How do you solve a problem like Maria? Family complexity and institutional complications in UK social work

ABSTRACT

This paper draws on UK data from an international, comparative project involving eight countries. The study examined how social workers’ conceptions and definitions of family impact on the way they engage with complex families, and how social policies that frame social work context impact on the way social workers engage with families. Focus groups were held in which social workers from four service areas (child welfare, addictions, mental health and migration) were asked to discuss a case vignette. Several factors were embedded in the vignette to represent a realistic situation a social worker may come across in their day-to-day work. Social workers clearly identified the complexity of the family’s situation in terms of the range of issues identified and candidate ‘causes’. However, typical first responses were institutional, looking for triggers that would signify certainty about their, or other agencies’ involvement. This resulted in a complicated story, through which the family was disaggregated into individual problem-service categories. This paper argues that understanding these processes and their consequences is critical for exploring the ways in which we might develop alternative, supportive professional responses with families with complex needs. It also demonstrates how organisational systems manifest themselves in everyday reasoning.     

“There Was No Money Left to Save”: Financial Literacy and the Lives of Low-Income People

Despite the popularity of financial literacy programs intended to benefit low-income families, little research explores how families experience and interpret their own participation in these programs. In-depth interviews with participants in one such program revealed participants’ complex analyses of financial literacy and their own poverty. Their analyses simultaneously affirm and challenge hegemonic ideologies and neoliberal practices and, as such, provide an opportunity for social workers to respond in ways that address not only the immediate financial needs of low-income families but also the structures and ideologies that contribute to those needs.     

Change Makers? Women's Microenterprises in a Bolivian City

If entrepreneurs are society's innovators, what is the role of businesspeople in poor countries — particularly, the ‘micro’ businesspeople that make up the majority? What hope for decreasing poverty and improving livelihoods do microbusinesses offer? In particular, what is the role of women microentrepreneurs, whose incomes have been understood to contribute a great deal to the well‐being of poor households? This paper is based on case studies collected in the late 1990s in Sucre, Bolivia, a context in which many women are the owners of independent microenterprises. Women in Sucre control a range of microenterprises in the commerce, production and service sectors and are recognized as businesspeople by their spouses, families and people in their community. Under such conditions of ‘empowered’ business ownership, what is the potential of these businesses to decrease poverty? The study explores the business experiences of women microentrepreneurs, their priorities, entrepreneurial abilities and the obstacles they face. It suggests the kinds of business activities which women in Sucre are most likely to undertake and the income levels which these activities generally attract. Finally, it indicates that, while women in Sucre can control resources and take advantage of opportunities as businesswomen, other constraints mean that most women's businesses have only a limited ability to decrease poverty. ‘Microenterprise development’ alone is insufficient to address the complex relationships affecting how these women and their households access resources.     

Authoritarian neoliberal rescaling in Latin America: urban in/security and austerity in Oaxaca

ABSTRACT

There is an increasing consensus that, across the globe, austerity policies have often relegated fiscal pressures from the state to the urban scale. These are sometimes discussed under the label ‘austerity urbanism’. This article explores urban authoritarian neoliberalism through an examination of spatial and scalar manifestations of neoliberal restructuring. It asks how austerity urbanism’s rescaling takes effect in spatially variegated ways in the intermediate city of Oaxaca in Southern Mexico. I argue that Oaxaca’s austerity programmes and its rescaling of security provision are two intertwined, rather than parallel, processes. The paper builds on and aims to advance the authoritarian neoliberalism literature by linking it to literatures on the postcolonial Latin American state and urban studies. The article makes two contributions: first, it identifies and carves out multi-scalar aspects of authoritarian neoliberalism (by speaking to the urban realm); second, it contributes to the authoritarian neoliberalism literature on the ‘South’. Hence, the aim is to reveal the multi-scalar aspects of authoritarian neoliberalism and to illustrate its explanatory power in the global South.     

Disability welfare reform and the chav threat: a reflection on social class and ‘contested disabilities’

The recent UK media clash between Katie Hopkins and Katie Price in the reality TV show Celebrity Big Brother 2015 regarding Price’s receipt of welfare benefits for her son, Harvey, has reopened old debates about welfare support for the so-called deserving and undeserving poor. Nowhere is this more evident than in the classed moralities of motherhood with the harshest criticisms aimed at the ‘chav’ poor and working-class families and their children whose lifestyles and moral respectability may be called into question for causing or even fabricating particular disabilities in the first place. Alongside these characterisations of parental deficits and immorality associated with working-class and poor parents, connections between ‘invisible’ disability, poverty and poor parenting continue.     

