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This article challenges a narrative of “decomunalization” and the loss of native culture and identity in the Andes. We ask in what way have formal community jurisdictions supported development and individual aspirations beyond the boundaries of rural places and economies? This research draws primarily on interviews conducted in 2023 with elected community council officials. In tracking changing aspirations of three generations of indigenous activists, we demonstrate how early leaders of the indigenous communities always looked beyond local circumstances in their plans, even as they consolidated immediate zones of relative organizational autonomy. We then show that while young people have moved from rural places, communities themselves are evolving and incorporating youth leadership. This paper seeks to contribute to emerging discussion on global indigeneity for the way it addresses a hemispheric issue of young people's exodus from rural places and the concerns that emigration raises about inter‐generational connectivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article approaches the mystery of preference formation – a blind spot in the capability approach – from the angle of aspiring. I argue that aspiring – actively engaging with desirable representations of potential futures – can be helpful to analyse the social processes involved in preference formation under two conditions. Firstly, we need to clarify the conceptual confusion around aspiring that can be found in the capability literature and beyond. Secondly, we need to consider the social and temporal embeddedness of aspiring, which can be done by examining the relationships between aspiring and people's lived experiences. Building on a critical discussion of the contribution of sociologists Alfred Schutz and Pierre Bourdieu to the study of projecting, I propose a framework to (a) analyse why aspiring may happen to lead to conceiving conservative aspirations despite adversity – thereby aligning with adaptive preferences in the sense of Sen, A. 2002. Rationality and Freedom. Cambridge, MA and London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press and Elster, J. 1983. Sour Grapes: Studies in the Subversion of Rationality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press – and to (b) envision the pathways along which aspiring could, alternatively, lead to emergent aspirations, i.e. geared at enhanced well-being. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines how the lasting effects of illegalisation and legal status regularisation contribute to the transformation of aspirations of individuals who lived and worked undocumented for years. It investigates whether obtaining legal residence status opens future possibilities, allowing individuals to project themselves more positively, make plans, and realise their aspirations. Drawing on qualitative longitudinal fieldwork conducted between 2018 and 2022, this research focuses on individuals who transitioned from undocumented status through the "Operation Papyrus" programme in Geneva, Switzerland. The study analyses the dynamic changes in their situations, difficulties, and aspirations, particularly emphasising occupational mobility. The findings reveal that while regularisation initially expands aspirations, various obstacles often necessitate the readjustment of these aspirations over time. This study provides valuable insights into the complexities of enhancing the capability to aspire among vulnerabilised individuals; it also highlights that while policies expanding formal opportunities bring many benefits, they may not be sufficient alone to increase the capacity of individuals to live according to their aspirations, especially for those who were previously exposed to social contexts that prevented them from projecting themselves positively into the future, such as illegalising policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on Sen's conceptual refinements of agency, in particular the distinction between agency freedom and agency achievement, this article highlights the existence of a feedback loop between agency and the capability to aspire. To explore this loop, the author uses John Dewey's praxeological approach, bringing institutions into the "Capability Approach" along with situated agency. Against this background, she develops an agentive model of the capability to aspire, where the latter is nurtured by the longitudinal and lateral dimensions of experience. While the longitudinal dimension involves temporal processes driven by creative continuity (between past, present and future), the lateral dimension involves relational processes driven by social interactions (between a person and her environment). Institutions are an important part of that environment. By propagating social norms that define roles and behaviours in society, they provide a matrix for individual and collective aspirations, especially for people with fewer individual resources. But as Sen has pointed out, the moral ideals pursued by institutions do not necessarily translate into concrete achievements. This is why Dewey invites us to subject them to an ongoing critical inquiry that confronts their goals to their effective role in people's lived experience, with the aim to transform them if necessary. The article concludes by discussing the implications of such a transformative inquiry and its potentially empowering effect in voicing aspirations and articulating new ones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In his seminal paper, Appadurai (2004) introduced the concept of "capacity to aspire" as a cultural capacity that may open routes out of poverty for the poor. He envisions entering a robust dialogue between his conception and the capability approach. The notion of aspirations is attractive for capability scholars since it seems to answer some shortcomings of the capability approach, namely the lack of any theory of preference or value formation, the missing dynamics, the question of countering adaptive preferences and eliciting information on people's values. I analyse capability literature on aspirations and argue that although they relate to these shortcomings, they fail to eliminate them and to enter the dialogue Appadurai invited. For doing this, the collective nature of the capacity to aspire has to be recognised. I suggest that the capacity to aspire rather than remedying one of the above-mentioned shortcomings is best understood as an example of Sen's concept of agency and how poor people can build up, exercise and sustain agency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on the role of place in shaping the (im)mobility aspirations of young people in coastal towns. In the Global North, youth mobility has become a normalised part of the journey to higher education and 'cosmopolitan' adulthood. However, we argue that this is only part of the story for young people in coastal towns in England. Many of these coastal towns now face persistent socio-economic and infrastructural challenges. Against this backdrop, many coastal youth feel