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In a growing number of destination countries state authorities have started to use various digital devices such as analysis of data captured from mobile phones to verify asylum seekers' claimed country of origin. This move has prompted some critics to claim that asylum decision-making is increasingly delegated to machines. Based on fieldwork at a reception centre in Germany, this paper mobilises insights from science and technology studies (STS) to develop a framework that allows for more nuanced analyses and modes of critiques of the digitisation of asylum procedures. Rather than thinking human and non-human forms of agency as external to one another in order to juxtapose them in a zero-sum game, I comprehend the introduction of digital technologies as a reconfiguration of existing human-machine configurations. This conception highlights how the use digital technologies enables caseworkers to retain their position as an epistemic authority in asylum decision-making by assembling clues about asylum seekers' country of origin generated by digital technologies into hard juridical evidence. Subsequently, I develop an alternative critique that focuses on epistemic implications of the digitisation of asylum procedures. I identify a particular version of data colonialism that enables epistemic domination by means of data extraction., Competing Interests: No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s)., (© 2024 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.)

Since the end of the Cold War, millions of migrants from Eastern Europe have sought better opportunities in Western European countries, yet few studies have assessed the impact of such moves on these migrants' children. In the aim of isolating a "treatment effect" of migration on educational outcomes, this study analyzes Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) scores from 2012, 2015, and 2018 for adolescents born in twelve Eastern European countries and living in eight Western European countries. It employs propensity-score matching within a homeland dissimilation framework, comparing immigrants' outcomes on reading, math, and science assessments to similar stay-at-homes in their countries of origin. In unadjusted comparisons to their counterparts who remained behind, migrant children attain lower scores across all three subjects. Once immigrant children are matched to non-immigrants with similar propensities to migrate, the disparity for math scores disappears, while those for reading and science remain. Disparities are wider for adolescents who come from within the EU, migrate at older ages, or speak a foreign language at home. This paper indicates the need for policymakers and educational administrators to better handle the negative academic effects that migration can have on children from within Europe., Competing Interests: Declaration of Interest Statement No potential competing interest was reported by the authors.

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is often referred to as a complex problem embedded in a complex system. Despite this insight, interventions in AMR, and in particular in antibiotic prescribing, tend to be narrowly focused on the behaviour of individual prescribers using the tools of performance monitoring and management rather than attempting to bring about more systemic change. In this paper, we aim to elucidate the nature of the local antibiotic prescribing 'system' based on 71 semi-structured interviews undertaken in six local areas across the United Kingdom (UK). We applied complex systems theory and systems mapping methods to our qualitative data to deepen our understanding of the interactions among antibiotic prescribing interventions and the wider health system. We found that a complex and interacting set of proximal and distal factors can have unpredictable effects in different local systems in the UK. Ultimately, enacting performance management-based interventions in the absence of in-depth contextual understandings about other pressures prescribers face is a recipe for temporary solutions, waning intervention effectiveness, and unintended consequences. We hope our insights will enable policy makers and academics to devise and evaluate interventions in future in a manner that better reflects and responds to the dynamics of complex local prescribing systems., Competing Interests: No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s)., (© 2023 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.)

Focusing on transnational entrepreneurship and immigrant businesses in new destinations, this paper studies entrepreneurship of Chinese immigrants in the U.S. using data from three surveys. In the analysis of transnational connections, we focus on the temporal dimension that links pre-migration and post-migration business activities. Results from logistic models reveal that the prospect of being self-employed among Chinese immigrants is significantly enhanced if they are from households in China with business backgrounds. This finding highlights the fact that transnational entrepreneurship is embedded in the multi-stranded connections between the immigrant sending and receiving societies. In the second part of the paper, sequence analysis is used to describe and classify business trajectories in traditional and new immigrant destinations. The results establish that while it may take a longer time for immigrants to achieve business ownership in new destinations than in traditional destinations, new immigrant destinations increase the chance of business expansion from one business to multiple businesses. These findings indicate a transition in immigrant entrepreneurs' business models. Businesses in traditional destinations mainly follow a survival strategy, while those in new destinations are adopting models that are akin to mainstream business operations, which gives rise to more opportunities for socioeconomic mobility.

