Semi-skilled Workers Research Articles

Social class and self-reported health status among men and women: what is the role of work organisation, household material standards and household labour?

Social class understood as social relations of ownership and control over productive assets taps into parts of the social variation in health that are not captured by conventional measures of social stratification. The objectives of this study are to analyse the association between self-reported health status and social class and to examine the role of work organisation, material standards and household labour as potential mediating factors in explaining this association. We used the Barcelona Health Interview Survey, a cross-sectional survey of 10,000 residents of the city's non-institutionalised population in 2000. This was a stratified sample, strata being the 10 districts of the city. The present study was conducted on the working population, aged 16–64 years (2345 men and 1874 women). Social class position was measured with Erik Olin Wright's indicators according to ownership and control over productive assets. The dependent variable was self-reported health status. The independent variables were social class, age, psychosocial and physical working conditions, job insecurity, type of labour contract, number of hours worked per week, possession of appliances at home, as well as household labour (number of hours per week, doing the housework alone and having children, elderly or disabled at home). Several hierarchical logistic regression models were performed by adding different blocks of independent variables. Among men the prevalence of poor reported health was higher among small employers and petit bourgeois, supervisors, semi-skilled (adjusted odds ratio—aOR: 4.92; 95% CI: 1.88–12.88) and unskilled workers (aOR: 7.69; 95%CI: 3.01–19.64). Work organisation and household material standards were associated with poor health status with the exception of number of hours worked per week. Work organisation variables were the main explanatory variables of social class inequalities in health, although material standards also contributed. Among women, only unskilled workers had poorer health status than the referent category of manager and skilled supervisors (aOR: 3.25; 95%CI: 1.37–7.74). All indicators of work organisation and household material standards reached statistical significance, excepting the number of hours worked per week. In contrast to men, among women the number of hours per week of household labour was associated with poor health status (aOR: 1.02; 95% CI: 1.01–1.03). Showing a different pattern from men in the full model, household material deprivation and hours of household labour per week were associated with poor health status among women. Our findings suggest that among men, part of the association between social class positions and poor health can be accounted for psychosocial and physical working conditions and job insecurity. Among women, the association between the worker (non-owner, non-managerial, and un-credentiated) class positions and health is substantially explained by working conditions, material well being at home and amount of household labour.

The Development of Construction Education in Singapore

In an earlier study, learning by doing (LBD) was found to be insignificant in the Singapore construction industry. This paper examines the development of the formal education system to uncover some of the reasons why so little learning by doing occurs in the construction industry. Under the colonial authorities, construction education was neglected. But after political independence, it developed slowly despite a massive public housing program. Much of the labor supply comes from low-wage unskilled and semi-skilled foreign workers. In the case of local construction workers, skills training takes place within the context of a deliberate general education policy of streaming to reduce the high attrition rate that resulted from the colonial and post-colonial bilingual policy. Screening channels the bulk of weaker students towards the construction sector. At the tertiary level, the rapid expansion of polytechnic education to support high economic growth raises the issue of education quality and limited opportunities for upgrading. The result is a distinctive fourtier system of production based on foreign workers, local semi-skilled workers, technicians and professionals. The stark subclass consciousness is likely to impede learning.

Women, Power, and Dissent in the Hills of Carolina (review)

