Space invaders: the negotiation of teenage boundaries through the mobile phone

Drawing on interview data, this paper explores the area of child/parent negotiation. Specifically, we examine the increasing significance of the mobile phone in the way teenagers negotiate spatial boundaries with their parents. Utilising theories of time and space, especially Giddens’ concept of ‘distanciation’, we show how parents and their children use the mobile phone as a tool for negotiating curfews in public space, thus extending household discussion and negotiation outside of the home. We point out that parents are using the mobile phone to enter their children's time and space as an ‘absent Other’, and see this as a means of extending parental authority and control. Children, conversely, see themselves gaining a degree of empowerment from the mobile phone, as parents are more lenient with curfews if they posses one. The mobile phone, then, has become an important facilitator of negotiations between parents and teenagers regarding boundary setting. We conclude that the mobile phone has enabled teenagers to gain increased leverage in their negotiations with their parents, but underline that parents still hold control and authority by ‘invading’ their children's space.     

A struggle on two fronts: boundary drawing in the lower region of the social space and the symbolic market for ‘down‐to‐earthness’

In this article we use qualitative interviews to examine how Norwegians possessing low volumes of cultural and economic capital demarcate themselves symbolically from the lifestyles of those above and below them in social space. In downward boundary drawing, a range of types of people are regarded as inferior because of perceived moral and aesthetic deficiencies. In upward boundary drawing, anti‐elitist sentiments are strong: people practising resource‐demanding lifestyles are viewed as harbouring ‘snobbish’ and ‘elitist’ attitudes. However, our analysis suggests that contemporary forms of anti‐elitism are far from absolute, as symbolic expressions of privilege are markedly less challenged if they are parcelled in a ‘down‐to‐earth’ attitude. Previous studies have shown attempts by the privileged to downplay differences in cross‐class encounters, accompanied by displays of openness and down‐to‐earthness. Our findings suggest that there is in fact a symbolic ‘market’ for such performances in the lower region of social space. This cross‐class sympathy, we argue, helps naturalize, and thereby legitimize, class inequalities. The implications of this finding are outlined with reference to current scholarly debates about politics and populism, status and recognition and intersections between class and gender in the structuring of social inequalities. The article also contributes key methodological insights into the mapping of symbolic boundaries. Challenging Lamont's influential framework, we demonstrate that there is a need for a more complex analytical strategy rather than simply measuring the ‘relative salience’ of various boundaries in terms of their occurrence in qualitative interview data. In distinguishing analytically between usurpationary and exclusionary boundary strategies, we show that moral boundaries in particular can take on qualitatively different forms and that subtypes of boundaries are sometimes so tightly intertwined that separating them to measure their relative salience would neglect the complex ways in which they combine to engender both aversion to and sympathies for others.     

Military Deployment of an Adult Child: Ambiguous Loss and Boundary Ambiguity Reflected in the Experiences of Parents of Service Members

ABSTRACT

This study explored the experiences of parents of service members, military family members who are often overlooked even though they are likely a vital source of support for their military adult-children. Reflections on deployment of military adult-children were gathered from 21 parents in semistructured group interviews. A framework of ambiguous loss, boundary ambiguity, and ambivalence was used to analyze comments reflecting pre-deployment, deployment, and post-deployment experiences. Pre-deployment anticipation of leave-taking was associated with boundary ambiguity and ambivalence for parents, tempered by safety concerns. During deployment ambiguity in parental role expectations and parameters complicated parents’ attempts to manage physical absence and maintain psychological presence. Post-deployment challenged parents with ambiguous psychological presence and disruption of family boundaries, complicated by changes associated with the effects of war.     

