Lauren Munro, Robb Travers, Alex St. John, Kate Klein, Heather Hunter, David Brennan and Chavisa Brett
This study sought to gain a better understanding of the general life experiences of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) newcomer youth, situated within the broader…
Abstract
Purpose
This study sought to gain a better understanding of the general life experiences of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) newcomer youth, situated within the broader context of their lives post-migration. The purpose of this paper is to explore the nature of various forms of oppression experienced by LGBT newcomers and offers recommendations for transforming services to better serve the complex needs of this marginalized population.
Design/methodology/approach
The Teens Resisting Urban Trans/Homophobia (TRUTH) project was comprised of ten focus groups with 70 youth (aged 14-29) living in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA). Another three focus groups were conducted with 13 GTA service providers and teachers working with LGBT youth, in addition to one key informant interview. For this paper, the authors drew from a subset of the data including four newcomer-specific focus groups in which there were 39 youth who identified as refugees or immigrants, as well as key informant interviews with four youth (three of whom also participated in focus groups) and one service provider. Participants were asked about “what homophobia and transphobia meant to them”, “where they experienced it”, “in what forms”, and “how it impacted their daily lives”.
Findings
The experiences of LGBT newcomer youth in this study involved a complex negotiation of multiple systems of oppression. Youth described experiences of homophobia and racism within interpersonal relationships, in the LGBT community, in their respective diasporic communities, in social service encounters and during the immigration/refugee process. Barriers for LGBT refugee youth included difficulties finding work and accessing health care, as well as the additional burden of proving their sexual orientation during refugee claimant hearings.
Research limitations/implications
While the combination of focus groups and key informant interviews is a strength in this study, it also presents challenges for analysis. In focus groups, it is not always clear who is speaking; because of this, the authors were sometimes unable to differentiate between refugee and immigrant youth (or those without status) in our focus groups, making it often unclear which perspective or experience youth were speaking to. Another limitation was the dominance of the “cisgender gay male voice” in our conclusions. Lesbian and bisexual women were present in fewer numbers and the sample only included three trans youth.
Practical implications
The findings reveal systemic discrimination on the basis of race and sexual orientation that illuminate injustices within Canadian society and systems that can enhance the efforts of those working in policy and service environments. Focused anti-homophobia and anti-racism training, and the implementation of policies designed to enhance accessibility, could improve service provision for newcomer LGBT youth. Furthermore, in order to facilitate a more just settlement process, a broader understanding of sexual identity, gender identity, and gender expression is required of the refugee claimant system.
Originality/value
This study examines the experiences of youth in a large and complex, multicultural, and gay-friendly urban centre, thus providing timely and current data about the well-being of newcomer LGBT youth. As such, it is one of the first studies to offer some insights into the life issues and challenges post-migration of Canadian LGBT newcomer youth.
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Margaret Robinson and Lori E. Ross
The purpose of this paper is to outline the use of intersectionality theory in research with gender and sexual minorities – that is, with lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, and queer…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to outline the use of intersectionality theory in research with gender and sexual minorities – that is, with lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, and queer (LGBTQ) people, and lesser-studied groups such as two-spirited people.
Design/methodology/approach
First, the paper note the limited way that LGBTQ research has taken up issues of intersecting oppression. The paper outlines why theoretical and methodological attention to overlapping oppressions is important, and why theorists of intersectionality have identified the additive model as inadequate. The paper presents a sketch of current best practices for intersectional research, notes special issues for intersectional research arising within qualitative and quantitative paradigms, and finishes with an overview of how these issues are taken up in this special issue of Ethnicity and Inequalities in Health and Social Care.
Findings
Current best practices for intersectional research include. Bringing a critical political lens to data analyses; contextualizing findings in light of systemic oppressions; strategically using both additive and multivariate regression models; and bringing a conscious awareness of the limitations of current methods to our analyses.
Originality/value
This paper addresses the use of intersectionality theory in research with gender and sexual minorities, highlighting methodological issues associated with qualitative and quantitative paradigms in LGBTQ research.
