Welfare Queens,Thrifty Housewives,and Do-It-All Mums

In this paper, we consider how the cultural politics of austerity within Britain plays out on the celebrity maternal body. We locate austerity as a discursive and disciplinary field and contribute to emerging feminist scholarship exploring how broader political and socio-economic shifts interact with cultural constructions of femininity and motherhood. To analyse the symbolic function of mediated celebrity maternity within austerity, the paper draws on a textual analysis of three celebrity mothers: Kate Middleton, Kim Kardashian, and Beyoncé. This analysis was undertaken as part of a larger qualitative study into celebrity culture and young people's classed and gendered aspirations. We show how these celebrity mothers represent the folk devils and fantasy figures of the maternal under austerity—the thrifty, happy housewife, the benefits mum, and the do-it-all working mum—and attempt to unpick what cultural work they do in the context of austerity within Britain. Through the lens of celebrity motherhood, we offer a feminist critique of austerity as a programme that both consolidates unequal class relations and makes punishing demands on women in general, and mothers in particular.     

Going back: ‘Stalking’, talking and researcher responsibilities in qualitative longitudinal research

This paper explores the process of going back in qualitative longitudinal research (QLR) to gather later accounts of unfolding personal experiences. The design of interview-based QLR is usually premised on collecting data, over-time, around an unfolding experience or event. This design facilitates the establishment of an on-going research relationship and ‘rapport’ and the accessing of fluid and time-sensitive accounts of individual experiences, leading to more nuanced understandings of temporal subjectivities. However in practice maintaining a sample in QL research, which may span a number of years, can be challenging and the process of going back, complicated. This paper reflects on issues and responsibilities which can arise when researchers try to access and go back to participants, especially where experiences once optimistically narrated and future-oriented have unfolded in unplanned and personally unwelcome ways. Using researcher experiences and the data from later phases of two UK based QLR studies on transition to first-time motherhood and first-time fatherhood, the practical steps of maintaining contact, reconnecting with participants and going back are documented. How does the passage of time and changes in participant’s lives alter research relationships, interpretations of data and researcher responsibilities?     

独联体国家朝鲜族的语言丢失问题

本文以前苏联的人口普查资料为依据,主要对独联体国家朝鲜族的语言丢失过程作了一些简要的描述和分析,并对中亚和萨哈林朝鲜族的语言状况作了一定对比研究。     

土地征收中失地农民权益保护的法律思考

伴随着工业化和城镇化的高速发展，大量农业用地转为城市用地和建设用地，失地农民增多在所难免，但这与实践中存在的侵害失地农民利益现象并无直接因果关系。导致侵害失地农民权益现象存在的根本原因是现行土地征收法律制度存在重大缺陷。要解决这一问题，需要解放思想，与时俱进，适应社会主义市场经济发展的要求，以保障农民权益为核心，全面改革征地法律制度。     

《庄子》“谨守而勿失”究竟“守”什么

有关《庄子·秋水》篇“谨守而勿失”命题的语意理解，今人都释为“谨守住前三句话道理而不失去”。结合概念、语境、命题之间的关系等重新审视该命题，应释之为“谨慎地守住自然本性而不要使之丧失”，实为一个独立的结论性命题。     

The Race and Class Privilege of Motherhood: TheNew York Times Presentations of Pregnant Drug‐Using Women1

Prior research has examined race and class bias embedded in media presentations of pregnant drug users; however, this past research is limited in identifying biases because it focuses on single substances—primarily crack cocaine. I build on this work by conducting a comparative analysis of more than 15 years worth of New York Times articles on three drugs (crack cocaine, alcohol, and tobacco) used during pregnancy. These three drugs have varying levels of deleterious effects on fetal development and infant health, as well as varying levels of use by poor and minority women. Because of this variation, I am able to assess whether media coverage of pregnant drug‐using women is proportional to the documented adverse consequences of specific drugs or, rather, whether media coverage is higher and more negative for poor and minority pregnant women regardless of the degree of adverse health consequences associated with the specific drug used. Through this analysis, I demonstrate that the prevalence and framing of news stories about pregnant drug‐using women has little to do with protecting the health of children. Rather, concern for children is a rhetorical tool used to define poor and minority women as bad mothers and blame them for contemporary changes in families.     

Negotiating motherhood: women with troubled upbringings and their self‐conceptions as mothers

This paper examines how women who experienced severe adjustment problems during adolescence, and who had troubled childhoods in families with high levels of conflict, construct their self‐conceptions as mothers. Applying data from a 30‐year‐long follow‐up study, this paper examines how participants with troubled upbringings experience social norms of motherhood. Two overall themes emerged along with their associated subcategories, and these are identified as significant findings. The first theme is the stigmatizing gaze, exemplifying how the intervention of the child welfare service is recognized as essential to the women's self‐conception; its three subcategories are prejudiced motherhood, predestined motherhood and self‐critical motherhood. The second theme is significant relationships, exemplifying the mothers' personal bonds and contributing greatly to their self‐conception; its three subcategories are the other half, next of kin and disturbed relations. The findings reveal that the way these women view themselves as mothers cannot be separated from the way that others view them, and in addition, they must negotiate their positions as mothers through the normative discourses of motherhood. The findings apply to both theoretical and practical social work, addressing the need for an understanding of motherhood within the field of child welfare.     

Differences in labour force participation by motherhood status among second-generation Turkish and majority women across Europe

Second-generation Turkish immigrants make up an increasingly important segment of European labour markets. These young adults are entering the prime working ages and forming families. However, we have only a limited understanding of the relationship between labour force participation and parenthood among second-generation Turkish women. Using unique data from the Integration of the European Second Generation survey (2007/08), we compared the labour force participation of second-generation Turkish women with their majority-group counterparts by motherhood status in four countries. We found evidence that motherhood gaps, with respect to labour force participation, were similar for majority and second-generation Turkish women in Germany and in Sweden; however, there may be larger gaps for second-generation mothers than for majority women in the Netherlands and France. Cross-national findings were consistent with the view that national normative and social policy contexts are relevant for the labour force participation of all women, regardless of migrant background.     

COVID‐19: A threat to educated Muslim women's negotiated identity in Pakistan

This study attempts to explore how the lockdown/containment measures taken by the government during the COVID‐19 pandemic have threatened educated Muslim women's negotiated identity regarding wifehood and motherhood in urban Pakistan and how they struggle to reposition to reconstruct it. Through semi‐structured interviews, making an in‐depth comparative study of three differently situated cases (Muslim women), this study argues that the abnormal situation that has ensued from the pandemic has reinforced the vulnerability of women's nascent negotiated identity by landing them in a space where they are supposed by the normative structures to step back to carrying out their traditional responsibilities as ‘good’ wife and mother during the crisis. It has found that the pandemic has similarity in its impacts for the women in their familial lives, despite their being variously situated and resistive, due to the general religio‐culturally defined patriarchal social behaviour of the place (Pakistan) toward women and lack of action on the part of the state for implementing its laws of women's empowerment.