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This paper examines how a combination of contemporary letters and retrospective interviews can shed light on the ways in which immigrants made and continue to make sense of their migration experiences. For immigrants of the later 20th century, research tends to focus on interviews, whereas contemporary egodocuments have often been overlooked. This paper aims to contribute to a reverse trend – recently initiated by historians of British emigration Angela McCarthy and Alistair Thomson – by means of a systematic analysis of letters alongside interviews using three theoretical notions derived from oral history debates: retrospectivity, composure and collective memory. In three case-studies of Dutch immigrants who moved to New Zealand in the 1950s and early 1960s, letter and interview materials will be compared and contrasted, focusing especially on the relationship between expectations and achievements. The combination of both types of sources offers a long-term perspective that makes clear that at various stages of the life course, different and sometimes even contradicting and ambiguous perspectives existed. But the value of these sources goes beyond the letters as an account of the past and interviews as an account of the present. They also complement each other by offering insights that help understand the information in the other sources. This study concludes that an integrated and systematic analysis of both sources can offer a rich perspective on the ways in which migrants try to make sense of their experiences, leading to better understanding of often contradictory accounts in which their own expectations, plans, successes and hardships – and those of others – play changing roles. It is well possible that a similar approach can also prove to be interesting for other topics in the field of migration studies, such as integration and identity-formation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The neoliberal restructuring of government policies in developed nations since the 1970s has stimulated many observers to observe the “roll back” of the state from social assistance, including housing. Some suggest that the “roll out” of new forms of state activity are occurring. This paper argues that perceptions of “roll back” and “roll out” arise from a particular conception of the capacity of the state that focuses on apparent state action over discursive production. A modified version of governmentality theory is deployed to demonstrate that despite perceptions of a weakening state housing assistance presence in Australia, the UK, the Netherlands and New Zealand, the conceptive and discursive role of the state has remained strong. The paper concludes by arguing that greater appreciation of the persistent pragmatic capacity of the state to define the objects, subjects and relationships of housing policy fruitfully illuminates the condition of the state under neoliberalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article enquires about why some countries have specialised their further education provision more than others, focusing on three types of specialisation: by subject, by geographical area and by age group. The article proposes an analytical framework to understand the drivers for further education provider specialisation, based on four variables: inputs to the further education system, regulatory framework, demand and supporting clusters. It then applies this framework to review the experience of Germany, New Zealand and the Netherlands in recent years. Drawing on this review, the last section of the paper provides some lessons for England and issues for further debate. It is concluded that the model proposed helps to explain the evolution of provider specialisation in the countries covered and that the UK's current specialisation profile suggests that greater efforts should be made to increase geographical specialisation, whereas action in stimulating further specialisation by subject and age group should be subject to caveats. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]