Serial Cohabitation in Young Adulthood: Baby Boomers to Millennials

Age at first marriage in the United States has consistently increased while age at cohabitation has stalled. These trends present an opportunity for serial cohabitation (multiple cohabiting unions). The authors argue that serial cohabitation must be measured among those at risk, who have ended their first cohabiting union. Drawing on data from the National Survey of Family Growth Cycle 6 (2002) and continuous (2006–2013) interview cycles, the authors find that serial cohabitation is increasing among women at risk. Millennials, born 1980 to 1984, had 50% higher rates of cohabiting twice or more after dissolving their first cohabitation. This increase is not driven by the composition of Millennials at risk for serial cohabitation. This work demonstrates the importance of clearly defining who is at risk for serial cohabitation when reporting estimates as well as continuing to examine how the associations between sociodemographic characteristics and serial cohabitation may shift over time.     

Global economy of signs and selves: A view of work regimes in call centers in the Philippines

Reflecting on the global nature of third-party offshore call center and its implications on the agent, this piece is an account of the researcher's own experience, observations, and interactions as a call center worker. Using the theoretical frame Global economy of signs and selves, weaving ideas from Scott Lash and John Urry, Pierre Bourdieu and Erving Goffman, the study looks at some dimensions and conditions of global service work experienced by Filipino agents. With the relocation of accounts offshore, call centers in the Philippines have given rise to a growing section of society required by the imperatives of their work to “defy” time and space, synchronizing their cycles and routines according to the rhythms and cycles of a distant social dimension and the imperatives of globalized production. Although relocation has allowed firms to reduce costs and make use of cheaper labor, the distance traversed by this new call center platform comes with some hidden costs, borne by workers, who may themselves take these other forms of work they deliver for granted. Highlighting under-emphasized, undervalued and misrecognized aspects of call center work, the study attempts to link the global, the local and the personal, while emphasizing the social and symbolic work involved in call center production.     

United by Gender or Divided by Class? Women's Work Orientations and Labour Market Behaviour

Recent debates on the relationship between women's work orientations and their labour market behaviour have been marked by a polarization between those who emphasize personal choice and those who argue that constraint is equally, if not more, important. However, in both approaches ‘orientation’ is understood primarily as a choice between prioritizing paid work or family (understood almost exclusively in terms of childcare responsibilities) for all women regardless of socioeconomic class. Drawing on in‐depth qualitative interview data, this article outlines some of the similarities and differences in the work orientations of women in professional/managerial, intermediate and routine/manual socioeconomic classes in Oxford. It develops the concept of ‘work orientation’ to include the meaning of paid work as well as labour market behaviour for women with and without children. The data presented here suggest that there are important class‐based differences in women's attitudes and that apparently similar work orientations may have very different causes and labour market consequences.     

Do Peers Affect Determination of Work Hours? Evidence Based on Unique Employee Data from Global Japanese Firms in Europe

By using a unique dataset on managerial-level employees who were transferred from Japan to European branches of the same global firms, we examine what would happen to work hours when a worker moves from a long-hour-working country to relatively shorter-hour countries. Even after controlling for business cycles, unobserved individual heterogeneity, job characteristics, and work hour regulations, we find a significant decline in Japanese work hours after their transfer to Europe, resulting from working-behavior influences of locally hired staff. We also find that the reduction in hours worked highly depends on the extent of the workers’ interactions with local peers.     

The overload at work and outside of work: the case of woman operators of blistering

The internationalization of labor is a prominent feature of the economy today, but is accompanied by adverse effects on operator health. In general, musculoskeletal diseases are the first to appear in this context. The open observations activity and interviews with operators and the hierarchy have been made to discover the organizational constraints. Other interviews were also conducted to account for the determinants of activity outside of work. The use of video has allowed the registration of work cycles, which helped to describe and quantify the postures and gestures to establish a possible link between musculoskeletal diseases and work activity. The collected data were processed using software Actogram Kronos. To understand the process of origin of these diseases, the analysis of the socioeconomic context is also essential because they in part determine the organization of certain companies. The objective of this paper was to discuss the activities of operators of blistering in both work and outside work. The goal is to determine the constraints presents in these two spheres of activity, that may increase the risk of developing musculoskeletal diseases and to define their interaction.     

