Sticking it on Plastic: Credit Card Finance and Small and Medium Sized Enterprises in the UK

This paper investigates the role of credit card financing in UK small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) and how this varies by location and business orientation. Using a large scale dataset of UK SMEs, the results of a regression based analysis suggest that firms located in peripheral geographic areas have greater usage of credit cards relative to counterparts located in ‘core’ locations. Innovative, growth, and export-oriented SMEs are also more inclined to use credit card financing. Moreover, SMEs that use credit cards as a form of improvised financial ‘bootstrapping’ are more likely to seek additional funding sources in the future

The International Organization for Migration and the international government of borders

Early debates often read globalization as a powerful tendency destined to make state borders less pertinent. Recent research has challenged this view by suggesting that globalization and (re-)bordering frequently advance hand in hand, culminating in a condition that might be described as 'gated globalism'. But somewhat neglected in this recent wave of research is the role that particular international agencies are playing in shaping the norms and forms that pertain to emergent regimes of border control – what we call the international government of borders. Focusing on the International Organization for Migration and its involvement in the promotion of what it calls better 'border management', this paper aims to partially redress this oversight. The IOM is interesting because it illustrates how the control of borders has become constituted as an object of technical expertise and intervention within programmes and schemes of international authority. Two themes are pursued. First, recent work on neoliberal governmentality is useful for illuminating the forms of power and subtle mechanisms of influence which chracterize the IOM's attempt to managerialize border policies in countries as different as Ethiopia, Serbia and Armenia. Second, the international government of borders comprises diverse and heterogeneous practices, ranging from the hosting of training seminars for local security and migration officials, to the promotion of schemes to purchase and install cutting-edge surveillance equipment. In such different ways one can observe in very material terms how the project of making borders into a problem of 'management' conflicts with a perception of borders as a site of social struggle and politics

Energy expenditure and nutritional adequacy of rehabilitation paraplegics with asymptomatic bacteriuria and pressure sores

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