Single mothers and resistance to welfare-to-work: A Bourdieusian account

2021 ◽  
pp. 144078332110429
Author(s):  
Simone Casey

This research applied Bourdieusian field theory to explain the forms of resistance exercised by single mothers exposed to the cultural and economic domination of Australian welfare-to-work policy. The mothers were affected by policy changes that reduced their social security benefit income and brought them into the field of activation policies. Unlike other studies focusing on well-being effects, this study focused on understanding resistance, that is, how welfare subjects like single mothers exercise resistance in dominating contexts. Bourdieusian field theory was applied to explain these resistances as a reaction to a social policy reclassification and to identity the enabling resources for it. This article observes the conditions that enabled single mothers to convert individual forms of resistance into collective action. In this respect, Husu’s adaptation of Bourdieusian field theory to social movement studies provided insight into how dominating fields like those of activation policy, generate resistances and social movements.

2000 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 187-198 ◽  
Author(s):  
David T Ellwood

This paper reveals that recent changes in social policy have included both sharp cutbacks in welfare for non-working families and dramatic increases in supports for low income working families. It explores the reasons for these changes, and documents how they have radically changed work incentives for some persons, notable single mothers. The result has been a large increase in work by low wage single parents. The paper concludes by examining several potential dangers of this new direction and explores the challenges that remain for the next century.


1970 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Rose Ryan

The celebration of one hundred years of women's suffrage in New Zealand in 1993 has provided a welcome opportunity to undertake something of a "stock-take" of many aspects of women's participation in the social and economic life of New Zealand. Participation in the paid workforce is one of the most important of these, given the centrality of employment and work to social identity and economic well-being. The current re-assessment has, however, raised more questions than it has answered, given the rapidly changing social and economic environment in which women work. This includes the restructuring of the economy, the growth of the service sector, social policy changes in health and education, and the greater emphasis on market regulation of many areas previously subject to legislative regulation.


2018 ◽  
Vol 47 (4) ◽  
pp. 827-845 ◽  
Author(s):  
MICHELLE BRADY

AbstractActivation reforms targeted at single parents simultaneously construct them as a legitimate target for activation policy and subject them to new obligations to engage in paid work or education/training. The social policy literature has established that the work of ‘making-up’ target groups occurs at the street level as well as in government legislation. The street level has become even more significant in recent years as there has been a shift towards establishing quasi-markets for the delivery of welfare-to-work programmes and organising these around the principles of performance pay and process flexibility. However, what is largely missing from the existing literature is an analysis of how contract conditions, together with individuals' activation obligations, shape how they are targeted at the street level. Drawing on a study conducted over eight years with agencies in Australia's quasi-market for employment services, this paper argues that the changes to the contracts for governing this market changed how Australian single mothers were targeted by employment services. Over time there was a shift away from making-up single-parent clients as a distinct, vulnerable target group and a shift towards viewing them in terms of risk categories described within the agencies’ contracts.


2014 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 1079-1105
Author(s):  
Rahul Nigam

In this review we study the elementary structure of Conformal Field Theory in which is a recipe for further studies of critical behavior of various systems in statistical mechanics and quantum field theory. We briefly review CFT in dimensions which plays a prominent role for example in the well-known duality AdS/CFT in string theory where the CFT lives on the AdS boundary. We also describe the mapping of the theory from the cylinder to a complex plane which will help us gain an insight into the process of radial quantization and radial ordering. Finally we will develop the representation of the Virasoro algebra which is the well-known "Verma module".  


Author(s):  
Jaime Kucinskas

This chapter introduces the contemplative mindfulness movement, its successes in legitimizing and popularizing mindful meditation, and its shortcomings. This case demonstrates how elite movements can initiate widespread cultural change by combining elements of social movement mobilization, institutional entrepreneurship, field theory, and cultural diffusion. Investigating the contemplatives sheds light on how a movement can support elites’ cultural pet projects across multiple powerful institutional fields. This approach to cultural change is particularly efficacious for elites’ and professionals’ initiatives for social reform, as they can draw upon their social networks, institutional resources, and symbolic power to advance their causes in the course of their everyday lives at work. While such movements may succeed in spreading compelling new cultures, they may struggle to initiate deeper structural social reforms.


