Managing everyday (in)securities: Normative values,emotional security and symbolic recognition in the lives of Russian rural elders

Qualitative studies of ageing have called for attention to be paid to the diverse experiences of older people and to their agency in negotiating opportunities and constraints. A lack of research into the experiences and subjectivities of rural elders has been noted. Yet, the majority of research concerning elderly people in contemporary Russia continues to treat old age as a category and focus on particular practical and material forms of assistance available to pensioners. This article, aims to contribute to the small but growing body of ethnographic studies which shed light on the lives of elderly people in Russia as subjects in their own right. Based on ethnographic fieldwork from rural Siberia, the article explores the ways in which elderly people experience and interpret day-to-day (in)securities, forms of care and social support. In doing so the article explores three key questions: Firstly, how do lived realities, both past and present, and normative values of rural life intersect in elderly people's experiences of (in)security in post-socialist contexts?; Secondly, what forms of assistance do older people view as legitimate in their everyday lives? In particular, how are emotional exchanges and interpersonal connections interpreted and what securities do they bring?; Thirdly, what is the significance of symbolic support and recognition for elderly people and how do these draw on practices and frameworks from the socialist past?     

Intergenerational and program-induced effects of welfare dependency: Evidence from the national longitudinal survey of youth

This study uses data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth to examine intergenerational and program-induced effects of welfare dependency. Three research questions are asked: (a) How do parental Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) receipt and other family background characteristics affect subsequent dependency on AFDC? (b) How do attitudes about welfare and state AFDC benefit levels affect AFDC dependency? and (c) How do the patterns and factors associated with AFDC dependency vary across racial and ethnic lines? The results suggest that women who grew up in households that received welfare during the woman's adolescence are approximately twice as likely to be dependent on AFDC in young adulthood as women whose families did not received welfare. Further, state AFDC benefit levels are associated with higher risks of AFDC dependency, but the association is significant only for Anglo women. These analyses provide little support for the hypothesis that attitudes toward welfare and low-wage work increase the likelihood of welfare dependency.     

Dealing with the past in the transition from care. A post-structural analysis of young people's accounts

Young people experiencing the transition from care often are weighed down by their past, both through their early experiences, but also by the way their past is made relevant in encounters with others. The aim of this article is two-fold. Firstly, to present a critical discursive analysis of young people's accounts of themselves in the transition from care. Secondly, to shed light on three different ways of making the transition from care; transition through a break with the past after moving out, transition through continuing change and transition as a way of dealing with the risk of further problems in their lives. The study is qualitative and includes 27 young women and men recruited from three child welfare institutions in the Oslo region of Norway. A multi-method approach including interviews, observations and documents has been used. The analytical framework is inspired by poststructuralist theory.¹     

Exploring emotional aspects of care and control in social work with children and families - a single case analysis of conversation

ABSTRACT

In this article, I explore how emotions are displayed and dealt with on a communicative level in face-to-face encounters between social workers and parents in a child welfare setting. The analysis draws upon detailed analysis of a whole encounter between a social worker and a parental couple who have recently had their new-born daughter placed in foster care. By examining the way emotional stances are expressed and responded to I discuss how orientations toward institutional tasks and goals create constraints for the display, recognition and validation of clients’ emotion displays. I consider the communicative challenges this poses for the parents and the social worker and the implications these may have for the client–worker relationship.     

Intergenerational transfers in long term care

How are parental inter-vivos transfers to their children and children’s informal care of parents influenced by personal characteristics, family conditions and state specific long term care policies? AHEAD data from 1993 and 1995 and a two-party choice model are used to guide the estimation of OLS and binary logit models of the amount and likelihood of inter-vivos transfers to children and informal care of parents. Results suggest that both parents’ characteristics and their offspring’s characteristics affect parental gifts to children and children’s time assistance to their parents, highlighting the interdependent nature of these decisions. Furthermore, though state policies did not consistently affect parental gift giving, the availability of state respite care support -short-term “breaks” for informal family caregivers- (1 % significance level) and adult day care centers (5 % significance level) were positively related to the amount and likelihood of children’s time assistance to their parents. These findings highlight the importance of some state programs such as respite care support in encouraging intra-family support for the elderly. Support for programs that reduce the caregiving burden may encourage more children to care for their elderly parents.     

