scholarly journals Grandmothers migrating, working and caring: Latvian women between survival and self-realisation

2016 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 43-53 ◽  
Author(s):  
Russell King ◽  
Aija Lulle
Keyword(s):  
Older Women ◽  
Research Evidence ◽  
Sense Of Self ◽  
Elderly Parents ◽  
Working Lives ◽  
Self Worth ◽  
Care Practices ◽  
The 2008 Financial Crisis ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Depth Interviews

AbstractThis paper describes the circumstances surrounding the migration of older Latvian women and their multi-dimensional lives as economic migrants and as distant carers and supporters of diverse family members who remain in Latvia. In post-Soviet Latvia, especially since the 2008 financial crisis and the austerity measures which took away hope for a decent old-age pension, older women migrate abroad in order to salvage their economic wellbeing and support their multi-generation families, which can run to four generations – their children and grandchildren plus, often, their elderly parents. Migration enables these women to maintain multidirectional flows of care and also to achieve economic and psychosocial independence. Therefore, care practices that reach four generations put the figure of the grandmother at the core of transnational care relations. Research evidence for this paper comprises 50 in-depth interviews with older Latvian migrant women aged from their mid-40s to their late 60s in the UK and elsewhere. The paper demonstrates the complexity and richness of these women’s working lives, built around enhanced economic wellbeing, multiple and transnational caring responsibilities, and a new sense of self-worth and empowerment.

scholarly journals Can Dirty Work be Satisfying? A Mixed Method Study of Workers Doing Dirty Jobs

2019 ◽  
Vol 33 (4) ◽  
pp. 631-647 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Deery ◽  
Deanna Kolar ◽  
Janet Walsh
Keyword(s):  
Mixed Method ◽  
Sense Of Self ◽  
Job Quality ◽  
Mixed Method Study ◽  
Dirty Work ◽  
Self Worth ◽  
The Usa ◽  
High Crime ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Method Approach

It has been argued in this journal that sociologists can make an important contribution to the understanding of why workers report feeling satisfied with their work, particularly where job quality is poor. Utilising a mixed method approach, this article explores how employees derive satisfaction from dirty work. The term ‘dirty work’ refers to tasks and occupations that are perceived as disgusting, distasteful or degrading. The research was conducted among workers specialising in the cleaning of abandoned social or public housing apartments in high crime areas in the UK and the USA. The study identifies a number of different mechanisms through which workers are able to make work both more satisfying and establish a sense of self-worth from the tasks they perform, even though dirt and physical taint are central to the job.

scholarly journals ‘Culture for Sale’: The Effects of Corporate Colonization on the UK Museum Sector

2021 ◽  
pp. 017084062198900
Author(s):  
Jeremy Aroles ◽  
John Hassard ◽  
Paula Hyde
Keyword(s):  
Public Institutions ◽  
External Support ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Financial Interests ◽  
Economic Austerity ◽  
The 2008 Financial Crisis ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Cultural Sector ◽  
Depth Interviews ◽  
Corporate Colonization

For the United Kingdom, the 2008 financial crisis coupled with the subsequent economic austerity programme forced many public institutions to engage in various cost-cutting and fundraising ventures. In parallel, corporate ideologies came to dominate how academics, officials and professionals debated public activities, in turn profoundly affecting the provision of communal services. This paper explores how ‘corporate colonization’ ( sensu Deetz, 1992), fuelled by austerity, claims public institutions for commercial interests. Drawing on in-depth interviews with senior staff, this paper demonstrates how retrenchment of external support in the UK museum sector has been an uneven process, resulting in the manifestation of three experiential states of corporate colonization: organizational perennity, organizational perseverance and organizational precarity. We thus investigate the differential and uneven ways in which corporate colonization affects organizations pertaining to the UK cultural sector. Overall, we argue that the austerity culture in the UK affects museums in largely negative ways by forcing them to respond to the progressive need to satisfy short-term financial interests.

From Taped Up to Mic’d Up: Experiences of Former Athletes and the Meaning of Athletic Identity in Sports Media Spaces

2019 ◽  
pp. 216747951985861
Author(s):  
Allison B. Smith ◽  
Erin Whiteside
Keyword(s):  
Sense Of Self ◽  
Qualitative Approach ◽  
Sports Journalism ◽  
Sports Media ◽  
Former Athletes ◽  
Shared Meanings ◽  
Self Worth ◽  
Elite Level ◽  
Depth Interviews ◽  
Do So

