The main objective of this paper is to investigate the relationship between intergenerational educational mobility and income inequality. Previous research suggests that this relationship is expected to be positive, i.e. high income inequality is associated with low intergenerational educational mobility. To estimate the association between the two specified variables data on educational mobility is taken from a previous study and data on the income inequality measure, the Gini coefficient is taken from the World Bank. A weighted least square regression shows that 0.10 increase in the Gini coefficient leads to a 0.135 increase in the measure of educational mobility. Moreover, one underlying mechanism for this certain linkage is inspected. Pearson correlation between public spending on education as a percent of GDP and educational mobility show a rather strong negative association suggesting that higher spending on education is related to higher educational mobility.

A relevant subject in our globalized world concerns the relationship between language and identity, specifically amongst migrant youngsters’ experience of group belonging. This study therefore focused on how adolescents born to foreign parents in Sweden, perceived their multilingualism as part of their identity formation. I also aimed to include how socio-economic aspects could affect the process of identity construction. Thus, the investigation was performed with seventh grade students at a primary school located in the Stockholm suburb Bredäng. The methods consisted of a questionnaire, which was completed by the entire class and a group interview where six students participated. The results revealed that students adapted their language use based on the context, but Swedish was used most habitually. The informants viewed their multilingualism as beneficial but yet fully aware of the linguistic ideologies functioning in society. By combining their minority and majority language, the students were left with different ethnic identities and had diverse interpretations of what it meant to be Swedish. Even though all of them perceived themselves to have multiple ethnic identities, this was not solely seen positively. The issue of belonging was raised and the students claimed to be outcasts everywhere. However, the results differed depending on whether the students were born in Sweden or not. Also, most of them struggled with the process of assumed and ascribed identities, since they perceived themselves to be Swedish but experienced that society valued them as immigrants. Lastly, the study revealed that there were connections between their multilingualism and social mobility as the relationship towards the motherland was highly prioritized even with low levels of economic capital.

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International Study Exchange Programmes as a Form of Student Mobility Abstract Czech students have been only little surveyed as a mobile population so far, despite the increasing importance of student mobility in the contemporary globalised world. This thesis examines student mobility on the example of Czech students from geographical departments of Charles University in Prague, Faculty of Science, who joined the Erasmus exchange programme as a part of their studies in the past five years (2005-2010). This study aims to analyze the directions and intensity of Erasmus student flows and motivation of students to take part in the student exchange programme. One of the main goals is also to measure the influence of the Erasmus study exchange on the potential international mobility of students. A multi-method approach is used in this case study, including questionnaire surveys among mobile students, interviews with Erasmus coordinators and a statistical analysis of existing data sources (especially the statistics of the geographical departments and the database of Czech National Agency for European Educational Programmes). The results show that the motivation to student mobility is influenced by many factors. The questionnaire data reveal a major importance of language and life experience as motivational...

Master of Regional and Community Planning / Department of Landscape Architecture/Regional and Community Planning / Hyung Jin Kim / This study seeks to investigate the impact of inner-city highways on walkability in urban downtowns in the United States, using Greater Downtown Kansas City as a case study. This study used the web-based online survey method to assess if inner-city highways impede the flow of pedestrians among residents and visitor of the Greater Downtown Kansas City, Missouri. The results showed that there were differences in the perception of the pedestrian environment between residents and visitors of the downtown area. Downtown residents generally had a more favorable view of the pedestrian environment than visitors of Greater Downtown. Additionally, the inner-city highways did not appear to be barriers to pedestrian mobility, which differs from the hypothesis of this study. However, although the pedestrian overpasses over the highways did have an impact on pedestrians’ perceptions and walking behaviors, newer overpasses with wider sidewalks mitigated barrier effects of highways more than older overpasses with narrow sidewalks. The study also found that walking was the most common travel mode for all trips in Greater Downtown Kansas City, despite potential barriers.

In the interconnected world of today more and more people get on the move. We go abroad for vacations, visits or business trips and we change countries of residence as we pursue new opportunities. Cross-border mobility is becoming part of our life. In recent years consumer researchers have been showing an increasing interest in particularities of consumption in condition of global mobility. Although previous studies have acknowledged the importance of economic capital in enabling global consumer mobility, existing research could be enriched by a deeper understanding of how globally mobile consumers manage their financial consumption across borders. The aim of this dissertation is to is to contribute to the uncovering of the particularities of consumption of financial services in global mobility by documenting globally mobile consumers’ financial consumption patterns, the ways they build and maintain relationships with their financial service providers and the ways in which they navigate cultural norms of service consumption and financial consumption across borders. The study is based on four research articles that develop an understanding of the dimensions of financial consumption and uncover purchasing, relational and acculturative aspects of consumption of financial services in mobility. The overarching chapter further develops the insights from the articles, bringing forward the concept of the cephalopodic consumption mode – a particular way in which globally mobile consumers organize their financial consumption. This work contributes to the domain of research on serially relocating consumers by showing how globally mobile professionals engage in cephalopodic consumption mode (CCM), using their economic capital in order to navigate their international movement. The multipresence, multi-acculturation, instrumentality and camouflage of CCM emerge as an answer to challenges of mobility – the need to reacquaint with new countries every time upon relocation, the future need to leave again and the necessity to organize consumption across borders. / <p>At the time of the doctoral defense, the following papers were unpublished and had a status as follows: Paper 2: Manuscript. Paper 4: Manuscript.</p>

