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The study utilizes Labour Force Surveys (LFS) for Barbados, Dominica, and St. Lucia for selected periods within 1996 – 2004 to analyse the themes of private rates of returns to the individual investment in education; and inter-industry wage structure and the subthemes of public sector pay premium and the gender pay gap. The interval coded nature of the earnings data reported in the LFS, requires the use of an interval regression model estimated by maximum likelihood techniques. A key empirical finding in the study is that the Eastern Caribbean labour market places a relatively high valuation on formally acquired post-primary human capital assets. The industrial wage structure in the selected countries reflects the effects of recent trade policy changes in regard to agriculture. The overall inter-industry wage dispersion was found to be high in Dominica and St. Lucia, remaining relatively constant in the two periods in the latter country. In Barbados the inter-industry wage structure was substantial but unlike the other countries expanded over time. The study finds the ceteris paribus public sector pay premium in the recent past has improved for women and is relatively large and suggests public sector workers are securing a high rent through employment in this sector. A gender pay gap in the range of 14 percent – 20 percent is detected and in Dominica there is also evidence of a sizeable ethnic pay disadvantage for male members of the island's indigenous population. In all respects the outcomes for the selected countries follow a clear pattern that mirrors the findings in the empirical literature on the Caribbean.

This dissertation describes labour work mobility issues within the European Union. It focuses on obstacles that restrict the free movement of workers and how these obstacles can be eliminated by the European Union. The case study "Motivation of Czech workers to work abroad" is also included in this dissertation.

This thesis examines the issue of marriage breakdown in the British Armed Forces in light of claims that rates are double that of the civilian population. The research is situated within the context of existing research on the relationship between the service family and the military organisation. This thesis is distinctive in that it employs Bacchi's (1999) method of critical analysis to problem framing in Governmental policy and existing discourses on service families. The objective is to show how the impact of military demands on marriage and family life are framed by the media, politicians, and academics as a problem for the military, in relation to a tension that exists between retention and divorce. Attention to the effects of service life on families is therefore embedded in policy directives, and framed by concerns over the retention and recruitment of military personnel as implications for operational effectiveness. By re-focusing attention to the implications of marriage breakdown for service families this thesis constructs new problem frames, a key question being: what is problematic about marriage and marital breakdown for military wives? The empirical areas explored through in-depth qualitative interviews with a sample of ex-service wives from across the tri-Services are women s experiences and perceptions of marriage and family life, and of marriage breakdown in the military. This methodological approach is unique in that previous studies of service wives have focused on a single community. The voices and experiences of ex-service wives are noticeably absent in previous research, representing neglected routes to experience and knowledge that are vital to a more holistic understanding of the impact of military demands on the family. This thesis highlights the role of emotion in the socialisation of service families which has not been made in the existing literature to date. It has been acknowledged that the conceptual boundaries between the public and private spheres are practically non-existent where the military and service families are concerned. The interface between work and home can be explained in terms of the invisible emotion work service wives perform in support of husbands careers and the institutional goals of the military. This thesis is also distinctive in that it defines wives work in relation to the military in terms of emotional labour and the two-person career. As wives receive little recompense for this labour, responding to role appropriate emotions can have implications for the well-being of military wives, and illustrates the complex picture that emerges as to the reasons why military marriages might end. Factors linked to issues of marital adversity were: infidelity, domestic violence and emotional and psychological abuse, the effects of a culture of alcohol, and the impact of post-operational stress. In addition, family separation was viewed as creating emotional distance between couples. Many women became very independent and adept at coping with the military lifestyle, which created problems for the reintegration of personnel into family life. Moreover, husbands that were perceived by women to be married to the military, in terms of an institutional and social identity, were less satisfied with their relationships. This thesis concludes that the construct of the service family is embedded in institutional rules and regulations regarding marriage and family life, therefore current problematisations of marriage breakdown fail to reveal the difficulties experienced by families in navigating post-divorce family life. Non-intact families are rendered operationally ineffective, hence there are a number of consequences experienced by service families, and women and children in particular, that represent a far-reaching problem of marriage breakdown in the UK Armed Forces.

The people who service the physical needs of university populations and maintain their built environment are barely acknowledged in the research into university life. An observed dissonance between university staff encountered on the ground and those appearing in the literature prompted this research into the work experience of university catering, caretaking and security staff. This thesis is based on a case study which investigated perceptions of this experience in an English university. Consideration was given to the contribution of these staff to the social and learning aspects of the institution. The research was positioned within the theoretical tension between the structural nature of the social determinants of work, and individual subjective responses to working practices. The format of the study was guided by Paul Edwards’ consideration of the components of a useful labour process analysis. The research strategy was an inductive single case study, drawing on ethnographic traditions of observation and conversation, supplemented by the perusal of documents. A first phase of familiarisation was followed by a second stage of interviews, participant and non-participant observation. Forty-five staff were directly engaged with the research with informal observations and conversations with others. Thematic analysis was used to consider data across the case study. English universities have been subject to structural change which have created large, fragmented and dispersed populations and impacted on the ways that the built environment is used. The formal work activities of these staff enabled the University to open and operate securely. They contributed to the social processes of the institution through their interactions with staff, students, customers and visitors. It is argued that they also had a valuable role in establishing a friendly, welcoming, supportive environment for students through discretionary, activity during frequent encounters. The work of these staff was closely structured as to time, place and task. These everyday social interactions provided an autonomous opportunity to craft their work environment and develop relationships whose significance is insufficiently explored in the current literature on low paid and low status work.

