This thesis explores Korean-Chinese migrant workers’ local experiences of the global phenomenon of international migration of care labour, focusing on how the care labour of migrant workers is being constructed through the intertwined social and political processes in South Korea’s shifting long-term care sector for the elderly. The thesis uses a qualitative case study method and relies on data collected through participant observation, interviews, and textual analysis during field research between November 2009 and May 2010. The analysis is based on a global economy of care framework, which understands care work as being made of products that are socially and politically constructed in the global processes. My study findings illuminate the roles and relations of the state, the employers, and the workers in producing a huge migrant workforce in South Korea’s segregated elder care labour market. The policy analysis at the intersection of elder care, labour market, and immigration policies shows that, over the last decade, the South Korean government has significantly reconstructed the boundaries of elder care work through the expansion of publicly-funded programmes for the elderly and the institutionalisation of care work in those programmes. In the institutionalisation process, the government’s ignorance about the care work performed in the private care sector has resulted in different regulations and working conditions for care workers in the publicly-funded versus the private sector. My empirical findings highlight how employers’ search for ‘cheap’ and ‘flexible’ labour and older female migrants’ disadvantageous status in the labour market have placed these workers in the less regulated private sector and their pay and working conditions at the bottom of hierarchical elder care workforce. In advocating for migrant care workers’ labour rights, this thesis challenges the current discriminative employment practices and the government’s lack of protection and regulation of care work in the private sector.

This thesis explores Korean-Chinese migrant workers’ local experiences of the global phenomenon of international migration of care labour, focusing on how the care labour of migrant workers is being constructed through the intertwined social and political processes in South Korea’s shifting long-term care sector for the elderly. The thesis uses a qualitative case study method and relies on data collected through participant observation, interviews, and textual analysis during field research between November 2009 and May 2010. The analysis is based on a global economy of care framework, which understands care work as being made of products that are socially and politically constructed in the global processes. My study findings illuminate the roles and relations of the state, the employers, and the workers in producing a huge migrant workforce in South Korea’s segregated elder care labour market. The policy analysis at the intersection of elder care, labour market, and immigration policies shows that, over the last decade, the South Korean government has significantly reconstructed the boundaries of elder care work through the expansion of publicly-funded programmes for the elderly and the institutionalisation of care work in those programmes. In the institutionalisation process, the government’s ignorance about the care work performed in the private care sector has resulted in different regulations and working conditions for care workers in the publicly-funded versus the private sector. My empirical findings highlight how employers’ search for ‘cheap’ and ‘flexible’ labour and older female migrants’ disadvantageous status in the labour market have placed these workers in the less regulated private sector and their pay and working conditions at the bottom of hierarchical elder care workforce. In advocating for migrant care workers’ labour rights, this thesis challenges the current discriminative employment practices and the government’s lack of protection and regulation of care work in the private sector.

Background: There is no standardized approach to the organizational structure for oral health provision in long-term care (LTC) and many different arrangements exist within different institutions. Objectives: To analyze how integration of dental service in LTC impacts residents and their oral health using quantitative and qualitative research methods. Methods: A cross-sectional study was performed involving 61 residents in 3 LTC facilities in Ontario. Facility A had a fee-for-service hygienist, Facility B had a dentist present once per week, and Facility C had a full time dental team. Results: Dental services that initiated treatment as opposed to placing responsibility on the LTC resident to access dental care resulted in better oral health outcomes. Conclusion: Dental services in LTC require a proactive approach directly integrated with each resident’s overall health care plan. Passive treatment strategies fail to provide acceptable oral health for LTC residents even when dental services are available.

The Chronic Pain Center (CPC) in Saskatoon offers a multidisciplinary treatment program whose goals are to facilitate improved coping skills, function and well-being, and to promote self-reliant lifestyles. They have documented a statistically significant improvement on several measures of physical and social functioning at the completion of the six week program, but to date have no formal evaluation of the long term effects.<p/> The purpose of this study was to re-evaluate the CPC clients (treatment group) at least one year following their completion of the treatment program to determine if they had maintained those improvements and also to compare them to the group of clients (control group) who underwent initial multidisciplinary assessment at the Centre, but did not attend the six week treatment program. Evaluation by mail out questionnaires assessed several important aspects of chronic pain. A 34% response rate resulted in 142 participants for this study.<p/> Data analyses involved a multi-stage process of univariate, bivariate and multivariate analyses. For the first goal, evaluating changes in the treatment group over time, the outcome variables considered had been administered at three points in time: admission to the CPC program, discharge from the six week program, and at study follow-up. For the second goal, the treatment and control groups were compared at one point in time; the study follow-up.<p/> The study demonstrated that the scores on all outcome variables used in the follow-up study improved significantly from the time of assessment to the time of discharge for the clients who attended the CPC treatment program. These improvements declined over time, but remained significantly improved from the admission scores. (Wilks Ë=.501, F(1,48)=4.788, p=.000) However, the study was unable to demonstrate any significant differences between the treatment and control groups on any of the outcome measures at the time of the study follow-up.(Wilks Ë=.930, F (1,107) = 1.014, p=.430) There were several limitations to this study, including the use of a non-randomized control group and the method of recruitment, which may have introduced bias into the study and affected the ability to effectively explain this finding.<p/>

