No abstract

No abstract

No abstract

In the aftermath of disasters it is not uncommon for a large number of individuals, ranging from professional technical responders to untrained, albeit well meaning, volunteers, to converge on site of a disaster in order to offer to help victims or other responders. Because volunteers can be both a help and a hindrance in disaster response, they pose a paradox to professional responders at the scene. Through focus group interviews and in-depth structured interviews, this paper presents an extended example of how Urban Search and Rescue (US&R) task forces, a type of professional technical-responder organisation, interact with and utilise volunteers. Findings show that US&R task forces evaluate the volunteers in terms of their presumed legitimacy, utility, and potential liability or danger posed during the disaster response. Other responses to volunteers such as a feeling of powerlessness or the use of volunteers in non-technical ways are also explored. This paper demonstrates some key aspects of the relationship between volunteers and formal response organisations in disasters.

In recent years, a significant amount of attention has been devoted to the survival of ethnicity among multiracial people in the United States. This concern is especially evident in the case of the offspring of Asian-Anglo couples. While scholars have speculated on the extent to which Asian ethnicity will continue to persist among multiracial children, little empirical work has addressed this concern. In this analysis, we use a multilevel model to examine the ethnic identification (as reported by parents) of children of Asian-Anglo couples. Data from the 1980 Public-Use Microdata Sample for California are used in the analysis. The results indicate that the majority of the children had Anglo ethnic identities. The multivariate findings also identify several variables that are related to children's ethnic identification.