Dialogue on Mexican childhoods in the COVID-19 pandemic

This interview is part of a series documented on the Rede Emili@, it proposes is disseminating academic research and collective reflections on childhood, education and politics. The document that we present synthesizes an analysis of the effects of the pandemic on the lives of children and adolescents in Mexico. Norma del Rio Lugo describes the socio-economic and political situation, with emphasis on the precarious situation of public policies-before, during and after-the stage of social isolation for COVID-19 pandemic. We have reflected on how the States have been able-or not-to respond to the social situation generated during the pandemic, the type of programs, policies and actions deployed based on rights. In this shared experience, she has highlighted the relevance of the role of States in the lives of children and their rights. Norma del Rio Lugo analyzes childhood experiences and the preponderant role of women during the pandemic, emphasizing the need for urgent care policies. In this context, the violation of rights has been dramatic for the child population, with an increase in poverty rates, lack of access to education and health services, a dramatic increase in malnutrition and situations of violence.

State of care for EU mobile workers' rights in the Dutch meat sector in times of, and beyond, COVID-19

PurposeWith a focus on the position of EU mobile workers in the Dutch meat industry, this article discusses the multi-level State efforts to enhance protection of workers who experienced limited protection of existing State and private enforcement institutions. The COVID-19 pandemic, with virus outbreaks at Dutch meat plants, fuelled public and political will to structurally improve these workers' precarious work and living conditions. Yet, the process of policy change is slow. The authors show it is the gradual transformation in the institutional environment that the State needs to counter to become more protective for EU mobile workers.Design/methodology/approachUsing the gradual institutional change approach and the concept of State ignorance, the authors examine State responses drawing on interviews with expert stakeholders in the public and private domain, public administration records and newspaper articles.FindingsThrough knowledge creation, boosted social dialogue mechanisms, enhanced enforcement capacity and new housing legislation, the Dutch State focuses on countering gradual institutional change through which existing institutions lost their effectiveness as protectors of EU mobile workers. The organization of work is, nevertheless, not (yet) fundamentally addressed with tighter public legislation.Originality/valueThe findings contribute to a more nuanced understanding of the role of the State as multifaceted actor in institutional change processes towards increased protection for EU mobile workers.

Beyond the brands: COVID‐19, supply chain governance, and the state–labor nexus

This article analyses the role played by brands, producer‐country governments, and unions in mitigating the impact of disruptions caused to garment supply chains by COVID‐19 in Cambodia, Indonesia, and Myanmar. Its findings challenge brand‐centric accounts, highlighting the need for more serious consideration of the dynamic, relational nature of labor governance—and, in particular, of the role of the state–labor nexus in determining producer‐country unions' ability to exercise strategic agency within global supply chains.

Community-led housing: Between ‘right to the city', ‘actually existing neoliberalism' and post-pandemic cities

This paper examines the Self-Managed Housing Program (Law 341), in Buenos Aires, Argentina. This programme created 45 cooperative housing units between 2001 and 2020 in consolidated urban areas currently undergoing renewal processes. It investigates the conditions that the programme has generated for the realisation of the ‘right to the city' in the context of ‘actually existing neoliberalism' and challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper analyses the origins of the process and mode of cooperative housing production, including tangible and intangible aspects and capacities acquired by the inhabitants. This study used a mixed quantitative and qualitative methodology. The analytical strategy focused on defining a set of dimensions that characterised the self-managed mode of production, conditions of social and urban insertion in the case studied and participants' perceptions of the influence of material characteristics and organisational arrangements during the pandemic. This paper contributes to our understanding of the socio-economic dynamics in the production of urban space by elucidating the role of the state and specific tensions arising due to bottom-up policies, specific forms adopted by urban experiences of resistance and their contribution in the promotion of concrete conditions of urban life. Finally, this paper characterises an emergent self-managed urbanism and reflects on its possibilities of dialogue with the construction of alternative local policies that challenge growing territorial inequality caused by the subordination of policies to real estate financialisation and its deepening tendencies in the pandemic context.

