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Adamus M, Ballová Mikušková E, Kačmár P, Guzi M, Adamkovič M, Chayinska M, Adam-Troian J. The mediating effect of institutional trust in the relationship between precarity and conspiracy beliefs: A conceptual replication of Adam-Troian et al. (2023). Br J Soc Psychol 2024. [PMID: 38270221 DOI: 10.1111/bjso.12725] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/28/2023] [Revised: 01/06/2024] [Accepted: 01/10/2024] [Indexed: 01/26/2024]
Abstract
The paper reports the results of registered conceptual replications of the indirect effect of institutional trust in the relationship between precarity and the endorsement of conspiracy beliefs (CB). The original study of Adam-Troian et al. (2023; British Journal of Social Psychology, 62(S1), 136-159) indicated that subjective appraisals of economic hardship are associated with lower trust in governments and institutions, which in turn is associated with stronger endorsement of CB. Our Studies 1 to 3 report a series of replications using Slovak panel data. Study 4 reports a replication of the mediation model using data from the European Social Survey Round 10 collected in 17 countries. To provide a quantitative synthesis of these and previous results, we conducted mini meta-analysis (N = 50,340). Although the strength of the observed relationships differed across the studies to some degree, the original patterns of relations remained robust, supporting the original model. The study corroborates the view that to curb the spread of CB, it is necessary to address structural issues, such as growing financial insecurity, socioeconomic inequalities, and the deficit of institutional trust. Finally, we discuss the role of cultural and political settings in conditioning the mechanisms through which precarity enhances the endorsement of CB.
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Affiliation(s)
- Magdalena Adamus
- Faculty of Economics and Administration, Masaryk University, Brno, Czechia
- Centre of Social and Psychological Sciences, Slovak Academy of Sciences, Bratislava, Slovakia
| | - Eva Ballová Mikušková
- Centre of Social and Psychological Sciences, Slovak Academy of Sciences, Bratislava, Slovakia
| | - Pavol Kačmár
- Faculty of Arts, Pavol Jozef Šafárik University, Košice, Slovakia
| | - Martin Guzi
- Faculty of Economics and Administration, Masaryk University, Brno, Czechia
| | - Matuš Adamkovič
- Centre of Social and Psychological Sciences, Slovak Academy of Sciences, Bratislava, Slovakia
- Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Jyväskylä, Jyväskylä, Finland
| | - Maria Chayinska
- Department of Cognitive, Psychological and Pedagogical Sciences, and Cultural Studies, University of Messina, Messina, Italy
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2
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Vaugoyeau E, Rambliere L, David M, Lemguarni H, Le Gac S, Pasquet-Cadre A, Rasli S, Ghosn J, Rozenbaum W, Bouvet E, Prioux M. Proof of concept of a sexual health outreach program led by community health workers in homeless hostels in the greater Paris region. Front Public Health 2024; 11:1305874. [PMID: 38283290 PMCID: PMC10811606 DOI: 10.3389/fpubh.2023.1305874] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/02/2023] [Accepted: 12/12/2023] [Indexed: 01/30/2024] Open
Abstract
Context Homeless individuals face exacerbated risks of infectious diseases, including sexually transmitted infections (STIs). Programs led by Community Health Workers (CHWs) have demonstrated potential to enhance healthcare access for marginalized groups such as homeless families. This study aims to evaluate the feasibility and effectiveness of a novel CHW-based outreach program addressing sexual health issues among individuals residing in homeless hostels. Methods Twelve social homeless hostels in the greater Paris region were selected as program implementation sites. An outreach program was developed consisting of two interventions: sexual health workshops and STI screening sessions (HIV and hepatitis B and C) accompanied by individual interviews, both conducted by CHWs within each hostel over an 8-week period and scheduled weekly. Feasibility, participation and engagement were evaluated using complementary methods including qualitative field observations, semi-structured interviews and focus groups with CHWs, satisfaction questionnaires for participants, and quantitative outcome data collection of each intervention. Results A total of 80 program activities (workshops and screening sessions) were conducted. Among the participants, 542 women and 30 men engaged in workshops. During the 30 Rapid Diagnostic Testing sessions, 150 individuals underwent testing for HIV, hepatitis B, and/or hepatitis C. Positivity rates were 6.7% for hepatitis B and 0.9% for hepatitis C. No HIV infections were detected. Participant satisfaction rates were consistently high (>76%) across workshops. Qualitative analysis unveiled two critical axes influencing program feasibility and effectiveness: program organization and CHW involvement. Discussion This assessment of the program highlights its feasibility among a population that is difficult to reach through conventional healthcare efforts. The intervention's potential effectiveness is suggested by self- and CHW-reported improvements in sexual health literacy and high rates of referral to the healthcare system, as well as holistic well-being considerations. CHW involvement is a vital determinant of program success, as are robust coordination among stakeholders, deep understanding of the target population, and strong partner engagement. Conclusion This outreach program amplifies the voices of often-overlooked populations while empowering them to navigate health and social challenges. Although these workshops serve as lifelines for those frequently excluded from mainstream services, long-term improvements to the health and wellbeing of homeless populations will necessitate systemic governmental intervention.
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Affiliation(s)
| | - Lison Rambliere
- Observatoire du Samusocial de Paris, Samusocial de Paris, Paris, France
| | - Manon David
- Pôle DELTA, Samusocial de Paris, Paris, France
| | | | | | | | - Samy Rasli
- Pôle DELTA, Samusocial de Paris, Paris, France
| | - Jade Ghosn
- COREVIH Île-de-France Nord, Paris, France
| | | | | | - Maëlle Prioux
- Pôle médical et soins, Samusocial de Paris, Paris, France
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3
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De Lange T, Falkenhain M. Precarity prevented or reinforced? Migrants' right to change employers in the recast of the EU Single Permit Directive. Front Sociol 2024; 8:1267235. [PMID: 38282750 PMCID: PMC10817776 DOI: 10.3389/fsoc.2023.1267235] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/26/2023] [Accepted: 12/19/2023] [Indexed: 01/30/2024]
Abstract
Labor migration policies within the European Union and its Member States typically address two conflictive labor market policy goals. They aim to attract and retain foreign workers in a situation of labor shortage, while at the same time protecting the national workforce from additional labor market competition. The balancing of these two goals is commonly resolved in favor of nationals and with fewer rights for migrant workers. It is precisely this nexus between migrant rights and the protection of the national workforce that is central to the understudied question of whether and under what conditions migrant workers from third countries (i.e. non-EU countries) may change their employer to quit low-quality work or exploitative employment, or for career reasons. Building on scholarly discussions on employer dependency and bureaucratic complexity as general sources of migrant precarity, as well as on international and EU law on the rights of migrant workers, this article presents three policy variations of the right to change employers currently in place in the European context. Thereby we fill a gap in the literature on labor migration, labor market regulation, and migrant workers' rights. To illustrate the mixed ambitions of EU institutions to reduce migrant precarity the article then presents and critically discusses the high-level negotiations over the recast of the EU Single Permit Directive 2011/98 that were centered around the right to change employers.
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Affiliation(s)
- Tesseltje De Lange
- Faculty of Law, Centre for Migration Law, Radboud University, Nijmegen, Netherlands
| | - Mariella Falkenhain
- Research Unit Joblessness and Social Inclusion, Institute for Employment Research (IAB), Nuremberg, Germany
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Chávez S, Bozick R, Li J. How Housing, Employment, and Legal Precarity Affect the Sleep of Migrant Workers: A Mixed-Methods Study. J Health Soc Behav 2024:221465231214825. [PMID: 38192210 DOI: 10.1177/00221465231214825] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 01/10/2024]
Abstract
In the United States, natural disasters have increased in frequency and intensity, causing significant damage to communities, infrastructure, and human life. Migrant workers form part of a growing occupational group that rebuilds in the aftermath of natural disasters like hurricanes and tornadoes. The work these migrant workers perform is essential but also unstable, exploitative, and dangerous, which stresses their health and well-being. This study focuses on the health and well-being of migrant roofers, a precarious occupational group who restores communities and helps the U.S. population adjust to a climate-changed world. Using surveys (n = 365) and in-depth interviews (n = 58) from a convenience sample of migrant roofers, we examine how precarity in terms of employment, housing, and legal status affect the sleep outcomes of these workers, who derive their income from an industry where instability is the norm, live in substandard and irregular housing, and lack workplace protections given their legal status.
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Affiliation(s)
| | | | - Jing Li
- Rice University, Houston, TX, USA
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5
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DeJong S, Blamey C. Top Shelf Drinks, Bottom Line Play: Examining Representations of Class in Bartending and Mixology Games. Games Cult 2023; 18:622-642. [PMID: 37305847 PMCID: PMC10251459 DOI: 10.1177/15554120221119962] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 06/13/2023]
Abstract
There is an emerging body of games that simulate the labor of drink making and serving at the forefront of play through the role of a bartender or artisanal mixologist. Both are working class but the creative variance between them challenges how economic precarity is understood. The authors ask how this translates to video games when these positions are foregrounded. How do play, poverty, and precarity interconnect in drink making and serving games? Through the qualitative analysis of four games that put the player in the position of bartender or mixologist, this paper shows how creative labor and precarity are illuminated or obfuscated through mechanics and narrative. In doing so, it argues how games, as one form of media, obscure or make visible labor and precarity to players and simultaneously reinforce the romanticization of often exploited creative labor. These findings prompt further questions and research directions on representations of working-class labor.
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Affiliation(s)
- Scott DeJong
- Communication, Concordia University, Montreal, Canada
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6
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Rambliere L, Leservoisier C, Bedo Y, Macalli M, Lebugle A, Douay C, Guénée L. Major depressive disorder in post-secondary students attending foodbanks in France. Front Public Health 2023; 11:1177617. [PMID: 37427275 PMCID: PMC10325617 DOI: 10.3389/fpubh.2023.1177617] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/01/2023] [Accepted: 05/31/2023] [Indexed: 07/11/2023] Open
Abstract
Introduction Poor mental health among youth is a major public health issue that has risen to the forefront since the COVID-19 crisis, especially among post-secondary students and precarious populations. The objectives of this work were to evaluate the rate of major depressive disorder (MDD) among precarious post-secondary students in the greater Paris region, to describe its risk factors, and to identify determinants for not seeking care. Methods We conducted a multi-site, cross-sectional survey of post-secondary students attending a selection of 13 student foodbanks in the greater Paris region (France) between 30 November 2021 and 27 January 2022. This study had two complementary epidemiological and sociological components: a quantitative description of MDD through completion of a questionnaire performed through face-to-face or telephone interviews, and a qualitative assessment of the factors underlying MDD through in-depth follow-up interviews conducted among a sub-selection of students who participated in the first phase. Results Among 456 students who participated in our survey, 35.7% presented with MDD. The risk of suffering from MDD was higher among women, students housed by third-parties, students reporting moderately to severely hungry and/or poor physical health. Students receiving material and/or social support were less likely to present with MDD. Among students who reported needing health care in the last year or since their arrival in France, 51.4% did not seek care. Conclusion To address poor mental health among precarious students, policy action must jointly consider financial precarity, administrative barriers, housing, food security, physical health, and access to health services, especially mental health.
