Perceptions of Stigma and User Involvement in Child Welfare Services

Correspondence to Dr E. M. Scholte, Department of Social and Behavioural Sciences/Centre for Research on Youth Welfare, University of Leiden, PO Box 9555, 2300 RB Leiden, The Netherlands. Summary This paper explores the perceptions of social disqualificationor ‘stigma’ that service users attributed to publicchild welfare services in random samples of service users takenfrom the Netherlands, a part of Spain (Catalonia) and a partof the United Kingdom (Wales). It was found that, in all threesamples, foster and residential care invoked the greatest senseof stigma, while the health related and the preventive familyservices were perceived as the least stigmatizing types of publicwelfare services. Comparative analysis further revealed thata positive attitude towards the use of public welfare services,a perception of supportive or non-stigmatizing social normsregarding the use of such services, and a perception of publicwelfare services as helpful correlated in all three sampleswith higher levels of user satisfaction and involvement in theservices. It was further found that, in the British and Spanishsamples, a positive attitude towards public welfare services,as well as a perception of public welfare services as helpfulfor their recipients, were the predominating factors promotinghigher levels of satisfactory user involvement in the services,while, in the Dutch sample, a perception of supportive socialnorms was the factor that most promoted satisfactory user involvement.     

International labour migration and tacit knowledge transactions: a multi‐level perspective

Abstract There has been limited research on the role of international migration in the transfer of tacit knowledge, as opposed to skills and capital. In part, this results from lack of engagement between research on migration and that on knowledge and learning, even in debates concerning the relative importance of distanciated versus localized knowledge transfers. However, positioning international migration in relation to the literature on knowledge management opens up new perspectives on its role in the overall transfer of knowledge in the economy. Starting from the premise that all tacit knowledge transactions are socially situated, in this article I set out a multi‐level approach to understanding the role of migrants in knowledge exchanges. The national, the urban and the firm constitute key levels in this study, although these are understood as interfolded rather than as discrete sites of analysis.     

Why is there no agrarian capitalism in Nigeria?

Abstract It is widely assumed that the development of commodity production in agriculture will necessarily lead to the displacement of peasant producers by more strictly capitalist forms of production. I argue that no such transition can be assumed in general, nor can it be shown to be occurring in Nigeria. The first section identifies the various ways in which the peasantry are said to be transformed along capitalist lines. The second section examines conditions under which agrarian capitalism has been established, both in Europe and in Africa. It discusses attempts by governments and capitalists to subordinate peasant producers in Africa to their direction. The third section examines attempts to establish plantations, capitalist farms and state farms in Nigeria and considers what light evidence of inequalities among peasant households sheds on the possible emergence of capitalist producers from among the peasantry. It discusses whether rural development projects are likely to transform peasant production along capitalist lines and/or subordinate peasants to the requirements of capital and the state. I conclude that state support has provided niches for capitalist farming, but that Nigerian agriculture is not being transformed along capitalist lines and that both capital and the state have found it difficult to subordinate peasant producers to their direction     

DOES SEX STILL MATTER? NEW EVIDENCE FROM THE 1980s

Recent analyses of gender based salary differentials among University faculty have focused on colleges and universities which are quite different from those used in earlier (pre-1975) studies. To facilitate comparisons with previous studies we examine gender earnings differentials during the 1983–84 academic year at Kent State University, a school similar to those studied in the pre-1975 period. Our results suggest that after controlling for differentials in productivity-related characteristics and market influences, there is little evidence of gender based salary discrimination at Kent State during 1983–84.     

Children in Need: Definition, Identification and Support

Correspondence to Dr Matthew Colton, Department of Social Policy and Applied Social Studies, University of Wales, Swansea, Singleton Park, Swansea SA2 8PP. Summary This paper examines the way in which local authorities operationalizethe concept of need contained in Part III of the Children Act1989. Findings from an empirical study conducted by the authorssuggest that difficulties are being encountered in operationalizingneed, and that these difficulties stem from an inherent contradictionbetween the all-embracing spirit of the Act and current politicaland social realities. The paper identifies key dilemmas in theimplementation of Part III of the Children Act and highlightsconflicts facing social services departments.     

Collective Action,Everyday Protest,and Lived Religion

The conflict in 2001 at the Kukdong (now Mexmode) maquila garment factory is one of the rare cases of success in the wider struggle for independent unionism in Mexico. The success of the struggle, which has attracted scholars interested in the campaigns against sweatshop labour conditions and on behalf of labour internationalism, has been attributed chiefly to the role played by transnational advocacy networks in mobilizing pressure on the global sportswear giant Nike, whose brand-name, collegiate apparel was being produced in the plant. In this paper we seek not to explain why the struggle was successful, but to examine the trajectory it took over a protracted period of about nine months. We draw on McAdam et al.'s reformulation of the analysis of contentious, transgressive politics to identify three mechanisms that were particularly salient in shaping the course taken by the conflict: scale shift, actor decomposition, and brokerage. Scale shift occurred as the workers quickly escalated the conflict by broadening their demands from the resolution of particular concrete grievances to a demand for freedom of association that made the existing corporatist union, the FROC-CROC, which had a signed a protection contract with the plant's management, the principal target of opposition and challenge. Actor decomposition occurred as the workers' strategy locally and transnationally sought to isolate the FROC-CROC by detaching it from other members of the corporate–state bloc (Kukdong management, Nike, and the local political authorities). Brokerage, finally, occurred as Nike in particular was used to mediate pressure from the workers' transnational supporters (principally labour rights NGOs and the anti-sweatshop movement) on Kukdong and the local political authorities to respect the workers' right to freedom of association, which resulted in the ouster of the FROC-CROC as the legally certified union at the factory and its replacement with an independent union (SITEMEX) formed by the workers themselves.