We study the employment gap between immigrants and natives in 16 European countries and the effect of integration policies and country of origin. In this paper, we want to answer 3 main questions. First, is there employment gap between natives and immigrants? Using the European Social Survey, we found that employment gap exists for both male and female immigrants compare to natives because of their characteristics are different from natives. Second, how do various integration policies affect the employment probability of immigrants? Using Migration Integration Policy Index, the result shows that some integration policies are beneficial to immigrants but some are not. Lastly, how do various countries of origin characteristics affect the employment probability of immigrants? Using data from the World Bank and the United Nation Development Program, we found that Human development index and labor force participation rate of the origin country affects immigrants in positive effects of probability of being employed.

Stuttgart, Univ., Studienarbeit, 2006.

Göttingen, Univ., Diss., 2004.

Marburg, Univ., Diss., 2004. / Erscheinungsjahr an der Haupttitelstelle: 2004. Computerdatei im Fernzugriff.

Marburg, Universiẗat, Diss., 2004. / Erscheinungsjahr an der Haupttitelstelle: 2004.

Göttingen, University, Diss., 2004.

Düsseldorf, Universiẗat, Diss., 2003.

This study examined the factors related to intergenerational conflict as perceived by immigrant and non-immigrant adolescents. The study replicated the work of Doreen Rosenthal (1989) using a modified version of the questionaire she administered to adolescents in Melbourne, Australia. This study was administered to 300 grade eleven students in two Vancouver high schools. The data was analysed to determine the effect of the following factors on intergenerational conflict: immigrant status, bicultural adaptation, gender, ethnicity, age at time of immigration, presence or absence of a common complex language with parents. Analysis revealed that students in general reported a moderate amount of conflict with their parents. Intergenerational conflict was not affected by whether or not the adolescent was an immigrant to Canada. Female adolescents reported higher conflict with their fathers, but no gender differences were noted with mothers. Of the three largest ethnic groups in the study, Indo-Canadians reported significantly more conflict with mothers than did either Euro-Canadians or Chinese-Canadians and a greater amount of conflict with fathers than did Chinese-Canadians. Chinese-Canadians reported less conflict with either parent than did either Indo-Canadians or Euro-Canadians. Bicultural students did not report significantly less conflict than traditional, assimilated or marginal adolescents. Age at the time of immigration did not affect the amount of intergenerational conflict. And finally, adolescents who speak a common language with their parents in the home perceived less conflict with mothers. While few recommendations could be made as a result of the findings, a framework for the analysis of integration patterns was developed, a comprehensive review of the literature conducted and questions for future research on intergenerational conflict were raised. / Education, Faculty of / Graduate

Thesis advisor: Juliet B. Schor / Despite decades of research and efforts to reform schools, racial disparities in educational opportunities and outcomes, often referred to as the "achievement gap," persist and concerns about students' math learning and achievement continue. Among researchers, educational practitioners, and the wider public, explanations for these ongoing problems usually point to structural influences or individual and cultural factors. For example, structures of schooling (e.g. school funding, organization and curriculum) and those outside of school (e.g. family background and neighborhood characteristics) become focal points for understanding educational inequalities and places for intervention. In terms of explanations that look to individual influences, teachers and students are either targeted for their inadequacies or praised for their individual talents, values and successes. Regarding students in particular, racial inequalities in academic outcomes often become attributed to students', namely black and Latino/a students', supposed cultural devaluation of education and their desires to not "act white" and academically achieve. Together, these explanations lead to the assessment that possibilities of teaching and learning are predetermined by a host of structural and individual influences. But how is the potential to teach and learn at least partially actualized through everyday processes? Moreover, how do these processes, which simultaneously involve structures and individual agents, lead to the production or disruption of racial disparities? To explore these questions, I investigated processes of teaching and learning in one well-funded, racially diverse public high school with high rates of students' passing the statewide standardized test, many students going onto prestigious colleges and universities, and enduring racial inequalities in academic achievement. I conducted fieldwork over three years in 14 math classrooms ranging from test preparation classes to honors math classes and interviewed 52 students and teachers about their experiences in school. Through analyzing the data, I find that what happens within the classroom walls still matters in shaping students' opportunities to learn and achieve. Illustrating how effective learning and teaching and racial disparities in education do not simply result from either preexisting structural contexts or individuals' virtues or flaws, classroom processes mold students' learning and racial differences in those experiences through cultivating or eroding what I refer to as students' sense of academic agency and teachers' sense of agency to teach. For students, that sense of agency leads to their attachment to school, identification with learning in general and math in particular, engagement, motivation and achievement. As classroom processes evolve in virtuous or vicious cycles, different beliefs about students (e.g. as "good kids" or "bad kids") importantly fuel the direction of these cycles. Since racial stereotypes often influence those beliefs, students consequently experience racial advantages and disadvantages in classroom processes. As a result, some students fail to learn and achieve not because they fear "acting white," but because they do not always get to experience classroom processes that cultivate their sense of being agentic in the classroom space, a sense that is distinctly racialized. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2009. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Sociology.