that they are marginalised within their towns, and that the town itself is on the margins - culturally, economically, and geographically. This sense of marginality simultaneously propels youth out-migration and stigmatises those that stay behind. The stigma associated with staying overlooks the fact that some young people do not aspire to be mobile, preferring instead to stay because of their familial, social, and place-based attachments. To make this argument, we draw on qualitative data we co-produced with young people in two coastal towns in North East Lincolnshire. In these data we identified three types of mobility narratives (Movers, Returners and Stayers) that help us to contribute to the existing literature on youth (im)mobility aspirations and place-based sociology of youth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Existing sociological literature provides conflicting theoretical accounts of disadvantaged youth's aspirations. While structuralists and rational choice theorists contend that disadvantaged young people tend to form low aspirations in the face of limited structural opportunities, cultural sociologists maintain that disadvantaged youth construct highly aspirational imagined futures to claim their moral self-worth in the present. I argue that incorporating time frames into the study of aspirations helps resolve the tension by enabling researchers to investigate when—in what time frame—one model works better than others. I demonstrate the value of this approach using qualitative interviews with 31 eighth-grade students in China's rural Shanxi Province, where structural constraints of socioeconomic attainment undercut cultural ideals of social mobility. In this context, findings show that respondents focused on practical constraints from their academic performance and family economic strains when projecting their short-term futures (structural/rational choice model) while they constructed future selves distinctive from rural origins in their long-term futures (cultural model). I conclude by discussing this approach's implications for studying aspirations, expectations, and their relationships to educational and career outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the perspectives and hopes of the Indian middle class regarding international migration, specifically focusing on educational mobility. It discusses the obstacles that students encounter in a fluctuating economy, their dependence on family resources and financial support for studying abroad, as well as the importance of social networks. Furthermore, it analyses how social media platforms aid migration and addresses the influence of privatisation and global mobility on student decision‐making. The paper also highlights Indian students' desires to embody ideal neoliberal characteristics to secure prestigious employment while fulfilling cultural expectations within middle‐class households. Additionally, it investigates how migration facilitation and migrants' actions contribute to new migration routes. The research contextualises these changes in students balancing conflicting pressures and ambitions across different locations with cosmopolitan migrant ideals at its core. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines land struggles that take place outside of the land in question, in order to show that rural youth continue to have an interest in rural and agrarian life despite out‐migration. Through life‐story interviews and photovoices with young Myanmar migrants in Thailand's agriculture and tourism sectors, the article shows how rural land serves as the material and emotional basis for young migrants’ imagined futures. Indeed, the vast majority leave Myanmar behind with the dream of saving up to acquire land and set up both agrarian and non‐agrarian livelihoods in their villages of origin. I argue that rural out‐migration and labour abroad need to be considered as struggles for land, driven by emotional attachments to rural areas and life. Importantly, difficult conditions in Thailand and Myanmar, aggravated by COVID‐19 and the 2021 Myanmar military coup, make it difficult for these aspirations to be realised. The findings in this article are crucial to fostering rural futures that can encompass rural youth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the relationship between the everyday livelihood practices of rural youth living and working in Addis Ababa and the production of gendered future aspirations. Drawing on Appadurai's (2004) notion of the 'capacity to aspire' and building on theoretical advancements on youth aspirations, findings presented show young people's future imaginaries are rooted in the driving factors that defined their migration trajectories, renegotiated in relation to subjective experiences of urban life. In highlighting the strategies that youth devise in their efforts to survive and live through the city, this paper highlights the relational nature of aspirations, emphasising how future imaginaries are formed in relation to youth's past, their social obligations, their networks and their marginality in relation to the state. This paper situates the production of future aspirations within broader social, economic and migratory spatialities and temporalities that configure young people's gendered experiences of cities of the global South. This article was published open access under a CC BY-NC-ND licence: https://creativecommons.org/licences/by-nc-nd/4.0. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Migrant housing investments in the countries of origin are a demonstration of their transnational engagement and their potential contribution to local development. Yet, these investments remain relatively understudied on a large scale. In this paper, we explore three related questions on the drivers, prevalence, and development of transnational housing, drawing on an original survey of Ecuadorian and Indian migrants in different European cities. First, what factors account for the likelihood of migrants owning a remittance house? Second, for those migrants without houses abroad, what factors account for the likelihood of aspiring to have a remittance house in the first place, as opposed to "not being interested"? Third, how do factors affecting the likelihood of owning a remittance house compare to those affecting the likelihood of being a remittance house dreamer? Our findings suggest that, among those without a remittance house, the likelihood of being a transnational house dreamer decreases with the length of residence abroad, while the length of stay has no statistically significant impact on the likelihood of transnational house ownership. We also find that migrants with greater economic capacity are less likely to be dreamers and more likely to be transnational house-owners, suggesting that the difference between being a transnational house-dreamer and a transnational house-owner is often financial. Finally, greater attachment to the country of origin increases the likelihood of being both a transnational house owner and a transnational dreamer. We also discuss how the results change