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Affiliation(s)
- Lison Rambliere
- Observatoire du Samusocial de Paris, Samusocial de Paris, Ivry-sur-seine, France
| | | | - Ysé Bedo
- Observatoire du Samusocial de Paris, Samusocial de Paris, Ivry-sur-seine, France
| | - Melissa Macalli
- University of Bordeaux, Inserm, Bordeaux Population Health Research Center, U1219, CHU Bordeaux, Bordeaux, France
| | - Amandine Lebugle
- Observatoire du Samusocial de Paris, Samusocial de Paris, Ivry-sur-seine, France
| | - Caroline Douay
- Observatoire du Samusocial de Paris, Samusocial de Paris, Ivry-sur-seine, France
| | - Lorraine Guénée
- Observatoire du Samusocial de Paris, Samusocial de Paris, Ivry-sur-seine, France
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7
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Dotsey S, Lumley-Sapanski A, Ambrosini M. COVID-19 and (Im)migrant Carers in Italy: The Production of Carer Precarity. Int J Environ Res Public Health 2023; 20:6108. [PMID: 37372695 DOI: 10.3390/ijerph20126108] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/05/2023] [Revised: 06/06/2023] [Accepted: 06/07/2023] [Indexed: 06/29/2023]
Abstract
This article explores the impact of COVID-19 restrictions on foreign health workers in Italy. Focusing on caregivers in Lombardia, we explore what we call carer precarity, an emergent form of precarity resulting from pandemic restrictions exacerbating existing socio-legal vulnerabilities. The duality of the carer role-complete household and societal reliance in addition to simultaneous socio-legal marginalization-shapes their precarity. Utilizing data from 44 qualitative interviews with migrant care workers in live-in and daycare facilities that were conducted prior to and during the COVID-19 pandemic in Italy, we demonstrate how the migrant populations working in the care sector were particularly adversely affected due to their migratory status and working conditions. Migrants are excluded from or have differential access to a range of benefits or entitlements and are employed in undervalued work. Workers with live-in employment experienced tiered access to benefits plus the spatiality of restrictions, resulting in their near-complete confinement. Drawing on Gardner (2022) and Butler's (2009) conceptualizations of precarity, we describe the emergence of a new form of pandemic-induced spatial precarity for migrant care workers at the nexus of gendered labor, limited mobility, and the spatiality of and a hierarchy of rights associated with migratory status. The findings have implications for healthcare policy and migration scholarship.
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Affiliation(s)
- Senyo Dotsey
- Department of Social and Political Sciences, University of Milan, 20122 Milan, Italy
| | | | - Maurizio Ambrosini
- Department of Social and Political Sciences, University of Milan, 20122 Milan, Italy
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8
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Stoyanova K, Stoyanov D, Dzhambov AM. Retrospective Analysis of the Psychological Predictors of Public Health Support in Bulgarians at the Beginning of the Coronavirus Pandemic. Brain Sci 2023; 13:brainsci13050821. [PMID: 37239293 DOI: 10.3390/brainsci13050821] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/23/2023] [Revised: 05/16/2023] [Accepted: 05/17/2023] [Indexed: 05/28/2023] Open
Abstract
The earliest critical context of the pandemic, preceding the first real epidemiological wave of contagion in Bulgaria, was examined using a socio-affective perspective. A retrospective and agnostic analytical approach was adopted. Our goal was to identify traits and trends that explain public health support (PHS) of Bulgarians during the first two months of the declared state of emergency. We investigated a set of variables with a unified method within an international scientific network named the International Collaboration on Social & Moral Psychology of COVID-19 (ICSMP) in April and May 2020. A total of 733 Bulgarians participated in the study (67.3% females), with an average age of 31.8 years (SD = 11.66). Conspiracy Theories Beliefs were a significant predictor of lower PHS. Psychological Well-Being was significantly associated with Physical Contact and Anti-Corona Policy Support. Physical Contact was significantly predicted by fewer Conspiracy Theories Beliefs, higher Collective Narcissism, Open-mindedness, higher Trait Self-Control, Moral Identity, Risk Perception and Psychological Well-Being. Physical Hygiene compliance was predicted by fewer Conspiracy Theories Beliefs, Collective Narcissism, Morality-as-Cooperation, Moral Identity and Psychological Well-Being. The results revealed two polar trends of support and non-support of public health policies. The contribution of this study is in providing evidence for the affective polarization and phenomenology of (non)precarity during the outbreak of the pandemic.
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Affiliation(s)
- Kristina Stoyanova
- Research Institute at Medical University of Plovdiv, Research Group "Translational and Computational Neuroscience", Strategic Research and Innovation Program for Development of MU-Plovdiv, Medical University of Plovdiv, 4002 Plovdiv, Bulgaria
| | - Drozdstoy Stoyanov
- Research Institute at Medical University of Plovdiv, Research Group "Translational and Computational Neuroscience", Strategic Research and Innovation Program for Development of MU-Plovdiv, Medical University of Plovdiv, 4002 Plovdiv, Bulgaria
- Department of Psychiatry and Medical Psychology, Medical University of Plovdiv, 4002 Plovdiv, Bulgaria
| | - Angel M Dzhambov
- Department of Hygiene, Faculty of Public Health, Medical University of Plovdiv, 4002 Plovdiv, Bulgaria
- Research Group "Health and Quality of Life in a Green and Sustainable Environment", Strategic Research and Innovation Program for Development of MU-Plovdiv, Medical University of Plovdiv, 4002 Plovdiv, Bulgaria
- Institute of Highway Engineering and Transport Planning, Graz University of Technology, 8010 Graz, Austria
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9
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Sabot P, Di Martino C, Moroni C, Pentini AA, Pabjan B, Machado MMP, Katkonienė A, Czajkowski P, Bardauskienė R, Beuscart JB. Reconsidering frailty from a human and social sciences standpoint: towards an interdisciplinary approach to vulnerability. Age Ageing 2023; 52:7147821. [PMID: 37130592 DOI: 10.1093/ageing/afad064] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/07/2022] [Indexed: 05/04/2023] Open
Abstract
Although frailty is an important, well-characterized concept in the provision of medical care to older adults, it has not been linked to the concept of vulnerability developed in the humanities and social sciences. Here, we distinguish between the two main dimensions of vulnerability: a fundamental, anthropological dimension in which people are exposed to a risk of injury, and a relational dimension in which people depend on each other and on their environment. The relational notion of vulnerability might provide healthcare professionals with a better understanding of frailty (and its potential interaction with precarity). Precarity situates people in their relationship with a social environment that might threaten their living conditions. Frailty corresponds to individual-level changes in adaptation to a living environment and the loss of ability to evolve or react in that environment. Therefore, we suggest that by considering the geriatric notion of frailty as a particular form of relational vulnerability, healthcare professionals could better understand the specific needs of frail, older people-and thus provide more appropriate care.
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Affiliation(s)
- Philippe Sabot
- Department of Philosophy, Univ. Lille, CNRS, UMR 8163-STL-Savoirs Textes Langage, Lille F-59000, France
| | - Carla Di Martino
- Univ. Lille, CHU Lille, ULR 2694-METRICS: Évaluation des technologies de santé et des pratiques médicales, Lille F-59000, France
| | - Christine Moroni
- Department of Psychology, Univ. Lille, ULR 4072-PSITEC-Psychologie: Interactions, Temps, Emotions, Cognition, Lille F-59000, France
| | | | - Barbara Pabjan
- Institute of Sociology, University of Wrocław, Wrocław, Poland
| | - Maria Manuela Pereira Machado
- Health Sciences Research Unit: Nursing (UICISA:E/ESEnfC_ESE/UMinho), School of Nursing (ESE UMinho), University of Minho Braga 4710-057, Portugal
| | - Agata Katkonienė
- Faculty of Human and Social Studies, Mykolas Romeris University, Vilnius LT-08303, Lithuania
| | | | - Raminta Bardauskienė
- Faculty of Human and Social Studies, Mykolas Romeris University, Vilnius LT-08303, Lithuania
| | - Jean-Baptiste Beuscart
- Univ. Lille, CHU Lille, ULR 2694-METRICS: Évaluation des technologies de santé et des pratiques médicales, Lille F-59000, France
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10
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van Pinxteren M, Mbokazi N, Murphy K, Mair FS, May C, Levitt N. The impact of persistent precarity on patients' capacity to manage their treatment burden: A comparative qualitative study between urban and rural patients with multimorbidity in South Africa. Front Med (Lausanne) 2023; 10:1061190. [PMID: 37064034 PMCID: PMC10098191 DOI: 10.3389/fmed.2023.1061190] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/04/2022] [Accepted: 03/07/2023] [Indexed: 04/18/2023] Open
Abstract
Background People living with multimorbidity in low-and middle-income countries (LMICs) experience a high workload trying to meet the demands of self-management. In an unequal society like South Africa, many people face continuous economic uncertainty, which can impact on their capacity to manage their illnesses and lead to poor health outcomes. Using precariousness - the real and perceived impact of uncertainty - as a lens, this paper aims to identify, characterise, and understand the workload and capacity associated with self-management amongst people with multimorbidity living in precarious circumstances in urban and rural South Africa. Methods We conducted qualitative semi-structured interviews with 30 patients with HIV and co-morbidities between February and April 2021. Patients were attending public clinics in Cape Town (Western Cape) and Bulungula (Eastern Cape). Interviews were transcribed and data analysed using qualitative framework analysis. Burden of Treatment Theory (BoTT) and the Cumulative Complexity Model (CuCoM) were used as theoretical lenses through which to conceptualise the data. Results People with multimorbidity in rural and urban South Africa experienced multi-faceted precariousness, including financial and housing insecurity, dangerous living circumstances and exposure to violence. Women felt unsafe in their communities and sometimes their homes, whilst men struggled with substance use and a lack of social support. Older patients relied on small income grants often shared with others, whilst younger patients struggled to find stable employment and combine self-management with family responsibilities. Precariousness impacted access to health services and information and peoples' ability to buy healthy foods and out-of-pocket medication, thus increasing their treatment burden and reducing their capacity. Conclusion This study highlights that precariousness reduces the capacity and increases treatment burden for patients with multimorbidity in low-income settings in South Africa. Precariousness is both accumulative and cyclic, as financial insecurity impacts every aspect of peoples' daily lives. Findings emphasise that current models examining treatment burden need to be adapted to accommodate patients' experiences in low-income settings and address cumulative precariousness. Understanding treatment burden and capacity for patients in LMICs is a crucial first step to redesign health systems which aim to improve self-management and offer comprehensive person-centred care.