Talking about death and dying is promoted in UK health policy and practice, from a perception that to do so encourages people to plan for their end of life and so increase their likelihood of experiencing a good death. This encouragement occurs alongside a belief that members of the public are reluctant to talk about death, although surveys suggest this is not the case. This paper describes findings from a research study in which people participated in deliberative discussion groups during which they talked about a range of topics related to death, including talking about death, the good death, choice and planning and compassionate communities. Here we report what they had to say in relation to talking about death and dying. We identified three themes: 1. The difference between talking about death as an abstract concept and confronting the certainty of death, 2. how death and dying presents issues for planning and responsibility, and 3. approaches to normalising death within society. For our participants, planning was considered most appropriate in relation to wills and funerals, while dying was considered too unpredictable to be easy to plan for; they had complex ideas about the value of talking about death and dying., Competing Interests: No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s)., (© 2022 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.)

Borders are constructs that shape our understandings of our societies, communities, and the world. Geospatial borders draw distinctions between neighborhoods and schools that are deemed 'worthy' and 'unworthy' of economic, social, and political investment. This paper employs the theoretical framework of 'discriminate biopower' to argue that geospatial borders produce a 'socio-political invisibility' linked to race and racial inequality. Through focus group discussions with kindergarten - grade eight educators in the Chicago metropolitan area of the United States, this paper provides evidence of how understandings of race are spatially applied by teachers. Findings suggest that teachers located and conflated individuals and racial groups with physical locations, demonstrating how spatial borders and the practice of bordering function as a biopolitical and segregationist way to understand race and power., Competing Interests: Disclosure statement No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Research recruitment, eligibility, and who chooses to participate shape the resulting data and knowledge, which together inform interventions, treatment, and programming. Patterns of research participation are particularly salient at this moment given emerging biomedical prevention paradigms. This paper explores the perspectives of Black and Latino young men who have sex with men (BL-YMSM) regarding research recruitment and eligibility criteria, how their experiences influence willingness to enroll in a given study, and implications for the veracity and representativeness of resulting data. We examine inclusion and recruitment as a complex assemblage, which should not be reduced to its parts. From April-July 2018, we conducted in-depth interviews with 30 BL-YMSM, ages 18-29, in New York City. Interviews were recorded, transcribed, and analyzed using the constant comparative method. Black and Latino YMSM's responses unveiled tensions between researchers', recruiters', and participants' expectations, particularly regarding eligibility criteria (e.g., age, sex frequency), assumptions about 'risky behaviors,' and the 'target' community. Men preferred peer-to-peer recruitment, noting that most approaches miss key population segments. Findings highlight the need to critically examine the selected 'target' community, who sees themselves as participants, and implications for data comprehensiveness and veracity. Study eligibility criteria and recruitment approaches are methodological issues that shape knowledge production and the policies and programs deployed into communities. These findings can inform how future research studies frame recruitment and eligibility in order to better meet the needs of participants and ensure future engagement.

In order to combat the COVID-19 pandemic, policymakers around the globe have increasingly invested in digital health technologies to support the 'test, track and trace' approach of containing the spread of the novel coronavirus. These technologies include mobile 'contact tracing' applications (apps), which can trace individuals likely to have come into contact with those who have reported symptoms or tested positive for the virus and request that they self-isolate. This paper takes a critical public health perspective that advocates for 'genuine participation' in public health interventions and emphasises the need to take citizen's knowledge into account during public health decision-making. In doing so, it presents and discusses the findings of a UK interview study that explored public views on the possibility of using a COVID-19 contact-tracing app public health intervention at the time the United Kingdom (UK) Government announced their decision to develop such a technology. Findings illustrated interviewees' range and degree of understandings, misconceptions, and concerns about the possibility of using an app. In particular, concerns about privacy and surveillance predominated. Interviewees associated these concerns much more broadly than health by identifying with pre-existent British national narratives associated with individual liberty and autonomy. In extending and contributing to ongoing sociological research with public health, we argue that understanding and responding to these matters is vital, and that our findings demonstrate the need for a forward-looking, anticipatory strategy for public engagement as part of the responsible innovation of the COVID-19 contact-tracing app in the UK., Competing Interests: Disclosure statement No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

