Migrant narratives as photo stories: on the properties of photography and the mediation of migrant voices

This article examines how the properties of photography might mediate voice, defined as the capacity to speak and to be heard speaking about one’s life and the social conditions in which one’s life is embedded. It focuses on the affordances that the image provides for migrant cultural minorities to articulate such a voice within the context of collaborative research. I look at the case of Shutter Stories, a collaborative photography exhibition featuring the photo stories of Indian and Korean migrants from Manila, The Philippines. Using participant observation data, I show that it was photography’s ability to be all at once indexical, iconic, and symbolic that became important in voice as ‘speaking’. It allowed migrants to tell rich, multimodal narratives about their lives, albeit with some key limitations. I also show that it was photography’s inability to fix meanings with finality that mattered in voice as ‘being heard’. Although the locals who visited the exhibition engaged with the photo stories in an overwhelmingly positive manner, they often did not completely grasp the migrants’ complex narratives. All these data indicate that collaborative photography exhibition projects should not just be about how migrants speak and are heard. They should also be about how migrants can listen, so that they can adjust what they say to how they are being heard. This is a valuable reminder that in conceptualising photography and migrant cultural minority voices, we also need to take into account the broader process of multicultural dialogue.     

Teaching Note—Partnering Macro Social Work Students and Agencies Addressing Youth Homelessness: A Model for Service Learning

In addition to direct practice skills, social work students need to become familiar and competent with macrolevel approaches to addressing youth and transgender youth homelessness. Service-learning courses provide an effective approach for students to learn the necessary knowledge and skills. In two sections of an upper-division social work macropractice course, teams of students worked with nonprofit organizations that addressed the needs of homeless youths and transgender youths. A three-pronged approach—community forum, fund-raising, and advocacy campaign—allowed a range of activities and learning experiences that benefited the students and agencies. This three-pronged service-learning model engaged the community, spread the message about youth and transgender youth homelessness, and consisted of projects that people can easily implement in their own communities.     

A Program for the Improvement of Instruction in American History

Although much energy has been spent designing children's books and curriculum to bring issues of diversity and acceptance into classrooms, perhaps the most meaningful and relevant curricular materials only require a digital camera and a space for students to talk about photos of their own classroom community, creating an organic and everyday curriculum. From over three years of research in a preschool classroom, the researcher-author tells how she uses digital photography to allow students to examine and reimagine their own social community. She revives the pedagogies of seminal social educators like Vivian Paley and Fannie Shaftel while offering a photo methodology for researchers of children who are interested in better understanding children's peer culture. As play is perhaps the most important vehicle of social education, carving out a time and space in the school day for a reflective component with digital photography can be an interesting and empowering way for children to examine social dilemmas and confront inequities.     

Whose photo? Whose voice? Who listens? ‘Giving,’ silencing and listening to voice in participatory visual projects

This article examines participatory visual projects that aspire to enable social change by providing communities with a platform through photography. It argues that projects are sites for negotiating rather ‘giving’ voice and calls for practitioners and researchers to be transparent and reflexive about these negotiated processes. Examining two sets of participant-produced images by refugee youth, one of which was shown publically and one of which went unseen, this article explores issues of control and the biases that shape editorial decisions in NGO-linked participatory visual projects. It demonstrates how voices that do not fit into dominant visual frames tend to be silenced. It is argued that this negates the critical potential of participatory visual work to enable political listening and undermines the plurality of unheard voices that participatory visual work aspires to facilitate. The article raises the central question of listening to the conception of ‘voice’ in participatory visual initiatives. It argues that the political and ideological promise of these projects relates not only to the voices they give rise to but to the kind of listening they enable.     

ENTREPRENEURIAL SOCIAL INFRASTRUCTURE AND LOCALLY INITIATED ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT IN THE NONMETROPOLITAN UNITED STATES

A community embeddedness perspective hypothesizes that nonmetropolitan localities high on entrepreneurial social infrastructure (ESI) are more successful at implementing economic development projects than those lacking ESI. ESI is a format for converting social capital into organizational forms that facilitate collective action. Logistic regression revealed that localities with projects were more likely to have an unbiased newspaper, multiple contributions by financial institutions to community projects, and more external linkages, Project communities place more emphasis on citizen involvement through civic organizations than through local government. Community-based patterns of interactions and organization are associated with successful collective economic development action.     

