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This paper reports an ethnographic study of mass fainting among garment factory workers in Cambodia. Research was undertaken in 2010-2015 in 48 factories in Phnom Penh and 8 provinces. Data were collected in Khmer using nonprobability sampling. In participant observation with monks, factory managers, health workers, and affected women, cultural understandings were explored. One or more episodes of mass fainting occurred at 34 factories, of which 9 were triggered by spirit possession. Informants viewed the causes in the domains of ill-health/toxins and supernatural activities. These included "haunting" ghosts at factory sites in the wake of Khmer Rouge atrocities or recent fatal accidents and retaliating guardian spirits at sites violated by foreign owners. Prefigurative dreams, industrial accidents, or possession of a coworker heralded the episodes. Workers witnessing a coworker fainting felt afraid and fainted. When taken to clinics, some showed signs of continued spirit influence. Afterwards, monks performed ritual ceremonies to appease spirits, extinguish bonds with ghosts, and prevent recurrence. Decoded through its cultural motifs of fear and protest, contagion, forebodings, the bloody Khmer Rouge legacy, and trespass, mass fainting in Cambodia becomes less enigmatic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The dramatic changes in the political and economic structures of Russian society have been widely documented and have focused interest on the interpersonal lives of the Russian peoples. The two studies reported in this paper use the cultural theory of Mary Douglas to examine intimate disclosure amongst cohorts of students, entrepreneurs and manual workers. Structured questionnaire responses analysed at the individual level suggest that those who believe in rules disclose less than those who do not. Analysis at the occupational level revealed that manual workers found discussing the family problematic whilst entrepreneurs found discussing sex and love difficult. Some age and sex effects were also evident, with younger informants and female respondents more willing to disclose. The implications of these findings for the efficacy of cultural theory, and the future development of interpersonal life in Russia, are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Over the past 5 years, the number of Vietnamese migrant workers in Japan has grown rapidly to become the largest group of migrant workers in the country. They hold various statuses of residence and are subjected to multifactorial stressors. Aims: The current study's aim is to investigate the association between psychological distress experienced by Vietnamese workers and their work environment. Another aim is to discuss issues involving migrant workers by comparing the characteristics of workers in the major statuses of residence. Methods: The study applied a cross-sectional design, and included a nationwide self-administered online questionnaire that was conducted in Vietnamese in 2022. The questionnaire included the Kessler Psychological Distress Scale (K10), workplace interpersonal factors as well as factors related to work and health. A multiple logistic regression analysis was conducted to investigate factors associated with psychological distress. Results: Of 933 Vietnamese workers, 37% were grouped as distressed under the K10 cutoff. Fewer opportunities to speak with Japanese co-workers, lower welfare and workload ratings, and the visa statuses including 'Technical Intern Training' were significantly associated with psychological distress. Unexpectedly, those in 'Engineer/Specialist in Humanities/International Services (ESI)' category who are deemed to hold better conditions demonstrated the highest amounts of distress. Conclusion: Outside of unsatisfactory working environments, differing situations depending on status of residence could produce various sources of distress. The difficult aspects of Japan's distinct culture seem to contribute to their distress, especially for those who have more interactions with Japanese co-workers. A push for a multicultural society, where migrant workers can pursue proactive life designs of their own choosing, is warranted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Depression is a common mental disorder that significantly contributes to the global burden of disease. Studies have consistently reported that migrant workers experience higher levels of depressive symptoms, especially women. Aims: This study aimed to examine the mediation role of sexual self-efficacy on the relationship between psychological wellbeing, and depressive symptoms among young female migrant workers in Vietnam's industrial zones. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted among 1061 female migrant workers aged 18 to 29 from January to November 2020 in Hanoi, Vietnam. Anonymous interview questionnaires were used to collect data on demographic characteristics, psychosocial wellbeing (PWB), sexual self-efficacy, and depressive symptoms. Mediation analysis was conducted to explore the mediation effect of sexual self-efficacy on the relationship between PWB and depressive symptoms. Results: Nearly 8% of the female migrant workers reported experiencing depressive symptoms. The final mediation model showed that the effect of overall psychological wellbeing on depressive symptoms was partially mediated by sexual self-efficacy. Specifically, 4.1% of the effect of overall PWB on depressive symptoms was mediated through sexual self-efficacy. In the PWB subdimension analyses, sexual self-efficacy mediated 14.3% of the effect of personal growth, 8.8% of the effect of purpose in life, 8.0% of the effect of autonomy, and 7.8% of the effect of environmental mastery on depressive symptoms, respectively. Conclusion: The study findings demonstrate that sexual self-efficacy plays an important role in the relationship between psychosocial wellbeing and depressive symptoms among female migrant workers in industrial zones in Vietnam. Improving psychosocial wellbeing and promoting sexual health including sexual self-efficacy should be prioritized when addressing depressive symptoms and mental health concerns among industrial zone female migrant workers in Vietnam, which may also be applicable in other low- and middle-income countries with similar socio-cultural settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the agglomeration of people working in jobs with similar knowledge requirements, ranging from groups of artists and scientists to service providers and low-skilled labourers. Empirical results from the US suggest that agglomeration enhances earnings in innovation- and creative-based occupations such as artists, engineers, financial executives and information technology workers. In contrast, medical workers, personal service providers and low-skilled labourers do not appear to benefit from agglomeration. Positive agglomeration effects, however, need not lead to a high geographical concentration of economic activity. Rather, an occupation’s ability to concentrate in a few places also depends on the way in which knowledge is disseminated to people outside the occupational cluster. