Types of Unemployment Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Types of Unemployment - Essay Example For example, advance in machinery and changes in souk conditions frequently turn many abilities outdated; this naturally raises the rates of joblessness. This kind of unemployment happens when employees take sometimes to shift from one job to a different one. It might be the case when some employees discover new occupations before they depart their previous ones. Many workers depart or lose their works previous to containing other jobs waiting. In such a situation, an employee must look about for a profession that is excellent for them, and this procedure takes some occasions (Tucker, 2008). The condition is not considered particularly difficult from an economic point of view. This type of joblessness is credited to economic reductions and business series happening to the economy. It happens during depression when the demand for merchandise and services in the market cascades, some corporations react by reducing output and firing employees leading to joblessness (Tucker, 2008). Unemployed snow remover fits in the structural form of unemployment since, removing the snow might depend on the market needs and its dynamic differences. Unemployed technician and a recent graduate fit in the fractional joblessness since the person might be looking for the profession that best suits

Cause of Divorce Essay Example for Free

Cause of Divorce Essay Marriage is supposed to be a sacred and beautiful union. In present day America, marriages are not lasting as long as they use to. Marriage is not the same anymore. It is like people forgot what it takes to be married and the true meaning of the union. Statistics show that the main causes of failing marriages are infidelity, high expectations, and lack of communication. Infidelity often seems to be normal in many relationships. It is probably the single most damaging cause that leads to divorce. Infidelity is also a problem most couples would face. Years ago when a spouse was cheated on, most likely they would have stayed together because getting a divorce was illegal. Over the years it has become easier and easier for couples to become separated and then divorced because of law changes. The betrayal and emotional pain you feel once you learned your spouse had an affair is what often leads to divorce. High expectations often lead to disappointment. Men and women both make a lot of assumptions when it comes to marriage. Women are taught by society that men want sex, that men think about sex and that sex is just second nature to men. According to society, if you marry a man you can expect that man to want sex with you. If a man lacks a desire of sex the woman’s expectation of her husband’s sexual performance is lacking. Nine times out of ten if a husband or wife cheats it is a result of a problem in the relationship. The lack of communication is a common problem in daily life. Unfortunately there are problems that avoid being talked about between couples. For example, growing up I would always see either my mother or father at home, rarely both. My mother worked all day and my father worked nights. The difference in work schedules caused issues. If a topic was to be discussed it seemed as though it wasn’t enough time to address it therefore it was not address. My parents did not have the time to often exchange ideas with each other so there was not a confidence for trying to solve their problems. Marriage is not an easy journey. It takes a lot of love, patience, commitment, and communication. Beat statistics. Show them you can make your marriage work. Let’s keep marriage sacred and beautiful.

Positive And Negative Aspects Of Edinburgh Fringe Festival Tourism Essay

Positive And Negative Aspects Of Edinburgh Fringe Festival Tourism Essay Introduction This report will give analysis and explain different aspects of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in terms of public relations. The Edinburgh Fringe Festival is the largest arts festival in the world, therefore it is important to carefully consider all the aspects and opportunities from a public relations perspective, as it is a great example of the different sides and features of public relations. After looking at the history of this festival, the report will provide an insight in the positive and negative aspects of the Fringe, name the main competitors and give SWOT and PEST analysis. Then the key public relation issues for the event will be analysed and analysis of the media environment relevant to the event will be given. Finally, a critical assessment of the success of the events PR strategy will be considered. History of the Fringe The Edinburgh Fringe Festival originated in 1947 and it was created to celebrate and enrich European cultural life in the wake of the Second World War. It first started when eight acts turned up at the Edinburgh international festival uninvited and decided to perform anyway this then lead to more acts following in their footsteps in the years to come. From this, the Festival Fringe Society was formed in 1959. The Fringe, these days, is now known as the largest arts festival in world and in 2010 the Fringe featured 40,254 performances of 2,453 shows in 259 venues. It is held every August for three weeks in the centre of Edinburgh and there are stages all over Edinburgh for example the Hilton Hotel, Edinburgh Castle and Underbelly. It is such a special event as it caters for everyone by having various acts put on, such as: theatre, comedy, dance, physical theatre, musicals, operas, music, exhibitions and events. Positive aspects of the Fringe The Fringe has been renowned for giving unknown performers a chance to be recognised as it is made up of emerging and established artists which is a review from edfringe.com. The Fringe has also been acknowledged for having worldwide recognition for being one of the best arts festivals in the world and this helps bring a lot of tourism into the capital city. Each year ticket sales rise incredibly as 1.8 million tickets were sold in 2009 and that increased to 1.9 million sold in 2010. This can be brought down to the effective communication from the society as they have advertised in newspapers, on posters, through television adverts, on radio adverts, on websites and they have even branched out to new technology by launching a Fringe iPhone app. The Fringe is so popular because anyone can enjoy a show as they have a range of entertainment for all audiences. They include free shows too, which are ever increasing because 558 shows at the 2010 Fringe were absolutely free, compared to 465 in 2009. Negative aspects of the Fringe During the research it was found that the childrens shows only made up 4% of the Fringe performance programme in 2010 and this may discourage families to come to the events as there is little choice for the children. Also the dance and physical theatre performances went down 0.5% to 4.5% in 2010 and this may be seen as the Fringe society not seeing these genres as important as others such as comedy. Another downside is that the performance locations are far too widely spread throughout city so many people will have to spend a lot of money on travelling. There are a high number of performances each year so this means acts will overlap one another causing people to miss out on some shows. Main competitors Throughout Scotland there are numerous festivals, whether they are large or small scale.  Ã‚   It is known from the official fringe website that the Fringe has a market share of 75% of all attendance at Edinburghs year round festivals and annually generates  £75 million for Edinburgh and the Scottish Economy.   These figures from 2004/05 demonstrate the high profile of the Fringe as an event in Scotland.   Despite accounting for the vast majority of the market share in Scotland, there are other events throughout the country which seek visitors. The Magners Glasgow International Comedy Festival takes place over   18 days with 350 performances from well-known and rising comedians.   The festival held at the kings theatre in Glasgow, specialises in comedy.   This is different from the fringe where although there are comedy events, there is an array of other arts as well.   For comedy enthusiasts the Magners comedy festival may be more attractive as it is specialised with more opportunity to see comedy.   As the event is also only held at one location, its more simple to find and easier to experience many performances without trekking across the city.   It may be on a much smaller scale that the Fringe but the less busy atmosphere may be much more appealing to some individuals. The Stanza poetry festival which is held in St Andrews is described by visit Scotland as where music, film, dance and poetry work in harmony.   The stanza poetry festival could be seen as a small scale Fringe festival however it primarily specialised in poetry.   Within this, the aim is to combine other arts into the poetry.   This unique selling point is a strength to the festival.   Held at the Byre theatre in St Andrews, the festival is not incredibly well-known.   This may have been due to a weakness in pr strategy and demand for this kind of event. Although the comedy and poetry festivals cannot really contend with the fringe due to its mass scale, they are strong in some ways as they specialise in events for a specific target audience.   However on a larger scale, the Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo can be seen a more pressing competitor.   With performances from 40 countries, the Tattoo invites visitors from all over the globe to not only visit the event but also perform.   Whereas at the fringe, it can be presumed that a large amount of the acts will be British.   35% of the 217,000 audience each year are from overseas which is advantageous as it means there is a great mix of cultures.   The fringe sees similar figures for its overseas percentage however towers over the tattoo with its number of visitors.   The tattoo is one main event whereas the fringe is many events over a long period.   Therefore it is difficult to compare the two as they are in completely different formats.   However unlike the fringe, t he tattoo is shown on television with 100 million viewers worldwide.   This illustrates the publicity of the tattoo making it the fringes main competitor in Scotland.   However as the fringe is the largest Arts festival in the world, naturally it will come out on top of other Scottish festivals. SWOT and PEST analysis Through the SWOT analysis it was found that:  ·Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Strengths Brings tourism to Scotland, there is a range of entertainment available and its largest arts festival in world.  ·Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Weaknesses Acts overlap one another, too big so travel costs increase and there are not enough acts for children so may discourage families.  ·Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Opportunities Emerging acts can become recognised, it entices different cultures to experience Scotland and it creates more job opportunities in Edinburgh.  ·Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Threats The festival faces competition from rival festivals, environmental issues may prevent the festival taking place and they may have a lack of funds to support such a big event. Through the PEST analysis is was found that:  ·Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Political It creates an environment where countries can combine and it also gives politics a light-hearted nature (by putting on plays about David Cameron, etc.).  ·Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Economical Brings money to Scotland and it also encourages tourism.  ·Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Social There are more tourists around and it enables the Scottish culture to be recognised.  ·Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Technological A new website has been launched and so has a new iPhone app, in order to promote the Fringe. Analysis of the key public relation issues for the event Analysis of the media environment relevant to the event Opportunities and threats in terms of media relations Edinburgh Fringe is a huge Festival, so there is a chance that it will get a lot of coverage both good and bad The Edinburgh Fringe Festival is the largest arts festival in the world so media will want to cover it. Also, there are a lot of opportunities to get media coverage outside Scotland and UK, especially in the European countries that are known for their love for arts such as France, Germany and Italy. However, if something goes wrong there will definitely be a huge interest from the media therefore everyone will know about it. As Edinburgh Fringe is such a enormous event, taking place over several weeks , with so many performances going on and so many people attending there is a chance for great success as well as great damage in terms of media relations. The key media Firstly, the key media are the print media and web sites history shows that newspapers and the websites of these newspapers are the sources of reviews and media coverage in general for the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Secondly, the electronic media is a vital key media because this festival is all about the arts therefore photographic examples are very important. Thirdly, the radio is also one of the key media as people really like hearing the interviews with the event organisers and the performers of the acts from the Festival. And finally, the television, especially important during the Festival people can see whats happening in the Festival, see something they like and decide to attend. Television also captures the mood and the atmosphere of the festival best. What would appeal to journalists and attract coverage The popularity of the festival in social networks such as twitter, facebook, etc, as well as having its own blogs creates the word-of-mouth effect thats not media generated so people get involved themselves and are not encouraged by the media but by other people. Media usually are interested if a lot of people get involved in this they are intrigued why is it so popular among the publics, is this a new phenomenon and why. It also attracts media because it seems more genuine this way the company hasnt spent lots and lots of money for campaigns to attract the attention. The media also like to write about events that are attended by celebrities because this guarantees the interest of the readers or about events that no one had expected or are shocking. Bad stories Fringe 2008 The resignation of the Edinburgh Fringe director, Jon Morgan, came at the end of a summer of bad news stories for the Edinburgh Fringe festival in 2008. Underlying them all is the question of how to cope with the unprecedented popularity of the worlds biggest arts festival. Most of the stories were about a new computer system that struggled to do the job. The  £350,000 Liquid Box Office crashed on its first day of operation, causing sales to be suspended for a week. Then it had trouble printing tickets, resulting in delays in postal bookings. Once the Fringe began, it sold too many tickets for certain shows, leading to reports of weeping youngsters being turned away.Finally the Fringe had to scrap the advertised two-for-one ticket frenzy on the final day, as the system couldnt cope. One of the bad examples is also the self-styled comedy festival which was a marketing exercise designed to attract sponsorship (which it failed to do) and spread the costs of advertising between the big four venues: Assembly, Gilded Balloon, Underbelly and Pleasance. It caused consternation by including only the comedians who were playing in those venues and threatened to damage the profile of the Fringe itself. The central box office takings had dropped by 10% that year. Good stories 2009 The Edinburgh Festival Fringe was suffering the backlash of the media on the back of a box office meltdown in 2008. The UK was in the middle of the storm of the so called credit crunch and many predicted the 2009 festival would be an expensive luxury that would be avoided by all but those most faithful to the festival. Under these circumstances it was a client that commissioned Whitespace to take a blank canvas approach and re-think the traditional approach to marketing. The result was a genuinely original and creatively challenging campaign concept and materials featuring over 100 viral videos, and, for the first time ever, a multiple set of covers for the Fringe Programme all on a very limited budget and under extremely tight deadlines. Whitespace created the concept of an iconic and metaphorical egg that symbolised the fact that the Fringe is always different, and that one can never be sure what lies within. Whitespace filmed the scientific discovery of a seemingly indestructible egg among Edinburghs tramworks. The resultant film became the viral centrepiece of the campaign. Having taken the egg to a secret Fringe laboratory overseen by Professor Ed Hegg, a series of filmed experiments ensued as he tried to reveal the eggs contents. The story was launched several months before the Fringe. Dr Ed Hegg received a page of coverage in the Scotsman; pre-launch publicity not normally received by the Fringe. Whitespace then developed a range of printed collateral, from T-shirts to banners, displays to ticket wallets and press passes, as well as a campaign microsite and a social media campaign. This included Dr Ed Heggs twitter page and blog along with shooting over 100 video experiments for inclusion on the microsite. The result was an increase of nearly 9% in ticket sales and a programme reprint. The fringe site reached 32,906 unique visitors with a low bounce rate and dwell time of, on average, 4 minutes. 10% of all fringe site visits resulted in a visit to the b ooking section of www.edfringe.com and 21% of all visits resulted in a desired action. Good Stories Fringe 2010 Fringecover was the top trending Twitter topic in Scotland on Thursday 25th and Friday 26th March and it was the second most tweeted topic across the UK. Inspired by the Fringes principle that anyone with an idea and a vision can bring their show to Edinburgh; Whitespace invited the Twitter community to tell Johanna Basford the most unusual thing theyd like to see at the 2010 Fringe supplemented by #fringecover. For two days, from 10am to 10pm on Thursday 25th and Friday 26th March, Johanna recreated Twitterers suggestions in real-time in her own unique illustrative style. The Whitespace creative team then applied Johannas illustrations to all aspects of the Fringes promotional materials including, three cover versions of the programme; the ticket, its wallet and envelope; the Fringe shops window display and pop-up exhibition panels. Audiences at the Fringe festival in Edinburgh bought nearly 2 million tickets last year, once again beating the previous years record. Kath Mainland, the events chief executive, said the sale of more than 1.95m tickets for more than 40,000 performances had shown the festival was the greatest show on earth. The Fringe said this years event, again dominated by comedy, had outstripped last year on most measures: there were 40,254 performances of 2,453 shows at 259 venues, involving more than 21,000 performers. More than 550 shows were free. A critical assessment of the success of the events PR strategy Conclusion This report has analysed different public relations aspects of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. It has provided research on the background and history of the event, analysis of the event, analysis of the key public relations issues for the event, analysis of the media environment relevant to the event, as well as a critical assessment of the success of the events PR strategy. One of the clear thoughts after the analysis of the festival is that the Fringe has definitely experienced bad times in terms of public relations; however, the organisers have only learnt from their mistakes and chosen much better PR strategies that have resulted in growth in the ticket sales, despite the very bad economic situation. Audiences have come to know the Edinburgh festival fringe as the place to see every kind of art; from the most imaginative childrens theatre to topical and incisive comedy and theatre which challenges audiences to discuss and re-consider not only their world but the world in general. Kath Mainland, the events chief executive has said: Edinburgh is without doubt the worlds leading festival destination and audiences continued to be inspired and enthralled by the many and varied events on offer.

