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The purpose of this study is to examine relevant demographic and socio-economic factors as they relate to progress towards intercultural communicative competence (ICC) and intercultural sensitivity for ethnic-minority Latinx middle school English learners (ELs) using a mobile-assisted funds-of-knowledge-featured writing practice.

Through the theoretical lens of funds of knowledge, this three-year study implemented a survey-based quasi-experimental design centered on the Latinx ELs’ ICC development with the implementation of an intercultural sensitivity questionnaire (Chen and Starosta, 2000). The authors first investigated the relationship between ELs’ intercultural sensitivity and associated demographic and socio-economic factors. The authors then examined the changes of ELs’ intercultural sensitivity. Over ten weeks, the intervention group completed five funds-of-knowledge-featured narrative essays using pen and paper and mobile-based writing tools alternatively.

Findings indicated that ELs’ intercultural sensitivity increased as they advanced to a higher-level grade from sixth to eighth. The embedded mobile-assisted funds-of-knowledge writing practice as intervention promoted ELs’ intercultural sensitivity in interaction engagement, respect of cultural differences, interaction enjoyment and interaction attentiveness. Among the variables, interaction enjoyment was portrayed the most. ELs who reported not speaking English at home were statistically significant in this experiment.

This study acknowledges the robust and variance of funds of knowledge as a niche to address the interculturality and hybridity of ELs’ cultural practices accumulated through Latinx ELs’ family socialization and social development using mobile-assisted writing practice. This study could provide implications for optimizing inclusive experience to promote computer-assisted language learning in a contemporary, postcolonial global world.

This paper aims to investigate how and when visual referents in brand visual aesthetics (i.e. colours, shapes, patterns and materials) serve as design applications that enable consumer diasporic identity.

This paper uses an innovative methodology that triangulates 58 in-depth interviews with diasporic consumers, 9 interviews with brand managers and designers and a visual analysis of brands (food retailer, spices and nuts, skincare, hair and cosmetics, ice cream and wine) to provide a view of the phenomenon from multiple perspectives.

This study illustrates how and when particular applications and compositions of product and design referents support diasporic identity for Middle Eastern consumers living outside the Middle East. Specifically, it illustrates how the design applications of harmonising (applying separate ancestral homeland and culture of living product and design referents simultaneously), homaging (departing from the culture of living product and design referents with a subtle tribute to ancestral homeland culture) and heritaging (departing from the ancestral homeland culture product and design referents with slight updates to a culture of living style) can enable diasporic identity in particular social situations.

Although applied to the Middle Eastern diaspora, this research opens up interesting avenues for future research that assesses diasporic consumers’ responses to brands seeking to use visual design to engage with this market. Moreover, future research should explore these design applications in relation to issues of cultural appreciation and appropriation.

The hybrid design compositions identified in this study can provide brand managers with practical tools for navigating the design process when targeting a diasporic segment. The design applications and their consequences are discussed while visually demonstrating how they can be crafted.

While previous research mainly focused on how consumption from the ancestral homeland occurred, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to examine how hybrid design compositions that combine a diaspora’s ancestral homeland culture and their culture of living simultaneously and to varying degrees resonate with diasporic consumers.

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused severe challenges to ethnic minorities in the UK. While the experiences of migrants are both complex and varied depending on individuals' social class, race, cultural proximity to the host country and acculturation levels, more in-depth studies are necessary to fully understand how COVID-19 affects specific migrant groups and their health. Taiwanese migrants were selected because they are an understudied group. Also, there were widespread differences in pandemic management between the UK and Taiwan, making this group an ideal case for understanding how their acculturation journey can be disrupted by a crisis.

Qualitative data were collected at two different time points, at the start of the UK pandemic (March/April 2020) and six months on (October/November 2020), to explore migrant coping experiences over time. Theoretically, the authors apply acculturation theory through the lens of coping, while discussing health-consumption practices, as empirical evidence.

Before the outbreak of the pandemic, participants worked hard to achieve high levels of integration in the UK. The pandemic changed this; participants faced unexpected changes in the UK’s sociocultural structures. They were forced to exercise the layered and complex “coping with coping” in a hostile host environment that signalled their new marginalised status. They faced impossible choices, from catching a life-threatening disease to being seen as overly cautious. Such experience, over time, challenged their integration to the host country, resulting in a loss of faith in the UK’s health system, consequently increasing separation from the host culture and society.