across migrant groups and across genders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami was an extremely destructive event in Aceh, Indonesia, killing over 160,000 people and destroying infrastructure, homes, and livelihoods over miles of coastline. In its immediate aftermath, affected populations faced a daunting array of challenges. At the population level, questions of how the disaster affected children’s and parents’ aspirations for education and whether it permanently disrupted schooling progression are critical in understanding how shocks affect human capital in the short and long term. We use longitudinal data from the Study of the Tsunami Aftermath and Recovery (STAR) to examine how disaster exposure affects educational aspirations and eventual attainment. We find that damage to one’s community depresses aspirations in the short term but that this weakens with time. With respect to educational attainment 15 years after the event, children’s aspirations, parents’ education, and family socioeconomic status are more important determinants of whether children complete high school and go on to tertiary schooling than is disaster exposure. While these results likely reflect, at least in part, the successful post-tsunami reconstruction program, they also establish enormous resilience among survivors who bore the brunt of the tsunami. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While studies on refugee-background students in school contexts have been prolific, research of this population in higher education or post-tertiary education is still emergent. The paper attends to this gap by drawing on the narratives of five refugee-background young adults who are undertaking Australian higher education or have completed university studies. An interpretive analysis of their life-story interviews is drawn from Appadurai's concept of 'voice' as a tool to understand the intergenerational nature of 'aspiration'. We illustrate the heterogeneous ways their resourcefulness is activated in pursuit of their aspirations, and the enabling role parental aspirations play in realising their pathways. It offers new insights on the enabling role refugee parents play to support their children's pathway into higher education. It also highlights the significance of individual refugee youth agency in navigating on-going challenges to attain their personal aspirations through education. We argue that the concept of inclusive education should contain a strength-based view of refugee students that positions them as aspirational individuals who are actively engaging in complex forms of negotiation, adaptability and resistance. Further research into inclusive education for increased social inclusion, incorporating the intergenerational aspirations of both refugee youth and their parents is clearly warranted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An often discussed but less researched dimension of youth unemployment is voluntary unemployment caused by the mismatch between available opportunities in the labour market and employment aspirations. In this paper, we attempt to explore this misalignment between employment aspirations and the jobs in the labour market as a factor responsible for higher incidence of unemployment among youth. We build a measure of relative occupational aspirations based on the premise that aspirations are shaped by the socio-economic context and educational attainment of an individual. Our analysis provides evidence for a lack of employment opportunities that satisfy the employment aspirations of the youth. The mismatch between aspirations and opportunities measured as relative occupational aspirations gap, is particularly high among youth with tertiary education, and female youth have higher aspirations gap compared to males. Based on our analysis, which includes both multinomial probit and instrument variable (IV) probit models, we find that youth with higher aspirations gap are more likely to be unemployed. We argue that increasing educational levels raise job-related expectations and aspirations. The lack of quality employment opportunities matching the aspirations could be a contributing factor to higher unemployment among youth. An effective policy approach requires the creation of better-quality jobs that align with the aspirations of young, educated labour force. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do privileged young people engage in artistic fields? Are the arts classified and classifying for educational paths? To examine these questions, I propose observations and reflections from a study of secondary art schools in Italy. Artistic education has received focused but limited attention from sociology, as part of an increasing interest towards cultural labour. However, Italian artistic schools remain a neglected research theme. The proposed study on secondary art schools aims to examine certain early dynamics of creative fields in Milan. This article interrogates the educational experiences of privileged students at art schools. The research is based on discursive interviews and focus groups with these students. Students' class culture is investigated focusing on diverse scholastic dispositions and different outlooks on the future. The Bourdieusian notions of cultural capital and habitus allow certain dynamics of the aspiring young creatives' process of self-formation to be examined. The analysis reveals privileged individuals who are ambitious, self-confident and with great forward-thinking skills, but who are also academically negligent. The trust in individual enterprise and success is deeply interiorised by interviewees. These neoliberal and entrepreneurial ideas are infused with moral, and often tacit, considerations on class boundaries. The analysis reveals some aspects of the symbolic boundary-making; dynamics in which a meritocratic ethos plays a key role in legitimating social divisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Building on aspirations and capabilities models in migration studies, this paper explores the utility of this approach for elucidating long-term integration processes. Aspirations as individual constructions of what one's life should look like in the future are a concept used by scholars to study migrants' motives to migrate. However, neither are aspirations an often applied analytical category, nor a sufficiently examined theoretical subject in the area of long-term migration. This paper addresses this gap and applies the category of aspirations and capabilities to the study of long-term adaptation processes of Polish emigrants of the 1980s in three European countries: Austria, Italy and Sweden. The case study illustrates the aspirations/capabilities model's usability for studying integration processes and proves that aspirations and capabilities should be a subject of inquiry throughout migrants' lives. As a contribution to the debate, an analytical framework along with a schema depicting live long migration processes is proposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aimed to determine the levels of aspirations, expectations, family