There is nothing honourable about honour killings: gender, violence and the limits of multiculturalism

'Honour killings' are extreme acts of domestic violence culminating in the murder of a woman by her family or community. However only in relation to religious and ethnic communities is the concept of 'honour' invoked as motivation for domestic violence. In this paper we argue that ethnicised women are caught up in a collision of discourses. Women who are victims of honour killings are invisible within the cultural relativism of the British multicultural discourse and the private/public divide which characterises the domestic violence discourse. But since September 11, while ethnicised women have become highly visible, they are now contained and constructed in the public consciousness within a discourse of fear and risk posed by the presence of the Muslim alien 'other'. By developing an effective human rights approach to honour killings it could be possible to move away from the 'gender trap' of cultural relativism within the liberal democratic discourse on multiculturalism

Shrewd Selection Speeds Surfing: Use Smart EXP3!

In this paper, we explore the use of multi-armed bandit online learning techniques to solve distributed resource selection problems. As an example, we focus on the problem of network selection. Mobile devices often have several wireless networks at their disposal. While choosing the right network is vital for good performance, a decentralized solution remains a challenge. The impressive theoretical properties of multi-armed bandit algorithms, like EXP3, suggest that it should work well for this type of problem. Yet, its real-word performance lags far behind. The main reasons are the hidden cost of switching networks and its slow rate of convergence. We propose Smart EXP3, a novel bandit-style algorithm that (a) retains the good theoretical properties of EXP3, (b) bounds the number of switches, and (c) yields significantly better performance in practice. We evaluate Smart EXP3 using simulations, controlled experiments, and real-world experiments. Results show that it stabilizes at the optimal state, achieves fairness among devices and gracefully deals with transient behaviors. In real world experiments, it can achieve 18% faster download over alternate strategies. We conclude that multi-armed bandit algorithms can play an important role in distributed resource selection problems, when practical concerns, such as switching costs and convergence time, are addressed.Comment: Full pape

Ealing brighter futures intensive engagement model: working with adolescents in and on the edge of care

Ealing’s Brighter Futures Intensive Engagement Model is a complex, whole system intervention that was launched in June 2015. Its implementation was intended to support and enable the children’s social care workforce to build effective, consistent relationships with adolescents, families, communities and carers, and to use those successful relationships to bring about positive change

Negotiating the diversity of 'everyday' multiculturalism: teachers' enactments in an inner city secondary school

This paper explores the presence of multiculturalism in teachers’ professional practice in a British inner city co-educational secondary school, which featured in two predominant ways: first, as a form of ‘diversity management’ through interventions including a formalised staffing structure to ‘respond’ to the school’s ethnically mixed student body, representation of difference, and same ‘race’ role models; and second, through its sedimentation into everyday practices, whereby teachers enacted multicultural approaches in varied ways. The multiple meanings teachers attached to multiculturalism and its subsequent translations into ‘everyday’ professional practice suggest that the term ‘everyday multiculturalism’ should be used beyond its ‘convivial’ meaning of living in/with ethnic diversity to also reflect the diverse professional enactments of multiculturalism through everyday practice in institutional settings. Further, an analytical focus on professionals in ‘everyday’ multiculturalism elucidates how teachers’ diverse enactments of multiculturalism perpetuate micro-processes of racialisation in schools

The Formative Intersections of “Race”, Nation, and Generation: Learning from “Care” in the Lives of Unaccompanied Child Migrants in England

In this talk, we explore how ‘race’, nation, and generation make and mark the category of the ‘unaccompanied minor’ in the UK’s border regime and, in so doing, shape their conditions of ‘care’. Drawing on participatory research with young unaccompanied migrants and interviews with adult professionals involved in their care from Children Caring on the Move (ESRC 2019-2023), we consider how ‘unaccompanied minors’ are rendered unchildlike, unknowing, and undeserving via neo-colonial and generational logics of development, civilisation, and normality. These discourses breed inaction from the state and often result in the substandard provision, or even absence, of statutory children’s services for unaccompanied young people. Our analysis offers insights into the ways that ‘race’, nation and generation are made ‘real’ in their everyday enactment, how the subjugation of unaccompanied children roosts in the routine and produces contemporary childhoods in a context of rising ethno-nationalism

Donor Tracker: An Innovative Real-Time Tracking System for Blood Donors in Mauritius

In Mauritius, caravans are sent around the island to collect blood from volunteers. This ensures that storage of pints of blood does not get depleted. However, in cases of urgent requirement of fresh blood, for instance an open heart surgery, it is very hard to quickly find a blood donor. The problem is even worse if the blood group is rare. In this paper, we explore the possibility of using location-aware computing to track blood donors in Mauritius and locate the nearest donor in cases of emergencies and whenever fresh blood is required. A number of blood donor management systems exist but none of them tracks the real-time location of blood donors. DonorTracker, the proposed innovative system, provides an easy and fast way to find a blood donor, thus saving time and saving lives.Keywords: Context-awareness, location-awareness, mobile and ubiquitous computing, location sensing technique, real-time