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This thesis explores the older age work attitudes and labour market behaviour of South Asian British Muslim older women living in the Greater Manchester area in the UK. It has the precise purpose of addressing the overarching research question of, 'What are the attitudes and behaviour of South Asian British Muslim older women towards wage work and in the Greater Manchester labour market?'. The broader contexts of an ageing workforce, the high level of unemployment and economic inactivity of this particular ethnic minority female group in the UK and recent extended working lives policies in the UK have guided the overall design and empirical inquiry of the thesis. The findings of the thesis show that several socio-cultural and political factors have played critical roles in shaping these women's wage work attitudes and behaviour in the Greater Manchester labour market. In articulating the overall findings on their wage work attitudes and labour market behaviour, the levels of integration with the host country UK's society and labour market and the divergent processes of their physical, psychological and social ageing come to the fore, indicating a two-way process at work, namely their life-long participation in strong gendered roles within the family and community structures both pre- and post-migration as well as social and policy exclusion within the UK systems. The less encouraging and somewhat negative older age wage work attitudes of the cohort were marked by a lack of enthusiasm and motivation, which implies that their attitudes are likely to remain relatively unchanged in the foreseeable future where more participation by older workers, particularly older female workers in the UK labour market is expected. The thesis re-conceptualises the translocational positionality framework, and proposes a translocational spectrum in tracking and locating these migrant older women's life trajectories, and their social as well as labour market positions in the UK. It also conceptualises their ageing process in a new light and provides timely insights into an under-researched cohort's wage work attitudes and labour market behaviour that has implications for gender, migration, ageing and employment research as well as for policymaking of extended working lives. The thesis suggests that research on older females and migrant workers should involve a multi-pronged approach covering transnational, intersectional and life-course impacts and prospects.

There is a growing and more heterogeneous older urban population. Yet representations of older age are often overly simplistic and reductionist in western societies. Against this backdrop, I consider how older age is lived to complicate and enliven homogenising representations of older age. The rich ethnographic accounts shared were developed through a flexible combination of methods with 32 older people from the Greater Manchester town of Prestwich over 12 months. I foreground the more-than-representational aspects of experience to consider what representations of older age do in the lives of older individuals; how older people live and attach to places; how memory works and mediates lived experiences of the city; and how we might research-with (rather than on) older people. Specifically, this thesis responds to calls for the incorporation of relational and more-than-representational approaches into the geographic study of older age to strengthen research on ageing. I bring together life-course and more-than-representational theories to advance current debates surrounding age relationality. I illustrate how more-than-representational theories foreground how pasts, presents and futures emerge together as time is lived, demonstrating how memories are not locked in a past but are multiple and mobile. I show how using a flexible combination of different methods over time and attuning to the possibilities and potential of methods as they unfold produces detailed, non-linear biographical accounts. This thesis demonstrates how more-than-representational approaches can speak to policy in ways they are often deemed unable. I caution how impact does not have to be an end point: benefit can be found in the doing of research through capacity building. Geographical research on ageing must continue to foreground those more-than-representational dynamics which are often overlooked in favour of a simple narrative.