support and academic achievements of grade 11 students of Congressman Ramon A. Arnaldo High School, Bgry. Banica, Roxas City, Capiz. Respondents of the study were 152 grade 11 students who were officially enrolled at Congressman Ramon A. Arnaldo High School, Bgry. Banica, Roxas City, Capiz, during the School Year 2018-2019. The Following are the significant findings: (1) The level of aspirations from the respondents is "very high"; (2) the level of expectations from the respondents is "very high"; (3) the level of family support from the respondents is "high"; (4) the level of academic achievement from the respondents is "very satisfactory"; (5) There is a significant relationship between the following variables: academic achievement and aspiration; academic achievement and expectation; and, aspiration and expectation. However, there is no significant relationship between the following variables: academic achievement and family support; family support and aspiration; and, family support and expectation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A growing literature in economics has analysed the effects of psychological interventions designed to boost individual aspirations as a strategy to increase households' propensity to make long-term investments and thus reduce poverty. This paper reports on a randomised controlled trial evaluating a short video-based intervention designed to increase aspirations of adults in poor rural Ethiopian households who are beneficiaries of the Productive Safety Net Program, the main government safety net program in Ethiopia. Evidence from a sample of 5,258 adults from 3,220 households is consistent with the hypothesis that there are no significant effects of the intervention on self-reported aspirations for the household, educational investment in children, or savings nine months post-treatment. This suggests that the effect of light-touch aspirations treatments for extremely poor adults may be limited in this context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Higher education is considered an important dimension for building more egalitarian societies. However, despite the social value assigned to it, international evidence indicates that the social status of students' families continues to prevent significant mobility in the social structure. In Chile, despite policies to increase access to higher education, the university system continues to reproduce inequalities of origin through selection, separating elite students from low-income students. In this context, little is known about the perception that university students have of the role that these institutions play in social mobility, especially for those of more disadvantaged social origins. This article explores and describes the persistence of the university dream among Chilean's students at the Catholic University of Temuco, the Chilean educational institution with the highest percentage of poor students in the country, analyzing it on the understanding that aspirations represent idealist targets of the desired social class, while expectations represent realistic goals regarding the expected social class. Based on a statistical analysis of survey data from 209 students, results show that students' family origin does not prevent them from projecting themselves as part of a higher class, with the university acting as an agent that dynamizes positions to favor greater homogeneity in the future social structure. In addition, postgraduate degrees are defined as a catalyst for future social mobility. Finally, the future tensions between the still-hegemonic meritocratic discourse and the reality of the social space that these students will occupy are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background Large numbers of young people worldwide, especially in the Global South, wish to migrate but lack the capacity to do so, with potentially detrimental consequences for their well-being and mental health. Termed ‘involuntary immobility’, this phenomenon is numerically larger than migration, but remains for now a largely underexplored area of research. Focusing on young Senegalese living in Casamance, this paper contributes to the limited literature on the implications of immobility for subjective well-being. It does so by (i) considering different degrees and types of involuntary immobility and their intersections, (ii) laying out the implications of (interacting) social and spatial immobilities for well-being with particular attention to youth’s agency in navigating a lack of capabilities, and (iii) by accounting for heterogenous experiences taking a gendered approach. Methods For this study, 35 semi-structured interviews were conducted with 18- to 39-year-olds in Ziguinchor region, recruited through purposive and snowball sampling. Thematic analysis was employed on verbatim transcriptions of audio-recorded interviews. Results Our study reveals a nuanced reality where aspirations to (temporarily) move abroad coexist with aspirations to stay in Casamance. Participants’ life aspirations and overarching projects clash, however, both with a lack of capabilities to move abroad and to enact these locally. This pervasive immobility decreases life satisfaction and generates negative emotions, such as stress, anxiety, discouragement, and distress. Despite these obstacles, our findings also underscore the agency and resourcefulness displayed by the youth as they navigate their limited control over life choices and paths. Conclusions Involuntary spatial immobility exacerbates the dominant experience of social immobility, magnifying its effect on youth’s well-being, revealing a previously unacknowledged phenomenon. Our findings further emphasize the pressing need for a more cohesive alignment between migration policies and information campaigns on one hand and the real experiences and challenges encountered by their intended audience on the other.

Background. The choice of a teaching career by graduates of pedagogical universities is determined by various factors. Among them, intrinsic motivation and experiences in learning activities play a major role. The desire to benefit society is also highly important. Purpose. To study the relations between the preference of a teaching career among students of a pedagogical university to academic motivation and experiences in educational activities. Methodology. The empirical data was collected using psychological questionnaires. The obtained data was processed using correlation and regression analysis. Results. Positive correlations were obtained between the preference for a teaching career and intrinsic academic motivation, pleasure from educational activities, effort and desire to benefit society. It was revealed that the most important factors for choosing a teaching career include students’ meaning of educational and professional activity and lack of academic amotivation. Scope of application of the results. The results of the study can be applied in the field of higher pedagogical education in working with students, as well as in the field of secondary education in working with novice teachers.

