This thesis seeks to explore the linkages between the networks which facilitate the exchange of information and assistance regarding internal Cambodian labour migration, and the physical assets and social systems within which, it is held here, they are embedded. In doing so, it revisits the area of enquiry recently associated with the social capital literature, with a new set of methodologies designed to circumvent some of the shortcomings associated with that theory. This is undertaken first, through recourse to the quantitative methodologies associated with network theory, and second, to the literature on endogenous systems of risk mitigation in response to natural disasters and climate pressures. In order that these local responses are framed fully within their multi-scalar context, structural violence theory is utilised in a linking role. Thus, labour migration is viewed herein as a lens through which to view the dynamic evolution of traditional Cambodian social systems. In particular, it is effective as a means of understanding resilience and response to the Kingdom’s contemporary environment, both in terms of its persistent vulnerability to natural disasters and climate shocks, and the rapid, but highly unequal, economic growth which has characterised the “economic miracle” of the previous decade. Indeed, the nature of the inequality which has characterised this period of rapid growth will be one of the primary foci of this study, which offers to the literature an account of how uneven distributions of social and physical assets and risks are entrenched in complex ways by the process of labour migration.

This thesis investigates the employment, unemployment and earnings experience of male immigrants in England using data from the Quarterly Labour Force Surveys of the United Kingdom which were undertaken between December 1992 and November 1994. After outlining some theoretical developments in the economics of migration, in particular the importance of self-selection, and surveying the recent empirical evidence, concerning international labour migration to the industrialised countries, the characteristics of the whole male population are examined using descriptive statistics. The sample consists of those resident in England, aged 25-64. These characteristics are then compared with those males who are economically active (according to International Labour Office definitions). Particular attention is given to the variation in the year of immigration and country of birth amongst the foreign born, and the differences between the ethnic white and ethnic non-white populations. The employment adjustment of foreign-born males to the English labour market is then examined, using Chiswick's (1982) model. Hypotheses concerning the impact of education, potential labour market experience, years since migration and country of birth on the employment rate are investigated using logistic regression analysis. A similar study is also undertaken of the unemployment experience of foreign born males, using both the International Labour Office definition and the official government measure. Predicted percentage probabilities, calculated for individuals with average group characteristics, clarify the separate impact of each variable upon the employment and unemployment prospects of males in England. Finally, selectivity corrected earnings functions are estimated, controlling for potential bias in both the employment decision and from the non-reporting of wage information. Importantly, the returns to schooling and to potential experience are separated into those received in the country of origin and those obtained after immigration. The country of birth is shown to influence the earnings performance amongst both the ethnic minorities and the immigrants.

Immigration is a contentious issue for the governments of developed countries like the UK. Despite limited evidence demonstrating any substantial detrimental impact of immigration, it is often opposed. This thesis contains three empirical works that investigate a) how immigrants view immigration and how theses views compare to natives b) the role of the labour market in establishing views towards further immigration and c) the impact of immigrants on primary schools in England. Data come from the UK Citizenship Survey; the censuses, providing longitudinal data on immigration in local areas, and the Department for Education, providing panel data for primary schools. A variety of econometric techniques are employed for the data analysis: OLS, Probit, Ordered Probit, fuzzy Regression Discontinuity Design (RDD), fixed effect regressions, and Instrumental Variable (IV) are all implemented. Results suggest that earlier immigrants are similar to natives in being opposed to further immigration, while recent immigrants are more in favour of further immigration. Financial and economic shocks are associated with stronger anti-immigration responses. However, labour market concerns do not play a large role for either group of the respondents. The role of labour market is investigated more rigorously by studying the change in views of native males on exit from the labour market. After controlling for the potential selection and endogeneity biases using a fuzzy RDD, views of native males, essentially, remain unchanged with some evidence of reduced opposition after exit from the labour market. Finally, this thesis investigates the impact of immigrants on educational outcomes and schools. Using past location choice of immigrants to account for the non-random selection of immigrants into areas, results suggest that increased immigration has improved educational outcomes, both in English and maths, but also placed resource pressures on primary schools, as class sizes have increased and schools had to hire additional teachers.

