In response to shifting borders and radical changes in political and economic regimes, a great number of Hungarian Romanians left their homeland in the last century. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in a Hungarian village in Romania, in this thesis I argue that the growing uncertainty in villagers’ working lives, a result of the high unemployment accompanying post-socialist transformation, and ethnic and class based disadvantage in Romania, impels them to engage in pluriactivity in their livelihood strategies. This includes circular labour migration in Hungary and other European Union states. Economic inequalities within the expanded EU create an ethnically segmented labour market, in which working class Transylvanian Hungarians become associated with certain types of work, in this case, temporary and often undocumented jobs in the least desirable sectors of the economy.

The literature review on immigrant’s self-employment activities has limited the debate around the leading factors to this type of activity. Much research on the subject has tried to answer the question ‘what are the determinant characteristics to become self-employed?’ In addressing that question researchers have focused on the relative value of the block mobility thesis and the ethnic enclave theory. This focus created a research gap; researchers have ignored how self-employment may be used by immigrants as an alternative or complementary strategy for accessing a new labour market. Using the Longitudinal Immigration Database, this research explores, using survival regression analysis, the extent to which immigrants adopt different labour market strategies following their admission to Canada. More specifically, it examines their rate of access to labour market activities, the length of time they stay in specific type of labour market activities and the determinant factors for such events. The findings of this research demonstrate that 27 per cent of the economic immigrants, who were admitted to Canada between 1990 and 2008, are likely to rely on paid and self-employment activities simultaneously over time. This finding reinforces the need to analyse self-employment activity as a concurrent activity to paid employment. The regression analysis results on the concurrent activities imply that immigrants admitted under the self-employed category are more inclined, than the other economic immigrants, to rely on the two types of activities when integrating into the Canadian labour market. The findings of this thesis indicated that the traditional theories on self-employment activities are inadequate to explain concurrent self-employment activities and paid employment activities. There is a need to develop contemporary theories around this new concept of concurrent labour market activities that would take into consideration self-employment and employment theories as well as immigrants’ adaptive integration capacity.

Very little research evidence exists with respect to the informal sector in African countries. Although (mixed) theoretical evidence does exist that postulates a relationship between formal sector employment and informal sector employment, very little is understood about the exact nature of such a relationship. The research problem to be answered by this study thus constitutes two parts: Firstly, to estimate the relationship between informal sector employment and formal sector employment in selected African countries, and, secondly, to compare and contrast the estimated coefficients for the sample of countries with respect to statistical significance, sign and magnitude of such estimated coefficients. The study makes use of a fixed effects or least squares dummy variable (LSDV) panel data regression model, in double-log form, that comprises observations for informal sector employment, formal sector employment and exports (as a possible proxy for the "trade cycle‟ effect on informal sector employment). The sample of countries includes: South Africa; Kenya; Namibia; Zambia; Botswana and Mauritius, for the study period, 1998 – 2008. Theoretically, the expectation is a negative relationship between informal sector employment and formal sector employment as these are (plausibly) "substitute‟ activities in the labour market. However, there is mixed evidence to support/negate this hypothesis. Further, the expectation is a positive relationship between informal sector employment and exports. Including formal sector employment and exports as explanatory variables in a linear regression framework, poses a possible problem of strong collinearity between the explanatory variables (i.e. multicollinearity) as formal sector employment and exports are, generally, strong positively correlated. This study uses suitable ratio transformation to remedy this problem. The general findings of the study are that South Africa, Namibia and Mauritius had statistically significant levels (or average changes therein) of informal employment as a proportion of population not dependent on changes to formal employment as a proportion of population and exports. In Namibia and Zambia, informal employment as a proportion of population was statistically related to formal employment as a proportion of population, with negative sign, and "elasticity‟ greater than 1. In Namibia and Mauritius, informal employment as a proportion of population was statistically related to exports. Namibia had a positive sign and "elasticity‟ barely in excess of 1. Mauritius, however, had a negative sign and "elasticity‟ greater than 1. / Thesis (M.Com.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2010.

