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For a Saudi woman living in times of rapid socioeconomic transformation, working in a low-paid job may feel both obligatory and shameful. This paper argues that Saudi women – torn between traditionalism and modernity – are deeply impacted, though in ambivalent ways, by the recent empowerment discourse. It examines how the corporate world adopts the empowerment narrative to promote progress, modernity, and openness at the expense of women's needs, preferences, and values. Through interviews with a diverse cohort of 20 employed women aged 20–45 years, this study seeks to unravel the motivations that drive women to pursue work in a patriarchal society where the conventional role of men entails assuming financial responsibility for women. Through an exploration of the motivations underlying women's decisions to work – a few of which are the desire for recognition, financial independence, and self-worth – this paper investigates issues of visibility, space, and social responsibility. These key issues emphasize the struggles encountered by working women in attaining empowerment, autonomy, and self-worth despite their participation in the labour market and their financial independence. By examining low-skilled sectors in which women struggle with challenging working conditions, this paper aims to give voice to disadvantaged women who, in the empowerment plans, are left unheard and their future obscured. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the effects of low-skilled immigration inflows on the motherhood gaps in wages among high-skilled women. Applying IV methods to U.S. census and ACS data, this paper first confirms previous findings in the literature that mothers are less willing to increase their work hours than childless women with inflows of low-skilled immigrants. However, the main contribution of the paper is showing that as the low-skilled labor supply increases, high-skilled mothers achieve more wage improvement than otherwise identical nonmothers. The findings in this paper imply that an increase in the low-skilled labor supply reduces the gender pay gap among high-skilled native workers, and most importantly, it is driven by women with children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The United States (US) apple industry relies heavily on semi‐skilled manual labor force for essential field operations such as training, pruning, blossom and green fruitlet thinning, and harvesting. Blossom thinning is one of the crucial crop‐load management practices to achieve desired crop load, fruit quality, and return bloom. While several techniques such as chemical and mechanical thinning are available for large‐scale blossom thinning, such approaches often yield unpredictable thinning results and may damage the canopy, spurs, and leaf tissue. Hence, growers still depend on laborious, labor‐intensive, and expensive manual hand blossom thinning for desired thinning outcomes. This research presents a robotic solution for precision blossom thinning in apple orchards using a deep learning‐based computer vision system, a six‐degrees‐of‐freedom UR5e robotic manipulator, and an electrically actuated miniature end‐effector. The integrated robotic system was evaluated in a commercial apple orchard which showed promising results for targeted and selective blossom thinning. Two thinning approaches, center and boundary thinning, were investigated to evaluate the system's ability to remove varying proportions of flowers from apple flower clusters. During boundary thinning, the end‐effector was actuated around the cluster boundary, while center thinning involved end‐effector actuation only at the cluster centroid for a fixed duration of 2 s. Field evaluation results showed that the boundary thinning approach thinned 67.2% of flowers from the targeted clusters with a cycle time of 9.0 s per cluster, whereas the center thinning approach thinned 59.4% of flowers with a cycle time of 7.2 s per cluster. Upon further improvement for commercial adoption, the proposed system could help address problems faced by apple growers with current hand, chemical, and mechanical blossom thinning approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the effect of digital transformation on the employment of low‐skilled labor. Using a large sample of Chinese listed firms for the 2008–2021 period, we find that digital transformation reduces the employment of low‐skilled labor. This result is robust to a battery of sensitivity tests and is attenuated for firms located in regions with higher unemployment rates and for small enterprises. Mechanism tests show that digital transformation affects the employment of low‐skilled labor through the wage effect channel and the substitution effect channel. The paper deepens our understanding of the economic effect of digital transformation on the labor market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study is based on the panel data from 2006 to 2020 to explore the relationship between artificial intelligence (AI) and pollution emission. The study demonstrates a notable and statistically significant reduction in pollution emission intensity attributable to AI. This finding is robust, holding up under various sensitivity analyses and addressing endogeneity using instrumental variable techniques. The mechanism analysis reveals that AI's role in decreasing emissions primarily arises from three factors: the promotion of technological innovation, increased investment in emission reduction technology, and the replacement of low‐skilled labor with more efficient alternatives. We also find more substantial environmental benefits in areas with stricter environmental regulations and higher initial levels of pollution. Additionally, AI is shown to facilitate a symbiotic relationship between economic growth and environmental management. This research provides both empirical evidence and theoretical insights that reinforce the essential role of AI in driving green transformations, process upgrades, and high‐quality development. It situates these advancements within the broader context of the interplay between artificial intelligence, environmental sustainability, and economic progression. