Disabled students: identity,inclusion and work-based placements

Research about disabled identity reflects diverse perspectives on the merits and challenges associated with such an identity. This paper explores the impact of disabled identity on the inclusion of disabled students in higher education and employment contexts. It considers their experiences of inclusion in a university setting and its associated work-based placements and discusses the extent to which students had to negotiate a range of experiences of disabled identity. The paper suggests that many disabled students, especially those with behaviour-related impairment labels, are subject to continued exclusion in university and, more particularly, work settings, and this contributes to an employment disadvantage compared with their peers. To this end, the paper highlights the importance of enhancing inclusion for disabled students, especially in employment settings, through a focus on reducing destructive identities.     

Helping HIV-positive persons to negotiate the disclosure process to partners, family members, and friends

For people who have been diagnosed with a chronic illness, one inevitable issue to be addressed is whether and how to share this information with others. For persons who are HIV positive, disclosure presents an especially arduous task. The purpose of this article is to offer a strategy to assist marriage and family therapists in facilitating client disclosure of an HIV-positive status to partners, family members, and friends. In addition, suggestions for setting the stage for disclosure to occur and recommendations for client follow-up are proposed.     

Between family and friends: a longitudinal study of friendship choice

The increasing role for chosen friends is a key element in current debates on individualization and the transformation of intimacy. This paper describes the changes in friendship choices over time and demonstrates how life events subsequently impact on those choices. We primarily distinguish between kin and non-kin nominations of friends and how these may be related to the social and economic turbulence inherent in late modernity. Analyses of data from ten years of the British Household Panel Survey showed that kin nominations still form a significant proportion of all friends but increasingly so with age and over time as people age. Life events, such as divorce or death of a partner, have large effects on the likelihood of changes in friendship choices as did gender, age, marital status and social class. We frame these results in a discussion of the saliency and nature of friendship at stages of the life course and conclude that the case for a general secular shift to choosing non-kin friendships rather than kin-based friendship is not demonstrated.     

College students,sexual activity,and binge drinking

College is a time when some young people start to drink, or drink more and have sex more. The peak age range for binge drinking is 18–25. But in college, sexual activity is also starting for many.     

Romantic partners, friends, friends with benefits, and casual acquaintances as sexual partners

The purpose of this study was to provide a detailed examination of sexual behavior with different types of partners. A sample of 163 young adults reported on their light nongenital, heavy nongenital, and genital sexual activity with romantic partners, friends, and casual acquaintances. They described their sexual activity with "friends with benefits," as well as with friends in general. Young adults were most likely to engage in sexual behavior with romantic partners, but sexual behavior also often occurred with some type of nonromantic partner. More young adults engaged in some form of sexual behavior with casual acquaintances than with friends with benefits. The frequencies of sexual behavior, however, were greater with friends with benefits than with friends or casual acquaintances. Interview and questionnaire data revealed that friends with benefits were typically friends, but not necessarily. Nonsexual activities were also less common with friends with benefits than other friends. Taken together, the findings illustrate the value of differentiating among different types of nonromantic partners and different levels of sexual behavior.     

All in the family: The role of family networks,collective action frames,and identity in Latino movement participation

The family is often described as the foundation of Latino immigrant communities. Scholars interested in the political activism of Latino immigrants in the United States have consequently sought to examine the relationship between the family and recruitment to social movement participation. Overall, this research focuses on how the family can promote Latinos' political activism. However, less is known about the conditions under which the family may hinder activism. Family dynamics may be particularly demobilizing for certain segments of the Latino population with liminal or undocumented status. This article reviews two groups of the recent literature on Latino political mobilization: (a) social networks; and (b) collective action frames. By drawing on insights from social movement theory, the article concludes by arguing for more research that theorizes on the family as a group identity, powerfully enabling, and constraining Latino movement participation.     