The making of ‘the elderly’: Constructing the subject of care

The provision and arrangement of care for elderly people is one of the main challenges for the future of European welfare states. In both political and public discourses elderly people feature as the subjects who are associated with particular needs, wishes and desires and for whom care needs to be guaranteed and organised. Underlying the cultural construction of the care regime and culture is an ideal type model of the elderly person. This paper analyses the discursive construction of elderly people in the discourses on care in Austria. An understanding of how elderly people as subjects, their wishes and needs and their position within society are constructed enables us to analyse, question and challenge the current dominant care arrangements and its cultural embeddings. The paper demonstrates the processes of silencing, categorisation and passivation of elderly people and it is argued that the socio-discursive processes lead to a particular image of the elderly person which consequently serves as the basis on which the care regime is built.     

Performative identity regulation in rehabilitative home care work: an analysis of how experts’ embodied mediation of the managerial ideology ‘activates’ new frontline identities

ABSTRACT

This article explores how therapists when introduced as new so-called frontline ‘experts’ in home care work, become both discursive and embodied mediators for the managerial ideology of rehabilitation, and how their presence regulates the care aides’ subjectivities at work. We show how the managerial discourse of rehabilitation mobilizes the care aides to transform their identity from traditional nurturing to rehabilitation, as a result of promoting the latter as more professional. While the traditional managers/nurses promote the identity transfer through more classic discursive regulation at a distance from ‘the office’, the therapists do so through what we label performative regulation. Performative regulation is exercised by the therapists performing the desired role at the frontline and thus embodies the ideal and transfers it by embodied practices, not directives. With this notion of performative regulation, the article emphasizes the material, physical, embodied and performative dimensions of professional identity regulation.     

Foundations of the open society: discourse ethics and the logic of inquiry

A jury is called upon to debate the guilt or innocence of a woman accused of murder. The jury can deliberate or ask for more information about the case. They want to achieve a maximally truth-like verdict: they want to be as close as possible in their estimation of the woman’s degree of responsibility for the murder to her actual degree of responsibility at the time of the murder. What principles should guide their verbal interaction? What rules of discourse and dialogue should they follow if they want to achieve maximal truth likeness in their verdict? How do current deliberation procedures and practices depart from the ideal of an open or authentic debate? This paper contributes to both the normative and the positive dimensions of the debate concerning the discursive forms of the open society, in two ways. First, it addresses the link between the rules for ethical discourse proposed by Karl Otto Apel and Robert Alexy some twenty years ago and the logic of inquiry proposed by Karl Popper as a normative approach to scientific process some fifty years ago. It is found that if a group’s members abide by the rules of ethical discourse, then the process of discovery that their process as a whole instantiates will abide by the Popperian logic of scientific inquiry. Second, it provides an analysis of the ways in which forms of social organization that we are familiar with (markets, representative democracies) depart from the discursive ideals of the open society. I will end the paper by arguing that going from current ‘crippled’ forms of discourse that bound correspondingly ‘closed’ societies cannot be accomplished merely by asserting and guaranteeing the exercise of a right to ‘freedom of expression; a more comprehensive ‘discourse ethics’ is needed in order to bring about the development of the open society.     

