Asian Working Research Articles

Employment of Central Asian Migrant Workers in Russia during the COVID‑19 Pandemic

In the context of the COVID‑19 pandemic and the economic crisis in Russia, the labour market has changed, affecting the foreign labour force, which is an important category of it. In these changed conditions, the study of the employment of labour migrants from Central Asia is becoming more relevant. Based on a sociological study conducted by the author in Russia in 2020–2021 among 900 labour migrants from Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan in the cities of Moscow, St. Petersburg and Yekaterinburg, the type and scope of their employment at home are analysed. The type and scope of their employment in Russia, the method of finding a job and competition with Russians, the type of colleagues and the length of stay in Russia are analysed. The analysis analyses the average monthly and hourly wages in Russia on average per year in rouble and dollar terms and participation in the formation of the family budget at home, the existence of a written agreement with the employer and the reasons for its absence in Russia during the COVID‑19 pandemic in the country and gender sections.

Racial and Ethnic Differences in the Perceptions of Health, Work Environment and Experiences of Work-Related Symptoms Among Cleaning Workers

This study explored racial and ethnic differences in perception of work environment, safe work practices, general health status, experience of work-related injury or illness and subsequent symptom reporting and health care seeking behaviors among cleaning workers. This study analyzed cross-sectional data obtained from 183 cleaning workers employed in a university hospital or a health sciences campus in Northern California. The sample included 120 Asians (65.6%), 37 Hispanics (20.2%), and 27 other ethnicities (14.2%); 85.7% were foreign-born. Asian workers perceived lower job control and supervisor support and higher job strain than other workers. The odds of perceiving general health as excellent or very good were lower among Asians compared to Hispanics and Others. Asians who experienced chemical-related symptoms were less likely than Hispanics and others to report the symptoms to their supervisor or seek healthcare. Our study findings indicated racial/ethnic differences in perceptions of work and general health, seeking healthcare, and reporting behaviors among cleaning workers. Asian workers, specifically, may need special attention to improve their experiences of work environments and health in the workplace.

Disposable kin: Shifting registers of belonging in global care economies

AbstractAs is well discussed in the literature, paid domestic workers become like kin through living with and caring for their employers. Exploring two disparate cases, aging Asian domestic workers in Singapore and African eldercare workers in the United States, the article focuses on two critical junctures when these kin relations are disavowed: the care worker's retirement and the death of a patient. We argue that the flexible registers of kinship that characterize care workers’ relationships with their employers revert, at the end of employment, to fixed notions of kinship based on blood and marriage. These essentialist understandings of kinship arise around inheritance and the worker's care in older age and in illness, enabling employers, states, and private care agencies to avoid post‐employment obligations to domestic workers. The fluctuation between kinship‐as‐doing and kinship‐as‐essence marginalizes domestic workers in a globalized economy as disposable kin, denying their belonging as citizens or social equals.

"Ana Mafi Khouf Min Kafeel": Counter-Narratives in Comedic Video Representations of Migrant Workers in the Arab Gulf States

In the Arab Gulf States, migrant workers are perceived as temporary and economic by dominant nationalist narratives that justify restrictive migration policies and exclusive citizenship laws. This article argues that online popular culture productions offer a space for the emergence of counter-narratives that assert the presence of migrants and advocate social change from below. I examine representations of South Asian workers in short comic skits and song videos produced during the last decade by comedians and actors in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain. Focusing on both aesthetic innovation and limitations, my analysis demonstrates how these videos utilize parody and satire to criticize the exclusion of migrant workers. I compare videos produced by Gulf citizens and non-citizens and argue that, even though the producers navigate different boundaries and offer distinct performances, they challenge authority and national boundaries by centralizing spaces of labor and turning them into sites of agency and cultural expression.