Mary K. Anglin. 2002. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press. This ethnographic and historical study of the industry in Western North Carolina is based on research conducted in the 1980s; publication in book form was delayed to protect workers who might suffer reprisal for their candid discussion of ambiguous relationships with local plant owners and supervisors and their revelations regarding health and safety issues at Hill Mica Company, the primary locus for ethnographic description. Anglin may have delayed publication but she gained additional insight and perspective on her dissertation research during the intervening years. Intensified globalization and restructuring of local economies in the late twentieth century have made her work all the more pertinent to current scholarship in feminist studies, anthropology of work, labor history, and Appalachian studies. When George Hicks published Appalachian Valley in 1966, he made passing mention of the historical importance of mining in northwestern North Carolina but said nothing at all about the where a semi-skilled work force composed mostly of women processed for industrial uses. Concluding the introduction to this book with Jo Carson's poem, Stories I Ain't Told Nobody Yet, Anglin positions her narrative to challenge stereotypes of Appalachian passivity and to balance an extensive literature on the male-dominated coal mining industry. Labor history of the West Virginia and Kentucky coalfields describes the struggle of working class people against impersonal and often ruthless corporations for decent wages, workplace safety, and free exercise of their rights as citizens. Mine wars and deadly disasters periodically have brought national media as well as scholarly attention to bear on the plight of coal miners and their families. In contrast, few outside of western North Carolina have any knowledge of mining and fewer still are aware of the work that goes on in the small rural plants known as mica houses where workers process and fabricate parts from that now is mostly imported. Anglin tells the story of women's work in that industry for the first time. Using documentary sources, oral histories, and ethnographic fieldwork, she describes how women's skill at tasks such as fabricating plate made them key to survival of western North Carolina's while their wages became increasingly essential to household welfare. Anglin effectively interweaves theory and description, historical context developed from social statistics for Pike and Clark counties in Western North Carolina, ethnographic observations, frank discussion of the challenges encountered during fieldwork, and an account of her developing relationships with the women who became her mentors at Hill Mica Company and primary narrators of occupational and life histories. Chapter one offers a brief overview of the social landscape of Pike and Clark counties; however, census records and other documentary sources provide only the sketchiest glimpses of women's participation in local economies and shed even less light on the lived complexity of social relations across class, gender, race and ethnic differences. Anglin turned to oral histories to supply temporal and socio-cultural context for ethnographic fieldwork centered in the workplace; but conversely, observation of shop floor politics and interactions with co-workers away from the plant made possible a richer interpretation of the narratives than could have emerged from a conventional oral history project. Chapter two details the difficulties of initiating and continuing fieldwork in a social field of worker factions and employer-employee conflicts of interest. Anglin chose to focus her dissertation project on because of its salience in women's talk about their lives; however, both the owner-managers who initially gave access to Moth Hill and workers fearful of unemployment were concerned about the consequences of having an outsider-possibly a spy-in the house. …

Bilingualism: Relationships With Willingness to Participate in Union Activities

This study examined the effects of bilingualism on willingness to participate in union activities. Surveys were completed by bilingual Hispanic members ( n = 48), monolingual (Spanish-only) Hispanic members ( n = 25), and monolingual (English-only) White and Black members ( n = 215, n = 61, respectively) from a local union representing semiskilled workers. The concept of second-culture competence from biculturalism theory was used to explain the influence of bilingualism on willingness to participate. In contrast with White and Black members, bilingual Hispanic members were more willing to participate, whereas monolingual Hispanic members were less willing to participate. Implications for union policy on enhancing participation among Hispanic members are discussed.

Profile of women presenting for abortions in Singapore at the National University Hospital

The study was conducted to profile women seeking abortions at the National University Hospital, with particular interest in the trend of teenage pregnancies with the aim of identifying risk factors for late presentation for abortions. All patients who underwent an abortion at our center from January 1, 1996 to December 31, 2000 were recruited. Data were entered into a prepared questionnaire during the mandatory pre-abortion counseling sessions and completed at the 6-week post-abortion follow-up. This was then keyed into a database (SPSS Version 10), and the results were analyzed. Multivariate analysis was used in identifying risk factors associated with late presentation for abortions. Chi-square analysis of variables was used where relevant. A total of 1370 women presented for induced abortions during the period of study. The mean age of women was 29.6 years. Most women were either homemakers (35.3%) or semi-skilled workers (28.5%) with at least a secondary school education (58.3%). The majority were married (75.5%). There was a significant trend in the proportion of single women seeking abortions, from 18.3% in 1996 to 27.8% in 2000 (p < 0.05). At the same time, the proportion of women presenting for repeat abortions also increased from 13.8% in 1996 to 33.2% in 2000 (p < 0.05). Teenage abortions made up 117 (8.5%) of the study group, of which 95% were single women. Significant proportions (52.1%) were students at the time of abortion. In contrast to women above 20 years of age, pregnant teenagers were more likely not to have used any contraception (67.1% vs. 37.3%) and more likely to present late for abortion (18.8% vs. 10.4%). Teenage pregnancies are a major risk factor for late presentation for abortions. This emphasizes the need for availability and easy access to early abortion counseling, and the need for sex education with use of contraception starting in schools, to reduce abortions among teenagers.

