Leaving Spain

2022 ◽  
Author(s):  
Me-Linh Hannah Riemann

Since the beginning of the economic crisis of 2008, Spain, like other Southern European countries, has witnessed a mass departure of mostly young people looking for opportunities abroad. Leaving Spain is based on 58 autobiographical narrative interviews with recent Spanish migrants who went to the UK and Germany, and sometimes returned. By presenting a combination of in-depth case studies and comparative analyses, the author demonstrates the potential of biographical research and narrative analysis in studying contemporary Europe, including its overlapping crises. The scope of the sociological study is not limited to examining how those who left Spain experienced single phases of their migration. Instead, it focuses on the significance of migration projects in the context of their life histories and how they make sense of these experiences in retrospect. This book will not only be of great interest to social scientists and students in different disciplines and interdisciplinary studies such as sociology, anthropology, human geography, European studies, education, and social work, but also to professionals, European and national policy makers, and those interested in learning more about migrants’ experiences, perspectives, and (often invisible) contributions.

Author(s):  
Mark Thatcher ◽  
Tim Vlandas

Political economy debates have focused on the internationalization of private capital. But foreign states increasingly enter domestic markets as financial investors. How do policy makers in recipient countries react? Do they treat purchases as a threat and impose restrictions or see them as beneficial and welcome them? What are the wider implications for debates about state capacities to govern domestic economies in the face of internationalization of financial markets? In response, the book develops the concept of ‘internationalized statism’—governments welcoming and using foreign state investments to govern their domestic economies—and applies it to the most prominent overseas state investors: Sovereign Wealth Funds (SWFs). Many SWFs are from Asia and the Middle East and their number and size have greatly expanded, reaching $9 trillion by 2020. The book examines policies towards non-Western SWFs buying company shares in four countries: the US, the UK, France, and Germany. Although the US has imposed significant legal restrictions, the others have pursued internationalized statism in ways that are surprising given both popular and political economy classifications. The book argues that the policy patterns found are related to domestic politics, notably the preferences and capacities of the political executive and legislature, rather than solely economic needs or national security risks. The phenomenon of internationalized statism underlines that overseas state investment provides policy makers in recipient states with new allies and resources. The study of SWFs shows how and why internationalization and liberalization of financial markets offer national policy makers opportunities to govern their domestic economies.


Author(s):  
Lorraine Warren

This paper focuses on the negotiation of identity in case studies of four women undergoing career change in the UK. The triple nexus between identity as a reflexive journey, entrepreneurship as a social process and communities of practice is established and provides a powerful means of exploring the dynamics of the entrepreneurial transition. The paper examines how identity is constructed and reconstructed during their trajectory from one mode of work to another, as they acknowledged, and were acknowledged by, shifting communities of practice. The central argument of the paper is that the women were at times constituted as entrepreneurs by a powerful discourse, but that their first priority was to be recognized and legitimized as professionals as they engaged with particular communities of practice. Further, they rework these discourses with an impact not just at the level of their own individual experience, but also at network level through interaction with their community of practice. The study uses narrative analysis to provide insights into the processes and practices that have constituted their experience. The purpose of the paper is to contribute to an understanding of the early stages of entrepreneurial activity; this may be of benefit to policy makers, support services and educators, as well as the academic community. Theoretically, it is demonstrated that the notion of the community of practice has value in developing a processual understanding of the entrepreneurial transition.


2015 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 33-39 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Evans

This paper considers the relationship between social science and the food industry, and it suggests that collaboration can be intellectually productive and morally rewarding. It explores the middle ground that exists between paid consultancy models of collaboration on the one hand and a principled stance of nonengagement on the other. Drawing on recent experiences of researching with a major food retailer in the UK, I discuss the ways in which collaborating with retailers can open up opportunities for accessing data that might not otherwise be available to social scientists. Additionally, I put forward the argument that researchers with an interest in the sustainability—ecological or otherwise—of food systems, especially those of a critical persuasion, ought to be empirically engaging with food businesses. I suggest that this is important in terms of generating better understandings of the objectionable arrangements that they seek to critique, and in terms of opening up conduits through which to affect positive changes. Cutting across these points is the claim that while resistance to commercial engagement might be misguided, it is nevertheless important to acknowledge the power-geometries of collaboration and to find ways of leveling and/or leveraging them. To conclude, I suggest that universities have an important institutional role to play in defining the terms of engagement as well as maintaining the boundaries between scholarship and consultancy—a line that can otherwise become quite fuzzy when the worlds of commerce and academic research collide.


Author(s):  
Daisy Fancourt

In recent decades, there has been an increasing number of national policy and strategy papers discussing arts in health in countries around the world. Some of this activity has been driven by national arts bodies, championing the value of the arts in health and wellbeing and advocating for their inclusion within core arts funding and practice. Other activity has been led by health bodies, including health departments within governments and health services themselves. This chapter explores some of the most influential documents and considers their implication for research and practice. It draws on case studies of activity within Ireland, the UK, the USA, Australia, and Nordic countries.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
Ben Hannigan

Abstract Wales is a small country, with an ageing population, high levels of population health need and an economy with a significant reliance on public services. Its health system attracts little attention, with analyses tending to underplay the differences between the four countries of the UK. This paper helps redress this via a case study of Welsh mental health policy, services and nursing practice. Distinctively, successive devolved governments in Wales have emphasised public planning and provision. Wales also has primary legislation addressing sustainability and future generations, safe nurse staffing and rights of access to mental health services. However, in a context in which gaps always exist between national policy, local services and face-to-face care, evidence points to the existence of tension between Welsh policy aspirations and realities. Mental health nurses in Wales have produced a framework for action, which describes practice exemplars and looks forward to a secure future for the profession. With policy, however enlightened, lacking the singular potency to bring about intended change, nurses as the largest of the professional groups involved in mental health care have opportunities to make a difference in Wales through leadership, influence and collective action.


