Organizing insecurity: marginal subjects and narratives of injustice

In order to understand how insecurity is organized, we draw from our conversations with marginal workers from a variety of contexts in India – Tamil and Tibetan refugees, informal sector workers, contract or temporary workers and organized sector workers with apparently stable contracts. We theorize insecurity as the experience of injustice, and the structuring of inequalities to which workers are forced to give muted consent. We also read insecurity as the production of sovereignties in which the nation, state and the corporation intersect to produce regimes of injustice. Finally, we read insecurity as the abduction of the subject of the worker, and her conversion into a resource from whom value is extracted. Perhaps, the hope of resistance lies in the politics of vulnerability, a politics which undoes the subordinations and the violence of contracts.     

The Far-Reaching Consequences of Job Insecurity: A Review on Family-Related Outcomes

Job insecurity (JI) appears a fairly stable job stressor in working life today and likely to impair employee well-being. This review article presents the key findings of studies examining the effects of perceived JI on family well-being (e.g., marital/parental role quality, work–family conflict). The results, based on 25 published peer-reviewed studies, suggest an association between JI and impaired family well-being. Thus, JI spills over into family life as proposed in the spillover theory of work–family interface. Furthermore, studies have found some evidence of crossover effects of JI from parents to children: parents’ JI relates to negative outcomes in children. These results support the view that JI is very likely a severe stressor not only for employees’ well-being and health but also for their families’ well-being. Limitations, future directions, and implications are also discussed.     

Work–family conflict and job insecurity: are workers from different generations experiencing true differences?

This paper explores the question whether workers of different generations significantly diverge in their perceptions of work–family conflict and job insecurity and implications of such differences on affective commitment and job satisfaction. Given the explorative nature of this study, we use a multi-method approach which relies on a focus group with Italian graduated students and on a field study with workers from an Italian food processing company respectively grouped in three generational cohorts: Baby Boomers, gen Xers, and Millennials. Overall, our findings demonstrate that workers belonging to different generational cohorts display divergent perceptions of work–family conflict and job insecurity. However, the effects of such perceptions on work attitudes are not directly correlated with the experienced levels of job insecurity and work–family conflict. That is, although Millennials tend to perceive a higher level of job insecurity than Baby Boomers and gen Xers, job insecurity is more likely to produce negative consequences on work attitudes among Baby Boomers and gen Xers rather than among Millennials. Notably, our findings indicate that there are no significant differences with regard to the effects of work–family conflict on affective commitment and job satisfaction among the three generational cohorts considered.     

Cardiac measures of stress in British prison officers

Abstract

Previous research has found that alternative employment arrangements are associated with both impaired and improved well-being. Since such inconsistencies are likely to derive from the type of employment contract as well as the characteristics of the job, this paper compares permanent full-time work with forms of alternative employment (permanent part-time, fixed-term and on-call work) in order to investigate how different employment contracts and perceptions of job conditions relate to individual well-being. This study contributes to the literature by addressing several questions. Different forms of alternative employment are distinguished and individual background characteristics that might be intertwined with the employment contract are controlled for. Moreover, the scope of this study extends to the effects of perceived job conditions, and possible interactive effects with type of employment are tested. Analyses of questionnaire data from 954 Swedish healthcare workers show that perceptions of the job (job insecurity, job control and demands), but not the type of employment contract, predicted health complaints. However, type of employment interacted with perceptions of job insecurity, in that insecurity was associated with impaired well-being among permanent full-time workers, while no relationship was found for on-call or core part-time employees. Despite the absence of interactions between employment contract and job demands or job control, it can be concluded that knowledge about the relationship between alternative employment arrangements and the well-being of workers can be enhanced when the combined effects of employment contract and job conditions are studied.     