The contribution of this thesis is in understanding the origins in developing countries of differences in labour wage and household consumption vis-à-vis educational abilities (and by extension employment statuses). This thesis adds to the labour market literature in developing countries by investigating the nature of employment and its consequences for labour wage and household consumption in a developing country. It utilizes multinomial probit, blinder-oaxaca, Heckman and quantile regressions to examine one human capital indicator: educational attainment; and two welfare proxies: labour wage and household consumption, in a developing country, Nigeria. It finds that, empirically, the self-employed are a heterogeneous group of individuals made up of a few highly educated individuals, and a significant majority of ‘not so educated’ individuals who mostly earn less than paid workers. It also finds that a significant number of employers enjoy labour wage premiums; and having a higher proportion of employers in the household has a positive relationship with household consumption. The thesis furthermore discovers an upper educational threshold for women employers not found for men. Interestingly, the thesis also finds that there is indeed an ordering of labour wages into low-income self-employment (which seems to be found mainly in “own account” self-employment), medium-income paid employment, and high-income self-employment (which seems to be found mainly among employers), and that this corresponds to a similar ordering of low human capital, medium human capital and high human capital among labour market participants, as expressed through educational attainments. These show that as a whole, employers can largely be classed as experiencing pulled self-employment, as they appear to be advantaged in all three criteria (educational attainments, labour wage and household consumption). A minority of self-employed “own account” workers (specifically those at the upper end of the income distribution who are well educated), can also be classed as experiencing pulled self-employment. The rest of the significant majority of self-employed “own account” workers in this study can be classed as experiencing pushed self-employment in terms of the indicators used.

This thesis contributes to the sociological literature about how social capital influences individual labour market outcomes by using and combining a constellation of identification strategies to alleviate endogeneity bias. The principal proposition of social capital theory has been that social resources embedded in social networks have significant influences on individual labour market outcomes. Although a vast amount of empirical literature has accumulated, previous sociological studies of this line have not paid enough attention to the endogeneity problem rising from various sources such as omitted variables, self-selection, sample-selection, and simultaneity bias. Unless the endogeneity problem is explicitly pointed out and well-corrected for, one cannot arrive at any convincing causal conclusions about whether social capital matters or not. Building on the existing literature, this thesis offers a systematic review in Chapter 2, paying close attention to the identification problem and empirical strategies. To identify causality under the counterfactual framework, four empirical chapters test for the effects of social capital using different identification strategies. Chapter 3 combines the instrumental variable method with the Heckman model to estimate network effects on labour market outcomes among rural-to-urban migrants in China. Chapter 4 presents evidence of the network effects on individuals' employment and income in China employing the instrumental variable method to control for the fact that friendships are not randomly formed. Using panel data and Heckman model from the former East Germany and contemporary China, Chapter 5 and Chapter 6 address the direct effects of using contacts to find jobs and the effects of contact’s prestige in labour markets under state socialism.

This thesis explores the relationship between self-assessed health (SAH), caring and labour market outcomes based on three empirical studies, for which the existing studies for Taiwan were limited. Our results may help in identifying priorities in terms of the most important individual characteristics for determining health, well-being and the impact of caring on the labour force. In the first empirical study, we use panel data from the Panel Study of Family Dynamics (PSFD) to explore the determinants of self-assessed health. In contrast to the existing studies for Taiwan, we use the generalized ordered probit (GOP) model. We find that, although both family background and a shared living environment play important roles in explaining health status, the effect of a common living environment is stronger than the effect of family characteristics on health. There is also evidence that suggests that reporting bias in the SAH measure is prevalent in the PSFD. In the second empirical study, we explore the determinants of well-being, with a particular focus on job characteristics, which has attracted little attention in the literature on Taiwan. We use data from the 2005 PSFD and explore potential sample selection issues when analysing employees only. Our results suggest that, while socio-economic characteristics are a significant determinant of well-being, there is no evidence to suggest that long working hours are associated with a lower level of well-being. The final empirical study investigates the relationship between caring and labour market outcomes. We use panel data from the Health and Living Status of the Middle Aged and Elderly. Our results suggest that informal care has an adverse effect on the labour force participation of women, but not of men. However, for males, a positive association between the provision of financial support and employment is found.

This thesis examines the labour force experiences of refugees living in Britain. By describing and exploring the employment, unemployment, training and job-search experiences of refugees from Vietnam it seeks to fill gaps in the existing literature. The literature currently recognises the importance of employment in the resettlement process, but fails to provide much insight into the long term experiences of refugees. Further, this thesis presents a new conceptual framework for understanding refugee labour force experiences. Literature from a wide range of disciplines informs a theoretical framework which stresses the complex and diverse nature of influences on refugee labour force experiences. The review of the experiences of refugees from Vietnam, draws on existing literature and novel quantitative analysis of the 1991 census, before giving a voice to the refugees themselves. Workers at 27 Vietnamese Community Associations around Britain describe labour force experiences in the areas they serve, while half also detail their own individual labour force careers. Throughout, emphasis is placed on the refugees' own interpretations of what has influenced their labour force experiences, and their reactions to those experiences. This thesis confirms that the refugees from Vietnam are spatially concentrated in locations which are characterised by high unemployment and a high ethnic Chinese population. This is reflected in their labour force experiences, which are dominated by unemployment or manual employment, particularly within the ethnic sector. Employment remains a minority experience for Vietnam refugees living in the majority of locations, although location specific differences in labour force experiences are identified. Self-reliance within the community of refugees from Vietnam is strong, as is the significance of access to labour force opportunities with the ethnic Chinese population. Both factors, do however have benefits and drawbacks. The evidence presented in this thesis supports the proposed framework for understanding refugee labour force experiences. Accordingly, this thesis argues for a refugee policy which recognises both the importance of employment in the resettlement process, and the complexity of factors which influence labour force experiences. A comprehensive programme of intervention is recommended to improve refugee labour force experiences, and community development is seen as a key element of this. A call for a permanent refugee resettlement organisation is also made.