The Textile and Clothing Industries Under the Fifth Kondratieff Wave: Some Insights from the Case of Hong Kong

This paper proposes that the world's textile and clothing industries have become increasing vertically disintegrated with a few flexible production regions (the “cream” portion) engaging in creative, innovative, dynamic and high value-added activities, and an expanding number and spatial extent of regions (the “cake” portion) taking part in low value-added activities. In-between is an “artificial” layer protected by the international regulatory framework. This layer has characteristics of both the “cream” and “cake” layers. On the one hand, the labor force in this layer suffers from low job mobility and low-paid blue-collar work of the “cake portion” and is dominated by female semi-skilled workers. On the other hand, industrialists and governments in this layer enjoy the profits and high export values of the “cream” portion. Under the Fifth Kondratieff wave, the textile and clothing industries have become increasingly coordinated and controlled by a thinner “cream” layer. Over time, regions in the “cake” portion will find it increasingly difficult to transform themselves into “cream” because of deep-seated structural and geographic differences.

Prevalence of obstructive lung diseases and respiratory symptoms in relation to living environment and socio-economic group

We wanted to test whether living environment, occupation and social position are risk factors for asthma and chronic bronchitis/emphysema (CBE). The prevalence of bronchial asthma, CBE, respiratory symptoms and smoking habits in a random sample of 12071 adults aged 20–59 years was assessed in a postal survey with a slightly modified questionnaire previously used in central and northern Sweden (The OLIN studies). Occupation was coded according to a socio-economic classification system. Six different living environment areas were defined; city–countryside, seaside–not seaside and living close to heavy traffic-not living close to heavy traffic. Multiple logistic regression analysis (forward conditional) was applied to estimate the association between the proposed set of risk factors and self-reported obstructive lung diseases and lower respiratory symptoms controlling for age, gender and smoking. After two reminders, the response rate was 70·1% (n=8469); 33·8% of the responders were smokers. In all, 469 subjects (5·5%) stated that they had asthma and 4·6% reported CBE. Besides smoking, which was a risk for both asthma and CBE, there were different risk patterns for self-reported asthma and CBE. In the economically active population there was a tendency that CBE was more common among ‘unskilled and semi-skilled workers’. This fact was further emphasized when the population was merged into the two groups ‘low social position’ and ‘middle/high social position’, with ‘low social position’ as a risk for CBE (OR=1·35, 95% CI=1·06–1·72). No social risk factors were identified for asthma. Living close to heavy traffic was a risk factor for asthma (OR=1·29, 95% CI=1·02–1·62) but not for CBE. Apart from this no living environmental risk factors for obstructive pulmonary diseases were identified. Asthma symptoms and long-standing cough were more common among those subjects living close to heavy traffic compared to those not living close to heavy traffic. To conclude, low social position was a risk factor for CBE and living close to heavy traffic was a risk factor for asthma.

Between `Mate' and `Scab'

This article uses the case study, informed by long-term fieldwork in factories, neighborhoods and homes, of a young worker in the Peugot automobile plant of Sochaux who is himself the son of a foundry worker in that same factory to dissect the divisions and contradictions that beset the industrial working class in contemporary French society as a result of the onset of mass secondary schooling, the normalization of high unemployment and the shift to postfordist modes of production. A deep-seated social opposition and cultural gulf is shown to emerge between older semi-skilled workers and younger workers endowed with school credentials (albeit devalued ones) which splinters the class asunder and further contributes to its collective demoralization and deconstruction. On the one side stands the generation of the fathers who, weakened by the decomposition and precarousness of the conditions of existence of the popular classes, encounter insuperable difficulties in transmitting their social and political heritage, their shopfloor know-how and tactics, modes of resistance at work, masculine sociability and political forms of expression in the workshop. On the other side, their sons have acquired in the course of their secondary schooling (which recently became near-universal in France) social dispositions, bodily demeanors and cultural aspirations that lead them to distance themselves from a heritage which consigns them to remaining `mere workers' when their ambition is to escape from the class and its collective entrapment.

Shifting Classes: Interactions with Industry and Gender Shifts in the 1980s

Data drawn from Population Census of Great Britain suggest that both the images of proletarianisation and upward shift of the class structure are over-generalised. Shift- share analysis is used for the period 1981-1991 to explore the complex interactions between changes in class composition within industrial sectors, change in the relative size of sectors and sex composition shifts (within classes, within sectors and within class/sector categories). For example, sector shifts explain change in numbers of self-employed professionals and semi-skilled manual workers but changes in class composition within sectors account for changes in numbers of managers, non-manual ancillary workers and artists, unskilled workers and own account workers other than professionals. Change in class composition does not account for the change in the sex ratios within classes. Although sector shifts contribute to a decline of the male/female ratio in most classes, this process is uneven, with both declining male dominated and growing female dominated sectors, whose effect is partly counterbalanced by growing male dominated and declining female dominated sectors.