This thesis empirically assesses the associations between socioeconomic status, acute and chronic stressors and stress related biomarkers during the working life-course for men and women living in England aged over 50 years. Specifically, this thesis seeks to understand the extent to which, acute and chronic stressors over the working life-course, help to explain socioeconomic differences in stress related biomarkers among older adults. To rigorously undertake this research, the basis of the thesis is comprised by three empirical papers: 1. Socioeconomic status and Perceived stress differences in diurnal cortisol: Longitudinal evidence from the Whitehall II Study. 2. Are socioeconomic differences in diurnal cortisol profiles underestimated by missing values? Compensating for Missing Data in the Whitehall II Study. 3. Allostatic Load and Effort-Reward Imbalance: Associations over the Working-Career. The contribution of this thesis to the research literature is unique in its treatment and modelling of the determinants of stress related biomarkers. Firstly, I explored the role that acute stress (perceived stress) and chronic stress (socioeconomic status) have in explaining the levels of stress (cortisol) throughout the day. I found that there were socioeconomic differences in diurnal cortisol profiles, which persisted even after controlling for perceived stress. However, perceived stress did not help to explain why the poorest civil servants had flatter diurnal cortisol slopes. Secondly, due to the amount of missing data, I analysed if missing data could lead to an underestimation of the socioeconomic differences in the diurnal cortisol slope. Using multiple imputation, and I found that imputed estimates of cortisol tended to be a bit higher at awakening for the middle and high socioeconomic groups, while the estimates for the low-grade jobs group diverged at bedtime, showing a flatter diurnal slope for the multiple imputation estimates. This suggests that the presence of missing data could lead to an underestimation in socioeconomic differences in biomarker of the stress response. Thirdly, using allostatic load, I explored if work stress (measured by effort-reward imbalance) over the working career predicts higher levels of allostatic load. Repeated exposure to effort-reward imbalance towards the end of the working career predicted higher levels of allostatic load, with employees working in semi-routine and routine jobs reporting more accumulated effort-reward imbalance. We now have a better understanding of the association between socioeconomic status and biomarker of the stress response. Through the analysis of acute (perceived stress) and chronic stressors, the former may not be as important in understanding socioeconomic differences in stress compared to chronic stressors like work related stressors over the working life-course.

Most gamblers never experience addiction and the majority of those who do eventually recover. This thesis investigates how most maintain control over their gambling and how the majority of those who do experience gambling addiction regain control. Findings are based on 25 qualitative semi-structured interviews with participants who fit one of three ideal-type groups: (i) gamblers who have never experienced addiction; (ii) gamblers who have regained control after experience of gambling addiction; and (iii) gamblers experiencing addiction at time of interview. Participants were recruited who had never engaged in formal treatment because existing research suggests most who experience gambling addiction and/or recovery never to do so. This study is underpinned by a synthesis of Bourdieusian theory and Foucauldian-inspired governmentality literature which was used to guide the thesis and help explain gambling behaviour. Taking a Foucauldian genealogical approach, the dominant theory of addiction as a biomedical disorder is critiqued and revealed to be myth. Instead, (gambling) addiction is demonstrated to be a social construction which becomes embodied within individuals and thereby influences gambling behaviour. Consequentially, it is shown that research concerning substance use is applicable to the investigation of gambling behaviours. Given paucity of gambling research, substance-related literature is drawn upon throughout the thesis. Attention is given to research demonstrating regulation over drug use to be influenced by the social settings in which consumption takes place as well as the wider social and cultural milieus in which the lives of actors are embedded. Moreover, particular appreciation is given to literature indicating recovery from addiction to be supported by shifts in socio-cultural milieu. In contrast to most existing addictions/gambling research, the agential capacities of gamblers to shape their own behaviours, albeit in ways heavily constrained by context (or ‘structure’) are emphasised throughout the thesis. Data revealed various gambling-related strategies to help constrain gambling and minimise harm. These are examined and it is recommended that this knowledge could be used to aid development of more effective ‘harm-reduction’ style interventions and policies in ways which support less harmful patterns of gambling behaviour. However, although valuable, those with greater control tended to rely little on such strategies to manage their gambling. Instead, greater control over gambling and recovery from gambling addiction was found to have less to do with how participants gamble (e.g. whether or not they followed harm-reduction strategies) and far more to do with the wider, non-gambling-related, aspects of their lives and the nature of their subjectivities/dispositions. Principally influential were found to be the qualities of interviewees’ socio-cultural milieus. Alongside gambling, those with greater control tended to participate in non-gambling-related communities with attendant ways of thinking and cultural expectations (values/norms) that marginalise (heavier) gambling. Drawing on Bourdieusian and Foucauldian governmentality theory, it is argued that, because of their day-to-day participation in such communities/milieus, those with greater control embody mentalities and expectations which discourage riskier gambling behaviour. This, in turn, results in more ‘prudential’ subjectivities which discourage problematic gambling behaviour. Participants who had experienced recovery and many of those who had never experienced addiction revealed long-term reductions in gambling behaviour. Findings suggested these reductions (as well as recovery) to be supported by social and cultural processes, occurring over the life-course, which encourage increased participation in more ‘conventional’ life/milieus and thereby promote alterations in subjectivities in ways more conducive to control. A dual approach to discouraging problematic gambling behaviour is recommended. Although it is important to promote ‘safer’ ways of gambling (e.g. through promotion of harm-reduction style interventions and by designing gambling environments in ways to support greater constraint), it is also imperative to support the development of lives/milieus and subjectivities more conducive to control (e.g. participation in ‘conventional’ life and access to resources required to do so).