The Best Asian Short Stories 2020 ed. by Zafar Anjum

Reviewed by: The Best Asian Short Stories 2020 ed. by Zafar Anjum Lopamudra Basu The Best Asian Short Stories 2020 Ed. Zafar Anjum Singapore. Kitaab. 2020. 245 pages. THE BEST ASIAN Short Stories 2020 is a volume showcasing the vitality and range of contemporary Asian writers. The volume is remarkable in offering both geographic breadth in representations of Asian lives as well as an impressive array of literary genres, styles, and voices. At the heart of this collection is the city of Singapore, the place of publication, a vibrant mix of varied Asian ethnic groups of Indian, Chinese, Malay, and other origins [End Page 71] producing a hybrid Asian sensibility, which erodes strict national affiliations but produces its own set of hierarchies based on the workings of global capital and invisible labor. The internal schisms of class and ethnicity are highlighted in the adoption narrative in Jasmine Adams’s “A Woman’s Place.” In Kelly Kaur’s “The Singapore Dream,” the allure and nostalgia for Singapore is evoked through the point of view of Desmond, who leaves Singapore to immigrate to Calgary, Canada, only to face the recession caused by a slump in oil prices. When his family returns to Singapore for a visit, his daughters decide to stay on in Singapore for better opportunities, making Desmond question his life choices. In Seema Punwani’s “Spin,” Singapore is represented through the perspective of an expat, who, in spite of his privilege as a corporate elite, remains disconnected from his family. We are offered a glimpse of the seamier side of Singaporean life in Phong Huynh’s “As Legal as We Are, ” where we see the protagonist, a very successful but insecure gay man from Chennai, wanting to climb the echelons of the gay social ladder while succumbing to the darker reality of his addictions. The precarious lives of undocumented migrants is evoked in Murali Kamma’s “The Route to Lucky Inn,” while Farah Guznavi depicts the grit and resiliency of Asian migrant workers from Sri Lanka and the Philippines who work as cleaning staff in luxury hotels in the Gulf states. Asian life radiates out into other cityscapes in this collection. We are offered a poetic evocation of the seaside in Mumbai in Sudeep Sen’s “Gold Squares on Muslin,” where a narrator is seeking a piece of muslin as a canvas to write and paint on. This story becomes an allegory of the creative process and its inevitable loneliness. In Areeba Nasir’s “Bench,” we are transported to a small town in Uttarakhand, India, where flash floods wash away villages, and where a mother is unable to come to terms with the loss of her beloved daughter in an accident until her husband brings home a young girl orphaned by the floods. In Moazzam Sheikh’s “Sunshine,” the theme of the primal fear of the loss of a child morphs into the more inevitable passing away of a childhood and the emptiness it leaves behind. The final story in the collection, “Dog at the End of the World,” by Jon Gresham, is a memoir of the pandemic in an island city narrated from the point of view of a dog. Although beginning in a realist mode, the story quickly changes to a vision of an apocalyptic end of civilization but still celebrates the devotion of the dog toward his mistress. The stories in the collection traverse a variety of genres and styles from the realist to the surrealist, from detective fiction to social satire. It is a celebration of Asian life, its heterogeneity, energy, and shared common bonds. In a world where literature is often classified by national boundaries, an attempt to break borders and depict Asian lives within the continent of Asia and in diasporic communities in North America, Australia, and Britain is a bold reimaging of the field of Asian literature. Lopamudra Basu University of Wisconsin–Stout Copyright © 2022 World Literature Today and the Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma

An L.A. story: The impact of housing costs on commuting

The empirical impact of housing costs on commuting is still relatively poorly understood. This impact is especially salient in California given the state's notoriously high housing costs, which have forced many lower- and middle-class households to move inland in search of affordable housing at the cost of longer commutes. To investigate this linkage, we relied on Generalized Structural Equation Modeling and analyzed 2012 CHTS data for Los Angeles County – the most populous county in the U.S. Our model, which jointly explains commuting distance and time, accounts for residential self-selection and car use endogeneity, while controlling for household characteristics and land use around residences and workplaces. We find that households who can afford more expensive neighborhoods have shorter commute distances (−2.3% and − 3.1% per additional $100 k to median home values around workplaces and residences respectively). Job density, distance to the CBD, and land-use diversity around workplaces have a relatively greater impact on commuting than the corresponding variables around commuters' residences. Compared to non-Hispanics, Hispanic workers commute longer distances (+3.5%), and so do African American (+5.1%) and Asian (+2.0%) workers compared to Caucasians, while college educated workers have shorter (−2.6% to −3.6%) commutes. Furthermore, commuters in the top income brackets tend to have faster commutes than lower income workers. Finally, women's commutes are ~41% shorter than men's, possibly because they are balancing work with domestic responsibilities. Better understanding the determinants of commuting is critical to inform housing and transportation policy, improve the health of commuters, reduce air pollution, and achieve climate goals.

