Search Results

Caregiver Depression, Mental Health Service Use, and Child Outcomes

Barbara J. Burns, Sarah A. Mustillo, Elizabeth M.Z. Farmer, David J. Kolko, Julie McCrae, Anne M. Libby, and Mary Bruce Webb

in Child Welfare and Child Well-Being: New Perspectives From the National Survey of Child and Adolescent Well-Being

This chapter analyzes the mental health care needs and service use for caregivers involved with the child welfare system, who experience symptoms of depression warranting a psychiatric diagnosis. ... More

This chapter analyzes the mental health care needs and service use for caregivers involved with the child welfare system, who experience symptoms of depression warranting a psychiatric diagnosis. Noteworthy findings include the high rate of caregiver depression, a 40% rate that greatly exceeds both the rate of depression in the general population and the rate for female welfare recipients; and the large gap between need for mental health care and reported use of such care for serious depression. An unusual feature of the chapter is the highly innovative use of NSCAW longitudinal data to group depressed caregivers into the categories early recovery, recovered and relapsed, and delayed recovery, in order that these caregivers' use of mental health services may be compared. It also reports a number of sobering consequences of caregivers' depressive illnesses for children and the role that mental health services may play in affecting those consequences. The chapter provides a model discussion of clinical and practice implications emerging from these empirical findings.Less

Common Occupations

Fu Hua, Tee L. Guidotti, and Kari Lindström

in Global Occupational Health

This chapter addresses occupational health and safety issues frequently encountered among workers in common occupations: artists, performers, construction trades, public safety personnel (police, ... More

This chapter addresses occupational health and safety issues frequently encountered among workers in common occupations: artists, performers, construction trades, public safety personnel (police, firefighters, emergency medical technicians), office workers, service workers, transport workers, waste handlers, welders.Less

The Rise of Managerialism in the US: Whither Worker Control?

Mimi Abramovitz and Jennifer Zelnick

in Working in the Context of Austerity: Challenges and Struggles

This chapter investigates the impact of managerialism on the work of non-profit human-service workers in New York City, drawing on survey data to paint a portrait of a sector that has been deeply ... More

This chapter investigates the impact of managerialism on the work of non-profit human-service workers in New York City, drawing on survey data to paint a portrait of a sector that has been deeply restructured to emulate private-market relations and processes. It uses the Social Structure of Accumulation (SSA) theory to explain the rise of neoliberal austerity and identify five neoliberal strategies designed to dismantle the US welfare state. The chapter also focuses on the impact of privatization, a key neoliberal strategy; shows how privatization has transformed the organization of work in public and non-profit human-service agencies; and details the experience of nearly 3,000 front-line, mostly female, human-service workers in New York City. It argues that austerity and managerialism generate the perfect storm in which austerity cuts resources and managerialism promotes 'doing more with less' through performance and outcome metrics and close management control of the labour-process. Closely analysing practices for resistance, the chapter concludes that in lower-managerial workplaces, workers had fewer problems with autonomy, a greater say in decision making, less work stress, and more sustainable employment, suggesting that democratic control of the workplace is an alternative route to quality, worker engagement, and successful outcomes.Less

Surveillance Schooling for Professional Clones

Kiran Mirchandani

in Phone Clones: Authenticity Work in the Transnational Service Economy

This chapter examines the economy of familiarity that runs through constructions of customer service workers in India. Like the economy of difference, the economy of familiarity occurs when ... More

This chapter examines the economy of familiarity that runs through constructions of customer service workers in India. Like the economy of difference, the economy of familiarity occurs when familiarity is put to work by “involving circuits of production, exchange and consumption.” In the case of the Indian customer service industry, familiarity works to create an “imagined kinhood” between workers in India and those in the West. Such a kinhood is enacted through the notion of professionalism, which is actualized in work processes in India through processes of control. This chapter explores the labor processes through which Western work norms are enacted in Indian call centers. It shows that becoming an ideal transnational customer service worker involves a constant process of enacting, revisioning, and resisting distinctions between the West and India, modern and backward, progressive and traditional. Finally, it argues that Indians are positioned as a model workforce for transnational service work through a well-orchestrated public relations machinery.Less

“Don’t judge us as different from you”: Wyatt

Raven Bowen

in Work, Money and Duality: Trading Sex as a Side Hustle

This chapter reflects on Contributors’ experiences and major themes discussed in the book. It highlights the need for sex worker control over sex industries and the hypocrisy in how we treat people ... More

This chapter reflects on Contributors’ experiences and major themes discussed in the book. It highlights the need for sex worker control over sex industries and the hypocrisy in how we treat people who trade sex. No other contemporary population of marginalised, poor (mostly women) in the UK context are prevented from defining harm and speaking their situations in order to influence policies. Blocking sex workers from the chance to educate the community, politicians, police and the policymakers about what it will take to expand choice and increase safety and security for their populations is unethical. This chapter presents the argument that active sex workers must be meaningfully involved in interventions that are meant to improve their lives and that in fact, we do not treat sex workers as we do other victims. Many choose to cleave to notions of sex workers as sinners and deviant fallen women without explicitly admitting to this. As a consequence, sex workers receive conditional social and legal protections if they declare sex work as inherently violent and accept rescue. The chapter appeals to the better angels of our nature, in a call to transcend polarising ideologies and exclusionary practices, to respect the self-definitions, analyses, priorities of adults in sex industries, and work together with them to end exploitation and violence against sex workersLess

