Browse

Embracing the Spirit/Abrazando El Espíritu is an interdisciplinary investigation of the underestimated emotional, physical, and financial exploitation framing the U.S. and Mexican governments’ conceptualization and implementation of the binational mid-twentieth-century guest-worker program most commonly known as the Bracero Program in the United States and Mexico. The oral life histories, correspondence, photographs, songs of love, and writing of Mexican children, women, and men—bracero families recruited to participate and sustain this contract labor program—renders a history that reveals these governments’ overdependence on these families’ spirited confrontation of a most inhumane family situation at the margins of U.S. and Mexican society. Being separated from each other across the U.S.-Mexico border for indefinite periods of time—without adequate information, protections, resources, rights, wages, or guarantees of ever seeing each other again—paved the way for these children, women, and men becoming daringly honest, invested, and ingenious in their pursuit of a humane and just family life that often transcended state-manufactured conceptualizations of borders and contract labor. Indeed, the bracero family experience is at heart a history about the hard truths of Mexican immigrant family separation.

This book provides scholars, students, practitioners, and policy makers with a comprehensive review of the most up-to-date social scientific literature on lethal and nonlethal forms of male-to-female violence during and after separation and divorce. Special attention is devoted to reviewing theoretical perspectives on the topic and the ways in which various technologies are used by men to hurt the women who want to leave them, have begun to emotionally separate, are trying to leave them, in the process of leaving them, or who have left them. This book also provides solutions that cover a broad range of approaches: legal and criminal justice reforms; social services; economic policies; feminist men’s efforts; and new electronic technologies. Throughout the book are the voices of women who have experienced much pain and suffering, as well as the voices of abusive men. These narratives are derived from extensive research done over the past thirty years by the three authors.

Academic Profiling focuses on the schooling experiences and relationships between the two fastest growing groups in the United States—Asian Americans and Latinas/os. At a time when politicians and pundits debate the sources of an achievement gap, Academic Profiling turns our attention to students, teachers, and parents to learn about the opportunity and social gaps within schools. In candid and at times heart-wrenching detail, students in a California public high school share stories of support and neglect on their paths to graduation. Separated by unequal middle schools and curriculum tracking, students are divided by race/ethnicity, class, and gender. While those in an International Baccalaureate Program boast about socratic classes and stress release-sessions, students outside of such programs bemoan unengaged teaching and inaccessible counselors. Labeled “the elite,” “regular,” “smart,” or “stupid,” students encounter differential policing and assumptions based on their abilities. These disparities are compounded by the growth in the private tutoring industry where wealthier families can afford to spend thousands of dollars to enhance their children’s opportunities, furthering an accumulation of privileges. However, in spite of the entrenchment of inequality in today’s schools, Academic Profiling uncovers multiple forms of resilience and the ways that students and teachers are affirming identities, creating alternative spaces, and fostering critical consciousness. As the story of this California high school unfolds, we also learn about the possibilities and limits of change when Gilda L. Ochoa shares the research findings with the high school.

Through an ethnographic exploration of everyday life infused with Marxist urbanism and critical theory, this work charts out the changes taking place in Muslim neighbourhoods in Delhi in the backdrop of rapid urbanization and capitalist globalization. It argues that there is an implicit materialist logic in prejudice and segregation experienced by Muslims. Further, it finds that different classes within Muslims are treated differentially in the discriminatory process. The resultant spatial ‘diversity’ and differentiation this gives rise to among the Muslim neighbourhoods creates an illusion of ‘choice’ but in reality, the flexibility of the confining boundaries only serve to make these stronger and shatterproof. It is asserted that while there is no attempt at integration of Muslims socially and spatially, from within the structures of urban governance, it would be a fallacy to say that the state is absent from within these segregated enclaves. The disciplinary state, neo-liberal processes of globalization, and the discursive practices such as news media, cinema, social science research, combine together to produce a hegemonic effect in which stereotyped representations are continually employed uncritically and erroneously to prevent genuine attempts at developing specific and nuanced understanding of the situation of urban Muslims in India. The book finds that the exclusion of Muslims spatially and socially is a complex process containing contradictory elements that have reduced Indian Muslims to being ‘normative’ non-citizens and homo sacer whose legal status is not an equal claim to citizenship. The book also includes an account of the way in which residents of these segregated Muslim enclaves are finding ways to build hope in their lives.