The Role Of Women in the Renaissance Essays -- European Renaissance Ess

When one talks about the Renaissance, the most common topic is art and architecture. It is true that the Italian Renaissance was marked by some of the greatest and most prolific masters of painting, sculpture and building. It is also true that the era marked the emergence of a great deal more. It was a time of awakening from the intellectual darkness of the medieval order and the emergence of many of the concepts that would form the basis for civilization as it is known today. The era saw the birth of new attitudes concerning the role of man in his relationship to the world and to God. Unfortunately, for the most part, the expansion of the 'role of man' did not include the role of women. "Renaissance (from the French for "rebirth") is a term coined in the nineteenth century originally to denote the revival of art and letters under the influence of ancient Roman and Greek models. This revival began in Italy in the fourteenth century, flourished in the fifteenth, and in the sixteenth reached apogee and then crisis in Italy, while it spread through most of Europe. But humanism's classical learning alone cannot account for the immense changes that took place during these centuries; moreover, movements originating in the North also contributed to these changes. Therefore the term Renaissance has also come to denote the era in general and its overriding spirit, in which desires intrinsic to human nature, generally repressed under medieval feudalism, burst forth with new fervor and resulted in a new culture" (Osmond 18). The most conspicuous of these changes were in the world of art and intellectual pursuits. The social structure of Italy and the culturally defined ge nder roles were not as affected as art and architecture. ... ...litical scientist" (Rhu 326). The Renaissance is perceived as a time of intellectual and creative growth, and, indeed, the arts and architectural accomplishments of the era bear out this perception. The two centuries denoted as the Renaissance in Italy are also known as a period of growth in the sciences, with such known personages as Leonardo de Vinci making strides into mathematics, anatomy and other sciences that would open the door for the empirical investigations of later centuries. The greatest of the Italian Renaissance writers, Niccolo Machiavelli, mirrors one of the least known attributes of the time, the social relegation of females. Although it is a time where the role of women is enlarged to some degree, it continues to place strictures on the place and meaning of women that were forged in the writings of the ancient Greeks, such as Aristotle.

Hostel or home Essay

Most Young people think about living away from home as the best part in their lives because they will have more freedom and that can be really exciting for them; however, they do not realize that living at home has more benefits compared to living away from home. The best thing about living away from home is that you have more freedom. You can set your own rules, stay up late, invite friends to your place and have parties whenever you want; hence, a parent- free environment is awesome, but you need to be mature enough to handle it. A drawback is that you may feel homesick. You may miss the moments that you used to share with your family, or even those familiar things such as your neighborhood, your bedroom, your pet and so on. A study in Neuropsychiatry states that people get higher mental health scores if they lived in their family home. Another disadvantage is that you will have to pay a rent, pay the bills, and buy your own food which will definitely affect you in the financial aspect. Finally, another aspect is convenience. You will not have many of the things that you used to have at home. You will have less free time for other activities because you will spend more time doing housework, balancing the budget and organizing things by yourself. On the other hand, living at home can be frustrating because you always have to obey rules; Your parents will control you most of the time, but this can be a benefit because it can prevent you from being lazy and wasting time doing things that are unproductive. The emotional aspect is also a plus because you would definitely feel better at home. There is nothing like family. They can support you when you need them and cheer you up. Moreover, you can save a lot of money because you do not have to pay a rent neither do you have to buy your own food because your parents will do that for free or sometimes charge you just a low rate. Another point in favor is convenience. You have almost everything you need at home; furthermore, your mother usually does all the housework, at least of the common areas, and organizes everything; consequently you will have more free time for studying or just going out with your friends and having fun.

