Kinship Care and Transnational Parenting: The Intersection of Cultural Values and Practices

This study uses ethnographic research to examine the phenomenon of transnational parenting by migrant mothers from the African Caribbean community and their family who care for the mothers’ children. Twenty women’s narratives demonstrate the complexity of relationships between migrant mothers living and working in New York City and their extended family or kinship caretakers who coparent their children in their countries of origin. The study reveals three main factors that contribute to the success of transnational parenting: (1) informal kinship care-child fostering, (2) remittances, and (3) social networks. Policy and practice implications are explored.     

Pathways to European identity formation: a tale of two models

This article argues that there are two distinct logics that underlie existing studies on European identification. These are grounded in models of collective identity formation that stress either messages inscribed in discursive processes or practices situated in socio-spatial relations – respectively, the “culturalist” and the “structuralist” models. The first of these models considers identification as a direct outcome of the exposure to content-specific symbols, narratives, and messages; the second, as an emerging property of socio-spatial interactions that are content-free of identity references. The first is logocentric, while the second is democentric and topocentric. This article focuses particularly on the second and less-developed research tradition which explores the effects of cross-national practices. The limits and potential of this model are discussed, setting an agenda for empirical research aiming to better elucidate the causal dynamics of European identity formation and adjudicate between these competing explanations.     

Parent-worker relationships in child welfare social work: a Belgian case study

The involvement of parents within child and family social work has become an important research topic during the past few decades. Within this research, a lot of attention is paid to partnership, which is recognised as a dominant concept in current thinking about the parent–worker relationship in present-day practice. The debate on parent–worker relationships, however, seems to be mainly focussed on the individual relationship between the parent and the social worker. Based on a historical analysis of policy documents on a Belgian child and family welfare service, this article offers a historical and sociopolitical contextualisation of the current debate on the parent–worker relationship. The analysis reveals that sociopolitical ideas about the responsibilities of the state, the community and the private family have induced a continuous reflection on which children and parents should be seen as the most appropriate clients for a particular service, as well as an ongoing development of diagnostic instruments to legitimise inclusion and exclusion of families within child and family social work. Consequences for parent–worker relationships in child and family social work are discussed, as well as some implications for future research on child and family social work practices.     

The disorganized family: institutions,practices and normativity

This paper considers the value of a normative account of the relationship between agents and institutions for contemporary efforts to explain ever more complex and disorganized forms of social life. The character of social institutions, as they relate to practices, agents and norms, is explored through an engagement with the common claim that family life has been de‐institutionalized. The paper argues that a normative rather than empirical definition of institutions avoids a false distinction between institutions and practices. Drawing on ideas of social freedom and creative action from critical theory, the changes in family life are explained not as an effect of de‐institutionalization, but as a shift from an organized to a disorganized institutional type. This is understood as a response to changes in the wider normative structure, as a norm of individual freedom has undermined the legitimacy of the organized patriarchal nuclear family, with gender ascribed roles and associated duties. Contemporary motherhood is drawn on to illustrate the value of analysing the dynamic interactions between institutions, roles and practices for capturing both the complexity and the patterned quality of social experience.     

Analytic Essay Cults

No abstract available for this article.     

Social assistance in China and Sweden: how policy intentions are translated into local practices

This article compares social assistance policies in China and Sweden, with a special focus on the means of translating policy intentions into local practices. Unlike China, Sweden has laws regulating social assistance, which is intended to ensure a ‘reasonable standard of living’. Though considered a legal right, assistance is Sweden is means-tested. While social assistance claims are dealt with by the welfare bureaucracy in Sweden, in China the process of application involves the input of cadres, administrative officials from different levels of government, and neighbours. The challenges facing Sweden are to find ways to cope with long-term social assistance and to help recipients find work. The challenges facing China are to establish a social assistance law and standardized management procedures, and to incorporate the resources of social work.     

RACIALIZING CULTURE IS ORDINARY1

This article engages a discussion of Raymond Williams claim that culture is ordinary to explore some of the ways in which racializing culture is embedded in everyday interactions and processes of identification that found subjectivity. It argues that there is a pressing need for social policy analysts to come to grips with the mechanisms through which ‘culture’ comes to be racialized and an object/subject of governance and suggests that current, high-profile articulations of the ‘problems’ of multiculturalism, profoundly hinder such a development.     

Use of concurrent mixed methods combining concept mapping and focus groups to adapt a health equity tool in Canada

The aim of this project was to identify and prioritize a set of conditions to be considered for incorporating a health equity tool into public health practice. Concept mapping and focus groups were implemented as complementary methods to investigate the conditions of use of a health equity tool by public health organizations in Quebec. Using a hybrid integrated research design is a richer way to address the complexity of questions emerging from intervention and planning settings. This approach provides a deeper, operational, and contextualized understanding of research results involving different professional and organizational cultures, and thereby supports the decision-making process. Concept mapping served to identify and prioritize in a limited timeframe the conditions to be considered for incorporation into a health equity tool into public health practices. Focus groups then provided a more refined understanding of the barriers, issues, and facilitating factors surrounding the tools adoption, helped distinguish among participants’ perspectives based on functional roles and organizational contexts, and clarified some apparently contradictory results from the concept map. The combined use of these two techniques brought the strengths of each approach to bear, thereby overcoming some of the respective limitations of concept mapping and focus groups. This design is appropriate for investigating targets with multiple levels of complexity.     

Intervention with Families in Extreme Distress (FED)

The FED (Families in Extreme Distress) Project described in this article was developed as an intervention model for families in extreme distress. The concept of families in extreme distress includes not only those families which have been widely regarded as multi-problem families for decades, but also those which may appear to be like any other middle class family. The dis- organization in family functioning that is created by an interaction of many problems results in a durable distress which is repeated throughout successive generations. The intervention design of this project was structured and short- term, and each family in the group met once a week in their own home for ten sessions with a therapeutic team composed of three workers. The target of the intervention was the functioning of the entire family as a unit; and goals included clarifying boundaries, strengthening roles, and developing a communication system. Analysis of the therapeutic sessions revealed several techniques which are useful for intervention with the FED population. The intervention process with these families should be multilevel and case management should not only include providing family therapy, but also advocating and mediating with various institutions in the community, as well as making connections for financial assistance.While some major policy changes may be required to meet the finan- cial and manpower needs involved in such a model, this demonstra- tion project indicates that investing the right resources is worthwhile for effecting change within the FED population.     

Adolescent girls’ race/ethnic status, identities, and drive for thinness

Using data from 7272 adolescent US girls, we explore how girls’ race/ethnic group status affects their bodyweight, perceptions of overweight, and weight control practices. We hypothesize that a girl’s race/ethnic status influences her basic identity which in turn prompts her to adopt or reject a “drive for thinness.” After controlling for family and peer support, school engagement, family SES, maturation, and family structure, we find that girls’ race/ethnic status influences their susceptibility to the thinness ideals of mainstream culture. African American girls weigh more than Asian, Hispanic, or White girls, but at any given weight they perceive themselves as overweight and attempt to control their weight less. Asian American and White girls invest most in thinness dynamics. Some evidence also suggests girls from lower SES families are less driven to be thin. Our results affirm the utility of viewing material bodies as “situations” that are experienced and interpreted in accord with identity group relations and dynamics.