This study explored the impact of an active project-based, aquaculture constructivist-learning program, as perceived by high school students. The purpose of this case study was to discover if participation in the program influenced students’ interest, engagement, and future educational and career aspirations in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) when integrating aquaculture in and outside the classroom. Likewise, the study also wanted to explore students’ knowledge about aquaculture and skill development after their participation in the program. The study employed a qualitative methods approach to explore students’ attitudes and experiences. Qualitative data were collected from post-student focus groups at three different public, rural high schools in Kentucky. Other qualitative data included teacher journal reflections (e.g., personal documents) and public newspaper articles (e.g., public documents). Four emergent themes were found: (1) Students show excitement and enthusiasm in the hands-on, aquaculture program; (2) students show attention to detail in the hands-on, aquaculture tasks, it sticks, and are more responsible; (3) students are collaboratively engaged with their peers; and (4) greater interest and confidence in STEM through practical application. Results demonstrated that the program engaged learners in real-world problem-solving and decision-making situations while working collaboratively in small works. It also appears that students gained an important life skill, responsibility, as well as self-confidence in STEM, after participating in the program.

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has become an existential challenge and a trigger of the migration crisis. The study aims to identify migration intentions of youth and factors for the preservation of the young population in Ukraine (a case study of university youth). The study conducts a sociological survey using a Google Forms questionnaire. The sample was formed by the method of three-stage selection: (1) quotas for the share of undergraduate and graduate students; (2) the higher education institutions in Ukraine were selected by the criterion of the number of students and specialties; and (3) field of knowledge. The sample size is calculated based on the resampling method and included 2,200 people from all regions in Ukraine (except Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Dnipropetrovsk oblasts). The study reveals that 10% of students plan to go abroad in the near future before graduation, 30% plan to stay in Ukraine only if the socio-economic situation improves after the end of the war, and 28.3% plan to migrate after graduation. The reasons for positive migration aspirations among students are socio-economic and security issues (14.9% can find a job abroad in the short term, 11.1% see the lack of further prospects in Ukraine even after the end of the war). Monitoring of youth migration processes across two vectors – current volumes and potential aspirations – can serve as an information and analytical basis for the development of a new vision of the country’s migration security strategy to preserve human resources in Ukraine.

Background: Large numbers of young people worldwide, especially in the Global South, wish to migrate but lack the capacity to do so, with potentially detrimental consequences for their well-being and mental health. Termed 'involuntary immobility', this phenomenon is numerically larger than migration, but remains for now a largely underexplored area of research. Focusing on young Senegalese living in Casamance, this paper contributes to the limited literature on the implications of immobility for subjective well-being. It does so by (i) considering different degrees and types of involuntary immobility and their intersections, (ii) laying out the implications of (interacting) social and spatial immobilities for well-being with particular attention to youth's agency in navigating a lack of capabilities, and (iii) by accounting for heterogenous experiences taking a gendered approach. Methods: For this study, 35 semi-structured interviews were conducted with 18- to 39-year-olds in Ziguinchor region, recruited through purposive and snowball sampling. Thematic analysis was employed on verbatim transcriptions of audio-recorded interviews. Results: Our study reveals a nuanced reality where aspirations to (temporarily) move abroad coexist with aspirations to stay in Casamance. Participants' life aspirations and overarching projects clash, however, both with a lack of capabilities to move abroad and to enact these locally. This pervasive immobility decreases life satisfaction and generates negative emotions, such as stress, anxiety, discouragement, and distress. Despite these obstacles, our findings also underscore the agency and resourcefulness displayed by the youth as they navigate their limited control over life choices and paths. Conclusions: Involuntary spatial immobility exacerbates the dominant experience of social immobility, magnifying its effect on youth's well-being, revealing a previously unacknowledged phenomenon. Our findings further emphasize the pressing need for a more cohesive alignment between migration policies and information campaigns on one hand and the real experiences and challenges encountered by their intended audience on the other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary Obstructive sleep apnea has been linked to an increased risk of pneumonia, possibly due to higher rates of nighttime aspirations. Few studies have directly investigated such aspirations in individuals with sleep apnea. This retrospective study included 142 adult patients with obstructive sleep apnea who underwent drug‐induced sedation endoscopy between 2017 and 2020. The incidence of penetrations and aspirations during the procedure was assessed, along with potential associated factors. The results showed that 28.1% of the patients experienced penetrations, 48.5% had aspirations, and 23.2% had neither. Male gender and epiglottic collapse were significantly associated with both penetrations and aspirations, while oropharyngeal collapse was more common in those without these events. This study highlights a high rate of aspirations during the procedure in individuals with sleep apnea, with epiglottic collapse and male gender identified as potential risk factors. These findings underscore the need for further research to understand the mechanisms of nighttime aspirations in sleep apnea and to develop targeted strategies to reduce pneumonia risk in this population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While studies on aspiration formation have progressively gained the interest of development practitioners and policymakers, little is known about the link between seasonal time poverty and aspirations. This study uses primary data on 337 smallholder households in rural northern Ghana to examine the relationship between seasonal time poverty and aspirations about income, assets, child education, and social status from household headship and age perspectives. The results indicate that seasonal time poverty is correlated with higher aspirations of