Asserting the Self: The Importance of Religion for Migrant Women in the United Kingdom

Author(s):  
Wei Yue ◽  
Marc Cowling

It is well documented that the self-employed experience higher levels of happiness than waged employees even when their incomes are lower. Given the UK government’s asymmetric treatment of waged workers and the self-employed, we use a unique Covid-19 period data set which covers the months leading up to the March lockdown and the months just after to assess three aspects of the Covid-19 crisis on the self-employed: hours of work reductions, the associated income reductions and the effects of both on subjective well-being. Our findings show the large and disproportionate reductions in hours and income for the self-employed directly contributed to a deterioration in their levels of subjective well-being compared to waged workers. It appears that their resilience was broken when faced with the reality of dealing with rare events, particularly when the UK welfare support response was asymmetric and favouring waged employees.


Author(s):  
Alan Ryan

This chapter examines some unanswered questions in John Stuart Mill's politics, especially with regards to bureaucracy, democracy, and liberty. These questions relate to what Mill thought about the bearing of the way India was governed on the way the United Kingdom should be governed; about the extent to which he had grown out of the anxiety about moral authority that permeated his essay “The Spirit of the Age”; and about the extent to which he felt that he had achieved a stable balance between a utilitarian concern with benevolent management and an “Athenian” concern with the self-assertive, self-critical, engaged, public-spirited, but independent-minded citizen. The chapter first considers Mill's views on the government of India and their implications for his ideas about empire, progress, and pluralism before discussing the issue of authority, along with his arguments in On Liberty.


2019 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 199-217
Author(s):  
Kevin Caraher ◽  
Enrico Reuter

Self-employment in the United Kingdom rose steadily until 2017, as part of wider changes in labour markets towards more flexible and potentially more vulnerable forms of employment. At the same time, welfare reform has continued under the current and previous governments, with a further expansion of conditionality with respect to benefit recipients. The incremental introduction of Universal Credit is likely to intensify the subjection of vulnerable categories of the self-employed to welfare conditionalities and to thus accentuate the ambivalent nature of self-employment. This article analyses the impact of Universal Credit on the self-employed by first discussing elements of precarity faced by the self-employed, and, second, by exploring the consequences of the roll-out of Universal Credit for those self-employed people who are reliant on the social protection system.


2018 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-49 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robin Bell ◽  
Peng Liu ◽  
Huirong Zhan ◽  
David Bozward ◽  
Jing Fan ◽  
...  

This article examines entrepreneurial identity in both the United Kingdom and China through the lenses of identity theory and social identity theory to develop a deeper and more holistic understanding of the concept of entrepreneurial identity. By examining the entrepreneur as both a role and an identity, this article explores how an entrepreneur views the role of the entrepreneur, the counter-roles to the entrepreneur, and the “self-as-entrepreneur” and seeks to understand how entrepreneurs construct their identity as an entrepreneur. By looking at the role identity in different social constructs, a more nuanced view of entrepreneurial identity can be uncovered for entrepreneurs in both the United Kingdom and China. The study argues that entrepreneurs in the United Kingdom use counter-roles to bridge the disconnect between their understanding of the entrepreneur-as-role and the self-as-entrepreneur, whereas entrepreneurs in China have less conflict reconciling the two and use the counter-role as a way to paint entrepreneurship as a “calling,” justifying their abandonment of other identities.


Author(s):  
Pauline Leonard ◽  
Rachel J. Wilde

This chapter provides an overview of the book by drawing out four key themes which emerged through the chapters as of key significance for understanding youth employability in the United Kingdom: regionality, social inequality, liminality and risk. Taking each of these in turn, the chapter demonstrates how the pervasive force of neoliberalism shapes youth employment policy and youth labour markets in the diverse regions of the UK. In order to ‘get in’ and then to ‘get on’, Britain’s young people must demonstrate neoliberal qualities such as individualisation, responsibilisation and resilience to risk. At the same time, the ability to perform this version of the self is powerfully shaped by social structure.


2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 13-29
Author(s):  
Susanne Stadlbauer

Abstract This case study applies aspects of third space theory (Bhabha, 2004; Hoover & Echchaibi, 2014) to investigate the activism on the YouTube channel Salafimedia UK (smuk) and their claim to be the self-proscribed “truest” and “purest” Islamic sect. This chapter introduces the somewhat paradoxical concept of “hybridic purity” – an emerging ideology that seeks to encompass pre-modern Islamic practices of the salaf (“predecessors” or first generations of Muslims) as the purest form of Islam (see also Wagemakers, 2016); modern values of individuality and reliance on the “self”; the affordances of the YouTube channel; and resistance to present-day Western cultural and political values, especially those of the United Kingdom (UK), as well as to the UK government’s censorship and bans of Salafist movements. This hybridic purity becomes authoritative as it compels YouTube audience members to take responsibility for their own growth and activism as pious Salafists.


Author(s):  
Damien Ridge ◽  
Alex Broom ◽  
Renata Kokanović ◽  
Sue Ziebland ◽  
Nicholas Hill

Australia and the United Kingdom have introduced policies to protect employees who experience mental illness, including depression. However, a better understanding of the experiential issues workers face (e.g. sense of moral failure) is needed for the provision of appropriate and beneficial support. We analysed 73 interviews from the United Kingdom and Australia where narratives of depression and work intersected. Participants encountered difficulties in being (and performing as if) ‘authentic’ at work, with depression contributing to confusions about the self. The diffuse post-1960s imperative to ‘be yourself’ is experienced in conflicting ways: while some participants sought support from managers and colleagues (e.g. sick leave, back-to-work plans), many others put on a façade in an attempt to perform the ‘well’ and ‘authentic’ employee. We outline the contradictory forces at play for participants when authenticity and visibility are expected, yet, moral imperatives to be good (healthy) employees are normative.


1959 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 204-218
Author(s):  
Zelman Cowen

There is an old adage that beauty lies in the eye of the beholder. It is certain that the beauty, the utility, and the significance of the Commonwealth association appear very differently to its various members. This was true of the pre-war Commonwealth: between the end of the first world war and the beginning of the second there were marked differences of attitude among the members. The central problem was seen as the definition of the relationship between the United Kingdom and what were then described as the self-governing dominions. To South Africa, the Irish Free State, and Canada—in varying degrees—it was important that the relationship should be spelled out in terms which assured, so far as was possible through the medium of statute and the articulation of conventional rules, a status of equality between the United Kingdom and the dominions. To Australia and New Zealand the attempt at such a definition appeared undesirable; quieta non movere seemed to them the counsel of wisdom.


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