The rapid development of the internet has far outpaced our ability to protect the internet. As new technologies have developed, so have new ways to exploit these technologies to use them for criminal purposes. This is extremely true of the core of the internet, websites. While the number of websites both personal and business focused have skyrocketed, so too have the number of cyber-attacks against these sites. These cyber-attacks are known as website defacements and can cause costly losses and damage the reputation of their internet victims. In such an attack the website defacer gains unauthorized access to the website and changes the appearance of the website, rendering it inoperable for extended periods of time. Prior research on website defacers has provided a preliminary understanding of the motivation and attack preferences of website defacers but given the relative newness of this line of research there are many avenues to deepen our understanding beyond description of these brazen cybercriminals. This dissertation addresses two such areas in need of further study by examining the criminal careers of website defacers and how they respond to potential changes in capable guardianship. As our review of the literature shows, over half of the studies in this literature utilize a data source that was shown to be faulty in measuring the motivational factors of website defacement. Thus, this dissertation used detailed data created by tracking the individual offending patterns of website defacers and utilizing open-source intelligence methods to gather information about each defacer’s characteristics in the sample, rather than the previously mentioned data source. This three-paper dissertation contains a scoping review of the website defacement literature, the first of its kind, to reveal the existing scholarly gaps in this field of research. This dissertation’s second paper uses my previously published paper using this data that revealed important findings on the criminal trajectories of website defacers. The dissertation closes with the first study to examine the effect of holidays on website defacement attack frequencies. These papers serve to outline the direction of future research, aid law enforcement agencies, and bolster our understanding of these cybercriminals’ activities.

This paper analyzes how family expectations from the Haitian culture manifest in the marriages of middle-aged Haitian-American couples. This study emphasizes that the evolution to biculturalism is a major factor in the adjustments of cultural expectations. Four middle-aged Haitian-American couples were interviewed via Zoom individually. They were asked to describe how they believed Haitian culture and family expectations influenced their family and marriage life. The results indicate that the middle-aged Haitian-American couples adhere to explicit and implicit family expectations set out by their families of origin; these expectations were influenced by Haitian culture. The major themes from the study were: continued but modified gender roles, the expectation to get married, upholding Haitian traditions, stoic love expression, and the importance of religion. The participants in this study also mimicked similar family expectations for their children by presuming they will marry and uphold Haitian traditions just as they learned from their parents and elders. Ultimately, the participants in this study have taken elements of Haitian and American culture coupled with their family expectations and the influence of their peers’ expectations in America to form a new culture for themselves, Haitian- American. This shows up in their marital practices and decisions as well as the way they choose to raise their children.

The prison experience provides a unique context where the notion of offender change takes on a different role compared to conventional “turning points,” such as marriage and employment. However, developmental and life-course (DLC) perspectives place little emphasis on inmate experiences despite incarceration being a major life event. Fitting correctional theory into the developmental framework and embedding the inmate in a broader context can enhance how we view desistance by identifying the key risk factors across both these perspectives. Using aspects from both DLC and correctional perspectives, this dissertation disentangles the “black box” of the prison experience by examining how the completion of programming that aligns with key aspects of the turning point literature, such as family programming, cognitive-behavioral interventions, and prison industry work programs, impact incarceration. This dissertation also provides an innovative way of viewing program completion that is both informed by the DLC literature and goes beyond whether program completion predicts a lower likelihood of offending, but more so how it potentially attenuates the impact of pre-prison characteristics (i.e., risk factors) and the structural conditions of incarceration (i.e., security level, sentence length, movement, waitlist status).