The activation of social welfare recipients has been, and still is, a central issue in the development of social and employment policies in Europe. This book explores the employment effectiveness of minimum income schemes, and provides the first comprehensive examination of its dependency on how the rights and obligations of the recipients are defined. The book argues that the right to a minimum income can only be adequately justified with reference to the individual's right to personal development. Combining political theory and policy analysis, the author draws on evidence from eight different European countries to illustrate how it is possible to combine higher levels of employment effectiveness with the respect for recipients' right to personal development. The book explores the balance between fairness and effectiveness in the activation of minimum income recipients.

‘Active ageing’ has become a key phrase in discourses about challenges and remedies for demographic ageing and the enrolment of older adults into voluntary work is an important dimension of it. The pattern and factors conditioning volunteering among older people has so far been an under-researched topic in Europe and this is the first book to study volunteering among older people comparatively and comprehensively. In this topical book older people's volunteering is studied comparatively in eight European countries representing different kinds of welfare regimes, at the structural, macro, meso and micro levels. Overall it highlights how different interactions between the levels facilitate or hinder older people's inclusion in voluntary work and makes policy suggestions for an integrated strategy. This book provides important new insights for academics and students interested in ageing societies, active ageing and voluntary work. It will also be of great value for policy makers and practitioner in third sector, older volunteers and voluntary organisations.

This book challenges the underlying presupposition that regular employment is the royal road to inclusion. Drawing on original empirical research, it investigates the inclusionary and exclusionary potentials of different types of work, including activation programmes. This book makes an important contribution to the debates in this area by: reporting on original international comparative research; reflecting on and critically assessing current activating policies; evaluating the consequences of these policies, as well as challenging the premises they are based on; including the perspectives of service users in its analyses; and offering recommendations for the future design of activating policies.

While reforms of welfare policies have been widely analysed, the reform of welfare administration has received far less attention. Using empirical case studies, this book provides significant new insights into the way welfare administration is being internationally transformed. Particular attention is given to the effect on welfare clients, staff and agencies. This book presents a critical analysis of governance practices in welfare administration and examines shifts in the participants, practices and processes of welfare administration. It presents original empirical case studies that highlight the effects of reforming welfare governance on welfare subjects, staff and agencies and provides a much-needed international and comparative perspective of changing welfare governance. It is aimed at scholars and advanced students of sociology, social policy, economics, public administration and management, as well as social policy practitioners and service delivery workers.

What role should racial difference play in the American workplace? As a nation, we rely on civil rights law to address this question, and the monumental Civil Rights Act of 1964 seemingly answered it: race must not be a factor in workplace decisions. This book contends that after decades of mass immigration, many employers, Democratic and Republican political leaders, and advocates have adopted a new strategy to manage race and work. Race is now relevant not only in negative cases of discrimination, but in more positive ways as well. In today's workplace, employers routinely practice “racial realism,” where they view race as real—as a job qualification. Many believe employee racial differences, and sometimes immigrant status, correspond to unique abilities or evoke desirable reactions from clients or citizens. They also see racial diversity as a way to increase workplace dynamism. The problem is that when employers see race as useful for organizational effectiveness, they are often in violation of civil rights law. This book examines this emerging strategy in a wide range of employment situations, including the low-skilled sector, professional and white-collar jobs, and entertainment and media. The book urges us to acknowledge the racial realism already occurring, and lays out a series of reforms that, if enacted, would bring the law and lived experience more in line, yet still remain respectful of the need to protect the civil rights of all workers.

Today, one out of every nine prisoners is serving a life sentence. Even though a proportion is serving a sentence of life without parole, the majority of lifers will at one point be released to society. We know, however, very little on what happens to those sentenced with life imprisonment after release. As they have been removed from society for decades, their re-entry process cannot be equated to that of other delinquents who have served much shorter prison sentences. To shed light on this question, this book discusses the life histories of more than sixty homicide offenders who completed a life sentence. Some were re-incarcerated, while others were able to build a life beyond bars. Against the backdrop of tough-on-crime policies, the book takes the reader on a journey into the lives of these men and women, the events that lead to their incarceration, and the struggles they faced upon release. The goal of this book is to offer the reader a unique insight into the lives of long-term incarcerated individuals and to provide them with a new understanding on how to explain their successes and failures post-release. Not only does the book move forward our theoretical understanding of crime throughout the life course, it also provides a basis for future discussion for policy and legislature changes in the context of the goals, costs and effects of long-term imprisonment.