The subject of the thesis is work-oriented rehabilitation of people on long-term sick-leave. The overall aim of my thesis is to: - analyse work-oriented rehabilitation as a gender theoretical phenomenon. - analyse how this phenomenon is expressed, maintained and changed on a societal, authority and individual level. The specific aims of the different reports were: I) to analyse the collaboration between the different authorities taking part in local rehabilitation groups, the results from these groups, as well as how the clients experienced the groups II) to analyse the situation of these clients some years after completed rehabilitation. III) to analyse gender related differences in rehabilitation. IV) to analyse factors in the rehabilitation process of importance for gender related differences in rehabilitation as well as the attitudes to gender constructions among clients and rehabilitation administrative staff. V) to give a broader context to the study of rehabilitation as gender theoretical, in which work rehabilitation as well as gender are constructed. Both quantitative and qualitative methods were used in the first and second study. Study number three and four used qualitative methods. The fifth study consisted of a literature review on womens work and gender related to illness. 　 The studies of local rehabilitation groups (I, II) revealed that it was more common for male social services workers to formulate concrete decisions regarding work or training for male clients, which can be interpreted as long-term ill men are the first chosen to be helped. The results of the third investigation. Rehabilitation for men?y highlighted the gender related differences in long-term illness and rehabilitation. The rehabilitation staff seemed to adopt a gender-neutral or equality-based position in relation to themselves, their clients and the world around. In spite of that, women were sometimes considered more difficult to rehabilitate because of their responsibility for unpaid work and care in their homes. In the study, "Women's private burden the conceptions of the clients' and rehabilitation staff of the meaning of gender in relation to long-term illness and rehabilitation were divided into three groups. I chose to call the first group androgynous since the interviewees, only men held the position that gender was meaningless. In the second group the meaning of gender was related to the primary responsibility for paid and unpaid work and the division of labour was according to gender. The third group is represented by rehabilitation staff who held the position that gender had meaning on a structural level, in the labour market and in rehabilitation, and the system worked in such a way that women were unfairly treated. The shaping of social insurance is gender-neutral - there are neither men nor women but rather "the insured". But gender neutrality produces paradoxical results since it overlooks the fact that men and women do not live in an equal society. The lack of conformity between ideals and reality is found in, amongst other contexts, services provided for rehabilitation and long-term illness. / digitalisering@umu

Long-term changes of El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) are studied with the ensemble run of Simple Ocean Data Assimilation (SODA 2.2.6) and the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5). An eight member ocean reanalyses (SODA 2.2.6) from 1871 to 2008 is produced by using forcing from eight ensemble members of an atmospheric reanalysis. The ensemble reanalysis shows that El Niño has prominent decadal variability. Weak El Niños occur throughout the entire record whereas the occurrence of strong El Niños varies, with strong El Niño at the beginning and end of the record. The strength of La Niña is weaker than for El Niño, and has less variability. Although for any given El Niño year all ensemble members show the occurrence of El Niño, in some ensemble members the El Niño is strong while in others it is weak. When the timing of the onset of Westerly Wind Bursts (WWBs) occurs earlier in the year and the strength of WWBs is stronger, strong El Niño occurs. To study the importance of the background state in the tropical Pacific Ocean on ENSO, long-term trends of tropical Pacific SST, wind stress, subsurface temperature and the sub-tropical cells (STCs) are analyzed. The reanalysis shows that there is a slight cooling trend of SST in the central tropical Pacific due to an enhanced tropical Pacific circulation. Subsurface temperature also has a cooling trend. The STCs, which consist of equatorial upwelling, Ekman transport, extra-tropical subduction and pycnocline transport from the sub-tropical to the tropical region, strengthen from 1900 to 2008. When the STCs are accelerated, equatorial upwelling increases bringing cold water from the subsurface that cools the surface. ENSO variability is also analyzed in the CMIP5 historical experiments. Results show that most of the models have a realistic representation of the strength of ENSO; however, the location of warming generally extends too far to the west. Overall, properties of ENSO do not show a significant change in most of the CMIP5 models. One distinguishing difference between the CMIP5 models and SODA 2.2.6 is that ENSO in SODA 2.2.6 has prominent asymmetry between El Niño and La Niña, whereas ENSO in the CMIP5 models tends to have fairly symmetric El Niño and La Niña. In contrast with the reanalysis most of the CMIP5 models have warming trends at the surface and the transport of the STCs has a decreasing trend.