Fragments of development: Nation, gender, and the space of modernity

Imagine any process of economic development. How do the social,political, and economic interact in your imaginary development?Who is active and who is passive? What stands in the way? Howis success or failure measured? Who is then credited or blamed?The ways that we think about development are at least partiallyreflective of essentialist constructions that have been producedby societal and theoretical discourses. Bergeron has examinedboth mainstream and critical bodies of literature and emergedwith a powerful set of observations regarding these constructions. The discursive analyses in Fragments of Development demonstrate     

Fragments of development: Nation, gender, and the space of modernity

Imagine any process of economic development. How do the social,political, and economic interact in your imaginary development?Who is active and who is passive? What stands in the way? Howis success or failure measured? Who is then credited or blamed?The ways that we think about development are at least partiallyreflective of essentialist constructions that have been producedby societal and theoretical discourses. Bergeron has examinedboth mainstream and critical bodies of literature and emergedwith a powerful set of observations regarding these constructions. The discursive analyses in Fragments of Development demonstrate     

Prior Placements of Youth Admitted to Therapeutic Foster Care and Residential Treatment Centers: The Odyssey Project Population

Two samples of youth in the child welfare system were compared—youth entering residential treatment centers (RTCs) and youth entering therapeutic foster care (TFC). Three questions were addressed: (1) Where were youth living prior to the current placement? (2) Had youth been treated in other systems of care? (3) How many prior placements did youth have? Time 1 data of the national “Odyssey Project” developed by the Child Welfare League of America were used. The^.measure utilized was the child and family characteristics form (CFC). Results revealed that youth admitted to RTCs were more likely to be entering from other systems of care and stepping down to the RTC while youth entering TFCs were more likely to be entering from within the child welfare system and stepping up to a higher level of care. The results have implications for improving clinical practice and for the development of a cross-system perspective on serving troubled youth.     

In sickness and in health: A qualitative study of elderly men who care for wives with dementia

It is estimated that approximately 1,000,000 elderly men care for spouses with Alzheimer's disease or other forms of cognitive impairment, yet we have only a limited understanding of their work, and central questions arise. What do men caregivers do, and what meanings do they ascribe to their work? What are their distinctive strengths and vulnerabilities, and what can we learn about men and caregiving from their stories? This qualitative study was based on in-depth, open-ended interviews with 14 elderly men who are primary caregivers to wives with dementia. All interviews were taped, transcribed, and manually coded. The resulting information then underwent analysis from which three major themes emerged: feelings of isolation and invisibility of their care work, a style of caregiving that jointly utilizes management and nurturing, and feelings of commitment, responsibility, and devotion.     

Adopted children and young people's views on their life storybooks: The role of narrative in the formation of identities

This paper reports interviews conducted with twenty children and young people adopted from the care system in England, exploring their experiences and views of their life storybooks and examines the role of life storybooks as a form of narrative that contributes to identity development. Despite being a widely used intervention in direct social work practice in England and enshrined as a requirement in law for all looked after children placed for adoption there is little known about how children experience their life storybooks. The data revealed three core themes related to the child's story, identity and communicative openness. These themes provide insights from the children about the levels of honesty in the narrative conveyed, concerns about gaps in their biographies, the importance of treasured material possessions alongside their book, their adoptive identity and the importance of different levels of openness in discussions about their adoptive status. There are a number of important practice implications outlined, as well as an identified need for more research on this topic.     

The Cost of Instability: The Effects of Family,Work, and Welfare Change on Low‐Income Women’s Health Insurance Status

The number of uninsured Americans has risen substantially over the last decade. Despite the availability of Medicaid, low‐income women are at particularly elevated risk of having no or inadequate health insurance. How does continuity of work, family, and welfare affect low‐income women’s health insurance status? A multinomial logistic regression analysis of 1,662 low‐income women from the Welfare, Children, and Families: A Three‐City Study provides evidence of the consequences of life changes on access to health insurance from 1999–2005. The results show that compared to those with stable welfare, work, and family attachments, new full‐time employment actually increases low‐income women’s risk of being uninsured as does being underemployed, on welfare, or single for extended periods of time. These findings illustrate how health‐care reform must adequately address the complexity of low‐income women’s lives—including the ways labor market, state, and family factors interact to create barriers to health insurance—in order to improve access to care under the current U.S. health insurance model.     