The transition to parenthood can be a challenging, stressful period for individuals across a range of social locations (e.g., Cowan and Cowan 1995; Doss, Cicila, Hsueh, Morrison and Carhart 2014). This dissertation research focuses on a key factor that may influence the success of this transition: the age of mothers during the birth of their first child. Although U.S. couples are increasingly delaying entry into parenthood (National Center for Health Statistics 2009), the impact of maternal age on postpartum mental health during this transition remains an understudied area within the social sciences. To address this existing gap in the literature, I examine the relationship between maternal age at first birth and postpartum depression, with a specific focus on the structural and individual level factors that contribute to this relationship. I draw on two social psychological approaches, the life-course perspective and the social structure and personality framework, to highlight the connections between social position and personal resources in the context of this important transition. To examine these theoretical relationships, I analyze data from a national survey on motherhood, Listening to Mothers II: Second National U.S. Survey of Women’s Childbearing Experiences (Childbirth Connection 2006). Contrary to my expectations, I found that maternal age was not significantly associated with PPD for the mothers in my sample. My results also suggest that perceptions regarding maternal physical health and baby’s physical health, as well as factors associated with the childbirth process, such as experiencing negative feelings during birth and level of perceived control during birth, mattered toward mothers’ psychological well-being during this critical transitional period.

Criminal involvement is non-randomly distributed across individuals and across groups. Debate regarding the etiology of differences in criminal involvement remains. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997, the current study examined latent class membership in the probability of arrest over a 15-year time span starting when participants were 12-16 years-old and ending when they were 28-31 years-old. Latent class regressions were employed to prospectively investigate whether various demographic and criminological risk factors from the base wave could predict class membership. Models were also estimated separately by sex and by race to identify potentially important differences and consistencies in class structure and risk prediction. Results from the latent class growth analyses resulted in two to three classes characterized by an abstainer group, an adolescent-limited group, and a stable moderate-level chronic group. In general, being male, increased substance use, and increased delinquency were consistent predictors of class membership. Regarding race and sex differences, being a minority was moderately related to class membership in males but was not significant for females. Being male was a very strong predictor of class membership for Black and Hispanic participants but a relatively weak predictor for White participants. Overall, results supported a general risk factor perspective over a gender or race specific risk perspective. Across race, sex, and cohort, self-reported delinquency was the strongest risk predictor of class membership, suggesting that differential arrest probability is predominantly explained by differential involvement in delinquent behavior.

This dissertation explores the relationship between personal and spousal migration to the United States and later-life health for older Mexican adults living in Mexico in the context of other social determinants of health across the life-course determinants. I use the 2001 baseline wave of the Mexican Health and Aging Survey, a nationally representative sample of Mexican adults 50 years and older (born before 1951). I test the relationship between U.S. migration experience and later-life depression, diabetes, and hypertension for older Mexican men, and between spousal migration to the U.S. and later-life depression, diabetes, and hypertension for older Mexican women. I also examine the degree to which personal or spousal migration to the U.S. might mediate or moderate the relationship between early-life socio-economic status and health conditions, and later-life health outcomes. My results suggest that there is no significant main effect of U.S. migration experience on later-life health for older Mexican men, although return U.S. migrant men who report lower socio-economic standing later in life appear to have elevated risk of depression and diabetes. On the other hand, older Mexican women whose spouses migrated to the U.S. have significantly increased odds of later-life diabetes and hypertension if those women are no longer in a union by the time of the survey. The adverse effects of spousal migration to the U.S. are exacerbated by women's domestic labor outside the home and lack of decision-making power relative to their spouses, but buffered by their own migration experience. Finally, although greater socio-economic disadvantage in childhood predicts both U.S. migration (personal and spousal), and increased odds of later-life depression, diabetes, and hypertension, there is no evidence that US migration experience explains this life-course trajectory of socio-economic status and health. There is also limited evidence that a U.S. migration experience alters the relationship between childhood conditions and later-life health. Overall, for this group of older Mexican adults, the adverse effects of past U.S. migration experience are only observed for women whose spouses migrated to the U.S. and who are no longer in a union, which contributes to theories of the gendered geographies of power, or the ways in which migration may have different effects for men and women - in this case women who primarily stayed behind in Mexico. On the other hand, contrary to theories of migration stress, having a U.S. migration history does not appear to have a substantial effect on the health of return Mexican migrant men.