It is important to note that the Taiwanese sample recruited through Facebook community groups is biased and has a high level of homogeneity. These participants were well-integrated, middle-class migrants who were highly educated, relatively resourceful and active on social media. More studies are needed to fully understand the impact on well-being and acculturation of migrants from different cultural, contextual and social backgrounds. This being the case, the authors can speculate that migrants with less resource are likely to have found the pandemic experience even more challenging. More studies are needed to fully understand migrant experience from different backgrounds.

Public health policymakers are advised to dedicate more resources to understand migrants' experiences in the host country. In particular, this paper has shown how separation, especially if embraced temporarily, is not necessarily a negative outcome to be corrected with specific policies. It can be strategically adopted by migrants as a way of defending their health and well-being from an increasingly hostile environment. Migrants' home country experience provides vicarious learning opportunities to acquire good practices. Their voices should be encouraged rather than in favour of a surprising orthodox and rather singular approach in the discussion of public health management.

The paper has clear public health policy implications. Firstly, public health policymakers are advised to dedicate more resources to understand migrants' experiences in the host country. Acknowledging migrants' voice is a critical first step to contribute to the development of a fair and inclusive society. Secondly, to retain skilful migrants and avoid a future brain-drain, policymakers are advised to advance existing infrastructure to provide more incentives to support and retain migrant talents in the post-pandemic recovery phase.

This paper reveals how a group of previously well-integrated migrants had to exercise “coping with coping” during the COVID crisis. This experience, over time, challenged their integration to the host country, resulting in a loss of faith in the UK’s health system, consequently increasing separation from the host culture and society. It contributes to the understanding of acculturation by showing how a such crisis can significantly disrupt migrants' acculturation journey, challenging them to re-acculturate and reconsider their identity stance. It shows how separation was indeed a good option for migrants for protecting their well-being from a newly hostile host environment.

Scholarship on America’s K-12 economics curriculum reveals an inattention to many harmful economic realities, specifically wealth inequality. Critics of the present curriculum posit that its emphasis on out-dated concepts and models ignores crucial elements of reality that impact economic interaction and identities. In response to the dominant economic paradigm and methods, this practitioner-focused paper discusses an economically pluralist, pedagogically critical approach to interrogating destructive economic realities. It details how three social studies classroom simulations based on the board game Monopoly may be integrated with certain informational texts to explore economic factors that contribute to America’s unique form of wealth inequality.

This paper describes wealth inequality in America and rationalizes the need to make this social problem a focus of study in the secondary social studies classroom. First, I survey the present curricular apparatus of K-12 economics education and then argue for a pluralist approach that expands the curriculum’s dominant neoclassical paradigm. Connecting economic pluralism to critical citizen education, I draw upon emerging critical economic citizen education scholarship to explain attendant pedagogical and instructional approaches. The described lesson builds upon a tradition of Monopoly simulations, is rooted in critical citizen education pedagogy and aligns with Soroko’s (2023) critical economic literacy framework.

This paper progresses the curricular movement of economic pluralism through its critique of America’s current K-12 economics curriculum that does not focus on immediate, lived social problems. It further defines critical economics, citizenship and pedagogy, then details an instructional practice that employs critical disciplinary tools to investigate contributing factors of American wealth inequality.

This paper contributes to the growing field of pluralist economic perspectives and pedagogies. Specifically, it enriches understanding of critical economics citizenship education by further defining attendant pedagogy and explaining Monopoly as an instructional tool for critical economics citizen education. Previous works have discussed Monopoly’s utility for teaching various concepts within the social studies disciplines. This simulation lesson is unique in its instructional approach that merges simulation experiences with certain informational texts to cultivate critical economic knowledge of American wealth inequality and critical economic skills for critiquing and transforming oppressive economic realities.

Employees facing challenges in their careers – i.e. female, migrant, elderly and lower-educated employees – might expect job searches to have a low likelihood of success and might therefore more often stay in unsatisfactory positions. The goal of this study is to discover inequalities in job mobility for these employees.

We rely on a large sample of Dutch public sector employees (N = 30,709) and study whether employees with challenges in their careers are hampered in translating job dissatisfaction into job searches. Additionally, we assess whether this is due to their perceptions of labor market alternatives.