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper analyses the introduction of the organising philosophy into the largest branch of a national, blue-collar, manufacturing union. It outlines the initial adoption of this philosophy and examines the reasons for the failure of this innovation. Some five years later, a second, more successful attempt to introduce the organising model was made. The factors determining this success are analysed in the paper presented here and comparisons are made with the earlier failed attempt. The paper argues that the level of commitment and zeal of the unions' leadership was the crucial factor in determining the extent and culture of organising. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In light of a literature review identifying severe difficulties of interpretation attaching to previous prominent work on blue-collar marriages and on unhappy marriages, the present paper advances some new approaches to these relationships. The study assessed the effects of marital happiness (happy, unhappy), occupational status (blue-collar, white-collar), and communication orientation (high, low), on the frequency of negative affect and negative affect reciprocity during problem-solving in the home, without any observers present. The results indicated that the overall frequency of negative affect was influenced by marital happiness for both husbands and wives, occupational status for husbands, and the interaction of marital happiness with occupational status for wives; negative affect reciprocity was influenced only by marital happiness and not occupational status; and the empirical relationship between negative affect reciprocity and marital happiness was stronger for high communication oriented couples than low communication oriented couples. Implications of the above findings for the generality of current taxonomies of marital interaction and theories about blue-collar marriages are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The on-going skilling debate has already yielded an abundance of contradictory theories, interpretations and empirical contradictions. Based on previous qualitative research in the Netherlands (Steijn and De Witte 1992), we have contributed to this debate by introducing the internal differentiation hypothesis. This paper addresses the empirical validity of this hypothesis by analysing data from a representative Dutch panel of 1,022 respondents in paid employment. The data show a small overall net upgrading trend. However, automation seems to have different effects for various occupational groups. For blue-collar workers, our findings suggest that a trend of internal differentiation does exist. Next, we examine the consequences (for underemployment and job satisfaction) of automation and changes in work content. Although our outcomes do not support our internal differentiation hypothesis, they do show the important effect of autonomy and complexity on feelings of underemployment. The outcomes justify Mottaz's statement that one of the consequences of this underemployment is job dissatisfaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The recent and dramatic political and social events in the former Soviet Union have focused interest on the interpersonal lives of the Russian peoples. The two studies reported in this article use the cultural theory of Mary Douglas to examine belief in the family and child-rearing values amongst 792 manual workers, entrepreneurs and students. Analysis at an individual level revealed that individualism and a belief in rules were both negatively related to family commitment. Analysis at an occupational level produced marked, independent occupational effects for child-rearing values, with students and entrepreneurs promoting independence and education as important, whilst manual workers promoted a broader concern for `humanity'. Women were also more family oriented than their male counterparts. The implications of these findings for the future development of the family in Russia are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study analyses the housing characteristics, residential situation, household conditions and satisfaction with social relations of trash pickers (N = 99) in León, Nicaragua. Results show that the trash pickers in León live in slum households. A large percentage of the trash pickers live in a situation of residential segregation, although a substantial number of them are scattered across different neighbourhoods in the city. However, this does not seem to affect the widespread social rejection perceived by those interviewed. The trash pickers live in overcrowded conditions, despite reporting a high level of satisfaction with their relationships with their relatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This study aimed to examine differences in depressive symptoms between urban and rural workers in mainland China and to identify community factors that could contribute to such residential differences. Methods: This study used nationally representative data from the 2014 China’s Labor Force Dynamic Survey. Data were collected through face-to-face interviews on a sample of 22,073 participants from 29 provinces of China, including 15,098 rural workers (Mage = 44.92, standard deviation (SD) = 14.85) and 6,975 urban workers (Mage = 43.28, SD = 13.62). Mediators included community cohesion, foreseeable community threat, supportive network size and medical benefit coverage. Mediation analyses were conducted using Hayes’ SPSS Macro Process for multiple mediators. Results: Urban participants reported fewer depressive symptoms than their rural counterparts. Lower levels of community cohesion, higher community foreseeable threat and poorer