Francesca Meloni, Cécile Rousseau, Alexandra Ricard-Guay and Jill Hanley
In Canada, undocumented children are “institutionally invisible” – their access to education to be found in unwritten and discretionary practices. Drawing on the experience of a…
Abstract
Purpose
In Canada, undocumented children are “institutionally invisible” – their access to education to be found in unwritten and discretionary practices. Drawing on the experience of a three-year university-community partnership among researchers, institutional and community stakeholders, the purpose of this paper is to examine how undocumented children are constructed as excluded from school.
Design/methodology/approach
The establishment of this collaborative research space, helped to critically understand how this exclusion was maintained, and highlighted contradictory interpretations of policies and practices.
Findings
Proposing the analytical framework of “institutional invisibility”, the authors argue that issues of access and entitlement for undocumented children have to be often understood within unwritten and ambiguous policies and practices that make the lives of young people invisible to the institutional entities with which they interact.
Originality/value
The notion of institutional invisibility allows the authors to integrate the missing link between questions of access and deservingness. The paper also reflects on the role of action research in both documenting dynamics and pathways of institutional invisibility, as well as in initiating social change – as both horizontal, and vertical mobilisation.
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Jill Hanley, Lindsay Larios, Alexandra Ricard-Guay, Francesca Meloni and Cécile Rousseau
It is well understood that women’s work situations are critical to their well-being during pregnancy and in terms of potential risks to the fetus. It has also long been known that…
Abstract
Purpose
It is well understood that women’s work situations are critical to their well-being during pregnancy and in terms of potential risks to the fetus. It has also long been known that undocumented women workers face particularly difficult work conditions and being undocumented precludes access to key social benefits (i.e. public health insurance, paid maternity leave, child benefits and subsidized daycare) that support pregnant women and new mothers. Yet, this paper aims to write about the intersection of undocumented women’s pregnancy with work experiences.
Design/methodology/approach
Drawing on the results of a broader qualitative study that was focussed on access to healthcare for undocumented (and therefore, uninsured) women who were pregnant and gave birth in Montreal, Canada, the authors begin this paper with a review of the relevant literature for this topic related to the work conditions of undocumented women, how work exacerbates barriers to accessing healthcare and the resulting health outcomes, particularly in relation to pregnancy. The authors highlight the social determinants of health human rights framework (Solar and Irwin, 2010), before presenting methodology. In conclusion, the authors discuss how an understanding of undocumented women’s work situations sheds light on their pregnancy experiences.
Findings
The authors then present participants’ work conditions before becoming pregnant, working conditions while pregnant and employment options and pressures after giving birth.
Originality/value
The authors emphasize that attention to undocumented pregnant women’s work situations might help health and social service practitioners to better serve their needs at this critical point in a woman’s life and at the beginning of the life of their children, born as full citizens.
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Jill Hanley, Nicole Ives, Jaime Lenet, Shawn-Renee Hordyk, Christine Walsh, Sonia Ben Soltane and David Este
This paper presents an analysis of how health intersects with the experience of housing insecurity and homelessness, specifically for migrant women. The authors argue that it is…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper presents an analysis of how health intersects with the experience of housing insecurity and homelessness, specifically for migrant women. The authors argue that it is important to understand the specificities of the interplay of these different factors to continue the advancement of our understanding and practice as advocates for health and housing security.
Design/methodology/approach
An exploratory, qualitative, methodological approach was adopted, using a broad definition of housing insecurity: from absolute homelessness (e.g. residing rough) to invisible homelessness (e.g. couch surfing) to those at risk of homelessness. In total, 26 newcomer (foreign-born women who came to live in Canada during the previous ten years, regardless of their immigration status) women were recruited in Montreal, Canada. Participants were recruited directly through advertisements in public places and in collaboration with community organizations (women’s centers, homeless shelters, crisis centers, domestic violence shelters, immigrant settlement agencies and ethnic associations) and they self-identified as having experienced housing insecurity. Efforts were made to include a diversity of immigrant statuses as well as diversity in ethnicity, race, country of origin, family composition, sexual orientation, age and range of physical and mental ability. Women were engaged in semi-structured, open-ended interviews lasting approximately 1 h. Interviews were conducted in English or French in a location and time of participants’ choosing.
Findings
The findings are presented around three themes: how health problems instigate and maintain migrant women’s housing insecurity and homelessness; ways in which women’s immigration trajectories and legal status may influence their health experiences; and particular coping strategies that migrant women employ in efforts to maintain or manage their health. The authors conclude with implications of these findings for both policy and practice in relation to migrant women who experience or are at risk of housing insecurity and homelessness.
Originality/value
Intersections of women experiencing migration and housing insecurity in Canadian contexts have rarely been examined. This paper addresses a gap in the literature in terms of topic and context, but also in terms of sharing the voices of migrant women with direct experience with housing insecurity.
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David Norman Smith and Eric Allen Hanley
Controversy has long swirled over the claim that Donald Trump's base has deeply rooted authoritarian tendencies, but Trump himself seems to have few doubts. Asked whether his…
Abstract
Controversy has long swirled over the claim that Donald Trump's base has deeply rooted authoritarian tendencies, but Trump himself seems to have few doubts. Asked whether his stated wish to be dictator “on day one” of second term in office would repel voters, Trump said “I think a lot of people like it.” It is one of his invariable talking points that 74 million voters supported him in 2020, and he remains the unrivaled leader of the Republican Party, even as his rhetoric escalates to levels that cautious observers now routinely call fascistic.
Is Trump right that many people “like” his talk of dictatorship? If so, what does that mean empirically? Part of the answer to these questions was apparent early, in the results of the 2016 American National Election Study (ANES), which included survey questions that we had proposed which we drew from the aptly-named “Right-Wing Authoritarianism” scale. Posed to voters in 2012–2013 and again in 2016, those questions elicited striking responses.
