This article examines the precarious work experiences and coping tactics of entertainers in China’s tourism performing arts (TPAs), who are also tourism labour migrants (TLMs). Focusing on a particular ethnic group, Wa entertainers (WEs), this article aims to highlight how TLMs sustain their careers and fight for decent work. Qualitive methods were applied to investigate entertainers in a neglected sector of the tourism industry. The findings show that entertainers face two main aspects of precarity: labour relations and job attributes. Inspired by the precarious TPA work, WEs develop micro-tactics to resist, namely, they have suitable geographical mobility choices and actively participate in skilling and learning. Thus, WEs become more capacitated to switch smoothly between different jobs to sustain a broader career in tourism-oriented sectors. This article offers critical insights into the capability development of tourism practitioners. It reflects on a vernacular, grassroots redefinition of sustainability with respect to decent work, in which a stable or predictable career pathway may not be the ultimate purpose for grassroots TLMs.

IntroductionDecision makers often use value-based decision rules to determine whether technologies offer good value for money and should therefore be adopted, comparing cost-effectiveness analysis results with a threshold value. This assumes that decision makers are indifferent to interventions with the same expected value but different levels of underlying uncertainty. Such indifference is unlikely to hold in practice. We propose a risk-based price and accompanying decision rules to address this limitation.MethodsWe characterized risk using the per-patient expected value of perfect independent information (EVPII), a modification of a standard output from value of information analysis. The EVPII estimates the expected value of net benefit losses caused by uncertainty related to a technology, independent of the uncertainty related to alternative treatments. ‘Payer risk tolerance’ is then defined as the maximum per-patient risk of making wrong decisions that payers are willing to accept, expressed in monetary terms. The risk-based price is the price at which the EVPII is equal to the payer risk tolerance.ResultsThe risk-based pricing decision rules are as follows: (i) a technology is acceptable for adoption at the submitted price if the incremental net benefit of the technology is greater than or equal to zero and the EVPII is less than or equal to the payer risk tolerance; and (ii) the optimal technology has the greatest expected net benefit at the lowest of the sponsor submitted, value-based, or risk-based price at a given cost-effectiveness threshold value.ConclusionsThe risk-based price incorporates uncertainty and risk attitudes into decision-making. We demonstrate that both risk-averse and risk-neutral payers prefer the outcomes of risk-based pricing. Risk-based decision rules incentivize sponsors to develop evidence. Implementation of the risk-based price improves outcomes for patients by increasing health system net benefits under constrained resources, with better alignment to decision maker risk attitudes.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to contribute to the challenges of bringing postcolonial, racism and migration research into a meaningful dialogue. Based on the research examining migration from Central Asia into Russia, the paper analyses migration policy and the everyday experiences of migrants.Design/methodology/approachThe paper is based on mixed methodologies, including narrative, semi-structured and in-depth interviews with migrants from Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan in Russian cities and those who returned to their country of origin (over 300 people), interviews with representatives of NGOs, state officials and journalists in 2013–2016 and an analysis of the legislation and mass-media regarding migration from Central Asia.FindingsThe paper demonstrates that experiencing racism is a part of everyday life for migrants from Central Asia living in Russia. Whether this is in interactions with the state, fear of persecution on the street by the police or in the workplace, it is a constant factor. It argues that the political and everyday xenophobia and racism demonstrates deeply rooted imperial views in Russia’s inner politics and shapes attitudes toward migrants.Social implicationsThe paper contributes to broader debates on the linkages between migration and racism in Europe, in particularly questioning the positionality of migrants from “not-European” countries.Originality/valueMbembe’s approach to “let die” is pertinent in understanding postcolonial migration. Racism continually plays a role in “normalization” of abuse toward migrants and restrictive migration policy. Blaming “the migrant” for acting informally, draining healthcare resources and for posing a security risk provides a much-needed scapegoat for the state.

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia has positioned itself as a modernising country (re)built on the profits of its energy boom and the efforts of, currently, over four million labour migrants, the majority from Central Asia. Far too many migrants endure an extremely precarious everyday as they are forced to live in what this article describes as a citywide state of exception, within which legal frameworks protecting migrants are ignored or misinterpreted to the benefit of the market. Many migrants who desire legality' are forced into illegality' by their employers and landlords refusing to register their documents correctly, increasing their vulnerability. Such abuses are facilitated by the state construction of migrants as diseased and criminal, which in turn becomes embedded into cultural imaginations. Employing Mbembe's theory of necropolitics, this paper theorises how these constructions position migrants as superfluous and that they can be let to die'. The research demonstrates that migrants are simultaneously visible and invisible to the state; with the latter, the legal uncertainty denies migrants access to welfare and a voice within the city, but they are visible for exploitation both in terms of their labour and the political capital gained from their presence.

This paper assesses the coping mechanisms of creative SMEs in the context of recent economic downturns. It argues that such industries develop various forms of micro-resilience anchored in three main dimensions: production, space and people. By using the case of Digbeth and the Custard Factory as a lens to focus the discussion, it posits the argument that micro-resilience rests upon competitive advantages, including corporate reputation and the capacity of those industries to be flexible, adaptable and entrepreneurial. It also notes that space and locality, as intangible resources, act as leverages to provide an adequate working environment, allowing financial viability and clustering. Finally, it points out that creative workers and their informal networks favour a range of tactics allowing micro-resiliency. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

As Europe's current economic crisis continues many households are developing new coping strategies in response to the pressures of everyday life. This paper explores such practices within Birmingham's Castle Vale housing estate, drawing on the increasing engagement within the social sciences with notions of resilience. This concept, originating from engineering, psychology, and disaster management, is increasingly used in urban and economic geography, and is becoming influential on state policy. This paper furthers its current usages by proposing the concept of 'persistent resilience', whereby households, and their networks, develop responses not just to 'shocks', but also to more long-term processes, such as the changing nature of employment and/or responses to constantly altering state policies. This form of resilience has significant policy relevance, as it can be seen, albeit under different names, at the heart of the British government's 'Big Society' project, within which communities are to be empowered to steer their development while 'big government' withdraws. This paper argues, however, that there is an inherent tension within such assumptions of community-led development, as they do not consider the spaces in which it takes place. As the paper demonstrates, 'persistent resilience' is often formed in the semiformal/informal spaces of everyday life, which, in many cases, will be destroyed by cuts to government funding to communities. Thus, the paper calls for a more nuanced, everyday understanding of resilience and the spaces within which it is formed and transmitted.

Based on large-scale surveys and in-depth interviews, this article discusses the role of religion in social welfare and social work in Russia's Republic of Tatarstan, a majority Muslim region. It notes that there is relatively little formal social work provided by large-scale Islam-based groups. However, religious spaces are important as places where social networks are developed, facilitating social welfare provision within wider networks. Locally, mosques rarely provide immediate aid, such as cash transfers, but some engage in long-term targeted provision. The article concludes that as such schemes develop, trust in religious organizations will increase and more people will turn to them in times of need.