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This paper explores the role of accounting and accountability techniques in contributing to Australia’s border industrial complex.

We use the political thought of Behrouz Boochani to explore the role that accounting techniques play at the micro and macro level of his dialectic of alienation and freedom. Firstly, we explore the accounting and accountability techniques detailed in Boochani’s No Friend but the Mountain, which gives an account of his life in Manus Prison, and the accounting techniques he experienced. Secondly, we explore the discourse of alienation created within the annual reporting of the Australian Federal Government regarding the border industrial complex.

We argue that the border industrial complex requires the alienation of asylum seekers from their own humanity for capital accumulation, and that accounting and accountability techniques facilitate this form of alienation. These techniques include inventorying, logging and queuing at the micro level within Manus Prison. This alienates those trapped in the system from one another and themselves. Techniques also include annual reporting at a macro level which alienates those trapped in the system from the (White) “Australian Community”. However, these techniques are resisted at every point by assertions of freedom.

We illustrate the role of accounting in accumulation by alienation, where the unfreedom of incarcerated asylum seekers is a site of profit for vested interests. But also that this alienation is resisted at every point by refusals of alienation as assertions of freedom. Thus, this study contributes to the accounting literature by drawing from theories of alienation, and putting forward the dialectic of alienation and freedom articulated by Boochani and collaborators.

The purpose of this study was to explore how the migration experiences of international accounting professionals were shaped by colonial structures and how, through their interactions with other professionals, migrants hybridize their professional identities and the profession in Canada.

A post-colonial analysis of the career narratives of international accounting professionals who migrated to Canada.

This paper illustrates how explicit and formal requirements for transformation, as well as the more subtle informal demands of employers and clients, require non-Western professionals to transform personal characteristics in ways that make them more “Canadian” or “professional”. Findings show that mimicry takes many forms, with some professionals becoming “consummate mimics”, while others discuss their transition in ways that highlight resistance (“reluctant mimics”) and the demands that systematically frustrate and exclude many non-Western professionals from full participation in the “global” profession in Canada (“frustrated mimics”).

This paper contributes to the existing scholarly literature on the persistence of colonial structures in shaping the experiences of colonized people even as they migrate in search of better opportunities decades after the colonial structures have been formally dismantled. It builds on Bhabha’s (1994) work illustrating that colonial structures are susceptible to change through action and interaction. We hope this study contributes to social change by providing some insights into how mimicry, resistance and hybridization may disrupt the unreflexive enactment of colonial structures that sustain inequality.

This study extends the literature on professional migration using a postcolonial perspective to empirically examine the lived experience of the colonial encounter and professionals transition their professional identities across borders.

The present work aimed to enhance the understanding of professional turnover intentions of accounting professionals by exploring their attitudes towards this phenomenon in an emerging economy (Tunisia).

An exploratory research was conducted using a narrative approach (episodic interviewing) after having interviewed accounting professionals. Data were analysed with the thematic coding method using NVivo software based on the push-pull-mooring (PPM) framework. Based on this analysis, four types of professionals were identified.

The interconnections among PPM factors, which are different from one type of professionals to another, play a vital role in whether a professional intends to leave the accounting profession or not. All four types of professionals perceived unpleasant facets of the public practice environment (push factors) and manifested a tendency to switch to available job opportunities (pull factors). Nevertheless, the latitude for profession change, for the third and the fourth types who perceived the professional experience differently, is restricted by mooring factors. That is not the case for the first type of professionals who have already left public accounting and the second type who intend to quit the profession, as we did not find any mooring factors.

This study explored the attitudes of accounting professionals towards professional turnover intention. A deeper insight into the views of the academics and the Ordre des Experts Comptables de Tunisie (OECT) might help understand this phenomenon.

Understanding the relative impact of push, pull and mooring allows the accounting professionals to determine their attitudes towards the intention to leave the profession. This enables firms to develop more effective programmes to retain valued accounting human resources. The findings highlight that the professional associations should promote the values the profession brings to the community through nationwide public awareness campaigns and enhance career opportunities by providing more branches of activity within the profession.

The paper responds to calls for further examination of factors behind professional turnover intention at a time when high rates of turnover were observed among accounting professionals. Also, the cultural context of Tunisia helps explain our findings.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of temporary migration on the upward occupational mobility by using a novel database from Estonia.

The authors use a unique data set of the online job search portal of Estonia that includes thousands of employees with foreign work experience. The authors study whether the presence of temporary migration in ones working career is associated with upward movement in the occupational ladder, defined either in terms of wages or required human capital.

The authors did not find any positive effect of temporary migration on upward occupational mobility and in case of females the effect was negative. The results could be related to the short-term nature of migration and the occupational downshifting abroad as well as the functioning of home country labour market.

While the uniqueness of the data set is of value, one needs to acknowledge its weaknesses: the job-seekers work histories are self-reported and the authors do not know what information was left out as undesired by applicant.

The findings imply that the benefits of temporary migration from Eastern to Western Europe on the sending country via the returnees’ labour market performance might be limited, yet it does not exclude the benefits of return migration through other mechanism.