This paper argues for a rethinking of disease preparedness that puts incertitude and the politics of knowledge at the centre. Through examining the experiences of Ebola, Nipah, cholera and COVID-19 across multiple settings, the limitations of current approaches are highlighted. Conventional approaches assume a controllable, predictable future, which is responded to by a range of standard interventions. Such emergency preparedness planning approaches assume risk - where future outcomes can be predicted - and fail to address uncertainty, ambiguity and ignorance - where outcomes or their probabilities are unknown. Through examining the experiences of outbreak planning and response across the four cases, the paper argues for an approach that highlights the politics of knowledge, the constructions of time and space, the requirements for institutions and administrations and the challenges of ethics and justice. Embracing incertitude in disease preparedness responses therefore means making contextual social, political and cultural dimensions central.

This paper draws upon the notion of slow emergency as a framework to interpret ethnographic and qualitative findings on the challenges faced by Puerto Ricans with chronic conditions and health sector representatives throughout the island during and after Hurricane María. We conducted participant observation and qualitative interviews with chronic disease patients (n=20) health care providers and administrators (n=42), and policy makers (n=5) from across the island of Puerto Rico in 2018 and 2019. Many Puerto Ricans coping with chronic diseases during and after María experienced bureaucratic red tape as the manifestation of colonial legacies of disaster management and health care. They describe a precarious existence in perpetual "application pending" status, waiting for services that were not forthcoming. Drawing on ethnographically informed case examples, we discuss the effects of these bureaucratic barriers on persons with three chronic conditions: renal disease, opioid dependency, and HIV/AIDS. We argue that while emergency management approaches often presume a citizen-subject with autonomous capacity to prepare for presumably transient disasters and envision a 'post-disaster future' beyond the immediate crisis, Puerto Rican voices draw attention to the longer, sustained, slow emergency of colonial governance.

With the rise of China's economy, more and more white Westerners are moving to China for better job or business opportunities. In addition to the so-called transnational elites, there are an increasing number of middle-stratum white migrants whose lived experiences in China are marked by notable tensions between privileges and precariousness. Based on research in Beijing and Xi'an, this paper examines how white migrants from different backgrounds make strategic choices in coping with the decline of white skin privilege in China and feelings of insecurity in a highly competitive Chinese labour market. It identifies China as a new frontier zone where the meanings of whiteness are contested and reconstructed in interracial encounters between white migrants and various groups of Chinese. I argue that although these white migrants have little control over the multiple and contradictory ways that they are racialised in Chinese society, they still demonstrate a certain degree of agency in manipulating the Chinese gazes for their benefits through the strategic performance of different versions of whiteness., Competing Interests: No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s)., (© 2022 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.)

Literature on diaspora engagement in development activities has centred on the contributions of migrating adults to the 'homeland', which range from private transfers to single households, to community development projects. While such studies often focus on the impact of such activities on the country of origin, relatively few have focused on what transpires during development encounters and how this affects migrants', and especially young people's, motivation to engage transnationally over time. This paper combines migration and development, transnational migration studies and second generation 'returns' literature, to address these gaps. It studies the motivations of transnational youth to engage in development encounters, which they referred to as 'giving back', in the context of their mobility trajectories. Drawing on 17 months of multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork in the Netherlands and accompanying young people during trips to Ghana, we show that giving back contributes to a sense of purpose that connects them transnationally. Young people's expectations of giving back were embedded in community narratives, which framed this as a means to 'become successful' in culturally valued ways. While young people sometimes encountered unexpected surprises, emotions experienced during development encounters led to learning that ultimately resulted in enhanced intentions of transnational engagement., Competing Interests: No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors., (© 2021 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.)

