Journey towards independent living: a grounded theory investigation of leaving the care of Girls & Boys Town,South Africa

The journey out of care and towards independent living is a challenge for many care-leavers. There has been little research into the social processes involved in this care-leaving journey. This paper presents the results of a grounded theory investigation into the care-leaving journeys of nine young men who had, several years previously, been in the care of Girls & Boys Town in South Africa. Working from a resilience perspective, with an ecological emphasis, four central social processes emerged that together explain the care-leaving experiences of the participants. These processes are striving for authentic belonging; networking people for goal attainment; contextualised responsiveness and building hopeful and tenacious self-confidence. These four processes are located within contextual boundaries and at the social environmental interface. The paper presents these processes in detail, drawing on selected narratives of the participants and integrated with additional theory. It is hoped that this paper may contribute to theory building concerning care-leaving processes and enhance youth care practices for youth in care and leaving care.     

Testing the validity of social capital measures in the study of information and communication technologies

Social capital has been considered a cause and consequence of various uses of new information and communication technologies (ICTs). However, there is a growing divergence between how social capital is commonly measured in the study of ICTs and how it is measured in other fields. This departure raises questions about the validity of some of the most widely cited studies of social capital and ICTs. We compare the Internet Social Capital Scales (ISCS) developed by Williams [2006. On and off the ’net: scales for social capital in an online era. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 11(2), 593–628. doi: 10.1111/j.1083-6101.2006.00029.x] – a series of psychometric scales commonly used to measure ‘social capital’ – to established, structural measures of social capital: name, position, and resource generators. Based on a survey of 880 undergraduate students (the population to which the ISCS has been most frequently administered), we find that, unlike structural measures, the ISCS does not distinguish between the distinct constructs of bonding and bridging social capital. The ISCS does not have convergent validity with structural measures of bonding or bridging social capital; it does not measure the same concept as structural measures. The ISCS conflates social capital with the related constructs of social support and attachment. The ISCS does not measure perceived or actual social capital. These findings raise concerns about the interpretations of existing studies of ‘social capital’ and ICTs that are based on the ISCS. Given the absence of measurement validity, we urge those studying social capital to abandon the ISCS in favor of alternative approaches.     

Power To Our Journeys: Re‐membering Michael

The following personal reflections are in honour of Michael and all that he contributed to our lives. And, we honour Brigitte a key member of the group who died in 2006. Mem, Sue and Veronica, December 2008.     

《根》中黑人文化身份的嬗变与重建?

《根》是美国黑人作家亚历克斯·哈利在二十世纪七十年代出版的一部家史小说。小说在追溯家族七代黑人曲折命运的过程中,清晰折射出黑人祖先身上不同的文化身份。通过对黑人家族三个典型人物文化认同的分析来探析黑人文化身份的嬗变与重建过程,这将对文化大融合背景下的少数边缘人群寻找精神归宿起到一定的指导意义。     

“I Really Belong Here”: Civic Capacity-Building among Returning Citizens

This article focuses on unlikely movement actors whose civic engagement has been understudied: people with criminal records (“returning citizens”). We present findings from 18 months of ethnographic research with members (leaders) of Fighting to Overcome Records and Create Equality (FORCE), a civic group led by returning citizens. FORCE leaders received institutional support from Community Renewal Society (CRS), a larger faith and community-based organization, to lead a rights reform movement in Chicago. Findings suggest that FORCE leaders constructed notions of kinship, recognition, and power through civic capacity-building efforts—and that social belonging was core to such capacity-building efforts. While bonding social belonging occurred as FORCE leaders formed kinship with people facing similar social and economic marginality, bridging social belonging emerged as leaders felt recognized by CRS staff organizers, affiliates, and elected officials. Bonding and bridging social belonging enabled FORCE leaders, who faced constant social exclusion in society, to experience much needed kinship, recognition, and power. Future studies should continue to uncover how local capacity-building processes have life-changing relational effects on movement participants from socially and economically marginalized groups.     