Discrimination experienced by Asian Canadian and Asian American health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic: a qualitative study.

Background:Asian Canadians and Asian Americans face COVID-19–related discrimination. The objective of this qualitative study was to explore the experiences of Asian health care workers dealing with discrimination, with a focus on racial micro-agressions, in Canada and the United States during the COVID-19 pandemic.Methods:We adopted a qualitative descriptive approach. We used convenience and snowball sampling strategies to recruit participants. We conducted individual, in-depth semistructured interviews with Asian health care workers in Canada and the US via videoconferencing between May and September 2020. Eligible participants had to self-identify as Asian and be currently employed as a health care worker with at least 1 year of full-time employment. We used an inductive thematic approach to analyze the data.Results:Thirty participants were recruited. Fifteen (50%) were Canadians and 15 (50%) were Americans; there were 18 women (60%), 11 men (37%) and 1 nonbinary person. Most of the participants were aged 25–29 years (n = 16, 53%). More than half were nurses (n = 16, 53%); the other participants were attending physicians (n = 5), physiotherapists (n = 3), resident physicians (n = 2), a midwife, a paramedic, a pharmacist and a physician assistant. Two themes emerged from the data: a surge of racial microaggressions related to COVID-19 and a lack of institutional and public acknowledgement. Participants noted that they have experienced an increase in racial microaggressions during the COVID-19 pandemic. They have also experienced threats of violence and actual violence. The largely silent organizational response to the challenges being faced by people of Asian descent and the use of disparaging terms such as “China virus” in the early stages of the pandemic were a substantial source of frustration.Interpretation:Asian health care workers have experienced challenges in dealing with racial microaggressions related to COVID-19 in the US and Canada. More research should be done on the experiences of Asian Americans and Asian Canadians, both during and after the pandemic, and supportive measures should be put in place to protect Asian health care workers.

"They Wanted to Talk to a 'Real Doctor'": Predictors, Perpetrators, and Experiences of Racial and Ethnic Discrimination Among Healthcare Workers.

BackgroundRacial and ethnic diversity of healthcare workers have benefits on team functioning and patient care. However, a significant barrier to retaining diverse providers is discrimination.ObjectiveTo assess the predictors, perpetrators, and narratives of racial discrimination among healthcare workers.DesignSurvey study.ParticipantsHealthcare workers employed at academic hospitals.Main MeasuresWe assessed prevalence and perpetrators of racial and ethnic discrimination using the General Ethnic Discrimination Scale. We included an open-ended question asking respondents to recount experiences of discrimination and analyzed responses using grounded theory.Key ResultsOf the 997 participants, 12.2% were females from backgrounds underrepresented in medicine (URM), 4.0% URM males, 10.1% Asian females, 4.7% Asian males, 49.1% non-Hispanic White females, and 19.8% non-Hispanic White males. Among healthcare workers of color, 85.2% reported discrimination. Over half of URM females (51.4%), URM males (52.6%), and Asian females (62.5%) reported discrimination by patients. About 20–25% of URM females, URM males, and Asian females reported discrimination by teachers, supervisors, co-workers, and institutions. In adjusted binary logistic models, URM females had 10.14 odds (95% confidence interval [95%CI]: 5.13, 20.02, p<.001), URM males 6.23 odds (95%CI: 2.59, 14.98, p<.001), Asian females 7.90 odds (95%CI: 4.07, 15.33, p<.001), and Asian males 2.96 odds (95% CI: 1.47, 5.97, p=.002) of reporting discrimination compared with non-Hispanic White males. Needing more support was associated with 2.51 odds (95%CI: 1.54, 4.08, p<.001) of reporting discrimination. Our qualitative findings identified that the murder of George Floyd intensified URM healthcare workers’ experiences of discrimination through increased fear of violence and requests for unpaid diversity work. Asian healthcare workers reported that pandemic-related anti-Asian violence shaped their experiences of discrimination through increased fear of violence and care refusal from patients.ConclusionsOur findings provide insights into experienced discrimination among healthcare workers and opportunities for hospitals to create programs that improve inclusivity.

