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This chapter discusses findings from a multiple case study of language learning programmes offered to adult migrant learners in Cyprus, Scotland, Malta and Estonia. First, using a cross-comparative policy analysis, the discussion synthesizes indicators of integration embedded in education policies and provisions for adult migrant learners. This analysis brings to light an overall inclusive approach: providers and programmes emerged as comparable in terms of type of programmes (formal, informal and nonformal; academic, vocational and interest-based); options available (academic, vocational and interest-based) and providers (state and civil society). However, policy analysis also illuminates restrictive indicators, such as traits of monocultural, generalizing policymaking that lacks consideration of sociodemographic differences between adult migrant learners. Secondly, the discussion validates the synthesized indicators by means of an analysis of qualitative data concerning the language programmes and related micro classroom-based practices, retrieved using qualitative research with adult migrant learners, their educators and related policy executives. Validated indicators include an inclusive approach to learners' entitlement to educational provision, as testified by educators' and policy executives' values and pedagogical approaches. Indeed, despite traits of monoculturalism and generalizing or homogenizing approaches identified at policy level, micro context data illuminated stakeholders' critical acknowledgement of the need of differentiated teaching and learning. Research-based recommendations include increased cooperation between state entities (e.g., inter-ministerial collaboration) and between state and civil societies, as well as professional development for adult educators that elicits their agency in proactively resisting and changing restrictive aspects of existent policies and practices.

Guided by Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological System’s model, this study documented acculturation and parental involvement in low-income Chinese immigrant homes that serve as predictors of parental mediation. By surveying 165 parents of 3–13-year-old immigrant children, this study found that low-income Chinese parents enacted restrictive mediation the most and exhibited a slow acculturation process even after an average of seven years of emigration. Higher parental acculturation was related to a higher use of active and restrictive mediation. Additionally, different aspects of parental involvement also served as predictors of the three mediation strategies. Chinese cultural emphasis on academic excellence and success was used to help interpret the findings. Future research should consider implementing research-based adult media literacy programs for immigrant parents to help them practice their parental mediation skills in the host culture.

This chapter explores a US state-endorsed tool for reviewing district, school, and classroom inclusive practices. The Best Practices for Inclusive Education (BPIE) assessment tool was developed through a collaborative initiative between state personnel, University faculty, and representatives from a federally funded technical assistance project, Florida Inclusion Network. The tool supports a facilitated review and subsequent action planning for greater inclusive practices that includes learners with severe intellectual disabilities. This chapter describes the BPIE process and offers examples of its application in districts across Florida with particular reference to practices that support learners with severe intellectual disabilities.

The death penalty has existed in a state of steady decline for the last two decades, during which state legislatures have been at the center of abolition efforts. Successful abolition is, however, very rare in contrast to how often death penalty repeal bills are introduced across state legislatures, year after year. Indeed, abolition is not a sudden event, but may be many years in the making. Research on the early phases of this process, where the groundwork for enacted legislation is laid, is nevertheless limited. This chapter explores patterns of death penalty bill introductions across all active death penalty states from 1999 to 2018, providing not only an overview of legislative activity at state level but also an analysis of potential factors fueling the activity. It argues that individual legislators play a significant role in the current trend of increased legislative support for a restricted, if not entirely abolished, death penalty, evident both in terms of persistency over time and cooperation across party lines. It also problematizes partisan aspects of legislative activity in the context of legislation on capital punishment.

Inclusive education in the United States has been a focus of government policy for the past 30 years. The underlying goals of the inclusive education movement are to provide the most efficient and effective education in the least restrictive environment for students with disabilities. In response to federal and state mandates, students with disabilities increasingly are being educated in more inclusive settings. One way to measure the success of inclusion is to examine graduation rates for students with disabilities. Although accountability related to state curriculum standards and standardized test scores is important, graduation rates may be the critical factor in deciding whether current educational policy is resulting in successful outcomes for students. To determine the effects of inclusion, a statewide study was conducted to look for trends in inclusion and corresponding graduation rates for students with mild disabilities. The researchers examined the records of 67,749 students with mild disabilities in Georgia during a six-year period to determine the amount of time spent in general education classrooms and the graduation rates for each year’s cohort of students. Results indicated a 62% increase in the percentage rate in inclusion for students with mild disabilities, while graduation rates for students with mild disabilities remained stable (+0.4%) at less than 30% during that same period. This chapter will describe the results of this study, discuss barriers to graduation, and present inclusive practices that support students with mild disabilities.