Free sample - Modern religious faiths characteristics. translation missing

Modern religious faiths characteristics. Modern religious faiths characteristicsModern religious faiths characteristics Today, millions of people worship various religions around the globe. Two of the major religions in the world are Hinduism and Judaism and they have coexisted for very many years. Whereas they are similar in the way they set their morals and rules, they differ in their believes on the afterlife and on where they started from. While the Jews believe of the heaven as their afterlife, Hindus have a belief that one is reincarnated until he/she reaches the Brahma. Jews have a belief that if one did right in everything while on earth, then they shall expend the eternity in Heaven with their God. Bhaskarananda, 1994 argues that Hindus have believed in Karma which is the faith that if you do good things, then excellent things shall come about to you and vice versa. When one dies in Hinduism, he/she reaches the Brahma where the hurting cycle of rebirth is lastly ended. In Judaism one is supposed to lead a good life and to be kind to each and everyone. If one attains success at this, he/she will lead the whole of eternity in heaven with God. The Jews, adore only one god, who they trust to be the one and only creator and the ruler. Hindus endorse and believe in the Caste System, which is interrelated with their view on reincarnation. Jews necessarily lack this system because they do not characteristically concur with the thought of reincarnation, despite the fact that there are a few, the structure does not subsist as a major thing to this religion. Jews do not have an exact method of steady body discipline, to remain on the unchanged focus as their god, they do something to some extent the same. This is how they pray their God. For Hindus, Yoga is practiced, which is intended to bring their bodies and their souls on the same level and conveys them nearer to the Ultimate Being. According to Hinduism, remaining pure in life and keeping a good karma, as a result of their good dealings on earth is the key to staying a good life. Those who live both socially and morally pure, they get to have their way upwards the Caste System in their after that incarnation. After some reincarnations, the Hindus may accomplish their ultimate goal, which is to achieve faultless peace of mind, and to be one with Brahma. This happens when they have gone through a life having done no mistakes, and have been â€Å"perfect† in essence. In Judaism an individual endeavors to relate well with their god. Throughout their single life that they go through, they have a trust in God, â€Å"both love him, and reverently fear him† (Louis, 2007. Pg 511), and to establish a close relationship with him. This is their supreme objective. When they achieve such, â€Å"They will be rewarded by God, the messiah will come, and the dead will be resurrected† (Louis, 2007. Pg 511). T he religions most likely wanted its faction to believe in these, for the reason that it gave them something to look ahead to, and it presented them with grounds to be good throughout their life. According to Robert in his anthology of world scriptures, the Hindus have a somewhat unique view on death. Someone who dies, if they are not yet entirely pure, they are reincarnated into another incarnation. This helps them continue their path to ultimate peace and unification with the Ultimate Being (Bhaskarananda, 1994). If a Hindu has no black marks on his soul, and is absolutely pure, they may find this ultimate peace and unification. Their soul will no longer remain in a human body/vessel, but will be one with Brahma. The Jewish view on death is that it’s not something to grieve over, because it is all part of Gods plan, so their time of death, even if it may seem untimely, was planned, and timed perfectly. If the person led a good life, they can look forward to a nice afterlife, similar to the Christian Heaven, but not exactly the same. As they all know that a good person is going to a good place when they die, the death of another is not typically a sad occasion, but th ere may be grieving, in which there is a set process so a mourner can slowly return to a normal life. So after looking at both Hinduism and Judaism, which are some of our oldest popular religions, we can conclude that they are both indeed different. They differ a lot in some of the greater points, such as their 3 main focuses of their religion, their goal of life, and their views on death and dying. As we saw though, these could be somewhat similar in that their goal of life was closely intertwined with their views of death and dying. Though, they are typically different, otherwise. This shows that the religions, Hinduism and Judaism, are some of the most differing religions, as well as some of the most ancient. Robert in his anthology of world scriptures informs that Hinduism was started in India while Judaism started in Israel many years later. The Aryans were the first of the Indian people to establish the Vedas which formed the foundations of the Hindu as a religion. Every law that followed as well as the moral standards of Hinduism was founded off of the Vedas. In Israel just about 3000 B.C.E. people started worshiping God, and live according to the teachings of Moses. Torah, their holy book, comprised of various writings that were supposedly prepared by Moses throughout his 950 year life. These books have teachings about the same moral standards such as; don’t kill, steal, or commit adultery. Most probably, these religions started off where and in the way they did, for the reason that the governments required a way to maintain their people in line, so they came up with these standards and rules by which people could live by. While these two religions differ in some way, they have some similarities like in how they have some particular rules that must be obeyed by their followers who must do so to get to Nirvana. Each of these religions has got guild lines that state what one should do to appease their gods or God and how to be a good person. All of these rules and guild lines have been put down in their holy books; the Vedas and the Torah. These religions most probably had rule books to ensure that the people went by the accurate path and carried out the correct things in life so as to get to a happy and eternal afterlife. Judaism and Hinduism have several differences based on their origins and on their ideas of an afterlife, but they also have some similarities in the way they share laid down regulations that their faction ought to live by. These two religions have got a massive impact on the contemporary, for the reason that they are still put into practice by millions of people across the globe. They educate people how to lead truthful life, and how to be good to other people while they live on Earth. All interviews were done in person with two active members of Judaism and Hinduism. The chosen members are all youthful followers of the two religions respectively. The Hindu is a young man of age 24 years, single, staunch follower of Hinduism as a religion and studying in an American university. Here below are the questions I asked and responses from the young man: 1) What is your religious denomination? Well, I am a part of the Hinduism religion. 2) For how long have you practiced Hinduism? I was born into Hinduism as I was born in India. 3) State three tenets of your religion? The three I can think of off the top of my head is Brahmin, Brahna, and Reincarnation. 4) Who was the founding father Hinduism? The founder of my religion is not known and even the date it started is also not known. 5) What do you love about your religion? I love the fact that my religion is very old. The Orthodox Judaism is a university male student, 23years of age, single, and not a strong follower of Orthodox Judaism as a religion. My face-to-face interview with him ensued into the following discussion: 1) What is your religious denomination? Well, I am an Orthodox Judaism. 2) What is the difference between Christianity and Judaism? In Christianity Jesus is worshiped as the messiah, while Judaism doesn't. Also, Judaism believes in the Old Testament while Christianity believes in the New Testament. 3) Do you people believe that Jesus really existed or do you believe that his being was fictionalized? Our belief is that Jesus existed. In fact, Jesus was a Jew himself! 4) You just decide not to worship him? There is no reason for us to worship Jesus, who is just another man. Actually we are taught that he wasn’t such a good man. 5) So what you mean is that Mary the virgin was not actually a virgin? Hehe! Hehe, that’s not what I was getting to. I really know little about Jesus, but I know of him to do very un-Jew-like dealings. I don’t want to offend you man, so I am avoiding getting into so much detail about Jesus. Works cited: Bhaskarananda, Swami. â€Å"The Essentials of Hinduism: a comprehensive overview of the world's oldest religion† Seattle, WA: Viveka Press, 1994. Louis. "Judaism." In Fred Skolnik. Encyclopaedia Judaica. 11 (2d Ed.). Farmington Hills,  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Mich.: Thomson Gale.2007, p. 511. Mary Pat Fisher, Living Religion 7TH edition Robert E. Van Voorst, Anthology of World Scriptures 8th Edition Jacobs,

immanuel kant in LD essays

immanuel kant in LD essays Born in Konigsberd in East Prussia on April 22, 1724, Immanuel Kant has been one of the most influential philosophers in the history of Western philosophy. His contributions to metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and aesthetics have had a dynamic impact on almost every philosophical movement that took place in the post Kant era. He began the early stages of his life at school of philosophy at the University of Konigsberg, where he studied the philosophy of Wolff and the mathematics and physics of Newton. Having spent most of his life as a university professor, he did not receive fame and recognition till his late fifties. His critical philosophy is what he was best known for. His Critical philosophy is divided into three portions: Critique of Pure Reason, Critique of Practical Reason, and Critique of Judgment. For 15 years after he obtained his doctorate, he taught at University of Kongsberg, lecturing first on science and mathematics, but gradually expanding his studies in almost all forms of philosophy. Having a very unorthodox religious teaching, which were based on rationalism rather than revelation, in 1792 king Frederick William II, forbid him to teach or write on religious subjects. After the death of the King, not feeling obligating any longer, Kant published a summary of his religious views. At the age of 46, Kant read the writings of a Scottish philosopher David Hume. Hume criticized and greatly disliked all metaphysics. Not agreeing totally with the works of David Hume, Kant decided to write his own critiques. Kant in 1781 released Critique of Pure Reason, in which Kant attempts to prove, that although our knowledge is derived from experience, it is possible to have knowledge of objects in advance of experience. Meaning that rather than learning from mistakes, we should already know the problems and complications associated with the situation, so we do not make that mistake in the fist place. Kant saw that there...

Definitions and Examples of Word Formation

Definitions and Examples of Word Formation In linguistics (particularly morphology  and lexicology), word formation refers to the ways in which new words are made on the basis of other words or morphemes. Also called derivational morphology. Word-formation can denote either a state or a process, and it can be viewed either diachronically (through different periods in history)  or synchronically  (at one particular period in time). See examples and observations below. In  The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language,  David Crystal writes about word formations:   Most English vocabulary arises by making new lexemes out of old ones - either by adding an affix to previously existing forms, altering their word class, or combining them to produce compounds. These processes of construction are of interest to grammarians as well as lexicologists. ...  but the importance of word-formation to the development of the lexicon is second to none. ... After all, almost any lexeme, whether Anglo-Saxon or foreign, can be given an affix, change its word class, or help make a compound. Alongside the Anglo-Saxon ​root in ​kingly, for example, we have the French root in royally and the Latin root in regally. There is no elitism here. The processes of affixation, conversion, and compounding are all great levelers.(David Crystal, The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language, 2nd ed. Cambridge University Press, 2003) Processes of Word-Formation Apart from the processes that attach something to a base (affixation) and processes that do not alter the base (conversion), there are processes involving the deletion of material. ... English Christian names, for example, can be shortened by deleting parts of the base word (see 11) This type of word formation is called truncation, with the term clipping also being used. (11a) Ron (-Aaron)(11a) Liz (-Elizabeth)(11a) Mike (-Michael)(11a) Trish (-Patricia)(11b) condo (-condominium)(11b) demo (-demonstration)(11b) disco (-discotheque)(11b) lab (-laboratory) Sometimes truncation and affixation can occur together, as with formations expressing intimacy or smallness, so-called diminutives: (12) Mandy (-Amanda)(12) Andy (-Andrew)(12) Charlie (-Charles)(12) Patty (-Patricia)(12) Robbie (-Roberta) We also find so-called blends, which are amalgamations of parts of different words, such as smog (-smoke/fog) or modem (modulator/demodulator). Blends based on orthography are called acronyms, which are coined by combining the initial letters of compounds or phrases into a pronounceable new word (NATO, UNESCO, etc.). Simple abbreviations like UK or USA are also quite common.(Ingo Plag, Word-Formation in English. Cambridge University Press, 2003) Academic Studies of Word-Formation - Following years of complete or partial neglect of issues concerning word formation (by which we mean primarily derivation, compounding, and conversion), the year 1960 marked a revival- some might even say a resurrection- of this important field of linguistic study. While written in completely different theoretical frameworks (structuralist vs. transformationalist), both Marchands Categories and Types of Present-Day English Word-Formation in Europe and Lees Grammar of English Nominalizations instigated systematic research in the field. As a result, a large number of seminal works emerged over the next decades, making  the scope of word-formation research broader and deeper, thus contributing to better understanding of this exciting area of human language.(Pavol Ã…Â  tekauer and Rochelle Lieber, preface to Handbook of Word-Formation. Springer, 2005)- [R]ecent voices stressing the importance of investigating word formation in the light of cognitive processes can be interpreted f rom two general perspectives. First of all, they indicate that a structural approach to the architecture of words and a cognitive view are not incompatible. On the contrary, both perspectives try to work out regularities in language. What sets them apart is the basic vision of how language is encapsulated in the mind and the ensuing choice of terminology in the description of the processes. . . . [C]ognitive linguistics concedes closely to the self-organizing nature of humans and their language, whereas generative-structuralist perspectives represent external boundaries as given in the institutionalized order of human interaction.(Alexander Onysko and Sascha Michel, Introduction: Unravelling the Cognitive in Word Formation. Cognitive Perspectives on Word Formation. Walter de Gruyter, 2010) Birth and Death Rates of Words Statistical Laws Governing Fluctuations in Word Use from Word Birth to Word Death.   Just as a new species can be born into an environment, a word can emerge in a language. Evolutionary selection laws can apply pressure on the sustainability of new words since there are limited resources (topics, books, etc.) for the use of words. Along the same lines, old words can be driven to extinction when cultural and technological factors limit the use of a word, in analogy to the environmental factors that can change the survival capacity of a living species by altering its ability to survive and reproduce. Source Petersen, Alexander M. Statistical Laws Governing Fluctuations in Word Use from Word Birth to Word Death. Scientific Reports volume 2, Joel Tenenbaum, Shlomo Havlin, et al., Scientific Reports, Nature, March 15, 2012.