medical coverage were related to fewer depressive symptoms. Rural–urban differences were mediated by community cohesion (B = −0.12, p < .01), foreseeable community threat (B = −0.08, p < .01) and medical benefit coverage (B = 0.25, p < .01). Conclusion: This study sheds light on distinctive roles of community factors in explaining rural–urban differences in depressive symptoms. Policies or programs should be designed to promote strengths and address weaknesses in rural communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We argue that the welfare state operates very differently in the advanced sectors of modern economies and in the low-skill sectors. Governments are concerned to promote the advanced sectors of their economies in which they have comparative advantage. This is a valence issue not a partisan one. Where companies and employees in advanced sectors co-invest heavily in company-specific skills, then governments will be concerned to maintain insurance infrastructures to underwrite these investments. Hence, in advanced sectors, we see politics for markets in maintaining insurance-based welfare states. In low-skill sectors, redistribution and active labour market policies are partisan issues for legislatures, so here our analysis is in line with Politics against Markets. Effective welfare state policies depend on political coalitions in which the low-skilled are represented. We suggest that those coalitions may be less available just as low-skilled workers are increasingly excluded from post-Fordist collective bargaining coverage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ireland represents a particularly interesting case study of the distributional impact of pronounced macroeconomic fluctuations. In this article, we use the Irish case to show that in contrast to periods of relative equilibrium, an understanding of the distributional consequences of economic turbulence requires going beyond conventional measures of income poverty or inequality. Here, we focus on a conception of ‘economic vulnerability’ that identifies a sub-set of the population as characterized by a distinctive multi-dimensional risk profile in relation to income poverty, material deprivation and economic stress. Our analysis reveals a doubling of levels of economic vulnerability in the post-recession period. However, the degree of polarization between vulnerable and non-vulnerable classes was significantly reduced. Economic vulnerability is highly stratified by social class for both periods. Over time, the higher salariat, the non-agricultural self-employed, the semi-unskilled manual and those who never worked gained relative to the remaining classes. This provides support for the notion of ‘middle-class squeeze’. This was also true in relation to household work intensity. The impact of the latter on economic vulnerability declined sharply, while it came to play an increasing role in mediating the consequences of membership of the non-agricultural middle classes. Responding to the political pressures likely to be associated with ‘middle-class squeeze’ while sustaining the social welfare arrangements that have traditionally protected the economically vulnerable presents formidable challenges in terms of maintaining social cohesion and political legitimacy. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Contemporary Russian reality is characterized by inconsistency in the official discourse regarding the problems and prospects of labour migration in Russia and the lack of a clear framework for building a network of social support for labour migrants. Research was carried out into the cultural resources for migrants provided by two types of regional social services: the territorial authorities and human rights NGOs providing social support for migrants. The authors argue that development of services requires integration mechanisms aimed at an inclusive culture for labour migrants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aims: To analyse the impact of sick-pay cuts on the use of sickness absence by employees of different socioeconomic groups. In 2009 cuts in sick pay were implemented in reaction to an economic crisis in Estonia. Methods: Nationwide health survey data from the years 2004, 2006, 2008, and 2010 were used to evaluate sickness absence among blue-collar and white-collar workers. The dataset comprised 7,449 employees of 20–64 years of age. Difference in prevalence of absentees before and after the reform was assessed using the chi-squared test. Odds ratios (OR) for sickness absence were calculated in a multivariate logistic regression model. Results: After the reform, the proportion of blue-collar workers who had been on sick leave decreased from 51% to 40% (p<0.001) and among white-collar employees from 45% to 41% (p=0.026). This reduction had a similar pattern in all the subgroups of blue-collar employees as stratified according to gender, age, self-rated health, and presence of chronic disease, especially among those with low incomes; in white-collar employees it reached statistical significance only in those with good self-rated health (p=0.033). In a multivariate model the odds of having lower sickness absence were highly significant only in blue-collar employees (OR 0.63; 95% confidence interval 0.51–0.77, p<0.001). Conclusions: The cuts in sickness benefits had a major impact on the use of sickness absence by blue-collar employees with low salaries. This indicates that lower income was a major factor hindering the use of sick leave as these employees are most vulnerable to the loss of income. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Research into public service motivation (PSM) is currently witnessing exponential growth. However, the universal application of the concept to all categories of public employees raises questions. Indeed, the origins of the concept, which can be traced back to political science studies in the United States, may suggest that the concept applies mainly to senior management but much less to other types of employee, whose motivations seem more instrumental. Research into the antecedents of PSM has thus shown that high hierarchical levels were associated with employee profiles with a high level of PSM (Bright, 2005; Camilleri, 2007). Some authors go as far as to consider that the concept does not apply at all to blue-collar jobs (Gabris and Simo, 1995). The purpose of this article is therefore to analyse the differences between the public service motivation of operatives and that of other categories of employees. To do so, we draw on two empirical studies, one quantitative (n = 2868), conducted among the public employees of cities in 12 countries, and the other qualitative, conducted among public employees working in the technical service of a French town. Our results show that the level of PSM is not lower among blue-collar workers but that, on the other hand, it is different in nature and dimensions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Germany’s immigrant population has dramatically increased since World War II, bringing a new need for immigrant-centered policies and programs. How has Germany responded to the needs of its growing immigrant population? This article provides brief historical highlights of German immigration policy, with a focus on how policies have affected education and academic achievement. Implications of such policies for social work practice are discussed, and recommendations for ways in which social workers can take an active role in fostering integration of immigrant families into German society are offered. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article looks at the migration policy of the trade unions as well as the political activism of migrants in West Germany during the 1960s and 1970s. It argues that migrants’ political activities have been rather neglected in historiography, because the research has followed the governmental view on migration which has led to an unnecessarily rigid analysis of migrants’ individual motivations to emigrate and ignored their demands. Through several instances of migrant protest and self-organization, the article emphasizes the importance of migrants’ political activism for the social history of the Federal Republic. Ultimately the idea of integration in historiography is discarded as a discourse that covers the migrants’ precise demands for equal rights. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Migrant care work has emerged as an increasingly important solution to the challenges of growing eldercare needs in both the private and the public sphere. Migrant workers are employed in domestic services in Southern European and in some continental European countries, and they are a significant part of the work force in the formal care sector in many national contexts. The article provides an exploratory cross-country analysis of the phenomenon. After assessing the extent of migrant care work based on individually contracted workers in the domestic sector vs. organization-based care workers in nine European welfare states, it investigates which conditions sustain specific national patterns. Using fuzzy-set analysis the article demonstrates how the intersection of care, migration and employment regimes shapes different patterns of migrant care work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the late 1990s, the German sociologists Leisering and Leibfried (1999) argued that most poverty is of a temporary nature. In their poverty study in the German city of Bremen, Leisering and Leibfried found that more than half of all social assistance claimants were out of poverty within a year. Based on their work, individualization theorists such as Giddens and Beck argue that ‘for most people poverty is only a temporary experience’. This article replicates Leisering and Leibfried’s study using statistical data about social assistance claiming in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. In doing so we find significant numbers of short-term claimants (about 30 percent), as well as surprisingly large numbers of long-term claimants. One in four Rotterdam social assistance claimants is poor for at least 5 years – more than twice as many as Leisering and Leibfried found in their study. We also show that recurrent benefit spells, for Leisering and Leibfried another typical feature of contemporary poverty, is only the exception in Rotterdam. Leisering and Leibfried (and sociologists such as Giddens and Beck in their footsteps) are wrong in claiming that short poverty experiences are typical for poverty in late-modern society. Persistent poverty is still present in our age and in our cities. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Contributing to the debate on the decline of the middle class, this article provides a comparative and longitudinal analysis of changes to the relative position of middle income groups in 19 (post)industrial countries between 1985 and 2005. How much did the income position of the middle worsen compared with more vulnerable groups? To what extent did public policies mitigate the market position of different income groups? The analysis is based on microdata of the Luxembourg Income Study. It divides the broad category of ‘middle class’ into three groups. Results suggest little change in the income position of the middle classes with respect to both market and disposable incomes. In most countries market incomes in the top quintile increased remarkably while the bottom quintile group lost out. The scale of government income redistribution has improved the position of the lowest income group, while burdening the highest income group. But it failed to fully compensate for the growing gap between the top and bottom income groups. The distance between the middle and the top incomes grew significantly, which might be one reason for the current public debate about an endangered middle class. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This study investigates workers’ early retirement intention among blue- and white-collar workers along two processes as described in the Job Demands—Resources model: (1) an energetic process wherein job demands are associated positively with early retirement intention through perceived ill-health, and (2) a motivational process wherein job resources are associated negatively with early retirement intention through work enjoyment. Analyses are based on 1812 Belgian workers aged 45 or older. Results from structural equation modelling provided support for the motivational process, with a stronger relationship between job resources and work enjoyment among blue-(vs white-) collar workers. The energetic process was not supported: the relationship between job demands and early retirement intention was direct and not indirect through perceived ill-health, and this relationship was stronger among white- (vs blue-) collar workers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]