Narratives of national belonging: the domestic,the wild,and the mutant in Australian film

This article explores understandings of postcolonial national belonging through an analysis of cinematic representations of humans, animals and the environment. It does so by analyzing a series of Australian films about plants, animals or people who are out of place or out of control. The article registers some of the changing representations of Australian flora, fauna and, by association people, as native, domesticated, simpatico, feral and wild; interpreting these shifts as recalibrations of a moral hierarchy of cultural belonging. Films including Lantana (2001) Dir. Ray Lawrence; Razorback (1984) Dir. Russell Mulchay; Rogue (2007) Dir. Greg Mclean; and Black Water (2007) Dirs. David Nerlich and Andrew Traucki are read in terms of political anxieties. Drawing on work ‘that insists humans and animals are currently bound in a complex network of relationships’, I use these films to explore issues of the nation, place, belonging in relation to aliens and natives. Given that in the past 20 years there has been increasing recognition of the history of colonialism and its effects on Indigenous peoples but also a different but related blossoming of environmental nationalism, the key question that animates this research is how these understandings are represented in film and what work animals and plants might have played in filmic cultural representations of national belonging.     

How the host nation's boundary drawing affects immigrants’ belonging

Across Western democracies, the place for newcomers in the host society is debated, involving often a questioning of immigrants’ belonging to their new nation. This article argues that immigrants’ feeling of host national belonging depends on how the host nation imagines its community and its concomitant boundaries. Utilising survey and country level data in multilevel regressions, immigrants’ belonging is found to vary significantly across the 19 countries included. A central contribution is the finding that citizenship policies do not explain this cross-national variation. Instead, what matters is the informal boundary drawing produced in the majority population's conception of what is important for being part of the national ‘us'. Thus, immigrants’ belonging is significantly greater when the majority population prioritises attainable criteria of national membership. In addition, these priorities are shown to have deep historical roots as immigrants’ belonging is greater in settler countries and in nations which democratised early. By showing that national imageries have consequences for a country's welcoming capacities, and by showing that these welcoming capacities are historically path dependent, the study contributes to the debate within nationalism studies about national identity's causal significance.     

Behind the ethnic–civic distinction: Public attitudes towards immigrants’ political rights in the Netherlands

Public opinion research has sought to distinguish between ethnic and civic conceptions of citizenship and examined the differential associations of these conceptions with policy preferences in the realm of immigration. What has not been examined empirically is why exactly these conceptions are related to people’s preferences. In two survey studies conducted among national samples of native Dutch we tested the proposition that the endorsement of ethnic citizenship is related to lower acceptance of Muslim immigrant rights (Study 1) and their political participation (Study 2) because of a weaker normative sense of common national belonging and higher adherence to autochthony (primo-occupancy) beliefs. In contrast, the endorsement of civic citizenship was expected to be associated with higher acceptance of Muslim immigrant rights and their political participation because of a stronger sense of common belonging and lower belief in autochthony. The findings of the two studies are similar and in support of these expectations.     

Patterns of im/mobility,conflict and the re/making of identity narratives*

ABSTRACT

This paper analyses the interrelationship between patterns of im/mobility on the one hand and the reconstitution of social collective identities and the related emergence or settlement of conflicts on the other. The main arguments are (1) that the im/mobility of a social or cultural group has major impact on how identity narratives, a sense of belonging and relationships to ‘others’ are shaped, and vice versa, and (2) that these dynamics are closely interlinked with mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion between groups and power structures that involve a broad variety of actors. Mainly looking at patterns of internal mobility such as ‘traditional’ or strategic mobilities and mobilities enforced by crisis, conflict or governmental programmes and regimes, the contribution provides the conceptual background for a special issue that aims to go beyond currently predominant issues of transnational migration. Established or emerging dynamics of (non-)integration and belonging, caused by im/mobility, are analysed on a cultural and political level, which involves questions of representation, indigeneity/autochthony, political rights and access to land and other resources. Conflict situations in contexts of mobility involve changes in the social understanding and renegotiation, reconstruction or reproduction of group identities and narratives with reference to certain socio-political and historical patterns. The legitimation of rights and access to various forms of citizenship and mobility need to be understood against the backdrop of emerging or established mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion between groups, which trigger or settle conflicts and make social identities to be constantly renegotiated.     

Belonging: women living with intellectual disabilities and experiences of domestic violence

Women with an intellectual disability are under-represented in domestic violence research, yet they are one of the most vulnerable groups who are at risk of violence and abuse. This article aims to contribute to the domestic violence field by reporting on a narrative dialogic performative study, which utilised a feminist poststructural perspective to explore significant relationships and the concept of belonging in the lives of women with a mild intellectual disability. Four in-depth narrative interviews were conducted. The study found that the women shared similar stories of devaluation and rejection in childhood and hence the women’s search for belonging contributed to their vulnerability to exploitation and abuse in domestic violence relationships. The paper argues that gendered discourses and constructions of intellectual disability regulate domestic violence as a personal problem or way of life for women with intellectual disabilities.