This thesis explores the politics and consequences of road construction for local populations and migrant road workers in Ladakh. Through a political ecology framework, I consider road construction as the transformation of an environment in which different agents act through specific socio-political arrangements and for purposes that are socially and culturally mediated. Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in remote villages and among groups of Nepali and Jharkhandi road workers in Ladakh, the thesis documents the case of the Zanskar Highway, a 292 km long trans- Himalayan road that has been under construction since the 1970s. It analyses the reasons why states build roads, nationally and more specifically in the contested landscape of Ladakh; why people want roads; how people negotiate roads and their trajectory; and what the consequences of roads and road construction are in terms of mobility, isolation, resource use, livelihoods and well-being. In the thesis, I question the roads-development nexus, and argue that the reasons why states build roads are extremely diverse and have changed over time. I argue that road construction is a highly political process determined by conflicting motivations and perceptions. I also argue that the consequences of roads are complex, often ambiguous and region-specific, and that gains and losses that occur because of roads and their construction are unequally distributed, within and between local and migrant populations. The research makes an original contribution to road studies by studying the political, socio-economic and symbolic consequences of both roads and the process of their construction for the populations that live near new roads and those who build them. It also links ex-ante with ex-post road studies by looking at what happens during the process of construction. Finally, it contributes to Ladakh studies by documenting the history of road construction in the region and providing the first study of migrants in Ladakh.

Drawing on workplace ethnography at a farm in the East of England and interviews with former participants on the UK's temporary foreign worker programme, the Seasonal Agricultural Workers Scheme, this thesis contributes to understanding of the everyday work and living experiences of migrant workers in UK horticulture. In particular, it assesses the influence of supermarket-driven supply chains and of immigration status on these experiences. This thus reveals a labour process which is strongly shaped by structural factors, yet workers' agency is also shown to play an important part. The analysis is organised around working and living spaces. It first explores the living spaces of the camp in which migrant workers were required to reside as a result of the conditions attached to the Seasonal Agricultural Workers Scheme. Such conditions, it is argued, give rise to both social and physical enclosure and thus to employers' control of migrant workers. Secondly, the thesis focuses on everyday work spaces, illustrating how migrants' work efforts are influenced by two features of production operating in UK food supply chains: just in time and total quality control. The role of surveillance and technology are shown to be important in habituating migrants' bodies and their work efforts. The analysis of spaces of work also reveals how the piece rate form of payment and uncertainty over rates of pay are used to gain workers' consent and intensification of work effort. Moreover, it contributes to understanding of the bodily effects of that effort. The thesis further explores leisure and consumption spaces away from the camp. These can be sites of stigma, racism and exclusion and simultaneously reveal the working of a transnational social field. The analysis of these spaces provides evidence of how immigration status and nationality can shape both migrants' own identities and how others perceive them.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-28T20:57:10Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Erika P Oliveira.pdf: 955790 bytes, checksum: 0db8c32d830ee4aec2ea9ab73537b0f1 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2007-04-26 / Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico / This work intended to apprehend the presence of the neoliberal ideology in the sense and meanings of labour in a 3rd year high-school student of the Youngster and Adult Educational Program (EJA). This moment of the educational process was chosen as a methodological resource. The theoretical perspective used in the research understands the EJA student according to the Socio-Historical Psychology principles, whose system of methodological and epistemological references sees man as built through social productions relations. The economy globalization along with the conditions of work progressively more flexible and precarious leverages the diffusion of the neoliberal ideology. To this research, countersigned by the qualitative approach, a group with ten students with that profile was formed in a state public school in São Paulo, and then the research subject was chosen. During the group session, the choice of the subject was based in the following criteria: involvement with the theme, absorption and pertinence, and personal availableness. Once the only subject was established, two half-structured interviews were made to investigate her professional and personal life, with the purpose of uncovering the senses and meanings of labour to the subject.The analysis procedure occurred through the agglutination of pre-indicators, later organized in indicators. Once articulated and systematized these indicators showed three signification nucleus. The organized nucleus were: The labour world and consumption and life project , Personal efforts today and forever , World vision and television mass media . The scenery of maintenance of the neoliberal ideology guides the ways of insertion of men in the world of labour, in such a way that it was possible to identify, in the student speech, the personal effort as key to the success and an emphasis on the individuality encapsulated in the family cell. Besides that, the television mass media constituted the responsible for knowledge transmission, and school education as the space of care and reassertion of family values; aspects which affects her ways to criticise, feel and act in the world. Thus, as a conclusion, it is possible to say that the ideology, and, more specifically as one of its elements, the personal effort notion, constitutes a decisive element, marking the process of insertion of the student in the labour world as something ideological, deprived of a process of appropriation of its constitutive mediations / Este trabalho buscou apreender a presença do ideário neoliberal nos sentidos e significados sobre trabalho em uma estudante do 3o ano Ensino Médio da Educação de Jovens e Adultos (EJA); momento este, do processo educativo, escolhido como recurso metodológico. A perspectiva teórica utilizada ao longo da pesquisa entende o estudante de EJA a partir dos pressupostos da Psicologia Sócio-Histórica, cujo referencial epistemológico e metodológico compreende o homem como ser histórico e constituído nas e pelas relações sociais de produção. A globalização da economia e a flexibilização e precarização do trabalho são os aportes para a difusão do ideário neoliberal. Para esta pesquisa, referendada pela abordagem qualitativa, formou-se um grupo com 10 alunos com esse perfil, em uma escola estadual de São Paulo, para, a partir daí, escolher-se o sujeito de pesquisa. No espaço grupal, a escolha do sujeito baseou-se nos seguintes critérios: envolvimento com o tema, aprofundamento e pertinência, e disponibilidade pessoal. Determinado o único sujeito, foram realizadas duas entrevistas semi-estruturadas, que recuperaram sua história de vida e profissional, objetivando aproximar-se dos sentidos e significados sobre trabalho. O procedimento de análise ocorreu por meio da aglutinação de pré-indicadores nos relatos da estudante, que foram organizados em indicadores, os quais articulados e sistematizados evidenciaram três núcleos de significação. Os núcleos organizados foram: O mundo do trabalho e projeto de vida e de consumo , Esforço Pessoal hoje e sempre e Visão de mundo e a mídia televisiva . O cenário de manutenção do ideário neoliberal orienta as formas de inserção dos homens no mundo do trabalho, de forma que foi possível identificar, nas falas da estudante, o esforço pessoal como chave para o sucesso e a ênfase na individualidade encapsulada na célula familiar. Além disso, a mídia televisiva constituiu-se como a responsável pela transmissão de conhecimentos, e a educação escolar como o lugar do cuidado e reafirmação de valores familiares aspectos que afetam suas formas de criticar, sentir e agir sobre o mundo. Assim, concluiu-se que o ideário e, mais especificamente, como um de seus elementos, a noção de esforço pessoal, constitui-se em um determinante fundamental, marcando o processo de colocação da estudante no mundo do trabalho, como algo ideologizado, desprovido de um processo de apropriação das mediações constitutivas