Seafarers in fishing: A year into the COVID-19 pandemic

This paper builds on our earlier publication that examined COVID-19, instability and migrant fish workers in Asia during the initial six months of the pandemic. Drawing on interviews with port-based support organizations and various other international organizations, we outline how pre-existing structural marginalizations of seafarers in distant water fishing has made them particularly vulnerable to the negative impacts of pandemic management policies for seafarers. We focus our analysis on obstacles to crew change and reduced access to crucial shore services. The basis of these longer term marginalizations includes the exclusion of fishing from the Maritime Labor Convention, the marginal status of fishing among global organizations concerned with seafarers, the dispersed ownership of fishing vessels compared to concentrated corporate ownership in shipping, lack of unionization, and frequent inaccessibility of consular assistance in fishing ports. We also highlight differences among important fishing ports, showing that repatriation of crew and access to shore services is the outcome of negotiation among a constellation of port-based actors.

The Smoking Behavior of Health Workers in Asia: A Literature Review

Health workers are role models in preventing smoking behavior, yet many are smokers themselves. This study reviews and analyzes the smoking behavior of health workers in Asian countries, based on databases such as PubMed, EBSCO, and Google Scholar in 2013–2018. It is shown that the prevalence of smoking amongst health workers was 4.6–44%, with the nursing profession showing a higher level than other health professions and with a higher ratio of male to female smokers. Health workers are aware of the dangers of smoking, including the effects of cardiovascular disease, respiratory disease, oral cancer, atherosclerosis, hypertension, fetal disorders, and infertility. However, the factors that lead to smoking include stress, the influence of friends or family who smoke, and addiction. Health workers are responsible for providing smoking prevention education. However, there are still obstacles to its implementation due to their smoking habits and lack of expertise in educating others. Smoking prohibition policies in the workplace, the training of health workers, and smoking prevention service facilities need to be considered by Asian countries to prevent smoking. Abstrak Analisis Perilaku Merokok pada Petugas Kesehatan di Asia: Literatur Review. Petugas kesehatan merupakan role model dalam pencegahan perilaku merokok, akan tetapi masih banyak petugas kesehatan yang merokok. Studi ini meninjau dan menganalisis perilaku merokok petugas kesehatan di negara-negara Asia, bersumber pada basis data seperti PubMed, EBSCO, dan Google Scholar, tahun 2013–2018. Hasil studi menunjukkan perilaku merokok petugas kesehatan memiliki prevalensi sebesar 4,6–44% dengan profesi keperawatan menunjukkan tingkat yang lebih tinggi daripada profesi kesehatan lainnya, dan dengan rasio perokok laki-laki lebih tinggi dari perokok perempuan. Petugas kesehatan menyadari bahaya merokok dan dampak penyakitnya seperti penyakit kardiovaskuler, penyakit pernapasan, kanker mulut, aterosklerosis, hipertensi, gangguan janin, dan kemandulan. Faktor yang memengaruhi merokok adalah stres, pengaruh teman atau keluarga yang merokok, dan kecanduan. Petugas kesehatan bertanggung jawab untuk mem-berikan pendidikan pencegahan merokok. Namun, masih terdapat kendala dalam pelaksanaannya karena kebiasaan pribadi merokok mereka dan kurangnya keahlian dalam mendidik orang lain. Kebijakan larangan merokok di tempat kerja, pelatihan tenaga kesehatan, dan fasilitas layanan pencegahan merokok perlu diperhatikan oleh negara-negara Asia untuk pencegahan perilaku merokok. Kata kunci: perilaku merokok, petugas kesehatan, role model