A case for psychodynamic social work

Abstract

Psychodynamic casework is not as popular in social work theory and practice as it once was. It is considered by some to be impractical, unscientific, and not suitable for those customarily receiving a social work service. Task-centred casework, behavioural approaches, the newer psychotherapies, and family therapy have all taken over as major paradigms of social work method. This is especially so, I think, for the social worker working in a psychiatric setting, where many clients stay only for a short time and where emphasis is placed on assessment and short-term intervention.

In this paper I shall argue that a psychodynamic approach in social work is still relevant; that it is important for its humanizing qualities, for understanding and working with people with severe problems and for, perhaps, helping us to locate the position of social work vis-a-vis other mental health professions. I shall do this by focusing on a particular case I had as a social work student on placement in a psychiatric day hospital.     

The Evolution of Mental Health Care Policy and the Implications for Social Work

Abstract

The focus of this article is on the evolution of mental health care policy in the United States from the eighteenth century to the present. To the extent that social work practice enacts policy, this article focuses particularly on the ways 20th century social workers have reflected, interpreted, and forged mental health care initiatives and reforms. The article includes a discussion of how the cycles of mental health reform (moral treatment, mental hygiene, and community mental health) have influenced not only the roles but also the actual practices of social workers. The article concludes with a consideration of the impact of managed care on mental health policy and the implications for social work.     

Resilience,mental health and Assertive Community Treatment

Clinicians try to promote resilience by building an effective therapeutic relationship with their clients. Assertive Community Treatment (ACT) is an established approach for providing services to individuals with severe mental illness who have not fared well in the regular mental health system. This work underscores the importance of a resilient therapeutic relationship in preventing relapse and assuring adherence to therapeutic outcomes. Persistent psychiatric illness takes a toll on the resilience of the client, while the relationship work takes a toll on the resilience of the clinician. This article explores the concept of relational resilience between clinician and client as a dynamic process of shared success and failure, progress and regression through cycles of crisis, stabilization, relapse, and partial recovery. This is a qualitative study exploring how ACT clinicians promote and sustain resilience and is based on interviews with social workers, nurses, occupational and recreational therapists, coordinators, and psychiatrists.     

Project Time in Silicon Valley

This article explores the pace of work for highly skilled workers who are employed in the high-tech industry of Silicon Valley. I link the temporal experiences of these workers to systems of domination at work, and to the particular characteristics of flexible specialization in the region. I ask four questions: How can the temporal rhythms of work be described? What factors shape these rhythms? Why do workers comply? How does this pace of work impact on other aspects of individuals' lives? I focus on the organization of work through project cycles, the de-linking of workers and organizations, and the ideology of individualism that constructs workers as entrepreneurs of their own careers as key factors that shape the erratic and quickened pace of work in Silicon Valley. I also show how this pace of work negatively affects other temporal spheres that individuals negotiate, most notably “bodily time” and the “interaction time” of social relationships.

     

Weekend-based short workweeks: peripheral work or facilitating ‘work–life balance’?

This research focuses on those working weekends and also having a workweek of 20 hours or less, which we define as having a weekend-based short workweek (WBSW). The purpose of this paper is to examine the characteristics of workers with a WBSW, with emphasis on gender, family status, and work–life balance. To our knowledge, this is the first study examining work schedules having overlapping characteristics of both weekend work and part-time hours. The country of research for this study is Canada. We found that workers with a WBSW are more likely to be female, but less likely to be married or have dependent children. They are also more likely to be younger, less educated, less experienced, and low-waged. Nonetheless, job satisfaction among those with a WBSW is only slightly lower than those without one. Moreover, we found a group of older, married females with high job satisfaction notwithstanding having a WBSW. We presume that some have managed to balance the substantial work, economic, and family obligations that they face, but also wonder whether some have become resigned to their available employment options rather than having found decent work per se.     