Human Resource Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 4250 words

Human Resource - Essay Example The issue of job satisfaction has been studied in connection with the disciplines such as economics, psychology, management science and sociology .A good employer is one who would ensure that his employees are satisfied because satisfaction is closely related to their labor market behavior such as quits, productivity and absenteeism. Research shows that job satisfaction predicts if an employee will quit just like in case of wages .It is therefore imperative to study the determinants of job satisfaction. In this study focus will be an aspect of job satisfaction with age, degree in the field of study and the educational level of employment of persons working in different sectors of the economy (Clark et. al). There have been different attitudes of people towards job satisfaction in International Business Machines Corporation (IBM). Researchers have indicated that job satisfaction is affected by the factors like educational factors for example degree status, situation factors for example workplace situations and biological factors like age. Employees in this company give varying results on job satisfaction. They claim that the companies do not have a good pay master and annual appraisal. This stud Purpose and objectives of the study This study is trying to determine how age and education level are related to the level of job satisfaction of employees in this company. The research proposal is based on some crucial questions which will be a guide to the research. Research Questions. 1. What is the overall job satisfaction for employees working in the Human Resources Department 2. What degrees of satisfaction do the employees of International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) with factors raised on job satisfaction 3. What is the relationship between job satisfaction and variable factors such as field of study at college, educational levels and age Significance of the study The humanitarian aspect is one angle that helps people to look at job satisfaction in detail. All employees regardless of the level in which they are should be treated well and respected as it contributes to their wellbeing. From the utilitarian aspect, job satisfaction may affect how employees behave and this may have either positive or negative effects on productivity depending on how a worker feels when they are being treated. Scope and limitations The study will focus on the workers who are at the human resource department. The sample size

Differences nuclear power between france and germany Research Paper

Differences nuclear power between france and germany - Research Paper Example The first usage of the nuclear energy was to use it as a weapon and the nuclear bomb was thrown on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. The World War took a massive step in the history of nuclear energy research and the need of nuclear technology. Nuclear technology was required for the need of making the atom bomb. There was a race between all the powers to use this form of energy to deadly effects. America won and became the first to introduce it on the grander stage. Later as the war ended the race for nuclear technology did not end introducing a new usage for nuclear power-energy. France initially was extremely motivated towards the race of atomic warheads and weapons. However, in the field of energy development France did not concentrate much effort until the first oil supply shock of 1973. After the shock the government decided to concentrate solely on expanding the country’s nuclear power capacity. This decision was taken by the government looking at the fact that France had the engineering expertise and capacity but had very few other energy sources. Nuclear energy was a viable option because of its low output cost and high efficiency if managed effectively. (World Nuclear Association, 2011) Like many other countries Germany started the pursuit of nuclear energy in the 1950s. However, in the decade Germany was only able to develop a few reactors and none of them was on a commercial scale. Between 1960 and 1970 none of the reactors introduced be Germany could produce more than 1000 MW. The first commercial nuclear power station was introduced in 1969. First the reaction of the French will be analyzed. The survey commissioned by the state electricity producer EDF has conducted March 15 and 16 after earthquake in Japan on March 11. 1000 sample, 55 percent said they did not support the argument that the most important French Green Party to abandon nuclear energy. About 42 per cent is worth it. (Reuters, 2011) CÃ ©cile Duflot, leader of the Green Party

Another new assignment Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Another new assignment - Essay Example The patient, who is the direct recipient of the delivery of health care service, is the most qualified person to assess, evaluate and judge the quality of healthcare that he or she receives. If the patient is totally immobile or unconscious during the confinement in the health institution, then, the immediate relative (spouse, children) who regularly accompanies the patient and oversees the delivery of the required medical services, is the next authorized person to gauge the quality of health care rendered and received by the patient. Quality is measured in terms of customer perspectives with emphasis on the following: (1) accessibility and availability of service; (2) timely and safe delivery of service; (3) coordination and continuity of care between services; and (4) effectiveness of services (i.e., the delivery and outcome of care). (ibid. p. 74) Delaune & Ladner (2006) averred that â€Å"a healthcare organization must be concerned with doing the right things (efficiency, appropriateness) and doing the right things well (availability, timeliness, effectiveness, continuity, safety, efficiency, and respect and caring)† (p. 74) Quality measurement consists of evaluating three interrelated components: structure (philosophy, guidelines, facilities, financial resources, policies, procedures, and job descriptions); process (nursing care and standards of care); and finally, outcome (client’s health status, self-care abilities, acquisition of knowledge, and higher level of wellness). The steps enumerated in Table 1 utilized by John Groocock in a big manufacturing firm have some parallelism to the measurement of quality in a healthcare institution except that the terminologies and classifications are not exactly the same. As previously noted, the elements needed in evaluating the quality of care in a hospital setting fall under three categories: structure, process, and outcome.

Higher Order Thinking Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Higher Order Thinking - Essay Example The three lowest levels of taxonomy are knowledge, understanding and application. Three highest levels are analysis, synthesis and evaluation. Analysis has to do with figuring out something on your own, i.e., an individual cannot be just repeating what he reads or hears. It is seeing how something works. An individual discerns what is connected to what. A student gets at why something is happening. During synthesis process, iIf analysis is taking things apart to see what makes them tick, synthesis is putting things together. Synthesis is solving a problem, making something whole out of a bunch of pieces nobody told you how to put together, or creating or devising something (Bloom, 1956). Evaluation is deciding on your own, and in an informed way, whether something is preferable; whether it has merit or worth; or whether it is morally right, just, or fair. Personal Meaning is reflection on the personal significance, consequence, or implication of some object of concern. It is importan t to help students recognize that all concepts are in some way related to one another. This is one reason concept mapping can be a very powerful evaluation tool. The main limitation of Bloom’s taxonomy is that it is not a strategy but a model which explains main thinking skills. It does not help to solve problems and develop effective critical thinking skills. Bloom explains some ideas and the concept of thinking but he does not explain how this model can be and should be applied to real world situations. His main works on taxonomy are Taxonomy of Educational Objectives: The Cognitive Dimension (1956). Another model of high order thinking was developed by Robert Marzano. Marzano adopted Bloom's taxonomy but added new characteristics to the model. This model consists of 8 characteristics: focusing, information gathering, remembering, organizing, analyzing, generating, integrating, evaluating. The ideology of Marzano is based on the idea that: "When content is new, students must be guided in relating the new knowledge to what they already know, organizing and then using that new knowledge. Knowledge can be of two types: Declarative (i.e., attributes, rules) or procedural (skills and processes). Items of this type are factual and content-specific" (Marzano 1995, p. 87). The main works by Marzano are Dimensions of thinking : a framework for curriculum and instruction (1988), Cultivating thinking in English and the language arts (1991), The systematic identification and articulation of content standards and benchmarks (1995). The most recent model based on Bloom's taxonomy is Anderson/Krathwohl mode (2000). According to this model, the following levels of thinking exist: (1) remembering: Retrieving, recalling, or recognizing, (2) understanding, (3) applying, (4) analyzing, (5) evaluating, (6) creating. The advantage of this model is that there isare student choice, exploration, or creative challenge. There is opportunity for students to collaborate, develop facility with language, and work with ideas. There is chance for students to write or say what they deeply care about. In sum, classrooms are all too teacher dominated, mechanical, and pedestrian for my blood. Whatever gains may result from mastery learning--and, remember the last section, they are significant--too often they are purchased at the expense of pointing us away from what really matters in education, that students learn how to take charge of their own learning and growth and empower themselves to live freely. The main problem describes the main stages of thinking but tells little about real life application and connections between these stages (Dettmer, 2006). In spite of limitations and weaknesses these models become a core of modern education helping teachers to construct tests

Forests and Forestry Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Forests and Forestry - Essay Example The evolution of deforestation in India has begun with the arrival of British government in India during 19th century. During the year of 1823, the governor of presidency during that period, Thomas Munro acted as a forest conservator with a belief that private business practices of forestry programs will be adopted soon to meet the balance of supply and demand. Due to this belief the country faced a continuous loss of forest resources for almost four consecutive decades. The developmental steps taken by the British government supported the act of deforestation in India. When the government realized the problem during 1864 the Governor-general Lord Dalhousie brought the German forester Dietrich Brandis to look after the problem and control the situation. Many more initiatives were taken afterwards in order to conserve the forests resources of India by recruiting manpower for the protection and control over the loss of the natural resource. It took almost another decade after these ini tiatives were taken up for the conservation of forest resource, to come into effect and proper law and orders were passed for the protection of the resource and resulted into Indian Forest Act in 1878. After the law and orders came into effect the situation was supposed to be under control but corruption adversely influenced them a lot and developmental activities were prioritized over the issue of deforestation. The corruption restricted the law and orders to show its proper effectiveness which is persistent till date. Deforestation activities can be beneficial also in cases where the cleared land can be used for the agricultural and farming activities. The technologies used for agricultural purpose still fails sometimes to sustain the farming and agricultural activities on certain tropical land formed by clearing of forest areas. Those lands are either made abandoned or used as less productive areas compared to other land used for agriculture and