Social comparison,group identity and professional identity. A study with bank clerks

Abstract

This study consisted of analyzing several hypotheses derived from Tajfel and Turner's social identity theory (Tajfel and Turner, 1979) within a real-life situation. We identified the intergroup relations among three banks in Brazil as an ideal chance to test the salience hypothesis (Oakes & Turner, 1980; Doise & Sinclair, 1973) and also the relationship between discrimination and social identity (Brown et al. 1983b). In general, results did not support the hypotheses, and alternative explanations of results, in terms of the groups ' real life conditions, are discussed.     

A note on strangers,friends and happiness

Using network data obtained in the 1985 General Social Survey, expressions of happiness are shown to increase with the size of a person's discussion network and decrease with the prevalence of strangers in the network. The density of especially close relations in the network has no direct effect on happiness. It is the negative impact of strangers rather than the positive impact of close relations that determines expressions of happiness. The network size and stranger effects remain strong even after respondent differences in socioeconomic status, age, sex, race, and domestic situation are held constant. However, it is clear that an almost certain route to strengthening the network measures to predict well-being lies in studying how happiness varies with the position of a spouse or other domestic partner in the respondent's network.     

Collective identity and readiness for social relations with Jews among Palestinian Arab students at the David Yellin Teacher Training College in Israel

This paper argues that the two national components of identity among Palestinian Arab students in Israel—the Arab component and the Palestinian component—are strong, while the civil Israeli component is very weak. This paper also argues that although social relations between Arab students and Jewish students are very limited, the readiness of Arab students for professional and social relations with Jewish students is greater than the perceived readiness of Jewish students for social relations with Arab students. Correlation coefficients between collective identity and readiness for social relations with Jews reveal that there is no connection between the components of collective identity of Arab students and their familiarity with Jewish students and readiness to have professional and social relations with them.     

Adolescent and family development: Autonomy and identity in the digital age

Adolescence is a time when youth are faced with multiple tasks that intersect and influence one another, e.g., increased desire for autonomy, salience of identity issues, peer orientation, self-focus and self-consciousness, and a continuing need for a safe environment in which to explore autonomy and identity. These all occur in a dynamic ecosystemic environment, which in the past would have mostly included family, peers, and school, but today also includes cyberspace as both a system, and a means to interact with many other systems through the use of multiple forms of information technology (IT). This paper uses the voices and experiences of 128 adolescents, captured in qualitative interviews, to look at autonomy and identity in the digital age as they talk about their parents vis à vis their use of IT. Thematic analysis revealed two major themes: 1) Adolescents spoke of their expertise. In particular they commented on their knowledge to repair equipment, ability to use IT well, their sense of pride in their own ability and their parents' acknowledgement of this ability. 2) Subjects perceived little need for their own supervision, but assessed that other adolescents and younger children needed to be watched closely by their parents. Implications of this work are discussed.     

Centering the voices of international students in family studies and family therapy graduate programs

In this article, we report the results of a survey that accessed the perceptions of family studies and family therapy international master's and doctoral students across the United States. Our goals included giving collective voice to the experience of international students and gathering their suggestions for improving programs. Themes that emerged from responses to open- and closed-ended questions included feeling (mis)understood and (de)valued; forming personal connections and experiencing marginalization; the importance of including international perspectives in curricula; considering the relevance/transferability of knowledge; and attending to barriers to learning. Based on the results, we share suggestions for improving family studies and family therapy graduate programs relative to program planning, curricula revision, teaching strategies, and faculty development.     

Peer cultural socialisation: a resource for minority students’ cultural identity,life satisfaction,and school values

ABSTRACT

This study investigated how peers can contribute to cultural minority students’ cultural identity, life satisfaction, and school values (school importance, utility, and intrinsic values) by talking about cultural values, beliefs, and behaviours associated with heritage and mainstream culture (peer cultural socialisation). We further distinguished between heritage and mainstream identity as two separate dimensions of cultural identity. Analyses were based on self-reports of 662 students of the first, second, and third migrant generation in Germany (Mean age = 14.75 years, 51% female). Path analyses revealed that talking about heritage culture with friends was positively related to heritage identity. Talking about mainstream culture with friends was negatively associated with heritage identity, but positively with mainstream identity as well as school values. Both dimensions of cultural identity related to higher life satisfaction and more positive school values. As expected, heritage and mainstream identity mediated the link between peer cultural socialisation and adjustment outcomes. Findings highlight the potential of peers as socialisation agents to help promote cultural belonging as well as positive adjustment of cultural minority youth in the school context.     

