Thinking of experimenting with digital scholarly publishing? Words to the wise

Kristen Nawrotzki and Jack Dougherty, co-editors of a born-digital, open-access, open peer-reviewed, and soon-to-be published digital humanities volume offer nuts-and-bolts advice on all aspects related to digital publishing and online collaboration. Transparency and openness thrive in a digital platform, but fundamentally, the most important element to consider is the content of the work itself

Assisting and Protecting Refugee Women: A Policy Analysis

The number of refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs) has risen sharply over the last decade. This trend is the result of several causes such as the impact of climatic change, conflicts over diminishing resources, and religious and ethical disagreements. The largest and most vulnerable subgroup among refugees is women and their dependent children, and they are frequently subject to abuse and neglect. To address protection issues, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) released the Policy on Refugee Women in 1990. The authors provide a comprehensive policy analysis, building on an exploration of the historical background and a presentation of policy goals. This exploration sets the stage for a discussion of the influence and viewpoints of major interest groups, such as donors, governments, and non-governmental organizations. The authors draw upon casestudies and a variety of literary resources to explore diversity issues, social justice concerns, and ethical interests. Furthermore, the authors assess the policy\u27s implementation success by using the categories of positive outcomes (institutional change, new programming tools, improvement in refugee situation) and unintended outcomes (cultural and religious opposition, one-sidedness, negative conception). Finally, the authors present a comparison of the applications and implications of the 1990 UNHCR Policy from a global perspective, focusing primarily on the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada as exemplary countries. The paper concludes with a set of recommendations for policymakers and project managers to further improve protection and assistance programs to meet the needs of refugee women and girls worldwide. © Common Ground, Barbara J. Kampa, Raphael Nawrotzki, All Rights Reserved

On the Structure of Spatial Branching Processes

The paper is a contribution to the theory of branching processes with discrete time and a general phase space in the sense of [2]. We characterize the class of regular, i.e. in a sense sufficiently random, branching processes (Φk) k∈Z by almost sure properties of their realizations without making any assumptions about stationarity or existence of moments. This enables us to classify the clans of (Φk) into the regular part and the completely non-regular part. It turns out that the completely non-regular branching processes are built up from single-line processes, whereas the regular ones are mixtures of left-tail trivial processes with a Poisson family structure

Affluence and Objective Environmental Conditions: Evidence of Differences in Environmental Concern in Metropolitan Brazil

In an age of climate change, researchers need to form a deepened understanding of the determinants of environmental concern, particularly in countries of emerging economies. This paper provides a region-specific investigation of the impact of socio-economic status (SES) and objective environmental conditions on environmental concern in urban Brazil. We make use of data collected from personal interviews of individuals living in the metropolitan areas of Baixada Santista and Campinas, in the larger São Paulo area. Results from multilevel regression models indicate that wealthier households are more environmentally concerned, as suggested by affluence and post-materialist hypotheses. However, we also observe that increasing environmental concern correlates with a decline in objective environmental conditions. Interactions between objective environmental conditions and SES reveal some intriguing relationships: Among poorer individuals, a decline in environmental conditions increases environmental concern as suggested by the objective problems hypothesis, while for the wealthy, a decline in environmental conditions is associated with lower levels of environmental concern

On the First Crossing of Two Boundaries by an Order Statistics Risk Process

We derive a closed form expression for the probability that a non-decreasing, pure jump stochastic risk process with the order statistics (OS) property will not exit the strip between two non-decreasing, possibly discontinuous, time-dependent boundaries, within a finite time interval. The result yields new expressions for the ruin probability in the insurance and the dual risk models with dependence between the claim severities or capital gains respectively

Amplification or suppression: Social networks and the climate change-migration association in rural Mexico

Increasing rates of climate migration may be of economic and national concern to sending and destination countries. It has been argued that social networks the ties connecting an origin and destination may operate as migration corridors with the potential to strongly facilitate climate change-related migration. This study investigates whether social networks at the household and community levels amplify or suppress the impact of climate change on international migration from rural Mexico. A novel set of 15 climate change indices was generated based on daily temperature and precipitation data for 214 weather stations across Mexico. Employing geostatistical interpolation techniques, the climate change values were linked to 68 rural municipalities for which sociodemographic data and detailed migration histories were available from the Mexican Migration Project. Multi-level discrete-time event-history models were used to investigate the effect of climate change on international migration between 1986 and 1999. At the household level, the effect of social networks was approximated by comparing the first to the last move, assuming that through the first move a household establishes internal social capital. At the community level, the impact of social capital was explored through interactions with a measure of the proportion of adults with migration experience. The results show that rather than amplifying, social capital may suppress the sensitivity of migration to climate triggers, suggesting that social networks could facilitate climate change adaptation in place. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

Climate change as migration driver from rural and urban Mexico

Studies investigating migration as a response to climate variability have largely focused on rural locations to the exclusion of urban areas. This lack of urban focus is unfortunate given the sheer numbers of urban residents and continuing high levels of urbanization. To begin filling this empirical gap, this study investigates climate change impacts on U.S.-bound migration from rural and urban Mexico, 1986–1999. We employ geostatistical interpolation methods to construct two climate change indices, capturing warm and wet spell duration, based on daily temperature and precipitation readings for 214 weather stations across Mexico. In combination with detailed migration histories obtained from the Mexican Migration Project, we model the influence of climate change on household-level migration from 68 rural and 49 urban municipalities. Results from multilevel event-history models reveal that a temperature warming and excessive precipitation significantly increased international migration during the study period. However, climate change impacts on international migration is only observed for rural areas. Interactions reveal a causal pathway in which temperature (but not precipitation) influences migration patterns through employment in the agricultural sector. As such, climate-related international migration may decline with continued urbanization and the resulting reductions in direct dependence of households on rural agriculture

Domestic and International Climate Migration from Rural Mexico

Evidence is increasing that climate change and variability may influence human migration patterns. However, there is less agreement regarding the type of migration streams most strongly impacted. This study tests whether climate change more strongly impacted international compared to domestic migration from rural Mexico during 1986-99. We employ eight temperature and precipitation-based climate change indices linked to detailed migration histories obtained from the Mexican Migration Project. Results from multilevel discrete-time event-history models challenge the assumption that climate-related migration will be predominantly short distance and domestic, but instead show that climate change more strongly impacted international moves from rural Mexico. The stronger climate impact on international migration may be explained by the self-insurance function of international migration, the presence of strong migrant networks, and climate-related changes in wage difference. While a warming in temperature increased international outmigration, higher levels of precipitation declined the odds of an international move

Undocumented migration in response to climate change

In the face of climate change-induced economic uncertainties, households may em-ploy migration as an adaptation strategy to diversify their livelihood portfolio through remit-tances. However, it is unclear whether such climate-related migration will be documented or undocumented. In this study we combined detailed migration histories with daily temperature and precipitation information from 214 weather stations to investigate whether climate change more strongly impacted undocumented or documented migrations from 68 rural Mexican mu-nicipalities to the U.S. from 1986−1999. We employed two measures of climate change, the warm spell duration index (WSDI) and precipitation during extremely wet days (R99PTOT). Results from multi-level event-history models demonstrated that climate-related international migration from rural Mexico was predominantly undocumented. We conclude that programs to facilitate climate change adaptations in rural Mexico may be more effective in reducing undo-cumented border crossings than increasing border fortification