This thesis explores Korean-Chinese migrant workers’ local experiences of the global phenomenon of international migration of care labour, focusing on how the care labour of migrant workers is being constructed through the intertwined social and political processes in South Korea’s shifting long-term care sector for the elderly. The thesis uses a qualitative case study method and relies on data collected through participant observation, interviews, and textual analysis during field research between November 2009 and May 2010. The analysis is based on a global economy of care framework, which understands care work as being made of products that are socially and politically constructed in the global processes. My study findings illuminate the roles and relations of the state, the employers, and the workers in producing a huge migrant workforce in South Korea’s segregated elder care labour market. The policy analysis at the intersection of elder care, labour market, and immigration policies shows that, over the last decade, the South Korean government has significantly reconstructed the boundaries of elder care work through the expansion of publicly-funded programmes for the elderly and the institutionalisation of care work in those programmes. In the institutionalisation process, the government’s ignorance about the care work performed in the private care sector has resulted in different regulations and working conditions for care workers in the publicly-funded versus the private sector. My empirical findings highlight how employers’ search for ‘cheap’ and ‘flexible’ labour and older female migrants’ disadvantageous status in the labour market have placed these workers in the less regulated private sector and their pay and working conditions at the bottom of hierarchical elder care workforce. In advocating for migrant care workers’ labour rights, this thesis challenges the current discriminative employment practices and the government’s lack of protection and regulation of care work in the private sector.

This thesis explores Korean-Chinese migrant workers’ local experiences of the global phenomenon of international migration of care labour, focusing on how the care labour of migrant workers is being constructed through the intertwined social and political processes in South Korea’s shifting long-term care sector for the elderly. The thesis uses a qualitative case study method and relies on data collected through participant observation, interviews, and textual analysis during field research between November 2009 and May 2010. The analysis is based on a global economy of care framework, which understands care work as being made of products that are socially and politically constructed in the global processes. My study findings illuminate the roles and relations of the state, the employers, and the workers in producing a huge migrant workforce in South Korea’s segregated elder care labour market. The policy analysis at the intersection of elder care, labour market, and immigration policies shows that, over the last decade, the South Korean government has significantly reconstructed the boundaries of elder care work through the expansion of publicly-funded programmes for the elderly and the institutionalisation of care work in those programmes. In the institutionalisation process, the government’s ignorance about the care work performed in the private care sector has resulted in different regulations and working conditions for care workers in the publicly-funded versus the private sector. My empirical findings highlight how employers’ search for ‘cheap’ and ‘flexible’ labour and older female migrants’ disadvantageous status in the labour market have placed these workers in the less regulated private sector and their pay and working conditions at the bottom of hierarchical elder care workforce. In advocating for migrant care workers’ labour rights, this thesis challenges the current discriminative employment practices and the government’s lack of protection and regulation of care work in the private sector.

Background: There is no standardized approach to the organizational structure for oral health provision in long-term care (LTC) and many different arrangements exist within different institutions. Objectives: To analyze how integration of dental service in LTC impacts residents and their oral health using quantitative and qualitative research methods. Methods: A cross-sectional study was performed involving 61 residents in 3 LTC facilities in Ontario. Facility A had a fee-for-service hygienist, Facility B had a dentist present once per week, and Facility C had a full time dental team. Results: Dental services that initiated treatment as opposed to placing responsibility on the LTC resident to access dental care resulted in better oral health outcomes. Conclusion: Dental services in LTC require a proactive approach directly integrated with each resident’s overall health care plan. Passive treatment strategies fail to provide acceptable oral health for LTC residents even when dental services are available.

This paper uses stock market data from 2000-2010 to examine the role long-term growth (LTG) uncertainty plays in equity valuations. In theory, the convex relationship between LTG and per-share value suggests a positive relationship between LTG uncertainty and analysts’ price targets, with higher levels of LTG uncertainty leading to higher, less accurate price targets. However, this paper finds conclusive evidence that analysts are not incorporating LTG uncertainty into their pricing models. This leaves uncertainty regarding the discount rate and the perpetuity growth rate as the only remaining potential sources of upward pressure on analysts’ price targets that are attributable to uncertainty.