Retraining the Unemployed in a Model of Equilibrium Employment

An equilibrium model of search and matching is developed to analyse the effects of retraining the unemployed on the market for skilled (or semi-skilled) workers. Versions of the model with free entry of vacancies and fixed numbers of jobs are considered. The latter environment exhibits multiple equilibria. While subsidized training (and enforced participation) is justified on employment grounds, it cannot be justified on efficiency grounds. Policies that, ceteris paribus, lower unemployment, also reduce the incentive to train. When such policies are introduced to a training economy, training may cease and unemployment can rise.

Study of public and private hospital care on a population basis, 1986-1996

The last decade saw the creation and implementation of the Brazilian National Health System (NHS)--public, universal and equalitarian--with the objective of offering wide coverage to meet the population's health needs. The objective of the study was the assessment of the evolution of public and private hospital care on a populational basis during the period of the implementation of the NHS. The 984,142 inpatients of the general hospitals of Ribeirão Preto, Brazil, during the period 1986 to 1996 were studied and those of them living in their own municipal district were selected. The inpatients are classified according to the financing system as private, pre-payment and NHS; the social situation of the patients and the profile of hospital morbidity are analysed. In the period studied a continuous growth in the number of hospitalizations is observed, both in absolute numbers and in coefficient per thousand inhabitants, increasing from 43,773 to 55,844 inpatients per year. Though when the categories of the hospitalizations are studied, it is seen that private inpatients present a reduction both in absolute numbers and as a coefficient from 3,181 (7.3%) to 2,215 (3.9%); the NHS inpatients decrease in absolute numbers and in a percentage by a third at the end of the period--falling from 33,254 (76.0%) to 29,373 (51.7%). On the other hand the pre-payment inpatient system triplicates in absolute numbers and duplicates by rate for inhabitant--from 7,338 (16.8%) to 25,256 (44.4%). The NHS hospital care attends mainly unskilled and semi-skilled manual workers; the professionals, technicians, non manual and skilled manual workers being assisted by the private services. The hospital morbidity of NHS inpatients is different from that of the private inpatient systems. The health policy in that period, limiting NHS financing, repressing demand and discouraging the private providers to work with NHS inpatients led to negative selectivity. The result was an increase in difference between standards of care as between the public and private services.

Remanufacturing: The Emergence of an Urban Industry

Demanufacturing is the disassembly and recycling of obsolete consumer products such as TV sets, personal computers, refrigerators, washing machines, and air conditioners. The basic argument of this article is that demanufacturing is an industry that will thrive in urban areas, because inner cities have a unique set of resources that provide competitive advantage to demanufacturing companies. This article also argues that demanufacturing can have a significant impact on economic development in our urban centers by creating large numbers of jobs for unskilled and semiskilled workers. A model is suggested for the development of this industry and identifies some of the challenges the industry faces, as well as solutions that can be implemented by state, local, and federal officials.

Measuring earnings inequality and median earnings in the tourism industry

The purpose of this paper is two-fold: to measure the degree of earnings inequality in tourism employees in South Korea, using the Gini coefficient and the Lorenz curve; and to examine the level of earnings based on median earnings. The results show that tourism generates a moderately equal distribution of earnings. In general, tourism performs earnings distribution better than secondary and tertiary industries, but it performs poorly as compared with primary industry. The results also indicate that tourism is more likely to improve living standards for the lower income class than secondary and tertiary industries. The analysis of median earnings, however, indicates that tourism is a low wage industry. The labor-intensive nature of the tourism industry absorbing many unskilled and semi-skilled workers might be attributed to its low wage structure. It is interesting to note that tourism was found to be advantageous to female workers in terms of earnings inequality and the level of earnings.

Enthalpimetric determination of total lead in gasoline

A method is descubed for the determination of lead alkyl additives in gasoline by direct injection enthalpimetry. The method is a single step process, iodine monochloride solution is injected into a sample of the gasoline diluted with an equal volume ofo-xylene. The system can be arranged to gave a direct reading of the concentration of the permitted lead alkyls for several concentration ranges. Once calibrated the proposed method can be operated by semi-skilled workers. The precision and accuracy are within industrial limits. The main advantages of the method are those of low cost and low time of analysis.