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the interplay between knowledge acquisition and the stepwise migration trajectories of low-skilled Vietnamese workers in China. Utilizing a rich array of data garnered from face-to-face interviews, customized surveys, on-site observations, media narratives, and an archival review of government regulations in Guangxi—a province bordering Vietnam—and in Guangdong, a non-adjacent province, this study proposes an analytical framework, skill-driven migration, to highlight the synergy between the pre-migratory socio-demographic attributes of migrants and the circumstances prevailing in both the places of origin and destination which orchestrates distinct job allocations and skill augmentation avenues. Notably, our study underscores that the competencies acquired in manufacturing employments potentially broaden the horizon of destinations for migrants in their subsequent stepwise migration endeavors. This phenomenon, in turn, poses intricate immigration management quandaries for newly emerged destination nations like China, spotlighting a nuanced dimension of labor mobility and policy frameworks in the evolving regional economic integration. Last, our findings challenge the conventional dichotomy of high-skilled and low-skilled categories of labor migration, as well as the dichotomy of explicit-tacit knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the era of globalization, the international community has witnessed a rapid increase in the number of low-skilled workers migrating from developing countries to industrial countries. However, there remain competing approaches to the governance of lowskilled labor migration; that is, the economic theory and the rights-based approach. By utilizing the labor migration between Vietnam and Japan under the Technical Intern Training Program (TITP), this article reveals the limitations of these two approaches in governing the migration of low-skilled workers. Moreover, through examining the Memorandum of Cooperation on the Technical Intern Training Program signed by the Vietnamese and Japanese governments in 2017 and its contribution to the TITP, this article suggests that to regulate labor migration properly, it is essential to uphold the rights-based approach and consider labor migration as a transnational issue that should be addressed at the international level; that is, through the bilateral or multilateral instruments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper theoretically analyzes and empirically examines the impact and mechanisms of automated machines on employment in manufacturing enterprises, drawing on task-based model and using micro data from listed Chinese manufacturing enterprises between 2012 and 2019. Our findings reveal that: (1) Automated machines in manufacturing enterprises leads to a substitution effect on the total labor force, with a substitution effect on low-skilled labor and a creation effect on high-skilled labor in terms of employment structure. (2) Further analysis indicates that automated machines primarily have a positive effect on R&D and technical staff, a non-significant effect on sales staff, and a negative impact on production, administrative, and financial staff. (3) The primary influencing mechanisms of automated machines on employment in manufacturing firms are productivity effects and output scale effects, based on the mediation effect model. (4) Considering the industry linkage effect, we employ the input-output method and the Input-Output Table and find that automated machines for upstream (downstream) manufacturing enterprises will result in a substitution effect on employment for downstream (upstream) enterprises. The novelties and research contributions are as follows: (1) we conduct a structural decomposition of total employment, and further decompose employment positions into production, R&D, sales, finance, and administration. (2) We try to investigate the industry linkage effect about the impact of automated machines on the employment of upstream and downstream enterprises. (3) We use data from listed manufacturing companies, and the data of existing research are about provincial and industry-level data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research analyzes the unequal impact of COVID‐19 on high‐skilled and low‐skilled labor in a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model. The model is calibrated to fit Taiwan's economy and evaluates the effectiveness of various fiscal measures, including an increase in government spending, an increase in lump‐sum transfers, a disbursement of consumption vouchers, and an income tax cut, for combating the pandemic recession. Our results indicate that low‐skilled households tend to hoard labor more than high‐skilled households during economic downturns. An income tax cut outperforms other fiscal instruments in generating the highest aggregate welfare and in advancing output, employment, and consumption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite rapid demographic decline, until recently, low-skilled migrant workers have been welcomed only through 'side-doors' such as technical interns (TITP). Yet pressure for change comes from two sides: the moral critique of the 'side-door' scheme, and the growing economic pressures of a dwindling labor force. In 2018 Japan put in place a short-term bona-fide labor scheme (Specified Skilled Worker; hereafter, SSW) in fields previously largely inaccessible to foreign labor. In combination with the TITP schemes, these workers are allowed to stay longer. But what do these changes mean, how do the farmer-employers see them, and will the SSW lead to a sustainable farm labor supply going forward? We explore stakeholders' views of the current schemes and their opinions on how low-skilled labor migration should proceed in agriculture. Businesses are desperate for labor, but not at any cost. Under SSW, employers are being asked to change the ways they envision and treat migrant labor. The tensions between their expectations and the realities on the ground reflect the contradictions that Japan's migration policies inherit, based in the bureaucratic fiction that only 'skilled' labor is necessary. Data for this paper come from qualitative interviews conducted from 2018 to 2022 in Kyoto, Aichi, and Tokyo. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper empirically examines the impact of the development of the digital economy on the employment scale and structure of China's listed companies. The results show that overall, digital economic development significantly improves the employment scale of listed companies in China. The development of the digital economy has significantly increased the share of high-skilled labor, medium- and high-skilled labor, and decreased the share of low- and medium-skilled labor and low-skilled labor. In employment positions, the development of the digital economy significantly increases the share of openings in accounting, sales, and other positions, especially in R&D. Furthermore, the employment creation effect of digital economic development is attributed to the effects of scale expansion and productivity, while the substitution of digital technology for low-skilled labor does not significantly hinder employment. The study has important implications for the digital economy and employment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The green transformation is a necessary path for industrialization to reach the advanced stage. Currently, achieving a win-win situation between green transformation and stable employment for residents has become a common concern for theoretical researchers and policymakers. This paper analyzes the influence mechanism of