Does identity matter for adaptation? The influence of acculturation identity on the well-being and delinquency of adolescent students in Europe

ABSTRACT

This study examines the implications of identity for the adaptation of immigrant children in the European context. Using the migrant sample from the Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Survey in Four European Countries (CILS4EU), this study examines how identity is related to the outcomes of well-being and delinquency of high school students. Results from multilevel models lend partial support to the theorized role of acculturation identity. Integrated students had higher well-being compared with assimilated students, challenging the notion that sole national affiliation is the most advantageous strategy for adaptation and thereby supporting a selective acculturation perspective. In addition, separate analyses of European and non-European immigrant students produced divergent results. While the ethnic identity of students with non-European backgrounds was negatively associated with delinquent behavior, separated students of European background reported higher delinquency compared with their assimilated counterparts, suggesting that acculturated identity works in different ways between immigrant groups and that the protective effect of ethnic identity against delinquency is only present for migrants students of non-European backgrounds.     

Nonverbal cues to deception among intimates,friends, and strangers

Buller and Burgoon (in press) propose that deceivers attempt to encode strategically nonverbal cues which indicate nonimmediacy and project a positive image. At the same time, deceivers leak arousal and negative affect via their nonverbal display. This experiment tested these predictions, while examining the influence of relational history on deception cues and the stability of deception cues within deceptive conversations. The nonverbal behavior of 130 strangers, friends, and intimates was measured. Results indicated that deceivers signalled nonimmediacy, arousal, and negative affect, but they did not appear to project a positive image. Deception cues were mediated by relational history and showed considerable temporal variation. Strangers leaked more arousal and negative affect than friends and intimates. Further, deceivers, particularly deceiving friends and intimates, seemed to monitor and control their nonverbal behavior during deception by suppressing arousal and negative affect cues and moderating nonimmediate behavior.     

Covictims of capital murder: statements of victims' family members and friends made at the time of execution

The death penalty is often touted as a punishment providing the only way to truly serve justice and offer closure for covictims (defined as family members or friends of murder victims'). These rationales are rarely structured around the actual words of these individuals, however. The findings in this study suggest that such rhetoric oversimplifies and often misrepresents the experiences and perspectives of covictims. Through their own words, we learn that the death penalty is not always the soothing salve for the pain and suffering of covictims we wish it to be. Rather, we find much more ambivalence and complexity in the statements of covictims. The impact of the death penalty and executions on covictims and their ability to attain healing and closure is not so clear cut. By presenting the actual words of capital murder covictims at the time of execution, this inductive, exploratory study provides a novel glimpse at the perspectives of these individuals and their perception of the death penalty process.     

Soil, blood and identity

Modern nations are products of nationalism, and can be defined only as such, rather than by their own distinctive traits - which anyway vary over an extremely wide range. Nationalism was, sociologically, an attempt made by the modern elites to recapture the allegiance (in the form of cultural hegemony) of the ‘masses’ produced by the early modern transformations and particularly by the cultural rupture between the elites and the rest of the population by the ‘civilizing process’, whose substance was the self-constitution and the self-separation of new elites legitimizing their status by reference to superior culture and knowledge. In the same way in which the modern state needed nationalism for the ‘primitive accumulation’ of authority, nationalism needed coercive powers of the state to promote the postulated dissolution of communal identities in the uniform identity of the nation. In the practice of both, there was an unallayed tension between the ‘inclusivist’ and ‘exclusivists’ prongs of the nation-state project; hence the never fully effaced link between nationalism and racism, nationalism being the racism of the intellectuals, and racism - the nationalism of the masses. Currently our part of the world undergoes the process of the separation between state and nation, effected by lesser reliance of state power on culturalist legitimation and a degree of de-territorialization of communal affiliations, which fills the efforts of nation-building, invention of heritage, tribal integration etc. with a new urgency and may lead to the sharpening of either of the two prongs of the nationalist project.