Lone mothers,workfare and precarious employment: Time for a Canadian Basic Income?

Abstract   The growth of precarious employment poses significant challenges to current social assistance income support policies yet it remains largely neglected in policy-making arenas. Drawing upon qualitative data from a study in Ontario, Canada, this paper examines the particular implications of these challenges for lone mothers, who figure prominently both in non-standard employment and as targets for workfare policies. In the context of changing labour markets, the article considers the potential strengths and limitations of Basic Income approaches to achieving economic security for lone mothers.     

Social Protest and Self-Enhancement: A Conditional Relationship

Data from a panel study are used to test the theoretically informed hypothesis that participation in social protest activities in the seventh grade has self-enhancing outcomes in the ninth grade and in young adulthood where the subjects in the seventh grade express alienation from the conventional social order. However, participation in social protest activities in the seventh grade is expected to have self-devaluing consequences in the ninth grade and young adulthood where the subjects in the seventh grade do not express alienation from the conventional social order. The results of OLS multiple regression analyses with interaction terms were consistent with the hypothesis. As predicted, among subjects who rejected the idea that one can get ahead by working hard, seventh grade social protest was inversely related to self-derogation; and, among subjects who affirm the idea that one can get ahead by working hard, social protest activities were related to higher subsequent levels of self-derogation.     

The Technical Substrates of Unconscious Memory: Rereading Derrida's Freud in the Age of Teletechnology

In a rereading of Jacques Derrida's writings on Freud, I trace the connections between his treatment of differance and his treatment of technology and unconscious memory. I focus on the challenge which Derrida's writings pose for a certain idea of history, including the history of technological development, and I locate that challenge in Derrida's deconstruction of the opposition of nature and technology, the human and the machine, the virtual and the real, the living and the inert. In proposing that these opposed elements are better thought of as deferrals of each other and that, therefore, neither of the opposed elements can be ontologically privileged, Derrida's writings offer a shift in ontological perspective befitting the age of teletechnology. In all this, Derrida's writings show that Freud's treatment of unconscious memory is still relevant, even while Derrida's writings offer a thought of unconscious memory that goes beyond Freud's, that is to say, goes beyond thought of the unconscious when it is conceived narrowly as a possession of the individual subject. Rather than referring unconscious memory to the individual subject, Derrida returns unconscious memory to thought and its technical substrates. It is in doing so that Derrida's writings propose an ontological shift.     

International adopters and their children: Birth culture ties

This study explores parents’ attitudes toward helping their internationally adopted children develop an appreciation for the cultures of the children’s birth countries and surveys the culture-related activities in which they and their children engage. While most parents believed their child’s primary attachment should be to American culture, they accorded great importance to their child forming ties to his/her birth culture. Both the adopted child’s region of origin and the parent’s gender had an impact on attitudes and activities. Parents who adopted from Asia and mothers generally accorded greater importance to and participated more frequently in cultural activities with their children than parents who adopted from Europe and fathers. Patricia Hanigan Scroggs is a foreign service officer with the U.S. Department of State and the mother of two daughters adopted from China. A specialist in economic affairs, she has served overseas in Mexico, Korea, and Japan and in various Washington assignments for the State Department. She conducted this research while a fellow in the State Department’s Una Chapman Cox Sabbatical Leave Program. She is presently studying Justice, Law, and Society and holds a graduate degree in forensic psychology from John Jay College of Criminal Justice.     

Adolescent Self-Rejection and Adult Social Action: A Conditional Relationship

Objective . Theoretically informed models of the relationship between stigmatized personal identities and participation in collective social action are tested. Methods . Data from a longitudinal study of participants ( N = 4,169) followed between adolescence and the fourth decade of life are used to estimate structural equation models. Results . The data support hypotheses that perceived rejection during adolescence anticipates participation in social action under conditions when respondents reported during adolescence (1) that many of the kids at school participated in social movements ( p < .10) and (2) that they perceived themselves as having personal control over adverse outcomes ( p < .05), but not under mutually exclusive conditions. In all models, gender, mother's education, and minority status were specified as control variables. Conclusions . Early experiences of rejection and failure dispose people to engage in collective social action if they perceive social support for such action and anticipate that action will be effective.     

Review Essay:Analyzing Slavery and the Slave Narrative

Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America, by Ira Berlin. Remembering Slavery: African Americans Talk About Their Personal Experiences of Slavery and Emancipation, edited by Ira Berlin, Marc Favreau, and Steven F. Miller.     

From Refugees to Forced Migration: The UNHCR and Human Security1

Within UNHCR, there has been a shift in the emphasis on the meaning of protection. Protection of refugees is now primarily defined as security of refugees and refugee operations rather than in terms of the legal asylum process. The article examines the significance of UNHCR placing the refugee issue within both the larger context of forced migration as well as within the context of human security. The paper clarifies and documents a current and general focus of forced migration that includes the internally displaced as well as refugees and offers a framework for comprehending and dealing with the refugee problem that has shifted focus to the security dimension.     

The Prison Cage as Home for African American Men

Through critical discourse analysis I describe the impact of incarceration as seen in narratives that underlie the overrepresentation of Blacks in American prisons. Much of my research illustrates how narratives can show the moral agency required for rehabilitation. This article shows the context into which that moral agency fits and calls for a critical literacy for communities to understand incarceration and its effects on family and society.