enterprise green transformation on employment using the partial equilibrium model. Furthermore, the employment effect and mechanism of enterprise green transformation are empirically verified with panel data from companies listed on the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges. The results indicate a dynamic non-linear relationship between enterprise green transformation and employment. As the transformation deepens, its impact on employment changes from negative to positive. Mechanism analysis reveals that enterprise green transformation has the potential to induce output growth and employment virtuous cycle. Additionally, environmental protection investment and labor employment in the transformation have a factor complementary effect. There is heterogeneity in the employment impact of enterprise green transformation, especially for production personnel, low-skilled labor, non-state-owned, heavy-polluting, and medium-low-tech enterprises, which experience stronger employment deprivation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Domestic workers in South Africa continue to tread the blurry line between formal and informal work. Despite attempts to regulate remuneration and organise workers, around 863,000 domestic workers earn their livelihoods within homes across the country. Comprised predominantly of black, semi-skilled women, authors have argued that this often-invisible workforce is vulnerable to exploitation, violence, and an insurmountable workload. Literature, however, hardly acknowledges that many domestic workers can be credited with harmoniously running the home, fulfilling elements of the role of the employer, and ensuring the employer’s children are cared for and supervised. Muslim female employers in particular teach and entrust their domestic workers to clean their home in line with Islamic principles and, more importantly, ensure their children are cared for and guided towards an Islamic path when left under the supervision of the domestic worker. The role of the mother in the home is emphasised in Islam, and thus, her helper must be an extension of that role, be it dusting with a ‘paak’ (clean) cloth or ‘deening’ (practicing tenets of an Islamic lifestyle). Building on previous qualitative research, this paper argues that domestic workers in South African Muslim homes must not only be ‘good’ cleaners – they must also understand, absorb, and display elements of Islam, both as cleaners and carers, in order to successfully fulfil their role as a trusted part of the Muslim home in South Africa. This paper also explores gendered bonds shared between employers and domestic workers, as mothers and wives, and how religion and remuneration influence this dynamic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several studies have indicated a type of hierarchical capitalism in Latin America, characterized by the presence of multinational and state corporations, diversified multi-enterprise groups, low-skilled labor, and segmented labor markets. From the perspective of ownership networks, we explore who the owners of large Brazilian corporations are. These networks reveal actors and groups with prominent positions in the structure and ownership of companies. Thus, this article proposes to 1) describe the ownership network of the largest Brazilian corporations; 2) analyze the density, average degree, modularity, and the number of components connected in this network; 3) analyze measures of weighted degree centrality, intermediation, and eigenvector; 4) identify and analyze subgroups in the network, and 5) relate the configuration of the ownership network with hierarchical capitalism in the Brazilian context. The results point to prominent positions of financial shareholders, the Brazilian state (state-owned firms), and groups composed mostly of large multinationals, financial firms, families, and state-owned firms, confirming that the ownership structure is strongly linked to these players. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From 2005 to 2015, China's high-skilled labor was increasingly concentrated in cities with high wages and high rents, while a narrowing of the wage gap between high- and low-skilled labor showed an opposite trend to an increase in geographic sorting. In this research, I estimated a spatial equilibrium structural model to identify the causes of this phenomenon and its impact on welfare. Changes in local labor demand essentially led to an increase in skill sorting, and changes in urban amenities further contributed to this trend. An agglomeration of high-skilled labor raised local productivity, increased wages for all workers, reduced the real wage gap, and widened the welfare gap between workers with different skills. In contrast to the welfare effects of changes in the wage gap driven by exogenous productivity changes, changes in urban wages, rents, and amenities increased welfare inequality between high- and low-skilled workers, but this is mainly because the utility of low-skilled workers from urban amenities is constrained by migration costs; if migration costs caused by China's household registration policy were eliminated, changes in urban wages, rents, and amenities would reduce welfare inequality between high- and low-skilled workers to a greater extent than a reduction in the real wage gap between these two groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The need for non-formal education (NFE), which does not result in a formal degree or certificate, is substantial as labour markets often require adult workers to take an initiative in advancing their jobrelated skills. Yet, NFE opportunities are more often pursued by highincome and high-skilled adults than their low-income and low-skilled counterparts. For this study, we used data from the 2012 Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) for Canada, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and the US, to compare participation rates in NFE by medium/high and low-skilled adults. Additionally, to gain insights of adult education and training policies that promote NFE, international key informant interviews (n = 33) and document reviews were conducted. Findings include (a) as compared to high-skilled adults, low-skilled adults are less likely to participate in NFE (b) as compared to the US, low-skilled adults in Norway and the Netherlands are more likely to participate in NFE, and (c) NFE is often more acceptable to low-skilled adults, possibly due to previous negative experiences with formal education. These findings are especially relevant to the increased need for retraining and reskilling as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has negatively impacted low-skilled workers more than their higher skilled counterparts (OECD, 2020a). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The coronavirus epidemic (COVID-19) has led to drastic changes in social life. Focusing on a group of essential workers, this study examines how mainland Chinese low-skilled labor migrants discursively manifest their everyday lives via WeChat Moments. From analyzing social media posts and interview data, this study demonstrates that these labor migrants' stay in Macao was a period of unsought and undesired time of waiting, impacted by socio-structural constraints of class, age, gender, and outsider identity. Participants experienced positive (happiness with newfound opportunities) and negative emotions (anxiety and entrapment) during forced immobility due to border closures. This study contributes to understandings of border-crossing as interpreted and experienced via social media discourse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author investigates effects of minimum wage rates on low-skilled, female low-skilled, and youth employment. The sample consists of 19 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries from 1997 to 2013 for low-skilled workers and from 1983 to 2013 for young workers. Six different static or dynamic estimation approaches are applied on different versions of the specifications, controlling for up to quadratic time trends. The author further investigates the effects over the long run and over the business cycle as well as the effects of high minimum wages and of institutional complementarities. The findings provide little evidence of substantial disemployment effects for low-skilled, female low-skilled, or young workers. The estimated employment elasticities are small and statistically indistinguishable from zero. The author then considers why his results on youth employment differ from those of Neumark and Wascher (2004), showing that they overstate precision and that small changes in their specifications lead to minimum wage effects close to zero. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Access to lifelong learning opportunities has long been discussed in terms of the economic benefits conferred by access to and engagement in further education by members of the labor force, particularly within the global knowledge economy. However, equitable access to lifelong education opportunities, particularly for low-skilled adults in the labor force, has been lacking. The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) identified three models for funding adult learning: (1) individual learning accounts, (2) individual savings accounts, and (3) training vouchers. The current study discusses examples of these models, either proposed or implemented, across four countries or economic blocks—France, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States. In addition, to understand the importance of providing funding for education and training to adults with low levels literacy skills, we use data from the Program for the International Assessment for Adult Competencies (PIAAC) to compare participation in adult education and training (AET) by literacy skill levels. In all countries examined, adults with low literacy skills participated in AET at lower rates than those with middle and high levels of literacy skills. To be successful in reaching adults most in need of skill upgrading, financing models need to provide adequate funds for meaningful skill upgrades, have well-structured information sources (e.g., websites) that are easily navigated by the target population, and include policies to screen educational providers for program quality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to provide empirical evidence against the theory and practice of immigrant integration through the experience of EU citizens in the UK around Brexit. We demonstrate that, in the case of EU citizens, the outcomes of presumably successful "integration" have been achieved while – and, we argue, because of the fact that – EU citizens have been treated as citizens (not migrants) and have been freed from the requirement to "integrate". On the basis of interviews, focus groups and a survey in the period 2016–18 we show meaningful incorporation of a variety of EU citizens of all backgrounds, including those from the so-called "low-skilled" presumably problematic to integrate subgroup. We claim that work, family, locality and time determine much of the intricacies of the incorporation journey. Integration governance which Brexit imposed on EU citizens can only threaten these outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several fruit-growing regions have emerged in Bulgaria over the years. Fruit harvested areas vary, as well as the number of registered farmers. All this is reflection of the agricultural policy, which changes every 7 years. The state of fruit growing in the country is highly dependent on many natural and socio-economic factors, among them are the lack of financial resources for consolidation and modernization of production as well as aging of existing plantations and insufficient rates of creation of new plantations. The disadvantage is lack of labor force and use of low-skilled labor in production. Other problems are related to irrigation of crops as well as population ageing on farms. The goal of the study is a review of the state of fruit production, as well as to identify the challenges associated with this production in Bulgaria. It is important to consider the state policy in fruit growing for farms development. The methodological part includes: (1) Current state and trends in development of fruit growing production, (2) Analysis of fruit growing support schemes and measures (3) Making recommendations for better farm management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most of the educators (teachers) are broadly versatile when they are working with learners that are literate on high levels (well educated or prepared). But, when low literate and/or low educated learners are concerned, many difficulties arise. Pretty important group of people are those who are functionally illiterate. International project was conducted in the period 2020-2022 with its main goal to ensure the adult educators to possess the necessary skills and competencies for creating motivating, productive and effective learning environment for adults with educational levels that are below the needs of the modern society regarding its professional, cultural and social aspect. The main intellectual output (out of three) was the web application integrating all the aspects of the issues targeted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pakistan is a country with rich natural and human resources. The role of highly skilled people in national development has become enormously vital in the new developmental period, but it is also an irrefutable fact that the gap in highly skilled personnel in Pakistan is expanding. The organization of Technical Vocational Education and Training was introduced to prepare a skilled workforce for various industries and sectors in Pakistan; however, the 60% level of young, unskilled, and semi-skilled labor emerging from informal and non-formal sectors is largely attributed to the