The purpose of the study was to locate the informal hiring sites for day labourers in Tshwane, to determine the approximate number of day labourers, to describe the nature of socio-economic activities taking place at the sites, and to make recommendations to address needs that have been identified. The research approach and methodology was exploratory, descriptive, quantitative and qualitative. In terms of the findings, 80 informal hiring sites were identified in Tshwane with approximately 3032 day labourers standing at the sites. Case studies were done on three sites and it was found that they were hazardous and lacked basic facilities such as shelter and toilets. Employer-employee interactions were also found to be haphazard and sometimes manipulative and exploitative. It is recommended that intervention programmes should be implemented which could include the provision of basic facilities, skills development, job search assistance and access to comprehensive social services. / Health Studies / M.A. (Social Science - Mental Health)

This thesis explored the fathering practices of precariously employed African men with the study objectives including understanding: (1) how precariously employed men construct fatherhood; (2) the fathering practices considered important to them; (3) in what way precarious employment impacts on their fathering practices; and (4) how precariously employed men negotiate between their children’s economic as well as socio-emotional needs. This research focused particularly on the experiences of roadside work-seekers in Parow, Cape Town, seeking to understand how they construct fatherhood within their precarious working conditions. What these men think about fatherhood is important particularly in South Africa where not only unemployment is high, but also the rates of children growing up without their fathers. An ethnographic study was conducted during which data was collected using both participant observation and semi-structured interview methods. This thesis reports on interviews conducted with 46 men over a period of seventeen weeks. The findings reveal that the majority of roadside work-seekers are migrants (both internal and cross border) who have families to provide for. This study also revealed having children as one of the main reasons men engage in precarious work activities. Also highlighted is the extent to which precarious work impact the lives of those involved to the extent that it affects their relationships with their children, families and intimate partners. The majority of day labourers, due to being unemployed also do not live with their children, with many being denied access as a result of a breakdown in their relationship with the mother of the child, but also as a result of being unable to fulfil certain traditional requirements expected of men who impregnate women out of wedlock in some African cultures. Finally, this study confirmed the various ways in which men engaged in precarious employment are exposed to high levels of poverty, homelessness, substance abuse, violence and crime, and racism, discrimination and exploitation. / Psychology / D. Phil. (Psychology)