Relational resolutions: digital encounters in ethnographic fieldwork

The articles in this special issue highlight the relationality existing between researchers, participants, cameras and images, with each article bringing complementary perspectives on the use of digital images in ethnographic fieldwork. These include reactivating archives through their digitization for visual repatriation, facilitating dialogue and understanding between participant and researcher, analysing the relation between participants and the virtual spaces of their self-representations and exploring the range of capacities for new research methodologies afforded by digital technologies. Individually and through their juxtaposition, the articles highlight the complexity of the interactions between researchers and participants in their digital encounters and open dialogical spaces, in ethnographic fieldwork and in visual anthropology, about access, participation and transparency in representational practices

Doing the 'dirty work of the green economy: Resource recovery and migrant labour in the EU

Europe has set out its plans to foster a ‘green economy’, focused around recycling, by 2020. This pan-European recycling economy, it is argued, will have the triple virtues of: first, stopping wastes being ‘dumped’ on poor countries; second, reusing them and thus decoupling economic prosperity from demands on global resources; and third, creating a wave of employment in recycling industries. European resource recovery is represented in academic and practitioner literatures as ‘clean and green’. Underpinned by a technical and physical materialism, it highlights the clean-up of Europe’s waste management and the high-tech character of resource recovery. Analysis shows this representation to mask the cultural and physical associations between recycling work and waste work, and thus to obscure that resource recovery is mostly ‘dirty’ work. Through an empirical analysis of three sectors of resource recovery (‘dry recyclables’, textiles and ships) in Northern member states, we show that resource recovery is a new form of dirty work, located in secondary labour markets and reliant on itinerant and migrant labour, often from accession states. We show therefore that, when wastes stay put within the EU, labour moves to process them. At the micro scale of localities and workplaces, the reluctance of local labour to work in this new sector is shown to connect with embodied knowledge of old manufacturing industries and a sense of spatial injustice. Alongside that, the positioning of migrant workers is shown to rely on stereotypical assumptions that create a hierarchy, connecting reputational qualities of labour with the stigmas of different dirty jobs – a hierarchy upon which those workers at the apex can play

Sociodemographic characteristics of participants in semi-structured interviews.

Sociodemographic characteristics of participants in semi-structured interviews.</p

Multivariate analysis of factors associated with poor treatment outcome.

Multivariate analysis of factors associated with poor treatment outcome.</p

Topic guide for interviewing health care providers.

Topic guide for interviewing health care providers.</p

Baseline characteristics for all study participants and across cities.

Baseline characteristics for all study participants and across cities.</p

Main themes and codes derived from the participants’ perspectives.

GP general practitioner, DOT direct observation of therapy.</p

Contains supporting tables.

BackgroundEvidence on factors contributing to poor treatment outcome and healthcare priorities in vulnerable populations affected by tuberculosis (TB) in urban areas of England other than London is needed to inform setting-specific prevention and care policies. We addressed this knowledge gap in a cohort of TB patients and healthcare providers in Birmingham and Leicester, UK.MethodsA mixed-methods study was performed. Logistic regression was used to identify TB patients more likely to have poor treatment outcomes according to clinical and demographic characteristics and social risk factors (SRFs) in a 2013–18 cohort. 25 semi-structured interviews were undertaken in purposely selected individuals (9 patients and 16 healthcare professionals) to glean insights on their healthcare priorities and the factors that contribute to poor treatment outcome.ResultsThe quantitative cohort comprised 2252 patients. Those who were ≥ 55 years of age, foreign-born from Central Europe, East Asia and Sub Saharan Africa and with MDR-TB were more likely to have poor treatment outcomes. According to patients and healthcare professionals, the factors that contribute to vulnerability to develop TB and poor treatment outcomes include poor working and living conditions, inadequate or absent welfare protection, poor primary healthcare responsiveness, treatment duration and side effects. These factors could be addressed by increased networking, partnership and integration between healthcare and social services and better integration between primary and secondary healthcare.ConclusionsIn both cities, being ≥ 55 years of age, having MDR-TB and being of foreign-birth are predictors of unfavourable treatment outcome. Risk of poor treatment outcome and vulnerability seem to be multidimensional. A better understanding of specific vulnerabilities and how they affect patient care pathway is needed to design adequate support programmes.</div

Topic guide for interviewing TB patients.

BackgroundEvidence on factors contributing to poor treatment outcome and healthcare priorities in vulnerable populations affected by tuberculosis (TB) in urban areas of England other than London is needed to inform setting-specific prevention and care policies. We addressed this knowledge gap in a cohort of TB patients and healthcare providers in Birmingham and Leicester, UK.MethodsA mixed-methods study was performed. Logistic regression was used to identify TB patients more likely to have poor treatment outcomes according to clinical and demographic characteristics and social risk factors (SRFs) in a 2013–18 cohort. 25 semi-structured interviews were undertaken in purposely selected individuals (9 patients and 16 healthcare professionals) to glean insights on their healthcare priorities and the factors that contribute to poor treatment outcome.ResultsThe quantitative cohort comprised 2252 patients. Those who were ≥ 55 years of age, foreign-born from Central Europe, East Asia and Sub Saharan Africa and with MDR-TB were more likely to have poor treatment outcomes. According to patients and healthcare professionals, the factors that contribute to vulnerability to develop TB and poor treatment outcomes include poor working and living conditions, inadequate or absent welfare protection, poor primary healthcare responsiveness, treatment duration and side effects. These factors could be addressed by increased networking, partnership and integration between healthcare and social services and better integration between primary and secondary healthcare.ConclusionsIn both cities, being ≥ 55 years of age, having MDR-TB and being of foreign-birth are predictors of unfavourable treatment outcome. Risk of poor treatment outcome and vulnerability seem to be multidimensional. A better understanding of specific vulnerabilities and how they affect patient care pathway is needed to design adequate support programmes.</div