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This study attempts to identify and analyze the pragmatic functions of religious expressions, that is, invocations that include the name of Allah (God), in naturally occurring social interactions in Najdi Arabic, which is spoken in Central Saudi Arabia.

Drawing on the speech act theory and politeness model, an analysis of the data illustrates that religious expressions, in addition to their prototypical religious meanings and uses in everyday interactions, are employed to communicate a wide range of pragmatic functions.

These include signaling the end of a conversation, persuading, mitigating and hedging, showing agreement and approval, reinforcing emphasis, expressing emotions, seeking protection from the evil eye, conveying skepticism and ambiguity, expressing humor and sarcasm, and showing respect and honor. The embedded multifunctional dimension of religious expressions in the present data is interpreted as serving as a politeness marker with which speakers promote both positive politeness (by showing solidarity, claiming common grounds, and building rapport) and negative politeness (by reducing imposition and emphasizing personal autonomy).

This study further highlights the interplay between religion, culture, and language use in Najdi Arabic.

Existing research focuses on the pension systems and reforms in China from a macro-level and financial perspective. The expectations of mid-life Chinese people regarding their retirement and pensions have been ignored to date, and this research set out to address this lacuna.

The application of qualitative research methods is relatively novel in Chinese social science. As a grounded theory (GT) study, the research reported here deployed semi-structured interviews to investigate middle-aged Chinese women's and men's perceptions of their pensions and retirement. In total, 36 interviews were conducted, following the constructivist GT method.

The data point to disparities between the choices and perceptions of individuals on the one hand and the official assumptions underlying the current pension regime on the other hand. Research participants had varying interpretations of the inequality in retirement incomes in China, the main division being between enterprise workers and public-sector employees.

Although there are in principle rigidly fixed retirement ages for men and women in contemporary China, the phenomena of early retirement and working post-retirement are increasing. There are trade-offs between work/retirement and family needs, which influence the choices of middle-aged citizens. Retirement pathways are increasingly individualised, reflecting broader patterns of individualisation and inequality in China.

Compared to younger and older generation migrants, middle-aged migrants in the diaspora seem to be more conflicted regarding their belonging. This paper aims to explore how middle-aged migrants in the diaspora define themselves in space and time.

The paper is based on ethnographic fieldwork done among Malawian migrants (herein referred to as Lydiatians) settled at Lydiate informal settlement in peri-urban Zimbabwe.

The paper reveals that, while younger migrants have a “radical transnational stance”, and older migrants regard their place of settlement as their final home, middle-aged migrants prefer to maintain a “strategic dual sense of place” regarding their place of settlement in the diaspora. These middle-aged migrants can be entrepreneurs considering their current settlement as a strategic place for petty commodity trading or those who find informal settlements to provide needed opportunities for cheap housing as the migrants pursue work in the nearby towns.

The paper offers a deeper understanding of how middle-aged migrants navigate their sense of place and contribute to host nations by functioning as key resources, dynamizing local economies through entrepreneurial activities and labour provision for various industries. The implications of this research should encourage states to positively interact with migrants, leveraging their potential for societal and economic development.

The finding that migrants in the diaspora have a dual, strategic view of their settlements is fascinating, if not new. Before this, scholars presented migrants as transnational figures, successively moving to a better place, which finally becomes home. However, the data presented in this paper suggests that this characterization associating migrants with maintaining a “stable, sedentary, bounded and fixed perception of home” is oversimplified. This is because migrants can sometimes continue to cherish the idea of informal settlements in the diaspora as home, just as the migrants also entertain the nearby established towns as useful places in their life.

The purpose of this paper is to assess physical activity and nutrient intake and their association with obesity in apparently healthy middle-aged adults in Akuse, a rural community in the Eastern region of Ghana.

This cross-sectional study assessed demography and anthropometry, nutrient intakes using a 3-day repeated 24 h dietary recall and physical activity using the global physical activity questionnaire (GPAQ). Data were entered into Microsoft excel and analyzed with SPSS version 25.