PUBLIC ART/PRIVATE LIVES

This essay traces a body of work, as it emerges in the space between visual art and an engagement in the public sphere. A range of projects and exhibitions, using photography as medium, is described in the context of a discussion about the complexity of the photographic transaction. All of these projects explore notions of intimacy, pushing at the boundaries between ‘the private’ and ‘the public’ in the South African public cultural domain. The essay focuses particularly on Hotel Yeoville (2010), a participatory public art project-based online and in the library of the old Johannesburg suburb of Yeoville. Yeoville's estimated 40,000 inhabitants are largely disenfranchised migrants and refugees from every part of the African continent. The project comprised a website and an exhibition space with a series of digital, interactive booths in which members of the public were invited to document themselves through mapping, video, photography, text and social media applications. The essay reflects upon the performative, evocative and expressive potentials of the media platforms that could be accessed through the Hotel Yeoville installation and in this particular social and political context asks questions about the photographic encounter and its relationship to self-representation, truth, knowledge and power.     

少数人的可持续发展：绿色城市发展与居民住房支付能力探析

不少旨在改善旧城空间的棕地开发项目和重建项目,都将可持续发展列为明确的目标。然而问题的关键是,这些重建项目的好处是否公平地分配到原有的社会成员或者街坊手中,或者,是否以牺牲现有居民和商贩的利益和现有社区的多样性为代价,使新搬来的高收入住户获得更多好处？加拿大维多利亚市棕地开发的案例分析,为本文所探讨的由棕地开发引发的收入差异问题提供了例证。第二个案例研究了多伦多的社区,指出在已有的社区内进行可持续发展项目,并不能确保维持和鼓励现有的社会多样性和公平性。英属哥伦比亚省温哥华市Downtown Eastside的一系列填空性建设项目也证实了类似的趋势,即它们对周边社区产生了很大影响,而且事实上给可持续发展带来了反作用。因此,可持续发展与社区中产化及高档化之间的关系比我们想象的更加复杂。     

Photographic portraits of migrants in South Africa: framed between identity photographs and (self-)presentation

This essay explores how migration within the African continent is framed visually by passport photos as well as artistic documentary projects based in Johannesburg, South Africa. It offers examples of what type of photographic (self-)portraits are constructed, which photographs circulate and how African migrants’ self-images as well as South African society’s perception of them are affected by certain photographic images. The method employed is a close reading of some paradigmatic photographs. In addition, I will discuss different – and often gendered – ways in which African migrant subjects may become visible. In short, this essay asks, what photographic portraits construct the hegemonic view of the African migrant subject in the public sphere? Accordingly, the tension between visibility and invisibility of African migrants’ lives emerges in the interstices of the inquiry. The paper first looks at the taking of identity photographs, since the passport photo exemplifies how the individual is made visible by the nation state. It can simultaneously serve as a poignant reminder of the ambivalent qualities of photography: on the one hand, documenting and codifying, and on the other hand, creatively representing. In this context, the essay explores the possibility of remaining invisible or “opaque,” but also the conceivably more empowering representational aspect of photography such as we see in participatory (art) projects, which may be connected to the visual politics of self-expression and reflection.     

A community-based organization: the Las Mercedes Project

Using the Las Mercedes Project as an example, the aim of this article is to discuss the philosophy and practice of community-based projects. At the core of such projects is a shift in understanding the nature of community. A community, in this case, represents a reality that persons construct that determines the character of rules, norms, and the focus and style of interventions. Additionally, community-based organizations, such as the Las Mercedes Project, are fully participatory, decentered, and carry the imprint of a community's members. Community-based projects, in this regard, improve the likelihood of creating successful interventions.     

