Five problems with UK immigration control post-Brexit

Most Leave voters expected Brexit to deliver a cut in immigration. In fact, says Patrick McGovern, they may see the very opposite. Points-based systems like the one advocated by Ukip do not cut migration. He discusses the possibility of a last-minute surge in EU migration, the effect of family reunification and the risk that irregular migrants will find new routes. Additionally, the porous Irish border with Northern Ireland poses a challenge for the UK Border Agency, which has already struggled to implement its e-borders policy

Long read: who are you calling unskilled?

Why do we tend to label migrants who do manual, caring and service labour as unskilled? Because, Patrick McGovern (LSE) argues, labelling them in this way makes it easier to justify exclusion, especially since the term ‘unskilled worker’ implies that such a person cannot learn. The government’s new immigration policy seeks to completely close off ‘unskilled migration’ to the UK, which will eventually trigger a series of labour market shortages

Survival, space use, and radio telemetry accuracy of white-tailed deer fawns in central Iowa

White-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) are one of the most managed species in North America. Overabundant deer populations negatively affect vegetation communities, cause crop damage, and increase the risk of deer-vehicle collisions. To identify areas of management need and set accurate harvest quotas, managers need reliable estimates of deer population trends. Fawns suffer the highest rate of mortality of any age class, and it varies across their range in response to differences in landscape composition, predator community, and deer density. We radio-collared 48 fawns from 2015-2017 to document cause-specific mortality, estimate survival, and describe space use in central Iowa. Disease was the primary cause of mortality, followed by suspected predation and harvest. The estimated fawn survival rate was 0.78 through 30 days post-capture, 0.69 through 60 days post-capture, and 0.31 through 7 months post-capture. Declines in fawn survival through 7 months post-capture were the result of disease and harvest. Fawn home ranges were primarily comprised of woodland (\u3e60%) and female fawns avoided agriculture. The proportion of nearby woodland had a positive effect on fawn survival. We used radio telemetry to estimate fawn locations and assess habitat selection. Locations derived from radio telemetry have inherent error that can bias habitat selection studies. We conducted trials to evaluate the effects of slope, observer experience, and fawn behavior on location accuracy. Location error varied among sites along a slope (P \u3c 0.001); however, distance between sites and observer, not slope position, was the best explanation for differences in error. Location error did not differ between experienced and inexperienced observers (P \u3e 0.05). Location error did not increase over time for radio-collared fawns (β = 0.005, 95% CI was -0.001, 0.010). Confidence ellipse area was an indicator of location error (β =0.87, 95% CI was 0.57, 1.18), which suggests it is an adequate proxy for accuracy of location estimates. Our finding of higher fawn survival in woodland habitat suggests that managers should maintain woodland habitat in agricultural regions. Disease caused most of our fawn mortality in contrast to predation as reported in other Midwestern studies. Our survival estimates through 30 and 60 days post-capture were similar to estimates from other Midwestern regions; however, survival through 7 months was much lower

Estimates of elastic plate thicknesses beneath large volcanos on Venus

Megellan radar imaging and topography data are now available for a number of volcanos on Venus greater than 100 km in radius. These data can be examined to reveal evidence of the flexural response of the lithosphere to the volcanic load. On Earth, flexure beneath large hotspot volcanos results in an annual topographic moat that is partially to completely filled in by sedimentation and mass wasting from the volcano's flanks. On Venus, erosion and sediment deposition are considered to be negligible at the resolution of Magellan images. Thus, it may be possible to observe evidence of flexure by the ponding of recent volcanic flows in the moat. We also might expect to find topographic signals from unfilled moats surrounding large volcanos on Venus, although these signals may be partially obscured by regional topography. Also, in the absence of sedimentation, tectonic evidence of deformation around large volcanos should be evident except where buried by very young flows. We use analytic solutions in axisymmetric geometry for deflections and stresses resulting from loading of a plate overlying an inviscid fluid. Solutions for a set of disk loads are superimposed to obtain a solution for a conical volcano. The deflection of the lithosphere produces an annular depression or moat, the extent of which can be estimated by measuring the distance from the volcano's edge to the first zero crossing or to the peak of the flexural arch. Magellan altimetry data records (ARCDRs) from data cycle 1 are processed using the GMT mapping and graphics software to produce topographic contour maps of the volcanos. We then take topographic profiles that cut across the annular and ponded flows seen on the radar images. By comparing the locations of these flows to the predicted moat locations from a range of models, we estimate the elastic plate thickness that best fits the observations, together with the uncertainty in that estimate

Paddy and the Public: Irish Immigrants, New York City, and Mass Culture, 1830-1860

This thesis investigates the role of visual images in reflecting and shaping attitudes of the native-born towards Irish immigrants in antebellum New York City. Representations in mass culture, specifically in the popular press and on minstrel sheet music covers, serve as a window into understanding native-born discourses on Irish Americans. Various elements of the Irish immigrant trope are analyzed, including massive immigration, crowding, disease, poverty, drunkenness, violence, public women, labor competition, and political corruption. In addition to visual analysis, gender, environmental, and discourse analysis are applied to representations of Irish immigrants. Taking the study of antebellum nativism in a new direction, this thesis demonstrates that mass culture served as a primary vehicle for the creation and distribution of anti-Irish attitudes, fueled by actual events and circumstances, but also popular opinions and visual imagery

Income inequality and the absence of a Tawney moment in the mass media

In this paper we address the paradox of increasing income inequality and the absence of public mobilization around the issue. As the mass media are our most important source of information on wider economic affairs, we examine the salience and framing of income inequality within major UK and US newspapers over the period 1990 – 2015. Despite an initial surge in media attention and again towards the end of the period, the issues-attention cycle of inequality resembles a hype-cycle that is more common with arcane academic or techno-scientific topics than with social mobilisation. The dominant frames present income inequality as the seemingly inevitable result of globalization, market forces and technological change. No new radical frames of economic injustice have emerged, neither have any new actors, and so policy solutions fall back onto existing left-right approaches

The early thermal and magnetic state of the cratered highlands of Mars

Surface heat flows are calculated from elastic lithosphere thicknesses for the heavy cratered highlands of Mars, in terms of the fraction of the surface heat flow derived from crustal heat sources. Previous heat flow estimations for Mars used linear thermal gradients, which is equivalent to ignoring the existence of heat sources within the crust. We compute surface heat flows following a methodology that relates effective thickness and curvature of an elastic plate with the strength envelope of the lithosphere, and assuming crustal heat sources homogeneously distributed in a radioactive element-rich layer 20 or 60 km thick. The obtained results show that the surface heat flow increases with the proportion of heat sources within the crust, and with the decrease of both radioactive element-rich layer thickness and surface temperature. Also, the results permit us to calculate representative temperatures for the crust base, rock strength for the upper mantle, and lower and upper limits to the crustal magnetization depth and intensity, respectively. For Terra Cimmeria, an effective elastic thickness of 12 km implies between 30% and 80% of heat sources located within the crust. In this case the uppermost mantle would be weak at the time of loading, and temperatures in the lower crust cold enough to favor unrelaxed crustal thickness variations and to permit deep Curie depths in the highlands, as suggested by the observational evidence