This paper aims to tell something of the story of the “Hawkspur Experiment” (1936–1941), a therapeutic camp organised early in the modern history of therapeutic community as an…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to tell something of the story of the “Hawkspur Experiment” (1936–1941), a therapeutic camp organised early in the modern history of therapeutic community as an intervention into the lives of young men who were viewed to be at risk of delinquency (Wills, 1967). Although it was to have a remarkable influence on group and therapeutic community practice and theory, the authors argue that its influence is not as well-remembered nor incorporated into contemporary therapeutic understanding and discussion as it should be.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper is a historical reflection based on systematic examination of the clinical and administrative records of Hawkspur Camp for men, and supporting documents held in the Planned Environment Therapy Archive. In addition, the authors use published primary and secondary sources.
Findings
Hawkspur Camp was a cross-disciplinary enterprise which brought together psychoanalytic thinking, social work, an interest in groups, political activism, a concern with the dynamics and working of democracy and the application of emergent social science methods. It was overtly an intervention into the criminal justice system but was also an intentional exploration of the therapeutic benefits of community living and of a “pioneering” lifestyle; a rigorous experiment in how psychoanalytic ideas might be used in group residential settings; and a politically grounded exploration of participative democracy as a fundamental therapeutic principle.
Originality/value
To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper presents the first findings from a systematic study of the records of Hawkspur Camp.
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Anne S. De Groot, Madeline Dilorenzo, Mary Sylla and Joseph Bick
At least 20% of individuals living with HIV pass through prison and jail doors every year, in any nation, worldwide. Therefore, interventions that improve access to HIV testing…
Abstract
At least 20% of individuals living with HIV pass through prison and jail doors every year, in any nation, worldwide. Therefore, interventions that improve access to HIV testing, HIV care, and education can have a broad impact on public health in every country. The benefits of these interventions in correctional settings have already been well documented. For example, improved access to HIV testing, treatment by an HIV specialist, preventive vaccinations and prophylactic medications, screening for concomitant infections such as HCV, and pre‐release planning services have been shown to decrease HIV‐related mortality and morbidity, to reduce the risk of HIV transmission and to decrease recidivism. Education of at‐risk individuals has also been shown to reduce HIV risk behaviors. Safe distribution of condoms and needle‐exchange programs have also been demonstrated to be safe and effective, although few such programs have been implemented in the United States. While all the available evidence has demonstrated that these public health‐oriented interventions can be and are successful in correctional settings, implementation on a national and international level lags far behind the evidence. The time has come to take an evidence‐based approach to improving HIV management in correctional settings. Implementations of the HIV management interventions described in this article make good medical sense and will have a positive impact on the health of inmates and the communities to which inmates return.
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Mary Ann McGrath, John F. Sherry and Nina Diamond
The aim of this paper is to expand the scant literature related to retail branding ideology and the application of mythotypes to flagship stores within the Chinese setting. The…
Abstract
Purpose
The aim of this paper is to expand the scant literature related to retail branding ideology and the application of mythotypes to flagship stores within the Chinese setting. The study explores the transplantation of a retail brand ideology in the form of complex home‐country cultural content to a host culture whose local retail narratives differ significantly from those of the brand enterprise.
Design/methodology/approach
This is an ethnographic study that spans the two years of the focal store's existence. With the help of native‐speaking graduate assistants, store visits, interviews with Chinese locals and internet mentions and secondary information were collected. Data include fieldnotes, interview transcripts, photographs, news articles, blog comments and website information.
Findings
The paper details the mythotypic mistuning of marketscape and mindscape that contributed to the failure of this flagship store and build theory concerning the implementation of retail brand ideology and retail theatrics. The paper concludes that successful themed flagship brand stores encapsulate ideology in stories composed of mythotypes and encourages the enactment of that ideology through multiple, interrelated brand experiences. Misalignments of these mythotypes can impede the acceptance of retail brand ideology and the diffusion of the retail theatre concept.
Originality/value
While foreign and domestic flagship brand stores have flourished in China, cultural propriety of these stores includes a host of physical design cues that must mesh with the local culture's sensibilities and the brand's provenance. To translate the retail brand ideology into customer‐centric meaning is challenging. The presence or absence of mythotypes comprising the servicescape profoundly affect their success.