The literature on return migration is not big and there are only a few papers dealing with occupational change or mobility of the return migrants. Compared to earlier studies we have looked at wider set of occupations ranked by different ladders. Using the unique data set the authors have included in the study ca 7,500 return migrants while earlier studies have been based on rather small samples.

This paper aims to examine undergraduate students' attitudes towards the accounting profession, including accounting as a career, as a discipline, as a profession and perceptions of the work activities of accountants.

The data set used in this paper was collected via questionnaires. The present study compares several aspects of a prior study of Marriott and Marriott using the Accounting Attitude Scale developed by Nelson.

Overall, the paper supports the view that exposure to accounting at university does not enhance positive attitudes about accounting as a discipline, but reinforces rule‐memorisation, and lack of involvement with conceptual skills or judgement.

The paper only examines students' attitudes at one point in time and does not attempt to identify whether students' attitudes change over the period of their study. The paper can only speculate as to why there is a difference between local and international students' attitude towards the accounting profession. Third, the questionnaire is only administered at one institution. There is a scope to extend this study across institutions as well as conduct a longitudinal study. In order to validate the findings, further research via in‐depth interviews with students may help determine the factors that influence students' attitudes.

The results from this paper are expected to contribute to the body of research by providing accounting educators with insights into how the curriculum may influence students' attitudes towards the profession, together with implications as to how the profession should be promoted to undergraduate students.

The purpose of this paper is to identify and map the shifting relationship between the settlement process and the information practices of newcomers from the Philippines as they migrate and settle in Canada.

This research employs two semi-structured in-depth interviews, each with 14 newcomers from the Philippines to Canada. Participants were selected because they had migrated to Winnipeg through the Manitoba Provincial Nominee Program within 1–4 years of the date of interview.

Eight settlement information tables are identified that demonstrate participants' migration experiences, including participants' thoughts and feelings related to migration and settlement, their information questions and needs, the information resources they consult and the activities in which they engage.

This paper argues that this phased model approach documents the shifting relationship between settlement processes and migrants' information needs, activities, resources and practices. Articulating study findings using this phased model approach can support information institutions, such as the settlement sector and libraries, to provide support to newcomer groups in a timely and targeted manner.

Since Poland's accession to the European Union in 2004, migration from Poland to the UK has increased substantially. These migrants are generally young and highly educated, and are migrating for reasons of economic improvement and self-fulfilment. Many are women migrating independently, an emerging trend in migration in general. Information behaviour research around migration has tended to focus on populations such as refugees; less research has been done on the information behaviour of economic migrants. This paper, therefore, investigates the role of information in the migration experience of young Polish women in the UK.

This study takes an interpretivist, constructionist perspective. An exploratory study was conducted, involving expert and pilot interviews and analysis of secondary data. In the main study, 21 participants were interviewed using a semi-structured technique. Data were analysed thematically.

The paper provides insights into the information behaviour and experience of this migrant group. They were found to be confident and successful information users, partly because their migration was planned, their language skills were high and cultural differences from their host country were not substantial. Weak ties were an important source of information. The paper contextualises these findings against previous research on migration in information science, and presents a model of the underlying factors shaping the relationship between migration and information behaviour.

The paper examines the migration experience of a relatively understudied group, drawing attention to a broader range of experience and demonstrating that a wider conceptualisation of migration is required in information behaviour. It presents a model of key factors shaping information behaviour around migration, which is relevant not only to the information field, but also to a wider range of areas. It also delivers practical recommendations for migrants and those working with them.

An ideal victim is someone who is both weak and strong enough (Christie, 1986). To be seen as an ideal victim one should be vulnerable, weak and not to blame for the crime one has been subjected to. But, in order to be seen, heard and believed one must also be strong, resourceful and confident. This chapter discusses the conflicting perceptions between the weak and the strong victim in light of one particular group of victims, Nigerian women subjected to trafficking for prostitution. What types of expectations do these women meet when identified as victims of trafficking in Norway? Do the Nigerian women live up to the image of the ideal victim? Or do they have to adjust their behaviour in order to enter this role and be entitled to help and assistance? The answers to these questions tell us whether existing trafficking measures are based on the real needs of victims of trafficking, or an idealised image of their problems and needs.

The purpose of this paper is to examine and reflect on current assessment practice in a large undergraduate accounting programme delivered both in Australia and offshore, from the perspective of academics in their first semester at a “new‐to‐them” university.

The changing higher education environment and the reality of assessment in the current context are considered, as they raise a number of important issues around assessment practice. Some of the often cited literature linking teaching, learning and assessment, including student‐centred learning and Confucian heritage culture, is also discussed. A reflective approach is used where Säljö's five categories of student learning are used as the basis for informed reflection of the assessment used in the “new” academics' first semester at the university. The use of empirical evidence to test these reflections would be the next step in this scholarly approach to teaching and learning.

The reflections reveal a disparity between reality and the ideal in relation to assessment practice. Issues regarding timely feedback to students and timing of assessments can result in summative assessment when it has the potential to be formative. This paper has provided an opportunity for “new” academics to engage with the higher education literature early in their careers.

This paper is a resource for academics beginning to engage with the higher education literature around assessment, teaching and learning and can also be used to inform and improve the teaching and learning practices of many academics in higher education.