Professional cricket migrants 'going Down Under': temporary, skilled, international migration?

The significance of flows of temporary, skilled labour migrants under conditions of globalization is widely acknowledged. Using a case study of elite cricket professionals moving from the UK to Australia for a maximum duration of 6 months, out and return migration flows and processes are examined. In doing so, this thesis exposes migration motives, notably in relation to career progression and personal development, and the processes and regulations that control temporary sojourns. Furthermore, the discussion reveals important social, cultural, economic and familial impacts of undertaking temporary, skilled, international migration. Using this case study of a sport-led migration, a largely under-researched occupational sector in migration studies, a number of theoretical, conceptual and empirical contributions are provided, which advance knowledge of skilled, international migration. First, utilising Bourdieu's (1986) notions of capital as an analytical framework, the comparative importance of migration motives are emphasised. Second, it is shown that migration can be viewed as a normalised aspect of a skilled worker's career trajectory, and that desired outcomes can be achieved during increasingly temporary stays overseas. Third, a three phase model of the migration flow is adopted to enable the development of professionalization and migration within cricket to be examined. It is asserted that cricket, as a professional sport, has changed under conditions of globalization, alongside smaller scale developments initiated by both employers and intermediaries, and the migrant cricketers. It is concluded that these connections will have salience for the other skilled occupations identified in Salt's (1997) typology of highly-skilled migrants

National Citizen Service: A Geographical Approach

This three year project examined the state’s motivations behind, the voluntary sector’s engagement with, and young people’s experiences of, National Citizen Service. National Citizen Service (NCS) is a UK government funded voluntary scheme for 15-17 year olds in England and Northern Ireland delivered through a range of social enterprises, charities and private sector partnerships. Since 2011, over 300,000 young people have completed NCS – a short-term programme with two residential experiences and 30 hours of a social action project (further details on page 6). Using NCS as a case-study, and positioning this new scheme within the historical context of youth citizenship development, this research project addresses timely and policy-relevant debates on the state and civil society, and contributes to academic debates on youth citizenship, volunteering and informal education

Temporary skilled international migration of young professional cricketers: ‘going Down-Under’ to move-up the career path

Recent theories of temporary skilled international migration tend to be predicated on intra-company overseas transfers and secondments. In this paper we present original findings from a study of cricket migrants to highlight another important form of temporary international movements that enable upskilling from strategic, channelled placements into a foreign club, to propel the careers of young professionals on return migration to their respective home club. Drawing upon interviews with 35 early-career English cricketers, we reveal that moving to Australia for 3–6 months during the English domestic off-season is an increasingly common practice to extend the number of months playing the sport in both distinctive work and climatic conditions. Encountering different overseas sporting cultures and environments is becoming a normative part of formative training and development of young professional cricketers to make the ‘‘unfamiliar’ more ‘familiar’’ and enhance skills and competencies. We argue that these flows of international migrants have been facilitated by the post-2001 professionalization of cricket, and the institutionalisation of global networks between cricket organisations and key actors in the sport. We suggest that there are parallels between cricket placements and other sports and occupational sectors, such as temporary overseas moves linked to loans (e.g. football), visiting fellowships, internships and secondments, in ever-competitive global professional labour markets

Postgraduate events as a building block for interdisciplinary research

Postgraduate students are at the forefront of geographical research, forging their career in a rapidly changing landscape. The ideology of geography as a single discipline is being erased, enabling complex geographical questions spanning both natural and social sciences to be properly addressed. A postgraduate event organised in a thematic manner, rather than by discipline, reveals that postgraduate students still associate with ‘human’ or ‘physical’ geography, rather than with interdisciplinary work. However, students who overcome time constraints and have exposure to, or engage with, interdisciplinary research gain valuable transferable skills, enhancing research outputs and employability. Therefore, postgraduate perceptions of interdisciplinary research are important for geography to advance

Brands of youth citizenship and the politics of scale: National Citizen Service in the United Kingdom

This paper explores the politics of scale in the context of youth citizenship. We propose the concept of ‘brands of youth citizenship’ to understand recent shifts in the state promotion of citizenship formations for young people, and demonstrate how scale is crucial to that agenda. As such, we push forward debates on the scaling of citizenship more broadly through an examination of the imaginative and institutional geographies of learning to be a citizen. The paper's empirical focus is a state-funded youth programme in the UK – National Citizen Service – launched in 2011 and now reaching tens of thousands of 15–17 year olds. We demonstrate the ‘branding’ of youth citizenship, cast here in terms of social action and designed to create a particular type of citizen-subject. Original research with key architects, delivery providers and young people demonstrates two key points of interest. First, that the scales of youth citizenship embedded in NCS promote engagement at the local scale, as part of a national collective, whilst the global scale is curiously absent. Second, that discourses of youth citizenship are increasingly mobilised alongside ideas of Britishness yet fractured by the geographies of devolution. Overall, the paper explores the scalar politics and performance of youth citizenship, the tensions therein, and the wider implications of this study for both political geographers and society more broadly at a time of heated debate about youthful politics in the United Kingdom and beyond

A view from above: using Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) to enhance ecological understanding of lianas in tropical forest canopies