This thesis examines processes through which the barriers in the Stockholm metro are continuously rearranged. The barriers are in place with the purpose of securing income, while simultaneously enabling the flow of passengers into the metro. First, I examine the technical components and capacities of the barriers. Second, I outline a variety of actors involved with planning, manufacturing, and maintaining them, and analytically link these actors as comprising an ‘apparatus of public transport’. More specifically, this study focuses on how metro users’ practices are both influenced by, and influence how the barriers are rearranged. I show how this dynamic is enacted in the barrier milieu in metro stations, where also the tension between the purposes of securing income and allowing mobility is negotiated. The ethnographic material includes encounters with metro users, technicians, officials, and politicians in metro stations and other settings, as well as written documentations. In public discussions, the barriers are commonly at issue in relation to fare evasion. From a standpoint where technical, social, and political dimensions are understood as intermeshed, this study casts attention to a variety of practices occurring in the barrier milieu. By exploring how a technical arrangement influences social relations, I aim to raise questions of responsibility with regards to technology.

This study investigates Life Cycle Hypothesis savings behaviour among South African households. The mobility matrix methodology as well as a multivariate regression analysis was employed to assess the implications of a permanent increase and a temporary decrease in household incomes based on the impacts of the global financial crisis. Using the General Household Survey data from 2002 - 2010, the study concludes that life cycle savings were greater during the period of 2002 - 2004 (,pre-financial crisis') compared with the period of 2008 - 2010 (,post-financial crisis'). Overall, the global financial crisis significantly negatively impacted household retirement savings.

O atual modelo de planejamento dos transportes é constantemente confrontado com novos ideais associados à mobilidade sustentável. Assim, inúmeros pesquisadores debruçam-se em busca de indicadores e índices capazes de avaliar e monitorar o desempenho de políticas públicas relacionadas ao tema. Dessa forma foi desenvolvido o Índice de Mobilidade Urbana Sustentável (IMUS), uma ferramenta pautada nos preceitos da mobilidade sustentável com a proposta de tornar-se um apoio à gestão municipal. Por ser um método recente, sua aplicação ainda é limitada. Assim, o objetivo deste estudo concentra-se em realizar o cálculo do índice na cidade de Curitiba, muito conhecida por suas soluções urbanas que associam o planejamento dos transportes ao uso do solo. A aplicação do método na cidade fundamentou-se não apenas em obter o simples score relacionado ao desempenho das condições da mobilidade local, mas também possibilitaram avaliar o próprio método. O valor resultante alcançado foi correspondente a 0,747, confirmando Curitiba como uma cidade com características bastante positivas quanto às políticas urbanas voltadas à mobilidade. Por outro lado, foram identificadas algumas deficiências, especialmente quanto aos modos não motorizados de transporte. O cálculo do IMUS permitiu encontrar também indicadores que não foram capazes de identificar aspectos reconhecidamente favoráveis da cidade, demonstrando que possivelmente esses apresentem problemas de avaliação ou normalização de valores. A aplicação do método também se mostrou eficiente para promover uma avaliação intraurbana entre as diversas regiões da cidade. Nesse aspecto Curitiba demonstrou um saudável equilíbrio, sem apresentar grandes disparidades quanto suas políticas locais. Tal característica mostra-se bastante favorável para identificar Curitiba como um benchmarking da mobilidade sustentável. Finalmente o método foi testado como uma ferramenta de comparação entre cidades distintas, demonstrando também ser eficiente, desde que se mantenha uma estrutura de cálculo compatível entre as cidades que se deseja comparar. / The current transportation planning approach is constantly confronted with new values derived from the concept of sustainable mobility. As a consequence, several researchers have devoted time and effort in the search of indicators and indexes capable of evaluating and monitoring the performance of urban policies related to the theme. The Sustainable Urban Mobility Index (I_SUM) was one of them. It is a decision support tool developed to help municipal administrations in the planning and management of sustainable mobility. As it is a recent method, its application is still limited to just a few cases. The objective of this study is to conduct an application of the index in Curitiba, which is a well-known city due to the quality of its urban planning solutions that associate transport planning to land use. The application of the method in the city was motivated not only by the possibility of having a score showing the performance of the city regarding sustainable mobility, but also by the opportunity of evaluating the method itself. The overall resulting value was 0.747, what confirms that Curitiba has very positive characteristics and effective urban policies regarding sustainable mobility. Conversely, some deficiencies were identified, especially concerning non-motorized transport modes. The I_SUM calculation also allowed the identification of indicators that were not able to identify aspects that are good to the city. That may suggest problems in the assessment or normalization procedures of the index. The method application was also efficient for the evaluation of city subdivisions. Curitiba also performed well in that intra-urban evaluation, with a positive equilibrium of the values throughout the city. It may be an indication that the city policies are homogeneously applied in the entire urban area, what certainly contributes to characterize Curitiba as a benchmark of urban mobility. Finally, when used to compare distinct cities, the method was also efficient. In that case, the calculation was compatible with a structure adjusted to simultaneously represent the compared cities.