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Affiliation(s)
- Myrna van Pinxteren
- Chronic Disease Initiative for Africa, Department of Medicine, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa
| | - Nonzuzo Mbokazi
- Chronic Disease Initiative for Africa, Department of Medicine, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa
| | - Katherine Murphy
- Chronic Disease Initiative for Africa, Department of Medicine, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa
| | - Frances S. Mair
- School of Health and Well-Being, College of Medical, Veterinary and Life Sciences, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, United Kingdom
| | - Carl May
- Department of Health Services Research and Policy, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London, United Kingdom
- NIHR North Thames Applied Research Collaboration, London, United Kingdom
| | - Naomi Levitt
- Chronic Disease Initiative for Africa, Department of Medicine, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa
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11
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Vasil S. "I Came Here, and it Got Worse Day by Day": Examining the Intersections Between Migrant Precarity and Family Violence Among Women with Insecure Migration Status in Australia. Violence Against Women 2023:10778012231159414. [PMID: 36913733 DOI: 10.1177/10778012231159414] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 03/14/2023]
Abstract
While understanding the diversity of women's lived experiences is a key focus area in the international feminist literature on family violence, research with migrant women in Australia remains limited. This article seeks to contribute to the growing body of intersectional feminist scholarship that examines how immigration or "migration status" impacts the dynamics of migrant women's experiences of family violence. The article examines precarity in relation to migrant women's lives in Australia and focuses on the ways that their specific circumstances contribute to and are compounded by the experience of family violence. It also considers how precarity functions as a structural condition that has implications in terms of various forms or patterns of inequality that can heighten women's vulnerability to violence and undermine their efforts to ensure their safety and survival.
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Affiliation(s)
- Stefani Vasil
- Monash Gender and Family Violence Prevention Centre, Monash University, Clayton, Victoria, Australia
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12
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Abstract
The arts and creative industries are among those most affected by government measures to contain the Covid-19 pandemic. This article discusses a qualitative survey study, open between August and October 2020, with creative arts workers living in Victoria, Australia. The study explored experiences of disruptions to work and broader impacts on daily lives during the pandemic. In this article, we examine how participants discuss their work and circulate pre-existing and create new intensified social imaginaries of a devalued and ignored arts sector in Australia. Our analysis points to how people understand their lives, work and communities amidst a global pandemic in relation to and entangled with particular social imaginaries of the creative arts.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jacinthe Flore
- Jacinthe Flore, Social and Global Studies
Centre, School of Global, Urban and Social Studies, RMIT University, GPO Box
2476, Melbourne, VIC 3001, Australia.
| | | | - Averyl Gaylor
- RMIT University, Australia
- La Trobe University, Australia
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Rhodes T, Kyaw KWY, Harris M. Precarious Lives, Precarious Treatments: Making Drug Treatment Work in Northern Myanmar. Med Anthropol 2023; 42:4-20. [PMID: 36306464 DOI: 10.1080/01459740.2022.2133706] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 02/04/2023]
Abstract
We explore how precarious livelihoods intersect with precarious treatments for heroin dependency in a setting affected by longstanding conflicts and an illicit drug economy as well as by recent events of pandemic and political change. Working with 33 qualitative interviews with people who inject drugs in Kachin State, northern Myanmar, we explore how drug dependency treatment, especially methadone substitution, is made to work in efforts to sustain everyday livelihoods. Our analysis attends to the work that is done to enable therapeutic trajectories to emerge as "generous constraints" in precarity. We trace methadone substitution as an emergent intervention of livelihood survival.
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Affiliation(s)
- Tim Rhodes
- Department of Public Health, Environments and Society, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London, UK
| | - Khine Wut Yee Kyaw
- Department of Public Health, Environments and Society, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London, UK
| | - Magdalena Harris
- Department of Public Health, Environments and Society, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London, UK
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14
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Albayrak-Aydemir N, Gleibs IH. A social-psychological examination of academic precarity as an organizational practice and subjective experience. Br J Soc Psychol 2023; 62 Suppl 1:95-110. [PMID: 36411241 PMCID: PMC10099343 DOI: 10.1111/bjso.12607] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/31/2021] [Accepted: 11/04/2022] [Indexed: 11/23/2022]
Abstract
Research and teaching conditions have, particularly for those who are junior or from disadvantaged backgrounds, deteriorated considerably over the years in the higher education sector. Unequal opportunities in access and advancement in careers have led to increasing levels of precarity in the higher education sector. Although the concept of precarity has been grasped in many other disciplines, the social-psychological understanding of this concept remains unexplored. In this paper, we aim to develop a social-psychological understanding of precarity to examine how identity dynamics and intergroup relations, as well as associated organizational controls, reinforce inequality regimes and power structures that create precarious conditions in academia. In doing so, we use social identity theory and system justification theory under an inequality regime framework. We argue that even though change towards equality and equity in academia should be possible, it is difficult to achieve this because of entrenched identity interests by power holders and the perceived legitimacy of the existing system. Therefore, academic precarity should be recognized both as a subjective experience and as an organizational practice to make inequalities more visible and decrease the perceptions of legitimacy-and to eventually achieve a fundamental positive transformation in academia.
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Affiliation(s)
- Nihan Albayrak-Aydemir
- The Open University, Milton Keynes, UK.,London School of Economics and Political Science, London, UK
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15
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Fine M. Prec(ar)ious knowledge and the neoliberal academy: Towards re-imagining epistemic justice and critical psychology. Br J Soc Psychol 2023; 62 Suppl 1:180-193. [PMID: 36576304 PMCID: PMC10108082 DOI: 10.1111/bjso.12617] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/18/2022] [Revised: 11/30/2022] [Accepted: 12/01/2022] [Indexed: 12/29/2022]
Abstract
This epilogue is written in the ink of gratitude and provocation, reflecting on the essays that constitute the special issue on precarity. I briefly review the key gifts of the essays and then try to imagine how a social psychology of precarity could be theorized and engaged otherwise, with commitments to epistemic justice, designed with decolonizing methodologies and organized in solidarity with movements for social justice.
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Affiliation(s)
- Michelle Fine
- The CUNY Graduate Center, Critical Psychology, The Public Science Project, CUNY, New York, New York, USA.,Visiting Scholar at University of South Africa, Pretoria, South Africa
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16
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Abstract
This article introduces the special issue 'Towards a Social Psychology of Precarity' that develops an orienting lens for social psychologists' engagement with the concept. As guest editors of the special issue, we provide a thematic overview of how 'precarity' is being conceptualized throughout the social sciences, before distilling the nine contributions to the special issue. In so doing, we trace the ways in which social psychologists are (dis)engaging with the concept of precarity, yet too, explore how precarity constitutes, and is embedded within, the discipline itself. Resisting disciplinary decadence, we collectively explore what a social psychology of precarity could be, and view working with/in precarity as fundamental to addressing broader calls for the social responsiveness of the discipline. The contributing papers, which are methodologically pluralistic and provide rich conceptualisations of precarity, challenge reductionist individualist understandings of suffering and coping and extend social science theorizations on precarity. They also highlight the ways in which social psychology remains complicit in perpetuating different forms of precarity, for both communities and academics. We propose future directions for the social psychological study of precarity through four reflexive questions that we encourage scholars to engage with so that we may both work with/in, and intervene against, 'the precarious'.
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Affiliation(s)
- Clare Coultas
- School of Education, Communication and Society, King's College London, London, UK
| | - Geetha Reddy
- Department of Psychology and Counselling, Open University, Milton Keynes, UK
| | - Johanna Lukate
- Max-Planck-Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity, Göttingen, Germany
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17
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Symeonaki M, Stamatopoulou G, Parsanoglou D. Measuring the unmeasurable: defining and rating precarity with the aid of EU-LFS data. SN Soc Sci 2023; 3:67. [PMID: 36974124 PMCID: PMC10032629 DOI: 10.1007/s43545-023-00651-5] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/08/2022] [Accepted: 02/26/2023] [Indexed: 03/24/2023]
Abstract
Precarity has been established as a central theoretical issue in labour market research and numerous attempts have been made in the past to provide indicators that measure it. Precarity has also been present in political discourse and linked to specific new forms of employment (temporary, part-time, insecure, and atypical amongst others) and certain social groups often defined as vulnerable groups (youth, women, ethnic minorities). However, precarity still remains a phenomenon that needs to be quantified with the use of reliable data. The present paper aims at providing a methodology for measuring individuals that are in precarious employment with data drawn from the EU-Labour Force Survey (EU-LFS). Thus, it presents a way of identifying individuals in the core of precarity and others that belong to this set to a lesser degree. More specifically, four different levels of precarity are identified and the methodology is illustrated and tested for a specific case study, that of Greece. However, the proposed technique can be applied with no or minor modifications to other data sets of EU member states, where the common EU-LFS questionnaire is used. An effort is also made to recognise the socio-demographic characteristics of the individuals that are identified as being precarious belonging to the four levels of precarity and to specify their differences. The analysis yields that as we move from the fist level of weak precarity to the last one of strong precarity the individuals become younger, worse paid and better educated.
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Affiliation(s)
- Maria Symeonaki
- grid.14906.3a0000 0004 0622 3029Department of Social Policy, School of Political Sciences, Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences, 136 Syggrou Av., 17671 Athens, Greece
| | - Glykeria Stamatopoulou
- grid.14906.3a0000 0004 0622 3029Department of Social Policy, School of Political Sciences, Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences, 136 Syggrou Av., 17671 Athens, Greece
| | - Dimitrios Parsanoglou
- grid.14906.3a0000 0004 0622 3029Department of Social Policy, School of Political Sciences, Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences, 136 Syggrou Av., 17671 Athens, Greece
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18
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Adam-Troian J, Chayinska M, Paladino MP, Uluğ ÖM, Vaes J, Wagner-Egger P. Of precarity and conspiracy: Introducing a socio-functional model of conspiracy beliefs. Br J Soc Psychol 2023; 62 Suppl 1:136-159. [PMID: 36366839 PMCID: PMC10100481 DOI: 10.1111/bjso.12597] [Citation(s) in RCA: 6] [Impact Index Per Article: 6.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/07/2021] [Revised: 10/22/2022] [Accepted: 10/26/2022] [Indexed: 11/13/2022]
Abstract
Conspiracy Beliefs (CB) are a key vector of violent extremism, radicalism and unconventional political events. So far, social-psychological research has extensively documented how cognitive, emotional and intergroup factors can promote CB. Evidence also suggests that adherence to CB moves along social class lines: low-income and low-education are among the most robust predictors of CB. Yet, the potential role of precarity-the subjective experience of permanent insecurity stemming from objective material strain-in shaping CB remains largely unexplored. In this paper, we propose for the first time a socio-functional model of CB. We test the hypothesis that precarity could foster increased CB because it undermines trust in government and the broader political 'elites'. Data from the World Value Survey (n = 21,650; Study 1, electoral CB) and from representative samples from polls conducted in France (n = 1760, Study 2a, conspiracy mentality) and Italy (n = 2196, Study 2b, COVID-19 CB), corroborate a mediation model whereby precarity is directly and indirectly associated with lower trust in authorities and higher CB. In addition, these links are robust to adjustment on income, self-reported SES and education. Considering precarity allows for a truly social-psychological understanding of CB as the by-product of structural issues (e.g. growing inequalities). Results from our socio-functional model suggest that implementing solutions at the socio-economic level could prove efficient in fighting CB.