Lianas play integral roles in structuring community composition, forest regeneration, the maintenance of species diversity and whole-forest level ecosystem processes in tropical forests. With increasing disturbances to forests worldwide, the relative importance of lianas as players in many areas of forest dynamics is expected to increase, with important ramifications for the global carbon cycle. However, our knowledge of lianas is incomplete and biased: (i) towards the Neotropics; and (ii) against the canopy, yet the canopy is where lianas proliferate most. Research in these areas is hampered by the logistical difficulties of studying lianas; the fact that they are time-consuming to survey, and that it is difficult to quantify what is going on in the canopy. This thesis enhances ecological understanding of lianas in tropical forest tree crowns, focusing on the lesser studied Palaeotropics. The development of a novel method to enable faster, cheaper and more canopy-centred assessment of liana than possible with traditional assessment methods is vital for this. A lightweight unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) was used to assess liana infestation of tropical forest tree canopies in Sabah, Malaysia. By visually interpreting the images, the UAV-derived liana infestation estimates were compared with those derived from traditional ground methods of liana infestation assessment to determine the validity, strengths and weaknesses of using UAVs as a new method for assessing liana infestation of tree canopies. These data were then used to map and monitor liana load in tree crowns: (i) spatially, to elucidate liana-environmental relationships; and (ii) temporally, to monitor the canopy response, including changes in liana infestation, to El Niño drought. UAV-derived estimates of liana infestation correlated strongly with ground-derived data at individual tree and plot level, and across multiple forest types and spatial resolutions. Furthermore, the UAV surveys improved liana infestation assessment for upper canopy layers and were considerably faster and more cost-efficient than ground-based surveys. Liana infestation was significantly spatially aggregated, with tree canopy height and presence of canopy gaps being the most important variables influencing this. Taller trees were less often and less heavily infested by lianas while liana infestation occurred more often and to greater extents in close proximity to canopy gaps. Temporally, tree-level liana infestation and crown area showed significant increases in the aftermath of the 2015/16 El Niño whereas crown greenness and tree leaf cover showed a significant decrease. Furthermore, liana cover was significantly higher for trees that experienced mortality in the aftermath of the El Niño than for those that did not. This thesis presents a novel UAV-based method of capturing data that can be used to assess liana infestation of tropical forest tree crowns at least as accurately as traditional ground data. This novel method promotes reproducibility of results and quality control, and enables additional variables to be derived from the image data. It is more cost-effective, time-efficient and covers larger geographical extents than traditional ground surveys, enabling more comprehensive monitoring of changes in liana infestation over space and time. By utilising the new UAV method, this thesis presents: (i) the largest and most comprehensive continuous assessment of Palaeotropical tree crown liana infestation, and analysis of environmental variables that may influence this, to date; and (ii) the first study assessing short-term temporal change in liana canopy cover and associated alterations in the forest canopy using UAV image data. Examining how and why lianas are distributed in the forest canopy and how this changes through time may help us to determine what variables could determine increases in lianas with environmental change in the future, with important implications for tropical forest carbon storage and sequestration, and provide a step towards more comprehensive testing of ecological theory in tropical forests

Evidence Of Social Desirability Response Bias In Ethics Research: An International Study

This paper analyzes the association between ethical perceptions of questionable business practices and Hofstede’s Individualism, Transparency International’s Corruption Index, and social desirability response bias.  The sample consists of 1,048 business students from ten countries: Canada, Colombia, Ecuador, Hong Kong, Ireland, Japan, Nepal, South Africa, Spain, and the United States.  The results of our analysis indicate that, while Hofstede’s (1980) cultural construct of Individualism was significant for two of the questions, social desirability response bias was the most consistent variable in modeling subjects’ responses.  Our data indicate that social desirability response bias should be controlled for when using self-reported data in ethics and/or international studies.&nbsp

Enhancing Fieldwork Futures: race and inclusion in Geography field trips

Fieldwork is integral to studying Geography. It is recognized in the QAA Subject Benchmark (2022) and in the requirements for accreditation by the professional body (RGS-IBG, no date). Fieldwork has pedagogical and social benefits (Marvell and Sim 2018; Stokes et al. 2011; Wheeler et al. 2011). Maximising out-of-class academic experiences increases informal interactions among students and staff, enabling the development of ‘field-based learning communities’ (Skop, 2014). However, recent research has exposed counter-narratives to this, in terms of inclusivity and accessibility for participants, particularly in relation to ‘protected characteristics’ (UK Equality Act, 2010) such as race (Foster, 2021; Hughes, 2016), disability (Lawrence and Dowey, 2022) and sexuality (Sou, 2021). This project draws upon interviews with students to explore how Geography fieldwork can be made more accessible and inclusive to Global Ethnic Majority students

Beyond the Walls: Patterns of Child Labour, Forced Labour, and Exploitation in a New Domestic Workers Dataset

The new Domestic Workers Dataset is the largest single set of surveys (n = 11,759) of domestic workers to date. Our analysis of this dataset reveals features about the lives and work of this “hard-to-find” population in India—a country estimated to have the largest number of people living in forms of contemporary slavery (11 million). The data allow us to identify child labour, indicators of forced labour, and patterns of exploitation—including labour paid below the minimum wage—using bivariate analysis, factor analysis, and spatial analysis. The dataset also helps to advance our understanding of how to measure labour exploitation and modern slavery by showing the value of “found data” and participatory and citizen science approaches