Self-Employment or Selfless Employment? Exploration of Factors that Motivate, Facilitate, and Constrain Latina Entrepreneurship from a Family Embeddedness Perspective

As the economic and social importance of Latina-owned businesses continues to grow, research is needed on the factors that motivate entrepreneurship among Latinas and that facilitate and constrain their success. This study draws on in-depth interviews and survey data to explore the experiences of Latina entrepreneurs in Idaho, USA, from an embeddedness perspective combining family embeddedness and intersectionality frameworks to illustrate how family and social positioning affects motivations, opportunities, and access to resources. We found Latinas were motivated to start businesses by a range of interacting factors, including centrally a strong sense of responsibility to their nuclear and families of origin. Prominent family motivations included the desire to provide opportunities for younger and older generations and the need for flexibility to manage family and work obligations. Compared to their middle-class peers, working-class Latina entrepreneurs were more likely to need flexibility because they could not afford third-party care for a family member, to experience greater barriers to accessing traditional financing and professional advice, and to be more dependent on family support for their success, although not all had family-based resources upon which they could rely. Latinas struggled to fulfill traditional family role expectations and obligations while assuming the expanded responsibilities of running a business. While a central tension in their lives, this struggle provides the impetus to renegotiate and update traditional gender and family expectations as they navigate role conflict and strain.

Navigating post-prison life. Social positioning and agency in unstable circumstances

People that are released from prison experience 'life outside' as unpredictable and insecure. They are faced with stigmatization, poverty and feelings of alienation from the 'world outside.' Based on ethnographic research in the field of post-prison life, this paper asks how formerly incarcerated men act and position themselves within and around uncertain circumstances that characterize post-prison life. The paper introduces the concept of 'social navigation' as an epistemological tool for approaching post-prison life ethnographically. In doing so, it shows the potential of the concept of social navigation in understanding actor's social positioning and agency within unstable sociocultural landscapes and within a disrupted sociocultural order.

Navigating Gendered Relational Spaces in Talanoa: Centring Gender in Talanoa Research Methodology

Talanoa is a research methodology that foregrounds Pacific cultural values and acknowledges the importance of the positioning of researchers and participants in the research space. Researchers are encouraged to consider how their social characteristics, such as their gendered social positioning, shape their interactions with participants. Scholarship that carefully examines the significance of positionality, and approaches research with Pacific people from a Pacific epistemological stance, provides critical conceptual and practical guidance. In this paper, as a married Samoan mother and early career researcher in the social sciences, I reflect on gendered relational spaces in one-on-one talanoa with Pacific mothers and fathers.

Social Positioning Analysis as a Qualitative Methodology to Study Identity Construction in People Diagnosed With Severe Mental Illnesses

Severe mental illnesses (SMI) in general, and schizophrenia in particular, have been characterized as alterations of the experience of self and identity. When first diagnosed with SMI, the subjective experiences and specific narrative challenges faced by this population are particularly important. Therefore, qualitative approaches which allow to analyze these subjective experiences should be developed. This article presents in detail a specific method, called Social Positioning Analysis, which makes the complexity of narratives and life stories with multiple turning points understandable. To develop this methodological proposal, it has been taken into account the performative aspects of social interaction in which narratives are constructed. The methodology has previously been used in other health contexts and is innovative in the field of mental health. Linguistic criteria, definitions, and multiple examples are included to facilitate its application, as well as some reflections about its potential and possible benefits.

Gifted Individuals with Asperger's: A Discourse Exploration of 'Being an Aspie'

<p>People labelled as both 'gifted' and as having Asperger's Syndrome are a social paradox. Asperger's is often associated with impairment and disability, and a dualistic 'opposite' of giftedness on a learning ability spectrum. This study explored life experiences of adults who self-identified as 'aspies' (a casual term used by people who are proud to have Asperger's as an identity) and who were also identified as being gifted in the widest sense. A literature review discovered few studies on the topic, and, of those found, most employed traditional medical explanations of the condition or 'syndrome'. This study adopted qualitative participatory methodology using interviews. Three men and one woman who identified as aspies participated in semi-structured interviews that were video recorded in order to better understand their communication strategies. A type of discourse analysis based on Foucault's use of discourse (Parker, 1992) was used to analyse their worldviews about Asperger's, giftedness and abilities. The analysis revealed an interplay of medical and other related discourses surrounding Asperger's as impairment, with a lesser emphasis on discourses of giftedness. Participants often felt marginalised due to stereotypes about 'incompetence' regarding people with Asperger's; a view seen as denigrating their talents. The main finding was that aspie identities were not always strong due to a conflicting need to 'fit in' and accommodate to 'normal' society. Their talents sometimes benefited their attempts at 'pretending to be normal'; however this depended on whether the skill was regarded by society as worthy. Decisions to be proud aspies and resist social norms, sometimes had consequences of isolation, confusion, being misunderstood or judged as disabled. Whilst participants preferred to be accepted as aspies with talented skills, they found this social positioning often contradictory. The thesis ends with a suggestion that future research could adopt more participatory focuses, to enable more insight into ways that people labelled as having Asperger's and with giftedness discursively describe their worlds and concepts of ability.</p>