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Affiliation(s)
| | - Maria Chayinska
- Department of Cognitive, Psychological, and Pedagogical Sciences, University of Messina, Messina, Italy
| | - Maria Paola Paladino
- Department of Psychology and Cognitive Science, University of Trento, Trento, Italy
| | | | - Jeroen Vaes
- Department of Psychology and Cognitive Science, University of Trento, Trento, Italy
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19
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Macharia P, Moore S, Thomann M, Mwangi P, Kombo B, King R, Lazarus L, Lorway R. The precarity of mobile loan debt and repayment among female sex workers in Nairobi, Kenya: Implications for sexual health. Glob Public Health 2023; 18:2184484. [PMID: 36934431 DOI: 10.1080/17441692.2023.2184484] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 03/20/2023]
Abstract
Financial technology tools have been utilised to create readily available mobile loan platforms for urban-based, daily-wage earners in Kenya. From a financial lending perspective, this development signals greater inclusion and equality in formal bank financing systems. In this paper, however, we examine mobile loans and their repayment from the perspective of women who sell sex in Nairobi, drawing upon the qualitative findings of two community-based studies conducted in close collaboration with sex worker-led organisations serving the sexual health needs of their peers. Our findings suggest that mobile loans may undermine the financial security strategies and economic independence of sex workers, leaving these women in more precarious economic circumstances, which have been shown in other instances to have effects on sexual risk taking and vulnerability to HIV infection.
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Affiliation(s)
- Pascal Macharia
- Health Options for Young Men Against STI/HIV/AIDS, Nairobi, Kenya
| | - Samantha Moore
- Rady Faculty of Health Sciences, Department of Community Health Sciences, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada
| | - Matthew Thomann
- Department of Anthropology, University of Maryland at College Park, College Park, MD, USA
| | - Peninah Mwangi
- Bar Hostess Empowerment and Support Program, Nairobi, Kenya
| | - Bernadette Kombo
- Rady Faculty of Health Sciences, Department of Community Health Sciences, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada
| | - Regine King
- Faculty of Social Work, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada
| | - Lisa Lazarus
- Rady Faculty of Health Sciences, Department of Community Health Sciences, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada
| | - Robert Lorway
- Rady Faculty of Health Sciences, Department of Community Health Sciences, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada
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20
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Josephi B, O'Donnell P. The blurring line between freelance journalists and self-employed media workers. Journalism (Lond) 2023; 24:139-156. [PMID: 36777088 PMCID: PMC9902803 DOI: 10.1177/14648849221086806] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 06/18/2023]
Abstract
This study uses the question, 'what makes a freelancer specifically a journalist' as a starting point for investigating the ways Australian freelance journalists experienced and managed precarious employment in COVID-19 impacted 2020. Drawing on qualitative interviews with 32 self-identified freelance journalists, we analyse the types of work they did, the influence of the precarious job situation on their work choices and the consequent ways they chose to display their identity as journalists. Our findings reveal a complex picture, which calls into question some of the binaries established around journalism. While nearly all participants had to resort to work outside journalism in 2020, at least half still displayed strong links to journalism, demonstrated by their sense of belonging to a community of journalists, and their continued interest in doing self-funded public interest journalism as 'passion projects'. However, we also noticed a blurring between the descriptors of journalist and writer, based partly on employment opportunities but also, importantly, on interest in increasing creativity in the journalistic space. These results lead us to question work-test definitions as a signifier of a freelancer's bond to journalism and to propose, instead, that freelancers merit a new standing in the flattening hierarchy of journalism.
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Affiliation(s)
- Beate Josephi
- Department of Media and Communications, The University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia
| | - Penny O'Donnell
- Department of Media and Communications, The University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia
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21
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Mahendran K, Nieland S, English A, Goodman S. No borders on a fragile planet: Introducing four lay models of social psychological precarity to support global human identification and citizenship. Br J Soc Psychol 2023; 62 Suppl 1:160-179. [PMID: 36504159 PMCID: PMC10107308 DOI: 10.1111/bjso.12605] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/31/2021] [Revised: 11/04/2022] [Accepted: 11/08/2022] [Indexed: 12/15/2022]
Abstract
Measures such as Identification with all humanity (IWAH) and global identification and citizenship (GHIC) are positivity correlated with measures of humanitarianism, cosmopolitanism and environmental concern. Research using these measures suggests that most citizens have low-global identification scores. This article sheds light on this finding by investigating how global identification relates to precarity and migration (neither of which are measured in the IWAH/GHIC). The study conducted in England, Scotland and Sweden introduces a qualitative dialogical approach to GHIC. This involves measuring migration-mobility in dialogical interviews and controlling and removing borders on world maps-using an interactive world mapping task (N = 23). Participants articulate four social representations relating to a fragile earth, enduring colonial settler/native conflict, ingroup/outgroup conflict or, in contrast, a cooperative plentiful planet where borders are unnecessary. Such social representations demonstrate the importance of planetary consciousness and relate to four lay models of social psychological precarity related to intergroup competition, global conflict, economic rationality and human-made borders. In conclusion, all participants employ lay models of social psychological precarity when discussing sovereignty, migration and belonging. We recommend psychologists investigating GHIC include measures of social psychological precarity and migration-mobility.
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22
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Reddy G, Amer A. Precarious engagements and the politics of knowledge production: Listening to calls for reorienting hegemonic social psychology. Br J Soc Psychol 2023; 62 Suppl 1:71-94. [PMID: 36537619 PMCID: PMC10107756 DOI: 10.1111/bjso.12609] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/21/2022] [Revised: 11/06/2022] [Accepted: 11/08/2022] [Indexed: 12/30/2022]
Abstract
In this paper, we invite psychologists to reflect on and recognize how knowledge is produced in the field of social psychology. Engaging with the work of decolonial, liberation and critical psychology scholars, we provide a six-point lens on precarity that facilitates a deeper understanding of knowledge production in hegemonic social psychology and academia at large. We conceptualize knowledge (re)production in psychology as five interdependent 'cogs' within the neoliberal machinery of academia, which cannot be viewed in isolation; (1) its epistemological foundations rooted in coloniality, (2) the methods and standards it uses to understand human thoughts, feelings and behaviours, (3) the documentation of its knowledge, (4) the dissemination of its knowledge and (5) the universalization of psychological theories. With this paper we also claim our space in academia as early career researchers of colour who inhabit the margins of hegemonic social psychology. We join scholars around the world in calling for a much-needed disciplinary shift that centres solutions to the many forms of violence that are inflicted upon marginalized members of the global majority. To conclude, we offer four political-personal intentions for the reorientation for the discipline of hegemonic social psychology with the aim to disrupt the politics of knowledge production and eradicate precarity.
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Affiliation(s)
- Geetha Reddy
- School of Psychology and Counselling, Open University, Milton Keynes, UK
| | - Amena Amer
- School of Human Sciences, Faculty of Education, Health and Human Sciences, University of Greenwich, London, UK
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23
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Seng S, Feuer HN, Charoenratana S. The Role of Food Literacy in Managing Nutritional Precarity in the Migrant Experience: Dietary Lifestyles of Cambodia Migrants in Thailand. Nutrients 2022; 14. [PMID: 36558539 DOI: 10.3390/nu14245380] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/13/2022] [Revised: 12/10/2022] [Accepted: 12/15/2022] [Indexed: 12/23/2022] Open
Abstract
The paper explores the dietary lifestyles of young Cambodian migrants in Thailand to illuminate the role of food literacy in determining nutritional outcomes and well-being, including during crises, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. In this context, food literacy is defined as food skills and abilities to plan, select, and prepare to achieve adequate consumption under new or adverse social and culinary contexts of the migrant experience. In this paper, we consider both how nutritional precarity arises in the migrant experience, and to what extent food literacy can mitigate it under various conditions. The research approach involves a combination of qualitative and quantitative approaches that were adjusted to address the limited mobility for social science research during the COVID-19 pandemic in Thailand. Data collection was conducted through hybrid (online and in-person) ethnography, focus group discussions, food literacy questionnaires, and key informant interviews, often facilitated through internet messaging clients. The findings indicate that, while generally high food literacy may facilitate the transition to the foreign food systems found in migration destinations, optimizing nutrition and well-being requires reinforcement by context-specific food literacy, such as openness to foreign flavors and recipes. Contextual food literacy most directly leads to positive social and health outcomes while simultaneously expanding universal food literacy in the long-term.
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24
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Kwak YK, Wang MS. Exclusion or Inclusion: National Differential Regulations of Migrant Workers' Employment, Social Protection, and Migrations Policies on Im/Mobilities in East Asia-Examples of South Korea and Taiwan. Int J Environ Res Public Health 2022; 19:16270. [PMID: 36498343 PMCID: PMC9739234 DOI: 10.3390/ijerph192316270] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/14/2022] [Revised: 11/16/2022] [Accepted: 11/25/2022] [Indexed: 06/17/2023]
Abstract
Low fertility rates and an aging society, growing long-term care needs, and workforce shortages in professional, industrial, and care sectors are emerging issues in South Korea and Taiwan. Both governments have pursued economic/industrial growth as productive welfare capitalism and enacted preferred selective migration policies to recruit white-collar migrant workers (MWs) as mobile elites, but they have also adopted regulations and limitations on blue-collar MWs through unfree labor relations, precarious employment, and temporary legal status to provide supplemental labor. In order to demonstrate how multiple policy regulations from a national level affect MWs' precarity of labor in their receiving countries, which in turn affect MWs' im/mobilities, this article presents the growing trends of transnational MWs, regardless of them being high- or low-skilled MWs, and it evaluates four dimensions of labor migration policies-MWs' working and employment conditions, social protection, union rights and political participation, and access to permanent residency in both countries. We found that the rights and working conditions of low-skilled MWs in Korea and Taiwan are improving slowly, but still lag behind those of high-skilled MWs which also affects their public health and well-being. The significant difference identified here is that MWs in Taiwan can organize labor unions, which is strictly prohibited in Korea; pension protection also differs between the nations. Additionally, an application for permanent residency is easier for high-skilled migrant workers compared with low-skilled MWs and both the Korean and Taiwanese immigration policies differentiate the entry and resident status for low-skilled and professional MWs from dissimilar class backgrounds. Policy recommendations for both countries are also discussed.