Det är svårt för personer med funktionsnedsättning att få en anställning på den öppna arbetsmarknaden och handlar det om en intellektuell funktionsnedsättning är chanserna än mindre. Funktionsnedsatta ska precis som alla andra ha en chans att genom sin sysselsättning kunna försörja sig. Men den låga sysselsättningsgraden, de långa inskrivningstiderna på Arbetsförmedlingen och den procentuellt sett höga arbetslösheten för den här gruppen visar på att det finns svårigheter med att ta sig in på arbetsmarknaden.   Syftet med studien är att undersöka möjliga framgångsfaktorer, som medverkar till att elever som gått på gymnasiesärskolans nationella program, ökar sina möjligheter att etablera sig på arbetsmarknaden. Som andra syfte studeras hur framgångsfaktorerna tillgodoses i gymnasiesärskolans nya läroplan från 2013.   Det finns inte så mycket forskning gjord om lindrigt utvecklingsstörda ungdomars övergång från skola till arbetsliv, framförallt inte forskning där individerna själva får komma till tals. Med kvalitativa intervjuer som metod utgörs resultatet i den här studien av att fem unga vuxna mellan 25-31 år själva får berätta om sina upplevelser och erfarenheter kring särskoletiden och vägen till ett arbete.   En historisk tillbakablick är viktig för att skapa en större förståelse för nutiden. I avsnittet Bakgrund och forskningsöversikt beskrivs hur samhällssynen för gruppen utvecklingsstörda har förändrats de senaste årtiondena samt hur skolsystemet utformats genom åren. Avsnitten om samhälls- och skolutveckling används tillsammans med tidigare forskning och resultatet av intervjuerna i analysen. Analysen sker dels med hjälp av Urie Bronfenbrenners teori Utvecklingsekologi samt Håkan Jenners tankar kring motivation och realistiska anspråk.   Studiens resultat tyder på att möjligheterna för en framtida anställning ökar med hjälp av arbetsplatsförlagd utbildning samt att den sker inom ett motivationsskapande intresseområde för individen. Små undervisningsgrupper där utveckling av förmågor som samarbete, självständighet, ödmjukhet, noggrannhet och social kompetens är ytterligare exempel på andra viktiga framgångsfaktorer.

Family day care providers operate at the interface of the private and the public. They are self-employed and work at home, yet their 'suitability' to provide childcare is scrutinised by officials and rules and regulations operating on different levels which can restrict their business opportunities. Family day care takes place in a particular cultural context concerning ideas of childrearing and against the backdrop of other childcare and educational provision. The focus of the thesis is the family day care provider, one of the members in the childcare triangle of child, parents and childcare worker. Previous research was mainly interested in the quality of childcare provided and parents' satisfaction. Here working conditions, such as hours worked, workload, income are examined, as are career prospects. Who are the women who become family day care providers and how do they see their future? The daily routines of family day care providers are examined and possible detenninants investigated. However, perceived needs of children may differ from demands arising out of parents' reason for using this kind of childcare service. Family day care providers accounts are examined in order to identify the various aspects of childcare arrangements and how to develop relationships that promote successful arrangements. Since family day care takes place in the home other family members are part of the setting and are affected by their mother's or wife's work. At the same time their contribution to the work of a family day care provider has to be included in the investigation ofthe working conditions. The comparison of family day care providers living in two different locations, four local authorities in the Northeast of England and one town in the Northeast of Germany allows the influence of family and childcare policies and the impact of cultural perceptions of good childrearing practices to be traced. A combination of quantitative and qualitative methods was employed. Apart from new insights into the actual working conditions of family day care providers, a better understanding of the intended and unintended effects of policies regulating family day care has been gained. The findings contribute to the debate on paid and unpaid work, and paid and unpaid care, as well as to the debate over equal opportunities, showing a more complicated relationship than just a gendered division.

