The study aims to investigate the current perceptions of the Unemployment Insurance Fund (UIP) for domestic workers in a township called KwaNdengezi, a Durban Metro area, Pretoria section. The study used qualitative research methods to gather and interpret data. A sample consisting of 13 domestic workers, 10 employers of domestic workers, Department of Labour (UIF official) and representative from the South African Domestic and Allied Workers Union (SADAWU) were interviewed. The study found that there are negative perceptions about the policy due to the fact that people (employers and domestic workers) do not understand the policy objectives and how the policy tries to meet these objectives. The study also found that SADAWU was participated in setting the agenda for policy by identifying the problems of domestic workers and petitioning government to address them. Lastly, the study highlighted that the main problem with the implementation of the policy was that it was not communicated clearly enough which has led to many misinterpretations of the policy. / Thesis (M.Soc.Sc.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2004.

Paid domestic work is the most important occupation for urban Mozambican women after self-employment. Domestic workers perform the reproductive and productive functions necessary to keep households running and the economy growing. Despite the importance of this sector, it is characterised by low wages, long hours, rigorous schedules, and vulnerability to abuse. In 2008, Mozambique’s National Assembly passed Decree 40/2008, extending labour protections to domestic workers. There is significant debate however about whether labour protection can transform working conditions in such an intimate sector. Domestic work takes place in isolation, behind the closed doors and high walls of private homes; it consists of intimate tasks, adding a personalness to the employment relationship; and working conditions are negotiated one-on-one with employers. Drawing on historical research, primary observations and semi-structured interviews with key informants and domestic workers in Maputo’s central city, this study discusses the opportunities and limitations of legislating worker justice in an intimate profession. It explores how the institutional and regulatory framework both enables and prevents improvements in working conditions; how domestic workers leverage these institutions to advance their interests; and the informal strategies and tactics they use concurrently. The study suggests that Decree 40/2008 has had limited direct impact on working conditions. Its ambiguous language, poor dissemination, and weak regulatory structure, combined with the precarious nature of Maputo’s labour market and entrenched power relations between workers and employers, mean that domestic workers exhibit high levels of accommodation or patience, preferring to wait for conditions to improve or better options to surface, than to make outright demands from employers. However, this study also suggests Decree 40/2008 has galvanised domestic worker organising, creating a focus of mobilisation and advocacy with the potential to profoundly affect working conditions in this sector. In the context of a fractured labour movement however, domestic worker organising has become a battleground for autonomy, power, and resources. It is still too early to know whether domestic workers will ultimately benefit. / Thesis (M.Dev.Studies)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2012.

In June 2010, Canada’s Conservative majority government made a controversial announcement that the mandatory long form Census of Canada questionnaire would be replaced by the voluntary National Household Survey, as the former was deemed to be too invasive to Canadians’ privacy, threatening imprisonment for non-compliance. This practicum examines the anticipated implications of the Census change through an analysis of existing information – the repository of letters either supporting or contesting the elimination of the mandatory questionnaire. Planning processes are contingent upon understanding socio-economic conditions and demographic distribution. The long form Census is arguably an integral planning tool that provides an indication of community change. This research explores the role of information with respect to planning processes and the use of knowledge in enabling power within or over communities. Finally, this practicum provides suggestions for planners to mitigate changes to statistical information and adapt planning processes.

This study examined how marital conflict and marital environment contribute to change in marital status over time; while controlling for gender and other demographic characteristics. The current study used all three waves, 1987-1988, 1992-1994, 2001-2002, of the nationally representative dataset National Survey of Families and Households (NSFH). Four longitudinal models were tested using path analysis and the Bayesian estimation technique. Findings indicate there is no effect of marital conflict on change in marital status when demographic and marital environment variables are in the model. Age has the strongest direct and indirect effects. An increase in number of times married consistently increases the chance of a change in marital status. Variables measuring the marital environment—with the exception of the effects of unfairness of chores and spending money in the male models—primarily, contribute direct and mediating effects on the two measures of marital conflict. Overall, when considering all models, the variable with the strongest direct and indirect effects, is age of the respondent. This finding indicates that the dominate influence on marital environment and marital conflict, and, ultimately, change in marital status, is that of age as a proxy for developmental change over the lifecycle.

