A case study of argumentation at undergraduate level in history

This article examines two essays by undergraduate students in the first year of study in History at a university in the UK. It also draws on documentary evidence from the department in question and interviews with the students themselves to paint a picture of the way argumentation operates at this level. While no firm conclusions can be drawn, the evidence suggests a department with a high degree of awareness of the importance of argument and argumentation in studying History; and students who are aware and articulate about the problem facing them in constructing essays in the discipline. Suggestions are made about induction into the epistemological and argumentative demands of undergraduate study

Maritime labour, transnational political trajectories and decolonisation from below: the opposition to the 1935 British Shipping Assistance Act

This paper uses a discussion of struggles over attempts by the National Union of Seamen to exclude seafarers form the maritime labour market in the inter-war period to contribute todebates at the intersection of maritime spaces and transnational labour geographies (cf Balachandran, 2012, Hogsbjerg, 2013). Through a focus on struggles over the British Shipping Assistance Act of 1935 it explores some of the transnational dynamics through which racialized forms of trade unionism were contested. I argue that the political trajectories, solidarities and spaces of organising constructed through the alliances which were produced to oppose the effects of the Act shaped articulations of ‘decolonisation from below’ (James, 2015). Engaging with the political trajectories and activity of activists from organisaions like the Colonial Seamen’s Association can open up both new ways of understanding the spatial politics of decolonisation and new accounts of who or how such processes were articulated and contested. The paper concludes by arguing that engagement with these struggles can help assert the importance of forms of subaltern agency in shaping processes of decolonisation

The diversity and complexity of the everyday lives of mixed racial and ethnic families: implications for adoption and fostering practice and policy

Recent research on mixed racial and ethnic couple and lone parents in Britain indicates that not only are they a diverse group, but that they also have a diversity of ways of understanding their difference and creating a sense of belonging for their children (Caballero, Edwards and Puthussery, 2008; Caballero, 2010; Caballero, 2011). Such research strongly challenges the idea that there is – or should be – a single benchmark of how to raise children from mixed racial and ethnic backgrounds. Nevertheless, placement decisions for children from mixed racial and ethnic backgrounds are often still rooted in longstanding and politicised assumptions about their identities and how best to instil a positive and healthy sense of self (Phoenix, 1999; Okitikpi, 2005; Goodyer and Okitikpi, 2007; Patel 2008).Drawing on three recent studies exploring the everyday experiences of lone and couple parents of mixed racial and ethnic children, this paper discusses the ways in which mixed racial and ethnic children who are not in the care system experience difference and belonging within their families and how they negotiate and manage these factors. In particular, the paper illustrates the types of strategies and supports that parents draw on to give their children a positive sense of identity and belonging, as well as the ways in which other issues can be more significant for mixed racial and ethnic children and their parents than what they often see as ‘ordinary’ internal family difference.Arguing that the demographics and experiences of mixed racial and ethnic families are much more diverse and complex than is commonly imagined, the authors thus ask to what extent do policies and practice around the placement of mixed racial and ethnic children reflect the lives of those families outside the care system and, moreover, in what ways can or should the experiences of these families inform policy and practice for those within it? The paper points to a number of implications for adoption and fostering practice and policies emerging from a more multifaceted understanding of the everyday lives of racially and ethnically mixed families as presented by the authors<br/