Changes in Admissions Work Arising from the New Social Work Degree in England

The business of admissions to higher education in England is a significant task for academic and support staff. This paper draws on the Evaluation of the New Social Work Degree Qualification in England (2004–2008) to describe the changes in admissions work for social work staff in higher education associated with the change from diploma to a degree level qualification for entry to the profession; to report how staff involved in admissions work are managing these changes; and to identify elements of admissions processes that are perceived to be fulfilling the new requirements of the degree and those which are identified as more problematic. The article draws on two telephone/email surveys of a national sample of social work programmes and on face-to-face in-depth interviews with a sample of teaching staff from nine social work programmes in six higher education institutions undertaken during 2005–2007. The work of admissions staff is rarely scrutinised in studies of higher education or specifically in social work programmes: this article discusses the spectrum of approaches. It recommends monitoring of the outcomes of practices in admissions work that are recasting Department of Health Requirements as the minimum.     

Piloting a social work doctoral programme: Ukraine’s vignette

In Ukraine the last decade was marked by significant changes in social work education development that evidence its academization and professionalization. International cooperation was a useful catalyst in these processes. The above has specific implications for developing the three cycles of social work education in Ukraine – Bachelor, Master and PhD programmes. Implemented in 2009–2012, an international project involving six European countries supported piloting of the first PhD programme in social work in Ukraine. This programme encountered a set of challenges that originated from the particularities of social work education in Ukraine and the broader academic context. Participatory observations and reflections demonstrate the challenges evident in Global North–Global South professional relations. Ukrainian social work education history evidences permanent localization of the international standards and experiences that have had various effects on social work academization.     

From the "terrain" to "territory": which contributions from mobility and bus drivers' activity towards local development?

The focus of the present analysis is on the work of drivers in the public road passenger transportation sector in Portugal and on its specific contribution to local development. This approach dissociates itself from the one that places mobility as a "paradigm" of the contemporary societies and considers that the increase in mobility registered in the latter years is, in itself, revealing of development. For field work, a public transportation line, in an urban context, and a network of lines, in a rural context were chosen. In each of these contexts, the drivers' work was analyzed in real situations and semi-structured interviews were held with 16 of them: ten drivers in an urban context and six in a rural context. Considering the point of view of the work activity, enabled us to abandon the dominant perspectives that tend to highlight the social inequality of the mobility conditions (between those who use a private vehicle and those who need to use public transportation), to reflect on the characteristics of the mobility spaces which benefit or limit it, contributing to other inequalities. What is the importance of the space for mobility besides its support? How is it considered in the drivers' work?     

Do the Characteristics of Seconded or Sponsored Social Work Students in England Differ from Those of Other Social Work Students?—A Quantitative Analysis Using National Data

Amongst initiatives by social work employers in the United Kingdom (UK) to resolve recruitment difficulties is the use of secondment and sponsorship to attract entrants to the profession; commonly known as Grow Your Own schemes. This paper reports on part of a mixed-method research study that asked ‘What works in Grow Your Own (GYO) schemes?’ in England. One important research question for this study was whether the characteristics of seconded or sponsored social work students differ from those of other social work students. To explore this, the researchers analysed around 41,000 students' anonymous data records supplied by the General Social Care Council covering enrolments on social work programmes from 1998 to 2007. The findings indicate that GYO schemes have facilitated the participation of men, Asian groups and older applicants in social work qualifying programmes when compared to the general population of social work students. However, students from Black ethnic backgrounds and those with disabilities have been more likely to be under-represented in such schemes. The findings are discussed within the wider study remits and messages for educationalists and social work employers are drawn out.     