Strangers in a strange land: coping with imprisonment as a racial or ethnic foreign national inmate

A wide range of scholarship examining the global effects of neo‐liberalism draws attention to the precarious position of individuals who are not seen as part of the social body. While immigrants, racial minorities, and common criminals are central to this discourse, relatively little research has examined how the experiences of these individuals may vary based on statuses other than citizenship when they are imprisoned. Our research focuses on the interactions (between prisoners and between prisoners and correctional staff) of a racially diverse group of Dutch foreign national prisoners incarcerated in England. Although all of these prisoners clearly saw themselves as ‘outsiders,’ visible minorities faced a unique set of challenges relative to their White counterparts. We consider both the practical and theoretical import of these findings.     

Disrupting 21st-Century In/Security

Abstract

This thematic issue probes into twenty-first-century security concerns in the United States, Canada and Mexico, and their transnational implications. In particular, it explores three tensions that characterise contemporary security concerns: national security vs. human security, policy measures vs. grassroots activism and scholarly discourses vs. artistic interventions. The 'War on Terror' launched by President George W. Bush marked the beginning of the century with issues of violence and insecurity, with major human rights ramifications. Grassroots activists, however, have resisted the imposition of security policy and stood up to the insecurities they face. This thematic journal issue discusses questions of in/security around a robust people-centred framework that delineates questions of insecurity as a complex nexus that intertwines policy-making, everyday experiences, cultural representations and formal and informal communication networks. This focus presents an alternative to more conventional approaches that examine issues of societal in/security solely from the viewpoint of nation states and law enforcement. The collection’s case studies address the ways in which ordinary people in a transnational North American context experience questions of insecurity. The articles highlight the central position of gender, race, class and sexuality in both strengthening and challenging danger, uncertainty and liminality.     

新冠肺炎疫情下全球农业食物系统的重新思考

当前全球食物系统已经受到诸多威胁,新冠肺炎疫情使食物系统更加脆弱,同时敲响了重新思考未来农业食物系统的警钟,世界进入多危机并存的复合型风险时代,增强食物系统的“韧性”至关重要。文章全面介绍了当前全球食物和营养安全面临的现状,分析了新冠肺炎疫情对全球食物和营养安全带来的挑战,并对未来全球农业食物系统的发展着力点进行了思考。截至2019年,全球有6.9亿人遭受饥饿困扰,20亿人无法正常获取安全、营养、充足的食物,1.44亿儿童发育不良;新冠肺炎疫情的大流行破坏了全球食物供应链,使弱势群体遭受重创,饥饿人数大幅度增加;未来食物系统应当是高效高产、低碳、健康营养、韧性、可持续并具有包容性的生产系统,其中“韧性”对于应对新冠肺炎等冲击并从中恢复至关重要,文章从技术、政策、制度、贸易等方面阐述了增强未来农业食物系统韧性需要重点关注的方向。     

A Process Model of Parenting and Adolescents' Friendship Competence

This study examined the prospective relationship between negative parenting behaviors and adolescents' friendship competence in a community sample of 416 two‐parent families in the Southeastern USA. Adolescents' externalizing problems and their emotional insecurity with parents were examined as mediators. Parents' psychological control was uniquely associated with adolescents' friendship competence. When both mediators were included in the same model, adolescents' perceptions of emotional insecurity in the parent–adolescent relationship fully mediated the association between parents' psychological control and adolescents' friendship competence. Parental hostility was associated with friendship competence indirectly through adolescents' emotional insecurity. Results contribute to identifying the mechanisms by which parenting affects youths' friendship competence, which is important in informing theory and practice regarding interpersonal relationships in adolescence.     

Agricultural Exports and Food Insecurity in Sub‐Saharan Africa: A Qualititative Configurational Analysis

Export of agricultural products is increasingly seen as one of the few viable instruments to solve the problem of food insecurity in developing countries. Using the configurative comparative method to study 17 countries in sub‐Saharan Africa, this article argues that increasing agricultural export is only beneficial for certain types of developing countries. Before agricultural exports are encouraged, food availability, agricultural labour productivity, the share of agriculture in total GDP, the amount of staple food imports, and the share of investment goods in total imports should be considered.