Journal Article

Using new direct measures of numeracy and literacy skills among 85,875 adults in 17 Western countries, we find that foreign-born adults have lower mean skills than native-born adults of the same age (16 to 64) in all of the examined countries. The gaps are small, and vary substantially between countries. Multilevel models reveal that immigrant populations' demographic and socioeconomic characteristics, employment, and language proficiency explain about half of the cross-national variance of numeracy and literacy skills gaps. Differences in origin countries' average education level also account for variation in the size of the immigrant-native skills gap. The more protective labor markets in immigrant-receiving countries are, the less well immigrants are skilled in numeracy and literacy compared to natives. For those who migrate before their teens (the 1.5 generation), access to an education system that accommodates migrants' special needs is crucial. The 1 and 1.5 generation have smaller numeracy and literacy skills gaps in more ethnically diverse societies.

The recent economic recession has impacted substantially on the graduate labour market, with many graduates now struggling to find secure employment in professional careers. In this context, temporary, unpaidinternships' have emerged as increasingly important as away in' to work for this group. Yet while there has been much media and policy debate on internships, academic consideration has been scant. This article begins to address this knowledge gap by drawing on a study of interns in a third sector environmental organisation. The research findings reveal that unpaid internships were rationalised through a complex mix of political motivations, career ambitions and lifestyle aims, but these intersected in important ways with social class. These findings are not only of empirical interest, contributing to our knowledge of graduate negotiations of precarity, but also of theoretical value, extending our understanding of young people's agency and motivations in transitions into work.

This study aims to revisit the understudied concept of career communities in higher education. Using mixed methods, this study assesses how university students define and characterize career communities compared to general communities. Based on our interviews (N=25) and survey (N=123), we define a career community more narrowly as a group of individuals who share similar career interests or aspirations and where one can receive direct or indirect customized benefits through the exchange of knowledge, expertise, and resources. Theoretical and practical implications with future research opportunities have been recommended for researchers and practitioners in higher education.

Most companies today place their job advertisements online and frequently require that applications for jobs be submitted online. Unfortunately, many online employment Web sites are inaccessible to users with disabilities, preventing these individuals from even applying for jobs online. Previous studies have used automated tools or expert reviews to evaluate the accessibility of online employment applications. This study involved 16 blind, screen-reader users, attempting to apply for jobs online. Two applications were submitted to each of 16 companies in the southeastern United States, for a total of 32 applications submitted. Many of the online employment application processes were inaccessible to blind users, and users repeatedly asked for assistance from the researchers when they faced accessibility problems. Only 9/32 (28.1%) of application attempts could be completed independently without any assistance. This report details the problems discovered during the usability testing and discusses the most common problems for blind users, as well as problems related to general usability. It also provides suggestions for improvement, including providing accessible feedback, unique and clear hyperlink text, properly structured layout, logical grouping of questions, clearly identified data format and required form fields, and conducting regular accessibility evaluations. It is essential that companies ensure that their online employment applications are accessible and usable for all individuals, including individuals with disabilities.

Mandatory internships are implemented in higher education curricula in order to ease the labour market integration of graduates. This article evaluates the utility of mandatory internships in Germany by assessing the effect on graduates' transition from higher education to work. The authors examine whether these compulsory programmes provide extra benefits for graduates from families with lower educational backgrounds. Three different outcome variables are used to characterize the labour market entry: search duration until the first significant job, employment history complexity and wages five years after graduation. The results clearly indicate that compulsory internship programmes neither have a positive effect on labour market outcomes in general, nor are they particularly beneficial for graduates from lower educational backgrounds.

This study examines whether employment status and workplace accommodations are associated with perceived well-being among workers with disabilities. Data from the 2006 Participation and Activity Limitation Survey conducted by Statistics Canada were used to test the relationship between employment status, receipt of workplace accommodations and well-being. Findings indicated that fully utilized permanent employees showed greater life satisfaction and less perceived disability-related discrimination than either temporary workers or permanent workers who were underemployed. These findings support the theory that inadequate employment is associated with deleterious effects on employee well-being due to inferior need fulfilment and reduced social status. Workplace accommodations were associated with higher levels of well-being for all workers with disabilities and helped to mitigate the negative effects of temporary status and underemployment. These findings supported the theoretical extension of main effect and buffering models of workplace stress to the prediction of perceived workplace discrimination.

It has long been recognized that innovative policies and programs can help to ameliorate unequal opportunities to accessing post-secondary education. With the demographic reality of an aging population and the secondary school population in decline, Canada must devote attention to increasing the educational attainment levels of disadvantaged and under-represented groups in order to meet growing social and economic challenges. This paper highlights some of the contemporary challenges facing post-secondary education in Canada and focuses on the need for a system that is more democratic, open, and accessible. The paper draws upon current research about the challenges faced by groups of Canadians who experience diffi culty accessing higher learning opportunities. It explores a number of possibilities for increasing educational participation and attainment for those who have traditionally been excluded from the system.

Studies on labour-market disadvantages of ethnic and visible minorities in Canada have focused, primarily, on earning differentials leaving other important socioeconomic indicators such as employment and occupational distribution insufficiently examined. These studies have rarely included religion as one of the explanatory variables, despite the presence of sizable religious communities and considerable religious diversity in Canada. Given the rise in anti-Muslim sentiment and the increase in Islamophobia, religion becomes an important factor. In this study, we argue that the Canadian labour market excludes/includes individuals based on their physical visibility and religious affiliation. We analyse data obtained from the Canadian 2011 National Household Survey. The analysis supports the existence of a hierarchy of labour market outcomes predicated on both visibility and religious affiliation. It is suggested that the existing labour market inequality among the various ethno-religious groups is shaped largely by physical visibility and cultural proximity to the dominant group. The results provide evidence for aMuslim penalty'.