The Governance of Forced Labour in the Global Economy

Abstract

The problem of forced labour in the contemporary global economy is attracting increasing attention in global governance debates and policy circles. The effectiveness of governance initiatives depends on underlying understandings of the root causes of the problem. We explore how the root causes of forced labour in global production networks (GPNs) are framed in global governance debates. Focusing on the dominant frameworks mobilized by international institutions, with some attention to cognate national-level and corporate governance strategies, we identify certain limitations to dominant interpretations, which derive from their ‘residual’ character and their associated neglect of the manner in which the roots of forced labour reach deeply into the organization of GPNs, the forms of exploitation which are integral to them, and the connections between exploitation and poverty. We set out an alternative, ‘relational’ perspective on the roots of forced labour in GPNs, based on the concept of ‘adverse incorporation’, and consider the implications of the insights generated by this perspective for contemporary governance frameworks.     

Poverty talk: how people experiencing poverty deny their poverty and why they blame ‘the poor’

Drawing on life history interviews with sixty men and women in north‐east England who were caught up in ‘the low‐pay, no‐pay cycle’, this article describes how people living in poverty talk about poverty – in respect of themselves and others. Paradoxically, interviewees subscribed to a powerful set of ideas that denied poverty and morally condemned ‘the poor’. These findings are theorized in four ways: first, informants deployed close points of comparison that diminished a sense of relative poverty and deprivation; second, dissociation from ‘the poor’ reflects long‐running stigma and shame but is given extra force by current forms of ‘scroungerphobia’; third, discourses of the ‘undeserving poor’ articulate with a more general contemporary prejudice against the working class, which fuels the impetus to dissociate from ‘the poor’ (and to disidentify with the working class); and fourth, the hegemonic orthodoxy that blames ‘the poor’ for their poverty can more easily dominate in contexts where more solidaristic forms of working‐class life are in decline.     

From Home to the Home Corner: Observing Children's Identity‐Maintenance in Early Childhood Settings

This article draws on data from two recent studies of young children in early childhood settings. One study was of children in a Korean private kindergarten, the other of children in a UK reception class. In each study, the data discussed include both evidence from ‘home’ (including parent interviews) and evidence from ‘school’ (including conversations with the children themselves) on the gendered and ethnic identities the children display in the classroom. The children's stated beliefs and preferences, and their observed choice of activities and friends, appear to be influenced both by the beliefs and behaviour of their families, and by the early childhood environments they are offered. The transition from home to group settings, it is suggested, may reinforce rather than diminish the stereotyping along gendered and ethnic lines, while participation in ‘research’ conversations may provide a rare opportunity for the children to question and reflect on stereotypes.
Copyright © 2006 The Author(s).     

Between two families: the social meaning of remittances for Vietnamese marriage migrants in Singapore

Scholars who have applied transnational perspectives to studies of migration and remittances have called for a move beyond the developmentalist approach to accommodate an expanded understanding of the social meanings of remittances. Researchers working in Asia have begun to view the remittances of money, gifts and services that labour migrants send to their families as transnational ‘acts of recognition’, as an enactment of gendered roles and identities, and as a component of the social practices that create the ties that bind migrants to their ‘home’ countries. In this article, we depart from the more common focus on remittance behaviour among labour migrants and turn instead to examine how, as marriage migrants, Vietnamese women generate and confer meaning on the remittances they send. First, from the women's viewpoint, we discuss the extent to which expectations vested in being able to generate remittances for the natal family by marrying a Singaporean man not only translate into motivation for marriage migration but also shape the parameters of the marriage. Second, we show how sending remittances are significant to the women as ‘acts of recognition’ in the construction of gendered identities as filial daughters, and, through the ‘connecting’ and ‘disconnecting’ power of remittances, in the reimagining of the transnational family. Third, we discuss the strategies that women devise in negotiating between the conflicting demands and expectations of their natal and marital families and in securing their ‘place’ between two families. We base our findings on an analysis of interviews and ethnographic work with Vietnamese women and their Singaporean husbands through commercial matchmaking agencies.     