How to use a mask

In the beginnings of the COVID-19 pandemic, Asians wearing masks in white colonized countries became a target of white supremacist violence. This piece of fabric has been a point of contention for anti-maskers who feel like their freedoms are being threatened. To dispel the myths of why people might wear masks, this is a basic 101 tutorial on how to use a mask. The comic tutorial breaks down what this apparently exotic cultural artifact is, why people wear it and how to use it properly. This is directed at white people so that next time they see East Asians wearing face masks, they will be equipped with all the relevant information to NOT punch us in the face, kick us out of supermarkets, bully Asian hospital workers, or abuse us on the streets or online. This comic was inspired by the safety instruction cards on flights and the patronizing posters in Anglo colonial university washrooms that tell Chinese students not to stand on the toilet seats. Thanks to Kirsty Fong for the idea and for being a reference.

Asian healthcare workers in the COVID-19 pandemic: a long road to recovery.

Asian healthcare workers have experienced racism during the COVID-19 pandemic, including from the medical community, with potentially long-term consequences for those affected.

Association between shift work and risk of metabolic syndrome: A systematic review and meta-analysis

AimsA comprehensive assessment of the association of shift work with risk of metabolic syndrome (MetS) through a systematic review and meta-analysis has not been reported. We aimed to evaluate the relationship from observational studies. Data synthesisWe searched PubMed, Embase, and Web of Science databases from inception to December 16, 2020. Articles were chosen according to established inclusion criteria. Studies with data on men and women and different types of shift work were treated as independent studies. Relative risks (RRs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were pooled by using random-effects models with heterogeneity (I2) > 50%; otherwise, a fixed-effects model was used. A total of 7192 articles was searched from PubMed, Embase and Web of science. Finally, we included 23 articles (38 studies) in this meta-analysis. The pooled RRs and 95% CI of MetS risk with shift work, 1-shift work, 2-shift work, and 3-shift work versus non-shift work were 1.30 (95% CI 1.19–1.41), 0.95 (95% CI 0.82–1.11), 1.19 (95% CI 0.91–1.56) and 1.17 (95% CI 1.00–1.37), respectively. The results from subgroup analyses stratified by sex, age, and region supported our overall findings that shift work is a risk factor for MetS. ConclusionsThis meta-analysis suggests that shift work increases risk of MetS. Higher risk of MetS was found in the shift workers who were 2-shift or 3-shift or women or Asian workers.

COVID-19 infection across workplace settings in Qatar: a comparison of COVID-19 positivity rates of screened workers from March 1st until July 31st, 2020

IntroductionCOVID-19 transmission was significant amongst Qatar’s working population during the March–July 2020 outbreak. The study aimed to estimate the risk of exposure for COVID-19 across various workplace settings and demographics in the State of Qatar.MethodsA cross-sectional study was conducted utilizing surveillance data of all workplaces with 10 or more laboratory-confirmed cases of COVID-19. These workplaces were categorized using a mapping table adapted from the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) codes, 2017 version. The data was then analyzed to estimate and compare the positivity rate as an indicator of the risk of developing COVID-19 infection across various workplace settings in the State of Qatar.ResultsThe highest positivity rate was reported amongst the Construction & Related (40.0%) and the Retail & Wholesale Trade sectors (40.0%), whereas, the lowest positivity rate was attributed to the healthcare workplace setting (11.0%). The highest incidence of COVID-19 infections occurred in South Asian nationalities and in the male gender. The private funded sector employees have seen higher positivity rate than employees of the governmental funded sector.ConclusionThe elevated risk of infection in Construction and Retail & Wholesale Trade is probably due to environmental and educational vulnerabilities. The predominant labor force of those workplace categories is South Asian craft and male manual workers. Alternatively, the better containment of the healthcare workplace setting can be attributed to the enforcement of infection control and occupational safety measures. These findings imply the importance of using preventive and surveillance strategies for high-risk workplace settings appropriately.

