Experiencing Diversity: Complexity, Education, and Peace Construction

AbstractThe relationship with diversity is one of the basic aspects of human experience. In the present contribution, a broad definition of diversity is proposed, which includes, but is not limited to, cultural diversity. The analysis of the experience of diversity is especially focused on children's attitudes and behavior. The role of education is also highlighted. Though education is generally considered by the author in its broad sense, namely, as the sum of all the elements of reality that in one way or another affect human development, a special emphasis here is given to school. The main assumption of this chapter is that complexity, diversity, education, and peace construction are intimately interrelated. Diversity is one of the essential components of complexity, and considerations regarding the reality of complexity should be the prerequisite of any educational program and of any effort toward peace construction. These reflections partly draw on a number of studies (especially through the use of anonymous open-ended essays) we conducted in Italian secondary schools on children's (aged 9–18) attitudes toward multiculturalism. Some suggestions are also prompted by a brief analysis of a passage from the Australian novel My Place by Sally Morgan

Who Receives More Help? The Role of Employer Support in Migration Processes

Research on migration usually focusses on the role of states in defining the "wanted" migrants who receive facilitated access to specific national territories. However, many countries apply a demand-driven admission policy in which employers play a central role in selecting candidates for migration. This article investigates the role of employers in the Migration-Mobility Nexus by analysing the relocation support they provide to different groups of migrants. We use a mixed-method approach based on a qualitative analysis of ethnographic data and a quantitative analysis of the Migration-Mobility Survey to observe who has more power to negotiate advantageous relocation conditions and in this sense represents a more "wanted" migrant for profit-oriented actors. Via a logistic regression model, we show that, all other variables being equal, employers tend to favour highly qualified men from Anglo-Saxon countries, whereas non-single women and people of West African and Portuguese origins have a much lower probability of receiving support from their employer. This article adds to the literature on the construction of migrant categories by showing that highly qualified men from rich Anglo-Saxon countries are actively given the possibility to become "expats", whereas people with similar levels of qualification and experience but with a different gender, nationality or background have fewer opportunities to access employers' support and migrate. In this sense, the very notion of "expat" is a construction that reflects power relations at a global level