failure of Technical Vocational Education and Training to supply the country with its requirements for trained manpower for the economy and China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) projects. China and Pakistan launched historic projects such as CPEC as part of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which fostered economic cooperation and development between the two countries. This article will go through the overview and the course of Technical Vocational Education and Training (TVET) in Pakistan. The major purpose of this study is to highlight that TVET in general, and CPEC in particular, are suffering from a lack of qualified personnel because of a variety of other reasons, such as outdated equipment, a lack of industry connectivity, inadequate skills, unemployment, and so on. The study is descriptive and exploratory in nature, and it employs a qualitative research method. The perspectives of the TVET challenges in Pakistan were researched using the data obtained from 500 student and staff respondents, including teachers, TVET workers, and TVET job holders. Some of the important findings include the fact that the current state of the TVET institutions is no doubt due to infrastructural issues and a lack of funding. In addition, TVET in Pakistan is marked by inadequate skills, a lack of industry connectivity, unemployment, insufficient teacher training, and a lack of female participation. In this study, recommendations were given based on the research analysis and research findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using longitudinal linked employer-employee data, the author investigates the returns to being a native speaker for immigrant men in the low-skilled labor market. She compares the two main recent immigrant groups in Portugal: Brazilians, who are Portuguese native speakers and Eastern Europeans, who are not. Findings show that both wage level and wage growth of the two groups are similar. To better understand this surprising result, the author studies two mechanisms through which language fluency may lead to higher wages: sorting across occupations and across firms. Brazilians do sort into occupations that require greater language skills; however, this does not translate into a wage premium. Considerable workplace segregation occurs in Portugal, but Brazilians are not less segregated from natives than are Eastern Europeans. Evidence in this article suggests that language skills are not a major driver of economic assimilation in the low-skilled labor market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Labor agglomeration with heterogeneous skills has different effects on urban air pollution. Based on the panel data of 263 prefecture level cities in China from 2006 to 2019, this paper constructs a Spatial Durbin Model to explore the impact of skill heterogeneous labor agglomeration and the interaction between skill heterogeneous labor agglomeration on urban air pollution. The results show that there is a positive U-shaped relationship between high-skilled labor agglomeration, low-skilled labor agglomeration, and urban air pollution. From the perspective of restraining urban air pollution, high-skilled labor agglomeration is stronger than low-skilled labor agglomeration. Under the influence of high skilled labor agglomeration, the inhibitory effect of low-skilled labor agglomeration on urban air pollution is enhanced. High-skilled labor agglomeration and low-skilled labor agglomeration reduce the degree of urban air pollution by promoting the improvement of urban innovation level. Based on this, this paper puts forward some policy suggestions, such as further promoting urban labor agglomeration, formulating reasonable urban population management policies, strengthening labor exchange and learning, and carrying out labor knowledge and skills training. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using data from the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) from 2010 to 2018 and the Peking University Digital Financial Inclusion Index from 2011 to 2018, this research explores the effect of digital financial development on residents' income and the channels of influence. The findings suggest that the growth of digital financial services has a significant and favourable influence on citizens' income. Furthermore, digital financial development benefits rural populations, low-skilled workers, and individuals working in basic industries the most. The extension of inhabitants' employment space, better access to credit, and ease of access to information online are the major ways that digital financial development influences their income. In particular, the expansion of employment space has a greater positive impact on the low-skilled labor force, rural residents, and those in primary and secondary industries, while access to information is more likely to explain the increase in income of urban residents, and credit has an advantage in promoting income growth for the low-skilled laborers and those in traditional industries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Immigration policy is often portrayed as a zero-sum trade-off between labor and capital or between high- and low-skilled labor. Many have attributed the rise of populist politicians and populist movements to immigrants and/or immigration policy. While immigration has distributional implications, we argue that something is clearly missing from the discussion: the fact that migrants are an engine of globalization, especially for countries in the Global South. Migration and migrant networks serve to expand economic markets, distribute information across national borders, and diffuse democratic norms and practices throughout the world, increasing trade and investment flows. We further argue that many commentators have got the causal relationship backward: Instead of immigration reducing support for globalization, we argue that trade, financial flows, and offshoring have reduced support for immigration among the elite and a vocal plurality of citizens in the Global North. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Spatial mismatch theory argues that geographic barriers have significant adverse effects on (un)employment, especially with respect to disadvantaged workers. Existing debates on spatial mismatch have focused on its influence on unemployment, but few studies have paid attention to the impact of spatial factors on increasingly precarious employment in today's labor market. Using data from four waves of the Hong Kong Panel Study of Social Dynamics (HKPSSD), the 2011 Population Census and the 2016 Population By-census, this study aims to investigate the effects of spatial mismatch on precarious employment in the low- and high-skilled labor markets in Hong Kong with multi-leveled modeling. The results suggest that with higher levels of spatial mismatch, workers in the low-skilled labor market are more likely to be in precarious employment. In the high-skilled labor market, sub-degree holders are also more likely to engage in precarious employment. Even worse, spatial mismatch in Hong Kong has deteriorated over time. Based on these results, we offer policy recommendations and show how the study of spatial mismatch can inform policymaking. Overall, we contribute to the literature by demonstrating that spatial mismatch can lead to precarious employment among employed workers and has differentiated effects on low- and high-skilled labor markets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses the long‐term development of social class differences in infant and child mortality in an area of southern Sweden, spanning from the early stages of the mortality transition at the beginning of the nineteenth century, to the late 1960s when both infant and child mortality had reached very low levels. Our findings show that infant and child mortality was fairly equal at the beginning of the study period. We find no clear pattern of class differentials in childhood mortality in the first half of the nineteenth century when both infant and child mortality declined. Later in the nineteenth century, class differences started to emerge. This is clear for both post‐neonatal mortality and child mortality, while we do not find any class differences in neonatal mortality. Over time, a more or less full gradient emerged for post‐neonatal mortality, and a weak gradient also emerged for child mortality. Strikingly, the disadvantaged position for unskilled and lower‐skilled workers remained throughout the 1960s, also at a time when mortality levels were very low, and living standards had increased dramatically for all classes in the population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Kashipur block in Rayagada district of Odisha has witnessed displacement of tribal and Dalit people because of the establishment of Utkal Alumina International Limited (UAIL). During the process of establishing UAIL, the local communities were promised adequate compensation and a fair resettlement and rehabilitation policy by the state government as well as the company. However, there has been a lack of equitable distribution of resettlement and rehabilitation facilities, widespread gender bias and caste-based discrimination against Dalits and tribals while the company offered semi-skilled jobs. Moreover, the Dalit and tribal women have been subjected to gender-based discrimination on top of the castebased discrimination faced generally by these communities. The present study is an attempt to examine such discriminations and the effect that this has had on the traditional livelihood practices of Dalit and tribal women. The study also explores how upper-caste people are controlling the legal and informal power in the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hoffman’s (2015) replication of Sabia, Burkhauser, and Hansen (SBH 2012) suggests that “unlucky” measurement error in low-skilled employment in the Current Population Survey Outgoing Rotation Groups (CPS-ORG) led SBH to produce upwardly biased estimates of the labor demand effects of the 2005 to 2006 New York State minimum wage increase. This study replicates Hoffman’s preferred policy estimates from the full CPS and finds evidence that the parallel trends assumption underlying his difference-in-difference approach is violated. When a synthetic control state with pretreatment employment trends similar to those in New York is constructed, this study estimates a relatively large negative employment elasticity with respect to the minimum wage for low-skilled individuals (–0.5), similar to the estimate SBH obtained using the CPS-ORG (–0.6). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Low-skilled migrants in wealthy receiving states are routinely subordinated across a range of social contexts. There is a rich philosophical literature on the inferiorizing effects of "crimmigration"—that is, the growing criminalization of unauthorized migrants and the state's use of uniquely harsh law enforcement methods against them. Yet there is less interest in the existing racialized division of migrant labor. Low-skilled Latino/a/x migrants disproportionately perform "dirty" and "difficult" work that citizens do not wish to perform. Theoretically, this division of labor is compatible with a more permissive immigration system that legally admitted far larger numbers of low-skilled migrants to continue "doing the dirty work." Indeed, many have assumed the desirability of such a system. Against this, I argue that "crimmigration" and the racialized division of migrant labor cannot be conceptually disentangled. Rather, they are mutually constitutive in reproducing background conditions that constrain the social equality of low-skilled migrants, as well as others perceived to be such. "Crimmigration" has not only excluded migrants, but enabled states to include them on socially unequal terms: as an instrumental and fungible source of cheap labor. Drawing on Alasia Nuti's (2019) valuable observation that "banal" historical mechanisms like stereotypes and social scripts can play a crucial role in maintaining present-day injustice, I show that stereotypes of migrants as workers in low-skilled occupations, as well as the expectation that they continue to take on those jobs, also profoundly undermine immigration justice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted China's labor market, leading to a decline in employment standards and placing many migrant workers in a precarious working condition. This situation has rekindled public awareness of the "returning-home tide". However, the motivations behind migrant workers returning home during the post-pandemic phase remain unclear. Drawing on the extended Theory of Planned Behavior, this study based on surveys of 349 migrant workers in Sichuan and Chongqing, aims to elucidate the key influencing factors and mechanisms driving migrant workers' motivation to return to their hometowns. Our results show that Behavioral attitude (BA), Subjective norms (SN), Perceived behavioral control (PBC), and Perceived support (PS) significantly and positively impact migrant workers' behavioral intention (BI) to return to their hometowns. Two prominent pathways, namely 'COVID-19→BA→BI' and 'COVID-19→SN→BI', emerge as crucial in determining the return migration intention of migrant workers. Additionally, Commercial Housing (CH) plays a significant and negative moderating role in the relationship between COVID-19 and Actual behaviour (AB). These results contribute to an improved understanding of the behavioral intentions of migrant workers to return home, offering important implications for enhancing the well-being of low-skilled labor in developing countries. • Influences on the return home of migrant workers: economic, policy, and the special events. • Perceived support has significant mediating effects. • Commercial housing has significant moderating effects. • Expanding the connotation and extension