Anti-austerity between militant materialism and real democracy: exploring pragmatic prefigurativism

ABSTRACT

The anti-austerity movement that emerged in the wake of the 2008 global economic crisis and 2010 Eurozone crisis, and which forms part of the ‘age of austerity’ that came after those crises, was underpinned by a set of ideas and practices that we refer to here as ‘pragmatic prefigurativism’. Whilst the anti-austerity movements typically rejected formal ideologies such as Marxism and anarchism, nevertheless pragmatic prefigurativism can be understood as a ‘left convergence’ of sorts. The paper explores the features of this pragmatic prefigurativism, comparing the anti-austerity movements in the UK and Spain. In particular, we note the role of unresponsive institutions of democracy in prompting the move towards pragmatic prefigurativism, the adoption of techniques of direct democracy and direct action as the means through which to express a voice and to refuse austerity, and the pragmatic nature of the subsequent (re)turn to political institutions when this became a possibility.     

Low-income young people's problematic relationship with individualised policy in England

There is much debate within youth studies regarding whether or not, or to what extent, young people subjectively experience individualised life-pathways. This article suggests that alongside these debates, it might be fruitful to also explore if young people are being institutionally individualised ‘from above’. Using the current UK Government's child poverty policy as a case study, it explores the extent to which this policy individualises low-income young people, arguing that it strongly pushes them towards the project of self-making and choice-biographies. This is regardless of whether or not they subjectively see themselves as self-makers, or whether or not they are equipped for the task. Working with 38 young people around England, who were some of targets of this policy, this article then goes on to document how this individualisation ‘from above’ was actively rejected. Given the opportunity to write their own, ideal child poverty policy, created as part of this research, these young people instead underscored the importance of structural inequalities in shaping the problems of poverty as they saw them. Their policy highlighted a desire for collective, universalistic interventions to correct for these inequalities, rather than individualised solutions imposed ‘from above’.     

Preparing,Working, Recovering: Gendered Experiences of Night Work among Women and their Families

The negative physiological consequences of night work are well evidenced, but there has been limited research on the gendered consequences of night work for partnered women with children. This paper examines women's experiences of night work by drawing on qualitative interview and audio sleep diary data with 20 UK female nurses working non‐regular rotating shifts, together with interview and diary data from their male partners and children. The analysis shows how the lived experience of women's night work is characterized by three phases, which we discuss within a timescape perspective. Alongside changes to paid work and sleep during the period of night shifts, the ‘preparation’ and ‘recovery’ phases of women's night work involve intense periods of considerable additional unpaid and unrecognized work and anxiety. Gendered expectations for household management and family wellbeing mean that women night workers undertake considerable responsibility for complex planning before night shifts begin, and re‐enter established domestic routines within hours after night shifts end. Women maintain continuity for their families by actively managing the impacts of night work. This enables the fulfilment and ‘display’ of successful and normative gendered patterns of domestic responsibility, which appears to be central to women's own coping with night shifts.     

Austerity common sense and contested understandings of the austerity measures within a leadership of a professional association of social workers

ABSTRACT

This paper introduces a preliminary conceptualisation of ‘austerity common sense’ in order to understand why austerity policies, despite the social harm they cause, have support not only from the economic and political establishment but also from the wider population including members of the social work profession. Building on the Gramscian concept of common sense, ‘austerity common sense’ refers to the set of beliefs circulated by the ruling elite and adopted by members of the leadership of the Professional Association of Social Workers (SKLE), as well as others within Greece and the European Union, to understand austerity policies. Through this framing, austerity measures are largely accepted as inevitable rather than challengeable. The paper maintains that the concept of austerity common sense provides an analytical framework for understanding the acceptance of austerity measures in Greece and elsewhere, since similar ‘austerity common sense’ framing is encountered in many countries. Furthermore, it is maintained that the concept of ‘austerity common sense’ can facilitate the interrogation of the socio-economic construction of ideas and phrases. This is an important process with which the social work profession needs to engage.     

The Impact of Women’s Work on Gendered Health Inequities

ABSTRACT

How does the work that American women perform, both in the formal economy (paid labor) and in the caring economy (caring for children and households) negatively affect their health? The World Health Organization’s social determinants of health model is used to illuminate the causes of gendered health inequities. The social determinants of gendered health inequities that are correlated with women’s work include globalization, cultural norms, an imbalance of power between men and women, the feminization of work, the gendered pay gap, unequal responsibilities in the caring economy, the lack of recognition of the value of caring work, stress, and poverty.     