The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 was the beginning of one of the most interesting natural experiments in recent history. The East German transition from a Communist state to part of the Federal Republic of Germany abruptly created a new social order as old institutions were abolished and new counterparts imported. This unique situation provides an exceptional opportunity to examine the central tenets of life-course sociology. The empirical chapters of this book draw a comprehensive picture of life-course transformation, demonstrating how the combination of life-course dynamics coupled with an extraordinary pace of system change affect individual lives. How much turbulence was created by the transition and how much stability was preserved? How did the qualifications and resources acquired before 1989 influence the fortunes in the restructured economy? How did the privatization and reorganization of firms impact individuals? Did the transformation experiences differ by age/cohort and gender? How stable were social networks at work and in the family? Were personality characteristics important mediators of post-1989 success or failure, or were they rather changed by them? How specific were the East German life trajectories in comparison with those of Poland and West Germany?

At a time when lower-income Americans face a desperate struggle to find affordable rental housing in many cities, After the Projects investigates the contested spatial politics of public housing development and redevelopment. Public housing practices differ markedly from city to city and, collectively, reveal deeply held American attitudes about poverty and how the poorest should be governed. The book exposes the range of outcomes from the US federal government’s HOPE VI program for public housing transformation, focused on nuanced accounts of four very different ways of implementing this same national initiative—in Boston, New Orleans, Tucson, and San Francisco. It draws upon more than two hundred interviews, analysis of internal documents about each project, and nearly fifteen years of visits to these neighborhoods. The central aim is to understand how and why some cities, when redeveloping public housing, have attempted to minimize the presence of the poorest residents in their new mixed-income communities, while other cities have instead tried to serve the maximum number of extremely low-income households. The book shows that these socially and politically revealing decisions are rooted in distinctly different kinds of governance constellations—each yielding quite different sorts of community pressures. These have been forged over many decades in response to each city’s own struggle with previous efforts at urban renewal. In contrast to other books that have focused on housing in a single city, this volume offers comparative analysis and a national picture, while also discussing four emblematic communities with an unprecedented level of detail.

After Urban Regeneration is a comprehensive study of contemporary trends in urban policy and planning. Leading scholars come together to create a key contribution to the literature on gentrification, with a focus on the history and theory of community in urban policy. Engaging with debates as to how urban policy has changed, and continues to change, following the financial crash of 2008, the book provides an essential antidote to those who claim that culture and society can replicate the role of the state. Based on research from the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council’s Connected Communities programme and with a unique set of case studies drawing on artistic and cultural community work. The book sets out the argument that post-2010, UK urban policy has ended what was termed “regeneration” policy. In the current context, driven further after May 2015, communities, towns and cities are left to fend for themselves. The book concludes by arguing the role of the university in its relationship with urban communities also has to change with this context. The resources of universities can help local communities better understand the challenges they face and possible solutions.

The global financial crisis showed deep problems with mainstream economic predictions, as well as the vulnerability of the world's richest countries and the enormous potential of some poorer ones. China, India, Brazil, and other counties are growing faster than Europe or America and have weathered the crisis better. Is their growth due to following conventional economic guidelines or to strong state leadership and sometimes protectionism? These issues are basic to the question of which countries will grow in coming decades, as well as the likely conflicts over global trade policy, currency standards, and economic cooperation. This is the third part of a trilogy comprised of the first three books in the Possible Future series.