In this chapter, we revisit those responses. We begin by exploring Trump's escalating anti-democratic rhetoric in the light of themes drawn from Max Weber and Theodor W. Adorno. We follow this with the text of the 2017 conference paper in which we first reported that 75% of Trump's voters supported him enthusiastically, mainly because they shared his prejudices, not because they were hurting economically. They hoped to “get rid” of troublemakers and “crush evil.” That wish, as we show in our conclusion, remains central to Trump's appeal.
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Jill Manthorpe and Steve Iliffe
– The purpose of this paper is to explore common usage and understanding of the term “frailty”, which is increasingly used in health care debates in England.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore common usage and understanding of the term “frailty”, which is increasingly used in health care debates in England.
Design/methodology/approach
This is a commentary from the perspectives of health and social care researchers. Recent policy and research are drawn upon in the arguments presented.
Findings
Most research on the subject of frailty comes from clinical practice although a parallel sociological or gerontological critique of the social construction is emerging. The public is likely to come across the term frailty through the media’s adoption of the term. Different definitions of frailty mean that estimates of the numbers of “frail people” will vary.
Research limitations/implications
The commentary draws on material in the English language and on policy, commentary, and research material.
Practical implications
The commentary may prompt reflection in practice and policy development on the usage of the term frailty and promote efforts to ensure that its meaning is clear and that it is acceptable to those to whom it is applied.
Originality/value
The paper contributes to debates about frailty by considering the implications of using the term across health and social care and in integrated settings and encounters. It draws on medical presentations of the term frailty and on critiques of it as a powerful discourse.
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Marjukka Ollilainen and Catherine Richards Solomon
With the rise in the number of women faculty since the 1970s, the traditional academic model of an exclusive devotion to work has been increasingly contested. Broad changes have…
Abstract
Purpose
With the rise in the number of women faculty since the 1970s, the traditional academic model of an exclusive devotion to work has been increasingly contested. Broad changes have occurred in academic culture and policies to make many universities more family-friendly. Recent research on graduate students points to a shift in attitudes about work/family management as well. Graduate students, both male and female, seem to balk at expectations for a sole devotion to an academic career to the exclusion of family life. We examine how faculty members carry out acts of resistance to this traditional model.
Methodology/approach
This article presents research from two separate but related qualitative studies for a combined sample of 74 faculty members with children.
Findings
Women and men faculty make professional and personal choices and engage in behaviors that, in essence, are acts of resistance against the dominant but perhaps “old” culture of academe.
Originality/value
Resistance to the ideal worker norm in academia has been largely overlooked in studies about faculty parents (particularly fathers) and work/family balance. We demonstrate how faculty members act as agents of social change in academia.
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Vanessa Pinfold, Paulina Szymczynska, Sarah Hamilton, Richard Peacocke, Shirley Dean, Naomi Clewett, Jill Manthorpe and John Larsen
The purpose of this paper is to reflect on the process of co-producing mental health research where work was shared between university academics, charity-based researchers and a…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to reflect on the process of co-producing mental health research where work was shared between university academics, charity-based researchers and a Lived Experience Advisory Panel.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors express the opinions of a research team made up of people with experience of using mental health services, being carers and being academically trained researchers from a range of health and social science disciplines. Some had experience in several areas. The paper is co-produced to provide collective reflection and recommendations.
Findings
Co-production of research is not well documented in published literature. The authors believe there is scope to develop co-production approaches, but further conceptual and theoretical work is needed alongside empirical studies. A socially situated complex research project, possibly involving multi-stakeholder groups, demands flexibility in approach. Similarly to user-controlled and other emancipatory methodologies, co-production makes the democratisation of research a primary objective in order to produce better quality and more relevant studies. Co-production also addresses inequalities in power and control within research projects; this way of working does provide a healthy challenge to traditional research hierarchies.
Practical implications
Lessons learned should be honestly shared to develop co-production research methods. Projects need to have a strategy for how to value different contributions and facilitate constructive relationships if discord emerges. Establishing clear project roles, expectations and process for payment are essential in developing genuine collaborative partnerships.
Originality/value
It is a viewpoint paper.
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The aim of this paper is to demonstrate that the application of standard environmental accounting practices for estimating long‐term discount rates is likely to lead to the…
Abstract
Purpose
The aim of this paper is to demonstrate that the application of standard environmental accounting practices for estimating long‐term discount rates is likely to lead to the rejection of biodiversity‐sensitive projects that are in the greater societal good.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors combine estimates of marginal ecosystem damages from two forestry case studies, one local, one global, with ten different term structures of discount rates taken from both the academic literature and policy choices to calculate present values.
Findings
Standard environmental accounting approaches for estimating the long‐term discount rate result in the under‐valuation of projects that are sensitive to biodiversity conservation.
Research limitations/implications
This paper is set within a full cost accounting (FCA) framework, and therefore has the limitations that generally follow from taking this approach to biodiversity problems. Recommended extensions include looking at broader ranges of biodiversity costs and benefits.
Social implications
Unless environmental accountants engage with environmental economists over the issue of intergenerational discount rates, then it is likely that socially responsible managers will reject projects that are in the greater societal good.
Originality/value
The paper introduces both normative discount rates and declining discount rates to estimates of shadow environmental provisions within FCA and contrasts these with current environmental accounting practices. It also provides two detailed case studies that demonstrate the extent to which biodiversity‐sensitive investment choices are likely to be undervalued by managers who follow current accounting recommendations concerning the appropriate choice of discount rate.
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Julie Stubbs, Sophie Russell, Eileen Baldry, David Brown, Chris Cunneen and Melanie Schwartz