measures for the treatment group after exposure to the intervention compared to the control group. These findings were persistent over the duration of the semester as demonstrated in the second posttest

Rosa rugosa as an Invader of Coastal Sand Dunes of Cape Breton Island and Mainland of Nova Scotia

Rosa rugosa is described for the first time as an invasive species associated with coastal sand dunes in Atlantic Canada. Our surveys of 24 beaches on western Cape Breton Island and the mainland of northern Nova Scotia from Cheticamp to Fox Harbour showed that 11 of the dune systems (ca. 45%) were colonized. This was more prevalent in Cape Breton where R. rugosa occurred on 9 of 13 systems, whereas only 2 of 9 mainland systems were colonized. Four dunes (three in Cape Breton) were considered heavily colonized with 0.4 - 8.8% of the dune area with cover of R. rugosa. These beaches had 12 - 42 independent clumps with almost monospecific stands over 90% cover. In general, heavily colonized beaches were found adjacent to communities where extensive domestic planting and hedges of R. rugosa occurred and where escapes onto roadsides had occurred. In most colonized beach systems, rhizomes from clones extended 1 - 5 m to produce younger shoots. The absence of Ammophila breviligulata, Lathyrus maritimus and Myrica pensylvanica, from the interior of many clumps of R. rugosa suggests that native dune communities are being negatively impacted. This exacerbates dune integrity already compromised by impacts of sea level rise