Developing dynamic capabilities for community collaboration and tourism product innovation in response to crisis: Nepal and COVID-19

International tourism will continuously face challenges to fully recover after COVID-19 unless destinations implement universally agreed upon public health protocols that make travellers feel safe. This challenge is even more daunting for least developed countries like Nepal, which relies on rural, nature and adventure tourism. These rural regions, already under stress prior to COVID-19, must now address the pandemic's consequences before availing themselves of opportunities for more sustainable tourism development that experts believe the pandemic confer. We use "mutual gaze” to examine how exchange relationships between rural and urban stakeholders shape collaborative decisions on tourism development. We conceptualise tourism development interactions through the innovative development of unique offerings to attract domestic tourists during the pandemic. Data on Nepal's rural tourism sector reveal that representative local associations enable innovation through the integration of dynamic capabilities and resources in the development of sustainable tourism products. While the study confirms the significant role government plays in facilitating cooperation among stakeholders to legitimise relationships and ascertain sustainability goals, it reveals organic collaboration is essential for inclusive planning and decision making at grassroots' level. © 2021 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Does economic power or leadership matter? The difference between male and female world leaders in managing pandemics

Factors that are typically associated with better disease prevention and control, such as the health care expenses and the wealth of a nation, are no longer reliable predictors of disease parameters during the Covid-19 pandemic. In fact, we see many developed nations suffering from more widespread infection, a higher mortality rate, and longer pandemic duration. We analyse the performance outcomes of female-led vs. male-led countries in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. We employ regression analysis based on the full sample as well as a propensity score matched sample emphasizing women's roles in society. In general, we provide some evidence that female-led countries exhibit lower numbers of total population-weighted cases and shorter pandemic duration. © 2021 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Covid, schooling and race in England: a case of necropolitics

In this paper, I focus on the UK government's Covid-19 pandemic response to schooling in England with regards to the impact on race inequality, an area which has received comparatively little attention. I review the existing research, drawing on work by academics, think tanks, lobbying organisations and media reports, conducted between spring 2020 and autumn 2021, and argue that this evidence suggests that the UK government's pandemic response firstly has increased existing racial disadvantage for Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) pupils in education, and secondly, it has potentially increased the exposure of BAME households to illness and death. I further argue that not only can education policy in response to Covid be considered to be an example of white supremacy, but it is an example of necropolitics, defined as ‘the power and the capacity [of the state] to dictate who may live and who must die' (Mbembe 2013, 161). I conclude by making some recommendations for wide-reaching social and educational change. © 2022 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Qiaoxiang 2.0: The People's Republic of China and Diaspora Governance at the Local Level

The article examines recent transformations in diaspora governance at the local level, particularly the new, more integrated approach towards emigrated Chinese developed in places with longstanding and strong emigration movements. These places, known as "hometowns of Overseas Chinese" or qiaoxiang, have been actively reaching out to their expatriates for decades, but the initiatives and strategies for reaching out have changed recently due to central government policies, increased return migration, and the widespread use of information and communications technologies. Based on the case study of Qingtian County in the eastern province of Zhejiang, the paper examines different ways in which local government is reaching out to its members abroad, focusing on activities in the area of legal affairs and public administration, investments, digital transformation, public diplomacy, local urban restructuring, and response to the Covid-19 pandemic. The findings reveal innovation and experimentation at the local level rather than the passive implementation of central policies, and point to the need for further unpacking of the role of the state in diaspora engagement.

Risk and Uncertainty in a Post-Truth Society

The editors have brought together people who work or have worked for the British government in roles related to risk assessment and management from different perspectives;in positions such as risk communicator and president of the Royal Statistical Society (Chapter 1), Head of Policy at the Royal Society (Chapter 2), Director-General of the UK's Statistical Authority (Chapter 3), Chief Scientific Advisor at Department of Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) (Chapter 4), and Chief Executive of the Foods Standard Agency and the European Food and Safety Authority (Chapter 5). Using the lens of climate change, Emma Woods, Head of Policy at the Royal Society, sets out the idea that scientists and policy makers have a different relationship with evidence, causing complications when dealing with the public and public health issues. [...]one ought not to underestimate the public's ability to cope with uncertainty. [...]discussions of uncertainty in isolation should be avoided.

50 YEARS OF ENGENDERING WOMEN IN BANGLADESH'S POLITICS: PROGRESS OR PARADOX?

The paper seeks to evaluate women's political participation at the 50th anniversary of Bangladesh which emerged in 1971 as an independent country. The country has recorded notable development indicators in these years. Among such indicators, the example of two women holding the topmost positions in politics has often resulted in a misconstrued notion, implying that all women have a fair and just role in the country's politics. This study argues that stark societal contradictions seriously threaten women's political roles, participation and empowerment at all stage, as members of political parties, as elected representatives of the people and more significantly as voters. The research attempts to address the following questions: What are the roadblocks hindering women's political engagement at all the above-mentioned stages? What measures has the government adopted for increasing women's low representation in politics? What forward-looking strategies have been employed for enhancing women's participation in public life? The findings show that a lot has yet to be achieved because women's subordinated position in politics may be a result of low political institutionalisation and patriarchy, both in public and private spheres.

