This article explores the efficacy and cost effectiveness of New Labour's skills-based policies to help low paid workers adjust to the pressures generated by globalisation, of which the leading example was Train to Gain (T2G). It also analyses the more general issue of how, why and under what circumstances education, training and skills can help…

This paper presents the way in which the subject of the under aged migrants in Mexico has been made part of the public agenda. This can be noted in three broad types of actions undertaken by the Mexican government since the 80s decade in the past century. In the first place, the legislative actions that were undertaken for this migrant population.…

Purpose: Whilst children working in agriculture and domestic work is an inherent part of growing up and essential for survival, if boys and girls lose out on education they are less equipped to respond to inevitable environmental shocks and to negotiate agri-food value chains. This article investigates views of extension agents on children…

This article focuses on the reforms in the field of vocational education, as well as on representations related to work, in Argentina during Peron's political leadership. In the framework of far-reaching economic reforms and social transformations, while in the position of secretary of labour (1943-1945) Peron started a vocational education…

While nearly 85 percent of the U.S. population is currently made up of immigrants and their descendants, some groups were specifically targeted for exclusion and deliberately expelled. The Chinese were the first to experience this. In the 1850s, many Chinese who came to this land to search for gold or to help build the transcontinental railroad,…

Since the 2004 EU enlargement established one European common labour market, a large number of Eastern Europeans have taken up seasonal employment as hired farm workers in Norwegian agriculture. Much attention in the public has been given to the potential for "social dumping" of these migrating workers, as they are considered prone to…

Temporary visa workers are increasingly taking on a heightened profile in Canada, entering the workforce each year in greater numbers than immigrant workers with labor mobility rights (Sharma 2006). This paper examines the incorporation of foreign workers in Canadian horticulture under the Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program (SAWP). I argue that…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to contextualise historically transnational labour experiences within guest worker programs in Canada and to provide a conceptual foundation for analysing work, learning and living relations with special attention to agricultural workers. Design/methodology/approach: The research is based on a critical review…

Poverty is one of the major threats to the realization of children's rights worldwide and in South Africa. Currently, 66% of South African children live in severe poverty. This places all other rights at risk; the rights guaranteed by the South African Constitution and by the UN Convention. Poverty and inequality in South Africa continue to…

Migration histories from residents of a rural Michoacan town were used to construct successive migrant cohorts for the period 1940-1978. Analysis indicates that prior to 1965, migration was limited primarily to male agricultural workers. Since 1965, increased numbers of women, children, and legal U.S. residents have made up the migrant population.…

One of the major challenges that Canadian government officials felt they faced at the end of the nineteenth century was the development of the prairie West. By this time there were large urban centers in eastern Canada, but many Canadians worried that they had not truly ensured the future existence of their country. To do this the government…

Immigration and domestic industrial policies have been powerful instruments in the creation of immigrant "niches" in labor markets. While Indians have clustered in the information technology industry, Mexicans have formed niches in low-skilled industries such as agriculture. A review of the relationship between immigration policy and the…

The Great Leap Forward disaster, characterized by a collapse in grain production and a widespread famine in China between 1959 and 1961, is found attributable to a systemic failure in central planning. Wishfully expecting a great leap in agricultural productivity from collectivization, the Chinese government accelerated its aggressive…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to describe how, from 2004-2006, a New Zealand research team experimented with the "change laboratory" learning process to create a new method of government policy development and implementation, referred to as "practice-making". The apple industry in Hawke's Bay was chosen because of the…