This study focuses on migratory experiences in the locality situated in the North of England. This medium-sized town since the late 1990s became a destination for international migrants. Contemporary migration to this locality has been associated with two structural policies: the dispersal of refugees and asylum seekers by UK government and the opening of the UK labour market to the new EU citizens from Central Eastern Europe. The study’s sample has included migrant participants coming both from EU and non EU (dispersed) backgrounds. This piece of research is explorative and inductive in nature. Its ontological and epistemological stances are influenced by intepretivism. The data has been gathered through biographical and semi-structured interviews, focus group interviews and ethnographic observations. The data and its interpretations contributed to the understanding of the following aspects of migrant living in this locality: the motives of migration, the arrival mechanisms, the experiences of paid employment and informal work. The study also examines the local dynamics of ethnic intolerance and individual experiences of housing provision. The interpretation of empirical data is used to construct a theoretical analysis exploring the migration process in the locality which has a particular set of social and labour market characteristics.

The thesis looks at the experiences of work and life of young women workers who have migrated from their villages to work in an electronics factory in a Special Economic Zone in Tamil Nadu, India. Moving beyond the lens of exploitation or emancipation, the thesis attempts to understand the meaning of work and relations that develop around it. It does so by focusing on the everyday lived experiences and practices of women inside and outside the factory. The thesis pays attention to individual stories to create linkages between lives as waged workers in a formal workspace with the informal nature of work-life outside. It tries to understand the processes through which women enter formal waged work in global production sites and the choices they make in their everyday lives, both within the workplace and outside of it; and how everyday social relations are constituted and re-constituted through work and practices of labour. The research finds that the everyday lived experiences of work and life in the factory form a ‘complex web of relations’ to which women grow attached to and from which they derive new meanings of work. While the thesis does not claim that the women were able to transcend the larger politics of gender or labour, it does show that waged work did create possibilities for reworking gender relations for the women. Finally the thesis argues for Labour Geography to look beyond the factory gates to understand the nuanced politics of labour as relations get ‘reworked’ within a patriarchal-capitalist society. It recommends paying close attention to the ‘small-scale geographies’ of workers (McDowell, 2015), their life narratives and experiences, but without losing sight of the larger struggles of labour and global processes, to develop a more grounded understanding of worker’s agency and actions.

Background: There is a growing awareness of the need to retain health workers in low-and middleincome countries. This is particularly the case in Malawi, with few doctors and historically high emigration. Previous retention efforts have focused on salary supplementation and expansion of undergraduate training. There has been little focus on training new doctors to become specialists, despite evidence of its value to Malawian junior doctors. In light of the considerable investment into medical education and retention, this thesis investigates the role of specialty training in stemming Malawi’s medical brain drain. Methods: A tracing study was carried out to locate all Malawian doctors who graduated between 2006 and 2012. Literature reviews and qualitative interviews informed the design of a discrete choice experiment exploring junior doctors’ preferences for different types of training posts. Nearly all eligible doctors in Malawi participated in the survey. The results were incorporated into a Markov model of the Malawi medical workforce as part of a cost-effectiveness analysis of expanded provision of specialty training. Results: The odds of leaving the public sector and Malawi rose with time after graduation, with most of those outside Malawi in specialty training. Junior doctors had strong preferences for different types of specialty training, with subgroups showing distinct preferences. Doctors would require substantial compensation to undertake training only in Malawi or in less popular specialties. Despite this, expanding training within Malawi was the most cost-effective means to retain doctors in the long-term, although more costly than current government spending. Conclusions: Almost all Malawian junior doctors desire to specialise, but not all specialty training is valued equally. Expansion of specialty training in Malawi, however, would lead to higher returns on investments in medical education. More cost-effectiveness modelling and a “whole-career” perspective to policy interventions would strengthen health workforce policy in low-resource settings.