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This open access book, now in its second edition, offers a comprehensive overview of the experiences of First in Family (FiF) or first-generation students in higher education. It draws upon narratives of students and their family members and spans the entire university student life cycle (pre-entry, commencement, progression and graduation) with a focus on specific cohorts including mature-aged students, parents or carers, as well as the differentiated experiences of male and female learners. With research drawn from three major research projects and including over 650 FiF students from across all Australian states and territories, as well as Europe, this wealth of perspectives provides unique insights into the lived reality of attending university in contemporary higher education settings. The book is written for a broad audience and will appeal to those working in universities, as well as family members and students who may be contemplating participating in higher education.

For 50 years, researchers at UCL’s Thomas Coram Research Unit have been undertaking ground-breaking policy-relevant social research. Their main focus has been social issues affecting children, young people and families, and the services provided for them. Social Research for our Times brings together different generations of researchers from the Unit to share some of the most important results of their studies. Two sections focus on the main findings and conclusions from research into children and children services, and on family life, minoritised groups and gender. A third is then devoted to the innovative methods that have been developed and used to undertake research in these complex areas. Running through the book is a key strategic question: what should be the relationship between research and policy? Or put another way, what does ‘policy relevant research’ mean? This perennial question has gained new importance in the post-Covid, post-Brexit world that we have entered, making this text a timely intervention for sharing decades of experience. Taking a unique opportunity to reflect on research context as well as research findings, this book will be of interest to researchers, teachers, students and those involved in policy making both in and beyond dedicated research units, and can be read as a whole or sampled for individual standalone chapters.

With a focus on nine different national contexts, this book explores contemporary family diversity. With attention to the different welfare states and cultures of care in each setting, it problematizes the pre-eminence of research and policy centered on heteronormative families, showing the extent to which family diversity exists cross-nationally in relation to different gendered and ""family-friendly"" policies. Considering variations in family forms, including differences in the number and marital status of parents, their gender, sexual orientation and biological relationship to the children (adoption), multicultural families, and families created by technological assistance or surrogacy, it presents demographic information, alongside quantitative and qualitative research, across a number of advanced countries. A contribution to our understanding of the diversity of family forms, how diversity is lived in families, and what family diversity means in various international policy contexts. The Changing Faces of Families will appeal to scholars with interests in the sociology of the family. The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

Children feature centrally in the ubiquitous narratives of ‘migration crises’. They are often depicted as essentially vulnerable and in need of special protections, or suspiciously adult-like and a threat to national borders. At the same time, many voices, experiences, and stories are rarely heard, especially about children on the move within the global South. This bilingual book, written in English and Spanish, challenges simplistic narratives to enrich perspectives and understanding. Drawing on collaborations between young (im)migrants, researchers, artists and activists, this collection asks new questions about how crises are produced, mobility is controlled, and childhood is conceptualised. Answers to these questions have profound implications for resources, infrastructures, and relationships of care. Authors offer insights from diverse global contexts, painting a rich and insightful tapestry about childhood (im)mobility. They stress that children are more than recipients of care and that the crises they face are multiple and stratifying, with long historical roots. Readers are invited to understand migration as an act of concern and love, and to attend to how the solidarities between citizens and ‘others’, adults and children, and between children, are understood and forged., La niñez ocupa un lugar central en las narrativas omnipresentes de las ""crisis migratorias"". A menudo ésta es representada como esencialmente vulnerable y necesitada de protección especial, como sospechosamente parecida a los adultos, o como una amenaza para las fronteras nacionales. Al mismo tiempo, existen muchas voces, experiencias e historias que rara vez son escuchadas, especialmente aquellas que hablan sobre las infancias en movimiento dentro del Sur global. 'Este libro bilingüe, escrito en inglés y español, desafía las narrativas simplistas para enriquecer nuestra perspectivas y comprensión. Basada en colaboraciones entre jóvenes (in)migrantes, investigadores, artistas y activistas, esta colección plantea nuevas preguntas sobre cómo se producen las crisis, cómo se controla la movilidad y cómo se conceptualiza a la infancia y la niñez. Las respuestas a estas preguntas tienen profundas implicaciones para la distribución de recursos, la infraestructura y las prácticas de cuidado. Las y los autores ofrecen perspectivas que surgen de diversos contextos globales, construyendo un rico y detallado tapiz sobre la (in)movilidad infantil. Destacan que niñas y niños son mucho más que simples receptores de cuidados y que las crisis que enfrentan son múltiples y estratificadas, con profundas raíces históricas. Se invita a las/os lectoras/es a entender la migración como un acto de concientización y amor, y a poner atención en cómo se entienden y forjan las solidaridades entre ciudadanos y aquellos que son percibidos como “otros”; entre adultos y niñas/os, y entre las/os niñas/os mismas/os.