FURTHER EVIDENCE ON THE MONTE CARLO CYCLE IN BUSINESS ACTIVITY

This paper tests the null hypothesis that "cycles" in business activity are merely Monte Carlo cycles. It compares the actual distribution of expansionary and contractionary phase duration times with those which would be expected under the null hypothesis. If the probability of a phase turning point is constant during a small interval of time, rather than increasing, the duration times of upswings and downswings should be exponentially distributed. Goodness of fit statistics were calculated for each phase for the post World War II time series of: five coincident indicators, inverted unemployment rate, and production index. The evidence found here supports the Monte Carlo thesis.     

Social capital and the added value of social relations

Almost all empirical research reveals that social capital is a factor that enhances public goods, but scholars are divided into two strands of thought. According to the first strand, the enhancement of public goods does not need any network of social relations, while, according to the second, enhancement depends on the existence and good functioning of relational networks, to the point that it consists in the creation of social networks. Which one is right? In order to clarify the issue, one should ask: can a social relation have any added social value? If so, how can we conceive of the added social value of social relations, and how can we measure it? The author claims that the added social value of social relations can be observed in those processes through which social capital and public (relational) goods (re)generate or elide each other. These processes can be analyzed as morphogenetic cycles that work in temporal sequences and are not circular or recursive. By adopting this perspective, we can see and measure the added social value of social relations in primary and secondary networks, leading to the emergence of public goods. The relational approach can give abundant evidence as to how and why different public goods are produced and/or enhanced depending on the different added social value of the social relations that constitute them.     

Exploring a family,work, and community model of work–family gains and strains

Much of the work–family literature focuses on job or family characteristics that impact on work–life interaction. A small body of research takes a wider perspective, highlighting the importance of community characteristics. This study builds on, and extends, this research by examining the way work and community characteristics may interact in their influence on work–family interaction. Building on Voydanoff's work, this study examined whether community demands amplified the impact of work demands on work–family conflict, and whether community resources increased the impact of work resources on work–family facilitation. Data were analyzed from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia survey, distinguishing between residents of higher or lower socioeconomic status (SES) communities. Work demands (work intensity, hours) demonstrated the strongest relationship with work–family interaction. Autonomy and work hours emerged as particularly important predictors of work–family interaction for those living in lower SES areas. Whereas social support (a community resource) was a particularly strong predictor of work–family interaction for those living in higher SES areas. There was also evidence that community demands (lack of safety) are independently associated with work–family interaction and also amplify the effect of job demands (work intensity) on work–family conflict for residents of lower SES areas.     

Contemporary Social Work Practice with Veterans: An Introduction to the Special Issue

This special issue is a historical marker for contemporary social work practice with veteran populations. The editors requested papers from private, public, and academic settings that illustrate the special needs of veterans. The articles in this issue address the impact of military culture and the veteran identity, diversity, eras of service, access to care, and different stages psycho-social development on clinical practice. This introduction places the articles submitted in the context of historical and current trends in veterans’ research concluding with a call to recognize resilience inherent in this population. It is hoped that this issue will serve as a tool for clinicians, researchers, and educators to improve upon their work as well as bring a new generation to serve and support those who served.     

Belonging to the library: humanising the space for social work education

Abstract

This article describes the running of four Living Libraries on a UK postgraduate social work course. A Living Library is a metaphoric remodelling of a conventional library where people, as authors of their experiences, provide specialist knowledge based on authorial areas of expertise. In the Living Libraries discussed here, ‘Living Books’ carried stories of social work—their narratives were of lived experiences as people using social care services; as carers in personal relationships with others who use social care services; or, as social work practitioners. The focus of this article is on those Living Libraries involving the participation of the first two of these groups. Drawing on social psychology, phenomenology and human geography, we propose that a Living Library can act as a connective space within social work education by engendering a discursive forum where all participants—people with experiences of services, students, practitioners and social work educators—are given both the freedom and obligation to talk openly about their differential experiences, fears and hopes for social work. Through this process, opportunities are created to consider how improvements that meet all stakeholders’ interests may be achieved.