Mobile applications for digital contact tracing have been developed and introduced around the world in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Proposed as a tool to support 'traditional' forms of contact-tracing carried out to monitor contagion, these apps have triggered an intense debate with respect to their legal and ethical permissibility, social desirability and general feasibility. Based on a large-scale study including qualitative data from 349 interviews conducted in nine European countries (Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, German-speaking Switzerland, the United Kingdom), this paper shows that the binary framing often found in surveys and polls, which contrasts privacy concerns with the usefulness of these interventions for public health, does not capture the depth, breadth, and nuances of people's positions towards COVID-19 contact-tracing apps. The paper provides a detailed account of how people arrive at certain normative positions by analysing the argumentative patterns, tropes and (moral) repertoires underpinning people's perspectives on digital contact-tracing. Specifically, we identified a spectrum comprising five normative positions towards the use of COVID-19 contact-tracing apps: opposition, scepticism of feasibility, pondered deliberation, resignation , and support . We describe these stances and analyse the diversity of assumptions and values that underlie the normative orientations of our interviewees. We conclude by arguing that policy attempts to develop and implement these and other digital responses to the pandemic should move beyond the reiteration of binary framings, and instead cater to the variety of values, concerns and expectations that citizens voice in discussions about these types of public health interventions., Competing Interests: No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s)., (© 2021 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.)

In the past decade, Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs) have become a highly visible public health issue in Senegal. In the absence of adequate and affordable care, people diagnosed with NCDs seek to manage their symptoms through the adoption of healthy diet. However, in households built on collective eating, dietary change is extremely challenging. Drawing on participant observation, biographical interviews, and focus groups with women in six households in the Dakar suburb of Pikine, this paper presents a relational analysis of the reception and translation of dietary advice within low-income households. Women diagnosed with chronic disease strategically 'bracketed' advice that was not possible to enact, prioritised collective transformation over individual change, and valued consumption that demonstrated 'respect' and solidarity over 'healthy eating'. I show that relational approaches open up new intervention and health promotion strategies for the prevention and management of Non-Communicable Diseases outside of the global North., Competing Interests: No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s)., (© 2021 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.)

Subjective wellbeing (i.e. life satisfaction and happiness) impacts youth's social, economic and political participation. Prior studies have documented cross-national variation in subjective wellbeing of adults but there is a lack of data on the prevalence and correlates of subjective wellbeing among youth in low and middle income countries. This paper utilizes data from an international dataset - Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys to assess the influence of structural and micro-level factors on the subjective wellbeing of youth (ages 15 - 24) in 29 countries or regions in Eastern Europe, Latin America, Asia and Africa. We find that within countries, global life satisfaction and happiness are associated with age, education attainment, place of residence, marital status, household wealth and exposure to mass media. Significant interactions between age, gender and education are observed. However, none of the country level development indicators account for cross-national variation in youth's SWB although there is some indication that income inequities between countries may influence youth's SWB. The findings underscore the need for objective measures of subjective wellbeing to understand the conditions in LMICs., Competing Interests: Disclosure statement The authors do not have any conflict of interest to report.

This paper uses practice theory to explore a poorly understood phenomenon with important health implications: How and why an increasing number of young Americans regularly use multiple tobacco products. Practice theory is a promising alternative to traditional public health frameworks for understanding everyday activities related to health. It broadens the analytic focus from characteristics of individuals to viewing practices as having lives of their own in competing for, winning, and losing practitioners. We drew from in-depth interviews with 21 young adults (ages 18-29; California) who regularly use cigarettes, electronic nicotine delivery systems (ENDS), and/or smokeless tobacco. Participants described their everyday routines. We examined the characterizing elements of each tobacco product use practice and the roles of each within participants' routines. We found that each product comprises a distinct substance use practice with different roles to play in different situations and contexts. Notably, many participants rotated between or modulated use of different products as a strategy for reducing perceived tobacco-related harms. Cigarettes are uniquely capable of aiding in the space-time organization of everyday activities and coping with crisis, while ENDS and smokeless tobacco open up times and spaces for nicotine consumption. This kind of approach aids our understanding and anticipation of the evolution of tobacco use practices as new products and regulations are introduced.

