Struggle for Transdisciplinary Moments: Building Partnerships for Resettlement

The effects of climate change are both acute and chronic, leaving many communities in a perpetual state of uncertainty. For others, there is no such uncertainty—their communities will soon be uninhabitable. Some levels of government have begun to recognize and slowly respond to communities facing the possibilities of relocation. This paper considers the impact of transdisciplinary thinking and collaborative moments in the planning phase of one of the few community-scale managed retreat attempts in the United States. In January 2016, the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) awarded the state of Louisiana $48.3 million to plan, design, and implement a structured and scalable resettlement with former and current residents of Isle de Jean Charles. The paper uses data from surveys and interviews with the practitioner team, fieldnotes, review of published reports, and a sample of more than 400 media accounts. Our analysis highlights how developing a transdisciplinary process may render a new understanding to the tasks and meanings of planning resettlements in the future.     

Investigating sexuality discourses in the U.K. secondary English curriculum

This article reports on findings from a small-scale study that investigated sexuality discourses in the U.K. secondary English curriculum. In addition to conducting a critical analysis of English curriculum documents, interviews were also conducted with some English teachers and young lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT)-identified people who attended, or had recently left, secondary school in Birmingham, U.K. Key findings indicate that issues around sexual diversity are noticeably absent from the curriculum, while other forms of diversity are more visible. This means that teachers are not explicitly encouraged to explore sexual diversity in their teaching, and the effects of this on young LGBT-identified people are overwhelmingly negative.     

Racial and Ethnic Disparities in the Lifetime Prevalence of Homelessness in the United States

Homelessness in the United States is often examined using cross-sectional, point-in-time samples. Any experience of homelessness is a risk factor for adverse outcomes, so it is also useful to understand the incidence of homelessness over longer periods. We estimate the lifetime prevalence of homelessness among members of the Baby Boom cohort (n = 6,545) using the 2012 and 2014 waves of the Health and Retirement Study (HRS), a nationally representative survey of older Americans. Our analysis indicates that 6.2 % of respondents had a period of homelessness at some point in their lives. We also identify dramatic disparities in lifetime incidence of homelessness by racial and ethnic subgroups. Rates of homelessness were higher for non-Hispanic blacks (16.8 %) or Hispanics of any race (8.1 %) than for non-Hispanic whites (4.8 %; all differences significant with p < .05). The black-white gap, but not the Hispanic-white gap, remained significant after adjustment for covariates such as education, veteran status, and geographic region.     

I can hear the birds: using audio recordings to assess perceptions of amenity in urban riparian environments

Urban Ecosystems - The restorative qualities of nature (amenity values) have been explored for their benefits to human wellbeing. Yet methodology to assess restorative qualities is generally...     

Modelling locational access to markets for pluriactivity: a study in the Grampian region of Scotland

This paper investigates the role of location in determining the presence of on- and off-farm pluriactivity. Gravity models are developed to define degrees of access to markets from farm locations, and farm household survey data from the Grampian Region of Scotland are used to test the ability of the models to explain the observed location of pluriactivity. Proximity to markets is shown to be an important factor for both tourist and non-tourist on-farm diversification, and is reflected in the location of farms with on-farm non-agricultural activities. However, there is no evidence of a relationship between access to labour market opportunities and the presence of off-farm employment at the sub-regional scale. Personal preferences concerning work location and household responsibilities may be more important in determining the presence of off-farm work than proximity to labour market opportunities. Possible refinements to the technique and policy implications are discussed.     

“Roll back the years”: A study of grandparent special guardians' experiences and implications for social work policy and practice in England

Growing numbers of grandparent special guardians (GSGs) are assuming responsibility for increasing numbers of children in the care system in England. Special guardianship arrangements are increasingly used as a permanency option as they allow children to remain in their kinship networks rather than in local authority care or be adopted; yet there is a scarcity of research on GSG carers' experiences. This paper reports a small qualitative research study where 10 sets of grandparents were interviewed to explore their journey to becoming GSGs and to theorize their subsequent experiences. Two themes emerge. First, experiences of the assessment process are elaborated, decisions often being made at a time of family crisis, impacting on GSGs: financial, employment, and relational. Second, GSGs' experiences of managing often challenging relationships and contact arrangements between the grandchildren and the parents reveal three main relationship management approaches emerging: containing‐flexible, containing‐controlled, and uncontained/defeated approaches. Anthropological concepts of affinity help theorize the GSGs' ambivalent responses to becoming carers in later life, enabling reconfigured kinship relationships in new family forms. Family policy and social work practice is critiqued as GSGs appear often left alone to “roll back the years,” to heal previous harms done to the grandchildren who end up in their care.     

The magic in the (extra)ordinary: Intensive validation to recalibrate the life-worlds of adolescents exposed to abuse

This qualitative case study aimed to explore environmental circumstances and interactional processes that appeared to be relevant for the dynamics of resilience in adolescents exposed to child abuse. Fieldwork at a learning and coping centre for children and their families was combined with semi-structured interviews with adolescent participants aged 12 to 18 years. A critical realist approach was used to unpack what has been called the ‘ordinary magic’ of resilience. We found that intensively validating qualities of both the environment and relationships seemed to be driving components for resilience. Borrowing ideas from the sociometer theory, we propose that particularly the consistent intensiveness may offer a recalibration of the adolescents' immediate life-worlds, in terms of how they perceive the people they meet and the environments they step into. In keeping with the transactional-ecological model of resilience, we suggest that such a recalibration leads to altered social agency that becomes visible through their immediate social participation.