Race and the Shifting Burden of Job Displacement: 1982-93

Advances in the relative labor market position of black men stagnated in the 1980s, after nearly four decades of steady improvement. The structural change of the early 1980s was particularly costly for black men. Past research shows that black men faced a substantially higher risk of job displacement than white men during this period. In contrast, we provide evidence that the black disadvantage in the incidence of displacement narrowed over the 1980s and vanished by 1992-93. We document this change over the past decade and analyze its potential causes. We also examine trends in the probability of survey date employment and post-displacement earnings losses. Our analysis, based on the 1984 to 1994 Displaced Worker Surveys, shows that over the 1980s and continuing into the 1990s, racial differences in the risk of job displacement narrowed significantly. In the early 1980s recession, the displacement rate for black men employed full-time was 7.05 percent, 43.9 percent higher than the white male displacement rate of 4.9 percent. In 1992-93, the black displacement rate was 4.02 percent, 2.7 percent lower than the white rate of 4.13 percent. The characteristics of job displacement were notably different in the 1990s than in the 1980s. Perhaps the most important difference was that white-collar workers faced a higher risk of losing their jobs in the 1990s than in the 1980s. At the same time, semi-skilled blue-collar workers experienced a substantial reduction in the likelihood of job loss in the slack labor market period in the 1990s as compared to their dramatic job losses of the early 1980s. These trends, combined with the underrepresentation of black men in white-collar occupations and overrepresentation of black men in semi-skilled blue-collar occupations, contributed to the decline in the black/white displacement rate gap in the 1990s. A substantial part of the decline in the aggregate racial gap was due to large reductions in the racial displacement rate gaps within occupations. When we consider the roles of education, region and industry, we find that there were large decreases in the displacement rate gap within most categories. The decline in the probability of job displacement for blacks relative to whites was not confined to only a few types of jobs, sectors of the economy or regions of the country. The relative and absolute decline in displacement rates for black men is an improvement in their labor market situation. Our view of this improvement is tempered by our finding that black relative post-displacement outcomes remained largely unchanged over the decade.

Occupational and economic mobility and social integration of Mediterranean migrants in Germany.

Foreigners of Mediterranean immigrant origin still occupy the lowerpositions in the German labour market. The employment profile is clearlydifferent from that of German wage earners and salaried employees. Resultsfrom the German Socio-Economic Panel Study show that 60% of this foreignpopulation was employed as unskilled or semi-skilled workers in 1993. Between1984 and 1993 their occupational mobility was relatively low. The situationof the second generation has clearly improved. To a small degree they evenfound access to attractive jobs in the service sector. But compared withGermans of the same age group their occupational success is limited. Thesocial situation of foreigners is characterised by increasing segregation.

Past, Place and Paint: A Neighbourhood Mural Project in Suburban Buenos Aires

Abstract: This article discusses the creation of a mural by the neighbourhood history workshop in a working-class district of Buenos Aires. The mural was chosen as a way of giving immediacy and visibility to memories of three distinct intervals in the history of the neighbourhood, the periods before, during and after military rule. In creating the mural, participants were able to re-establish some of the community solidarity lost during the era when community leaders were subject to repression and disappearance and give voice to some of the insecurities of the present. The mural portrays some surprising presences and absences in the collective memory of the different phases of the neighbourhood's existence and points to ways in which old and new members of the community can work toward a common future.How do people make sense of a past fraught with danger and contradiction? For the members of a history workshop in a working-class neighbourhood, one answer was to paint a mural. The mural, like the workshop that produced it, calls our attention to the difficult relationship between community and place in the Greater Buenos Aires neighbourhood called Jose Ingenieros. Much of the literature on memory sees working on the past as a way of getting at and thinking about collective identity (cf. Boyarin, 1994; Friedman, 1992a, 1992b). Workshop participants also saw the neighbourhood history workshop as a location where community might be remembered and thus somehow reconstituted and positively valued. In the attempt a group of neighbours engaged their past in a process and through images that provide a point of entry for considerations of popular memory on one hand, and the social constitution of place on the other.The SettingJose Ingenieros is an intriguing location from which to examine working-class memories of Argentina's last 25 years. The neighbourhood where I conducted field work in 1991 and 1992 is comprised of 2 500 apartments in four-storey blocks with a total population of about 15 000. It is located in La Matanza, the most populous of the formerly industrial and working-class boroughs which form a ring around Argentina's cosmopolitan capital. Most residents are domestic labourers, semi-skilled construction workers, pieceworkers, low-income wage earners or self-employed.An acute housing shortage set the stage for a squatter occupation of these apartments even before they were completed. Squatters were thus part of a moment of almost revolutionary effervescence surrounding the return of Peron at the beginning of the 1973 democratic period. The space they occupied was originally constructed as part of the National Plan for the Eradication of Shanty Towns, and some of the intended inhabitants were placed in the neighbourhood as well. In the time between the toma, as the takeover is known, and the military coup in March 1976, squatters organized for the completion of the unfinished apartments and infrastructure, and for official recognition. They went beyond these most immediate concerns, however, generating lively community organizations including a health centre and a mothers' child care cooperative.Things changed after the 1976 coup. There were disappearances: delegates to the neighbourhood council, political activists and doctors from the community clinic were among those kidnapped by plain-clothes military and police. The repression included other less horrific activities as well: there were censuses in which military conscripts surrounded the neighbourhood, searched apartments, checked documents and took people in for questioning. From 1979, the neighbourhood even had a military administrator. In general, poorer neighbourhoods were seen by the state as either a refuge for, or a hotbed of subversion. These experiences made manifest the ways in which the neighbourhood itself -- unlike middleclass neighbourhoods, I would argue -- was a target of suspicion.After 10 years of democracy, everyday concerns in the neighbourhood are drugs, crime and the physical deterioration of the buildings and infrastructure due to vandalism and neglect. …