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Affiliation(s)
- Yoon Kyung Kwak
- Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs, Sejong-si 030147, Republic of Korea
| | - Ming Sheng Wang
- Graduate Institute of Social Work, National Chengchi University, Taipei 116011, Taiwan
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25
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Earle S, Blackburn M, Chambers L, Downing J, Flemming K, Hale J, Marston HR, O’Dell L, Sinason V, Watts L, Whitney S. 'Whose life are They Going to Save? It's Probably Not Going to be Mine!' Living With a Life-Shortening Condition During the Coronavirus (COVID-19) Pandemic: A Grounded Theory Study of Embodied Precarity. Qual Health Res 2022; 32:2055-2065. [PMID: 36250473 PMCID: PMC9574525 DOI: 10.1177/10497323221131692] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 06/16/2023]
Abstract
This article explores the experiences of young adults with a life-shortening condition in the first wave of the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic in the UK. It presents the findings from an inclusive qualitative research study using constructivist grounded theory which aimed to examine the unintended consequences of pandemic control measures (lockdown and 'shielding') on this population. Purposive and theoretical sampling methods were used to recruit young adults with a life-shortening condition, employing a range of recruitment methods such as social media, advertising in newsletters and snowballing. Twenty-six young adults (aged 22-40 years), with a wide range of life-shortening conditions participated in the study. Seventeen participants were female and nine male. The majority identified as White British/Other and the remainder as Black British (2), Mixed Race (2) or Latin American (1). Data were generated iteratively using in-depth guided interviews and analysed collectively by an inclusive research team using the constant comparative method. The article explores a theory of embodied precariousness of living with a life-shortening condition during the first wave of the Coronavirus pandemic in relation to three categories: the rationing of life-saving treatment, the deterioration of health and retraction of healthcare provision, and the disruption of typical care arrangements. The findings show that the pandemic control measures introduced to keep people safe have intensified the precarity of this group promoting inequalities in healthcare and health outcomes. The article identifies some implications for practice to support the future management of unexpected and unwanted change.
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Affiliation(s)
| | | | | | - Julia Downing
- International Children’s Palliative Care
Network, UK/South Africa
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26
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Heney V, Poleykett B. The impossibility of engaged research: Complicity and accountability between researchers, 'publics' and institutions. Sociol Health Illn 2022; 44 Suppl 1:179-194. [PMID: 34874575 DOI: 10.1111/1467-9566.13418] [Citation(s) in RCA: 8] [Impact Index Per Article: 4.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/01/2021] [Accepted: 10/28/2021] [Indexed: 06/13/2023]
Abstract
Over the past decade, U.K. universities have increasingly sought to involve publics in research as active participants in the construction of academic knowledge. Sociologists of health have largely welcomed this enthusiasm for engaged and participatory ways of working, including methodologies long in use in the field such as patient-led research and co-creation. Despite the strong interest in engaged research, however, we argue that funding patterns, bureaucratic structures and an overreliance on people employed on casual contracts make it extremely difficult, often impossible, to do engaged research in British universities. Drawing on our own experiences, we show how our attempts to practise and deepen accountability to variously situated publics were constrained by the way our institution imagined and materially supported engagement. We argue that it falls to individual researchers to mitigate or work around structural barriers to engagement, and that this process creates dilemmas of complicity. If engaged research is to fulfil its remit for inclusion and its radical potential, researchers need to think carefully about how the U.K. engagement agenda entwines with processes of casualisation, acceleration and projectification, and how institutional recuperations of engagement can undermine its political and epistemic objectives.
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Affiliation(s)
- Veronica Heney
- Wellcome Centre for Cultures and Environments of Health, University of Exeter, Exeter, UK
| | - Branwyn Poleykett
- Faculty of Social & Behavioural Sciences, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
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27
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Wolf AB. COVID and the Risky Immigrant Workplace: How Declining Employment Standards Socialized Risk and Made the COVID-19 Pandemic Worse. Labor Stud J 2022; 47:286-319. [PMID: 38603091 PMCID: PMC9253681 DOI: 10.1177/0160449x221110276] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/16/2022]
Abstract
This article investigates the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic in NYC as they were concentrated on immigrant workers and their communities, studying one group of immigrant workers, namely taxi drivers. Based on two years of ethnographic research with the New York Taxi Workers Alliance, a union of 24,000 taxi and app-based drivers in NYC, conducted before and during the pandemic, as well as formal interviews and an original survey of 1,002 union members, my research shows how drivers' precarious existence in the work-citizenship nexus informed their experiences of sustaining their families during the pandemic. COVID highlighted how the welfare state's increasing privatization of risk, the fissuring of the workplace, and the rise in employment precarity have generated an immigrant underclass. This manifested in immigrant drivers experiencing the pandemic through the lens of specific uncertainties-health, economic, bureaucratic, and immigration-that shaped their unequal access to pandemic support. This process in turn produced a boomerang effect, as immigrant drivers' weaker connection to state and social institutions made it harder to contain the virus in their communities, a development which ultimately puts society writ large at greater risk. This article advances our knowledge of precious employment by introducing the concept of uncertainties to explain the socio-cultural aspects of how crises of social reproduction are generated. It also extends our understanding of the decline of the welfare and regulatory state by showing how this process interacts with immigrant status.
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Affiliation(s)
- Andrew B. Wolf
- Department of Sociology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Brooklyn, NY, USA
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28
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Hougaard IM. Rural precarity: relational autonomy, ecological dependence and political immobilisation in the agro-industrial margin. J Peasant Stud 2022; 50:2437-2456. [PMID: 38013880 PMCID: PMC10545403 DOI: 10.1080/03066150.2022.2101097] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/29/2023]
Abstract
Across the world, economic interests and state-making interventions have converged in dispossessing rural and urban dwellers. Drawing on literature on rural transformation, precarity, and life after dispossession, this paper explores how lifeworlds are constructed after dispossession. Based on ethnographic research in an Afro-descendant village in agro-industrial Colombia, I analyse five income-generating activities that together point to rural precarity, characterised by uncertain labour relations, fragile conditions of life, ecological dependence, and reconfigured rural relations. While villagers construct their lifeworlds around community, autonomy, and recognition, the constant search for income and reconfigured rural relations uphold and deepen inequalities in the agro-industrial margin.
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Affiliation(s)
- Inge-Merete Hougaard
- Department of Food and Resource Economics, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark
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29
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De Backer K, Brown JM, Easter A, Khazaezadeh N, Rajasingam D, Sandall J, Magee LA, Silverio SA. Precarity and preparedness during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic: A qualitative service evaluation of maternity healthcare professionals. Acta Obstet Gynecol Scand 2022; 101:1227-1237. [PMID: 35950575 PMCID: PMC9538337 DOI: 10.1111/aogs.14438] [Citation(s) in RCA: 4] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/28/2022] [Revised: 07/05/2022] [Accepted: 07/25/2022] [Indexed: 11/28/2022]
Abstract
Introduction The SARS‐CoV‐2 pandemic has devastated populations, posing unprecedented challenges for healthcare services, staff and service‐users. In the UK, rapid reconfiguration of maternity healthcare service provision changed the landscape of antenatal, intrapartum and postnatal care. This study aimed to explore the experiences of maternity services staff who provided maternity care during the SARS‐CoV‐2 pandemic to inform future improvements in care. Material and methods A qualitative interview service evaluation was undertaken at a single maternity service in an NHS Trust, South London. Respondents (n = 29) were recruited using a critical case purposeful sample of maternity services staff. Interviews were conducted using video‐conferencing software, and were transcribed and analyzed using Grounded Theory Analysis appropriate for cross‐disciplinary health research. The focus of analysis was on staff experiences of delivering maternity services and care during the SARS‐CoV‐2 pandemic. Results A theory of “Precarity and Preparedness” was developed, comprising three main emergent themes: “Endemic precarity: A health system under pressure”; “A top‐down approach to managing the health system shock”; and “From un(der)‐prepared to future flourishing”. Conclusions Maternity services in the UK were under significant strain and were inherently precarious. This was exacerbated by the SARS‐CoV‐2 pandemic, which saw further disruption to service provision, fragmentation of care and pre‐existing staff shortages. Positive changes are required to improve staff retention and team cohesion, and ensure patient‐centered care remains at the heart of maternity care.
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Affiliation(s)
- Kaat De Backer
- Department of Women & Children's Health, School of Life Course & Population Sciences, Faculty of Life Sciences & Medicine, King's College London, London, UK
| | - Jeremy M Brown
- Medical School, Health Research Institute, Faculty of Health, Social Care & Medicine, Edge Hill University, Ormskirk, UK
| | - Abigail Easter
- Department of Women & Children's Health, School of Life Course & Population Sciences, Faculty of Life Sciences & Medicine, King's College London, London, UK
| | | | - Daghni Rajasingam
- Maternity Services, St. Thomas' Hospital, Guy's and St. Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust, London, UK
| | - Jane Sandall
- Department of Women & Children's Health, School of Life Course & Population Sciences, Faculty of Life Sciences & Medicine, King's College London, London, UK
| | - Laura A Magee
- Department of Women & Children's Health, School of Life Course & Population Sciences, Faculty of Life Sciences & Medicine, King's College London, London, UK
| | - Sergio A Silverio
- Department of Women & Children's Health, School of Life Course & Population Sciences, Faculty of Life Sciences & Medicine, King's College London, London, UK
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Warran K, May T, Fancourt D, Burton A. Understanding changes to perceived socioeconomic and psychosocial adversities during COVID-19 for UK freelance cultural workers. Cult Trends 2022; 32:449-473. [PMID: 38601794 PMCID: PMC11005917 DOI: 10.1080/09548963.2022.2082270] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 04/12/2024]
Abstract
There is a dearth of qualitative research exploring how freelancers working in the cultural industries have been affected during COVID-19. In particular, there is a lack of research exploring how socioeconomic and psychosocial adversities may have changed or evolved, and how these changes have been perceived and subjectively experienced by freelance cultural workers. This study builds on qualitative interviews carried out in July-November 2020 (n = 20) by exploring findings from follow-up interviews conducted in May-July 2021 (n = 16). It presents an inequality of experiences connected to a range of socioeconomic and psychosocial factors, showing how some freelancers experienced small changes (e.g. to the kind of work carried out), with others experiencing major changes (e.g. leaving the sector completely). It concludes with a call for highly bespoke financial and psychological support, as well as a need to rethink what cultural value is for this workforce in the "new normal", considering changing valuing processes.
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Affiliation(s)
- Katey Warran
- Research Department of Behavioural Science and Health, Institute of Epidemiology & Health Care, University College London, London, UK
| | - Tom May
- Research Department of Behavioural Science and Health, Institute of Epidemiology & Health Care, University College London, London, UK
| | - Daisy Fancourt
- Research Department of Behavioural Science and Health, Institute of Epidemiology & Health Care, University College London, London, UK
| | - Alexandra Burton
- Research Department of Behavioural Science and Health, Institute of Epidemiology & Health Care, University College London, London, UK
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31
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Sigmund K. COVID-19 and decreased asylum access: mother work, precarity and preocupación among Central American asylum-seekers in Los Angeles. Ethn Racial Stud 2022; 46:295-315. [PMID: 36523746 PMCID: PMC9744180 DOI: 10.1080/01419870.2022.2079382] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/06/2021] [Accepted: 05/10/2022] [Indexed: 06/17/2023]
Abstract
In 2020, the public health response to the COVID-19 pandemic and the U.S. government's increased legal restrictions on asylum-seekers acted together to increase social, economic and legal precarity in the lives of Central American asylum-seeking mothers in Los Angeles. In this context, these asylum-seeking mothers discussed their intersectional precarities through the idiom of distress "preocupación", which signalled the concerns, worries, and fears they had in relation to the daily mother work of raising their children. Using ethnographic data collected during the COVID-19 pandemic, I examine how the intersectional precarities Central American asylum-seeking mothers faced necessitated protecting their children from their own preocupación. Through this, I argue that by using the analytic of preocupación it is possible to see exactly how racial and legal barriers to care increase precarity in the lives of asylum-seeking mothers in the U.S., and the detrimental impact that intersectional precarities have on asylum-seekers' mother work today.