of planned behavior theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines narratives of learning and occupational advancement amongst migrants employed in 'low-skilled' jobs, based on in-depth interviews with secondary-educated East and South Europeans living in the London region. Our findings indicate that many achieved varying degrees of professional gratification, progress, and skills development within occupational sectors typically associated with unattractive conditions, limited benefits or opportunities to get ahead. Participants' narratives of achievement expand the relatively limited literature that challenges common perceptions of occupational mobility and professional development as the terrain of the 'highly skilled'. Furthermore, we examine how migrants made sense of their career opportunities and success. We discuss two discourses, centred on 'hard work' and 'creativity' respectively, through which participants challenged and reconfigured traditional 'high'-'low-skilled' divides. Our findings contribute to critiques of traditional understandings of migrant human capital and simplistic 'high'-'low-skilled' distinctions in two ways: by documenting the less visible experiences of learning and career progress amongst secondary-educated European youth who enter 'low-skilled' employment abroad, and by calling attention to subjective understandings of occupational mobility and the new 'symbolic boundaries' around skills, broadly construed, that migrants redrew in their reflections on career progress. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic has heightened the visibility of "low skilled" migrant workers in the agricultural and care work sectors, who have been rebranded as "essential" by receiving states in the Global North. Many such workers are from the Global South and experience marginalization due to their overlapping social positions: race, gender, ascribed skill level, and legal status. We assess how COVID-19 can prompt a revaluation of the legal statuses of "essential" migrant workers in countries of the Global North and thereby alleviate their marginalization to a small extent. We present two frames of deservingness – based on work and based on sacrifice – as having the potential to facilitate claims for improved legal status. We argue that deservingness claims stemming from migrants' willingness to sacrifice their health and lives have the greatest potential for success. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the diverse trajectories of downward professional mobility as experienced by skilled Polish migrants living in Norway. On the basis of 30 in-depth qualitative interviews with Poles who have worked below their level of competence after migrating to Norway, I outline (1) how they tend to channel themselves into low-skilled employment at the initial stages of migration as they commonly assume it is inevitable when migrating, and (2) how they interpret and respond to remaining in low-skilled jobs after settling in Norway, often explaining it as a result of racialising and discriminatory practices against them. By bridging concepts of habitus and field with hierarchies of desirability of national migrant groups, I propose a notion of a ‘transnational field of national hierarchies’. I argue that the downward professional mobility is both an individual and collective social practice guided by what I call ‘the national component of the habitus’ and embedded in the transnational field, where different national identities are hierarchically positioned. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions data for the year 2009, the authors evaluate how vertical and horizontal job segregation explains the differential between full-time and part-time pay for prime-age women in four European countries: Austria, Italy, Poland, and the United Kingdom. The selected countries are representative of different welfare state regimes, labor market regulations, and extents and forms of part-time employment. Full-time hourly wages exceed part-time hourly wages, especially in market-oriented economies, such as Poland and the United Kingdom. Results using the Neuman-Oaxaca decomposition methods show that most of the full-time—part-time wage gap is driven by job segregation, especially its vertical dimension. Vertical segregation explains an especially large part of the pay gap in Poland and the United Kingdom, where, more than elsewhere, part-timers are concentrated in low-skilled occupations and the wage disparities across occupations are quite large. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Active labour market policies (ALMPs) are widely diffused measures aiming to re-integrate jobseekers into the labour market. Despite their crucial role in acting as gatekeepers to employment, the literature scarcely considers the employer's perspective of these measures. We analysed whether and how employers consider ALMP participation in the hiring process as a signal that helps explain the labour market outcomes of jobseekers. We developed a theoretical argument regarding how employers interpret ALMP participation and identify assumed agency, that is, whether employers believe that the agency for initiating ALMP participation lies with the jobseeker (voluntary participation) or the job centre (mandatory participation), as a crucial factor determining whether their evaluation of ALMPs is positive or negative. To examine our expectations, we conducted qualitative interviews with employers hiring for low-skilled occupations in Switzerland and Sweden, representing two countries with comprehensive ALMP systems. As expected, the interpretation of ALMP programmes differs depending on the assumed agency. Employers who believe that participation is voluntary interpret participation as a signal of motivation; however, employers who believe that participation is mandatory interpret participation as a signal of lower productivity, which reduces the chances of a successful labour market access. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The response of human capital accumulation to changes in the anticipated returns to schooling determines the type of skills supplied to the labor market, the productivity of future cohorts, and the evolution of inequality. Unlike the USA, the UK or Germany, Spain has experienced between 1995 and 2008 a drop in the returns to medium and tertiary education and, with a lag, a drop in schooling attainment of recent cohorts, providing the setup to estimate the response of different forms of human capital acquisition to relative increases in low-skill wages. We measure the expected returns to schooling using skill-specific wages bargained in collective agreements at the province–industry level. We argue that those wages are easily observable by youths and relatively insensitive to shifts in the supply of workers. Our preferred estimates suggest that a 10% increase in the ratio of wages of unskilled workers to the wages of mid-skill workers increases the fraction of males completing at most compulsory schooling by between 2 and 6.5 percentage points. The response is driven by males from less educated parents and comes at the expense of students from the academic high school track—rather than the vocational training track. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses the Spanish migration to France that emerged following the 2008 crisis from the perspective of crossed mobilities [Oso, L., A. Sáiz López, and A. Cortés. 2017. ""Movilidades Cruzadas" en un Contexto de Crisis: Una Propuesta Teórica Para el Estudio de la Movilidad Geográfica y Social, con un Enfoque de Género, Transnacional e Intergeneracional." Revista Española de Sociología 26 (3): 293–306. doi:], focusing on the cross between social class, gender and generation. It considers the connection between this recent "migration wave" and Spanish low-skilled labour migration in the 1960s and 1970s (domestic service, caretaking, cleaning, the building sector). It also analyses high-skilled migration, which stands apart from traditional emigration, revealing the key role social origins play in labour market insertion. Finally, the article considers the crossed mobility between exiled Republicans and the Marea Granate or "Maroon Wave", who refer to themselves as "economic exiles". The analysis is based on qualitative fieldwork conducted in Paris with migrants that arrived in the wake of the 2008 crisis and virtual ethnography (Spanish emigration's principal websites and Facebook portals). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This article provides new evidence on salaries and living standards of low‐skilled workers in Lima in 1825–73. During this period, low‐skilled workers in Lima could cover their basic needs. Real salaries increased in the early‐1830s, but declined in the following decades. Real salaries declined during the Guano Era in spite of the commercial bonanza. An international comparison shows that Lima had lower living standards than Northern Europe and Australia, but higher than Asia. In most of the nineteenth century, Peru and other Latin American economies had higher welfare ratios than China, India, and Japan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examined the impact of a German workfare programme for hard‐to‐place welfare recipients, the so‐called '€1‐jobs', on staff in public and non‐profit establishments. We applied static and dynamic panel models using IAB Establishment Panel data from 2005 to 2013. To account for regional influences, we linked the establishment data to indicators at the district level. We identified a positive complementary effect on high‐skilled workers and a negative substitution effect on low‐skilled workers. We interpreted these findings as follows: In that €1‐jobs require highly skilled staff for management, instruction, qualification and support, this indicates that the programme generates jobs for skilled workers within the welfare‐to‐work industry. The negative effect that we found for low‐skilled workers suggests substitution effects between the programme participants and regular low‐skilled workers; although in this study, both effects were relatively small. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research has focused on the happiness of immigrants, but the workplace satisfaction of temporary low‐skilled migrant workers has rarely been explored. By utilizing survey data for two years, 2010 and 2013, along with interviews with migrant workers, we explored how economic or social factors could trigger diverse impacts on the satisfaction of temporary low‐skilled migrant workers in different work environments. Results showed that economic factors triggered more notable impacts in 2010, while the importance of social factors increased with improvements in work environments in 2013. The results indicated that moving motive premises and social exchange theory effectively explain attitudes of temporary low‐skilled migrant workers. Theoretical and practical contributions and suggestions of the results are also included. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors examine the impact of globalization on the domestic labor market for low-skilled workers. Whereas existing research typically focuses on the effects on labor market outcomes such as wages and employment, the authors of this paper examine whether American workers respond to globalization by increasing their investment in human capital. Using both Census data and the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) for the period 2000-2007, they measure the extent to which offshoring and immigration affect enrollment at institutions of higher education. Results indicate that both offshoring and immigration increase enrollment at community colleges but not other types of institutions, particularly among older, non-traditional age students. The authors conclude that U.S. workers are indeed responding to globalization by acquiring the skills necessary to compete in a global economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The electricity sector is a fundamental component of the transition to a post‑carbon economy. Restructuring away from fossil fuels will bring about job losses, along with job gains related to renewable energy deployment. Understanding the net changes in employment requirements and labor intensity will help to inform about potential bottlenecks. We apply a multiregional input-output model to quantify the employment requirements of the transition of the electricity sector in the European Union. We compare the effects of a 100% renewable energy scenario with a reference scenario (representing country-level energy and climate commitments in force in 2015), modeled at five-year intervals from 2015 till 2050. We show the direct and indirect employment requirements by region, sector, skill level, and gender associated with capital investments, operation and maintenance. A transition to 100% renewables would significantly increase labor demand within the European Union in particular. The employment requirements in the construction and manufacturing sectors would be significant, but only temporary. The transition would increase demand especially for medium- and high-skilled labor. However, comparison with labor force availability projections shows the largest gap in low-skilled labor. The higher labor intensity of 100% renewable electricity generation can also affect labor productivity and economic growth. • We track global employment requirements of the EU's transition to 100% renewable electricity. • We utilize a multiregional input-output model with separate capital investments. • The transition increases domestic labor demand and labor intensity, both short- and long-term. • This may be at odds with labor force availability and lead to labor shortages. • High-skilled labor sees the largest increase, but low-skilled represents the biggest bottleneck. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]