This purpose of this dissertation was to examine the attitudes of retirees toward mental illness treatment. Secondary data from the Survey Research Center at the University of North Texas was utilized for this study. The focus was on the influence that gender, income, education, race/ethnicity, personal experience, fear, goodwill, and social control might have had on retirees' attitudes toward mental illness treatment. An n = 225 was selected out of the existing data to serve as the sample population. Binary logistic regression was utilized to analyze the data. Results indicated that the obtained significant findings were consistent with existing literature.

Social capital has grown into an important theoretical concept in thesocial sciences. In criminology it has been applied within theframework of social disorganization theory and other theories ofsocial control. However, while adult social capital has receivedmuch attention, adolescent social capital, and its possiblerelationship to offending, has not been studied. In order to fillthis gap in the literature I answer three important questions. First, Itheorize about, and empirically investigate, the development of socialcapital and the possible transmission of it from parents to adolescents. Second, I investigate the relationship between adolescent social capitaland adolescent violence and property offending. Third, I investigate howadolescent social capital is associated with offending in early adulthood.My results suggest that the intergenerational transmission of socialcapital is an important source of social capital development thatinfluences adolescents' behaviors for years to come. Parental socialcapital relates positively to adolescent neighborhood social capitaland adolescent school social capital. The investigation also showsthat the relationship between parental social capital and adolescentschool social capital is as strong as the one with neighborhood socialcapital.The intergenerational transmission of social capital hasdiametrically opposed effects for violence. While adolescentneighborhood social capital increases violence, social capital inschool decreases violent offending. The cause for these opposingrelationships is likely the different environmental contexts in whichboth types of social capital exist. While adolescent neighborhoodsocial capital exists in an environment providing adolescents withunstructured activities, the environment in which adolescent schoolsocial capital is developed represents structured activities and, bydefinition, pro-social value formation.My research also shows that, at least for the earlyyears of adulthood, adolescent social capital is an importantpredictor of offending. The relationships in early adulthood mirrorthe associations in adolescence. It is likely that young adults inthe transitional period between adolescence and adulthood maintaintheir adolescent social capital networks, leading them to engage inthe same offending patterns they displayed in adolescence. Socialcapital networks, and with them offending patterns, likely shiftafter the young adults have established themselves in adult life.

This paper attempts to rectify a void in the existing life-course and illegal drug use literature by examining desistance from marijuana in rural and non-rural vicinities. Until recently, the scholarship on crime has focused on the factors associated with recidivism, thereby overlooking an equally important topic-desistance, that is, the practice of not continuing to participate in illegal behavior. In order to address this neglected issue, and explore the possible explanations for the age-crime curve, Sampson and Laub (1993) set forth an integrated theory of informal social control. The thrust of this theoretical framework centered on adulthood bonds to conventional society, such as marriage and employment. They argued that adults who acquire and are highly-committed to such institutions, increase their odds of desisting from crime. However, Sampson and Laub neglect to take into account possible rural-urban differences in the desistance process. The emphasis on urban populations is also a characteristic of most studies examining drug use. This research examines desistance in drug use by rural and urban population, by using a life-course perspective. Three life course transitions were employed in this study: education, employment, and marriage. Also included in the analysis were measures of time spent with peers and contact with deviant friends. By using these measures, this study was able to test Sampson and Laub's theory. The sample for this study comes from waves 6 and 7 of the National Youth Survey. The multivariate models predicting desistance from marijuana lend little support for differences between rural versus non-rural locations. Although enrollment in college facilitates the desistance process, employment and marriage do not play a significant role in the desistance process. This paper concludes with some implications of these findings.