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The notion of refugees as a viable source of labor to address skill shortages in the destination country's labor market has rarely been the dominant discourse on refugee entrants. Bella's1 lived experience as a professional woman who arrived as a Syrian conflict refugee to Australia in 2017 presents an outlier in refugee research and challenges conventional scholarly wisdom and public discourse. A combination of human capital, a purposeful use of networks, supported by her desire for recognition and a deep sense of self-worth allowed her to navigate the formalized and structured Australian business landscape. Accordingly, she was able to overcome the stigma of being a refugee: Less worthy of employment status in a position representative of her overseas skills and qualifications. In drawing on an outlier methodology and critical theory, we develop a more nuanced understanding of the agency of skilled and qualified refugee women drawing attention to lessons for business which typically takes a "one size fits all" approach to labor integration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

IN THIS ARTICLE WE use feminist post-structuralist concepts of discourse and relations of power to question how a neoliberal regime of truth in Australian early childhood education impacts educators currently working for gender equity with children, prior to their entry to schooling. We show how this regime of truth is endorsed and transferred in and by key documents of the Australian National Quality Framework (NQF) including the National Quality Standard (NQS) and the Early Years Learning Framework (EYLF) in which discourses of universal rights, individual freedom and choice, and human capital dominate approaches to inclusion and diversity that govern gender equity work (ACECQA, 2011, 2017a, 2017b; DEEWR, 2009; NSW Education, 2016). Our article addresses how some educators use their understandings of feminism to negotiate spaces for gender equity work within the theoretical, political and ethical tensions arising in/between discourses that constitute this neoliberal regime of truth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By virtue of its island geography and isolation, Australia is able to control the scale and composition of immigration more than most nations. Accordingly, it has one of the most highly managed migration programs and intakes. Skill selection has been the major focus of both permanent and temporary migration programs in Australia over the last two decades. Government has continually modified the Permanent Migration Program so that not only are a higher proportion of settlers coming to Australia under the Skilled Migration Program but the skill selection is tied increasingly to skill shortages in the labor market. Increasingly, permanent settlers are selected from student migrants and skilled temporary migrants because they have Australian qualifications and experience. The article analyzes the increasingly complex nexus between temporary and permanent skilled migration in Australia, and discusses the changing scale and composition of skilled migration to Australia. One particular feature of Australian immigration has been the continual shifts in the process of selection of skilled temporary and permanent immigrants on the basis of empirical evidence to achieve better economic outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

THE EARLY YEARS OF CHILDHOD are critical for the successful development of adult literacy, whatever that literacy might look or feel like in the oncoming digital age. Two questions that become important are what sort of literacy (or literacies) will children need in the future to navigate new information pathways, and how can we use recent advances in neuroscience to help us understand optimal pathways for developing the fundamentally social skills of literacy. This paper reviews recent research from the two traditionally separate areas of contemporary literacies and infant brain development to re-examine the underpinnings of literacy learning in the early years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The intensity of provision of transnational education (TNE) in the Asian region by Australian universities has been increasing over the past three decades. Although much is claimed, little is actually known about the outcomes and opinions of students enrolled in TNE programs. This article investigates student experiences through the longitudinal extension of an ethnographic study of one TNE program in Singapore. Student motivations, career paths, and adaptations are considered in the context of “second chance” and lifelong learning in Singapore. Analysis reveals something of a good news story in the face of much negativity about transnational education at the current time. The study reveals that TNE students are achieving high-level positional outcomes and developing transformative learning habits. Recommendations are made for the use of global comparative studies in TNE programs to facilitate mutual learning through respect for local knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Compulsive buying and materialism have become topics of increasing interest to researchers and policy makers, particularly because studies have shown that both can influence consumer behavior and well-being. However, a clear picture of how these phenomena arise has proven elusive. Using the life course paradigm as an integrative framework, the present research derives hypotheses from three theoretical perspectives (the stress, normative, and human capital perspectives), and uses a survey of young adults in Australia to test the hypotheses. The findings indicate that one’s experiences and circumstances in adolescence are related to both materialism and compulsive buying in early adulthood, but the processes involved in their development differ. These differences, as well as the framework used to elucidate them, have important implications for theory and practice. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The issue of how much to pay government employees to ensure optimum effort level is a complex one. Government employees are generally reported to be less motivated by high wages than their private sector counterparts. There is substantial empirical evidence that many performance-based pay schemes are either meaningless or dysfunctional in the public sector. Yet, it is common knowledge that most people do not seek employment without expecting some sort of remuneration for their effort. Drawing on the efficiency wage theory and public service motivation (PSM) literature, this article constructs a model to examine the relationship of wages and PSM in determining the effort levels of the public sector workforce in 15 countries that include the United States, Great Britain, and Australia. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper examines the way immigrant earnings are determined in Australia. It uses the overeducation/required education/undereducation framework and a decomposition of the native-born/foreign-born differential in the payoff to schooling. This decomposition links overeducation to the less-than-perfect international transferability of immigrants' human capital, and undereducation to favorable selection in immigration. Comparisons are offered with findings from analyses for the U.S. and Canada to enable assessment of the relative impacts of favorable selection and the limited international transferability of human capital to the lower payoff to schooling for the foreign born. The sensitivity of the results of the decomposition to several measurement issues is assessed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the employment and occupational status of South Asian female migrants in Australia mostly Indian and Sri Lankan. It highlights the native-born and female migrants in the multicultural context. It examines whether the South Asian female migrants in Australia contribute to human capital with the use of their language and education sills. It also examines whether a careful attention is needed in selecting migrants from South Asia. It also highlights labor market, labor supply and multivariate results of the research.