When elite-level athletes transition out of their sport, they often experience feelings of loss and questions about their self-worth. It is not uncommon for former athletes to turn to sports media for a new start, and as they do so, they enter a profession that is engaged in its own process of redefining itself as new genres of sports media continue to emerge, a process that has forced legacy outlets to find innovative ways to compete and reimagine what constitutes effective sports journalism. Taking these simultaneous ongoing struggles into consideration, this research uses a qualitative approach grounded in the sociocultural tradition to first explore how former athletes working in sports media negotiate their sense of self and, secondly, make meaning around the value of athletic experience in the profession. Using one-on-one, in-depth interviews with 13 former athletes working in sports media, this research assesses how former athletic experience is situated and understood among sports media professionals, with a particular focus on what being a former athlete means to the notion of professional competency. The analysis produced three themes, which focus on notions of identity, professionalism, and the gendered implications underpinning these shared meanings.

scholarly journals Envisaging post-Brexit immobility: Polish migrants’ care intentions concerning their elderly parents

2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
pp. 473-494
Author(s):  
Agnieszka Radziwinowiczówna ◽  
Weronika Kloc-Nowak ◽  
Anna Rosińska
Keyword(s):  
Elderly Care ◽  
Direct Care ◽  
Discursive Construction ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Elderly Parents ◽  
New Policies ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Second Wave ◽  
Depth Interviews

The United Kingdom’s withdrawal from the European Union will end the European Freedom of Movement and the privileged migration status of EU Citizens in the UK, which will likely affect ‘Brexit families’ and their transnational care arrangements. This is a case study of the biggest migrant group in the UK, namely Poles. Before the Brexit referendum, the first wave of the in-depth interviews identified several types of migrants’ intentions concerning elderly care for their parents who remained in Poland. The research approached intentions as discursive strategies: declarations of care commitment and statements provided to explain the absence of care intentions. The second wave was conducted after the UK had decided to exit the EU and new policies concerning EU citizens were being developed. Brexit’s influence on elderly care intentions is twofold. First, it brings higher uncertainty about future migration regulations and disorientates migrants about the possibilities regarding reunification with their parents in the UK. Second, Brexit appears in the interviews as a discursive construction to alleviate a migrant’s involvement in direct care provision, where they still deem it normatively appropriate to enact this cultural norm, but do not intend to in fact do so.

‘Keeping busy with purpose’: How meaningful occupation can shape the experience of forced migration

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helen Claire Hart
Keyword(s):  
Phenomenological Study ◽  
Sense Of Self ◽  
Forced Migration ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Key Skills ◽  
Self Worth ◽  
The Hours ◽  
The Uk ◽  
The Right

AbstractForced migration creates multiple barriers to everyday life, including individual’s access to dignified and meaningful daily occupations. Without the activities that form family life, self-care, work, leisure, and community participation, individuals can find themselves struggling to fill the hours in their days and feeling they exist on the margins of society. This article reflects the findings of a small-scale phenomenological study exploring the meaning of everyday occupations to people seeking asylum in the UK. A series of in-depth interviews, conducted with 10 people, explored the role of daily occupation in their country of origin and in the UK. The study found that restrictions on daily activities had a significant impact on their well-being and sense of self-worth. They highlighted how limited their opportunities were and acknowledged the value of meaningful daily occupations as a means to ‘keep busy with purpose’. There is growing evidence that occupation has the potential to be of benefit to people during the post-migratory period: maintaining health, preserving key skills, retaining a sense of self, and increasing integration. This study shows the multiple gains associated with purposeful activity, including how the right kind of occupation can promote self-worth at a time when people often feel devalued. The article encourages the reader to consider how increased access to activity can promote well-being and to consider challenging the occupational injustices behind asylum policy.

Gendered Power at Work: Constituting Moral Worth in a Hyper-Masculine Organizational Culture

2021 ◽  
pp. 174997552097603
Author(s):  
Tair Karazi-Presler
Keyword(s):  
Organizational Culture ◽  
Social Power ◽  
Sense Of Self ◽  
Moral Worth ◽  
Gendered Politics ◽  
Social Expectation ◽  
The Social ◽  
Moral Boundaries ◽  
Self Worth ◽  
Depth Interviews

How do powerful women in a hyper-masculine organization talk about power? To answer this question, we should explore both cultural contents and gendered politics that inform women’s discourse about social power. This article investigates how women morally evaluate their own and others’ power. Based on in-depth interviews with 34 women serving in senior military positions, I argue that they achieve a sense of self-worth and professional subjectivity through moral work. This symbolic work involves three main discursive strategies regrading power: (1) Drawing symbolic moral boundaries between themselves and the morally ‘degenerate’ military environment; (2) Using ‘performances of authenticity’ to constitute their moral worth; and (3) (Non-)apology to counter the accusation implicit in the social expectation that they must apologize for their power as women. These strategies allow these women to talk about power in moral terms, bring power closer to themselves, and at the same time claim moral subjectivity. By morally justifying the use of military power, they make the internalized ‘brass ceiling’ transparent. Thus, I argue that although women are agentic in constituting their worth, this is not necessarily done by way of ‘resistance’, but rather through discursive maneuvering that relies on the same oppressive discursive patterns designed to restrict their power. Accordingly, their efforts to constitute their selves and ‘do power’ are carried out within, rather than outside, the gendered moral logic of the organizational culture.