A path to improved health workforce planning, policy & management in Canada: The critical coordinating and convening roles for the federal government to play in addressing 8% of its GDP

The goals of a health workforce system are to develop, deploy and sustain an integrated and collaborative network of health workers that is equipped with the necessary skills, supports, incentives, and resources to provide quality care that meets all population health needs in an acceptable, equitable and cost-effective manner. This requires robust data and evidence. A key problem in Canada is that it lags behind comparable OECD countries in terms of health workforce data and digital analytics. As a result, health workforce planning here is ad hoc, sporadic, and siloed by profession or jurisdiction, generating significant costs and inefficiencies for all involved. Health workers in Canada account for more than 10% of all employed Canadians and over 2/3 of all health care spending which amounted to $175 billion in 2019, or nearly 8% of Canada’s total GDP.[i]Recognizing these facts, supporting strategic health workforce planning, policy and management ought to be key priorities for federal and provincial/territorial governments and other health care organizations. Across all the different stakeholders that make up the complex adaptive health workforce system in Canada, we lack a centralized and coordinated health workforce data, analytics, and strategic planning infrastructure, a neglect that has been readily acknowledged for over a decade. The significant gaps in our knowledge about the health workforce have been exposed during the COVID-19 pandemic causing critical risks for planners to manage during a health crisis. The time is ripe for the federal government to take on a coordinating leadership role to enhance the data infrastructure that provinces, territories, regions, and training programs need to better plan for and support the health workforce. Efforts should centre on three key elements that will improve data infrastructure, bolster knowledge creation, and inform decision-making activities: * A new data standard and enhanced health workforce data collection across all stakeholders * More timely, accessible, interactive, and fit-for-purpose decision support tools * Capacity building in health workforce data analytics, digital tool design, policy analysis and management science. This vision requires an enhanced federal government role to contribute resources to coordinate the collection of accurate, standardized, and more complete health workforce data to support analysis across occupations, sectors, and jurisdictions, with links to relevant patient information, healthcare utilization and outcome data, for more strategic fit-for-purpose planning at the provincial, territorial, regional, and training program levels. In this paper, a proposed vision for enhanced federal support to data-driven and evidence informed health workforce planning, policy and management is presented. First, two data infrastructure and capacity building recommendations include: * the federal government should create through a specially earmarked contribution agreement with the Canadian Institute for Health Information a Canadian Health Workforce Initiative dedicated to the necessary enhancement of standardized health workforce data purpose built for strategic planning purposes and associated decision-making tools for targeted planning. * In addition to the need to build better data, digital tools, and decision-support infrastructure, there is a parallel need to build the human resources capacity for health workforce analytics. Through a special CIHR-administered fund to build health workforce research capacity, this could include a Strategic Training Investment in Health Workforce Research and a complementary Signature initiative to fund integrated research projects that cut across the existing Scientific Institutes. Building on these two necessary but insufficient building blocks, three options for a coordinating pan Canadian health workforce organization could include one of the following: * The federal government could create a dedicated Health Workforce Agency of Canada with an explicit mandate to enhance existing health workforce da a infrastructure and decision-support tools for strategic planning, policy, and management across Canada. * The federal government could support through a contribution agreement the creation of an arm’s length, not-for-profit organization, Canadian Partnership for Health Workforce, as a steward of a renewed health workforce strategy and to provide health labour market information, training, and management of human resources in the health sector, including support for recruitment and retention. * The federal government could support the creation of a more robust, transparent, and accessible secretariate for a Council on Health Workforce, Canada to improve data and decision-making infrastructures, bolster knowledge creation through dedicated funding and policy to inform decision-making and collaborate on topics of mutual interest. Because of the importance of the health workforce to Canada’s economy and pandemic recovery, a sizeable and sustained investment over the course of at least 10 years is needed to build the necessary infrastructure for better decision-making. In addition to building a more robust health system for Canada’s post pandemic recovery, these actions would align with the World Health Organization’s Global Strategy on Human Resources for Health (2016) which encourages all countries (including Canada) by 2030 to have institutional mechanisms in place to effectively steer and coordinate an inter-sectoral health workforce agenda and established mechanisms for HRH data sharing through national health workforce accounts. [i] In 2019, healthcare constituted 11.5% of GDP. Although the data are not readily available for the full costs of the health workforce, it is generally accepted that approximately 70% of health care costs are the costs of labour;70% of 11.5 is 8.05.