Should public funding be used to provide early childhood education to Essay

Should public funding be used to provide early childhood education to all children - Essay Example However, this fact notwithstanding, the following analysis will consider the extent to which governmental funding of early childhood education would be a net good or an overall net bad from educational, economic, and societal standpoints. As a function of answering such a broad question, it is the hope of this particular author that the reader will be able to draw a more well rounded answer to a question that would otherwise evoke a rather emotional response from the perspective shareholders within the process as well as the taxpayers that will ultimately be left holding the bill regardless of what particular approach is engaged. By analyzing these determinants, it is the further intention of the author that the pros and cons of such a broad and overarching funding will be made manifest and allow the reader to come away with a rather clear understanding of the benefits and drawbacks of such a system might be. Firstly, and perhaps most importantly, one must integrate an understanding and appreciation for the economic constraints that universal government sponsorship of early childhood education would portend. ... As a function of understanding the means by which the United States government ultimately operates, one comes away with the understanding that the elected representatives are responsible to the shareholder citizens with regards to the legislation and proposed budget. In this way, it is easy to see how, regardless of current budgetary shortfalls, a large enough response from the electorate would force the hand of the federal government to act in a way to provide such services to the electorate. Naturally, in doing so, this would have a strong negative impact upon other vital functions of the government, to include many other forms of needed social programs; perhaps Medicaid, Medicare, and/or Social Security funding (Hart 64). As such, it is necessary for the reader/researcher to consider the fact that without exponentially raising tax rates, it will be impossible to seek to add a broad new level of government services without directly robbing from one program to help to pay for anothe r one. From the educational standpoint, the application of universal childhood education can have a massive benefit to the further development of educational standards within the lifetime of the student and can serve to provide a sound basis upon which the educators involved can seek to build. Within the current system, only some shareholders within the student body have the opportunity and/or the means to engage within childhood education. Although this should not be seen as a definitive disadvantage, the fact of the matter is that it provides an unequal footing upon which the first few grades must integrate with the students. A level of basic assumption cannot be provided with relation to what has been covered and what has not. In

Higher Order Thinking Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Higher Order Thinking - Essay Example The three lowest levels of taxonomy are knowledge, understanding and application. Three highest levels are analysis, synthesis and evaluation. Analysis has to do with figuring out something on your own, i.e., an individual cannot be just repeating what he reads or hears. It is seeing how something works. An individual discerns what is connected to what. A student gets at why something is happening. During synthesis process, iIf analysis is taking things apart to see what makes them tick, synthesis is putting things together. Synthesis is solving a problem, making something whole out of a bunch of pieces nobody told you how to put together, or creating or devising something (Bloom, 1956). Evaluation is deciding on your own, and in an informed way, whether something is preferable; whether it has merit or worth; or whether it is morally right, just, or fair. Personal Meaning is reflection on the personal significance, consequence, or implication of some object of concern. It is importan t to help students recognize that all concepts are in some way related to one another. This is one reason concept mapping can be a very powerful evaluation tool. The main limitation of Bloom’s taxonomy is that it is not a strategy but a model which explains main thinking skills. It does not help to solve problems and develop effective critical thinking skills. Bloom explains some ideas and the concept of thinking but he does not explain how this model can be and should be applied to real world situations. His main works on taxonomy are Taxonomy of Educational Objectives: The Cognitive Dimension (1956). Another model of high order thinking was developed by Robert Marzano. Marzano adopted Bloom's taxonomy but added new characteristics to the model. This model consists of 8 characteristics: focusing, information gathering, remembering, organizing, analyzing, generating, integrating, evaluating. The ideology of Marzano is based on the idea that: "When content is new, students must be guided in relating the new knowledge to what they already know, organizing and then using that new knowledge. Knowledge can be of two types: Declarative (i.e., attributes, rules) or procedural (skills and processes). Items of this type are factual and content-specific" (Marzano 1995, p. 87). The main works by Marzano are Dimensions of thinking : a framework for curriculum and instruction (1988), Cultivating thinking in English and the language arts (1991), The systematic identification and articulation of content standards and benchmarks (1995). The most recent model based on Bloom's taxonomy is Anderson/Krathwohl mode (2000). According to this model, the following levels of thinking exist: (1) remembering: Retrieving, recalling, or recognizing, (2) understanding, (3) applying, (4) analyzing, (5) evaluating, (6) creating. The advantage of this model is that there isare student choice, exploration, or creative challenge. There is opportunity for students to collaborate, develop facility with language, and work with ideas. There is chance for students to write or say what they deeply care about. In sum, classrooms are all too teacher dominated, mechanical, and pedestrian for my blood. Whatever gains may result from mastery learning--and, remember the last section, they are significant--too often they are purchased at the expense of pointing us away from what really matters in education, that students learn how to take charge of their own learning and growth and empower themselves to live freely. The main problem describes the main stages of thinking but tells little about real life application and connections between these stages (Dettmer, 2006). In spite of limitations and weaknesses these models become a core of modern education helping teachers to construct tests

Should public funding be used to provide early childhood education to Essay

Should public funding be used to provide early childhood education to all children - Essay Example However, this fact notwithstanding, the following analysis will consider the extent to which governmental funding of early childhood education would be a net good or an overall net bad from educational, economic, and societal standpoints. As a function of answering such a broad question, it is the hope of this particular author that the reader will be able to draw a more well rounded answer to a question that would otherwise evoke a rather emotional response from the perspective shareholders within the process as well as the taxpayers that will ultimately be left holding the bill regardless of what particular approach is engaged. By analyzing these determinants, it is the further intention of the author that the pros and cons of such a broad and overarching funding will be made manifest and allow the reader to come away with a rather clear understanding of the benefits and drawbacks of such a system might be. Firstly, and perhaps most importantly, one must integrate an understanding and appreciation for the economic constraints that universal government sponsorship of early childhood education would portend. ... As a function of understanding the means by which the United States government ultimately operates, one comes away with the understanding that the elected representatives are responsible to the shareholder citizens with regards to the legislation and proposed budget. In this way, it is easy to see how, regardless of current budgetary shortfalls, a large enough response from the electorate would force the hand of the federal government to act in a way to provide such services to the electorate. Naturally, in doing so, this would have a strong negative impact upon other vital functions of the government, to include many other forms of needed social programs; perhaps Medicaid, Medicare, and/or Social Security funding (Hart 64). As such, it is necessary for the reader/researcher to consider the fact that without exponentially raising tax rates, it will be impossible to seek to add a broad new level of government services without directly robbing from one program to help to pay for anothe r one. From the educational standpoint, the application of universal childhood education can have a massive benefit to the further development of educational standards within the lifetime of the student and can serve to provide a sound basis upon which the educators involved can seek to build. Within the current system, only some shareholders within the student body have the opportunity and/or the means to engage within childhood education. Although this should not be seen as a definitive disadvantage, the fact of the matter is that it provides an unequal footing upon which the first few grades must integrate with the students. A level of basic assumption cannot be provided with relation to what has been covered and what has not. In