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Affiliation(s)
- Kim Sigmund
- Department of Anthropology, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands
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32
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Banerjee S, Wilks L. Work in pandemic times: Exploring precarious continuities in paid domestic work in India. Gend Work Organ 2022:GWAO12858. [PMID: 35942415 PMCID: PMC9348274 DOI: 10.1111/gwao.12858] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/01/2021] [Revised: 02/22/2022] [Accepted: 04/21/2022] [Indexed: 11/28/2022]
Abstract
Research on crisis have brought to fore the necessity of studying the gendered impact of such events. Covid-19 too has shown how gender relations play a role in the political economy of crisis, relief and response as well as recovery. This article focusses on the experiences of paid domestic workers in India who are among the most invisible and marginalized of India's informal workers and largely excluded from labor discourse and employment legislation. With Covid-19, the precariousness characterizing the sector has also been further exposed and exacerbated, with vast numbers of workers now facing significant challenges to livelihood, as well as several new/additional pressures and risks, both at work and at home. In this article, we examine these Covid-related challenges, drawing on interviews conducted with domestic workers, NGO practitioners, and labor rights' activists in Delhi and Kolkata between April and August 2020. We show how, during the national lockdown, many domestic workers in these cities experienced increased insecurity related to jobs and housing, as well as an increased control and surveillance at home. Furthermore, with the partial easing of lockdown and the associated 'return' to work, many experienced reduced bargaining power at work, increasingly blurred roles, and heavier workloads. Workers also experienced more overt forms of avoidance behavior, linked to ideas of caste/class and more recent notions of 'hygiene'/'distancing'. In detailing these experiences and contextualizing them within a much longer history of invisibilization and marginalization facing workers engaged in social reproduction, we draw attention to what we call the 'precarious continuities' in paid domestic work. We argue that the crisis allows for a lens to widen the theoretical understanding around social reproduction as a form of underpaid and devalued labor.
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Nayiga S, Denyer Willis L, Staedke SG, Chandler CI. Taking Opportunities, Taking Medicines: Antibiotic Use in Rural Eastern Uganda. Med Anthropol 2022; 41:418-430. [PMID: 35324360 PMCID: PMC10040720 DOI: 10.1080/01459740.2022.2047676] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 10/18/2022]
Abstract
The ways in which dimensions of health and healthcare intersect with economics and politics in particular contexts requires close attention. In this article we connect concerns about antibiotic overuse in Uganda to the social milieu created through policies that follow President Museveni's vision for a population who kulembeka, "tap wealth." Ethnographic fieldwork in rural Eastern Uganda illustrates how taking medicines in rural households reflects a wider landscape of everyday imperatives to "tap" opportunities in a context of acute precarity. We argue for a closer connection between medical and economic anthropology to push forward understanding of health, medicines and wellbeing in Africa.
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Affiliation(s)
- Susan Nayiga
- Infectious Diseases Research Collaboration, Kampala, Uganda.,Department of Global Health and Development, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, London, UK
| | | | - Sarah G Staedke
- Infectious Diseases Research Collaboration, Kampala, Uganda.,Department of Clinical Research, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, London, UK
| | - Clare Ir Chandler
- Department of Global Health and Development, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, London, UK
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Abstract
The onset of COVID-19, coupled with the finer lens placed on systemic racial disparities within our society, has resulted in increased discussions around mental health. Despite this, mental health struggles in research are still often viewed as individual weaknesses and not the result of a larger dysfunctional research culture. Mental health interventions in the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) academic community often focus on what individuals can do to improve their mental health instead of focusing on improving the research environment. In this paper, we present four aspects of research that may heavily impact mental health based on our experiences as research scientists: bullying and harassment; precarity of contracts; diversity, inclusion, and accessibility; and the competitive research landscape. Based on these aspects, we propose systemic changes that institutions must adopt to ensure their research culture is supportive and allows everyone to thrive.
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Affiliation(s)
- Juanita C Limas
- Department of Pharmacology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, USA
| | | | | | - Ana E Cartaya
- Department of Surgery, Center for Nanotechnology in Drug Delivery, Department of Pharmacology, McAllister Heart Institute, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, USA
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35
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Ali I, Ali S. Why May COVID-19 Overwhelm Low-Income Countries Like Pakistan? Disaster Med Public Health Prep 2022; 16:316-320. [PMID: 32907694 PMCID: PMC7674821 DOI: 10.1017/dmp.2020.329] [Citation(s) in RCA: 20] [Impact Index Per Article: 10.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/14/2020] [Revised: 08/16/2020] [Accepted: 08/27/2020] [Indexed: 02/06/2023]
Abstract
Since the coronavirus disease 2019, called COVID-19, has overwhelmed the high-income countries with ample resources and established health-care system, we argue that there are plausible concerns why it may devastate the low-income countries like Pakistan. Focusing on Pakistan, we highlight the underlying reasons, eg, demographic features, ineffective health-care system, economic and political inequalities, corruption, and socio-cultural characteristics, that create fertile grounds for COVID-19 to overwhelm low-income countries. This study presents Pakistan's brief profile to demonstrate these underlying structures that may make low-income countries like Pakistan more vulnerable in the face of an unceasing COVID-19 pandemic. The study concludes that the country may make appropriate and possibly effective short-term preparedness measures to halt or slow the transmission of the virus, and deal with its current implications as well as it may pay significant attention to long-term measures to deal effectively with COVID-19's longer-term effects. These measures will help them, including Pakistan, to deal appropriately with a similar future critical event.
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Affiliation(s)
- Inayat Ali
- Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Vienna, Austria
| | - Shahbaz Ali
- Department of Anthropology, PMAS-Arid Agriculture University Rawalpindi, Pakistan
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36
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Pazderka H, Shalaby R, Eboreime E, Mao W, Obuobi-Donkor G, Agyapong B, Oluwasina F, Adu MK, Owusu E, Sapara A, Agyapong VIO. Isolation, Economic Precarity, and Previous Mental Health Issues as Predictors of PTSD Status in Females Living in Fort McMurray During COVID-19. Front Psychiatry 2022; 13:837713. [PMID: 35370820 PMCID: PMC8975535 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyt.2022.837713] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Journal Information] [Submit a Manuscript] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/17/2021] [Accepted: 02/17/2022] [Indexed: 11/17/2022] Open
Abstract
OBJECTIVES The COVID-19 pandemic represents an instance of collective trauma across the globe; as such, it is unique to our lifetimes. COVID-19 has made clear systemic disparities in terms of access to healthcare and economic precarity. Our objective was to examine the mental health repercussions of COVID-19 on adult females living in Fort McMurray, Canada in light of their unique circumstances and challenges. METHOD To investigate this issue, we analyzed responses gathered from an anonymous cross-section of online survey questionnaire responses gathered from females living in the Fort McMurray area (n = 159) during the COVID-19 pandemic (April 24-June 2, 2021). This included relevant demographic, mental health history, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), as well as COVID-19 data. Chi-squared analysis was used to determine outcome relevance, and binary logistic regression was employed to generate a model of susceptibility to PTSD. RESULTS 159 females completed the survey. The prevalence of putative PTSD in our sample was 40.8%. A regression analysis revealed 4 variables with significant, unique contributions to PTSD. These were: a diagnosis of depression; a diagnosis of anxiety; job loss due to COVID-19; and lack of support from family and friends. Specifically, women with a previous diagnosis of either depression or anxiety were ~4-5 times more likely to present with PTSD symptomatology in the wake of COVID-19 (OR = 3.846; 95% CI: 1.13-13.13 for depression; OR = 5.190; 95% CI: 1.42-19.00 for anxiety). Women who reported having lost their jobs as a result of the pandemic were ~5 times more likely to show evidence of probable PTSD (OR = 5.182; 95% CI: 1.08-24.85). Receiving inadequate support from family and friends made the individual approximately four times as likely to develop probable PTSD (OR = 4.258; 95% CI: 1.24-14.65), while controlling for the other variables in the regression model. CONCLUSIONS Overall, these results support our hypothesis that volatility in factors such as social support, economic stability, and mental health work together to increase the probability of women developing PTSD in response to a collective trauma such as COVID-19.
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Affiliation(s)
- Hannah Pazderka
- Department of Psychiatry, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada.,Be Brave Ranch, Centre for Treatment of Child Sexual Abuse, Edmonton, AB, Canada
| | - Reham Shalaby
- Department of Psychiatry, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada
| | - Ejemai Eboreime
- Department of Psychiatry, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada.,Global Psychological E-Health Foundation, Edmonton, AB, Canada
| | - Wanying Mao
- Department of Psychiatry, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada
| | | | - Belinda Agyapong
- Department of Psychiatry, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada.,Global Psychological E-Health Foundation, Edmonton, AB, Canada
| | | | - Medard Kofi Adu
- Department of Psychiatry, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada
| | - Ernest Owusu
- Department of Psychiatry, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada
| | - Adegboyega Sapara
- Department of Psychiatry, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada.,Global Psychological E-Health Foundation, Edmonton, AB, Canada
| | - Vincent I O Agyapong
- Department of Psychiatry, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada.,Global Psychological E-Health Foundation, Edmonton, AB, Canada.,Department of Psychiatry, Dalhousie University, Halifax, NS, Canada
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Lotto M, Fontaine H, Marcellin F, Périères L, Bureau-Stoltmann M, Carrat F, Pol S, Zoulim F, Carrieri P. Hepatitis Delta virus in migrants: The challenge of elimination (ANRS CO22 HEPATHER cohort). Liver Int 2022; 42:249-252. [PMID: 34825765 DOI: 10.1111/liv.15106] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Submit a Manuscript] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/22/2021] [Revised: 11/17/2021] [Accepted: 11/18/2021] [Indexed: 02/13/2023]
Abstract
Novel treatments for hepatitis Delta virus (HDV) infection provide promising opportunities to treat patients with hepatitis B virus (HBV) and HDV co-infection. However, current clinical trials on HDV treatment rarely explore patients' barriers to treatments. In Europe, HDV infection mostly affects young migrants from HDV-endemic areas who experience early liver-related mortality. Migrants are more likely to face multiple situations of statutory and socioeconomic insecurity and structural barriers than non-migrants. These obstacles may impact their quality of life and can (i) lead them to give secondary importance to certain HDV care options, (ii) delay treatment initiation and (iii) affect their adherence and commitment to care. Preliminary results from the ANRS CO22 HEPATHER cohort show that the majority (61.6%) of HBV-HDV co-infected migrants live in poverty. Moreover, half were diagnosed and a quarter of those who initiated HBV treatment had been in France for no more than two years, a period when language skills are often still poor and when knowledge of the health and administrative system may be lacking. We advocate for increased social science research, in particular qualitative studies, to investigate the effects that multiple forms of precarity (weak access to social rights, language barriers, housing insecurity, unexpected expenditures and other difficulties) may have on HDV screening opportunities, follow-up, and treatment pathways in migrants. This will help adapt communication and care around viral hepatitis, as well as inform and orient medical services and public health actors about the difficulties that migrants encounter.