There were 118 respondents (55 males, 46.6% and 63 females, 53.4%) in the study with mean age of 45.62 ± 6.88 years. About 90% of respondents were physically active based on WHO physical activity recommendation. Prevalence of overweight/obesity was higher among inactive participants compared to active participants and sitting/reclining hours was significantly (p-value = 0.042) associated positively with BMI after a bivariate correlation analysis, suggesting that physical activity plays a role in obesity. About one in five respondents were obese. Mean energy intake exceeded RDA for females. Sodium intake far exceeded RDA for both males and females, putting the population at potential risk of hypertension.

This study demonstrates the need for intensifying health education and other obesity prevention interventions to curb the rising obesity prevalence in rural communities.

The study revealed that overweight/ obesity in this rural community is higher than previously reported for rural Ghana.

This paper investigates the relationship between health and labour market participation considering the potential role played by the presence of children and elderly persons (with/without disabilities) in Italian households.

The authors use longitudinal data from the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions and full-information maximum likelihood to estimate a two-equation model (one equation for labour force participation and one for health status) with instruments to address the endogeneity of the labour force participation choice. The model is estimated separately by gender.

The authors find that while the presence of children, elderly persons or both is positively associated with the health status of both genders, the presence of disabled elderly persons exerts a negative role. As for participation, interesting differences emerge. The presence of children discourages women's participation but is positively associated with men's labour force participation. Interestingly, a caring role for elderly persons without disability emerges for both genders when the presence of children is combined with that of elderly people. Gender differences are also at work for the role of childcare services and elderly and/or disabled home care/assistance.

The findings indicate a possible caring role for elderly persons without disabilities, neutralizing the effect of the presence of children on the labour force participation of both genders. The results also suggest that greater coverage of care services should increase the active participation of women in the labour market.

This chapter discusses female managers’ and entrepreneurs’ views on lifelong learning. The main empirical data were drawn from interviews with 67 women participating in training and coaching programmes in South Savo, Finland, in 2017–2021. Many of the women belonged to the working sandwich generation (WSG). The particular focus was on how lifelong learning relates to these women’s careers, wellbeing at work, work–life balance and search for meaningful lives. A model integrating women’s earning, learning and meaning aspects of work and life was developed. The findings of the study show that considering women’s fragmented work careers, lifelong learning is often crucial for them. For an individual, opportunities for lifelong learning and meaningful work assure personal development, wellbeing at work and a sustainable career. For employing organisations, offering opportunities for learning and meaningful work for their employees constitutes a competitive advantage.

This study aims to answer two research questions: first, to what extent can workplace bullying be explained by ageism? And second, does the likelihood of workplace bullying increase when age interacts with gender and ethnic minority?

The authors report results from a survey carried out in 11 organizations in Estonia (N = 1,614) using the Negative Acts Questionnaire-Revised (Einarsen et al., 2009).

The results show that ageism does not explain bullying in Estonia. As in some earlier studies, older age correlates negatively with negative acts, and women report less work-related bullying than men. These findings were unexpected because Estonia's post-socialist background and the highest gender wage gap in Europe suggested otherwise. However, there is gendered ageism in work-related bullying such that older women report more negative acts in their workplace. Respondents from ethnic minority groups do not experience more bullying in general, nor in combination with age. Surprisingly, managers reported both person- and work-related bullying more than employees with no subordinates.

The study contributes to intersectionality literature with a view to workplace bullying in post-socialist study context.

This chapter examines representations of gender in online modafinil markets. While gender has often been absent from scholarship on online drug markets, our analysis demonstrates the ubiquity of gender in representations of modafinil users and sellers. The analysis draws on visual images, blogs, and marketing emails relating to three websites selling modafinil, discussed pseudonymously. We describe the range of ways that notions of gender are represented in advertising. Although women represent around 40% of that buying modafinil online, websites and communications tended not to feature women. Although sexist stereotypes of women were rarely present (in contrast to direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical advertising), the ways that modafinil was imagined tended to focus narrowly on corporate spheres of work and productivity. We contrast this narrow imaginary with female journalists’ own accounts of using modafinil to manage illness and enhance creativity. Thus, we conclude that the ways that modafinil has been imagined reflects working assumptions as to who is considered the ‘normal’ participant in online modafinil markets.