Lost in the System? Disabled Refugees and Asylum Seekers in Britain

This short paper calls for greater awareness of disabled refugees and asylum seekers living in Britain. Currently, policy makers, many refugee communities and the disability movement fail to consider disabled refugees and asylum seekers, perhaps because they constitute a minority about whom data are rarely available. Focussing on the particular combination of circumstances affecting disabled refugees and asylum seekers, this paper presents recent changes in support arrangements for refugees and asylum seekers. The paper also calls for greater involvement in refugee issues by the disability movement.     

‘Nothing about us without us’: the emerging disability movement and advocacy in China

The disability movement and disabled persons’ self-help organizations (DPOs) are emerging in China, some of which succeeded in promoting policy and social changes with special strategies. Based on an original survey and interview, this article explains the development and survival strategies of China’s DPOs, and especially interprets some successful cases of social advocacy and policy advocacy in the emerging disability movement. It is hoped that scholars will pay more attention to the advocacy and public engagement of the disability community in non-western settings in the future.     

An emergent cosmopolitan paradigm? Asylum,welfare and human rights1

This paper addresses the recognition in cosmopolitan debate of a possible disjuncture between the normative ideal of cosmopolitanism and its realization in practice. Taking as its focus the potential conflict between human rights commitments and national concern about immigration control, it reflects on a series of legal challenges to UK government attempts to withdraw support from asylum seekers who do not claim on entry into the country. Set in the context of socio‐legal theory, these cases are analysed for signs of a ‘national’ or ‘cosmopolitan’ paradigm in judicial interpretation, and considered as a possible instance of reflexive judgment, espoused as a feature of cosmopolitanism.     

Public attitudes toward science and technology: what have the surveys told us?

Surveys of public attitudes toward science and technology over the last two decades show a very high level of favorable response. Public confidence in science sagged in the seventies and, though science suffered considerably less than most other major social institutions, a larger tiny minority now view it as harmful than in the fifties. The most striking aspect of public attitudes toward science, and scientists, however, is that they appear to be based on nebulous and distorted conceptions which are dominated by themes of applied technology.     

“What can the Chinese experience of empire tell us about the Belt and Road Initiative?”

Theory and Society - China’s “Belt and Road Initiative” (BRI), first announced by President Xi Jinping in 2013, has attracted widespread attention, with much discussion as to its...     

New Approaches to Asylum?

Since its inception 50 years ago, the international asylum regime has shifted through a series of discernibly different approaches. The most recent approach has been characterized by restrictions on asylum-seekers, manifested initially through a reluctance to grant asylum, and today through a reluctance even to admit asylum-seekers.
There is now a growing consensus that this approach is unsustainable. States are recognizing that restrictions have not fulfilled their original aims of reducing the number of asylum-seekers, and furthermore have had unintended consequences that include the growth of human smuggling and trafficking.
UNHCR is concerned about the erosion of the entire concept of asylum. Asylum advocates, NGOs and human rights activists argue that restrictions have impacted as heavily on those who need international protection as on those who do not. As a result, a wide range of new initiatives are being proposed, which may pave the way for the evolution of a new approach to asylum.
This article analyses the evolution of restrictions in the asylum regime, explains the failing of this approach, and finally reviews possible ways forward.     

Photographs from the Grahamstown Lunatic Asylum,South Africa, 1890–1907

This essay investigates photographs taken at the Grahamstown Lunatic Asylum during the superintendence of Dr Thomas Duncan Greenlees, from 1890 to 1907. It examines two specific sets of photographs: first, the photographs taken for public consumption, and, second, the casebook photographs of the patients. I argue that the photographs produced for public consumption ascribe to the broader public image of the asylum. Greenlees constructed a public image of the asylum being committed to the curative regime of moral therapy while catering to the tastes, proclivities and activities of white private patients. The photographs for public consumption also include images of black patients. Yet, in this time of British colonial rule in South Africa, there was differential treatment for black patients. Under Greenlees’s superintendence, they were assigned supervised physical labour tasks under the pretext of them being occupational treatment. The discourses of cure and recovery in such a “treatment” regimen become signalled by the black patient’s ability to work. Thus, the curative ideal of the asylum for black patients, disseminated as its public image, is primarily concerned with domesticating black bodies into a docile and cooperative labour force. However, the public image of black patients as being passive before the asylum’s regimen is problematised through an analysis of the second set of images – the casebook photographs. These photographs depict patients confronting, refusing and resisting the asylum administration. Thus, the casebook photographs are valuable in recuperating active resistance and hold the potential to undermine the public image of the asylum.     

Inter‐professional Learning to Prepare Medical and Social Work Students for Practice with Refugees and Asylum Seekers

Social workers and medical practitioners, particularly those in general practice, provide services for individuals who experience social exclusion. Access to medical, health and social care services has been identified as problematic for refugees and asylum seekers, reflecting their marginalised status within society. It is widely accepted that multi‐agency responses and working together are key requirements in improving access to services and promoting social inclusion; however, achieving this across professional and agency boundaries often remains challenging. Joint planning and training have been suggested as being important in improving communication, leading to more flexible and creative services.

