Mothering in hostile environments: Migrant families negotiating the welfare and immigration regime nexus

This article examines the production, working and impact of the UK's hostile environment on migrant families with precarious legal status. Our approach is informed by two bodies of scholarly work: critical border studies and research on migrant families. We bridge these literatures to show how the hostile environment is neither a singular, neatly bounded space, nor limited to a set of interactions between immigration enforcement and a clear-cut group of people (so-called ‘illegal immigrants’). It affects the lives of a wider segment of the UK population, in particular racialised migrants and citizens, by making their legal status more insecure and precarious, and percolates in multiple and intersecting domains in the lives of families, such as education, housing and welfare, making them ambivalent sites of protection and safety as well as control and enforcement. Drawing on ethnographic engagement with families with insecure immigration statuses, we explore how the hostile environment manifests in the everyday lives of families; how the hostile environment circulates and is re-enacted within the micro-politics of families; and how families negotiate the continuous work of protecting children from the effects of the hostile environment. In conclusion we argue that dramatic and rapid shifts in immigration rules and regulations undermine the capacity of mothers to navigate the policy environment and welfare for their children and to shield them from the consequences of state-driven hostility towards immigrants

Reciprocity for new migrant integration: resource conservation, investment and exchange

In this paper we bring a new perspective to the understanding of migrant integration. We focus on how new migrants use reciprocity to make and sustain connections. In turn, we identify integration resources accessed through those connections and associated acts of reciprocal exchange. Using qualitative data collected in retrospective interviews from a maximum variation sample of new migrants arriving in the UK up to two years before interview we identify five interconnected sub-types of reciprocity and explore how these are used to replace or substitute resources lost through the act of migration. We argue that, contrary to Hobfoll’s (2011) ideas about conservation of resources in crisis, migrants use resource exchange strategies to develop social networks which may form important buffers against migratory stress and aid access to functional, psychological and affective resources that can further integration. The paper concludes by highlighting the significance of reciprocity in moving the theorisation of integration in new a new direction

Citizens of Nowhere? Paradoxes of State Parental Responsibility for Unaccompanied Migrant Children in the United Kingdom

Social workers are confronted with a contradictory task: that of acting as state parents for unaccompanied asylum seeking children, in an era of hostile migration policies and austerity. Mobilizing Young’s (2006) concept of ‘responsibility’ we ask: how is state parental responsibility towards unaccompanied minors given meaning, and with what consequences, for both frontline workers and unaccompanied minors alike? Drawing on interviews with frontline workers and unaccompanied minors in the UK (n = 107), we delineate three modes through which responsibility operates: namely outcomes, capacity and morality. We argue that the underlying logic of responsibility shifts the blame from sociopolitical structures to migrant children themselves, with crucial consequences for questions of social justice

Applying the Verona Coding Definitions of Emotional Sequences (VR-CoDES) in the dental context involving patients with complex communication needs : an exploratory study

This study was conducted as part of a larger collaborative study funded by the EPSRC, between the University of St Andrews and the University of Dundee.Objective The VR-CoDES has been previously applied in the dental context. However, we know little about how dental patients with intellectual disabilities (ID) and complex communication needs express their emotional distress during dental visits. This is the first study explored the applicability of the VR-CoDES to a dental context involving patients with ID. Methods Fourteen dental consultations were video recorded and coded using the VR-CoDES, assisted with the additional guidelines for the VR-CoDES in a dental context. Both inter- and intra-coder reliabilities were checked on the seven consultations where cues were observed. Results Sixteen cues (eight non-verbal) were identified within seven of the 14 consultations. Twenty responses were observed (12 reducing space) with four multiple responses. Cohen's Kappa were 0.76 (inter-coder) and 0.88 (intra-coder). Conclusion With the additional guidelines, cues and responses were reliably identified. Cue expression was exhibited by non-verbal expression of emotion with people with ID in the literature. Further guidance is needed to improve the coding accuracy on multiple providers’ responses and to investigate potential impacts of conflicting responses on patients. Practice implications The findings provided a useful initial step towards an ongoing exploration of how healthcare providers identify and manage emotional distress of patients with ID.PostprintPeer reviewe

Welcoming Acts Temporality and Aff ect among Volunteer Humanitarians in the UK and USA

15 pagesThis article compares local volunteer mobilizations offering welcome to forced migrants in the USA (Oregon) and UK (Yorkshire). We contribute to literature on volunteer-based humanitarianism by attending to the importance of affect and temporality in the politics of welcoming acts, presenting the notion of “affective arcs.” While extant literature argues that volunteers become increasingly contestational, we identify a countertendency as volunteers move from outrage toward pragmatism. Through long-term ethnographic engagement, we argue that affective arcs reveal a particular understanding of “the political” and an underlying belief in a fair nation state that has not reckoned with colonial legacies in migration governance. By carefully tracing affective arcs of volunteer humanitarian acts, this article offers original insights into the constrained political possibilities of these local forms of welcome

After encounters:revealing patients’ unseen work through their pathways to care

Purpose – Research has long focused on the notion of access and the trajectory towards a healthcare encounter but has neglected what happens to patients after these initial encounters. This paper focuses attention on what happens after an initial healthcare encounter leading to a more nuanced understanding of how patients from a diverse range of backgrounds make sense of medical advice,how they mix this knowledge with other forms of information and how they make decisions about what to do next.Design/methodology/approach – Drawing on 160 in-depth interviews across four European countries the paper problematizes the notion of access; expands the definition of ‘‘decision partners’’; and reframes the medical encounter as a journey, where one encounter leads to and informs the next.Findings – This approach reveals the significant unseen, unrecognised and unacknowledged work that patients undertake to solve their health concerns.Originality/value – De-centring the professional from the healthcare encounter allows us to understand why patients take particular pathways to care and how resources might be more appropriately leveraged to support both patients and professionals along this journey