income and assets but a lower social status. The effect is more significant in dry than wet seasons, and more evident in female- and adult-headed households. The findings are robust to alternative estimation methods for addressing endogeneity. Income is identified as the main potential channel through which seasonal time poverty influences aspirations formation and the implications of the findings are discussed. HIGHLIGHTS In Ghana, seasonal time poverty is positively associated with income and asset aspirations. Seasonal time poverty reduces social status aspiration. The effect of seasonal time poverty on aspiration is higher among women and adults. Programs that promote rural household income must be targeted, pursued, and sustained to improve aspirations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite efforts to foster a more equitable gender representation, Australia's higher education sector and workforce continue to be highly segregated. This article focusses on the gendered experiences of first-in-family (FIF) students—many who are from low-socioeconomic communities—transitioning to Australian universities. In terms of the gendered nature of widening participation, we know students who are FIF will often study disciplines which align with traditional gender norms. Drawing on the First-in-Family Project (n = 48), we present the analysis of our findings in two parts. First, we provide an overview of the cohort where we analyse the gendering of degree choice of FIF students. Second, underpinned by theoretical work focussed on student gendered and classed subjectivities, we address how FIF young people negotiated classed and gendered norms during the transition to university. Our data suggest that young people engage in 'gender work' and 'class work' which informs their identities and how they make choices about their futures. Based on our research, we argue that to achieve social justice there is a need for a renewed attention to gender within the widening participation agenda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Unstructured out-of-school time (OST) science activities, such as reading a science book, watching a science television show, or researching on the internet about science, constitute a self-sustaining way for adolescents to engage in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Although it is suggested that long-term engagement in such activities could have a broad influence on several STEM-related constructs, so far little is known about the impact of unstructured OST science engagement. The current study therefore investigated the effects of unstructured OST science engagement on the development of vocational interests, occupational aspirations, competencies, school achievement, and ability self-concepts. For this purpose, we used a large longitudinal subsample (N = 2,655) from the National Educational Panel Study (NEPS; Blossfeld & Roßbach, 2019) where students in Germany were assessed in Grades 9, 11, and 12. Following the recommendations of VanderWeele et al. (2020), we used an outcome-wide longitudinal design for causal inference: Outcome-wide effects of unstructured OST science activities were estimated while controlling for a set of joint confounders and pretest measures. Our findings show that unstructured OST science activities influence investigative vocational interests, but do not influence occupational aspirations, competencies, school grades, and ability self-concepts. The results suggest that adolescents with similar initial interest trait levels who engage in unstructured OST science activities develop a stronger interest toward STEM, compared to adolescents who do not engage in such activities. Educational Impact and Implications Statement: The findings of the study imply that an increased engagement in unstructured out-of-school time science activities, such as reading articles in newspapers or visiting internet sites about science, can increase investigative vocational interests of students in grade 11, but does not affect occupational aspirations, competencies, school grades, and students' view of their abilities. Preexisting differences between students on the outcome variables were controlled for during the statistical analysis. Because investigative vocational interests are known as strong predictors for educational decisions in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, unstructured out-of-school time science activities might be a relevant complementary factor in fostering adolescents' motivation to pursue a science, technology, engineering, and mathematics career. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports the findings of a narrative study exploring the journeys of nine care leavers into university, answering the research question: How do care leavers explain their journeys into university? Care leavers are one of the least represented groups in the university setting. Therefore, examining the journeys of those who do enter the university field is important for understanding how to help raise aspirations and support other care leavers to follow. Recruitment to the study took place across all five universities in the Northeast of England, with nine students from three of these institutions taking part. Individual face to face and telephone interviews were conducted to capture the narratives and these were examined through a Bourdieusian lens, drawing on Bourdieu's theory of practice, using an experience centred thematic approach. The findings underline the dominant view that university education is culturally desirable and valuable, but also serve to highlight the diversity and complexity of the aspirations and experiences of care leavers' journeys into university. This research study contributes to the developing evidence base concerned with the educational experiences and trajectories of care leavers, highlighting the need for further research and review of both policy and practice in this area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This paper proposes to identify the necessary interventions to enhance graduates' performance in the Certified Public Accountant Licensure Examination. It aimed to examine the relationship between identified student factors and the inconsistency in graduates' performance in the CPA board exams from 2016 to 2019. The study is based on Walberg's theory of academic achievement, which asserts that the psychological characteristics of students and their immediate environments affect educational outcomes. A descriptive research design was utilized, surveying 28 Bachelor of Science in Accountancy graduates who took the CPA board exam using a standardized checklist. Qualitative data, serving as secondary data, were analyzed through documentary analysis. Additionally, indepth structured interviews were conducted to support the quantitative data. Results indicated that among student-related factors, only study habits significantly impacted graduates' performance in the CPA board exam. Other factors, such as academic performance, aspiration, and attitude towards accounting, were found to be insignificant. The study advocates for time management, comprehensive self-management, development of analytical skills, and maintaining a consistent desire to pass the CPA board exam and become an accountant. Future research is also recommended. