Regional restructuring of industrial sport: The case of elite hockey player production in British Columbia

Although ice hockey has been characterized as a “people's sport,” since the 1980s neoliberalism has stimulated elite hockey to take on industrial characteristics, driven by: the commodification of sport; a growing scale of hockey performance; the branding of teams and cities; a strategic coupling with media; and the privatization of training and facilities. In British Columbia, elite hockey players are being produced in new regional settings. Formerly, many elite players came from smaller resource-hinterland towns offering strong local support. With neoliberal commodification of the sport, the Lower Mainland has emerged as the main centre of elite player production in British Columbia. This has occurred very rapidly as costly private training programs located mostly in larger metropolitan areas have become the main source of young players aspiring to elite status. High-performance training companies and private hockey academies offer costly routes to elite player status, with new class relations that exclude low-income families. A range of internal and external scale economies lead to these new facilities being concentrated in larger conurbations, particularly in Greater Vancouver.     

Shift Work,Childcare and Domestic Work: Divisions of labour in Canadian paper mill communities

The growing prevalence of shift work and non-standard working hours is challenging many taken-for-granted notions about family and household life. This article examines how rotating shift schedules shape household strategies with regard to childcare and unpaid domestic work. In 1993-94 in-depth interviews were conducted with 90 predominantly male newsprint mill-workers and their spouses living in three communities located in different regions of Canada. The analysis in this article is based on these interviews as well as data collected in a questionnaire survey administered to a much larger sample. The article focuses on the effects of rotating shifts and the extent to which household strategies differ between households with one or two wage-earners. The findings reveal that the onus for adjusting to shifts fell mainly on the spouses of mill-workers, who felt constrained in their own choices regarding employment and childcare by the demanding regimen of their partner's shift schedules. In the vast majority of households a traditional division of labour predominated with regard to both childcare and domestic work. When women quit paid employment to accommodate the schedules of shift-workers and ensure time for the family to be together, traditional values reassert themselves. Surprisingly, a high level of satisfaction with current shift schedules was found, despite the significant adjustments to family life they had necessitated. By comparing families employed in the same industry but living in three very different communities, the analysis underscores the importance of local circumstances in mediating the strategies households deploy in coping with shift work, especially with regard to childcare.     

To Be or Not to Be a Refugee: The International Politics of the Hong Kong Refugee Crisis, 1949–55

While a great deal is known about the international politics of refugee policy in Europe since the appointment of the first international commissioner for refugees by the League of Nations in 1921, relatively little attention has so far been paid to similar questions involving the plight of refugees in Asia. This article examines one of the first attempts by the newly established UNHCR to extend its mandate beyond the European context for which it was originally conceived. During the early 1950s the British colony of Hong Kong briefly became the focus of intense UN and international attention over the issue of how to treat the hundreds of thousands of Chinese refugees who fled China's communist revolution for the colony. The influx of refugees, many of whom were destitute, threatened to overwhelm Hong Kong's infrastructure and prompted urgent calls for their resettlement abroad. The ensuing UNHCR investigation into the legal status of the Hong Kong ‘refugees’ offers an instructive example of the politicisation of the UNHCR in the context of the unfolding Cold War in Asia and reveals the deep divisions that emerged within the Anglo-American alliance over how to deal with Hong Kong's refugee population. The paper argues that the UNHCR Survey Mission in Hong Kong was doomed to fail given the mutual suspicions and incompatible agendas of the various players involved.     

Regional Unemployment in Canada in the 1981–4 Recession

The 1981–4 recession in Canada was the worst in half a century, with unemployment peaking at almost 13 per cent in December 1982. However, the effect of the recession varied considerably from region to region, in both severity and timing. This paper measures the severity of the recession's regional impact in both the downswing and recovery phases. The timing of the recession in each region is then identified, using the method of turning points. Preliminary interpretations of the seventy and timing of regional recession are presented, drawing particularly on explanations rooted in the economic structure and trade performance of the regions .
La dépression des années 1981–4 a été la pire que le Canada ate connu en un demi-siècle, alors que le taux de chomage a presqu atteint 13 pour cent en décembre 1982. Cependant, le choc de la dépression a été ressenti différemment d'une région à I'autre à la fois dans sa sévérité, et le moment de son apparation. Cette etude mesure la sévérité du choc de la depression au plan regional tant dans sa periode de descente, que celle de sa remontée. L'incidence de la dépression dans le temps en chaque region est identifiée par la méthode du point décisif. Des interpretations prélimi-naires de la sévérité et de /incidence dans le temps de la dépression au niveau regional sont présentées, en tenant compte surtout des raisons avancées pour expliquer la structure économique et la performance commerciale des régions .