Case Study of Tobacco Use among Myanmar Migrant Factory Workers in the Seafood Industry in Thailand

Migrant workers commonly face many health disparities when they relocate to a foreign work environment. Many workers migrating to Thailand are young unskilled workers from Myanmar. In this study, we examine factors associated with Myanmar migrant workers’ smoking status and characterized smoking-related knowledge, attitudes, and behavior in one seafood factory in Thailand. This descriptive study utilized person-to-person interviews among 300 Myanmar migrants in one seafood factory in Thailand, of which 94.3% were young males between 18 and 39 years of age. Results demonstrated that 90% were current daily smokers, over 90% smoked 30–60 times per month, and 95% spent less than 500 baht (US $16) per month on smoking. About 70% of current smokers had 6–10 friends who smoked, compared with 40% of non-smokers (chi-square, p-value ≤ 0.07). Among this sample of mainly male migrant workers, smoking is very common, in part driven through social contact, but levels of dependence appear relatively low. The results suggest potential intervention approaches to reduce high smoking prevalence among this population, such as targeting young males and addressing their concerns about negative attitudes by peers to tobacco use and the unhealthful exposures of women and children in their families and the larger community.

Cross-Cultural Component in the Works of Dagestan Russian-Speaking Authors as a Teaching Subject

Cross-cultural analysis has firmly taken its place in linguistics, while the novelty of the term is relative: we are dealing with a new definition of what was meant by the concept of ethnolinguistics, linguistics, and cultural studies. In literary studies, cross-cultural analysis is a new term for culturological comparative studies, i.e. an analysis from the point of view of the "dialogue of cultures", which makes it possible to single out the national images of the world. The aim of the present research was to study the cross-cultural component in the works of the national authors of Dagestan who write in Russian. The study featured Russian-language poetic texts created by Dagestan authors and how they reflect the national identity of the author. Cross-cultural analysis relies on the idea about universal cultural patterns. As a result, Dagestan Russian-language literature can be interpreted as a set of national works written in Russian. Literary text as a role model plays a fundamental role in language acquisition. Reading fiction allows language learners to move away from standardized teaching texts and immerse into the "living" language. While studying a foreign work of art, the learner touches upon both linguistics and culture: it provides information about the social and cultural structure of a foreign community. A positive aspect of using literary texts for educational purposes makes it possible to learn more about the culture of the people, since the texts always reflect the language in its historical, social, and cultural context.

The Hiring Prospects of Foreign-Educated Immigrants: A Factorial Survey among German Employers

This article analyses the conditions under which employers grant immigrants access to jobs corresponding to their foreign education. It is often observed that employers prefer native-educated employees and devalue foreign education. We argue that part of this devaluation is due to institutional differences in education systems. Nevertheless, hiring foreign-educated immigrants is becoming a viable strategy for employers given the substantial shortage of skilled labour and the significant influx of skilled immigrants. Using a factorial survey, we simulate a hiring process and present a series of hypothetical foreign applicants to employers in Germany. Our findings show that the transferability of foreign qualifications strongly depends on the institutional characteristics of foreign education systems. However, employers are willing to accept differences in education because they consider institutional differences a trade-off against other dimensions, such as relevant foreign work experience.

What is the value of foreign work experience for young return migrants?

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to understand the value of foreign work experience for young migrants after their return to the home country labour market and their labour market preferences relative to stayers. Design/methodology/approach The authors analyse the labour market integration patterns of young return migrants in Slovakia. After reconstructing the life histories of young people from online CVs, a set of regression models investigates the attractiveness, salary expectations and positions of interest to returnees in comparison to stayers. Findings Post-accession foreign work experience increases the attractiveness of job candidates. Foreign work experience changes the expectations of returnees with respect to wages and widens their perspective on the location of future work. In the underperforming labour market, migration experience signals to employers a set of skills that differentiate young returnees from young stayers in a positive way. Research limitations/implications While the web data are not representative, it allows the authors to study return migration from a perspective that large representative data sets do not allow. Social implications Foreign work experience is, in general, an asset for (re)integration into the home labour market, but the higher salary demands of returnees might hinder the process in a less-skilled segment of the labour market. Originality/value Return migration is a relatively underresearched area, and knowledge about the perception of returnees among employers and the labour market preferences of returnees is relatively limited. Another contribution lies in the use of online data to analyse return migration from the perspective of both labour demand and supply.