This paper describes the genesis and implementation of a series of innovative inter‐professional workshops for medical and social work students, focussing specifically on marginalised groups. Learning and teaching input was developed by, and came from, service users and qualified medical, health and social work practitioners. The paper focuses particularly on the sessions relating to refugees and asylum seekers. The content and structure of the sessions are discussed and students' responses are reported. The implications for future inter‐professional learning and practice in relation to socially excluded groups are highlighted.     

Protecting Women Asylum Seekers and Refugees: From International Norms to National Protection?

Little attention is paid in most national asylum policies and legislation to the specific position of female asylum seekers, and to gendered aspects of refugee and asylum situations. Further, even in those countries that have adopted asylum legislation to specifically address the question of women asylum seekers and victims of gender specific persecution, problems still remain in the implementation of these policies and in the full recognition of persecutions specific to women. Whilst the issue of protection of women victims of this type of violence have been put on the international agenda, at least to some extent, through directives on the defence of women’s human rights and on the protection of female refugees and asylum seekers, the international norms which have thus been created have been implemented unevenly and unequally in different national contexts. This article seeks to analyse the extent to which national asylum legislation and policies have integrated a concern with the protection of women victims of gender specific forms of persecution, and how effective this implementation has been. The article will engage critically with existing accounts of global norm creation to examine the uneven diffusion and implementation of norms on the protection of female refugees, pointing to the importance of discursive opportunity structures open to actors in mobilising around these issues at local and national levels. It will also argue that even where policies and legislation dealing specifically with women refugees and asylum seekers do exist, they may not actually address some of the important insecurities facing these women because of an approach that does not fully comprehend and act upon gendered structures and relations of power.     

‘So few of us and so many of them’

Public protest against the Persian Gulf War in 1990–1 was only part of the story of US American women's resistance to war in general and to that war specifically. Although the gendering of war is seldom discussed outside feminist scholarship, the events of 11 September 2001 and its aftermath as well as all events and processes having to do with war are gendered events and processes. Both women and men participate in war in various ways, some of which, particularly in the case of women, are either not noticed, are deliberately ignored or made invisible. In this essay, the stories of some women who protested the Persian Gulf War are represented alongside questions that their narratives prompted about what constitutes anti-war work, and what the ramifications of such work are in the present international context.     

State and Regional Professional Associations—the Case of the CSA and the PSA

The CSA and the PSA share several critical challenges including maintaining a stable membership, providing opportunities for students to present their work while at the same time maintaining their position as an organization of professional sociologists, meeting the needs of a diverse membership and balancing the teaching and research needs of this diverse membership. The need is for the CSA and the PSA to work together to form an even closer partnership.     

Women and the Environment

Cleaning-up the environment, the Sewage Disposal Factory in Luzhi Town in suburban Suzhou, Jiangsu Province, centralizes sewage control for the local economic and technological development zone.     

‘The sea inside us’: narrating self,gender, place and history in South African memories of the Hajj

¹ 1. From Mxolisi Nyezwa’s poem, ‘Sea’ (Nyezwa 2000 Nyezwa, M., 2000. Sea. In: Song trials. Pietermaritzburg: University of KwaZulu Natal Press, 62.  [Google Scholar]). How do Muslims in South Africa recount the experience of pilgrimage? This paper considers the genre of oral and written South African hajj narratives and reflects on the insights they hold about Muslim subjectivity and history in South Africa. Pilgrimage is a complex theme, or, as Barbara Cooper (1999 Cooper, B.M., 1999. The strength in the song: Muslim personhood, audible capital, and Hausa women’s performance of the Hajj. Social Text, 60 (Globalization?), 87–109.  [Google Scholar]) phrases it, ‘the hajj presents an immensely complex “ethnoscope” of human movement of tremendous historical depth’ (p. 103). In this article, I take a literary and historical rather than sociological or quantitative approach to the topic of the hajj and examine one of the earliest published accounts of the hajj from the Cape – that of Hajji Mahmoud Mobarek Churchward, who performed the hajj in 1910, along with oral testimonies about pilgrimage by ship in the 1950s and recently published accounts of pilgrimage by Na’eem Jeenah and Shamima Shaikh (2000), Rayda Jacobs (2005 Jacobs, R. 2005. The Mecca diaries, Johannesburg: Jacana.  [Google Scholar]) and Rashid Begg (2011 Begg, R. 2011. The Hajj, Stellenbosch: Imvusa.  [Google Scholar]). In my analysis I consider the nature of the self and the voice, the relation of the spiritual to the quotidian, and the place of South Africa and South Africanness in these accounts. The article reveals that South African pilgrimage narratives are deeply compelling as an autobiographical practice and as an historical archive. They relate the universality of Islamic religious observance with the particularity of South Africa’s political and social realities in a seamless and illuminating nexus. I therefore argue that the hajj narrative as literary form offers new insights about the relation of the sacred and the profane, nation and religion, and gender and authenticity in South African Muslim life.     

The gender identity of pedophiles: what does the outcome data tell us?

