Raluca Bejan

The Link between Childhood Sexual Abuse and Myocardial Infarction in a Population-Based Study.

OBJECTIVES This study examined the relationship between childhood sexual abuse (CSA) and myocardial infarction in men and women, while controlling for social determinants (i.e., socioeconomic status, social support, mental health) and traditional cardiovascular risk factors (i.e., age, race, obesity, smoking, physical inactivity, diabetes mellitus). METHODS Population-based data were obtained from the 2010 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System. Myocardial infarction was ascertained by self-report of a health-professional diagnosis. CSA was defined as forced sex with someone at least 5 years older before the age of 18. The final sample included 5,095 men and 7,768 women. RESULTS After adjustment for 15 factors, abused males had nearly 3 times the odds of heart attack compared to non-abused males (OR=2.96; 95% CI=1.12, 7.85). Among women, CSA was not associated with heart attack in the age-race adjusted (OR=1.20; 95% CI=0.39, 3.68) or fully-adjusted (OR=0.88; 95% CI=0.28, 2.75) analyses. CONCLUSIONS CSA was associated with heart attack in men, even when controlling for traditional risk factors; however, no association was found among women. Future research is needed to replicate the studys unique findings.

Making the invisible visible: are health social workers addressing the social determinants of health?

This study explored the ways in which health social workers (HSW) address the social determinants of health (SDH) within their social work practice. Social workers (n = 54) employed at major hospitals across Toronto had many years of practice in health care (M = 11 years; SD = 10.32) and indicated that SDH were a top priority in their daily work; with 98% intentionally intervening with at least one and 91% attending to three or more. Health care services were most often addressed (92%), followed by housing (72%), disability (79%), income (72%), and employment security (70%). Few HSW were tackling racism, Aboriginal status, gender, or social exclusion in their daily practice.

Social workers’ perspectives on social justice in social work education: when mainstreaming social justice masks structural inequalities

Abstract This paper presents findings from an exploratory study with Master of Social Work (MSW) graduates in Canada to explore the extent to which their classroom and practicum learning addressed social justice and anti-oppressive practice. Thirty-five MSW graduates took part in a semi-structured online survey regarding the quality of social justice knowledge and practice skills in their field instruction and coursework. The survey also examined how graduates employ social justice in their current social work practice. The majority of the study sample reported favorable educational outcomes and embraced social justice goals in their current practice. Discourse analysis of written comments, however, identified a disconnect between social justice theory, field education, and the overall climate of the social work program. Despite an explicit endorsement of social justice values by the program and the profession, graduates reported limited opportunities to learn anti-oppressive practice or apply social justice theories in their field education. We argue that the ‘hidden curriculum’ in social work education reflects market pressures that privilege task-oriented goals while ‘mainstreaming’ social justice rhetoric. Skills to confront oppression with transformative change are viewed as abstract goals and thus less useful than clinical practice.

Transnational responses to global capitalism: The case study of the Roşia Montană campaign

This mapping report uses a transnational lens to portray the United We Save global movement in support of the Roşia Montană campaign. Roşia Montană is Romania’s oldest mining settlement, located within the Transylvanian mountains of Apuseni. Despite its remote location, Roşia Montană has gained much public attention in recent years, particularly in 2013, due to local and global uprisings against a proposed open pit gold mining project pursued by Roşia Montană Gold Corporation (RMGC) – an intermediary of the Canadian-owned Gabriel Resources (GBU). The venture would constitute the largest cyanide opencast mine in Europe (Velicu, 2014). United We Save gathered large groups of Romanians and migrants of Romanian background from abroad as they mobilized to oppose the project. After months of unrest, the draft bill allowing GBU to start the Roşia Montană development was rejected by the Romanian Senate on 19 November 2013, with amendments to the country’s mining law being further voted down by the Parliament on 10 December 2013 and 3 June 2014 (Salvați Roşia Montană, 2014). We are drawing from participant observation and personal reflections on our own involvement within the United We Save campaign in Toronto, Canada, in order to portray the movement and its transnational connections.

A Post-Master’s Advanced Diploma and a MSW Specialization in Social Service Administration: Design, Delivery, and Assessment of Outcomes

ABSTRACT Many social workers with primarily direct practice experience have been increasingly moving into upper-level administrative roles within their organizations. Unfortunately, many of these new leaders do not have an adequate base of knowledge and skills needed to manage human service organizations. In response to this identified need the Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work in Toronto developed both a post-graduate diploma in social service administration, and a new social service administration specialization within its Master of Social Work (MSW) program. This article describes the design, delivery and evaluation of these initiatives.

Down but Not Out—A Comment on the 15th Canadian National Metropolis Conference “Building an Integrated Society”

“Metropolis is here to stay!” stated a defiant Jack Jedwab, Executive Director of the Association for Canadian Studies, in his welcoming remarks at the 2013 National Metropolis Conference, held in Ottawa, Canada, on March 14. A product of the Metropolis Research Network, a collaborative partnership between academia, immigrant-serving community groups and all levels of Canadian government, the annual Metropolis conference brands itself as a unique outlet for sharing academic and community-based research findings with policymakers and service providers. Under the overarching title “Building an Integrated Society/Construire une Societe Integree,” the 2013 conference encompassed over 100 workshops and presentations and approximately 500 attendees (Taylor, 2013). Up until a few months prior, it had been unclear if the longstanding conference would happen at all. As of 2013, the Network had its funding decimated by the Canadian Conservative federal government, a move many settlement workers and immigration activists considered part of a deliberate strategy to undermine research documenting the needs of many vulnerable immigrant groups (Keung, 2013). Amidst widespread pessimism regarding the conference’s financial prospects, the Association for Canadian Studies, a wellknown progressive Montreal-based think-tank, stepped in at the last minute, saving the day and offering to take on financial responsibility for the event indefinitely.

