Marital splits and income changes: Evidence from the British Household Panel Survey

We provide new evidence about what happens to people's incomes when their or their parents' marital union dissolves using longitudinal data from waves 1--4 of the British Household Panel Survey. Marital splits are accompanied by substantial declines in real income for separating wives and children on average, whereas separating husbands' real income on average changes much less. Results are shown to be robust to the choice of income de®nition and degree of economies of scale built into the household equivalence scale, and are validated with information about respondents' assessments of how their personal ®nancial circumstances changed. In addition we analyse the extent to which the welfare state mitigates the size of the income loss for women and children relative to men, and document the accompanying changes in social assistance bene®t receipt and paid work, and maintenance income receipt and payment.     

Disconnections and exclusions: professionalization,cosmopolitanism and (global?) civil society

In this article, we address the ways in which theories and practices of cosmopolitanism and professionalization intersect in the sphere of global civil society. We emphasize the experiences of grassroots development activists, arguing that although they have so far been pivotal to the legitimacy of these spaces and discourses, such activists are increasingly absent from the practices of global civic spaces. We explore this process of change over time using the example of grassroots health promoters in Peru, explaining it in terms of the articulation of neoliberal processes of professionalization with a particularly neoliberal version of cosmopolitanism. We argue that the two are mutually reinforcing and produce a particularly narrow, and arguably less cosmopolitan, rendition of global civil society, with implications for the possibility of building critical and transformative encounters across difference as a foundation for more equitable ideas and practices of development and democracy.     

Informality in a micro economy: Measurement,composition and consequences

This article measures the extent of – and unrecorded income generated by – informal employment in a micro economy characterized by poor governance. Household survey and census data are used to estimate the number of informal workers in Northern Cyprus and analyse the characteristics of informal employment, for the period 2004–11. Informal workers are mostly comprised of citizens with no social security registration, illegally employed immigrants or second‐job holders who have not registered their second jobs. In terms of value added, the estimated size of the informal economy is 9.1 per cent and 12.2 per cent of GNP in 2006 and 2011, respectively.     

'She Has Different Fits to Me': how people with learning difficulties see themselves

People with learning difficulties often appear to experience significant incongruence between their categorical identity as someone with learning difficulties and their self-identity. This paper draws on research undertaken with 60 young adults, and their parents or carers to examine the nature of that incongruence. We conclude that it is based almost entirely in discursive relationships, whereas experiential and power relationships promote incorporation of categorical identity into self-identity. We call for more careful consideration and open discussion of the ways in which the categorical identity of people with learning difficulties is handled in discursive relations with them.     

Adolescents in Crisis: on Hypothesizing with Minimal Information

Summary This paper suggests some of the questions that practitionersshould ask themselves when faced with an adolescent in crisis.It is important that professionals have available a number oflevels for conceptualizing behaviour if they are to make senseof complex information. Minimal information from a referralis given to demonstrate our approach. We consider some issuesconnected with change in systems; symptomatic behaviour in alife cycle context; agency contexts as they affect professionalhelp; and adolescent development in the context of marital breakdown.The practitioner is encouraged to develop hypotheses, whilehaving very few facts which in the light of further contactmay be developed, or discarded in favour of hypotheses morerelevant to the particular family. We warn against the equal,but different dangers of approaching each new family eitherwith a totally open mind, or with fixed ideas concerning whatit ‘must be about’. We do not argue that it is betterto have little or no previous history (although too much historycan become part of ‘the problem’), but that workersalways have more information, from the very start, than theymay realise.     

Dimensions et effets des activités informelles dans une très petite économie

Les auteurs évaluent l'emploi informel – et les revenus non déclarés qu'il engendre – dans une très petite économie à gouvernance médiocre. Les données d'une enquěte auprès des ménages et d'un recensement leur servent à estimer le nombre de travailleurs en emploi informel à Chypre‐Nord, ainsi que les caractéristiques de cet emploi, entre 2004 et 2011. Les travailleurs concernés sont essentiellement des citoyens non affiliés à la sécurité sociale, des immigrés employés illégalement ou des personnes ayant deux emplois dont un non déclaré. L'économie informelle aurait représenté 9,1 pour cent du PNB en 2006, et 12,2 en 2011.