The aim of this study was to determine whether pedophiles have a different gender identity profile compared with non-sexual offenders. Participants were 87 male adult subjects, divided into three groups: (a) 27 pedophiles who abused male victims, (b) 30 pedophiles who abused female victims, and (c) 30 non-sexual offenders. The gender identity factor was measured with the Mf scale of the MMPI and the Bem Sex Role Inventory (BSRI). Results indicated no significant inter-group differences in terms of gender identity. However, the order of the three groups regarding scores on the Bem-Masculinity and the Mf scale was as predicted. Conceptual and empirical elements related to gender identity are addressed in order to shed light on potential disturbances in the gender identity of pedophiles.     

Empowerment,expectations, and the psychological contract—managing the dilemmas and gaining the advantages

Empowerment, participation, self-managing work teams, employee ownership and profit sharing are but a few of the many current forms of employee involvement in workplace decision making. Few theorists or practicing managers question the concept of employee involvement or its potential benefits. However, most employers realize that the degree of involvement varies with the organizational situation, the persons involved and the nature of work. Empowerment creates a dilemma. Empowering employees results in creating beliefs about entitlements that must be unfulfilled eventually. Unfulfilled beliefs about entitlements may constitute a breach of the psychological contract between employer and employee. A breach of the psychological contract may result in employee behavior that is counterproductive in terms of organizational goals.     

Dangjia Village Blends the Old and the New

DANGJIA Village is located nine kilometers north of Hancheng City, Shaanxi Province. The building complex in this village is Oriental in style, and the customs here show the development of Chinese traditional culture. Dangjia Village was established in 1331 A.D. Residents of the village had two family names—Dang and Jia. The descendants of Dang and Jia lived,     

Closing the Gap? Gender and the Global Compacts for Migration and Refugees

Migrant women's organizations, UN Women, and civil society advocacy networks have mobilized to call for greater gender‐responsiveness in migration governance. The development of the Global Compacts on Migration and Refugees presented an important opportunity to continue enhancing the international framework for protecting the rights of women and men on the move. This article asks: How has gender been understood/invoked during proceedings leading up to their adoption? In what ways is it incorporated in the resulting compacts and their operationalization? What are the gains and missed opportunities for gender‐responsiveness? Drawing on data gathered through participant observation in the global compact on migration preparatory meetings and member state negotiations in Geneva and New York, and policy analysis of the drafts of both compacts, this paper aims to determine the extent to which the compacts, and the plans to operationalize them, serve to widen or close the gender gap.     

Spousal Income and Sick Leave: What do Twins Tell us About Causality?

Theoretical arguments suggest that a higher socioeconomic status can improve health and as a consequence reduce the need for sick leave. The purpose of this study is to empirically investigate causal effects between spousal income and absence from the workplace due to sickness. To control for unobserved heterogeneity a Swedish sample of female twins and a semiparametric censored fixed-effects model was used. Results for dizygotic (fraternal) twins indicated that male spousal income, i.e., a non-shared environmental influence, reduced the share of income that was government-paid sickness benefits. Data on monozygotic twins, who have identical genes, provide a more complete control for unobserved heterogeneity. No causal effect was found in this case.

What students’ Facebook posts teach us about the identity challenge in field placements abroad

ABSTRACT

Facebook is a common tool that enables students to publicly express their emotions, thoughts, experiences, and knowledge. On the assumption that the personal narratives of students can provide deep insights into their learning processes during practical training programs, the article presents content analyses of Facebook posts written by Israeli students who participated in an international social work field placement program in India. Content analysis of the students’ posts reveals that they grappled with their personal and professional identities as part of the learning process that occurred while they were formulating their professional identity as social workers. The analysis elicited three main themes: (1) awareness of the national identity; (2) exploration of other identities (personal, professional, and global); and (3) an attempt to contain multidimensional identity. The students discussed the main challenges they faced in the process of formulating an identity that will enable them to engage in international social work, and they described the fluctuations that occurred in those identities. The results show how public Facebook posts can be used as a tool to shed light on the contribution of social work education in international field placements, and provide insights into the learning processes that students experience in field placements abroad.     

What is new with old? What old age teaches us about inequality and stratification

Aging is remarkably unequal. Who survives to grow old in America and the circumstances they face once there reflect durable racial, socioeconomic, and gender inequalities that structure our lives from birth. Yet within the field of social stratification and mainstream sociology proper, examinations of the rapidly growing population of older Americans are often relegated to a “gerontological” periphery. This essay posits that the failure to place aging as a core concern in stratification and inequality is a missed opportunity. We argue for the importance of reintegrating studies on the stratification of aging and explain why such a move is necessary. Specifically, we posit that (a) examining the aging population is necessary for understanding American inequality because aging is an outcome that is ubiquitous yet highly stratified; (b) aging and being seen as “old” in a youth‐focused society are stratifying processes in their own right; and (c) later life provides for analytical comparisons that are illustrative of how key mechanisms of inequality structure and stratify. After examining insights provided by a new wave of research on the aging U.S. population, we revisit the implications for understanding inequality and stratification in a graying and unequal America.