EU Children in Brexit Britain: Re-Negotiating Belonging in Nationalist Times

This article contributes to debates on identification, home and belonging by focusing on EU children in Brexit times.¹ The article combines attention to the emotional and affective side of integration with a focus on the effects of the discursive practices of the state on these processes. The article explores how Italian children and their parents navigate the increasingly neo-assimilationist pressures in Britain. Specifically, it looks at children's ways of accommodating their parents’ values of mobility, multilingualism and transnationalism with the revived nationalist logic now dominant. The article argues for renewed scrutiny into the role of public discourses on migrants’ experiences, which illuminate the redrawing of the boundaries between inclusion and exclusion at moments of crisis.     

The long road from Nador to Brussels

The focus of this article is on the migration of the married Berber woman and her children from the city of Nador in Northeast Morocco to Europe. The Berber woman has her own space to move in her own world with specific boundaries. In the countryside, the setting of the boundaries of the married Berber woman is materialized primarily by the boundaries of the house and the surrounding group of women. The Berber woman's real authority in the home, her potential power, corresponds to the role of the man in the external world, which is the 'wild' for the woman. In addition to the sexually determined boundaries, there is also a spatial differentiation in behavior in the women's world. Upon her arrival in Brussels, the Berber woman enters a completely new terrain in terms of both the environment and the space that will become her internal world, the home. The Berber woman, after a period of time that varies from woman to woman, will cross the new boundary to establish contacts in the outside world. The traditional boundary system is continually challenged by the functional aspect of daily life. Many of the immigrant women see their stay in Europe as a temporary phase in their lives and prepare for returning to Morocco. To obtain an insight into the manner in which young immigrants construct their life worlds and the conflicts that can accompany it, it is necessary 1st to know their country of origin, in particular, the world that their parents and ancestors were raised in and which is structured by the boundary system described in this paper.     

Non‐job work/unpaid caring: Gendered industrial relations in long‐term care

This article explores the operation of gender and industrial relations in long‐term care work or nursing home work, ‘from within’ the experience of the predominantly female workforce in seven unionized facilities in Canada. Drawing on qualitative case study data in non‐profit facilities, the article argues that the main industrial relations challenges facing long‐term care workers are that their workplace priorities do not fit within existing, gendered, industrial relations processes and institutions. This article starts from the experience of women and threads this experience through other layers of social organization such as: global and local policy directions including austerity, New Public Management, and social and healthcare funding; industrial relations mechanisms and policy; and workers’ formal [union] and informal efforts to represent their interests in the workplace. The strongest themes in the reported experience of the women include: manufacturing conditions for unpaid work; increasing management and state dependence on unpaid care work; fostering loose boundaries; and limiting respect and autonomy as aspects of care work. The article extends the feminist political economy by analysing the links between the policies noted above and frontline care work. Building on gendered organizational theory the article also introduces the concept of non‐job work and suggests a fourth industrial relations institution, namely the needs and gendered expectations of residents, families and workers themselves, operating within the liminal spaces in care work.     

Social identity and alcohol in young adolescence: the perceived difference between youthful and adult drinking

This paper examines the evolving social identities of young adolescents in regard to alcohol and drinking culture in Norway. Detailed analysis of 29 focus group interviews and 32 individual interviews with 12–13-year-olds reveal a thorough negative attitude towards alcohol, especially when enjoyed by young people. Young adolescents found young people to be too irresponsible and immature to drink, while adults were portrayed as capable of enjoying alcohol without losing control or experiencing other negative effects. Through symbolic boundary work, they distanced themselves from adolescents who drank. The young adolescents rejected the idea that drinking alcohol was a sign of maturity; instead, they exhibited maturity by distancing themselves from drunk adolescents. We discuss how these findings reflect the participants’ socio-cognitive development, and how symbolic boundaries are often drawn against those closest in social distance. We conclude that boundaries between ‘adolescents’ and ‘adults’ are fundamental when understanding emerging adolescent social identities, especially when it comes to drinking and drinking culture.     