Dowagers, Debs, Nuns and Babies: The Politics of Nostalgia and the Older Woman in the British Sunday Night Television Serial

2013 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 769-784 ◽  
Author(s):  
Estella Tincknell
Keyword(s):  
Older Women ◽  
Social Role ◽  
Mature Female ◽  
Older Woman ◽  
Distinctive Features ◽  
The Past ◽  
Political Position ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Popular Television

The extensive commercial success of two well-made popular television drama serials screened in the UK at prime time on Sunday evenings during the winter of 2011–12, Downton Abbey (ITV, 2010–) and Call the Midwife (BBC, 2012–), has appeared to consolidate the recent resurgence of the period drama during the 1990s and 2000s, as well as reassembling something like a mass audience for woman-centred realist narratives at a time when the fracturing and disassembling of such audiences seemed axiomatic. While ostensibly different in content, style and focus, the two programmes share a number of distinctive features, including a range of mature female characters who are sufficiently well drawn and socially diverse as to offer a profoundly pleasurable experience for the female viewer seeking representations of aging femininity that go beyond the sexualised body of the ‘successful ager’. Equally importantly, these two programmes present compelling examples of the ‘conjunctural text’, which appears at a moment of intense political polarisation, marking struggles over consent to a contemporary political position by re-presenting the past. Because both programmes foreground older women as crucial figures in their respective communities, but offer very different versions of the social role and ideological positioning that this entails, the underlying politics of such nostalgia becomes apparent. A critical analysis of these two versions of Britain's past thus highlights the ideological investments involved in period drama and the extent to which this ‘cosy’ genre may legitimate or challenge contemporary political claims.

“Scrap-Heap Storiesˮ: Oral Narratives of Labour and Loss in Scottish Mining and Manufacturing

2020 ◽  
Vol 31 (2-2018) ◽  
pp. 8-21
Author(s):  
Arthur McIvor
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Lived Experience ◽  
Oral History ◽  
Job Loss ◽  
Sense Of Self ◽  
Oral Narratives ◽  
Industrial Work ◽  
Working Lives ◽  
Plant Closures ◽  
The Impact

This article is an attempt to comprehend deindustrialisation and the impact of plant downsizing and closures in Scotland since the 1970s through listening to the voices of workers and reflecting on their ways of telling, whilst making some observations on how an oral history methodology can add to our understanding. It draws upon a rich bounty of oral history projects and collections undertaken in Scotland over recent decades. The lush description and often intense articulated emotion help us as academic “outsidersˮ to better understand how lives were profoundly affected by plant closures, getting us beyond statistical body counts and overly sentimentalised and nostalgic representations of industrial work to more nuanced understandings of the meanings and impacts of job loss. In recalling their lived experience of plant run-downs and closures, narrators are informing and interpreting; projecting a sense of self in the process and drawing meaning from their working lives. My argument here is that we need to listen attentively and learn from those who bore witness and try to make sense of these diverse, different and sometimes contradictory stories. We should take cognisance of silences and transgressing voices as well as dominant, hegemonic narratives if we are to deepen the conversation and understand the complex but profound impacts that deindustrialisation had on traditional working-class communities in Scotland, as well as elsewhere.

scholarly journals Can Ethical Political Leadership Restore Public Trust in Political Leaders?

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
N. A. Mozumder
Keyword(s):  
Ethical Leadership ◽  
Leadership Practices ◽  
Political Leadership ◽  
Public Trust ◽  
Political Leader ◽  
Political Leaders ◽  
Moral Person ◽  
Tone At The Top ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Depth Interviews

AbstractThis article presents findings from a qualitative study (via in-depth interviews with 121 local political leaders from 65 local authorities in the UK) that aims to understand how ethical leadership practices can restore public trust in political leaders. The study finds that being a moral person, an ethical political leader sets good examples of behaviour, sets the tone at the top and challenges those who do not behave ethically, as well as encourages, supports and rewards those who perform and conduct themselves well. As a result, the level of public trust in political leaders is likely to increase gradually.

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