In this paper we show that the neo-transitional economies are less neoliberal than could be expected given their 25-years long transition towards building market environment, supporting entrepreneurship and restoring capitalism in general. According to factor analysis results based on a cross-sectional sample of 134 countries during the period of 2010–2012 we find that the neo-transitional economies are characterised by relatively restrictive trade and capital regulations, average level of labour protection and low activity of state in terms of tax-based redistribution and social cohesion support. We briefly review several theoretical frameworks, such as the World System Theory, Commodity Chain and Global Capital theory, and Varieties of Capitalism framework, and point towards their limitations in explaining these transitional outcomes. We conclude that these frameworks are not capable of providing the explanations mainly because of their limited or no concern for labour and capital, and their interactions with the national institutions. We conclude that the history of industrialisation and path dependence provides a more plausible framework for explaining the neo-transitional outcomes. Furthermore, the consideration of the ‘resource curse’ and authoritarian regimes in many CIS countries can explain their neglect for tax-based redistribution and the high degree of government interventions in trade and capital regulations.

This chapter investigates the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on economic stimulus policies. Based on data from 156 economies, empirical results show that in the medium term, cumulative effect of COVID-19 pandemic is positively correlated with the economic stimulus policies but not in the short term. Heterogeneity tests show that while economic policies are used in developed economies more often, restrictive measures in developing countries are likely used as a substitution; deaths have a positive impact on economic stimulus policies but confirmed cases not. The results suggest that the pandemic may reinforce economic inequality due to potential stimulus policy capabilities, requiring international coordination and assistance to low-and-middle income countries in various aspects.

There is currently a great deal of attention in psychometric and statistical methods on ensuring measurement invariance when examining measures across time or populations. When measurement invariance is established, changes in scores over time or across groups can be attributed to changes in the construct rather than changes in reaction to or interpretation of the measurement instrument. When measurement in not invariant, it is possible that measured differences are due to the measurement instrument itself and not to the underlying phenomenon of interest. This chapter discusses the importance of establishing measurement invariance specifically in postsecondary settings, where it is anticipated that individuals' perspectives will change over time as a function of their higher education experiences. Using examples from several measures commonly used in higher education research, the concepts and processes underlying tests of measurement invariance are explained and analyses are interpreted using data from a US-based longitudinal study on bioscience PhD students. These measures include sense of belonging over time and across groups, mental well-being over time, and perceived mentorship quality over time. The chapter ends with a discussion about the implications of longitudinal and group measurement invariance as an important conceptual property for moving forward equitable, reproducible, and generalizable quantitative research in higher education. Invariance methods may further be relevant for addressing criticisms about quantitative analyses being biased toward majority populations that have been discussed by critical theorists engaging quantitative research strategies.

In spite of the extensive literature on the regulation of air transport services, until the development of the Quantitative Air Services Agreements Review (QUASAR) methodology no systematic review existed of the degree of liberalization granted through air services agreements. The chapter lays out QUASARs key features, and presents the main results its application has generated. It then elaborates on how the methodology could be further refined and extended to other segments of the air transport industry yet uncovered. Based on QUASAR, the chapter critically evaluates some commonly held beliefs about the liberalization of international passenger transport and then moves on to explore the technical feasibility of creating a liberal multilateral regime for air transport services. QUASAR has demonstrated that, although the air transport sector has experienced some liberalization over the past few years, this has been, overall, rather marginal. The skies are not truly open.

To explore the politics of gender, health, medicine, and citizenship in high-income countries, medical sociologists have focused primarily on the practice of legal abortion. In middle- and low-income countries with restrictive abortion laws, however, medical sociologists must examine what happens when women have already experienced spontaneous or induced abortion. Post-abortion care (PAC), a global reproductive health intervention that treats complications of abortion and has been implemented in nearly 50 countries worldwide, offers important theoretical insights into transnational politics of abortion and reproduction in countries with restrictive abortion laws. In this chapter, I draw on my ethnography of Senegal’s PAC program to examine the professional, clinical, and technological politics and practices of obstetric care for abortions that have already occurred. I use the sociological concepts of professional boundary work and boundary objects to demonstrate how Senegalese health professionals have established the political and clinical legitimacy of PAC. I demonstrate the professional precariousness of practicing PAC for physicians, midwives, and nurses. I show how the dual capacity of PAC technologies to terminate pregnancy and treat abortion complications has limited their circulation within the health system, thereby reducing quality of care. Given the contradictory and complex global landscape of twenty-first-century abortion governance, in which pharmaceutical forms of abortion such as Misoprostol are increasingly available in developing countries, and as abortion restrictions are increasingly enforced across the developed world, PAC offers important theoretical opportunities to advance medical sociology research on abortion politics and practices in the global North and South.