Several socio-structural theoretical approaches attempt to explain the gendered division of household labor, but the dyadic process of dividing labor has gone largely unexplored. Therefore, a grounded theory approach was taken with 20 dual-earner married couples to uncover the process of dividing household labor between spouses. The theory that emerged indicated that couples seek to maximize benefits in their distribution of labor, and do so by dividing tasks according to personal preferences and proficiencies. When a household task goes unclaimed by both spouses’ preferences and proficiencies, containment and outsourcing are the strategies employed to minimize the impact of the unclaimed task. The emergent theory can be used by researchers to illuminate the dyadic process of division of household labor in ways that other theories are not able. The theory can also be used by educators to prepare premarital couples for future division of household labor practices as well as by therapists who can identify problematic patterns within clients’ division of household labor process.

<p>This dissertation explores the quotidian experience of economic development by studying both the material realities and discursive worlds of 1960s Argentina. I reveal the gendered relationship between economic development and an expanding consumer culture by analyzing the use, circulation, and meanings attributed to household appliances by journalists and public intellectuals. In the late 1950s, many economists, politicians, and intellectuals fervently believed they had found an economic model -- developmentalism -- that would finally provide the means of raising Argentines' standard of living and make the Argentine economy as robust as those of the United States and Northern European countries. Household appliances played a key role because they achieved both those goals, (supposedly) improving women's lives in the process by in part facilitating their increased participation in the workforce. Developmentalists believed their economic model to exist independently of ideology and cultural influences, but their model encountered cultural realities that limited its success. Consumerism--the way through which Argentines interacted with development--and its effects on family and gender relationships complicated the process. Both supporters and critics of developmentalism attacked women's roles as consumers to articulate many of their protestations against changes in women's status and to express anxieties about seemingly unrelated social and cultural changes. I argue that through the course of the 1960s the discussion about consumerism increasingly became a way through which different groups offered distinct visions of how "Argentine society" ought to be transformed.</p><p>This study draws on a broad array of written and oral sources. To trace the connection between economic development and consumer society, I interweave an analysis of economic and infrastructural data - such as production statistics or the availability of gas, water - with a study of socio-cultural discourses found in a wide variety of magazines, essays, films, and interviews. I juxtapose these sources in unusual ways to demonstrate two things. First, the cross-referencing of disparate sources to reveals a fuller, more complete picture of economic development and its effects--transcending macro-structural phenomenon to offer a view of quotidian change. And, two, this more complete pictures details how a narrative of hope and idealism evolved into one of anxiety and vitriol as the decade progressed.</p> / Dissertation

<p>This dissertation consists of two related essays on the economics of immigration. The first chapter presents new evidence on whether the earnings of foreign-born workers grow faster than that of similarly educated natives. We compare cross-sectional and panel analyses of assimilation in the U.S. context. The panel data allow us to control for fixed unobserved heterogeneity in earnings. As others have found for earlier entry cohorts, we find that immigrants with less than a college education start at an earnings disadvantage but converge toward native earnings with time in the U.S. in the cross-section. Lower earning immigrants selectively leave on-the-books jobs. We also find substantial selection among low earnings natives who also tend to work less and leave the labor force earlier. Both groups display selection and the net result is that controlling for fixed unobserved heterogeneity has little effect on the relative earnings growth of low-skilled immigrants.</p><p>We find very different results for high-skilled workers. In the cross-sectional analysis, immigrants whose highest level of education is a bachelor's degree exhibit a decline in relative earnings with time in the U.S. However, for these immigrants, the inclusion of an individual fixed effect reveals faster earnings growth relative to natives. Among both immigrants and natives, lower earners selectively leave the covered sector. However, because low earning immigrants who remain in the sample become more likely to work with time in the U.S., the net result is that the average earnings of immigrants diminish. These results indicate that controlling for individual heterogeneity is important in estimating the economic assimilation of immigrants.</p><p>The second chapter examines the role of the workplace in earnings assimilation. Using an earnings panel much like in the first chapter, we consider whether job characteristics such as firm size, industry, and firm specific tenure can account for earnings differences between native and foreign-born workers. We focus on workers with less than a college education and find that the job characteristics considered account for almost all of the faster earnings growth of high school dropouts and half of the faster earnings growth of high school graduate immigrants. Rising relative job tenure of immigrants is the most important factor.</p> / Dissertation