Cultural Background Paper Essay Example for Free

Cultural Background Paper Essay The fusion of cultures has been ever growing and I would like to say- being multiracial these days is not a new phenomenon. There are many of us who come from a similar status where we share different ancestors from different cultures. For instance, my own friend has a Hispanic father and an African-American mother. Both the parents come from different cultures and the instances have been increasing. However, I share an Indian background with a Hispanic background. The fusion of the two cultures was unthinkable but I believe it has to happen sometimes that way. The main reason why I believe we have cultural fusions is because of the increased ethnic and racial diversity in the United States of America. It is interesting to note how different parents from different cultures actually bring in their stories and traditions into our lives. I believe it is easy to distinguish characteristic traits from an Indian background and a Hispanic background. There are a few traits that make one easily recognizable and distinguishable from others. Importance to family ties and bonds is extremely crucial. I remember my father (who obviously shares an Indian background, American-Indian) who stressed on the importance of relationships. Grandparents, uncles, aunts and every relative had to be respected and served on their occasional arrival. Indians are particularly fond of spicy food with their own kind of spices which includes lots of chili, cumin powder and other so-called â€Å"masalas† in their food (Gawle, 2003). There is an obligation and responsibility that the Indians exhibit in their mentality which makes them extremely family-oriented. As Jean Bacon in his book, â€Å"Life-lines: Community, Family and Assimilation among Asian Indian Immigrants† states regarding this stance, â€Å"The notion of obligation perhaps encourages members of the second generation to follow the wishes of their parents regarding issues such as educational choices or choices of marriage partners more often than would be the case if this sense of obligation were not present. It was very surprising to me that none of the children in these families ever defied his or her parents desires. No one ever decided to move away and become financially independent in order to pursue his or her own, as opposed to his or her parents, desires. No one took out educational loans to secure the education of his or her choice† (Bacon, 1996). The system of joint-families and extravagant weddings with lots of food and numerous ceremonies is synonymous with them. Their music sense with the sitar and the classics by well-known singers was their favorite. Religion and spiritual obligations were also taken seriously. As Charles A. Moore in his book, â€Å"The Indian Mind: Essentials of Indian philosophy and culture† states regarding Indian culture, â€Å"It is common ground in Indian thought that the adoption of secular means and methods do not lead to freedom or salvation. It may be held that, if we could conquer Nature and fully exploit her resources, we might satisfy all our wants, and as soon as they arise. The modern man in the atomic age with his immense faith in technology is prone to think that the solution lies this way. But wants may still outstrip our ability to satisfy them; a leap-frog race may result. The root problem is left untouched. Technology cannot provide the wisdom and the good will necessary to make a wholesome use of our power. Control over Nature without control over oneself (self-restraint) can lead only to rivalry, domination, conflict, and suicidal warfare. The human problem is basically spiritual; it lies in self-control and self-education† (Moore Morris, 1967). The following quote from the book on the Indian culture shows the immense spirituality in the Indian community and how they try to resolve their problems through the means of self-control. Their religion and their belief in spirituality play a vital role in bringing out these characteristics. My mother who is a Hispanic lady submitted to the Indian culture as they shared a few common ideologies. On the whole, the Indian trait in my family background is dominant. An interesting study was done by Shamita Das Dasgupta on the gender roles and cultural continuity in the Asian Indian Immigrant community in the United States of America where she evaluates the attitude of women and dating in the Indian culture. Her revelation is as follows, â€Å"Where attitude toward women was concerned, there seemed to be great intergenerational similarities between parents and children. The belief in gender equality of both mothers and fathers was positively correlated with that of their children regardless of age. However, mothers egalitarianism seemed to be mitigated by their childrens age. That is, the older their children, the more conservative mothers became regarding womens roles. Since mothers own age was not linked to this relationship, it can only be speculated that as adolescents grew older, their mothers started to experience the pressures of socializing them in traditional gender roles. In the process, they themselves turned toward conservatism† (Dasgupta, 1998). Another interesting trait that can be drawn in the Indian culture is regarding the relationship between a boy and a girl. The Indian culture places an immense importance on the physical chastity. In other words, there is nothing like sex-outside-marriage for them. As Shamita Das Dasgupta in her journal article states, â€Å"Undoubtedly, a reason for instilling inhibitions about dating in girls more than boys is due to Asian Indian parents obsessions with maintaining sexual chastity. Dr. Prasad, a professor of engineering conducting a youth forum in New Jersey, stated, From an Indian Culture point of view, dating involving physical relationships before marriage is not permissible. Segal (1991) notes this fear in Asian Indian parents and believes most Indian immigrants who are not quite familiar with the practice tend to conflate dating with sexual activity† (Dasgupta, 1998). The idea of physical chastity plays an important role in the Indian community and any kind of illicit relationship outside the framework of marriage is taboo for them. It means absolute disgrace on the family if any such kind of an act is indulged by either the boy or the girl. In Hinduism particularly, such girls are exiled from the communities and their family members are disgraced and humiliated to a great extent. My parents value their own cultures and traditions. Though I come from a bi-racial background, my family has most of the Indian traditions in it as my mother had very willingly given herself to the Indian heritage. The freedom stories as well as the Indian history are still known to my father. My father stated in a brief conversation, â€Å"Indian culture imbibes its traditional roots from the Vedas. We have a deep attachment to it and we cannot forget what our country has done for us to bring us so far. Our Indian tradition and culture is our identity to who we are. Indian culture promotes an inner sense of brotherhood and unconditional love- something that I witness lacking in the West but we have a small world of our own here. I still value the Indian norms and I am proud of it as well. I cannot forget the freedom fighters that fought for our beloved country. I believe that is how we are here. I cannot forget the sacrifices given by our country’s soldiers to protect India from foreign invasion. The emotions are far too many to be forgotten†¦Ã¢â‚¬  (John K. Ram Prasad, personal communication, May 15, 2007). John Y. Fenton, in his book entitled, â€Å"Transplanting Religious Traditions: Asian Indians in America† lists some of the important characteristics that are found in the Indians and are most desired to preserve. He lists family as the most important trait and dominant in the Indian culture. Secondly, he states Indian character (pious and chastity) and thirdly, he states religion as the inherent trait amongst Indians. Fourthly, he finds cultural arts and language as important traits in the Indian culture. (Fenton, 1988). There are some hints on the Hispanic culture in my family background as well. Though they are not very dominant, they are worth looking into as the character traits are identifiable in their own way in my family. I believe the reason why it was easy for my Hispanic mother to accept the Indian traditions as her own was because they shared many similarities, one of them being their conservative or traditional lifestyle. Furthermore, the Hispanic culture also places immense emphasis on the family, religion and community (Sutherland, 1997). My father also exhibits similar characteristics as discussed above but he has evolved in some sense. As stated in several literatures above regarding religion, my father keeps his religion in his own personal space and allows his children to make their own decisions (which are very unlikely to happen in a typical Indian culture). Adapting to the American environment came easy on him and adapting to the Indian culture came easy on my mother. I have witnessed many occasions when my father gave his first priority to family and then on building a perfect human character in his children. His children and wife were always his first priority over everything and he made sure they received the best of education and lifestyle. Furthermore, his moral stories enlightened us to be good humans and be of good human character. His teachings also revolved on the aspect to respect our grandparents as well as our great-great-ancestors that he so proudly talks about. Though an American now, his Indian values are still present and he vows to pass it on in every way he can through us and though his grand children, as he says. He still celebrates all the festivals and all the Indian rituals. I have personally witnessed these traits in my family that show that my parents are indeed very knowledgeable about their culture. As we saw above, the traits of the Indians are very dominant in my family and most of them have been discussed and stated as being visible in my family. Yes- the traits have also been found visible in my close Indian relatives as well as grandparents who value their Indian culture and still prefer to eat chapattis, curry, sweets and love Indian music and ghazals (Ghazals are slow Indian songs with Urdu lyrics, sort of a beautiful poetry on subjects like love, life and sadness). Old Indian movies and soap operas still occupy a prominent status in my grandparents’ menu through which they cherish their Indian culture and the traits are obviously noticeable. As my grandmother stated a few days ago, â€Å"We cannot forget where we are from†¦ we cannot forget our land, no matter how long we have lived here. We cherish our cultures through centuries and no matter where we are, we will continue to cherish it till our death and pass it on†¦Ã¢â‚¬  (Jodha Ram Prasad, Personal Communication, May 20, 2007). Racism has been an old tale in the history of United States of America and still continues in different manners with different thinking patterns today. They label people like my parents and grandparents as â€Å"typical stereotypical characters† though they have lived all their life to this country. Personally, I have never had any racist experiences but my relatives who have been here for over three decades did. They had problems getting enrolled into American institutions and they would often be looked down as from the â€Å"third-world countries,† though they hold the American citizenship. My uncle states his story that depicted racism exhibited in his own words, â€Å"I was 18 when I had finished my high school and lived all my life in the United States. Even then, we had our house in such a locality where only immigrants lived. It was difficult for us to buy or rent houses in those locations where whites would live. Once I tried getting a house in a typical white locality and found that they gave me rates that were twice expensive than what they charged the white people. This would eventually force us to buy homes in immigrant localities, hence depicting discrimination. We were discriminated based on where we came from. We would be paid lower than the whites in our era when the fight against racism was still in its beginning stages. It was difficult to get the law in our support either. We were eventually marked as weak and powerless†¦Ã¢â‚¬  (Hardy Lewis Choudhry, Personal communication, May 21, 2007). There are many such stories that we would get to hear. These were not new then and are not new even now (though we have several legislations and agencies protecting us from racism). Our grandparents, parents and relatives have a lot more to say than anyone else as racism was extremely common when they immigrated to United States than it is now. Today, we have our rights protecting us from discrimination and racial profiling (that previously didn’t exist). Even today, as I see, Indians are marked stereotypically as foolish and old-fashioned thinking people. There are quite many things that I have learned about my family’s culture through this research and this includes the Indian philosophy and culture, including the racism stories and several other experiences from my primary care-givers. The American culture that I have blended in and the Indian culture that still persists in my family are poles apart in their philosophies and so are their lifestyles. I have witnessed that the conservative Indian thinking is actually a trait that is passed on and I have seen that the Indian culture values a person by his character. Earlier, my focus was never laid on my family’s culture as we lived the way as every American family would live but it was interesting to note the rich characteristics of Indian culture in my family, including my parents, grandparents as well as relatives who gave a tremendous insight into several notions of the Indian philosophy and Indian traditional values. I believe and I respect the traditional cultural values of my family (earlier to which I was not exposed to) and I have learned how spirituality plays a vital role in the making of a person’s character and mind. On the whole, the experience has been quite enriching as India is truly a country with diverse cultures and an interesting history. I am still reminded about Mahatma Gandhi and the times of the Mughals (ancient rulers of India) by my grandparents which show that the traits still exist in them and they want those traits to prevail in me as well which they hope I will pass on to my progeny too†¦ REFERENCES: Moore, Charles A. , Morris, Aldyth V. (1967). The Indian Mind: Essentials of Indian Philosophy and Culture. East-West Center Press. Page no. 323-389. Dasgupta, Shamita Das (1998). Gender Roles and Cultural Continuity in the Asian Indian Immigrant Community in the U. S. A Journal of Research, Vol. 38, 1998. Bacon, Jean (1996). Life-lines: Community, Family and Assimilation among Asian-Indian Immigrants. Oxford University Press. Page 242. Gawle, Rupa (2003). Ask not what your family can do for you†¦ Is obligation an exclusively Indian trait? India Abroad. Published on the 13th of June, 2003. Retrieved online on the 22nd of May, 2007 at http://www. highbeam. com/doc/1P1-78807655. html John K. Ram Prasad, Personal Communication, May 15, 2007. Fenton, John Y. (1988). Transplanting Religious traditions: Asian Indians in America. Praeger Publishers, Page 201. Sutherland, Jean (1997). Understanding Hispanic/Latino culture and History through the use of Children’s literature. Yale-New Haven Teacher’s Institute. Retrieved online on the 22nd of May, 2007 at http://www. yale. edu/ynhti/curriculum/units/1997/2/97. 02. 06. x. html Jodha Ram Prasad, Personal Communication, May 20, 2007 Hardy Lewis Choudhry, Personal communication, May 21, 2007