An interview with Maria Nikolakaki regarding the 2016 “Crossing Borders” conference in Lesvos, Greece

The journey from Athens to the port of Mytilene, capital of Lesvos, takes about nine hours by boat. Formerly a highly visited tourist spot, packed with small cafés and local Greek stores, Lesvos has recently attracted international attention due to the high influx of refugees from the Middle East and Africa arriving on the island’s shores. Alongside the Greek coastlines of Chios, Leros, and Samos, and Italy’s ports of Augusta, Lampedusa, Porte Empedocle, Pozzalo, Taranto, and Trapan, Lesvos nowadays constitutes a “hot” arrival “spot,” labeled as such by the European Commission to denote the high(er) inflow of refugees and asylum seekers. In light of the European refugee crisis, an international conference was organized in Lesvos in the summer of 2016 to address issues related to citizenship, displaced migration, borders and identity, refugee and asylum law, as well as the larger socio-political phenomena of imperialism, colonialism, globalization, and capitalism, which are also grounding the refugee crisis as such. The Crossing Borders conference took place between 7–10 July 2016. It was the first event organized by the Cooperative Institute for Transnational Studies (CITS), in collaboration with the Sociology Department of the University of Aegean. The conference was sponsored by the Stop the War Coalition (UK), Peoples’ Assembly Against Austerity, Real News Network, Stopimperialism.org, and the National Greek Television. Featured speakers included Tariq Ali, Andrej Grubačić, Feyzi Ismail, Dimitris Lascaris, Zoe Konstantopoulou, Vicki Macris, Maria Nikolakaki, John Rees, and Kenneth Surin. CITS was founded earlier in 2016 as an independent institution of higher learning, ideologically steered by radical politics and operating as a bottom-up educational system under the guiding principles of participation, collaboration, solidarity, democracy, and cooperativism, hence intended to work as a commons, with a general assembly bargained by all members, including teaching scholars and students. CITS also struck up an Advisory Board, comprising the well-known names of Tariq Ali, Étienne Balibar, Werner Bonefeld, Raquel Gutiérrez, John Holloway, Peter McLaren, Moishe Postone, Jacques Rancière, and Helena Sheehan. The conference opened with an art exhibit on the refugee topic, encompassing paintings, photos, sketches, and a combination of video art installations. Bilingual conference panels, in Greek and English, were conducted for two days. Sessions incorporated roundtables as well as special events, such as the screening of Janus’ Legacy: Refugee Passage to Europe, a documentary film directed by Dimitris Papageorgiou and Alexandros Spathis, which was

Irene León on the project of Buen Vivir as a challenge to corporate transnationalism

The following conversation took place in October 2015, in Toronto, succeeding an event at Beit Zatoun, a community space open to dialogs that address current political and cultural issues from a framework of social justice and human rights. An Ecuadorian based author, journalist and political activist, Irene León held at the time an advisory position for the Ecuadorian Minister of Foreign Affairs on issues of strategic and transnational interest. Her work was mainly centered on the legal-juridical matters that surrounded the Chevron versus Ecuador legal case. In Ecuador, the Texaco/Chevron oil exploitation between 1964 and 1990 contaminated the Amazonian rainforest, polluted the drinking water and negatively affected the local agriculture. Chevron was sentenced in 2011, by an Ecuadorian court, to pay damages totalling 9.5 billion dollars to the affected Indigenous communities. However the company liquidated all its assets in Ecuador, and the judgment could not be enforced. The Chevron – Ecuadorian plaintiffs litigation issue ended up being disputed in Canada, where the Supreme Court has unanimously voted (in September 2015) that Ecuador’s Indigenous communities have the right to pursue the judgment at the Ontario Court of Appeal. Chevron also filed, in 2009, an international plea against Ecuador, at The Hague, for private arbitration. Irene León was invited by the Anti-Chevron Canada (a grassroots group), to talk about the case, and to broadly contextualize it within the topic of transnational corporate responsibility. The day after her talk at Beit Zaton, Irene León continued the discussion. She spoke about the ideological shift brought forward by the transnational capital interests and practices, about the alternative efforts carried out in Latin America to resist the intrusions of multinational corporations, and about developing unorthodox relationships of exchange that would steer away from the ‘market’ and would organize different ways of economic (re) production. Latin America has been long involved in a political project of ideological change. We can only think of the Pink Tide movements that started in the 1990s, which included working class and Indigenous campaigns against neoliberalism and against American imperialism, while simultaneously promoting anti-capitalist structural reforms, particularly against the IMF, privatization and social restructuring (Prashad, 2013). By now, many South American nations have elected governments from the left side of the political spectrum (Prashad, 2013): Brazil (2002), Argentina (2003), Uruguay (2004), Bolivia (2006), Chile (2006), Ecuador

Us and them?: The dangerous politics of immigration control

Us and Them is a conceptually rich book. It enhances the field of migration theorizing across borders and within borders. It is mainly focused on the nationwide British context, yet the presented ideas could easily transverse transnational fields. Anderson cuts across disciplinary boundaries in juxtaposing the concepts of exclusion and inclusion, particularly in relation to the production of immigration status and the division of people into desirable and undesirable, deserving and undeserving, citizens and migrants, legals and illegals.

“Democracy Rising: From Insurrections to ‘Event’” – Athens 2015: A conference report and a conversation with Giovanbattista Tusa and Creston Davis of the Global Center for Advanced Studies

The Global Center for Advanced Studies (GCAS), an alternative higher education institution, organized its first Global Conference, Democracy Rising: From Insurrections to ‘Event,’ which took place ...