Drawing Boundaries or Drawing Weapons? Neighborhood Master Status as Suppressor of Gang Violence

Criminological scholarship on gangs has documented that attempts to take over territory and drug markets under the control of another gang is a primary motivation of inter-gang violence. However, little is known about situations where competition over territory and drug markets comes from within the territory, or about instances where gang competition does not lead to violence between criminal groups. Drawing on over 140 interviews and over nine months of ethnographic fieldwork in Canada’s oldest social housing project—Regent Park—this article describes and analyzes the changing nature of the neighborhood’s gang landscape as a result of neighborhood redevelopment. In particular, it examines why the emergences of a rival gang within Regent did not incite violence as the literature would expect. The article outlines how the emergence of a new rival gang within a territory previously dominated by established criminal groups did not result in the type of violence, in part because the two groups shared a “master status” of being Regent residents, which served to buffer inter-gang violence. Further, it argues that instead of drawing weapons, the established criminal groups expressed their frustration with the loss of their territorial monopoly to emerging groups by morally distinguishing themselves from the new groups. This article concludes by casting a scholarly spotlight on the means through which boundary work develops between criminal groups, and how cultural contexts affect identities and discourses in physical space.     

Processes of Knowledge Production in Social Movements as Multi‐level Power Dynamics

Most literature related to the study of processes of knowledge production within social movements neglects how power relations between participants rooted on structural inequalities shape such processes. It also underestimates how such inequalities and the very dynamics of movements intersect in the setting up of the ‘boundaries’ of ‘insidership’ and ‘outsidership’, as well as of the terms implicit in different forms of participation. This article makes a review of theoretical and methodological literature that is relevant to the study of processes of knowledge production within social movements. Based on that review, it proposes the concept of ‘multi‐level power dynamics’ as a tool for future research on the way in which such processes are shaped by power relations between movement members endowed with, or experiencing a differentiated access to different forms of knowledge, as well as with actors within the state and networks promoting the diffusion of ideas and strategies.     

Occupation as refrain: territory and beyond in Occupy London

Emerging with the wider ‘movements of the squares’ of 2011, Occupy London was defined by occupation, and by participants’ negotiation of what occupation meant. Its forms and meanings changed as London’s Occupiers moved between occupied sites, through uprootings by eviction, and into post-eviction attempts to extend Occupy’s territorial politics without the camps. This paper builds on three years of ethnography to consider occupation as an unfolding process, using Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of the ‘refrain’. This describes territory in three ‘moments’: the marking of a fragile centre; the stabilization of a bounded ‘home’; and the breaching of boundaries, extending in progressive directions. This rubric is used to analyze London’s occupations, and their defining tension, between an expansive desire to ‘Occupy Everywhere’ – connecting to the wider ‘99 percent’ – and the tendency to become embedded in the protest camp ‘home’. The features of ‘home’ are analyzed using Foucault’s concept of ‘heterotopia’, highlighting an alterity with ambivalent consequences for Occupy’s project. The paper argues that despite a desire to ‘deterritorialize’ occupation, Occupy London stalled in the moment of ‘home’, a consequence of the camp’s status as the ‘common ground’ of an often disparate movement, and the reduction of productive capacities characterizing Occupy’s terminal downswing.     

(Ap)parent Boundaries: Parents' Boundary Work at Cultural Events for Families with Children Adopted from China

Abstract

The adoption of children from China by American families represents a rich case study for an expanding sociological literature on boundaries: it brings to life many of our most salient borders and highlights their very permeability. This paper represents one aspect of a larger research project on parents' efforts to bridge perceived ethnocultural boundaries within the China adoptive family. Through ethnographic fieldwork and semistructured, in-depth interviews, I examine parents' interpretations of and participation in Chinese cultural events organized by and for China adoptive families. These events are significant sites for social research on boundaries because they: (1) appear to assume permeable ethnocultural borders; and (2) bring previously incoherent individuals together as a bounded group. Drawing on classic and contemporary theories of ethnic identification and collective identity, I reveal how parents activate existing symbolic and social boundaries and create new symbolic and social boundaries in their efforts to construct community. In particular, I demonstrate how previously incoherent parents cohere as a bounded community by actively distinguishing themselves from “authentic” Chinese/Chinese American referents and the “imagined community” of biological families. Likewise, I reveal how the community's boundaries and cultural events both mask and alienate a growing percentage of the China adoption contingent: African American and Asian American China adoptive parents, lower-middle-class and working-class China adoptive parents, and the adoptive parents of Chinese sons. Through this case-based analysis, I add general theoretical and methodological contributions to the diffuse boundaries literature.     

