Extreme risk makes the journey feasible
We have just launched a new master’s course on International Development: Migration, Mobility and Displacement. To coincide with this and to give students a greater idea about the course we will be sharing a series of blogs from members of our Migration, Refugees and Asylum research group.
In this blog Oliver Bakewell explores his and Caitlin Sturridge’s recent paper on Extreme Risk Makes the Journey Feasible: Decision-Making amongst Migrants in the Horn of Africa
What is the role of risk in determining how people move? We might think that the more someone knows about the risks of going on one route, the more they try to find another way. In a recent paper based on research from the Horn of Africa undertaken by the Research and Evidence Facility, Oliver Bakewell and Caitlin Sturridge, show how the extreme danger of kidnapping and extortion by traffickers opens up a narrow window of opportunity for some young Somalis to find a way to reach Europe. In the absence of any safe routes, increasing the danger has the perverse effect of making it easier for young people to go. read more…
Campaigners call for democratic approach to managing public land in Greater Manchester
- Over 50 local campaign organisations, including housing and climate groups, trade unions and charities, have signed an open letter to Andy Burnham calling for a democratic approach to managing public land in Greater Manchester.
- The letter calls for Burnham to use his strong new mandate to follow the example of Liverpool City Region and establish a Greater Manchester Land Commission by the end of 2021. This would mean that representatives of the public, private and voluntary sectors and academia can develop proposals for how best to use public land in order to address social and environmental needs in the city region.
- The letter follows the launch of a new report by researchers from the Universities of Manchester and Sheffield that raises concerns about the sale of Council-owned land in central Manchester.
Concurso Fotográfico – Photo Contest
Migración Transnacional en tiempos de pandemia en América Latina y el Caribe/ Transnational Migration in Times of a Pandemic in Latin America and the Caribbean
PhD students: Getting published from a standing start
By Xi Xi and Kunkanit Sutamchai
Publishing papers in journals is an effective approach to disseminate your research and communicate with peers in the research field. For a PhD student, having a paper published in an academic journal proves that you are capable to advance in your field and helps you stand out from other candidates in job applications. However, for novice researchers (like us), getting your work published for the first time might feel daunting. In this blog, we would like to share our experiences in the hope that this can be helpful for other PhD students. read more…
Oil: from a lifetime of damage-limitation to outrage
David Little
Much of my career has been spent trying to find ways of reducing the environmental pollution and social damage caused by oil spills. In recent work with colleagues at Manchester and Vancouver, we have shown how prolonged public pressure brought genuine improvement to oil spill response (OSR).
But that got us thinking about oil spills and climate change (see Figure 1). In particular: “why does a low-probability risk like an oil spill attract huge public outrage, whereas climate change presents global, extreme and multifarious risks but little or no outrage? That is, until recently, and mainly among young people. read more…
Transnational care across age and generations through the pandemic: continuities and disruptions in Bolivia
Tanja Bastia, Reader, Global Development Institute
Transnational care takes various forms. People’s abilities to practice transnational care also varies and has, inevitably, been impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic.
I begin with two vignettes: doña Celia from Santa Cruz, Bolivia and doña Palmira from Cochabamba, Bolivia (names used are pseudonyms). Both have adult children who live abroad. However, their experiences of transnational care could not have been more different. read more…
A brief primer on wealth for social policy.
Armando Barrientos, Emeritus Professor of Poverty and Social Justice, Global Development Institute
Social policy has traditionally focused on income, its distribution and redistribution. But wealth is increasingly coming into view on issues such as wealth taxes, intergenerational mobility, pensioner capitalism and the super-rich. This brief primer aims to encourage a closer understanding of wealth for the purposes of social policy.
Atkinson distinction between income and wealth is an excellent starting point: “income in a given period is the amount a person could have spent while maintaining the value of his wealth intact” p.39. Wealth is the stock of economic resources or property rights of economic agents. read more…
Hrishipara Daily Financial Diary: The transactions our diarists didn’t make
Since May 2015 the Hrishipara Daily Financial Diary project has been recording all the daily money transactions of a sample of low-income households living in central Bangladesh.
At the end of March 2021, we asked them about the transactions they hadn’t made. The question that Project Manager Kalimullah put, privately, to each of our 60 diarists, was “during the month, were there things you needed to spend money on, but couldn’t, for some reason?” read more…
Welcome to the February 2021 MSc Human Resource Management & Development student cohort
The Global Development Institute offers a range of taught master’s programmes in international development, including four focusing on human resource management (MSc HRM), organisational change (MSc OCD), human resource management and development by distance learning (MSc HRMD-DL) and managing and implementing development projects (MSc MIDP). read more…
Learning from the World of Wedgwood: Human Resource Management webinar
GDI’s Human Resource Management course aims to equip learners with a robust theoretical framework for careers in HRM and at the same time to provide students with an opportunity to gain insights into practice-focused HRM across a wide range of management contexts and sectors. The MSc HRM Enhancement Programme has been developed over five years to offer closer student engagement with a wide range of organisational contexts in the field of HR practice. This year, due to the impact of Covid-19, alternative plans have been made for the enhancement programme to invite guest lecturers from different organisations to engage on matters of HR Practice with HRM students through a series of webinars. read more…