Bargaining for Security with Flexibility in Toronto’s Attendant Services

Cynthia J. Cranford

in Home Care Fault Lines: Understanding Tensions and Creating Alliances

This chapter studies Toronto's attendant services. In attendant services, workers had considerable labor market security through relatively high wages, benefits, and job protection. Managers did not ... More

This chapter studies Toronto's attendant services. In attendant services, workers had considerable labor market security through relatively high wages, benefits, and job protection. Managers did not willingly support workers' security but rather the union pushed them to do so. This security coincided with limited flexibility at the labor market level in that consumers had little influence over which attendant helped them on a given shift. Nevertheless, attendants and consumers alike gave many examples of bargaining for flexibility and security at the intimate level. Interviews with consumers, attendants, union activists, disability activists, and employers support the claim that, overall, attendant services included a process of collective negotiation marked by representative and participatory democracy for both groups and an outcome of compromises.Less

Hate Nationalism and the Outsourcing Backlash

Kiran Mirchandani

in Phone Clones: Authenticity Work in the Transnational Service Economy

This chapter examines the ways in which national interests are defined and nationalisms exercised through calls between Indian customer service agents and Western customers. Through training and work ... More

This chapter examines the ways in which national interests are defined and nationalisms exercised through calls between Indian customer service agents and Western customers. Through training and work process, the difference between India and the West is enacted to allow Indians to be “understood” by Westerners. Overall, this difference is constructed not only in terms of language and culture but also in terms of nationalist policies and histories. Before discussing how nationalist discourses are expressed in relation to Indian customer service work at call centers, this chapter considers how Indian customer service workers are distanced in terms of their physical location. It also looks at the dramatic shift from locational masking to the open acknowledgment of work in India in the context of Western debates on outsourcing occurring between 2003 and 2004.Less

Language Training: The Making of the Deficient Worker

Kiran Mirchandani

in Phone Clones: Authenticity Work in the Transnational Service Economy

This chapter examines the language training undertaken by prospective customer service agents in India before they are allowed to interact with Western customers. Language training is justified in ... More

This chapter examines the language training undertaken by prospective customer service agents in India before they are allowed to interact with Western customers. Language training is justified in terms of the need for Western clients to understand and be understood by workers, but it also serves to establish a starting point of difference, where all Indians, irrespective of their location, background, or education, are deemed deficient in their use of English. This chapter considers the processes through which India's customer service workers are constructed as “different” from Westerners. It explains how Indian call center agents are embodied through their voices, and are known as those who speak a strange and corrupted form of the English language. It argues that becoming a transnational customer service worker involves “sounding right”; this has been termed “aesthetic labor.”Less

Conclusion: Authenticity Work in the Transnational Service Economy

Kiran Mirchandani

in Phone Clones: Authenticity Work in the Transnational Service Economy

This book has explored the authenticity work of customer service workers in India, revealing the proactive, conscious, and continual negotiation of sameness and difference that characterizes the ... More

This book has explored the authenticity work of customer service workers in India, revealing the proactive, conscious, and continual negotiation of sameness and difference that characterizes the transnational service economy. It has shown how authenticity work sheds light on the work of establishing legitimacy in the context of colonial histories and transnational economic relations. It has considered how authenticity work requires Indian customer service agents to be phone clones—simultaneously similar and different from their Western customers. The book concludes by discussing the notion of authenticity in relation to the microprocesses of economic globalization. It argues that call center agents suffer from a gaping hole in regulatory entitlements in the context of contemporary neoliberalism, such as employer violations of their terms of employment.Less

Serve and Certify: Paradoxes of Service Work in Organic Coffee Certification

Tad Mutersbaugh

in Confronting the Coffee Crisis: Fair Trade, Sustainable Livelihoods and Ecosystems in Mexico and Central America

This chapter examines the paradoxical effects of transnational organic coffee certification processes on service workers in Oaxaca, Mexico. It focuses on the service workers’ role of accommodating ... More

This chapter examines the paradoxical effects of transnational organic coffee certification processes on service workers in Oaxaca, Mexico. It focuses on the service workers’ role of accommodating their local “agri-cultural” practices according to the transnational certification standards. Aspects of certified agricultures monitoring, including audit chain practices and management technologies, are discussed, as are advantages of certified agricultural production, including better livelihoods for farmers and skill development for the workforce. A case study from the coffee producers’ confederation of Oaxaca, Mexico presents paradoxes of product certification, including structural contradictions in the certification procedures and the impact of the procedure on the performances of service workers.Less

Postscript

Raven Bowen

in Work, Money and Duality: Trading Sex as a Side Hustle

This short section contains a summarises the contributions to the book and provides a message to Contributors.