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within the social imaginary of Australia's dominant 'White' culture, ethnic minority men, particularly Muslim men, are often depicted as 'folk devils,' resistant to the cultural norms of mainstream society. Muslim masculinities have been problematically conflated with notions of radicalisation, terrorism and violent extremism. There has been decidedly less attention to Muslim men's acclimatisation to the secular mainstream. This article presents a longitudinal case study of two second-generation young Australian-Muslim men who have attended an Islamic secondary school and spent most of their lives within a cloistered Islamic community. We document their experiences and aspirations as they come to be in higher education. The article considers the discursive production of identities of these men during a liminal time in their lives and how they construct their identities in relation to familial and community-based expectations around success and failure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We draw on the behavioral theory of the firm and prospect theory to examine how performance feedback (decision context) and the characteristics of the alternatives (decision content) that decision makers face jointly determine organizational risk-taking choices. While the behavioral theory of the firm has identified performance feedback's important role in driving organizational risk-taking decisions, it has not considered the intrinsic attributes of alternatives, specifically the magnitude and likelihood of their outcomes, which have been the focus of prospect theory. We argue that these two attributes play a key role in decision makers' assessment of alternatives, but because achieving organizational goals is the prime objective in organizations, performance feedback drives how decision makers process information regarding these attributes. Analyzing 23,895 fourth-down decisions from the U.S. National Football League, we find that decision makers weigh attainment discrepancy and the magnitude and likelihood of outcomes in their choices, depending on deadline proximity. Furthermore, the size and valence of attainment discrepancy modify the weight of the magnitude and likelihood of outcomes in risky choices. Our arguments and findings suggest extensions to the behavioral theory of the firm and imply modifications to prospect theory when applied to the organizational context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigate the relationship between hope and risky behaviour and the role of migration among young people in northern KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. We use data from a cohort of n = 5248 adolescents and young adults (AYA) aged 13–35 recruited and followed up in 2017–2019. We conducted a structured quantitative survey to assess levels of hope among AYA using a validated tool/scale. 44% of participants were aged 13–17 years, 63% were still in school, 66% were from rural areas, and 26% were from food insecure households. The mean hope total score was 31.7. The mean hope score was lower for females compared to males −0.43(95%CI; −0.64, −0.21) and lower for those out of school and not matriculated compared to those in school −0.72(95%CI; −1.1, −0.32). Young people who had experienced violence had a lower mean hope score than those who had not −0.28(95%CI: −0.50, −0.06). Those out of school, matriculated and unemployed were more likely to migrate than those in school (aOR = 1.60, 95%CI; 1.25, 2.05). AYA who were food insecure were also more likely to migrate (aOR = 1.23, 95%CI; 1.05, 1.43). Our findings suggest a need for structural interventions that address employment and education needs and harmful gender norms for older AYA.

This paper studies a simple process of demand adjustment in cooperative games. In the process, a randomly chosen player makes the highest possible demand subject to the demands of other coalition members being satisfied. This process converges to the aspiration set; in convex games, this implies convergence to the core. We further introduce perturbations into the process, where players sometimes make a higher demand than feasible. These perturbations make the set of separating aspirations, i.e., demand vectors in which no player is indispensable in order for other players to achieve their demands, the one most resistant to mutations. We fully analyze this process for 3-player games. We further look at weighted majority games with two types of players. In these games, if the coalition of all small players is winning, the process converges to the unique separating aspiration; otherwise, there are many separating aspirations and the process reaches a neighbourhood of a separating aspiration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this article is to answer the question: What future aspirations do students of anthropological careers in Mexico have? For this, the results of the “Encuesta de estudiantes de Antropología 2019” were analyzed, which investigates the expectations that students have about their future through the questions: “When you finish your degree, would you like to […]” and “When you are professional you expect […]”. Among the results of this analysis, it stands out that the economic, labor and academic aspirations of anthropological career students do not radically differ from the aspirations of other higher education students, but that the meaning they attribute to them acquires a particular meaning due to the experiences they live in the anthropological training process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite high college expectations and enrollments among young people, their trajectories through higher education have become increasingly complex. Even after initially starting as "traditional" students, many college graduates are only able to complete a bachelor's degree after a series of stops and starts across multiple institutions. While there is a growing body of research regarding nontraditional students, we know very little about how these individuals make sense of their trajectories. This qualitative study draws on interviews with 40 college graduates who attained a bachelor's degree following an extended and interrupted path. We consider how these individuals, who we define as post-traditional graduates, come to understand the value of college, distinguishing between the moral value, referred to as the expressive logic, and more practical and economic explanations, referred to as the instrumental logic. Our study found that an instrumental logic characterized the beginning of their college journeys, but what sustained our participants over time was an expressive logic: an evolved understanding of college as a process conferring personal development and moral worth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Young people's transitions are important crossroads for their future position within society. At the end of obligatory schooling, adolescents have to decide