Studying the social determinants of COVID-19 in a data vacuum.

Race‐based and other demographic information on COVID‐19 patients is not being collected consistently across provinces in Canada. Therefore, whether the burden of COVID‐19 is falling disproportionately on the shoulders of particular demographic groups is relatively unknown. In this article, we first provide an overview of the available geographic and demographic data related to COVID‐19. We then make creative use of these existing data to fill the vacuum and identify key demographic risk factors for COVID‐19 across Canada's health regions. Drawing on COVID‐19 counts and tabular census data, we examine the association between communities’ demographic composition and the number of COVID‐19 infections. COVID‐19 infections are higher in communities with larger shares of Black and low‐income residents. Our approach offers a way for researchers and policymakers to use existing data to identify communities nationwide that are vulnerable to the pandemic in the absence of more detailed demographic and more granular geographic data.

The Double-Edged Sword of Health and Safety: COVID-19 and the Policing and Exclusion of Migrant Asian Massage Workers in North America

Migrant Asian massage workers in North America first experienced the impacts of COVID-19 in the final weeks of January 2020, when business dropped drastically due to widespread xenophobic fears that the virus was concentrated in Chinese diasporic communities. The sustained economic devastation, which began at least 8 weeks prior to the first social distancing and shelter in place orders issued in the U.S. and Canada, has been further complicated by a history of aggressive policing of migrant massage workers in the wake of the war against human trafficking. Migrant Asian massage businesses are increasingly policed as locales of potential illicit sex work and human trafficking, as police and anti-trafficking initiatives target migrant Asian massage workers despite the fact that most do not provide sexual services. The scapegoating of migrant Asian massage workers and criminalization of sex work have led to devastating systemic and interpersonal violence, including numerous deportations, arrests, and deaths, most notably the recent murder of eight people at three Atlanta-based spas. The policing of sex workers has historically been mobilized along fears of sexually transmitted disease and infection, and more recently, within the past two decades, around a moral panic against sex trafficking. New racial anxieties around the coronavirus as an Asian disease have been mobilized by the state to further cement the justification of policing Asian migrant workers along the axes of health, migration, and sexual labor. These justifications also solidify discriminatory social welfare regimes that exclude Asian migrant massage workers from accessing services on the basis of the informality and illegality of their work mixed with their precarious citizenship status. This paper draws from ethnographic participant observation and survey data collected by two sex worker organizations that work primarily with massage workers in Toronto and New York City to examine the double-edged sword of policing during the pandemic in the name of anti-trafficking coupled with exclusionary policies regarding emergency relief and social welfare, and its effects on migrant Asian massage workers in North America. Although not all migrant Asian massage workers, including those surveyed in this paper, provide sexual services, they are conflated, targeted, and treated as such by the state and therefore face similar barriers of criminalization, discrimination, and exclusion. This paper recognizes that most migrant Asian massage workers do not identify as sex workers and does not intend to label them as such or reproduce the scapegoating rhetoric used by law enforcement. Rather, it seeks to analyze how exclusionary attitudes and policies towards sex workers are transferred onto migrant Asian massage workers as well whether or not they provide sexual services.

Unnecessary, Counterproductive, and Unjust: The Case Against Hate Crime Legislation

The 2021 Atlanta shootings of six Asian spa workers has sparked interest regarding hate crime legislation. In light of the push to expand such legislation, this Article examines the often-overlooked problems with hate crime legislation. Critiques of hate crime legislation covered include arbitrariness of which groups are protected classes; incentivization of unhealthy competition among disadvantaged groups; increased difficulty of prosecution at trial; inconsistent enforcement; and counterproductive effects, such as increased crimes and hate group activity. And all of this is against the backdrop of legislation that is largely unnecessary since motive can be considered as an aggravating factor at sentencing in the absence of hate crime legislation.

Gender differences in experience and reporting of acute symptoms among cleaning staff.