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Affiliation(s)
- Marta Lotto
- Aix Marseille Univ, Inserm, IRD, SESSTIM, Sciences Economiques & Sociales de la Santé & Traitement de l'Information Médicale, ISSPAM, Marseille, France
| | - Hélène Fontaine
- Département d'Hépatologie, AP-HP, Hôpital Cochin, Paris, France.,INSERM U1223, Institut Pasteur, Université Paris Descartes, Paris, France
| | - Fabienne Marcellin
- Aix Marseille Univ, Inserm, IRD, SESSTIM, Sciences Economiques & Sociales de la Santé & Traitement de l'Information Médicale, ISSPAM, Marseille, France
| | - Lauren Périères
- Aix Marseille Univ, Inserm, IRD, SESSTIM, Sciences Economiques & Sociales de la Santé & Traitement de l'Information Médicale, ISSPAM, Marseille, France
| | - Morgane Bureau-Stoltmann
- Aix Marseille Univ, Inserm, IRD, SESSTIM, Sciences Economiques & Sociales de la Santé & Traitement de l'Information Médicale, ISSPAM, Marseille, France
| | - Fabrice Carrat
- Sorbonne Université, Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale (INSERM), Institut Pierre Louis d'Epidémiologie et de Santé Publique, Paris, France.,Assistance Publique-Hôpitaux de Paris (AP-HP), Hôpital Saint-Antoine, Unité de Santé Publique, Paris, France
| | - Stanislas Pol
- Département d'Hépatologie, INSERM U1223, Université de Paris, AP-HP, Hôpital Cochin, Institut Pasteur, Paris, France
| | - Fabien Zoulim
- Département d'hépatologie, Université de Lyon, Hospices Civils de Lyon, INSERM U1052, Lyon, France
| | - Patrizia Carrieri
- Aix Marseille Univ, Inserm, IRD, SESSTIM, Sciences Economiques & Sociales de la Santé & Traitement de l'Information Médicale, ISSPAM, Marseille, France
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MacGregor H, Leach M, Akello G, Sao Babawo L, Baluku M, Desclaux A, Grant C, Kamara F, Martineau F, Yei Mokuwa E, Parker M, Richards P, Sams K, Sow K, Wilkinson A. Negotiating Intersecting Precarities: COVID-19, Pandemic Preparedness and Response in Africa. Med Anthropol 2022; 41:19-33. [PMID: 34994676 PMCID: PMC8820371 DOI: 10.1080/01459740.2021.2015591] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 10/26/2022]
Abstract
This article shares findings on COVID-19 in Africa across 2020 to examine concepts and practices of epidemic preparedness and response. Amidst uncertainties about the trajectory of COVID-19, the stages of emergency response emerge in practice as interconnected. We illustrate how complex dynamics manifest as diverse actors interpret and modify approaches according to contexts and experiences. We suggest that the concept of "intersecting precarities" best captures the temporalities at stake; that these precarities include the effects of epidemic control measures; and that people do not just accept but actively negotiate these intersections as they seek to sustain their lives and livelihoods.
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Affiliation(s)
- Hayley MacGregor
- Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, BrightonUK,CONTACT Hayley MacGregor Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, BrightonBN1 9RE, UK
| | - Melissa Leach
- Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, BrightonUK
| | - Grace Akello
- Department of Mental Health, Gulu University, Gulu, Uganda
| | | | - Moses Baluku
- Department of Mental Health, Gulu University, Gulu, Uganda
| | - Alice Desclaux
- Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD), MontpellierFrance
| | - Catherine Grant
- Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, BrightonUK
| | | | - Fred Martineau
- Department of Global Health and Development, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, UK
| | | | - Melissa Parker
- Department of Global Health and Development, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, UK
| | | | - Kelley Sams
- Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD), MontpellierFrance
| | - Khoudia Sow
- Infectious Diseases Department, CRCF, Dakar, Senegal
| | - Annie Wilkinson
- Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, BrightonUK
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Bone J. Neoliberal precarity and primalization: A biosocial perspective on the age of insecurity, injustice, and unreason. Br J Sociol 2021; 72:1030-1045. [PMID: 34374077 DOI: 10.1111/1468-4446.12884] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/27/2020] [Revised: 07/14/2021] [Accepted: 07/24/2021] [Indexed: 06/13/2023]
Abstract
In light of the observed rise in social instability and populist politics that has emerged recently even in some of the world's oldest and presumed stable democracies, this paper reappraises the role of the neoliberal political and economic consensus in fermenting popular discontent. While this is very well trodden ground the paper approaches the issues from a wholly new direction, specifically addressing how exposure to the destabilizing conditions of the present can be seen to have negatively impacted on the neurological functioning of many of the disenchanted and distressed of the current era, generating chronic negative emotional arousal and an associated impact on the capacity for rational thought and conduct. This condition of mental and emotional fugue, it is argued, has also rendered growing numbers more susceptible to marginal and radicalizing discourses, largely extended and amplified via social media, and not least the emotionally charged overtures of populist politicians. Against a backdrop of increasing insecurity, transformative changes to work and living conditions precipitated by neoliberal policy and the digital revolution, together with the epochal crisis presented by the global pandemic, it is argued that the task of understanding the deep and fundamental causes of social and political fracture have rarely been more urgent.
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Affiliation(s)
- John Bone
- School of Social Sciences, University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen, UK
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40
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Dunn M, Munoz I, Sawyer S. Gender Differences and Lost Flexibility in Online Freelancing During the COVID-19 Pandemic. Front Sociol 2021; 6:738024. [PMID: 34532354 PMCID: PMC8438330 DOI: 10.3389/fsoc.2021.738024] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/08/2021] [Accepted: 08/16/2021] [Indexed: 06/13/2023]
Abstract
We report findings from an ongoing panel study of 68 U.S.-based online freelancers, focusing here on their experiences both pre- and in-pandemic. We see online freelancing as providing a window into one future of work: collaborative knowledge work that is paid by the project and mediated by a digital labor platform. The study's purposive sampling provides for both empirical and conceptual insights into the occupational differences and career plans of freelance workers. The timing of the 2020 data collection provides insight into household changes as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Findings make clear these workers are facing diminished work flexibility and increased earning uncertainty. And, data show women are more likely than men to reduce working hours to help absorb the increased share of caregiving and other domestic responsibilities. This raises questions of online freelancing as a viable career path or sustainable source of work.
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Affiliation(s)
- Michael Dunn
- Department of Management and Business, Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, NY, United States
| | - Isabel Munoz
- School of Information Studies, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY, United States
| | - Steve Sawyer
- School of Information Studies, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY, United States
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Abstract
In this paper I discuss Jungian psychological work of the trauma and loss experienced in reaction to COVID-19 with a man who represents a clinical composite. The issues of precarity, a concept used by the philosopher Judith Butler, are combined with the notions of lack and absence of French psychoanalyst André Green. The psychological and societal situation of precarity aroused the man's childhood issues that were long repressed. The loneliness, isolation and death from COVID-19 mirrored his personal and the collective responses to the disaster from this global pandemic. He felt on the edge of collapse as what he knew of his world crashed and he found himself unable to cope. The subsequent Jungian work taking place through the virtual computer screen was taxing and restorative simultaneously for both analyst and analysand.
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Muszyński K, Pulignano V, Domecka M, Mrozowicki A. Coping with precarity during COVID-19: A study of platform work in Poland. Int Labour Rev 2021; 161:ILR12224. [PMID: 34548686 PMCID: PMC8444919 DOI: 10.1111/ilr.12224] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 06/13/2023]
Abstract
This article explores how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected the work and life experiences of platform workers' and how workers have responded to the outbreak in Poland. Platform workers have been exposed to substantial fluctuations of demand during the pandemic, magnifying the distortions existing in an unregulated asymmetrical employment relationship diverging from the standard employment relationship. Findings illustrate how workers have attempted to reduce the disruptions underpinning the existence of this unregulated asymmetrical relationship by adopting different strategies, which resemble Hirschman's typology of loyalty, voice and exit. We explain the choice of strategies by highlighting workers' different access to resources and institutional capabilities, as well as by variation in their orientations.
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Affiliation(s)
| | | | | | - Adam Mrozowicki
- University of Wrocław, Faculty of Social Sciences, Institute of Sociology
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Elisabeth M, Maneesh PS, Katarina SF, Slobodan Z, Michael S. Antimicrobial Resistance & Migrants in Sweden: Poor Living Conditions Enforced by Migration Control Policies as a Risk Factor for Optimal Public Health Management. Front Public Health 2021; 9:642983. [PMID: 34277534 PMCID: PMC8281056 DOI: 10.3389/fpubh.2021.642983] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/17/2020] [Accepted: 06/11/2021] [Indexed: 11/13/2022] Open
Abstract
Infectious diseases exacerbated by Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) are of increasing concern in Sweden, with multi-drug resistant strains associated with new resistance mechanisms that are emerging and spreading worldwide. Existing research has identified that sub-optimal living conditions and poor access to healthcare are significant factors in the spread and incubation of AMR strains. The article considers this linkage and the effort to control the spread of AMR in relation to migrants, highlighting deficiencies in public policy where such individuals are often increasingly exposed to those conditions that exacerbate AMR. In many of the richest countries, those conditions are not accidental, but often direct goals of policies designed with the goal of deterring migrants from staying within host countries. Without engaging with the politics around migration control, the article points to urgent need for more holistic assessment of all public policies that may, however unintentionally, undermine AMR control through worsening living conditions for vulnerable groups. The consequences of prioritizing policies meant to deliberately worsen the living conditions of migrants over avoiding those conditions that accelerate AMR spread, are today made ever apparent where new AMR strains have the potential to dwarf the societal effects of the current Covid-19 pandemic.