Characteristics of neurasthenia: examination and cross-cultural applicability of ICD-10 Diagnostic Criteria for Research

The purpose of this study was to examine characteristics of Yugoslav patients with neurasthenia diagnosed according to the ICD-10 Diagnostic Criteria for Research (ICD-10-DCR), and to examine the ICD-10-DCR symptoms of neurasthenia and applicability of the corresponding diagnostic criteria to Yugoslav patients with this condition. Thirty-four patients with the ICD-10-DCR neurasthenia and 31 patients with mixed anxiety and depressive disorder were compared in terms of demographic variables, results of several questionnaires, symptom profiles and comorbidity with other mental disorders. Patients with neurasthenia were less educated and more often held jobs as unskilled and semiskilled workers; they had a more chronic course of illness, tended to report more symptoms, manifested more hostility, somatization and hypochondriacal tendencies and received a comorbid diagnosis of hypochondriasis more frequently. In addition to exhaustion and weakness, the most prominent features of neurasthenia were irritability, anger, nervousness, various somatic symptoms and tension. An ICD-10-DCR diagnosis of neurasthenia could not be made in slightly over one-third of patients who would have otherwise met criteria for this diagnosis because of the imposed diagnostic hierarchy, ie, due to current comorbidity with affective disorders and generalized anxiety disorder in such patients. It is concluded that the ICD-10-DCR concept of neurasthenia is generally suitable for Yugoslav patients, except for the diagnostic hierarchy requirement. The diagnostic criteria therefore require revision in order to reflect more accurately the variability in clinical presentation of neurasthenia in different countries.

2 Analyses of Social Distances Among Classes

:This paper presents detailed analyses of eight dimensions of objective distances among social classes in Hungary and Poland based on large-scale social surveys carried out during the 1980s. The data for both countries could be fitted well with a modified log-multiplicative model that included a single set of relative class distances and class-specific tendencies for homophily across all dimensions. Social distances were greatest with regard to the selection of friends, and endogamy with regard to class of spouse and career mobility. Distances were more moderate with regard to intergenerational social mobility, endogamy with regard to spouse’s father, and similarities among siblings. They were smallest for residential segregation and two-generation intergenerational mobility. In Hungary, homophily was greatest for workers in agriculture, the self-employed, and higher professionals. The largest gaps in unidimensional class distances were between skilled and semi-skilled workers and between higher professionals and managers.

Labour Market Adjustments and Migration in Thailand

This study reviews Thailand's past economic development trends and the effects on labour market adjustments and migration. The Thai economy has grown by over 7 per cent per annum on average over the past 35 years. Growth has been accompanied by major struc tural transformations, from agrarian-based, to industry and services. Migration patterns in Thailand reflect changes in the economy and the labour market. Internally, the main migration movements are towards Bangkok and the surrounding provinces, reflecting income gaps between urban and rural areas. Many low-skilled and semi-skilled Thai workers also work abroad, particularly in the Middle East and other higher income East Asian econo mies. Thailand also has a large number of foreign workers. One group consists of highly skilled professionals who work in foreign investment related enterprises, as well as serve to fill gaps created by shortages of technical manpower. This group does not cause any major concern for Thailand. A second group consists of illegal migrant workers from Thailand's poorer neighbouring countries. This group is a major concern to the government, and concrete policies are needed to effectively deal with illegal migrant workers.