Of Roots and Wings: Letting Go of the College‐Bound Child

This article examines how parents experience the process of “letting go” of their college‐bound children. The focus of our analysis is on how the parents evaluate the meanings of their children's leaving home and adopt strategies to facilitate the process for both themselves and the departing child. Our analysis is based on interviews with thirty sets of parents. The interview materials allowed us to recognize and then parse the paradoxical task faced by parents of fostering “attached individuation” for both themselves and their children. We address four broad and persistent themes that emerged from our conversations with parents. First, we consider how parents manage the range of sometimes‐conflicting emotions generated by the letting go process. Second, we analyze the content of parents' worries as a good unobtrusive measure of how they understand the transition to college as a ritual marker in their children's lives. Third, we show how negotiations about geography—about proper distance from home—in choosing a college reflect efforts to impose a measure of gradualism into the letting go process. Fourth, we report on how parents theorize the impact of a child's departure on family relationships in general.     

Post‐Fordist reconfigurations of gender,work and life: theory and practice

Based on an in‐depth study with 56 informants (25 women and 31 men), across the ICT (information and communication technology), creative and academic sectors in one city/regional hub in Ireland, this article investigates the so‐called revolution in work/life practices associated with the post‐Fordist labour processes of the Knowledge Economy from the perspectives of workers themselves. Recent theorizations of post‐Fordist work patterns emphasize a rearranging of work and life place boundaries; a reconfiguring of work and life time boundaries; and a dissolving of the gendered boundaries of work and life (production and social reproduction) (Adkins and Dever 2014 ; Morini and Fumagalli 2010 ; Gill and Pratt 2008 ; Weeks 2007 ; Hardt and Negri 2004 ). Our findings suggest that, instead of dissolving boundaries, workers constantly struggle to draw boundaries between what counts as work and as life, and that this varies primarily in relation to gender and stage in a gendered life trajectory. Work extensification is compensated for via a perceived freedom to shape one's own life, which is articulated in terms of individualized boundary‐drawing. While younger men embraced ‘always on’ work, they also articulated anxieties about how these work habits might interfere with family aspirations. This was also true for younger women who also struggled to make time for life in the present. For mothers, boundary drawing was articulated as a necessity but was framed more in terms of personal choice by fathers. Although all participants distinguished between paid work and life as distinct sites of value, boundaries were individually drawn and resist any easy mapping of masculinity and femininity onto the domains of work and life. Instead, we argue that it is the process of boundary drawing that reveals gendered patterns. The personalized struggles of these relatively privileged middle‐class workers centre on improving the quality of their lives, but raise important questions about the political possibilities within and beyond the world of post‐Fordist labour.     

Professional Relationship Boundaries: A Social Work Teaching Module

Social workers are often challenged by the complex and ever‐changing dynamics within their relationships with clients, and struggle to find ethical responses within professional boundary grey zones where boundaries with clients can be difficult to identify, yet easy to cross. Social work educators attempt to prepare students for these complex situations, yet in the United States research reveals rates of social work boundary violations that lead one to question the efficacy of social work ethics education. This article describes the educational competencies and instructional strategies that comprise an adaptable course module which was developed in response to this challenge, and intended to increase students' self‐awareness, motivation and professional judgment‐making abilities related to their professional boundaries. The educational competencies for this course include the abilities to: identify boundary violations, apply critical thinking skills to complex professional relationship contexts, increase awareness of self and other, and initiate prevention strategies. In contrast to traditional approaches to education, this article describes instructional strategies that are based on adult‐learning principles, which have the purpose of effectively and creatively teaching topic areas in such a way as to produce behavioural change. These course topic areas include a ‘Professional Relationship Boundaries Continuum’ conceptual framework, boundary violation impacts, personal boundary vulnerabilities, blurring boundary indicators, and risk‐minimizing strategies.     

