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It is well understood that women’s work situations are critical to their well-being during pregnancy and in terms of potential risks to the fetus. It has also long been known that undocumented women workers face particularly difficult work conditions and being undocumented precludes access to key social benefits (i.e. public health insurance, paid maternity leave, child benefits and subsidized daycare) that support pregnant women and new mothers. Yet, this paper aims to write about the intersection of undocumented women’s pregnancy with work experiences.

Drawing on the results of a broader qualitative study that was focussed on access to healthcare for undocumented (and therefore, uninsured) women who were pregnant and gave birth in Montreal, Canada, the authors begin this paper with a review of the relevant literature for this topic related to the work conditions of undocumented women, how work exacerbates barriers to accessing healthcare and the resulting health outcomes, particularly in relation to pregnancy. The authors highlight the social determinants of health human rights framework (Solar and Irwin, 2010), before presenting methodology. In conclusion, the authors discuss how an understanding of undocumented women’s work situations sheds light on their pregnancy experiences.

The authors then present participants’ work conditions before becoming pregnant, working conditions while pregnant and employment options and pressures after giving birth.

The authors emphasize that attention to undocumented pregnant women’s work situations might help health and social service practitioners to better serve their needs at this critical point in a woman’s life and at the beginning of the life of their children, born as full citizens.

In Canada, undocumented children are “institutionally invisible” – their access to education to be found in unwritten and discretionary practices. Drawing on the experience of a three-year university-community partnership among researchers, institutional and community stakeholders, the purpose of this paper is to examine how undocumented children are constructed as excluded from school.

The establishment of this collaborative research space, helped to critically understand how this exclusion was maintained, and highlighted contradictory interpretations of policies and practices.

Proposing the analytical framework of “institutional invisibility”, the authors argue that issues of access and entitlement for undocumented children have to be often understood within unwritten and ambiguous policies and practices that make the lives of young people invisible to the institutional entities with which they interact.

The notion of institutional invisibility allows the authors to integrate the missing link between questions of access and deservingness. The paper also reflects on the role of action research in both documenting dynamics and pathways of institutional invisibility, as well as in initiating social change – as both horizontal, and vertical mobilisation.

The universality of the health system in Canada is often emphasised to contrast the differences between the Canadian and American systems of access to care. However, changes in migration patterns and tightening of administrative procedures around undocumented persons are beginning to challenge this Canadian image. Currently, there is a lack of data to support the existence and the consequences of this shift. This pilot project documents health care professionals' and community organisation workers' perceptions of the problems faced by recent migrants in accessing health care, and the health consequences of such barriers. Results confirm the existence of numerous health care access problems for both completely undocumented migrants and legal migrants who fall into the cracks of the provincial and federal health systems. The data suggests that these barriers may have important unrecognised morbidity and mortality consequences, and that they are a source of severe stress and psychological distress. To protect recent immigrant families, there is a need not only to revise the articulation between the provincial and federal health mandates but also to address the strong societal perception linking universality of health care to the notion of citizenship. Further research is warranted on this emerging social problem, but the institutional sensitivity of these issues may constitute an obstacle to a more comprehensive understanding.

Between 2012 and 2016, the Government of Canada modified health insurance for refugees and asylum seekers. In Quebec, this resulted in refusals of care and uncertainties about publicly reimbursed services, despite guaranteed coverage for people with this status under the provincial plan. The Chronic Viral Illness Service (CVIS) at the McGill University Health Centre in Montreal continued to provide care to refugees and asylum seekers living with HIV. The purpose of this paper is to explain how and why challenges brought by this policy change could be overcome.

A qualitative case study was conducted using interviews with patients and staff members, observation sessions and a review of media, documents and articles. A discussion group validated the interpretation of preliminary results.

The CVIS provides patient-centered care through a multidisciplinary team. It collectively responds to medical, social and legal issues specific to refugees. Its organizational culture and expertise explain the sustained provision of care. The team’s empathetic view of patients, anchored in the service’s history, care for men who have sex with men and commitment to human rights, is key. A culture of care developed over time thanks to the commitment of exemplary figures. Because they countered the team’s values, changes in refugee healthcare coverage strengthened the service’s culture of care. However, the healthcare system reform launched in 2014 in Quebec is perceived as jeopardizing the culture of care, as it makes, refugee and asylum-seeker patients a non-lucrative venture for providers.

This research analyzes the origin of sustained provision of care to refugees and asylum seekers living with HIV through the lens of culture of care. It considers the historical and political contexts in which this culture developed.

The purpose of this paper is to critically examine the reasons behind the relatively poor level of implementation of e-services. To this end, records management procedures in a particular Belgian federal administration – the Belgian Federal Public Service (FPS) Employment, Labor and Social Dialogue – will be studied. Based on this concrete and relevant case study, the authors examine how cross-organizational differences in terms of the implementation speed of digital workflows can hinder the development of innovative e-services. By doing so, the authors raise relevant questions about the efficacy of digital workflows and work processes. The impact on the consultation and exchange of government records among public services and toward citizens will be examined as well.

