A qualitative exploration of the social construction of the asylum-seeker category in UK policy, media discourse and practioner work

This research investigates the complex relationship between the official categorization of asylum and the social construction of the asylum-seeker in the UK. I assess the role of categories, the process by which they are constructed and the purpose which they serve. Adopting an eclectic theoretical framework which focused on; social construction, the relationship between categorization and power and liquid modernity, the thesis consists of a series of three studies which aim to advance the discursive research on ‘asylum-seekers’ and ‘refugees’. The thesis addresses how the figure of the ‘asylum-seeker’ has become problematized. The three actors examined in the study play a combined role in the social construction of an asylum-seeker. Asylum policy, media reporting and practitioners collectively contribute to how asylum is defined and managed. The official categorization of asylum is consumed, produced and reproduced in society through a range of processes, all which shape and provide the changing meanings attached to the label ‘asylum-seeker’. Furthermore, I explore the relationship between the categories ‘asylum-seeker’ and related categories such as ‘refugee’ and ‘forced migrant’. Research has paid little attention to the connections and areas of intersectionality between these terms. This research addresses this gap in literature to provide new insights. The study integrates multiple perspectives that are rarely examined together, through qualitative multi-method research. Study one is a documentary thematic analysis of asylum policy which demonstrates both normative and evolving social constructions of ‘asylum-seekers’, ‘refugees’ and ‘migrants’ in policy discourse. Study two examines the social construction of ‘forced migrants’ in news reporting, employing summative content analysis, supplemented with two journalist interviews. It demonstrates the significance of the conflation of different migrant categories in framing our understandings of forced migration. Study three presents the interview data conducted with twenty-one practitioners employing theoretical thematic analysis. The analysis draws attention to both official and unofficial representations of asylum-seekers. In addition, the study sheds light on the relationship between the categories ‘asylum-seeker’ and ‘refugee’. This research adds to existing scholarship which maintains that a ‘new asylum paradigm’ is emerging, which has shifted the language of refugee protection. The thesis provides new empirical support to conceptualise the status of ‘refugees’ and ‘asylum-seekers’ as fluid rather than fixed and highlights the grey area of labelling in the field

Improving agricultural productivity for poverty alleviation through integrated service provision with public-private sector partnerships: Examples and issues

Irrigation management / Crop production / Productivity / Constraints / Poverty / Farmers’ associations / Public sector / Private sector / Models / Food security / Sugarcane / Rice

Liquid jet pumped by rising gas bubbles

A two-phase mathematical model is proposed for calculating the induced turbulent vertical liquid flow. Bubbles provide a large buoyancy force and the associated drag on the liquid moves the liquid upward. The liquid pumped upward consists of the bubble wakes and the liquid brought into the jet region by turbulent entrainment. The expansion of the gas bubbles as they rise through the liquid is taken into account. The continuity and momentum equations are solved numerically for an axisymmetric air jet submerged in water. Water pumping rates are obtained as a function of air flow rate and depth of submergence. Comparisons are made with limited experimental information in the literature

Combined radiation, convection, and conduction for a system with a partially transmitting wall

The net radiation method is developed for systems having both opaque and partially transparent walls. Heat convection is present at the surfaces and heat conduction through the windows is taken into account. Specific equations are derived for a window between two parallel plates, where one plate is at an elevated temperature typical of what would be encountered in an electric furnace, and the other plate is being cooled. A two-band model is used with cutoff wavelengths typical of glass or quartz. Numerical results are obtained for the window temperature and the heat flow through the window. The effect on these quantities of various plate temperatures and emissivities is shown

Delay Learning Architectures for Memory and Classification

We present a neuromorphic spiking neural network, the DELTRON, that can remember and store patterns by changing the delays of every connection as opposed to modifying the weights. The advantage of this architecture over traditional weight based ones is simpler hardware implementation without multipliers or digital-analog converters (DACs) as well as being suited to time-based computing. The name is derived due to similarity in the learning rule with an earlier architecture called Tempotron. The DELTRON can remember more patterns than other delay-based networks by modifying a few delays to remember the most 'salient' or synchronous part of every spike pattern. We present simulations of memory capacity and classification ability of the DELTRON for different random spatio-temporal spike patterns. The memory capacity for noisy spike patterns and missing spikes are also shown. Finally, we present SPICE simulation results of the core circuits involved in a reconfigurable mixed signal implementation of this architecture.Comment: 27 pages, 20 figure

Asset price bubbles: implications for monetary, regulatory, and international policies

Monetary policy ; Price regulation

Analysis and classification of myocardial infarction tissue from echocardiography images based on texture analysis

Texture analysis is an important characteristic for automatic visual inspection for surface and object identification from medical images and other type of images. This paper presents an application of wavelet extension and Gray level cooccurrence matrix (GLCM) for diagnosis of myocardial infarction tissue from echocardiography images. Many of applications approach have provided good result in different fields of application, but could not implemented at all when texture samples are small dimensions caused by low quality of images. Wavelet extension procedure is used to determine the frequency bands carrying the most information about the texture by decomposition images into multiple frequency bands and to form an image approximation with higher resolution. Thus, wavelet extension procedure offers the ability to robust feature extraction in images. The gray level co-occurrence matrices are computed for each sub-band. The feature vector of testing image and other feature vector as normal image classified by Mahalanobis distance to decide whether the test image is infarction or not

Health risks of irrigation with untreated urban wastewater in the southern Punjab, Pakistan

Irrigation water / Water quality / Water reuse / Waste waters / Risks / Public health / Diseases / Farmers / Pakistan / Southern Punjab / Haroonabad

Community perceptions of reasons for preference for consanguineous marriages in Pakistan

Although the recent Pakistan Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) show that two-thirds of marriages in Pakistan are consanguineous, the sociocultural determinants of such marriages remain largely unexplored. This paper examines the relative importance of the three commonly perceived reasons for such marriages: religious, economic and cultural. The analysis is based on qualitative data collected in 1995 from multi-ethnic and multireligious communities in Karachi, the largest city of Pakistan. Results show that consanguineous marriages are preferred across all ethnic and religious groups to a varying degree, and that parents continue to be the prime decision-makers for marriages of both sons and daughters. The major reasons for a preference for consanguineous marriages are sociocultural rather than any perceived economic benefits, either in the form of consolidation of family property or smaller and less expensive dowries. Among Muslims, following religious traditions is the least commonly cited reason for such marriages. Despite the reported sociocultural advantages of consanguineous marriages, such unions are perceived to be exploitative as they perpetuate the existing power structures within the family