Globalizing Sportscapes

D Parthasarathi’s paper centres global sportscapes as indicative of global-local linkages and transnational flows of investment in clubs across nations and the spread of viewership and consumption across continents, but offers a different scope and perspective, through football within the political economy of leisure as it is played in the streets of Mumbai, Singapore and Bangkok. The changing politics of class, ethnicity, aspirations, and leisure among the urban working classes in these cities is illustrated using the lens of globalizing football. Heterotopic uses of public spaces through the sport of football, served as a counterstrategy of the urban poor, migrants, minorities and working classes against the dehumanizing and disciplining effects of alienating work and urban spatial exclusion. Some of these are also channeled into sport consumption cultures.

DUALISMO ECONOMICO E MOBILITÀ SOCIALE IN ITALIA. UN CONFRONTO TRA CENTRO-SETTENTRIONALI, MERIDIONALI E IMMIGRATI INTERNI

This paper studies the association between south-to-north internal geographical mobility and social mobility in Italy. Two issued are analysed: the association between migration and social mobility pathways, comparing the movers with the stayers, i.e. those who did not experienced any episode of geographical mobility; b) whether the effect of south-to-north mobility changes according to gender and education. Analyses are based on the Longitudinal Survey on Italian Households (ILHS) and use Mobility tables and Linear Regression Panel Models with random effects. Results shown that the social mobility of internal migrants are characterized by three main pathways: a) to the urban working class, which concerned the southerners originally from the lower classes, especially the children of peasants and laborers; b) to the white collars, which instead mainly concerned the bourgeois and the white-collar middle class; c) mixed pathways, which involved people from the petty bourgeoisie and the urban working class. Results also shown a gender divide, where a positive effect of geographical mobility is found for men and a negative one for women. Finally, the negative effect among women is confirmed only when they are lower educated.

Assessment of Self-Esteem among Working Women

Women are significantly involved in the development of any nation by managing personal responsibilities as well as professional life. They are playing an important role in economic and social development of any society and their participation gives them satisfaction at their home up to a greater extent. Self-esteem is defined by how much value people place on themselves being the evaluative component of self-knowledge, high self-esteem refers to a highly favorable global evaluation of the self. So, the study was conducted in Hisar district of Haryana state on 400 rural and urban working women to assess their self-esteem. It was found that a very high majority of respondents (95.5%) of urban area were having low level of leisure time exercise and 47.5 percent respondents were having high level of self –esteem. Occupation of respondents was observed statistically significant only in low level of self-esteem (F=2.84, p<0.05).

“Eskimo” Immigrants and Colonial Soldiers: Icelandic Immigrants and the North-West Resistance, 1885

How did marginalized and racialized ethnic immigrants transform themselves into active, armed colonial agents in nineteenth-century Western Canada? Approximately twenty Icelanders enlisted to fight Louis Riel’s forces during the North-West Resistance in 1885, just ten years following the arrival of Icelandic immigrants in present-day Manitoba. Forty more reportedly enlisted in an Icelandic-Canadian battalion to enforce the government’s victory in the fall. This public, armed stance of a group of Icelanders against Indigenous forces in 1885 is somewhat unexpected, since most Icelanders were relatively recent arrivals in the West and, in Winnipeg, members of the largely unskilled urban working class. Moreover, they were widely rumoured among Winnipeggers to be from a “blubber-eating race” and of “Eskimo” extraction; community accounts testify to the discrimination numerous early Icelanders faced in the city. These factors initially make Icelanders unexpected colonialists, particularly since nineteenth-century ethnic immigration and colonial suppression so often appear as separate processes in Canadian historiography. Indeed, this scholarship is characterized by an enduring belief that Western Canadian colonialism was a distinctly Anglo sin. Ethnic immigrants often appear in scholarly and popular histories as sharing a history of marginalization with Indigenous people that prevented migrants from taking part in colonial displacement. Proceeding from the neglected history of Icelandic enlistment in 1885 and new developments in Icelandic historiography, this article argues that rather than negating ethnic participation in Indigenous suppression, ethnic marginality and the class tensions it created could actually fuel participation in colonial campaigns, which promised immigrants upward mobility, access to state support, and land.