Postdivorce Coparenting and Children’s Well-Being in Hong Kong

This article reports a survey study on postdivorce coparenting and its relationships with children’s well-being in Hong Kong. Based on data from 142 resident parents and 84 children, the results revealed that interparental conflict and triangulation of children within parental conflict adversely affected children’s well-being, whereas interparental support fostered children’s well-being. Parental communication and interparental support coexisted simultaneously with parent conflicts. These conflicting effects make postdivorce coparenting a mixed blessing for children. Fortunately, residential parent–child intimacy and quality parenting by both parents protected children’s well-being from the effects of negative relational dynamics. Promoting postdivorce coparenting should always accompany effective interventions in conflict resolution, the renegotiation of growth-enhancing boundaries among family members, the support of parental functioning and individual recovery of both parents, and the facilitation of noncompetitive parental involvement of nonresident parents.     

Taking her hand: Becoming,time and the cultural politics of the white wedding

Abstract

This article attempts a cultural analysis of the white wedding as an event that can be viewed as the crystallisation of several moments of identification, both temporal and spatial. Written in three sections, each located within a different philosophical literature, the article focuses on the significations that surround the emblem of ‘the hand’, playing on all the associations that gather around that emblem, and making critical consideration of a series of crucial boundaries of cultural differentiation.     

Men at Work and at Home: Managing Emotion in Telework

Home‐based telework, as one of the flexible working options available today, is unique in its ability to blur physically and emotionally the boundaries between work and home. This article explores how men experience working from home, how they construct their identities as workers and as parents in this ambiguous location and how, as fathers, they manage the emotional work of reconciling family and career in this context. Our findings suggest that in order to manage the emotional aspects of telework men will, at times, focus on either the professional or parental part of their identity in their narratives, and at times attempt to ‘have it all’. We conclude that telework can provide a space where men can adopt emotional discourses and practices traditionally associated with women and, particularly, with working mothers.     

Navigating Globalization: Immigration Policy in Canada and Australia, 1945–20071

Scholarship on immigration and globalization has failed to adequately analyze the nation‐state’s regulatory capacities, insisting instead that contemporary patterns of migration jeopardize national sovereignty and territoriality. While recognized that states possess the legitimate authority to control their territorial and membership boundaries, recent transformations of these capacities remain largely unanalyzed. This article’s historical analysis of Australia and Canada’s postwar immigration policies demonstrates that the contours of state regulation are intimately connected to the exigencies of state administration and nation building and—in contrast to the expectations of dominant theories—have intensified and expanded within the globalization context. The literature’s inattention to the fundamentally political nature of immigration has obscured the critical effects of national policies within both the migratory and globalization process. Australia’s and Canada’s contemporary policies constitute a unique model of migration control and reflect attempts by both countries to strategically position their societies within the global system and resolve a number of economic, political, cultural, and demographic transitions associated with globalization.     

Culture,boundary, and identity: a comparison of practices between two online punk communities in China

This article analyzes how digital technology can shape cultural practice in Chinese online communities. By using the concepts of boundary and identity, it explores the formation of two online punk communities in China, created by those who are interested in punk music originating from Anglo-American countries. Drawing on data from participant observation and 10 in-depth interviews, this article first reviews literature on Internet culture in China, online communities, boundaries, and identity. It then focuses on the differing practices of the two online punk communities. A discussion is subsequently provided concerning how boundaries are constructed in online communities through the exclusion that is enabled by the technological platform. An analysis of how the members identify themselves with online communities and form punk subcultures encouraged by the boundaries of their respective communities is then presented towards the end of the article. It is through this process that the members empower themselves in their relationships with the surrounding society.