Findings show that non-Western migrant, elderly and lower-educated employees are less likely to act on job dissatisfaction than their advantaged counterparts, whereas women are more likely than men to do so. Additionally, we find that although they perceive labor market opportunities as limited, this does not affect their propensity to search for different jobs.

This paper is novel in discovering inequalities in job mobility by analyzing whether employees facing challenges in their careers are less likely to act on job dissatisfaction and therefore more likely to remain in unsatisfactory positions.

Aging is a complex and multifactorial process. This study aims to is focus on mattering in older people. Mattering is the feeling of being important to others in ways that give individuals the sense that they are valued and other people care about them. However, for many, aging brings about the loss of self-esteem, and they feel useless, deprived and unwanted. The authors have adopted the partial least square structural equation modeling technique and Self-Esteem Scale of Rosenberg for evaluating the level of self-esteem in senior citizens of Pakistan. The results reveal a strong association between the predictor and the criterion variables, supporting the view that the communal integration construct is the strongest determinant in old age. Based on the results, the authors can argue that socioeconomic status, social relationships and daily activities and have a direct association with the elderly people’s self-esteem.

The Self-Esteem Questionnaire by Rosenberg (Rosenberg, 1965) and the Quality of Life Questionnaire by Bowling (Bowling, Banister, Sutton Evans and Windsor (2002) are two tested tools that were used to collect the sample data from various neighborhoods of Peshawar. The sample consisted of respondents who were 60 years of age or older. The current study only included men who were 60 years of age or older because men make up a higher number of retirees in the district (84%) than do women. A total of 312 male volunteers, representing a various cadre of job, were recruited at random. The research population’s data were gathered through convenience sampling. Only volunteers who appeared to be healthy in both body and mind were chosen as participants. When older people were unable to complete questionnaires, researchers helped them read the questions and then helped them write down their answers. Out of the 500 survey forms that were sent, 312 were properly completed and used for the analysis.

The results of this study suggest that the happiness and well-being of retired seniors are not only influenced by their general activities, health and socioeconomic status but also more strongly by their psycho-social integration, such as their close and intimate relationships with friends, family and relatives. The findings, therefore, urge the incorporation of social integration aspects in mental health treatment programs and public health policies to support the psycho-social well-being of the elderly. Social relationship variables might become a common aspect of practice through medical, psychiatric and psychological screening and examination.

Due to the fact that research participants were selected from just one city – Peshawar – the results cannot be generalized. As a result, findings are less likely to apply to older persons who reside in other provinces due to sample selection. Future research will be conducted all around the nation, though, and it could produce more precise and broadly applicable findings. Only male respondents applied to the second limitation. Only male participants were sought due to socioeconomic differences, social and cultural obstacles and the small number of female retirees. Therefore, it limits the spectrum of the study.

An individual’s self-esteem is made up of intrapersonal and interpersonal elements. Regarding policy intervention, the present effort will be a crucial step in helping the elderly understand the value of maintaining social networks and will encourage them to maintain close relationships with family and friends to safeguard their well-being in later life. On the other side, this research will help academics, politicians and thinkers better comprehend aging, perspectives of conduct and psychological and emotional viewpoints. One of the most important aspects of life that affects how old people feel about themselves is the support from social networks. Therefore, through raising awareness and fostering a favorable environment for the welfare and self-worth of senior individuals, politicians and society are expected to care for enriching the lives of the elderly. By highlighting the importance of communal support from a multidimensional aspect of a person, this study offers a wider perspective on self-esteem. With this in mind, the authors advise academics to adopt a fresh perspective on interpersonal mechanisms that ultimately aim to improve self-esteem and social support. Social support is a key factor in fostering or inhibiting self-esteem in the elderly and is a strong predictor of mental health. A society must take action to boost older people’s communal integration to improve their quality of life.

This study makes the case for a broader perspective on self-respect or esteem by suggesting that self-esteem may be seen in a broader context rather than in terms of limited characteristics. The authors offer an integrated model of self-esteem that conceptualizes it as an interpersonal phenomenon influenced by multiple vital aspects using various metrics of old age. Self-esteem was envisioned as the result of a number of factors, including social position, activities and interpersonal interaction “relationships with relatives, family, and friends.” The authors’ conceptual framework’s goal is to comprehend the different ways that senior citizens’ lives affect their sense of self-worth.