Crisis Within a Crisis: Migrant Workers’ Predicament During COVID-19 Lockdown and the Role of Non-profit Organizations in India

This article explores the role of non-profit organisations in mitigating crisis for the urban working poor during the pandemic in India. We focus specifically on the humanitarian crisis around the interstate migrant workers that resulted from the Indian government’s efforts to contain the pandemic by imposing a nationwide lockdown. Through in-depth interviews with leaders of non-profit organisations in India, who were actively engaged in relief work during the migrant crisis, we explore the role of poverty and inequality in exacerbating the pandemic’s impact. Our findings indicate that multiple dimensions of inequality combined to aggravate the effects of the lockdown on interstate migrant labourers in India. The government’s initial apathy towards this vulnerable group, delay in addressing the unanticipated consequences of the pandemic response, and its ineffective crisis management efforts resulted in a humanitarian crisis in the country concurrent to the pandemic. In this context, the non-profit sector played a critical supporting role in mitigating the migrant workers’ crisis during the pandemic.

Psychosocial Predictors of Medically Unexplained Infertility in Urban Working Women

Background: Infertility is one of the major causes of mental health issues among couples. Interestingly, a large percentage of this infertility cannot be always explained in terms of a medical diagnosis. Psychological distress has long been suspected as having an important impact on infertility. However, the exact nature of association between psychological factors and infertility has been a subject matter of scientific debate. For modern urban women, there is an additional obligation of balancing work and home responsibilities; this dual role inevitably leads to stress. In this context, an important yet less-explored area of infertility is the role of work-related stress on female infertility. Aims: This study tries to investigate the mediating role of certain psychosocial constructs viz (a) Self-efficacy related to work-family conflict—measured in terms of “work-family conflict self-efficacy scale” by Cinamon (2003), (b) perceived occupational stress—measured in terms of “work-to-family conflict scale” by Netemeyer et al (1996), (c) decision-making in family—measured in terms of “decision-making scale” by Blood and Wolfe, (d) perceived infertility stress—measured in terms of “fertility problem inventory” by Newton et al (1999) in 25 urban working women of the age range 28 to 40 years who have been experiencing medically unexplained infertility for at least 1 year; the severity of infertility being measured in terms of duration of involuntary childlessness. Results: The analysis reveals that severity of medically unexplained infertility can be explained in terms of “self-efficacy related to work-family conflict” and “perceived infertility stress”; 28.6% of variation in severity of unexplained infertility being contributed by “self-efficacy related to work-family conflict” and 46.9% of the variation in the severity of unexplained infertility being contributed by a conjunction of “perceived infertility stress” and “self-efficacy related to work-family conflict.” Conclusion: The findings imply that urban educated women tend to place more psychological emphasis on “motherhood,” and “perceived deficit in attaining motherhood” seems to be the important source of personal stress for these women in comparison to stressors emanating from occupational hazards and family dynamics related to decision-making.

Awareness and Exercise of Human Rights Among Women of Punjab

Human rights are rights inherent to all human beings, irrespective of their nationality, places of residence, sex, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, language, or any other status. People everywhere should know and understand what human rights are, to lessen the chances of tyranny and to promote justice and well-being in society. Awareness, understanding, and use of human rights can empower individuals, can promote solutions for specific problems and thus can reduce friction within society. A recent study was conducted to explore the awareness and exercise of human rights among working and non-working women of Punjab. The study was a descriptive survey. Simple random sampling technique was employed to select a sample of 200 women (100 working women and 100 non-working women). Further, out of 100 women, 50 were from the rural area while 50 were from the urban area. The results of the study revealed that working women had a greater awareness of human rights and exercise more human rights in comparison to their non-working women counterparts. Further, rural working and urban working women had similar awareness of human rights while rural working women exercise more human rights as compared to urban counterparts. While rural and urban non-working women had similar awareness as well as knowledge about human rights.