Building Community Leaders in Underserved Communities: An Exploration of the Role of Seed-Funding for Community Projects by Program Graduates

Investing in community leadership development (CLD) remains a strategy with promise in creating vibrant communities. Although many low-income CLD programs teach effective leadership skills, these often lay fallow due to lacking opportunities for graduates to apply the skills. This study explores how providing competitive minigrants fuels the creation of value-adding community projects. In-depth interviews were conducted with 55 graduates of a low-income CLD program, 19 facilitators, and 12 community members knowledgeable about the program. The study observed that by providing seed money for graduate projects, CLD programs can help translate skills into practice thereby increasing community engagement and socio-economic wellbeing.     

On Track Multi‐Agency Projects in Schools and Communities: A Special Relationship

Social inclusion, multi‐agency projects in education in the United Kingdom increasingly seek to work with participation from children, families and communities and through partnerships with other agencies. In this paper, the complexities of such developments are examined. The paper looks at the wider context of preventative and social inclusion projects and highlights the ways in which schools tend to be the dominant locus of communication, delivery and control in the early stages of project implementation. Schools are seen to be valuable conduits into the community, to have the potential to begin capacity‐building with isolated individuals and to forge informal networks. This presents significant challenges to project and school managers, working towards genuinely empowering multi‐agency preventative work and support. A ‘special relationship’ embracing schools, projects and community appears the most productive way forward for such projects. Copyright © 2006 National Children's Bureau.     

Meta-analysing community action projects in Aotearoa New Zealand

The current Labour Government in Aotearoa¹ New Zealand has overseena revival of interest in devolved community decision-makingand a burgeoning of locality-based community action and communitydevelopment projects. This paper reports on a meta-analysisof ten community action projects. The activation, consolidationand transition or completion stages of the projects were examinedto identify commonalities in structures and processes that eitherenhanced or impeded the projects meeting their objectives forsocial change. The importance of processes for critical reflection,the analysis of power dynamics between stakeholders, and recognitionof the social, cultural and historical context of a project'sgenesis will be discussed.     

The work ability web: A tool for job matching

A rural community in the Eastern Cape, South Africa, requested assistance in finding a solution for the dilemma of unemployment for persons with disabilities (PWD). The researcher was involved in a multi disciplinary development programme in the community and investigated the possibilities of integrating the PWD in the income generating projects planned for the community at large. This article reports on one of the objectives of this participatory research study: exploring possible ways of job placement in the projects by community workers. The challenge was to find a simplified process by which uncomplicated placements could be handled by community workers, and complex cases identified and referred to the regional occupational therapists. The researcher used a functional assessment kit to assess the level of dependence/independence of each PWD as well as an interview on employment history and personal aspirations and needs. A job analysis was done on five planned projects for the community that would generate income. The data of the functional analysis of each person and the job requirements were then plotted on one web, the work ability web (WAW) to illustrate compatibility. One of the cases from the sample is described to demonstrate the process.     

Calm,cool, and collected: Canadian multiculturalism (domestic globalism) through a Cold War lens

The Canadian government adopted a multicultural policy in 1971, complicating the binary of ‘two founding peoples’ by acknowledging the diversity of its settler populations. This redefinition took place against the backdrop of the Cold War in which Canada was a strategically located junior partner in the Western alliance. This article draws parallels between photographic representations of Canadian diversity and the photographic culture of the Cold War as complementary programmes of nation-building and national defence. The study focuses mainly on the activities of the Still Photography Division of the National Film Board of Canada in its coincident evolution from a government information agency to a proto-museum with a mandate to collect and circulate Canadian contemporary photography. A curious mixture of communitarian ideals, countercultural impulses, and institutional ambitions is displayed across a number of documentary projects. The power of photography as a silent language is put into question by a modest compilation of words and images that situates both global and local uncertainties in a Winnipeg grocery store.     

Israeli immigrants in the United States: The question of community

Despite their possession of many social advantages such as high levels of education, familiarity with Western, urban culture, Caucasian appearance, relative economic security and ties to an established, co-ethnic community, much literature on Israeli immigrants in the U.S. depicts them as plagued by social and psychological alienation to the extent that they are incapable of creating viable ethnic communities. This paper uses field work and photography collected within the Israeli immigrant population of Los Angeles to critically examine the assertion that Israeli immigrants in the U.S. are much less organized than would be predicted by recent theories on immigrant adaptation and community formation. Based on this research, we argue that while Israelis are ambivalent about their presence in the U.S., they have created a variety of communal activities involving entrepreneurship, religion, culture, politics and leisure.     