The extent of a community experiencing social vulnerability depends on the community’s ability to access resources that may contribute to coping mechanisms (either within the household or provided externally by a responsible authority) that decrease the impacts and effects of a disaster. Therefore, the purpose of this research was to identify the existence of social and institutional mechanisms that aim to reduce experiences of water inaccessibility and the causes of social vulnerability, and increase coping mechanisms within Kayamandi. Kayamandi is a low income residential community on the north-westerly periphery of the greater Stellenbosch town in the Western Cape. The research attained responses through questionnaires and surveys from residents, community organisations and responsible personnel. These surveys allowed the researcher to produce raw attribute data for each household that assisted in spatially representing vulnerable households and informing the five priority areas of the Hyogo Framework for Action. Contributing to this method of attaining information, secondary geographic data collection was obtained through the Stellenbosch Local Municipality, the National Geospatial Information Directorate and the National Demarcation Board. The findings of this thesis established that household and public water infrastructure contribute to the risk of experiencing social vulnerability that affects economic standings and quality of health within the community. Contributing to this and due to Kayamandi’s politically sensitive and historically fractioned community, social cohesion has also been noted as an area of vulnerability. Although these vulnerabilities are experienced, residents are able to implement technical, social and municipal reliant coping mechanisms. However, although efforts from Stellenbosch Local Municipality do respond to most of the key indicators within the Hyogo Framework for Action, the study found no concrete efforts within the Stellenbosch Local Municipality that illustrate integrated mechanisms to reduce the impacts of disasters and compound effects. / Magister Artium - MA

<p>Diss. Stockholm :  Stockholm School of Economics, 2013. Introduction together with 4 papers.</p>

This study aims to examine how the migration experience influences newcomer mothers’ young child feeding and care practices and their children’s overall health. The thesis comprises three separate manuscripts, each of which examines one of the three intermediate determinants of the nutritional status of young children (UNICEF 1990): access to healthcare, household food insecurity, and child feeding and care practices. The research was conducted in Toronto’s Jane-Finch neighbourhood, a suburban neighbourhood home to a high density of newcomers. Thirty-two participants (16 Sri Lankan Tamil and 16 Latin American) who had migrated to Canada within the past five years as refugee claimants or family sponsored immigrants participated in the study. Data collection consisted of semi-structured interviews with women from low-income households who had a child between the ages of 1 and 5 years. Spanish and Tamil speaking interviewers interviewed each participant two or three times. Data was analyzed using a mid-level approach in which broad analytical themes are determined prior to analysis and specific themes were then generated based on participants’ perspectives and are grounded in the data. The first manuscript examines newcomer mothers’ experiences accessing physicians for their children and identifies the major gaps between mothers’ expectations and their actual experiences that lead to barriers in communication and overall patient dissatisfaction. The second manuscript demonstrates that mothers’ past experiences with food insecurity affect two aspects of the construct of food insecurity: its managed aspect and its temporal nature. This finding has implications for the measurement of food insecurity in newcomer populations. The third manuscript reveals that newcomer mothers are exposed to several parallel and often conflicting systems of knowledge concerning health and nutrition for their children, and that their utilization of Canada’s Food Guide is impeded by its failure to acknowledge alternate parallel knowledge systems. These findings can be applied to the development of social and health policy aimed at improving cultural competency in healthcare and nutrition education and at ameliorating the income constraints leading to household food insecurity.