‘Bad Mum Guilt’: the representation of ‘work-life balance’ in UK women’s magazines

The social policy climate, labour market trends and gendered arrangements for paid and family work mean that ‘work-life balance’ remains a key social issue in the UK. Media representations of ‘work-life balance’ are a key source for the construction of gender and working motherhood. Despite evidence of gendered representations in media coverage of other social issues, little attention has been paid to the construction of work-life balance in UK women's magazines. Articles from the highest circulating UK women's magazines are analysed using a discursive approach to explicate constructions of work-life balance and working motherhood. The analysis reveals that multiple roles are constructed as a problematic choice leading to stress and guilt. Problems associated with multiple roles are constructed as individual problems, in a way that decontextualises and depoliticises them and normalises gendered assumptions and a gendered division of labour. Parallels can be drawn between this and wider discourses about women's daily lives and to the UK social policy context.     

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.     

Critical Literacy as a Lens for Students’ Evaluation of Sources in an AP World History Class

Abstract

Critical literacy is an appropriate learning outcome for social studies courses because it has the potential to teach students how to critically evaluate sources of information relevant to historical texts and current news media. The purpose of this qualitative case study is to examine the process through which students learned to apply critical literacy strategies while completing an end-of-unit research project in tenth grade AP world history. This study looks as student and teacher interviews to examine how students use critical literacy approaches and perspectives to analyze texts. As a result of this study it was determined that: (1) students at the elite private school had limited experience with source evaluation and critical literacy prior to this research project, (2) critical literacy served as an effective evaluation tool for reliability and bias for some students, (3) certain students experienced challenges in using critical literacy as an evaluation tool, and (4) students believed that critical literacy would benefit them personally and academically. Results include implications for instructors who wish to teach critical literacy and source evaluation in this information age.     

Troubling Discourses of Poverty in Early Childhood in the UK

Poverty in early childhood is pervasive, affecting every aspect of children’s lives. Under current government policies child poverty in the UK is predicted to rise to 40 per cent by 2022. Dominant discourses of poverty have historically focussed on an over‐arching discourse of moral responsibility, essentially relating to notions of deserving and underserving poor. This paper examines how government policy continues to significantly impact on young children and families on low incomes in early childhood and how stigmatised discourses about welfare, work are pervasive. It is argued that discourses of redistribution and children’s rights deserve greater recognition if poverty is to be addressed.     

Everyday Matters in Global Private Security Supply Chains: A Feminist Global Political Economy Perspective on Gurkhas in Private Security

Abstract

In a case study of Nepalese Gurkhas working for Western private military and security companies (PMSCs), this article develops feminist global political economy understandings of global labour chains by exploring how the ‘global market’ and the ‘everyday’ interact in establishing private security as a gendered and racialised project. Current understandings of PMSCs, and global markets at large, tend to depoliticise these global and everyday interactions by conceptualising the ‘everyday’ as common, mundane, and subsequently banal. Such understandings, we argue, not only conceal the everyday within private security, but also reinforce a conceptual dualism that enables the security industry to function as a gendered and racialised project. To overcome this dualism, this article offers a theoretically informed notion of the everyday that dissolves the hegemonic separation into ‘everyday’ and ‘global’ levels of analysis. Drawing upon ethnography, semi-structured interviews, and discourse analysis of PMSCs’ websites, the analysis demonstrates how race, gender, and colonial histories constitute global supply chains for the security industry, rest upon and reinforce racialised and gendered migration patterns, and depend upon, as well as shape, the everyday lives and living of Gurkha men and women.     

The resonance of moderate feminism and the gendered relations of austerity

During the tenure of the UK Conservative‐led coalition government (2010–15) austerity policy was rolled out in response to the global financial crisis of 2007–08. In this article a discourse analysis of mainstream newspaper representations of austerity, which appeared throughout this period, is undertaken using the principles of Cultural Political Economy (Jessop 2004). Three key questions are posed: 1) How is gender drawn upon to render austerity intelligible? 2) How do these discursive constructions contribute to the reproduction of particular ideas regarding contemporary gender relations? 3) What do these gendered austerity discourses reveal about the institutionalisation of particular forms of feminism? A critical gender discourse which emphasised equality appeared alongside constructions of gender that reproduced problematic assumptions. Made meaningful in this way, austerity, as a strategy for restoring pre‐crash social arrangements, also restored particular aspects of gender relations. This is theorised as the product of the successful institutionalisation of a hegemonic, moderate liberal feminism prior to the financial crash. The findings contribute to debates within feminist scholarship about the dynamics of gender inclusion and extend our understanding of the associated implications for feminist critique.