Captive labour: asylum seekers, migrants and employment in UK immigration removal centres

The steady growth in the use of immigration detention under the UK's New Labour government has been mirrored by the concurrent development of a new form of labour market within immigration removal centres (IRCs). This market has grown out of the long history of what some label as exploitative employment practices used amongst the wider prison population. It relies upon a subtle form of coercion which ensures compliance and discipline and, in so doing, provides a cheap and easily exploitable pool of labour for private sector companies. The research for this article draws on findings from prison inspection reports and the annual reports of independent monitoring boards

The limits of corporate social responsibility : Techniques of neutralization, stakeholder management and political CSR

Since scholarly interest in corporate social responsibility (CSR) has primarily focused on the synergies between social and economic performance, our understanding of how (and the conditions under which) companies use CSR to produce policy outcomes that work against public welfare has remained comparatively underdeveloped. In particular, little is known about how corporate decision-makers privately reconcile the conflicts between public and private interests, even though this is likely to be relevant to understanding the limitations of CSR as a means of aligning business activity with the broader public interest. This study addresses this issue using internal tobacco industry documents to explore British-American Tobacco’s (BAT) thinking on CSR and its effects on the company’s CSR Programme. The article presents a three-stage model of CSR development, based on Sykes and Matza’s theory of techniques of neutralization, which links together: how BAT managers made sense of the company’s declining political authority in the mid-1990s; how they subsequently justified the use of CSR as a tool of stakeholder management aimed at diffusing the political impact of public health advocates by breaking up political constituencies working towards evidence-based tobacco regulation; and how CSR works ideologically to shape stakeholders’ perceptions of the relative merits of competing approaches to tobacco control. Our analysis has three implications for research and practice. First, it underlines the importance of approaching corporate managers’ public comments on CSR critically and situating them in their economic, political and historical contexts. Second, it illustrates the importance of focusing on the political aims and effects of CSR. Third, by showing how CSR practices are used to stymie evidence-based government regulation, the article underlines the importance of highlighting and developing matrices to assess the negative social impacts of CSR

Complex needs in homelessness practice; a review of 'new markets of vulnerability'

This article reviews institutional responses to adult homeless people, to argue that there is a contemporary flourishing of debates about complex needs across homelessness research and practice fields. These understand housing need as a mental and physical health issue and a care and support need, with foundations in biographical and societal events, issues and experiences, including trauma. Responses to complex needs are conceptualised as enterprising in scope; articulated as fresh, proactive, preventative and positive. The article suggests that there are a range of legislative, policy and funding drivers for these developments, from across homelessness, housing support and adult social care fields, which are distinctive to the English context. At the same time, debates about what complex needs are, and how best to respond to them, are evident in international debates about service delivery models with homeless service users in the Global Western North. ‘Complex needs’ is defined as a travelling concept, with affective qualities, which provides foundation for practice interventions, techniques and principles in different locations. The article conceptualises institutional machinations around the governance of complex needs as ‘new markets of vulnerability’. This term theorises new markets and new marketising strategies around complex needs in the context of a much larger reconfiguring of the mixed economies of welfare around markets and market mimicking devices and practices. It is argued that the intensification of activities around complex needs give insight into processes of neoliberalisation in contemporary modernized welfare ‘mixes’

Asset-management framework(s) for infrastructure facilities in adverse (post-conflict/disaster-zone/high-alert) conditions

Public works departments have responsibility to manage and operate (transportation/water/power) infrastructure assets through careful planning and adoption of appropriate (facility) management techniques. Efficient asset-management becomes all the more important for countries subject to post-conflict/post-disaster adversity, not only to reactivate essential services, but also because programs that stimulate civil-engineering industry participation contribute much to recovery rates and can make-up 10% of a (recovering) nation's Gross Domestic Product. A good asset-management model needs to address key activities, communicate respective interconnectivities, and realize best practice. Limited study has been done into asset-management model frameworks that link directly with the change-management strategies required by recovering societies; this presents an obstacle to the prompt implementation of essential asset-management systems in sectors operating in adverse conditions. Asset-management techniques able to take account of the full range of factors in less stable environments require to link contributory variables including: dynamic user-needs analyses, life-cycle analysis, national design specifications, building codes, prefabrication opportunities, procurement routes, and project management tools towards re-build/retro-fitting.This early stage research project presents progress thus far in developing an integrative asset-management framework for infrastructure facilities in adverse/high-alert conditions using a multitude of North African case-study locations. Discussion centers upon developing framework(s) as a basis for workable procedures able to be amended with regard to (changing) design specifications/standards/legislation. Secondary research is presented that addresses the need to integrate economic whole-life evaluation techniques, asset-management tools and scopes in flux, and the extent to which such examination allows future development of flexible change-management for adverse situations towards incorporation into an integrative asset-management framework for infrastructure and civil engineering assets

Smoke and mirrors: some reflections on the science and politics of geoengineering

This article identifies and explores some of the political issues that will need to be addressed in the governance of geoengineering. It is argued that the diversity of different possible geoengineering techniques—encompassing solar radiation management (SRM) and carbon dioxide removal (CDR), and further divided into territorial techniques and commons-based techniques—rules out a single mode of geoengineering governance. Whereas some geoengineering techniques may be effective when implemented by a small number of countries, others would need to be implemented around the globe and involve most countries of the world, with different countries having different comparative advantages in the various geoengineering techniques. Such an enterprise would generate collective action problems related to implementation and disagreements over who should pay for the financial and nonfinancial costs of geoengineering. Nonetheless, a more coherent system of geoengineering governance is possible and is necessary if international conflict is to be avoided and the risks of unintended consequences are to be minimized. Any new international institutional design on geoengineering will need to address some pressing political and scientific questions, including the desired mean temperature of the world’s climate, the possible role of CDR technologies in carbon offsets and emissions-trading schemes, and whether there should be differentiated obligations between different groups of states