BMJ Open ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. e047632
Author(s):  
Helen Humphreys ◽  
Laura Kilby ◽  
Nik Kudiersky ◽  
Robert Copeland

ObjectivesTo explore the lived experience of long COVID with particular focus on the role of physical activity.DesignQualitative study using semistructured interviews.Participants18 people living with long COVID (9 men, 9 women; aged between 18–74 years; 10 white British, 3 white Other, 3 Asian, 1 black, 1 mixed ethnicity) recruited via a UK-based research interest database for people with long COVID.SettingTelephone interviews with 17 participants living in the UK and 1 participant living in the USA.ResultsFour themes were generated. Theme 1 describes how participants struggled with drastically reduced physical function, compounded by the cognitive and psychological effects of long COVID. Theme 2 highlights challenges associated with finding and interpreting advice about physical activity that was appropriately tailored. Theme 3 describes individual approaches to managing symptoms including fatigue and ‘brain fog’ while trying to resume and maintain activities of daily living and other forms of exercise. Theme 4 illustrates the battle with self-concept to accept reduced function (even temporarily) and the fear of permanent reduction in physical and cognitive ability.ConclusionsThis study provides insight into the challenges of managing physical activity alongside the extended symptoms associated with long COVID. Findings highlight the need for greater clarity and tailoring of physical activity-related advice for people with long COVID and improved support to resume activities important to individual well-being.


2017 ◽  
Vol 33 (4) ◽  
pp. 409-427 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna P Durnová ◽  
Eva M Hejzlarová

In public policy scholarship on policy design, emotions are still treated as opposed to goals, and their presence is assumed to signal that things have gone wrong. We argue, however, that understanding how and for whom emotions matter is vital to the dynamics of policy designs because emotions are central to the capacity building of policy intermediaries and, with that, to the success of public policies. We examine the case of Czech single mothers in their role as intermediaries in ‘alimony policy’. Our interpretive survey provided single mothers an opportunity to express the way they experience the policy emotionally. The analysis reveals that the policy goal of the child’s well-being is produced at the cost of the mother’s emotional tensions and that policy designs defuse these emotional tensions, implicitly. These contradictory emotions expressed by mothers show us a gateway to problematising policy designs in a novel way, which reconsiders construing policy design as a technical, solution-oriented enterprise to one in which emotional tensions intervene in policy design and are essential for succeeding.


2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 223-242
Author(s):  
Rebecca Ann Versaci

When an infant is hospitalized on the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) it can have a profound influence on the psychosocial well-being of the infant and their older sibling(s). This article presents a case vignette of the use of the Six-Part Storymaking Method with the sibling of an infant hospitalized on the NICU. The article reviews the therapeutic aims and benefits of the intervention, including: supporting emotional expression, providing opportunity for the sibling to be deeply witnessed by caregivers, therapist and hospital staff, empowering the sibling to inhabit the big sibling role and fostering insight into the sibling’s thoughts, feelings and behaviours as related to their infant’s hospitalization. Considerations for facilitation and assessment are also discussed.


Author(s):  
Samat Kazbekovich Imanbaev

This article examines the pension policy, which is usually attributed to the direction of the state’s social policy. Designed to improve the well-being of the population and ensure a high standard and quality of life. The state pension policy is the basic and one of the most important state guarantees for the stable development of society, since it directly affects the interests of the able-bodied and disabled population. The results of an online survey revealed that the most important condition for creating an effective system of social support for pensioners in the current reality is the improvement of pension policy, as well as the system of social services, the development of new social technologies to provide assistance to the population, in particular the elderly, and the formation of a network of specialized institutions. social services to the population, an increase in the volume and expansion of the list of social services provided by them.


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