Cleaning tasks pose risks of hazardous chemical exposure and adverse health effects for cleaning workers. We examined gender differences among cleaning staff in the experience of chemical-related symptoms and in reporting to supervisors. We analyzed cross-sectional reports from 171 university hospital or campus cleaning staff on chemical exposures to cleaning products, experience of acute symptoms, reporting of symptoms to supervisors, as well as demographic and psychosocial factors (risk perception, job demand/control, supervisor/co-worker support, and safety climate). Results were analized using multivariable logistic regression, adjusting for demographic, job, and psychosocial factors. Interactions of gender and psychosocial variables were also examined. Men and women reported different frequencies for exposure-related tasks. Acute symptoms of chemical exposure were more prevalent in women compared with men (46.0% vs. 25.4%; adjusted odds ratio [OR] = 2.63; 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.27-5.46). Women were more concerned about exposure to cleaning chemicals (p = 0.029) but reported symptoms to their supervisor less often than men (18.5% vs. 40.6%, adjusted OR = 0.28; 95% CI 0.09-0.93). More supervisor support was significantly associated with less frequent symptom experience among women (OR = 0.83; 95% CI 0.70-0.99). Asian workers and less educated workers were less likely than others to report symptoms to supervisors. Gender differences in symptom reporting to supervisors were not explained by psychosocial factors. Women may have increased susceptibility or perception of symptoms from cleaning compared to men, but this may be mitigated by supervisor support. Female Asian workers with lower education may perceive more significant barriers in reporting work-related symptoms to supervisors. Further research is needed to explore factors related to underreporting.

Exploring subjective experiences of international social workers in Asia: Content analysis of Japanese field reports

AbstractThe aim of this study is to explore the subjective and practical experiences of international social workers, focusing on the content, outcomes, impact, and related factors of their activities in Asia. Individual reports of social workers dispatched from Japan to 11 Asian countries during the period of 2003–2018 were collected (n = 59). A mixed quantitative and qualitative content analysis was used to examine their experiences and perceptions in the field. Parts of their reports were categorized mainly into the relationship between requested activities and perceived needs, the type of social work activities conducted, experiences of success and failure in activities, and perceived outcomes and impact of the activities. The quantitative analysis showed that approximately 48.9% of the social workers described positive outcomes of their activities and 43.9% described positive impacts of their activities on the placement or communities. The qualitative analysis revealed that they experienced a variety of difficulties, together with sociocultural and religious differences. Many of their experiences of success or failure appeared to be associated with their interactions with local stakeholders. The findings suggest the importance of the reflective and contextualized practice of international developmental social workers with local stakeholders.

An Asia-Pacific study on healthcare workers’ perceptions of, and willingness to receive, the COVID-19 vaccination

ObjectiveIn the fight against COVID-19, vaccination is vital in achieving herd immunity. Many Asian countries are starting to vaccinate frontline workers; however, expedited vaccine development has led to hesitancy among the general population. We evaluated the willingness of healthcare workers to receive the COVID-19 vaccine. MethodsFrom 12 to 21 December 2020, we recruited 1720 healthcare workers from 6 countries: China, India, Indonesia, Singapore, Vietnam and Bhutan. The self-administrated survey collected information on willingness to vaccinate, perception of COVID-19, vaccine concerns, COVID-19 risk profile, stigma, pro-socialness scale, and trust in health authorities. ResultsMore than 95% of the healthcare workers surveyed were willing to vaccinate. These respondents were more likely to perceive the pandemic as severe, consider the vaccine safe, have less financial concerns, less stigmatization regarding the vaccine, higher pro-socialness mindset and trust in health authorities. A high perceived pandemic risk index, low vaccine harm index and high pro-socialness index were independent predictors in multivariable analysis. ConclusionsThe majority of healthcare workers in Asia are willing to receive COVID-19 vaccination. Perceived COVID-19 susceptibility, low potential risk of vaccine harm and pro-socialness are the main drivers. These findings may help formulate vaccination strategies in other countries.