on whether they want to attend higher secondary schooling or to enter the job market. These decisions are framed by educational and occupational aspirations. Based on young people's narratives in a three-wave panel study, we analyze their imagined future starting one year before completing obligatory schooling. In a qualitative longitudinal case history approach, we analyze their aspirations as well as their embeddedness in their biography. We found that plans, hopes and dreams give more nuance to aspirations and are thus helpful conceptual frames for analyzing transitions. With two case histories, we illustrate different navigation processes: one with educational and the other with occupational focus but both starting with rather vague plans for their next steps. Despite different aspirations, both adolescents navigate the transitional phase and develop agency. The concretization of aspirations through plans, hopes and dreams brings evolving agency to light. Our results shed light on the process of change in young people's aspirations with an emphasis on the person's perspective and frame of reference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With dramatic global expansion of secondary schooling there has been significant research interest in how education is related to future aspirations, with important calls to acknowledge connections within processes of aspiring to young people's social, economic and cultural circumstances. This paper presents findings from thematic analysis of interview, participant observation and classroom observation data from an ethnographic study in two secondary schools in Tanzania. It argues that an important, and often overlooked, aspect of this complex process is the way in which aspirations for the future are connected not only to present realities, but also aspirations in the present. Focusing on students' aspirations relating to 'being a "good" student' and being able to 'soma kwa bidii' or 'study hard', this paper uses the conceptual language of the capability approach to assert the importance of considering aspirations for 'being' in education in conjunction with future aspirations for 'becoming'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper delves into the employment aspirations and struggles for upward social mobility of middle‐class Muslim female youth in Delhi, located in segregated and non‐segregated areas. The paper contends that women respondents navigate constraints such that their class, gender and religious background have an ambivalent role in the production of aspirations but a more definitive one in their realisation. This argument is anchored in the three key themes addressed in the paper. For women from middle and lower sections of the middle‐class the presence of high aspirations does not translate into gainful employment, leading to the problem of fraying hope and 'frustrated freedom'. They are engaged in prolonged waiting experiencing what Ghassan Hage would call 'stuckedness'. The upper stratum placed strategically in the Bourdieusian field, can leverage their economic and cultural capital to offset uncertainties around employment and marriage. The third section navigates religious, gender and class‐based constraints by participating in self‐employment activities in a segregated neighbourhood in Delhi. For these women, the segregated neighbourhood has a dual role as an enabler and a barrier to their aspirations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to their exposure to public areas, particularly at border checkpoints, police officers were not free from the Covid-19 risk. Aside from the health hazards, these frontliners were frequently targets of mistreatment from border violators. The study aimed to know the lived experiences of police officers enforcing standard health protocol at the border checkpoints of Maasin City, Southern Leyte. Specifically, the research sought the following problems: the experiences of the informants in enforcing standard health protocols, the informants coping with the problems encountered in enforcing standard health protocols, and the aspirations of informants to improve the implementation of standard health protocols. This research was carried out during the Covid-19 pandemic, and data was collected through individual depth interviews and focused group discussions. It was performed to learn more about police officers' lived experiences with the pandemic, including how they adjusted to the sudden change and managed challenges in the work environment, health risks from Covid-19 exposure, and the possibility of the danger posed by many challenges enforcing standard health protocols. The research tried to show how these experiences are handled and how their ramifications could help to improve future crisis preparedness and policing. Furthermore, seven (7) emergent themes were formulated in this study. From the positive experiences, the theme of The Fulfillment of Heroes emerged. While from the experiences of the informants, in the negative experiences, two (2) themes have been formulated: Being in the Frontline and In the State of Battle. The two (2) developed themes for how the informants cope with their experiences are Self-suffieciency in the State of Adversity and Overcoming Adversity in Unity. The final two themes, Unity and Cooperation, an Excellent Armor, and The Desire Behind the Motivation, are drawn from the aspirations of the informants. The police officers performed their duties with the goal of involving the community in their work and coping with and adapting to sudden changes as a whole. They achieved this by considering their past experiences in order to become better public servants and be ready for upcoming crises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We provide evidence that in certain contexts, firms set upward-striving goals and that this upward striving yields significant performance and visibility benefits. We develop a model of variable attention in which, as firms' performance levels approach cognitively salient round numbers, managers strategically shift their focus from easier-to-reach goals based on historical and social reference points to more challenging goals that provide external visibility and capital market benefits. As one specific yet important instance of an upward shift in attention, we document a significant increase in revenue growth rates as firms' annual revenue approaches $100 million. Firms achieving this goal obtain discontinuous increases in analyst and media coverage, investment by new institutional investors, and executive compensation. We find no evidence of decreased investment efficiency or profitability, suggesting that managers typically build slack into their goal levels. Our theory extends to goals based on other salient round numbers, such as revenue of $10 million, $500 million, and $1 billion. This study recasts behavioral theory of firm research in an open systems perspective, highlighting the externally directed aspects of firm goal setting. Supplemental Material: The online appendices are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2021.15148. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]