Payment of Universal Credit for couples in the UK: Challenges for reform from a gender perspective

Universal Credit has been rolled out gradually in the United Kingdom since 2013 as one integrated means-tested benefit replacing six different transfers with a single monthly payment. Previously, these benefits were awarded for distinct purposes and, for couples who claimed them, were potentially payable to different partners. Concerns about Universal Credit’s single payment include the opportunities it may create for facilitating domestic abuse, the fostering of more unequal power relations within couples, the reduction of financial autonomy for individuals, and the de-labelling of benefit payments. This article explores debates about the prospects for individual payments to partners in couples of Universal Credit as a jointly assessed integrated means-tested benefit, including different approaches emerging from the United Kingdom’s devolved governments (mainly Scotland and Northern Ireland). Whilst payment to each partner is likely to be more feasible where there are separate rather than integrated means-tested benefits, it concludes that genuine financial autonomy for partners in couples is best pursued via individually based non-means-tested benefits.     

The intergenerational transmission of risk attitudes: Evidence from Burkina Faso

Review of Economics of the Household - This paper investigates the intergenerational transmission of risk attitudes in the context of a low income country with a focus on rural–urban and...     

Picturing social work,puzzles and passion: exploring and developing transnational professional identities

ABSTRACT

Exploring and in turn developing professional identity is a challenge faced by social work programmes, nationally and internationally. This paper developed from the authors’ shared research interest in how social workers and students of social work develop and express their professional identities. We report findings from a workshop designed to explore how a group of social workers from different countries conceptualised social work identity, including the effects of transnational and cultural contexts. Our starting point drew on theoretical concepts developed in Wiles’s research, in which the term professional identity is used to convey multiple meaning, and the method developed in Vicary’s research which uses drawing to elicit data. We found that a collective identity is shared across national boundaries albeit, and ironically, that this shared identity has components that are not cohesive and are continually being redefined. In the participants’ own words, the notion of social work identity is always just out of reach conceptually, or ‘over the horizon’. Tensions in identity were also revealed, alongside a sense of passion or deep commitment. These findings complement and add to the existing literature on exploring and developing professional identity in social work.     

Using WhatsApp for a homeless count

The study analyses how the use of instant messaging (WhatsApp) alongside other ICT tools is adequate to complement the count of homeless people in an area. In particular, it describes the methodology used in order to organize the first official count of homeless people in Girona (Catalonia, Spain). Given that this is the first count of individuals experiencing homelessness in the city, it is difficult to say that it is an improvement, but it could be suggested that the app might make the future counts more efficient. Both professional and volunteers and homeless people used WhatsApp to send information. A total of 283 homeless people were detected. Results show that the usage of this application optimized the results of the count. 36.1% of the data were obtained online. Homeless people, who were reluctant to contact directly with the professional team, used WhatsApp to communicate with them, adding up to 19.4% of the data obtained. Results show how communication between homeless people and health and mental health services can be potentially improved with this type of application.     

Rethinking network capital: hospitality work and parallel trading among Chinese students in Melbourne

Drawing on an ethnographic study of Chinese female tertiary students’ work practices in Melbourne, Australia, this article engages critically with John Urry’s concept of network capital. I show how these students’ work practices link them both into relatively fixed, localized, diasporic employment networks in Melbourne’s Chinese restaurant sector; and into relatively mobile, transnational, digitally mediated trading networks in the micro-entrepreneurial activity of daigou or parallel trading: buying local goods on behalf of customers in China. Based on this case study, I develop three main inter-related claims. First, I argue that geographic and social mooring in place, as well as mobility, can generate benefit for individuals and groups, just as both fixity and mobility may generate disadvantage or risk. Second and relatedly, I propose that social capital cannot operate entirely independently of geography, as Urry’s proposal of network capital as a replacement for the concept of social capital implies. Third, through my development of the concept of ‘feminine network capital’, I show how network capital may take ‘weak’ and tactical, as well as ‘strong’ and strategic forms.     

Conditions for the successful integration of Human and Organizational Factors (HOF) in the nuclear safety analysis

This communication presents some elements which come from the experience feedback at CEA about the conditions for the successful integration of HOF in the nuclear safety analysis. To point out some of these conditions, one of the concepts proposed by Edgar Morin to describe the functioning of "complex" systems: the dialogical principle has been used. The idea is to look for some dialogical pairs. The elements of this kind of pair are both complementary and antagonist to one another. Three dialogical pairs are presented in this communication. The first two pairs are related to the organization of the HOF network and the last one is related to the methods which are used to analyse the working situations. The three pairs are: specialist - non-specialist actors of the network, centralized - distributed human resources in the network and microscopic - macroscopic levels of HOF methods to analyse the working situations. To continuously improve these three dialogical pairs, it is important to keep the differences which exist between the two elements of a pair and to find and maintain a balance between the two elements of the pairs.     

Coordination and artifacts in joint activity: the case of tagging in high-risk industries

The social, organizational, and technological complexity of high-risk organizations creates a strong need for coordination. Joint activity in such systems thus relies both on formal coordination and on a set of informal coordinative practices. Coordinated joint activity is documented in this paper from two perspectives: the development of coordinative practices to overcome the limitations of formal coordination, and the use of artifacts for coordinative purposes. The empirical material is provided by a workplace study undertaken according to theoretical conceptions of situated action and cognition. It was undertaken in the context of a design project that aims at improving the tagout process in a high-risk industry. Findings first describe and analyze situations in which formal coordination turned out to be more of a constraint than a resource for effective action. They then illustrate the role played by artifacts in coordinated activity, focusing on the use of a particular artifact, the tagout tag, in different situations.     

The Bernese Program against Victimization in Kindergarten and Elementary School

The Bernese Program against Victimization in Kindergarten and Elementary School was designed to be adaptable to the very different situations and needs encountered by teachers in kindergarten and elementary school. The basic principle of the program is to enhance teachers' ability to address bullying. The program consists of six modules, each corresponding to a specific topic. Teachers are urged to implement the tasks discussed during the meetings in their own classes during the time between the meetings. The program has been evaluated using a prevention-control pre- and posttest design. The informants were teachers as well as children. There was a significant interaction between time (pre- and posttest) and group (prevention and control) as to victimization. Changes in teachers' attitudes toward bullying and their ability to cope with such problems were also significant and in the expected direction.