This thesis uses focus group interviews and survey questionnaires to examine perceptions of Ghanaian and Somali youth, residing in Toronto, about barriers to their labour market access. The emphasis is on perceptions that deal with labour market discrimination based on race, ethnicity and recency of immigration. The results show that perceptions of discrimination based on these factors are widespread among all of the participants interviewed or surveyed. This suggests a very strong belief that employment discrimination is pervasive and persistent in the Toronto labour market. The findings also show that the perceptions of discrimination are largely driven by ‘lived discriminatory’ experiences faced by the participants as well as revealing their desire for fairness and equality in society. The perceptions of discrimination negatively affected the level of trust the research participants have in people and institutions as well as impacting their sense of belonging to their communities and the wider society. The relationship between perceptions of discrimination and low levels of trust and sense of belonging is established in the findings of the Ethnic Diversity Survey. The consequences of this impact on the research participants and their communities are high levels of unemployment, high poverty rates and participant dissatisfaction with their own communities and society at large. It is my belief that this thesis contributes to the debate about the significance of discrimination due to race, ethnicity and immigrant status in the Canadian labour market.

The Integrated Land Use, Transportation, Environment (ILUTE) modelling system simulates the activities of agents within the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area (GTHA) as they evolve over time. However, in its currently implemented form, ILUTE lacks an endogenous treatment of the labour market and the associated wages. This is seen as the major weakness of the current model. This work describes a labour market framework to partially fill this gap and then develops the dynamic disaggregate model of year to year transitions of the labour force status of the people within the GTHA and the set of wage models components of this framework. The data used is a sample of individuals from the Toronto, Oshawa, and Hamilton Census Metropolitan Areas surveyed over twelve consecutive years between 1995 and 2007 in the Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics.

The Integrated Land Use, Transportation, Environment (ILUTE) modelling system simulates the activities of agents within the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area (GTHA) as they evolve over time. However, in its currently implemented form, ILUTE lacks an endogenous treatment of the labour market and the associated wages. This is seen as the major weakness of the current model. This work describes a labour market framework to partially fill this gap and then develops the dynamic disaggregate model of year to year transitions of the labour force status of the people within the GTHA and the set of wage models components of this framework. The data used is a sample of individuals from the Toronto, Oshawa, and Hamilton Census Metropolitan Areas surveyed over twelve consecutive years between 1995 and 2007 in the Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics.

Research Doctorate - Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / This thesis explores the behaviour of job flows in Taiwan. The investigation of the behaviour of job creation and destruction has improved our understanding of the dynamics of the Taiwanese labour market and also has important implications in terms of economic research and policymaking. Chapter 2 discusses the basic features of the overall post-war Taiwanese economy. We find that large flows of workers enter and exit the employment pool. The large worker flows offer an interesting insight about the job flow dynamics. Based on the measures proposed in Chapter 3, Chapter 4 carefully examines the so-called small business job creation hypothesis. We find that small business can be viewed as the engine of job creation. However, small business is not the source of sustained increases in employment. Chapter 5 documents the basic features of job creation and destruction. We find that job creation is more volatile than job destruction in the manufacturing and service sectors, but reveals the opposite pattern in the construction sector. Based on the methodologies outlined in Chapter 6, Chapter 7 investigates the regime switching and asymmetric behaviour of job creation and destruction. We find that the interest rate can help to explain the asymmetric behaviour of job creation and destruction rates in all sectors. Furthermore, we find an interesting feature that a lower interest rate stimulated beneficial regime shifts in job flows. Chapter 8 explores the similarities and differences of regional business cycles by reference to the employment growth rate as well as job creation and destruction rates. We find that the regime switching behaviour of employment growth was similar across the North, Central and South regions. However, behaviour in the East Region was dramatically different. Furthermore, the regime switching behaviour of the common regional business cycle (specified in terms of employment growth) is consistent with the business cycle indicator proposed by Council for Economic Planning and Development (CEPD).

Translated title: Transnational Care Space Central Europe. Working and Living Conditions of Irregular Migrants in Domestic Care Provision