Urban Aboriginal use of fringe financial institutions: Survey evidence from Prince George, British Columbia
This paper analyses the use of fringe financial institutions (FFIs), such as payday loan and check cashing providers, by urban Aboriginal people based on a survey undertaken in Prince George, British Columbia. We found that 60% of FFIs’ clients surveyed self-identified as Aboriginal. Their characteristics, compared to the non-Aboriginal FFI clients, included having lower average incomes, lower levels of education, more likely to be female, a higher incidence of being unemployed, higher levels of financial exclusion, and less satisfaction with the service provided by FFIs. We find that government policy towards regulating the FFI industry is inadequate for meeting the basic financial needs of urban Aboriginal people.
The embeddedness of bank branch networks in immigrant gateways
Employing the concepts of embeddedness and ethnic assets, and using a mixed methods approach of in-depth interviews and the mapping of spatial data, this article examines the role of branches of various types of banks in immigrant integration in Vancouver and San Francisco. We find that the mainstream banking sector is less territorially embedded and the ethnic banking sector is more socially embedded, especially in the deployment of ethnic assets. Many banks actively pursue business opportunities by designing products and services that cater to the needs of immigrants of high socioeconomic status. Few are active in engaging unbanked and under-banked immigrants. Banks in Vancouver are more proactive in reaching out to their immigrant clientele, but those in San Francisco have begun to reach out to immigrants of lower socio-economic status. Such findings suggest policy implications for differential embeddedness and the utility of ethnic assets as a conceptual notion in financial geography and immigration studies. 
 
 
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Reposant sur des concepts de l'enchâssement et des actifs ethniques et recourant a une approche methodologique mixte afin de mener des entretiens en profondeur et cartographier les donnees spatiales, cet article explore le role des succursales de differents types de banques dans l'integration des immigrants a Vancouver et a San Francisco. Nous constatons que le secteur bancaire courant est moins enchâsse dans le territoire alors que le secteur bancaire ethnique est plus enchâsse sur le plan social, particulierement dans la mobilisation des actifs ethniques. Plusieurs banques font la promotion des possibilites d'affaires en concevant des produits et des services destines aux immigrants de niveau socio-economique plus eleve. Peu d'entre elles se donnent des moyens d'attirer les immigrants dont le compte bancaire a ete ferme ou qui n'en disposent pas. Les banques a Vancouver sont plus proactives dans le demarchage de clienteles immigrantes, tandis que celles a San Francisco ont initie des pratiques de demarchage d'immigrants dont le niveau socio-economique est plus faible. De cet etat de fait peuvent decouler, d'une part, des consequences sur les politiques qui pronent un enchâssement differentiel et, d'autre part, un interet pour la conceptualisation des actifs ethniques dans la geographie financiere et les etudes sur l'immigration.
Industrial Relations in 1988
Undoubtedly, the election of the Hawke Labor Government in 1983 marked a turning point in Australian industrial relations. To a large extent industrial turbulence receded, helped along by global econ omic instability and the influence ofthe Prices and Incomes Accord between the Australian Labor Party and the Australian Council of Trade Union (ACTU). Arguably, the apparent success of the Accord owed something to a widespread concern within unions that the election of a Liberal-National Party government at the federal level would have resulted in a major pro gram of economic regulation, especially in relation to the institutions ofthe labour market. During 1988, despite an increasingly buoyant economy, the continuing influence of these economic and political conditions ensured that the level of industrial disputation remained subdued by historical stan dards, though those opposed to the nascent corporate state or centralised wage fixing may have been heartened by signs that wage restraint was fraying at the...