In the context of an on-going four-year research project named HECTOR (Hybrid Electronic Curation, Transformation and Organization of Records), the study is conducted from an interdisciplinary approach, closely combining information sciences and law. Moreover, this approach also has implications on information sciences through the integration of archival principles at an early stage of conception of hybrid (paper-based and digital-based) records management strategies, instead of confining archivists to a depository and preservation role. This “integrated archival” approach is highly encouraged to anticipate best practices for the long-term preservation of records (Rousseau and Couture, 1994). Furthermore, the project adopts a bottom-up approach based on an exploratory analysis of the particularities of hybrid records management within a project called “e-PV” led by the FPS Employment, Labor and Social Dialogue to draw general conclusions that could eventually be applied to other public services. In this case study, standardized surveys were used to collect information from a manager perspective, followed by in-depth interviews with field workers.

The miscellaneous reasons for the aforementioned poor level of implementation are a continuously decreasing public budget, a strongly rooted resistance to change, the difficult but inevitable cross-organizational relations between public administrations, the legal uncertainties arising from a fast-changing digital environment and the political autonomy in the decision-making process of the different public entities. As a consequence, the substantial differences between the many public administrations lead to a lack of interoperability not only at a technical level but also at an organizational level. The many local and other non-connected initiatives that this situation has generated do not help fostering collaboration either. The absence of well-established records management policies is interpreted both as a cause and a consequence of some of the factors mentioned before.

Research is carried out within Belgium’s particularly complex administrative context, where competences are not only spread but also shared at multiple levels (national and regional) and in multiple domains (legislative and executive). Consequently, the political decision-making process is also highly complex. Nevertheless, the observations and the findings of the study are deemed to be applicable to any administrative structure (both national and international ones).

This paper outlines the constraints of an almost completely implemented eGovernment initiative which may guide other public administrations in the development of their own e-services, as well as showing them the importance of taking into account records management and archiving principles. The multidisciplinary approach represents a significant added value.

Using social influence theory, this study examines the relationship between self-initiated expatriates' (SIE) political skill, as a measure of their social effectiveness, and cross-cultural adjustment (CCA). It also tests whether the host employer's psychological contract (PC) fulfillment mediates this relationship.

Partial least square structural equation modeling (covariance-based SEM) technique is employed to analyze a sample of 209 SIEs.

The study finds SIEs' political skill positively and significantly associated with SIEs' work-related adjustment. The relationship with interactional adjustment is only marginally significant. It also finds that SIEs' PC fulfillment mediates the relationship between SIEs' political skill and work-related adjustment. The mediation is marginally significant for the relationship between SIEs' political skill and general living adjustment.

The study adds to the literature on expatriates' skills and CCA by theorizing and testing the hitherto unexplored role of SIEs' political skill in their work and non-work CCA. It also theorizes and examines the host employer's PC fulfillment as a mediating mechanism, through which SIEs' political skill facilitates their CCA. Finally, it advances the literature on political skill by testing the construct's application in the cross-cultural and non-work domain.

DAVID HERBERT (1830–99), classical tutor, journalist and aficionado of eighteenth‐century literature and history, was born on 15 April 1830 in Glasgow, at the home of his parents on Castle Street. He spent his early life in Glasgow where his father, James Herbert, worked in a shop.

This review arises from a series of multidisciplinary Franco‐British workshops which were supported by a grant from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and the Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR). More than 30 participants from a range of institutions and agencies were involved in compiling the material in this review (Appendix I). The workshops offered an opportunity to exchange ideas from research on the relationships between migration, health and well‐being in Britain and France. In the following discussion we compare and contrast experiences in the two countries, with the aim of assessing the importance of international, national and local contexts, in their various cultural, social and political dimensions, for the relationships of interest. Drawing on these ideas, we suggest the definition of a future international research agenda.

The international awareness of corporate social responsibility (CSR) issues and the socio‐political context of emerging countries are increasing the pressure on businesses, including multinational corporations, to take another look at their societal role. In a context of state failure (immature institutions), paying taxes can guarantee neither the peaceful management of company operations nor the sustainable development of local communities. Moreover, multinationals have experienced that making resources and opportunities available to local communities is not enough. The Niger Delta in Nigeria is, in this regard, a textbook case that demonstrates the challenge of achieving sustainable development in the context of acute inequalities. This paper seeks to address these issues.

Drawing on fieldwork – quantitative and qualitative surveys – carried out in Nigeria for the past seven years, the paper builds on initiatives and approaches undertaken by Total, Agip and NPDC/Shell, consistent with their understanding of their role in society.

Inequalities and imbalances (income, gender, inter‐regional, sector‐based) ferment frustrations and nurture insecurity and violence in the Niger Delta, therefore hindering sustainable development. As far as the relationship between oil companies and communities is concerned, the authors argue that oil multinationals have to foster an approach that targets the reduction of those exceptional inequalities for which they are partly responsible, as revealed with the “double effect” principle.

Whereas CSR has been so far mainly studied as a management issue, this paper brings broader views and analyzes ethical, cultural and economic dynamics that underlie the acceptability of companies in their environment, in the specific context of the Niger Delta.