New ethnicities and old classities: respectability and diaspora

This article explores the contrasts between the flexibility and openness of interethnic and diasporic identifications and the fixity of class distinctions in contemporary Britain. The author draws on fieldwork conducted in the Midlands area and a suburban town in the south east of England and traces the ways in which project participants mobilised their biographies and ancestries to express feelings of empathy and relatedness across black, white and Asian identities. The author discovered the same people articulated a strong sense of classed distinction between themselves and others who were thought to lack respectability, social ambition and mobility. These observations have led me to reflect upon the theoretical contrasts between what Stuart Hall has famously called ‘new ethnicities’ and what the author calls ‘old classities’.     

Sustaining and Strengthening a Macro Identity: The Association of Macro Practice Social Work

Macro practice focuses on community-level interventions, such as management, organizing, research, and policy advocacy. Despite social work's deep roots in this type of work, macro practice and macro practitioners often practice without support or connections with other macro practitioners, and are underrepresented in the profession. In 2006, a group of social workers, including academics and practitioners, formed the Association of Macro Practice Social Work (AMPSW). AMPSW works to strengthen the professional identity of macro practitioners, elevate the status of macro social workers, and address common concerns within the social work profession.     

Writing the New West: A Critical Review*

Abstract A vast and growing interdisciplinary research effort has focused on the rise of the so‐called New West, purportedly the product of regional socioeconomic, political, and ecological upheavals in states like Montana and Colorado. Reviewing the growing research on this problem in sociology, economics, geography, and conservation science, this article identifies four central questions at the core of this diverse scholarship. Our review demonstrates that none of these central questions has generated consensus conclusions and that there is untapped potential for more structurally robust analyses of the drivers and outcomes of rapid change in the region. Indeed, supporting other analyses that have called the consistency of the region into question, our survey suggests the ways in which this region is not unique, but largely reflective of larger scale socioecological forces playing out in similar ways around the postindustrial world. We conclude, therefore, with a series of crucial questions, which may be unanswerable by assuming the “New West” as a coherent geography.     

Incongruent Teen Pregnancy Attitudes,Coparenting Conflict,and Support Among Mexican‐Origin Adolescent Mothers

The current longitudinal study examined whether differences between Mexican‐origin adolescent mothers and their mother figures (N = 204 dyads) in attitudes on the status attained through teen pregnancy were associated with conflict in their coparenting relationship and whether coparenting conflict was associated with adolescent mothers' perceptions of social support. Findings revealed that when adolescents held more positive attitudes than their mother figures about the status gained through teen pregnancy, they tended to report greater coparenting conflict with their mother figures. Furthermore, greater coparenting conflict was significantly associated with decreases in adolescents' perceptions of social support (i.e., emotional, instrumental, companion support) 1 year later. Findings underscore the importance of incongruent attitudes and the quality of coparenting relationships between adolescent mothers and their mother figures in relation to support processes. Findings are discussed with respect to understanding Mexican‐origin adolescent mothers' social support in the context of family subsystem attitudes and interactions.     

Making it ‘APP’en: service user feedback: developing and implementing a service user APP: reflections from Northern Ireland,England and Scotland

Despite the advent of social media and increasing use of smart phone technology amongst global and UK populations, APP’s for social work remain in their infancy. Several have been developed which focus on the education of social workers and practitioners providing information on specific social work issues, and one we are aware of that explores ethics and values using a games-based approach. In this paper, we discuss the importance of service user perspective in social work practice and how this informed the development of the feedback App. We reflect on developing this instrument using digital technologies which social workers can use to gather anonymous feedback from service users about their experiences of social work interventions. This project, developed in response to demands placed on social work agencies to evidence the effectiveness of service interventions, provide robust data from service users for inspection regimes and sustain service user involvement in improving services. The evaluation model is designed to document the implementation process, exploring what works and what barriers, challenges and lessons were learned by the project team together with how some of the tensions in the process were addressed and resolved.