A Leap into the Future: The Australia-Japan Working Holiday Agreement and Immigration Policy
The Australia-Japan Working Holiday Agreement of 1980 represented a leap of faith on the part of both governments in their own people. Unprecedented for Japan, and breaking with Anglophone cultural stereotypes for Australia, neither government could have objectively predicted the enormous success of the agreement, or that it would become a model for many more such agreements. Both governments counted on recognition developing of the cultural benefits of the agreement. Neither could have foreseen that the agreement would eventually have significant labour market effects, mainly positive, though different, in Australia and Japan.
The overseas working holiday and graduate employment trajectories : a cross-cultural comparison
This thesis examines claims that transnational youth mobility represents a means for students and graduates to invest in employability through the adoption of a cross-national comparative approach. It employs qualitative interviews with former working holidaymakers, careers advisers, and employers in Britain and Japan, comparing accounts both within and across country contexts. The research investigates how student and graduate aspirations, orientations, and career trajectories - and employer perceptions and values - are shaped by both the economic and socio-cultural context(s) within which they are situated and their own position within this context. The research further explores variation in how experiences are mobilised and valued (i.e., as cultural and symbolic capital) according to national context, employment sector, institutional arrangements, and cultural values. It highlights how differing perceptions of experiences of work and travel overseas, and different ideas about what constitutes the ideal employable graduate, are embedded within - and illuminate key features of - specific economic and socio-cultural contexts. This challenges notions of employability that position graduate skills and attributes as discrete and measurable objects existing in an external world, carried by students and graduates, and valued by a neutral labour market. Further, the relationship between mobility and privilege itself is also shown to vary with economic and socio-cultural context. What constitutes the "right story" about experiences of work and travel overseas - and how such activities may be linked to the (re)production of social inequalities - is thus also shown to be highly contingent on context.
Environmental education in Latin American and the Caribbean: the challenges and limitations of conducting a systematic review of evaluation and research
Abstract This systematic review extends the boundary of prior reviews in the environmental education (EE) field by analyzing publications focused on Latin America and the Caribbean (LATAM). We examined peer-reviewed literature and dissertations/theses in four languages (English, French, Spanish and Portuguese) published between January 2000 and February 2018 to examine outcomes of EE interventions occurring in both formal and nonformal settings among LATAM youth up to age 18 years. Our findings reflect recurring critiques of EE, such as the field’s limited empirical research and a bias toward measuring knowledge gain. Our findings also highlight themes specific to LATAM, related to issue-based EE programs, EE versus Education for Sustainable Development, barriers to EE implementation and potential challenges posed by bias, privilege and power in LATAM-based EE research. Access to potentially appropriate publications was limited by weaknesses in search databases. Only a small selection of LATAM countries is represented in publications that met the search criteria, limiting our capacity to draw stronger conclusions about the region as a whole.