Shame and pride in second-generation German identity in Melbourne,Australia: emotions and white ethnicity

As members of an established, well-integrated, white ethnic group, second-generation Germans are largely invisible in Australian society. Given this, they are easily presumed a group for whom Gans’ notion of ‘symbolic ethnicity’ might apply. However, based on interviews with adult children of German immigrants in Melbourne, Australia, this article suggests an alternative interpretation using recent literature on the role of emotions for identity. In the interviews with adult children of German immigrants in Melbourne, Australia, the notions of shame and pride in relation to ethnic identity were clearly evident. Shame often emerged in interaction with other people in Australia, and particularly in relation to Nazism and the Second World War. However, most respondents felt equally proud of their German heritage, particularly later in life. These findings suggest that ethnic identity for these second-generation Germans is a deeper, embodied experience that is similar to what Bourdieu terms habitus.     

Finding your way into employment against all odds? Successful job search of refugees in Austria

Labour market entry poses enormous challenges for recently arrived refugees, ranging from language barriers, devaluation of human capital, unfamiliarity with customs of the job search process to outright discrimination. How can refugees overcome these challenges and quickly enter gainful employment? In this paper, we draw on interviews with 26 male and female refugees from Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran, conducted in 2017 and 2018, who came to Austria in 2015 and 2014 and who have successfully entered employment. We depict refugees’ own perspectives on and strategies for fast job entry and integration. Personal agency and a proactive approach of seeking and seizing opportunities are key for overcoming initial barriers and entering upon positive integration pathways. At the same time, refugees’ personal agency is essential for establishing social ties to the host society, which also play a crucial role in early labour market integration. Finally, institutions of the Austrian labour market (the ‘apprenticeship’-system) interact with refugees’ agency in most intricate ways, both setting up nearly insurmountable barriers but also providing specific opportunities for refugees.     

Affordances for Participation: Children's Appropriation of Rules in a Reggio Emilia School

This study explores how young children appropriate school rules and what opportunities for active participation are afforded in a Reggio Emilia elementary classroom with particular interest in the interactional and communicative competences children display in situated practice. An ethnographic and microanalytic approach is used to study how the material environment and multimodal resources are mobilized in the activity. The analysis is based on video-recorded sequences in which 6- to 7-year-old children participate in a school project about rules for the schoolyard. The detailed analysis demonstrates how the children plan, reflect, enact, and discuss how to apply their own co-constructed rules in locally relevant ways in the playground. Overall, the findings shed light on how opportunities for children's active participation are situated within and also afforded by the particular Reggio Emilia educational practice that is also shaped by the learning process itself.     

The Child of the Common: Governing Children in the Freetown Christiania,Denmark

Children in the intentional community of Christiania, Denmark, are seen as belonging to a flock. They experience a relatively high degree of freedom and autonomy as well as collective supervision/control. Departing from Foucault's conceptualisation of pastoral power and interviews conducted in Christiania, this article explores what the idea of the child as belonging to the common/collective may imply for the governance of children. A unique combination of freedom and supervision, individualism and collectivism, results in a form of responsibilisation that aims to strengthen the community, unlike neo‐liberal responsibilisation, which leaves the individual alone with the freedom to take care of herself.