2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (Supplement_1) ◽  
pp. 511-512
Author(s):  
Robin Tarter ◽  
Dena Hassouneh ◽  
Susan Rosenkranz

Abstract Adult daughters represent the largest and fastest growing population of providers of unpaid care labor (UCL) to older adults with life limiting illness. Providing UCL to parents at the end of life is associated with significant and lasting risks of morbidity and mortality, especially for women with negative relationships with care recipients, and those who provide UCL based on constraining gendered expectations rather than agentic choice. While nearly one quarter of US women experience some form of maltreatment from parents during childhood, few studies have examined, or even acknowledged, the effect of trauma on the experience and health impact of family UCL. We used feminist poststructuralist informed dialogic narrative analysis to explore discursive constructions of agency and constraint in co-constructed life histories from 21 women who provided end of life UCL to older adult parents who maltreated them in childhood. For these women, parental childhood maltreatment influenced identity construction, social position, intersubjectivity, and vulnerability to victimization. For some, providing end-of-life UCL to the parents who maltreated them facilitated the mobilization of relational agency and identity validation. For others, providing UCL potentiated lifelong constraint, reinforcing their positions as non-agents and leading to significant psychical and emotional harm. End of life UCL for older adult parents represents a crucible out of which either healing or re-traumatization can arise. Our findings will be leveraged to inform clinical practice and policy to support the growing population women trauma survivors providing UCL to older adult parents, reducing negative outcomes for those at the greatest risk.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-21
Author(s):  
JON ORD ◽  
MARC CARLETTI ◽  
DANIELE MORCIANO ◽  
LASSE SIURALA ◽  
CHRISTOPHE DANSAC ◽  
...  

Abstract This article examines young people’s experiences of open access youth work in settings in the UK, Finland, Estonia, Italy and France. It analyses 844 individual narratives from young people, which communicate the impact of youthwork on their lives. These accounts are then analysed in the light of the European youth work policy goals. It concludes that it is encouraging that what young people identify as the positive impact of youth work are broadly consistent with many of these goals. There are however some disparities which require attention. These include the importance young people place on the social context of youth work, such as friendship, which is largely absent in EU youth work policy; as well as the importance placed on experiential learning. The paper also highlights a tension between ‘top down’ policy formulation and the ‘youth centric’ practices of youth work. It concludes with a reminder to policy makers that for youth work to remain successful the spaces and places for young people must remain meaningful to them ‘on their terms’.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
Lisa Scullion ◽  
Katy Jones ◽  
Peter Dwyer ◽  
Celia Hynes ◽  
Philip Martin

There has been an increasing focus in the UK on the support provided to the Armed Forces community, with the publication of the Armed Forces Covenant (2011), the Strategy for our Veterans (2018) and the first ever Office for Veterans’ Affairs (2019). There is also an important body of research – including longitudinal research – focusing on transitions from military to civilian life, much of which is quantitative. At the same time, the UK has witnessed a period of unprecedented welfare reform. However, research focused on veterans’ interactions with the social security system has been largely absent. This article draws on the authors’ experiences of undertaking qualitative longitudinal research (QLR) to address this knowledge gap. We reflect on how QLR was essential in engaging policy makers enabling the research to bridge the two parallel policy worlds of veterans’ support and welfare reform, leading to significant policy and practice impact.


2015 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 83-99 ◽  
Author(s):  
MARK EXWORTHY ◽  
PAULA HYDE ◽  
PAMELA MCDONALD-KUHNE

AbstractWe elaborate Le Grand's thesis of ‘knights and knaves’ in terms of clinical excellence awards (CEAs), the ‘financial bonuses’ which are paid to over half of all English hospital specialists and which can be as much as £75,000 (€92,000) per year in addition to an NHS (National Health Service) salary. Knights are ‘individuals who are motivated to help others for no private reward’ while knaves are ‘self-interested individuals who are motivated to help others only if by doing so they will serve their private interests.’ Doctors (individually and collectively) exhibit both traits but the work of explanation of the inter-relationship between them has remained neglected. Through a textual analysis of written responses to a recent review of CEAs, we examine the ‘knightly’ and ‘knavish’ arguments used by medical professional stakeholders in defending these CEAs. While doctors promote their knightly claims, they are also knavish in shaping the preferences of, and options for, policy-makers. Policy-makers continue to support CEAs but have introduced revised criteria for CEAs, putting pressure on the medical profession to accept reforms. CEAs illustrate the enduring and flexible power of the medical profession in the UK in colonising reforms to their pay, and also the subtle inter-relationship between knights and knaves in health policy.


1998 ◽  
Vol 43 (S6) ◽  
pp. 33-55 ◽  
Author(s):  
Holly J. McCammon

Historians and social scientists often investigate the conditions that influence the occurrence of particular events. For instance, a researcher might be concerned with the causes of revolutionary action in some countries or the forces that unleash racial rioting in major cities. Or perhaps the researcher wishes to examine why industrial workers decide to strike or what prompts policy-makers to pass new legislation. In each of these examples, a qualitative shift occurs, from a circumstance without racial rioting in a particular city, for instance, to one with racial rioting. Event history analysis can aid researchers in uncovering the conditions that lead to such a shift.


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