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Tayybah Kiren and Muhammad Shoaib
Ontologies are used to formally describe the concepts within a domain in a machine-understandable way. Matching of heterogeneous ontologies is often essential for many…
Abstract
Purpose
Ontologies are used to formally describe the concepts within a domain in a machine-understandable way. Matching of heterogeneous ontologies is often essential for many applications like semantic annotation, query answering or ontology integration. Some ontologies may include a large number of entities which make the ontology matching process very complex in terms of the search space and execution time requirements. The purpose of this paper is to present a technique for finding degree of similarity between ontologies that trims down the search space by eliminating the ontology concepts that have less likelihood of being matched.
Design/methodology/approach
Algorithms are written for finding key concepts, concept matching and relationship matching. WordNet is used for solving synonym problems during the matching process. The technique is evaluated using the reference alignments between ontologies from ontology alignment evaluation initiative benchmark in terms of degree of similarity, Pearson’s correlation coefficient and IR measures precision, recall and F-measure.
Findings
Positive correlation between the degree of similarity and degree of similarity (reference alignment) and computed values of precision, recall and F-measure showed that if only key concepts of ontologies are compared, a time and search space efficient ontology matching system can be developed.
Originality/value
On the basis of the present novel approach for ontology matching, it is concluded that using key concepts for ontology matching gives comparable results in reduced time and space.
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R. Lyle Skains, Jennifer A. Rudd, Carmen Casaliggi, Emma J. Hayhurst, Ruth Horry, Helen Ross and Kate Woodward
Many expatriates have difficulty building a social network that includes locals in Denmark, and they often find themselves in an “expatriate bubble” where they meet mostly with…
Abstract
Many expatriates have difficulty building a social network that includes locals in Denmark, and they often find themselves in an “expatriate bubble” where they meet mostly with other expatriates. This is unfortunate because much culture learning can be gleaned from interacting with host country nationals, and a lack of contact can negatively influence expatriate well-being and satisfaction. This chapter first focuses on how expatriates build a social network when they are abroad. Interviews with five self-initiated expatriates show key factors that influence the building of a social network, such as attitude and motivation, similarities with the other, location, and cultural differences. Denmark, in particular, seems to be a difficult place to make local friends, compared to many other countries globally. Three main cultural characteristics might explain this difficulty: the homogeneity of Denmark in terms of culture and language, the value of equality that is engrained in Danish mentality, and Denmark being a specific and deal-focused culture. The chapter ends with recommendations for expatriates who do wish to connect with Danes.
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Chi Meng Chu, Michael Daffern, Stuart Thomas, Ang Yaming, Mavis Long and Kate O'Brien
Gang affiliation in youth is associated with increased criminal recidivism and an exaggeration of various criminogenic needs; affiliation also meets a variety of youth's personal…
Abstract
Purpose
Gang affiliation in youth is associated with increased criminal recidivism and an exaggeration of various criminogenic needs; affiliation also meets a variety of youth's personal and social needs. The purpose of this paper is to describe a study of the self-reported reasons for joining and leaving gangs, as well as the difficulties faced by Singaporean youth offenders in leaving youth gangs; it also explores the relationship between gang affiliation and family connectedness, educational attainment and early exposure to gangs.
Design/methodology/approach
This prospective study involved structured interviews and administration of questionnaires with 168 youth offenders in Singapore. Univariate and multivariate analyses were conducted to examine the research questions.
Findings
Gang-affiliated youth cited a desire to establish and maintain friendships as their primary reasons for joining a gang. Youth who left their gang reported maturing beyond this need and the activities of their gang, particularly in light of the deleterious impact of their gang-related activities on familial relationships and employment and financial status. Early exposure to gangs through family and neighborhood influences, and poor educational engagement increased the likelihood that youth would join a gang.
Practical implications
This study highlights the need for clinicians and other service providers to better understand the universal human needs that are met through gang affiliation and the correlates of affiliation.
Originality/value
Few studies have directly examined the factors relating to gang affiliation in a non-western context; this study may be relevant to professionals working in the juvenile justice and offender rehabilitation arenas.