“No One Acknowledged My Loss and Hurt”: Non-death Loss,Grief, and Trauma in Foster Care

How do youth in foster care experience non-death loss? Drawing upon the theories of ambiguous loss, symbolic loss, and disenfranchised grief, this applied theoretical article integrates research findings to address how youth experience loss, grief, and trauma in foster care. Youth’s reports illustrate experiences of non-death loss, the impact of non-death loss on psychological and emotional well-being, and how non-death losses are disenfranchised and enfranchised within the foster care system. Recommendations are made that child welfare agencies consider how their practices and policies can be enhanced to meet the needs of grieving youth in foster care.     

Towards interprofessionality in developing family mediation in Finland

Collaboration crossing professional and organizational boundaries is promoted, but also considered difficult and uncalled for. The aim of this study is to advance the comprehension of inter-professional collaboration on boundaries as a resource for learning and change. I examine and trace the initial shapes of interprofessionality and learning in two separate learning networks of a project researching, developing and learning family mediation in Finland. The naturally occurring data consists of transcribed audio-taped talk between practitioners (e.g. social workers, family counsellors, psychologists and judges) at the beginning of their collaborative work. The qualitative analysis detected communicative patterns, disruptions and dialogical learning mechanisms. The results interpreted through Cultural-Historical Activity Theory show that although the two quite similarly composed learning networks were given the same tasks, they differed on emerging learning mechanisms and unfolding dialogues. If collaboration is intended to be inter-professional and lead to change, there is a need to actively create shared tools, such as models, that enable transformative dialogue. For social work education inter-professional collaboration poses a challenge: how can education concurrently promote both learning the boundaries of social work and learning how to inter-professionally cross them?     

How do middle-aged employees combine work with caring for elderly parents?

How common is it for elderly employees to experience a squeeze between work and care obligations for their parents, and to what extent does this affect their behaviour in working life? To illuminate these questions, this article presents findings from a representative survey conducted in Norway in 2007. One finding is that seven out of 10 respondents (with one or both parents still living) are both employed and caring for their elderly parents. Fifty-seven percent have experienced difficult situations in coping with both. The most preferable arrangement is flexible working hours. Employees prefer the possibility to reduce or stagger working hours, or the option to work from home if necessary.     

Constructing deservingness: federal welfare reform,supplemental security income,and elderly immigrants

On August 22, 1996, President Clinton signed the welfare reform law that ended eligibility for all immigrants to federal means tested entitlements. Poor elderly immigrants on Supplemental Security Income were specifically targeted. This article documents how the print media responded to these policy changes. The following are the major research questions: (1) How were older immigrants on Supplemental Security Income portrayed in the print media before and after federal welfare reform? (2) Who was involved in the print media coverage of older immigrants on Supplemental Security Income before and after federal welfare reform? (3) What types of statements were made by those involved in the print media coverage of older immigrants on Supplemental Security Income, before and after federal welfare reform? The approach used was an in-depth content analysis of newspaper articles from major U.S. newspapers. The findings demonstrate that older immigrants were constructed as "undeserving" in news articles prior to the passage of the federal welfare reform bill. However, after the passage of the federal welfare reform bill the coverage of older immigrants on Supplemental Security Income started to change, and older immigrants were portrayed as "deserving." In advancing aging policy for poor, vulnerable elderly, such as elderly immigrants, advocates, health and social service providers can play an influential role in bringing their voices to the print media.     

Predictors of late adolescent delinquency: The protective role of after-school activities in low-income families

Research suggests an important link between maternal welfare and employment, lack of after-school care, and a child's propensity to engage in increased levels of delinquency. Indeed, with welfare reform, many disadvantaged families, typically single-mother households, face increased pressures to move off of welfare and into employment or risk losing their benefits, which decreases the mother's ability to provide adequate after-school care and supervision. Using longitudinal data from Welfare, Children, and Families: A Three-City Study, this study assessed how changes in maternal welfare and employment status, as well as participation in after-school activities influence rates of adolescents' delinquency 4 years later. Results show that early and increased participation in after-school activities served as a protective factor against late adolescent delinquency during a mother's transition off of welfare. Youth who increased their after-school activity participation from early to late adolescence had lower rates of delinquency at wave 3. Policy implications are discussed.