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

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

Precarious care and (dis)connections: Adults working with separated child migrants in England and their understandings of care

Adult stakeholders who work with separated child migrants face a substantial challenge to their capacity or remit to care amid increasingly hostile immigration environments. This paper explores a diverse range of adult stakeholders’ understandings of the care of separated child migrants, filling an important gap in understanding how care is conceptualised by those working in often complex and contradictory positions. Drawing on the care literature, this study focuses on fifteen qualitative semi-structured interviews with state and non-state adult stakeholders in England (e.g. social work, law, police, NGO workers). We argue that stringent immigration practices, policies, bureaucracy and structural challenges undoubtedly present personal tensions and professional constraints for those whose role is meant to foreground ‘care.’ Importantly, when taking into account a range of different perspectives, roles and responsibilities across professions and sectors, our respondents were constrained in varying ways or had varying room to manoeuvre within their institutional contexts. Our analysis suggests that amid a hostile immigration environment, care connections with and between separated child migrants are treated with mistrust and are unstable over space and time. We argue that how care is conceptualised and experienced is mutually constituted by hostile policies and procedures, adult stakeholders’ roles within or out-with those systems, and their personal values and perspectives. It is within this space where constraints, enablers and resistances play out. Care is subjectively experienced and care relationships are open to potential (dis)connection across space and time

An absent presence: Separated child migrants’ caring practices and the fortified neoliberal state

This paper explores the ambivalent positioning of separated child migrants in the UK with a focus on the care that they provide for each other. Drawing on interview data with state and non-state adult stakeholders involved in the immigration-welfare nexus, we consider how children’s care practices are viewed and represented. We argue that separated children’s caring practices assume an absent presence in the discourses mobilised by these actors: either difficult to articulate or represented in negative and morally-laden terms, reflective of the UK’s 'hostile environment' towards migrants and advanced capitalist constructions of childhood. Such an examination sheds light on the complex state attempts to manage the care and migration regimes, and the way that care can serve as a way of making and marking inclusions and exclusions. Here we emphasise the political consequences for separated child migrants in an age of neoliberal state retrenchment from public provision of care and rising xenophobic nationalism

Respecting Difference : Race, faith and culture for teacher educators

Respecting Difference demonstrates how teacher educators in the UK and worldwide can attract, recruit and support black and minority ethnic students to become much-needed and valued future teachers and educational leaders. This accessible guide presents insights into the institutional and individual dilemmas and experiences of both tutors and students involved in Post-Graduate Certificate in Education (PGCE) courses as they deal with issues of race, faith and culture. While the book collects and shares good practice, case studies throughout the book highlight specific ways tutors and students have explored and learned from difficult situations to develop positive outcomes. Student experiences are fundamental in framing the outcomes, particularly in respect of racist incidents and the dynamics of institutional racism. The book demonstrates how to create spaces and networks where people can express themselves and seek support so that problems are recognised and resolved. The book includes: • A snapshot of policy and practice on the PGCE • Clear and up-to-date descriptions of race-relations policies, procedures and legislative guidance • Clarification of the responsibilities of tutors in relation to professional practice in issues of diversity • Case studies based on real examples, such as how to support Muslim women students, and how to deal with the sensitive topic of racism in the classroom. Respecting Difference is essential reading for all providers of initial teacher education (ITE) who need to consider their organisation’s—and individual—practice and policy in regard to recruitment and retention. While the book is essential reading for all those involved in ITE, it is also extremely relevant for all those working with students in higher education more generally

Gendered surveillance and the social construction of young Muslim women in schools

This chapter interrogates the ways in which young Muslim women are subject to the highly visible mainstream cultural discourses of gendered surveillance, risk, safety and well-being in schools in Britain. Drawing on interviews with 17 young Muslim women aged 16-19, the three dominant narrative constructions of young Muslim women centred on bodily regulation through the headscarf, families and community, and educational policy discourse. An intersectional theoretical framework illuminates how their gendered subjectivity and experiences in school were lived through Islamophobic discourses that circulated in educational spaces