Policy on Refugees and Integration in Costa Rica

Policy on Refugees and Integration in Costa Rica COSTA RICAN GOVERNMENT POLICY ON REFUGEE AID AND INTEGRATION INTRODUCTION: THE AMBIGUOUS STATUS OF THE REFUGEE AND COSTA RICA The problem of the refugee originates as a peculiarly twentieth century phenomenon. The displacement of peoples from the very borders that delineate states presented a historical challenge that threatened the integrity and the essence of the latter. As the philosopher Giorgio Agamben abstracts the pertinence of this problem: Every time refugees no longer represent individual cases but rather a mass phenomenon (as happened between the two wars, and has happened again now), both these organizations and the single states have proven, despite the solemn evocations of the inalienable rights of man, to be absolutely incapable not only of resolving the problem but also simply of dealing with it adequately.[1] For Agamben, this inadequacy of the treatment of the refugee problem, despite the international consensus on the existence of the human rights of the refugee, is intimately tied to the theoretical shortcomings of the notion of the Nation-State itself; there is a consistent rupture in t he functionality of the Nation State when confronted with the anomaly of the refugee, i.e., when a subject is separated from his/her state, this subject becomes a disturbing remainder that other states find it difficult to account for. Thus, insofar as the refugee denotes a certain failure of the Nation State to protect its citizens/non-citizens, the case of the refugee denotes the limit of the State. Nevertheless, despite the tension between the notions of the refugee and the state that ground their relationship, there is an attentiveness to this problematic (evinced in Agambens own remark), demonstrated by the general consciousness of the existence of the refugee. Hence, regardless of any discerned policy inadequacies, there still exists a concerted effort to address the problem. The success of various refugee policies certainly may be evaluated, e.g., as with Agambens negative evaluation. In the case of Costa Rica, its treatments of the refugee crises that began in 1980s Central America was an example of some moderate successes, or at least, the desired mobilization of a states capabilities via governmental policy towards the refugee cause. However, this mobilization encountered its own distinct problems, over-determined (following Agambens abstraction of the problem) by the irregular status of the refugee him/herself. The successes and failures of Costa Ricas refugee policy is a particularly significant case study for numerous reasons. To the degree that there was a concerted effort from the Costa Rican officials to alleviate the refugee crisis, the shortcomings relate not to Costa Ricas negligence of this crisis (thusly indicating the direction of an evaluation of this policy in terms of a general apathy on the part of Costa Rica), but the opposite: it is this very effort that provides a compelling case for an analysis of a refugee policy in terms of its affectivity and its limits. That is, Costa Ricas attempt to rectify their refugee problem, rather than ignore it or deal with it in a manner that undermines the notions of the rights of man, provides an excellent paradigmatic case for the possible indexing of refugee policy. It is because of this very commitment to alleviating the problem that Costa Rica, despite any subsequent further critiques regarding the details of their refugee policy, is recognized by the international community as having advanced a fairly successful policy in regards to refugees. As Tanya Bysok notes Costa Rica is often cited as a model for refugee settlement.[2] However, this is not to suggest that the Costa Rican approach is flawless. Whilst some policies of the Costa Ricans have been recognized as effective by social scientists, this praise does not diminish the evident gaps in the Costa Rican policy. In this paper we shall examine the Costa Rican treatment of the refugee and attempt to understand how the refugee was integrated/or non-integrated into Costa Rican society. This analysis will be concerned with Costa Ricas approach; however, whilst there was a clear Costa Rican governmental policy, a significant factor in the Costa Rican case is the large presence of foreign organ izations that were encouraged to participate in a possible refugee solution. Thus, because of the Costa Rican openness to a diversity of aid organizations and volunteers offering support, the qualitative analysis of the success/failures of the Costa Rican approach cannot merely be attributed to the Costa Rican government itself. Whilst this encouragement of international participation may be logically viewed as an autonomous gesture of the Costa Rican government, it can also be construed as Costa Ricas self-acknowledgement of having been fundamentally overstretched in terms of its capabilities to handle the problem. Secondly, this analysis shall be supplemented with an anonymous questionnaire of former refugees in Costa Rica, in order to introduce a non-theoretical personal discourse within the parameters of our text. The method of the questionnaire is placed into the paper to act as a balancing point with the theoretical evaluation. The emphasis on the notion of testimony, a form of empiricism all its own, forwards an account of the Costa Rican policy that evaluates the countrys treatment of refugees from a theoretical standpoint, while also acknowledging the power and significance of such a testimony. COSTA RICAN REFUGEE INTEGRATION ANALYSIS The genesis of Costa Ricas refugee problem may be preliminarily abstracted as a matter of geopolitical positioning. Costa Rica occupied a hazardous place within Central America in the 1980s. The relative stability of Costa Rica was contrasted by the neighboring conflicts in El Salvador, Panama, Guatemala, Nicaragua and Honduras: The 1980s evinced a certain explosion of such geopolitical and ideological tensions in Central America, from which Costa Rica was spared. As Martha Honey notes, the Costa Rica of the 1980s â€Å"appeared to be an oasis of tranquility†[3] It is this status of a certain oasis in Central America, that evidently yielded Costa Ricas refugee problem: as a stable nation, it represented the destination of choice for refugees seeking to avoid war in their native lands. Costa Ricas stability as a source for refugees has continued in the time period since the beginning of the 1980s. Yet the refugee that Costa Rica encounters now is substantially different: Refuge es coming into Costa Rica today tend no longer to be from Central America but instead the vast majority are from Colombia. Many are middle-class, urban professionals.[4] Thus, by no means is the refugee in Costa Rica a homogeneous figure. The wars across Central America in the 1980s that led to such displacement are no longer a significant factor in present Costa Rican refugee policy. The Costa Rican encounter with the phenomenon of the refugee begins in 1980 with increasing hostilities in the neighboring country of El Salvador. The immediate reaction of Costa Ricas treatment of this refugee influx distinguished itself from other nations such as Honduras. Whilst Honduras policy favored the internment of the Salvadorian refugees in camps, Costa Rica from the outset emphasized the process of making the refugee self-sufficient; they sought to sever any dependency of the refugee on the state apparatus itself, while simultaneously integrating the refugee into Costa Rican society. These two approaches immediately evince a lucid difference in treatment. In the case of Honduras, this treatment may be viewed as an isolationist approach, insofar as the site of the camp becomes the home of the refugee it does not represent a zone of inclusion, but rather one of suspension moreover, it is an implicit acknowledgment of Honduras government inability to deal with the phenomeno n of the refugee, placing the refugee in a certain no-mans land, as it waits for the conflict in the home country to cease. In contrast, the Costa Rican emphasis on autonomy and self-sufficiency denotes the acceptance of the refugee immediately into its boundaries. We can abstract this difference in terms of a synchronous thinking and a diachronous thinking. In the case of Costa Rica, the policy does not introduce the phenomenon of two times, i.e., waiting for the war to stop rather, the interruption of the refugee experience is directly addressed, through a minimization of this interruption that is a policy of refugee inclusion in Costa Rica. On the other hand, in the Honduran approach, two times are articulated, a wartime and a non-war time. There is no possible mediation between the times; there is only a case of transition and thus, a passivity on the part of the government that is then transferred to the refugee him/herself this interruption that is the refugee event determines the entire Honduran policy. In essence, Costa Rica attempted to establish the continuity of the refugees’ life, allowing for the possibility of a normalcy to remain in the face of a crisis. Such initial successes of the Costa Rican programme may be attributed to a certain history of human rights discourse that emerges in the country, i.e., that Costa Rica was conducive to internationalism in its support of UN programmes and its own creation of international approaches. This historiographical element is significant to understanding the immediate difference of Costa Rica from its neighbors, as it stresses a historical Costa Rican commitment to human rights. As Alison Brysk notes, Costa Rica qualifies as a global good Samaritan because its record of human rights promotion is enduring and multifaceted, and it makes a meaningful contribution to globally significant initiatives.[5] Hence, Costa Ricas Good Samaritan status is derived from its fidelity to such initiatives on both a regional and global level. Among its contributions, Costa Rica was involved in the peace negotiations that ended three regional civil wars, while also functioning as the seat for the Inter-American C ourt of Human Rights of the Organization of American States (OAS). On the international level, Costa Rica was involved with international organizations such as serving at the initial prepatory conference for the founding of the United Nations, while also initiating the UN Childerns Fund. These historical contributions of Costa Rica may be construed as establishing a certain tradition within Costa Rica that made it more receptive to the specific demands of the refugee influxes that began in the 1980s. Thus, from an ideological perspective, there was nothing in the Costa Rican state ideology that would be adverse to the refugee; rather, the ideology was committed to human rights from its outset. This tradition may help to understand the initial successes of the Costa Rican programme. In the initial stages of the refugee problem in the 1980s, because of such an international tradition of Costa Rican policy, there was no shortage in the country of foreign and international refugee organizations that participated in the alleviation of the crisis. As Basok summarizes these contributions: A number of government and voluntary agencies have participated in refugee settlement [in Costa Rica]. They include local branches of such international organizations as Caritas, the Episcopalian church, and the YMCA. In addition, refugees themselves formed a number of voluntary organizations in the hope of assisting their compatriots. Apart from providing emergency aid to refugees, the UNHCR has also financed most of the refugee urban projects. Financial assistance has been provided by other international NGOS as well.[6] The plurality of non-governmental actors demonstrated a Costa Rican openn ess to the refugee crisis. Moreover, the possibility of refugees themselves forming aid organizations demonstrated a certain autonomy of the refugee within Costa Rica; despite the loss of nationality that is the refugee displacement, the refugees were granted a freedom to organize and assemble regardless of their anomalous status. These international organizations were also complimented by Costa Ricas own approach, which has been termed as the durable solution model, emphasizing integration of refugees into the country of asylum. As an unpublished UNHCR document describes this durable solution model: Self sufficiency projects are the ultimate aim of UNHCR as they allow the refugees to become independent of emergency assistance and be productively integrated in the receiving community. In the under-developed countries with serious unemployment problems, self-sufficiency projects offer the best alternation for the refugees work problem. For the receiving country, these durable solutions are a contribution to the national economy, particularly the projects which include both nationals and refugees.[7] Costa Ricas commitment to what the UNHCR deemed as the most effective program for refugee crisis further explicates the traditional openness of Costa Rica to international consensus, whilst concomitantly identifying Costa Ricas desired integration of refugees. The UNHCRs evaluation further acknowledges the durable solution as beneficial to the new country of the refugee itself: the influx of labour sources provided a boost to the national economy of Costa Rica. Thus, Costa Ricas commitment to the durable solution model may be viewed as both a commitment to international law and the notion of human rights, whilst also a policy decision how to utilize the refugee crisis for the benefit of Costa Rica itself. Nevertheless, what may be termed as Costa Ricas comprehensive solution, insofar as it incorporated the UNHCRs preferred model while simultaneously allowing for the participation of foreign organizations, nevertheless encountered specific problems. Primarily the non-organizational model’s intervention into the refugee problem was problematic: The results, however, were less than satisfactory. In 1985 it became evident to the UNHCR that less than half of the 152 projects registered with government agencies were still active. Most of the others had failed.