The Translator as a Mediator in the Dialogue of Literatures

<p>The article raises the issue of translating the works of national literatures through an intermediate language since most of the works of the peoples of Russia find their readers in the world thanks to the Russian language. The urgency of this problem is obvious in modern conditions when the interest in Turkic-speaking literature is growing, and many Russian poets, like in the Soviet era, see themselves as the translators from national languages. On the example of the translation of the poem «tɵshtǝgechǝ bu kɵn – sǝer Һǝm iat …» (“the day is like a dream”) of the contemporary poetess Yulduz Minnullina both the strengths and the weaknesses of the modern translation school are considered. The word for word translation can lead to the unification of differences between literatures when the dominant language (the Russian language) imposes certain aesthetic principles on the original text. The most important aspect of the topic of interest is the consideration of the role of interlinear translation in the establishment of interliterary dialogue. Through interlinear translation a foreign work, endowed with its special world of ideas, images, national and artistic traditions, serves as the basis for dialogical relations that are indispensable for both the Russian-speaking reader who discovers the “other” literature, and the very work that is included in the dialogue in the “large time”. At the same time, the elimination of differences between literatures occurs when the translator, through the Russian language, by means of line-by-line translation, introduces the features of his own consciousness into a foreign work. In this case, the translation simplifies the content of the literature, equalizes the artistic merits, thereby projecting the life of the work onto communication, rather than dialogue.</p>

‘The French Connection’ among French Translations of Milton and within Du Bocage’s Paradis terrestre

This chapter surveys the eighteen French translations of Paradise Lost, from the earliest ‘elegant’ prose translation of Dupré de Saint-Maur (1729), to the latest, Himy’s translation into unrhymed verse (2001), with due attention to Chateaubriand’s most renowned translation (1836). The chapter then turns to the only French translation, or rather ‘imitation’, done by a woman writer and poet: du Bocage’s Paradise terrestre, poème imité de l’anglais de Milton (1748). While Milton’s poem tackles the question of God’s plan for the redemption of humankind, du Bocage’s poem describes the pleasures of Adam and Eve in the garden; du Bocage is not interested in theological issues. This ‘imitation’ is a fascinating and key example of the transculturation of a foreign work into the cosy atmosphere of the salon of the French literary élites.

Surprise Me If You Can

Hey! Whatcha readin' for?—Bill Hicks, comedian, Sane Man (1989)Miller Reads So the Chinese (and Young, Western Computer Gamers) Don't Have ToIn August 2010, I Attended a Lecture that J. Hillis Miller Gave at the Shanghai jiao Tong University on the Challenge of Reading world literature. The lecture argued that in a globalizing world, traveling literature grows distant from its linguistic milieu, local readership, and aesthetic context, making it our challenge to find a reading method that could safeguard these endangered aspects of the text's specificity. To do this, he proposed to imagine himself as a Chinese anthologist who, wishing to include a translation of William Butler Yeats's poem “The Cold Heaven” in a Chinese anthology of world literature, must ask himself, “Just what would I need to tell Chinese readers to make them the best possible readers of this poem?” Miller concluded that, as that anthologist, he would need to give them the facts about Yeats's life and works, an account of the generic rules of the poem's verse form, a note on the broad recurrence of “sudden” and “suddenly” in Yeats's oeuvre, information about “[w]hat sort of bird the rook is and why they are delighted by cold weather,” a clarification of the differing connotations of “heaven” and “skies” for Christian readers familiar with “The Lord's Prayer,” an explanation of what the oxymoron “burning ice” has meant in the Western poetic tradition, a pointer to the allusion in the word “crossed” to Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, and some sense of the embedded subtext of Yeats's failure to woo Maud Gonne (256). For, according to Miller (citing David Damrosch), when culturally distant readers are not made aware of the “vast substratum beneath” a poem, they are “likely to impose domestic literary values on the foreign work” (254). In short, a respectful reading method must ensure that such readers are guided through the text, in the light of its original context.