Postwar Civic and Civil Rights Unionism: The Vulcan Society’s Golden Age, 1946–1963

David Goldberg

in Black Firefighters and the FDNY: The Struggle for Jobs, Justice, and Equity in New York City

This chapter charts the growth of the Vulcan Society in both numbers and stature during the postwar era. Led by Wesley Williams’ protégé, Robert Lowery, this second generation of Black firefighters ... More

This chapter charts the growth of the Vulcan Society in both numbers and stature during the postwar era. Led by Wesley Williams’ protégé, Robert Lowery, this second generation of Black firefighters rapidly expanded the organization’s size, civic engagement, public profile, and influence within the FDNY and Democratic politics by the early 1960s.Less

In the Software Factory

Carol Upadhya

in Reengineering India: Work, Capital, and Class in an Offshore Economy

Chapter 3 explores the organizational structures and practices that govern Indian IT workspaces and the mechanisms through which value is extracted from software labour. Drawing on interviews and ... More

Chapter 3 explores the organizational structures and practices that govern Indian IT workspaces and the mechanisms through which value is extracted from software labour. Drawing on interviews and workplace observations, it describes the panoptical and ‘process-driven’ management systems that are employed in these ‘software factories’ to exert control over the labour process as well as the time and knowledge of IT workers, practices that reflect the re-Taylorization of work in the ‘new economy’ as well as the flexibilization and individualization of labour. The chapter highlights the routinization and rationalization of IT work, the fashioning of software engineers into customer-oriented and self-governing service workers, and the responses of IT professionals to these modes of control and subjectification.Less

Smithfield Foods: A Huge Success You’ve Hardly Heard About

Jane F. McAlevey

in No Shortcuts: Organizing for Power in the New Gilded Age

This chapter demonstrates how motivation and strategy may have more to do with failure and success across all sectors of workers than previously thought. Most academics have long assumed that ... More

This chapter demonstrates how motivation and strategy may have more to do with failure and success across all sectors of workers than previously thought. Most academics have long assumed that organizing the unorganized might be possible only among low-wage service workers. The case study of Smithfield Foods returns the focus to the private sector, to the organization of the world’s largest pork production facility, in rural North Carolina—the state with the lowest rate of unionization in the United States. The workers there are mostly men, and the employer had encouraged and exploited racial and ethnic tensions among them so profoundly as to turn the plant into a de facto Jim Crow enclave. It was in this unpromising context that the workers in a traditional private-sector factory were organized into a strong union that achieved a stunning win.Less

Phantoms of Success: The Politics of Aspiration in Post-Boom Silicon Valley

Elsa Davidson

in The Burdens of Aspiration: Schools, Youth, and Success in the Divided Social Worlds of Silicon Valley

This book explores the lived space of Silicon Valley by focusing on the experiences and aspirations of local youth as well as the educational, social, cultural, and political contexts that shape ... More

This book explores the lived space of Silicon Valley by focusing on the experiences and aspirations of local youth as well as the educational, social, cultural, and political contexts that shape their daily lives and strategies of aspiration management. It considers how experiences of social contradiction shape patterns of subjectification and agency involved in processes of social reproduction within Silicon Valley's social landscape. It examines the process of aspiration formation among youth from divergent class, racial, and ethnic backgrounds, with particular emphasis on the children of the region's low-wage service workers and those of its highly skilled tech and service professional classes. This chapter discusses how Silicon Valley's polarization of wealth and local increased cost of living during the 1990s sharpened social, economic, and cultural divides along lines of race, ethnicity, and class. It also analyzes the rise of a techno-civilizing process in Silicon Valley and concludes with an overview of the book's scope.Less

Conclusion: power, participation and political renewal

Marian Barnes, Janet Newman, and Helen Sullivan

in Power, participation and political renewal: Case studies in public participation

This conclusion discusses the transformatory potential of public participation, and its capacity to contribute to a process of political renewal. It argues that the aspirations highlighted may need ... More

This conclusion discusses the transformatory potential of public participation, and its capacity to contribute to a process of political renewal. It argues that the aspirations highlighted may need to be tempered by an awareness of the institutional practices that constrain agency or produce a loss of trust. It emphasises the power of official discourses to define and delimit notions of ‘the public’ and of ‘legitimate participants’, and suggest ways in which such meanings are contested and negotiated. It examines how relationships and identities are shaped in the context of power inequalities, as well as the tensions present when those engaged in autonomous collective action are engaged in dialogue with public bodies. It also shows new insights into the dilemmas experienced by public service workers exposed to new encounters with the public. The case studies in this book highlight a set of issues and raises a series of questions that might productively be addressed in future policy and practice. It argues that public participation can help to equip people to become better at dialogue with others, enabling a greater understanding of different perspectives and a respect for others' positions.Less