Gifted Individuals with Asperger's: A Discourse Exploration of 'Being an Aspie'

<p>People labelled as both 'gifted' and as having Asperger's Syndrome are a social paradox. Asperger's is often associated with impairment and disability, and a dualistic 'opposite' of giftedness on a learning ability spectrum. This study explored life experiences of adults who self-identified as 'aspies' (a casual term used by people who are proud to have Asperger's as an identity) and who were also identified as being gifted in the widest sense. A literature review discovered few studies on the topic, and, of those found, most employed traditional medical explanations of the condition or 'syndrome'. This study adopted qualitative participatory methodology using interviews. Three men and one woman who identified as aspies participated in semi-structured interviews that were video recorded in order to better understand their communication strategies. A type of discourse analysis based on Foucault's use of discourse (Parker, 1992) was used to analyse their worldviews about Asperger's, giftedness and abilities. The analysis revealed an interplay of medical and other related discourses surrounding Asperger's as impairment, with a lesser emphasis on discourses of giftedness. Participants often felt marginalised due to stereotypes about 'incompetence' regarding people with Asperger's; a view seen as denigrating their talents. The main finding was that aspie identities were not always strong due to a conflicting need to 'fit in' and accommodate to 'normal' society. Their talents sometimes benefited their attempts at 'pretending to be normal'; however this depended on whether the skill was regarded by society as worthy. Decisions to be proud aspies and resist social norms, sometimes had consequences of isolation, confusion, being misunderstood or judged as disabled. Whilst participants preferred to be accepted as aspies with talented skills, they found this social positioning often contradictory. The thesis ends with a suggestion that future research could adopt more participatory focuses, to enable more insight into ways that people labelled as having Asperger's and with giftedness discursively describe their worlds and concepts of ability.</p>

Language ideologies and social positioning: the restoration of a “much needed bridge”

In recent years, the intersections between, or entanglements of, local action and translocal patterns gained renewed interest in sociolinguistics. Received distinctions such as micro/macro or practice/structure have been challenged and confronted with more granular concepts such as sociolinguistic scales. Consequently, established disciplinary orientations such as micro/macro or qualitative/quantitative sociolinguistics have also been questioned: rather than one of two options, sociolinguistics is now supposed to embrace “complexity”. This fundamental discussion also centrally concerns research into language ideologies. While it has always been acknowledged that language ideologies frame and shape, or manifest in, local action, they have long been construed as a translocal social order, a “macro phenomenon”. In the wake of the general discussion outlined above, however, this has been challenged. Language ideologies are now increasingly located at the intersection of structure and practice, construed as structurating practices and as dynamic, scalar phenomena that emerge from, and are subjected to, ongoing local processes of social positioning and indexical enregisterment (which they reversely frame). This special issue takes up the discussion and asks where we can get to with such a complex notion of language ideologies and/as social positioning, how far we have come already, and which obstacles lie ahead. The authors address these questions from different perspectives. This introduction sets the scene, recapitulates the discussion and state of the art, and provides an outline of the issue.

Protest Structures: Responses From Nigerians in the United States to Police Brutality and #BlackLivesMatter Protests

This study examined how Nigerian immigrants communicated about, and got involved in, #BlackLivesMatter protests and/or advocacy due to racialized violence against Blacks in the United States during the summer of 2020. Using a qualitative open-ended questionnaire, a purposive sample of Nigerians ( N = 70) was assembled. Constant comparative analysis revealed that communication about and participation in the BLM movement consisted of affective (feelings associated with protests), cognitive (psychological processes triggered by thinking about protests), and behavioral (actions and engagement in protests) responses. This process is labeled protest structures, a term that captures the socio-psychological processes that shape the communication of and involvement in protests and/or advocacy. We discuss further how social positioning impacts active participation in the fight for racial equality and social change.