Teaching Note—Keeping It Real: Program Evaluation Projects for an Undergraduate Research Class

ABSTRACT

This article describes a teaching innovation that focused on the redesign of an undergraduate social work research class. Students enrolled in the redesigned class had an opportunity to conduct program evaluation projects in community agencies. The projects included (a) pretest and posttest evaluation of reminiscence approach in improving the well-being of older adults in a long-term care facility, (b) evaluation of family support services at a Head Start center, and (c) pretest and posttest evaluation of an awareness program to promote community inclusion of individuals with an intellectual disability. Steps in course development, implementation, and evaluation as well as the positive student learning outcomes are discussed. The article concludes with limitations and potential areas for further improvement.     

Making Sense of Voluntary Participation: A Theoretical Synthesis*

Abstract This paper examines the influence of community attachment on voluntary citizen participation in rural community improvement projects. We do so by modifying the original systemic model of community attachment (Kasarda and Janowitz 1974) and combining it with tenets of rational choice and social embeddedness theories. The modified model is then extended to consider voluntary participation in community projects by accounting for the influence of community attachment through both a solidarity of interests and a solidarity of sentiments (Bell 1998). Based on survey results of almost 9,000 citizens across 99 small (500–10,000) Iowa communities, findings provide overall support for the expected positive influence of local social ties (weak informal, strong informal, and formal) on the two forms of community attachment which, in turn, positively affect voluntary participation. Attachment in the form of community interests shows a strong direct and indirect effect on voluntary participation, while sentiment's influence is largely indirect. We conclude by considering the relevance of our findings to ongoing discussions of social capital.     

The Co-production of a Community: Engaging Citizens in Derelict Neighbourhoods

In order to deal with “wicked problems” like inequality and social exclusion, one needs the support of committed citizens (Brandsen et al. in Manufactured civil society: practices, principles and effects, Palgrave, London, 2014). A promising setting to examine to what extent this is the case is that of community development projects in derelict neighbourhoods where the largest representation of ‘marginalised’ citizens can often be found (Head in Community development: theory and method of planned change, Vikas Publishing House, New Delhi, 1979; Needham in Personal co-production, 2009). In this article, we examine to what extent citizens are actually involved in local co-productive community development projects (in the city of Ghent, Belgium), and how professional field workers influence this engagement. We focus on three different potential effects of co-productive community development (inclusion and empowerment of citizen co-producers and the equity in the benefits they receive), and whether professional support can influence these effects. We find that co-production in community development projects may lead to more inclusion, empowerment and equity. Moreover, it is posited that the presence of professionals in their different roles does have a positive impact on co-productive community development.     

The History Mystery

Two social studies methods instructors created an assignment that places teacher candidates in leadership roles in partnerships with community organizations to plan and implement projects to increase student learning. This article outlines the project requirements, past project results, and student reflections on the collaborative effort. It provides evidence of the success and effectiveness of collaborative projects at increasing student learning, providing opportunities for leadership, and challenging students to become involved in community issues.     

Making Sense of Community Action and Voluntary Participation—A Multilevel Test of Multilevel Hypotheses: Do Communities Act?

To what extent does community context influence individuals’ proclivity to participate in community‐oriented activities and projects? In this article we utilize survey data from residents of 99 Iowa communities to conduct a multilevel analysis of voluntary participation and community action, simultaneously addressing voluntary participation at the individual level and “community action” at the community level. Additionally, we test the suggestion that community attachment may constitute a unique form of social capital. The robustness of these data allows us to overcome the obstacles that have led to the conflation of individual‐ and community‐level attributes in many community studies. We show that community attachment and community‐oriented action are determined almost entirely by individuals’ characteristics rather than by the characteristics of communities, and thus do not constitute community‐level phenomena, calling into question the assumptions on which certain theoretical approaches to community are based.