在以个人主义为文化核心的西方发达国家，关于个体转成人这一生命历程的研究早在二十世纪中期就已兴起。但在以家庭和关系为主导文化的中国，关于个体转成人的研究却非常少见。另一方面，在全球范围内流动人口年轻化的趋势下，已经有一些研究开始关注流动人口的转成人生命历程。但在拥有大量新生代乡-城流动人口的中国，却鲜有研究关注这一群体所处的转成人生命历程。为了弥补这些空白，本研究将探索中国新生代乡-城流动人口的转成人及其成人身份认同。 / 作为质性研究，研究者通过目的抽样的方法获得19位来自深圳市的、具有不同人口学特征的访谈对象。通过对被访者外出、工作以及婚恋经历进行深入访谈与分析，本研究获得了非常重要的发现。首先，新生代乡-城流动人口的转成人呈现非阶段、非线性、漫长、漂泊以及高风险的特征。第二，这一群体的转成人既非个体被各样社会环境单方面影响和形塑的过程，也非具有统一的年龄界限和发展任务的发展阶段，而是能动的个体与社会环境不断互动的过程，体现出丰富的社会、文化与个体多样性。第三，在成人身份认同方面，这一群体并非单纯地将年龄的增长与社会角色的转变看作其转成人的重要标志，而是更看重自身所具备的应对城市生存挑战和满足农村家庭伦理要求的能力，呈现生存取向与伦理取向相结合的特点。 / 本研究一方面挑战了成年初显期这一普遍运用于西方个体转成人研究中的新兴概念，另一方面，也挑战了传统的生命发展阶段视角对个体成长过程的线性的、阶段化以及标准化的理解。更重要的，本研究为中国本土关于新生代乡-城流动人口的研究提出了新的、整合的研究视角，即整合的生命历程视角。最后，研究者提倡关于新生代乡-城流动人口的社会政策与服务的设计应该具有整合的生命历程的视角，因为个体在转成人过程中的每一个选择都会影响其整个生命历程的福祉。更具体的，研究者从家庭、教育、就业、草根劳工NGO、籍制度、与社会福利制度等方面提出关于促进其转成人过程顺利进行、提高其社会福利的政策建议。 / Research on individuals’ transition to adulthood has emerged from the mid-20th century in Western developed countries with individualism as the core of culture. However, in China with family and relationship as the dominated culture, research regarding individuals’ transition to adulthood is rare. On the other side, research about the transition to adulthood among young migrants has sprung up under the context of global mobility in which young migrants become the major drive. However, there is little research focusing on the very transition-to-adulthood life course among young-generation rural-urban migrants in China while this age group has gradually dominated the whole rural-urban migrants. This study is to fill these research gaps. / This research explored the transition-to-adulthood experience and adult identity among Chinese young-generation rural-urban migrants. As a qualitative research, the researcher obtained 19 participants in Shenzhen by purposive sampling. Through two rounds of face-to-face in-depth interview about their life experience in migration, work and intimate relationship, this research found that the transition-to-adulthood trajectory of the participants is neither linear nor progressive; it is rather prolonged, recursive, floating, and fused with instability, contingency and risks. / Second, this research indicated that the transition to adulthood among the participants is neither a one-way process in which the individuals were passively influenced by social environment, nor a normative life stage with unified age ranks and developmental tasks. Rather, it is an interactive process between individual agency and different social environment and a trajectory with social, cultural and individual diversities. / Third, with regard to the formation of adult identity, the participants did not consider the age and role transition as the main markers of becoming adults. On the contrary, they took high regard of the ability and responsibility in coping with survival environment in cities and fulfilling the ethic requirements and expectations from their families. In other words, their adult identity formation is both survival-oriented and ethic-oriented which was molded by their status as rural-urban migrants. / This research challenged the concept of emerging adulthood which has been widely used in transition to adulthood research in western society. This research also challenged the traditional life stage perspective which understood individual’s life development as linear and normalized stages. More important, this research introduced a brand-new and more integrated research perspective ─ integrated life course - to research on young-generation rural-urban migrants in China. / This research advocated that social polices targeting on the young-generation rural-urban migrants in China should be designed in integrated life course perspective because each life choice during transition to adulthood will influence the participants’ wellbeing. More specifically, the researcher proposed some key advice on policies and services in the areas of family, education and labor market, for supporting the participants’ transition to adulthood and enhancing their social welfare. / Detailed summary in vernacular field only. / Detailed summary in vernacular field only. / Detailed summary in vernacular field only. / 趙瑞玲. / Parallel title from added title page. / Thesis (Ph.D.) Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2016. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 326-361). / Abstracts also in Chinese. / Zhao Ruiling.