Higher education institutions are always directed through policy reforms to promote graduates employability by developing skills in students that contribute to human capital. This interest in employability through education system in the development of skills reflects is part of human capital theory. Considering this, underlying research investigates the expectation-performance gap in the development of generic skills for the purpose of employability offered by the accounting institutes of Pakistan. For the purpose of answering the research question, this research, adopted the theoretical framework of ‘expectation-performance gap’ by Bui and Porter and analysed it within the context of Pakistan. Adoption of this theoretical framework implies the evaluation of three constituent factors as research objectives; the ‘expectation gap’ (reflecting the differences in the expectations of accounting educators and employers), the ‘constraints gap’ (limiting factors to develop generic skills into the student learning process) and the ‘performance gap’ (reflecting the ineffectiveness of teaching activities). However, there is also a fourth objective, that is, to evaluate an outline of the ‘skills acquisition framework’ considering the context of Pakistan’s accounting job-market. Principally this research adopts the survey strategy of a questionnaire with closed-ended questions in order to collect the data. But for the purpose of refining the content of the questionnaire for relevance to the context of Pakistan there are also cognitive interviews. Thus, this research entails a mixed-method approach. The qualitative data from the interviews was analysed using content analysis, thematic analysis and textual analysis. Whereas the quantitative data from the questionnaires was analysed using numerous statistical techniques such as Mann-Whitney U-test, Independent sample t-test, Statistical mean and Principal Component Analysis. The findings related to the ‘expectation gap’ were that there are 19 skills where the accounting educators have dissimilar expectation from employers in terms of skill base education, such skills include decision making, economics, ability to analyse and reason logically, teamwork etc. The findings related to the ‘constraints gap’ were that there are 6 constraining elements which are prevailing within the context of professional accounting education, such constraints include ‘training organisations are not following standard procedures to develop skills in students’, ‘people (potential students) have misperception about accounting education’, 'enrolling students have weak academic background', ‘inadequate stipend offered by training organisations to trainees’, ‘accounting institutes are not appreciating teaching activities, and lack of training opportunities for academics’. The findings related to the ‘performance gap’ were that there are 24 skills where the accounting educators found to be ineffective in the development of skills in students as expected by employers for employment purpose, such skills include inter or multidisciplinary perspective, financial risk analysis, think and behave ethically, independent thinking etc. From the perspective of the ‘skills acquisition framework’, overall 6 skills components were identified from the perspective of Pakistan's accounting job-market, such skills components include appreciative skills, interpersonal skills, technical and functional skills, organisational and business management skills, personal skills and professional skills. Considering the novelty of the adopted theoretical framework (expectation-performance gap by Bui and Porter, 2010) there was a related paucity of literature employing it for empirical investigation using the questionnaire based approach. Therefore, this research provides such theoretical underpinning to this framework that now enables it to be used within the questionnaire based approach. Further this research has described all the generic skills used in this study from the accounting disciplinary perspective and highlights the constraining elements that are assumed to limit the ability of professional accounting institutes. This research also provides a skill acquisition framework which could be used as a reference point for new entrants to the accounting job-market.