The periphery of care: Emergency services for homeless people in rural areas

Until recently, homelessness in rural areas has received little recognition because of overwhelming assumptions about the urban-centredness of homeless people and their needs. This paper seeks to build on recent research that has begun to uncover some of the problems and characteristics of rural homelessness, by suggesting two significant dynamics which together can shape the experience of different groups of homeless people in rural environments. First, rural places reflect particular local qualities which contextualise both the circumstances of homelessness and the provision of services in response to those circumstances. Secondly, the contemporary governance of homelessness unfolds rather unevenly in different rural areas, producing distinct local service environments with varying degrees of ‘insider’ and ‘outsider’ status in relation to joined-up responses to the needs of homeless people. These dynamics are articulated through three case studies: a remote friary in a deep rural area of southern England; a small hostel run by a vibrant non-statutory organisation in a small town in the west of England, and two advice centres in a coastal resort in the north-east of England. Through these case studies we highlight the importance of both local reactions to the homeless other, and local relations between central government funding, local authority initiatives and charitable organisations, in the production and consumption of spaces of care in settings set in, or serving, rural environments.     

THE JOYS OF GARDENING: COLLECTIVIST AND BUREAUCRATIC CULTURES IN CONFLICT

Collectives and bureaucracies differ not only in structure and values, but interpret the social world and engage in actions based on quite different themes, symbols, and meanings. These diverse patterns of symbolic discourse, or organizational cultures, are assessed in the case of the recent urban gardening movement. Although government agencies assisted the movement by providing resources to movement collectives and by establishing thousands of urban gardening projects, collectives and bureaucracies had different meanings for what appeared to be the same experience. A comparison of how each described the benefits of urban gardening and structured the gardening experience for participants show serious underlying differences between these organizational cultures and a source of potential bureaucratic/collectivist conflict. Implications for understanding apparent official opposition to collectivist movements are also assessed.     

Climate Change Facts,Strategies, Choices and Innovations

Canada's Action Plan is the federal response to its international obligation under the UN Framework Convention of 1992 whereby Canada must reduce its greenhouse gas emissions to the 1990 level by the year 2000. The Plan is failing completely, because of its essentially voluntary nature. Overall, greenhouse gas emissions will have increased 13 per cent in Canada between 1990 and 2000, four per cent more than the population increase for that period. Five other plans studied by government agencies are projected to fail to achieve the called-for reductions in emission. An analogous plan, the Rational Energy Plan, developed by a network of nongovernment organizations, is projected to enable the federal government to achieve its obligations under the Framework Convention and also its further obligations under the 1995 Berlin Mandate. This Plan has been analyzed using the government's own analytical tools which project that it will offer Canada substantial annual increases in employment for at least ten years, more prosperous households for more than ten years, and a smaller federal deficit for at least eight years. The federal government has no viable alternative to adopting this plan as soon as practicable. This paper explains some of the needed preliminaries to introducing the Plan, together with examples of tax-shifting and of easily implemented stick-and-carrot inducements to making the Plan work in a sea of partly hostile provinces (Alberta, Saskatchewan, Ontario and Newfoundland). The Plan will not be easy to implement because of necessary changes in human habits of thinking and attitudes. A new and simple strategy for reducing fuel wastage on highways is introduced in this paper; and also the concept of extended cogeneration, the Rational Energy Plan itself being a particularly fine example.     

SHORT REVIEWS

Books reviewed in this article: Paul Demeny and Geoffrey Mcnicoll (eds.), Encyclopedia of Population Barbara Ehrenreich and Arlie Russell Hochschild (eds.), Global Woman: Nannies, Maids, and Sex Workers in the New Economy Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, World Agriculture: Towards 2015/2030: An FAO Perspective and Summary Report Jeanne X. Kasperson and Roger E. Kasperson, Global Environmental Risk Richard Lynn, Eugenics: A Reassessment Douglas W. Maynard, Hanneke Houtkoop‐Steenstra, Nora Gate Schaeffer, and Johannes van der Zouwen (eds.), Standardization and Tacit Knowledge: Interaction and Practice in the Survey Anthony M. Messina (ed.), West European Immigration and Immigrant Policy in the New Century     

The Maid Trade: Cross-Border Work in South Texas

Objective . The primary objective of this article is to investigate the "informal" marketplace for domestic servants (maids) in a border community in South Texas (Laredo). Methods . A questionnaire was administered by a household member familiar with the present study who employed at least one maid utilizing the snowball method of sample selection. Usable data (surveys) were collected from 389 individuals—195 maids and 194 employers. Results . For maids, who are overwhelmingly female Mexican nationals, the primary determinant or "push" factor in becoming a maid was economic necessity while the primary "pull" factor was good pay. A large hourly wage differential was uncovered for day maids ($3.44) vis-a-vis live-in maids ($2.61), which was primarily the result of civil status and the possession of documents permitting entry into the United States as determined by a logistic regression. Conclusion . The relative attractiveness of work as a maid in Laredo, Texas reflects the benefit of good pay balanced by the cost of poor employment choice in Mexico.