[8] The infectivity of the multiplicity of organizations according to the quantitative data of the UNHCR tends to suggest that the approach of a strength in numbers, i.e., multiple organizations engaging in the refugee crisis, was unsuccessful primarily because of a lack of cohesion. Inasmuch as the Costa Rican intent was essentially one of no aid is bad aid†, this ultimate failure speaks to a certain consistency needed be tween organizations, in order better to establish links between groups, and affectively address the grounding problem, that of the refugee him/herself. This bureaucratic entanglement between organizations as detrimental to the refugee is easily discernable from the perspective of the refugee him/herself; because a plurality of organizations exists, the refugee is caught in a bureaucratic system, with no connection to the Costa Rican government itself. This serves as an impasse to the desired integration. This collapse of the various international programs led Costa Rica to attempt a more autonomous policy that would be regulated by the government, therein optimistically hoping to marginalize the previous failures through a centralization of refugee policy. This centralization would enable a consistent discourse of the durable solution to emerge in the Costa Rican space. As Ed Mihalkanin notes After the failure of many of the international and domestic refugee projects, the Costa Rican government tried to integrate refugees into already existing jobs.[9] By Costa Rica directly addressing the problem, this focusing of the remit of refugee policy could better serve the goal of integration: as the refugees are located in Costa Rica, the most efficient means towards integration would be to have the government directly involved in the refugee process by opening economic opportunities to the refugee. This shift reflects a certain fundamental ambiguity at the heart of the general theory of refugee policy. While, prima facie, the plurality of non-governmental organizations that operated in Costa Rica to alleviate the suffering of the refugee may be viewed as a logical step, inasmuch as it emphasizes giving aid to refugees in light of any possible limits to the capabilities of the Costa Rican government, this approach simultaneously suspends the notion of an integration into Costa Rican society. That is to say, if integration is the ultimate goal of Costa Rican refugee policy, such integration can only be engendered by the direct intervention of the government itself, as the government is ultimately congruent with Costa Rica. From this perspective, the collapse of the aid programmes emanating from various international sources may be viewed, in actuality, as a step towards a more direct involvement of the Costa Rican government in the refugee problematic, in terms of a more strident form of integration. This strident form would be necessary if the Costa Rican government would become the primary instrument for refugee aid in the nation, as opposed to the organizational plurality. Nevertheless, after the general failure of the international aid programmes, charity organizations, etc., the new Costa Rican government initiative itself faced various de jure issues that prevented the establishing of a greater remit for refugee aid. As Mihalkanin writes, at times Costa Rican laws actually prevented refugee aid, despite any best intentions of the Costa Rican government. This was the case regarding Costa Rican employee law: â€Å"Yet very few work permits were issued since by law only ten percent of a firms workers can be foreigners.†[10] Thus, the attempt to integrate refugees into the Costa Rican labour force already met opposition in a pre-existing law that marginalized the possibility of foreign workers in Costa Rica. As Mihalkanin notes, despite the intent of both the government to integrate the refugees and the employers’ will to aid the refugees by giving them work, this shared movement encountered a double impasse: the de jure situation of the l abour law, coupled with the de facto situation of employers, whom, although giving refuges a workplace, could not register the workers because of the law. Therefore, any type of de jure integration of these refugee workers who were already working in Costa Rica, was not possible because of the law; despite their labour power, and one must conclude, the desire for this labour source, the separation between the de jure and the de facto situation prevented this opportunity at integration. What occurred then is simply a missed opportunity, a miscommunication between government and private sectors, the latter wholly receptive to the influx of refugee workers, but whose hands were metaphorically tied by the Costa Rican law. This problem of the limits of aid in the sphere of labour relations also extends into the basic human rights of Costa Ricans, such as health care: insofar as health care is available to refugees in Costa Rica, access is limited from both a temporal and financial perspective. As a UNHCR report from 2003 noted, â€Å"in Costa Rica, access to social security services is universal, which means that everyone, regardless of nationality, is entitled to health coverage at a very low cost.†[11] Nevertheless, the caveat here is that â€Å"refugees and asylum seekers are entitled to free healthcare cover during their first three months in Costa Rica.†[12] This leads to an immediate problem facing refugees after the three month period of coverage has elapsed; as Gloria Maklouf Weiss, Director of ACAI (Asociacià ³n de Consultores y Asesores Internacionales), a UNHCR partner in Costa Rica recapitulates this problem: â€Å"some refugees are in such economic hardship that they cannot pay even the very small monthly fees.†[13] Thus, considering the situation of the refugee, the three-month time limit appears insufficient for health care coverage. The securing of an employment opportunity in Costa Rica within this same three-month period would have to be a concomitant aim of a programme; otherwise, the benefits of the Costa Rican health care policy are severely limited by the refugees’ inability to generate capital. On this point, the separation of the spheres of employment and healthcare impede the abilities of the refugee to begin a life in Costa Rica; insofar as employment and healthcare are considered as distinct issues, the benefits of healthcare are separated from the refugee labour force. The weakness therefore in this aspect of the policy is not anticipating the contiguity between employment integration and the possibility of health care. It is examples such as these incongruities in the law and policy of Costa Rica itself that failed to provide a comprehensive programme for its refugees. Thus, whilst Costa Ricas position as a stable country remains attractive to refugees in a time of crisis, various gaps in the system prevented a comprehensive plan to address the phenomenon. QUESTIONNAIRE The data in section 2.0 regarding Costa Rica’s history and policy approach to the refugee crisis only provides one side of the picture. This theoretical analysis of Costa Rican refugee policy, considering the constraints on any discourse of this style, is to be supplemented by a questionnaire submitted to four former refugees in Costa Rica. Whilst the sample size of the questionnaire is admittedly small, the necessity of its inclusion rests on a theoretical significance given to the notion of testimony in an effort to verify or contradict the reading provided of Costa Rican refugee policy. The prejudice of the academic discourse is to be alleviated through the survey presentation; thus, the purpose of the questionnaire is based on a theoretical value attached to testimony and the attempt to provide a more complete picture of the refugee policy of Costa Rica. Because of sensitivity to the time concerns of the participants and because of issues with the English language, the que stionnaire was deliberately simple and limited to four questions. QUESTIONNAIRE ANALYSIS While the sample size is admittedly small, and the nature of the questions direct, the data of the questionnaire would seem to indicate a moderate level of satisfaction with the Costa Rican refugee policy. The option for the refugees in Costa Rica appears to be beneficial; the majority of answerers expressed that integration and employment possibilities were available in Costa Rica, whilst also noting the receptivity of the various refugee organizations to the concerns of the refugees. It is germane to note that the questionnaire deliberately avoided inquiring into the personal history of the participants, in respect for ethics and the privacy of the participants. While this may be construed as detracting from the accuracy of the questionnaire, as it brackets out some of the personal histories involved in the participants, the aforementioned ethical position of protecting privacy was taken as paramount. Rather the questionnaire was to function as a cursory testimonial survey of Costa Rican refugee policy, and thus, while no means a complete account, it does indicate that the Costa Rican option for refugees was more positive than it was negative. CONCLUSIONS The difficulty of the refugee problem primarily lies in the problems it engenders vis-à  -vis the traditional structure of the State, which relies for its function on the notion of citizenry. Inasmuch as human rights become an international imperative, the anomalous appearance of the refugee conflicts with the traditional State model. This tension is however a source for the production of new approaches to the refugee problematic. Costa Rica’s position in the ravaged Central America of the 1980s placed the nation into a role of a paradigm case for refugee policy. The Costa Rican approach must be commended at the outset for its commitment to human rights and the welfare of the refugees. The intent of the Costa Rican policy therefore must be viewed in a positive light. However, the complications that arose from the refugee crisis provide valuable data and source material for the possible improvements of refugee policy. Costa Rica’s acceptance of foreign, international and non-governmental charitable organizations to alleviate the crisis, whilst helping the refugees on the â€Å"terrain†, actually hindered the successful integration of these refugees into Costa Rican society, inasmuch as these organizations, as non-Costa Rican entities, actually created a further distance between the refugee and the Costa Rican state. Moreover, once the majority of these organizations had failed, the Costa Rican government was left to complete the so-called â€Å"durable solution.† The impasses to the â€Å"durable solution† may be traced to employment and economic laws of the Costa Rican state, laws which were unable to successfully meld with the desired â€Å"durable solution.† It is various de jure factors, despite the overall Costa Rican government intent and the intent of the private sector to integrate refugees through employment, which hindered the affectivity of this solution. Nevertheless, Costa Rica is still referred in some academic literature as an excellent example of a refugee policy. This seems to be supported by the anonymous questionnaire that was a part of our research; the questionnaire, while its sample size is admittedly small, nonetheless offers a certain support to the notion that Costa Rica was more effective than not regarding the refugee experience. Thus, whilst there are problematics in the policy of Costa Rican refugee integration, it is nevertheless a paradigm from which numerous positives can be drawn, whilst also providing a better insight into the impasses that may present themselves in such a policy: hopefully these cases, will yield a better approach to the difficult notion of the refugee in the future. BIBLIOGRAPHY Giorgio Agamben, â€Å"We Refugees†, accessed at: http://roundtable.kein.org/node/399 Tanya Basok, Keeping Heads Above Water: Salvadorean Refugees in Costa Rica McGill Queen’s Press: 1993. Alison Brysk, â€Å"Global Good Samaritans? Human Rights Foreign Policy in Costa Rica†, in: Global Governance, Vol. 11, 2005. Martha Honey, Hostile Acts: U.S. Policy in Costa Rica in the 1980s, University of Florida Press: 1994. Ed Mihalkanin, â€Å"Refugee Aid, Displaced Persons, and Development in Central America† in: Refugee Aid and Development, Greenwood Press: 1993. UNHCR, â€Å"Health Fair in Costa Rica gives refugees much needed medical care†, March 6, 2006, accessed at: http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/RWB.NSF/db900SID/EVOD-6MNF3L?OpenDocument> 1 [1] Giorgio Agamben, â€Å"We Refugees†, accessed at: http://roundtable.kein.org/node/399. [2] Tanya Basok, Keeping Heads Above Water: Salvadorean Refugees in Costa Rica, pg. Xvii. [3] Martha Honey, Hostile Acts: U.S. Policy in Costa Rica in the 1980s, pg. 4. [4] UNHCR, â€Å"Health Fair in Costa Rica gives refugees much needed medical care†, March 6, 2006, accessed at: http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/RWB.NSF/db900SID/EVOD-6MNF3L?OpenDocument> [5] Alison Brysk, â€Å"Global Good Samaritans? Human Rights Foreign Policy in Costa Rica†, in: Global Governance, Vol. 11, 2005. [6] Basok, pg. Xviii. [7] Basok, pg. Vi. [8] Basok, pg. Xviii. [9] Ed Mihalkanin, â€Å"Refugee Aid, Displaced Persons, and Development in Central America† in: Refugee Aid and Development, pg. 90. [10] Mihalkanin, pg. 90. [11] UNHCR, accessed at http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/RWB.NSF/db900SID/EVOD-6MNF3L?OpenDocument> [12] UNHCR, accessed at http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/RWB.NSF/db900SID/EVOD-6MNF3L?OpenDocument> [13] UNHCR, accessed at http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/RWB.NSF/db900SID/EVOD-6MNF3L?OpenDocument>