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Affiliation(s)
- Mangrio Elisabeth
- Department of Care Science, Faculty of Health and Society, Malmö University, Malmö, Sweden.,Malmö Institute for Studies of Migration, Diversity and Welfare (MIM), Malmö University, Malmö, Sweden
| | | | - Sjögren Forss Katarina
- Department of Care Science, Faculty of Health and Society, Malmö University, Malmö, Sweden
| | - Zdravkovic Slobodan
- Department of Care Science, Faculty of Health and Society, Malmö University, Malmö, Sweden.,Malmö Institute for Studies of Migration, Diversity and Welfare (MIM), Malmö University, Malmö, Sweden
| | - Strange Michael
- Malmö Institute for Studies of Migration, Diversity and Welfare (MIM), Malmö University, Malmö, Sweden.,Global Political Studies, Malmö University, Malmö, Sweden
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Malet Calvo D. ‘There was no freedom to leave’: Global South international students in Portugal during the COVID-19 Pandemic. Policy Futures in Education 2021. [PMCID: PMC9167675 DOI: 10.1177/14782103211025428] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 05/17/2023]
Abstract
This article looks at the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on international students, focusing on Portuguese-speaking African and Brazilian students during the lockdown of spring 2020. Using evidence from interviews conducted with 27 students domiciled in Portugal, we illustrate some of the challenges faced by students when coping with the pandemic, including difficulties in meeting the cost of tertiary education and the centrality of working to sustain their stays abroad, alongside the emotional impact of prolonged domestic confinement and separation from families. We also consider the paradoxes of online teaching, which have made visible the digital gap between local and international Global South students in the context of their stays. In this sense, pre-existing inequalities are more at the centre of students’ concerns than new issues raised by COVID-19, a pandemic that served to reveal former injustice in the context of global capitalism. In our conclusion, we argue that there is a need for greater recognition of the vulnerabilities facing certain African and Brazilian students at Global North universities in the context of contemporary neo-liberalism, including their dependence upon precarious work. Policy responses include the need for a more serious involvement and responsibility by both home and host higher education institutions in the lives of their students abroad.
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Affiliation(s)
- Daniel Malet Calvo
- Daniel Malet Calvo, ISCTE – Instituto Universitário de Lisboa (ISCTE-IUL), Centro de Investigação e Estudos de Sociologia, Lisboa, Portugal.
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Nimer M, Rottmann SB. Logistification and hyper- precarity at the intersection of migration and pandemic governance: Refugees in the Turkish labour market. J Refug Stud 2021; 35:feab076. [PMCID: PMC8344718 DOI: 10.1093/jrs/feab076] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/04/2020] [Revised: 03/08/2021] [Indexed: 06/01/2023]
Abstract
This article analyses the governance of migration and the Covid-19 pandemic on precarious Syrian refugees in Istanbul. Drawing from a review of state policies and interviews with refugees before and after the pandemic, we argue that the intersecting governance of migration and the pandemic compounded inequalities. While refugees initially lost their employment without notice in lockdown periods, their partial lifting revealed unequal expectations towards their labour, as they were reincorporated within even more hyper-precarious labour relations. Unlike citizens who were somewhat protected by the state, refugees were under the limited care of international funders and subject to the whims of the market. Pandemic governance resulted in increased hyper-precarity and the need to rely on individual coping mechanisms for refugees. This research shows how shifting inclusion and exclusion shapes refugees' hyper-precarity related to Covid-19 governance, transforming Syrians into ‘market buffers’ to prevent or delay bankruptcies.
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Affiliation(s)
- Maissam Nimer
- Istanbul Policy Center, Sabancı University, Istanbul, Turkey
| | - Susan Beth Rottmann
- Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Social Sciences Faculty, Özyeğin University, Istanbul, Turkey
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Chapman RR. Therapeutic Borderlands: Austerity, Maternal HIV Treatment, and the Elusive End of AIDS in Mozambique. Med Anthropol Q 2021; 35:226-245. [PMID: 33029848 PMCID: PMC11018325 DOI: 10.1111/maq.12613] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/07/2020] [Revised: 08/07/2020] [Accepted: 08/13/2020] [Indexed: 11/29/2022]
Abstract
"End of AIDS" requires ambitious testing, treatment, and adherence benchmarks, like UNAIDS' "90-90-90 by 2020." Mozambique's efforts to improve essential maternal/infant antiretroviral treatment (ART) exposes how austerity-related health system short-falls impede public HIV/AIDS service-delivery and hinder effective maternal ART and adherence. In therapeutic borderlands-where household impoverishment intersects with health-system impoverishment-HIV+ women and over-worked care-providers circumnavigate scarcity and stigma. Worrisome patterns of precarious use emerge-perinatal ART under-utilization, delayed initiation, intermittent adherence, and low retention. Ending HIV/AIDS requires ending austerity and reinvesting in a public sector health workforce to ensure universal health coverage as household and community safety nets.
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Oswald TK, Rumbold AR, Kedzior SGE, Kohler M, Moore VM. Mental Health of Young Australians during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Exploring the Roles of Employment Precarity, Screen Time, and Contact with Nature. Int J Environ Res Public Health 2021; 18:5630. [PMID: 34070331 PMCID: PMC8197562 DOI: 10.3390/ijerph18115630] [Citation(s) in RCA: 14] [Impact Index Per Article: 4.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/14/2021] [Revised: 05/19/2021] [Accepted: 05/21/2021] [Indexed: 11/16/2022]
Abstract
The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic is widely understood to have contributed to mental health problems. In Australia, young people (18-24 years) have been disproportionately affected. To date, research has predominantly focused on the presence or absence of mental illness symptoms, while aspects of mental well-being have been overlooked. We aimed to explore associations between potential risk and protective factors and mental health more comprehensively, using the Complete State Model of Mental Health. An online survey of 1004 young Australians (55% female; M age = 21.23) was undertaken. Assessment of both mental illness and mental well-being enabled participants to be cross-classified into four mental health states. Those with 'Floundering' (13%) or 'Struggling' (47.5%) mental health reported symptoms of mental illness; a 'Languishing' group (25.5%) did not report symptoms of mental illness but mental well-being was compromised relative to those who were 'Flourishing' (14%) with high mental well-being. Multinomial logistic regressions were used to examine associations, adjusting for socio-demographic confounders. Protective factors associated with Flourishing mental health included being in secure employment, using screen time to connect with others, and reporting high levels of hope. Both incidental and purposive contact with nature were also associated with Flourishing, while a lack of green/bluespace within walking distance was associated with Languishing, absence of outdoor residential space was associated with Floundering, and lower neighbourhood greenness was associated with all three suboptimal mental health states. Precarious employment, financial stress, living alone, reporting decreased screen time during lockdowns, lower levels of hope, and high disruption of core beliefs were also associated with Struggling and Floundering mental health. Those who were Languishing reported somewhat less hardship and little disruption to core beliefs, but lower levels of hope compared to young people who were Flourishing. This study highlights that young adults require dedicated mental health services to deal with current burden, but should also be supported through a range of preventive strategies which target mental health risk factors, like precarious employment, and enhance protective factors, such as urban green infrastructure.
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Affiliation(s)
- Tassia K. Oswald
- Faculty of Health & Medical Sciences, School of Public Health, The University of Adelaide, Adelaide, SA 5005, Australia;
- Faculty of Health & Medical Sciences, Robinson Research Institute, The University of Adelaide, Adelaide, SA 5005, Australia; (A.R.R.); (S.G.E.K.)
| | - Alice R. Rumbold
- Faculty of Health & Medical Sciences, Robinson Research Institute, The University of Adelaide, Adelaide, SA 5005, Australia; (A.R.R.); (S.G.E.K.)
- South Australian Health & Medical Research Institute, SAHMRI Women and Kids, North Adelaide, SA 5006, Australia
| | - Sophie G. E. Kedzior
- Faculty of Health & Medical Sciences, Robinson Research Institute, The University of Adelaide, Adelaide, SA 5005, Australia; (A.R.R.); (S.G.E.K.)
| | - Mark Kohler
- Faculty of Health & Medical Sciences, School of Psychology, The University of Adelaide, Adelaide, SA 5005, Australia;
- The Environment Institute, The University of Adelaide, Adelaide, SA 5005, Australia
| | - Vivienne M. Moore
- Faculty of Health & Medical Sciences, School of Public Health, The University of Adelaide, Adelaide, SA 5005, Australia;
- Faculty of Health & Medical Sciences, Robinson Research Institute, The University of Adelaide, Adelaide, SA 5005, Australia; (A.R.R.); (S.G.E.K.)
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Whitson JR, Simon B, Parker F. The Missing Producer: Rethinking indie cultural production in terms of entrepreneurship, relational labour, and sustainability. Eur J Cult Stud 2021; 24:606-627. [PMID: 33867811 PMCID: PMC8022774 DOI: 10.1177/1367549418810082] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 06/12/2023]
Abstract
This article draws on over 60 interviews and 120 surveys with indie game developers to illustrate relational labour and entrepreneurship practices in cultural industries and their relationship to 'good work'. We first outline the changing organization of games work, the shift towards so-called indie production, and the associated rejection of creatively constrained, hierarchically managed production models. In the move towards small-scale games making, indies jettisoned producers because producers represented industry modes of work, values and creative constraints. But indies are now struggling to manage production processes without producers. We use developer narratives to highlight how this 'missing producer' work is redistributed in the form of cultural entrepreneurship, cultural intermediation and relational labour. This relational labour simultaneously supports and undermines sustainable production practices, as developers take on impossible workloads associated with networking and connecting with others. We next illustrate how the inherent valorization of growth and expansion in cultural entrepreneurship discourses may force developers to mimic industry practices and organization in order to find funding, but these practices inherently conflict with their desire to focus on making games as small, sustainable and creatively autonomous teams. Ultimately, we want to demonstrate how interviews and time spent with indie developers help us account for otherwise invisible and ambiguous cultural labour practices and discourses, thus allowing us to make sense of the larger context of cultural production and its possible futures.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jennifer R Whitson
- Jennifer R Whitson, Department of Sociology and Legal Studies, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON N2L 3G1, Canada.
| | | | - Felan Parker
- University of St. Michael’s College in the University of Toronto, Canada
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Abstract
This study explores the community-based strategies that a group of trans women living in Lima, Peru, employed to resist the negative impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on their wellbeing. Data was collected through participant observation and focus group discussions during the implementation of a social aid campaign targeted to this population and analyzed through reflexive theoretical thematic analysis. Resistance strategies were understood as forms of social capital grounded in relations of support and connectedness. Results underscored the importance of social cohesion to ameliorate increasing levels of precarity, community leaders as key for linking trans women across different networks, and unified efforts of social groups who share values to influence institutional power. The analysis also captured barriers and challenges that could hinder the development and articulation of social capital. Fostering trust relations and community-organization should be fundamental components for advocacy programs that seek to support the trans women community.
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Affiliation(s)
- Diego Garcia-Rabines
- Grupo de Investigación en Comunicación y Salud, Instituto de Investigación Científica, y Facultad de Psicología, Universidad de Lima , Lima, Perú
| | - Bruno Bencich
- Asociación para la Investigación en Inclusión y Diversidad (INCIDE Perú) , Lima, Perú
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Abstract
Mental and emotional well-being are intimately entangled with immigration status, personal relationships, and the broader political environment. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in South Texas including interviews with mixed-status families, this article illustrates the spillover impacts affecting mental and emotional health of family members with different legal statuses. Building on the notion of "structural vulnerability," we propose the concept of familial vulnerability, a lens which highlights how racialization, legal status, and discrimination affect the family unit. Our analysis of the mental health impacts on family members within mixed-status families may inform necessary changes to programs and policies to improve the needs of this population.
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