Employers have enjoyed a tremendous amount of power throughout American history. This nine-chapter collection examines that power as it relates to the so-called “labor question” or “labor problem,” defined in the late nineteenth century by academics, clergymen, journalists, lawyers, politicians and employers to describe strikes, boycott campaigns, and union organization campaigns. Employers asserted their power in numerous ways; they organized with one another, busted unions, broke strikes, and blacklisted labor activists. They enjoyed largely favorable political climates; judges regularly granted them injunctions against protesting workers, politicians passed laws making union organizing difficult, and armed forces—police forces and National Guardsman--assisted them during strikes and boycott campaigns staged by workers. These chapters examine class conflicts on the local and national levels, demonstrating how employers contested labor in many different contexts—and usually won. The chapters explore how employers used race to divide the working class, how they sought to deflect attention away from their own privileged class positions, how they used the law to their advantages, and how they settled internal disagreements. Taken together, the chapters reveal a rich history of employer organizing, lobbying politicians, and creating new forms of public relations while enriching themselves at the expense of ordinary people.

The book provides a comprehensive analysis of research and policies examining the development of age-friendly cities and communities. The chapters examine the theoretical assumptions behind the idea of an ‘age-friendly community’; provide case studies of age-friendly work in contrasting environments in Asia, Australia and Europe; and assess different design and policy interventions aimed at improving the physical and social environments in which people live. The book also has a ‘Manifesto for Change’, directed at the various stakeholders working in the field, containing a range of proposals aimed at raising ambitions for developing age-friendly activity.

Population ageing and globalisation represent two of the most radical and far reaching social transformations that have occurred since the middle of the last century. This book provides, for the first time, an accessible overview of how they interact. Ageing has been conventionally framed within the boundaries of nation states, yet demographic changes, transmigration, financial globalization and the global media have rendered this perspective problematic. This book critically applies theories of globalisation, notably Appadurai’s model of the landscapes of global modernity, to gerontology. In so doing the books aims to assess the impact of globalization on the experiences and expectations of ageing and later life. Drawing on data from a wide range of studies, the book explores the state of the health, financial circumstances, identity and sense of belonging of the world’s older population. The key argument presented in the book is that, although we are witnessing the decline of the nation-state as the dominant spatial unit through which to understand ageing and later life we are yet to witness the emergence of a global spatial order. The book concludes by arguing that the economic, political and cultural co-ordinates of later life have become increasingly located in a series of overlapping spatial logics encompassing the local, the national, the regional and the global.

With socio-economic and demographic changes taking place in contemporary societies, new patterns of family relations are forming partly due to significant family changes, value shifts, precariousness in the labour market, and increasing mobility within and beyond national boundaries. This book explores the exchange of support between generations and examines variations in contemporary practices and rationales in different regions and societies around the world. It draws on theoretical perspectives and empirical analyses to discuss both newly emerging patterns of family reciprocity and more established ones which are affected by changing opportunities and pressures in contemporary societies. The book is split into two parts: the first reviews key theoretical and conceptual debates in this field, while the second offers new insights and an understanding of exchange practices based on case studies from different regions and different relationships.

Targeted as ‘grey consumers’, people retiring now participated in the creation of the post-war consumer culture. These consumers have grown older, but have not stopped consuming. Based on extensive analysis over two years, this book examines the engagement of older people with consumer society in Britain since the 1960s. It charts the changes in the experience of later life in the UK over the last fifty years, the rise of the ‘individualised consumer citizen’ and what this means for health and social policies.

This book is a timely collection of interdisciplinary and critical chapters about the fields of ageing studies and the sociology of everyday life as broadly conceived to explore the meaningful connections between subjective lives and social worlds in later life. The scope of the writing expands beyond traditional approaches in these fields to engage with cross-cultural, feminist, spatial, ethnographic, technological, cinematic, new media and arts research. Readers will find the detailed attention to everyday experiences, places, biographies, images, routines, intimacies and temporalities illuminating, while appreciating the wider critiques of ageism and exclusion that inform each chapter. The book also contributes to the growing international area of ‘critical gerontology’ by comprising two parts on ‘materialities’ and ‘embodiments’, foci that emphasize the material and embodied contexts that shape the experiences of ageing. The chapters on ‘materialities’ investigate things, possessions, homes, technologies, environments, and their representations, while the complementary chapters on ‘embodiments’ examine living spaces, clothing, care practices, mobility, touch, gender and sexuality, and health and lifestyle regimes. Overall, in both its parts the book contests the dominant cultural narratives of vulnerability, frailty and disability that dominate ageing societies today and offers in their place the resourceful potential of local and lived spheres of agency, citizenship, humanity and capability.