India has about 400 million internal migrants (UNESCO 2013). The proportion of permanent internal migrants in India has risen between 1983 and 2007-08, and much of this increase is attributed to female marriage migrants. However, there is limited literature analyzing the well-being of female marriage migrants in India. This paper seeks to examine whether women's autonomy in the public sphere is a function of: a) the geographical community where the woman resides, or b) imagined communities (the mindset of the communities to which the woman's family belongs), using multilevel mixed-effects logistic and ordered logistic regression. Analyzing data from the India Human Development Survey (IHDS), 2012, for more than 34,000 ever-married women aged 15-49 years, the study finds that the communities in the mind (norms about marriage migration in the caste/sub-caste to which the woman's family belongs) are more important than the physical communities to which the women have migrated, in relation to certain aspects of women's physical autonomy and autonomy to participate in civic activities. In contrast, a woman's economic autonomy is a function of both 'imagined' and 'physical' communities. Thus, the opportunities available to women who migrate for marriage are shaped by both geographical communities, and more importantly, by the norms in her community about marriage migration.

This paper explores the joint roles of law and biomedicine in constituting the boundary between legitimate and illegitimate (and genuine and 'pseudo') traditional healing. It argues that, as law and biomedicine have grown to share common understandings of the nature of knowledge, they have come to act as converging colonizing forces that displace and alter 'other' forms of knowing and ordering. Even as regulatory systems set out to recognize some forms of traditional medicine, they continue to operate on assumptions that disqualify knowledge, products, and actors, that do not resemble their biomedical counterparts. This leaves traditional healing systems potentially having to either operate outside the law or adapt to it by transforming themselves, potentially beyond the point of recognition, to fit better into the systems provided by law and biomedicine. The paper explores the series of dilemma this creates for those seeking to 'regulate better' traditional medicine.

This paper recounts the tale of a 'Spurious Drugs Kingpin' and his scandalous business empire of relabelling and recirculating expired medicines in the south Indian city of Chennai. At the time the story broke, in the first half of 2010, questions of drug safety dominated media headlines and public discussion. However, a closer investigation suggests a more complicated picture. While relabelling expired medicines was certainly a crime, it is far from clear if their relabelling and subsequent redistribution constituted a public health danger. If actually existing unsafe drugs did not fuel this drug safety scandal, what did? I argue this case illuminates two things: (1) the illusory nature of certainties about drug safety and (2) how ambiguity about the safety of expired drugs facilitates policing not of relations within the pharmacological world, but instead of social and economic relations. This episode matters because it illuminates how, within apparent attempts to police the safety of circulation of drugs, drugs themselves are neither subject nor object, but instead the ground upon which market battles are waged.

This paper centres on the roles and contributions of fieldworkers-local data-collectors in Global Health research in postcolonial contexts. It is informed by two separate ethnographies, conducted in two different East African biomedical research institutions. It discusses how common characterisations of fieldworkers as 'low-skilled' and 'local' make them attractive to research institutions in two important ways - as community-embedded data-collectors thus facilitating community participation and as being unlikely to fabricate data because they lack the skills to avoid detection. This paper questions these assumptions. It draws on Daston's idea of the 'scientific persona' and Fanon's concepts of mask-making to explore how fieldworkers construct identities and data within their liminal roles. Fieldworkers create particular pseudo-personae or masks for getting and staying employed. They dumb-down CVs and emphasise their similarities with community members in ways which are partially 'real' but also 'fake'. These constructed identities provide fieldworkers with a persona that allows them to fabricate or modify data without raising suspicions. They frequently engage in practices known as 'genuine fake' data fabrication which is data perceived as factually correct and verifiable yet methodologically incorrect, hence it is real and fake in varying degrees. We understand the 'pseudo' as the blurry space between real and fake where fieldworkers construct their identities and data. Given the seemingly laudable aims of Global Health, we argue that fieldworkers' masking and making up data signal the need for greater attention by those designing its research, to better understand and address why and how these practices unfold.

Increasing feminisation of transnational labour migration has raised concerns over potential 'care crises' at home, and consequently a 'care deficit' for children left in origin countries. Our paper focuses on how left-behind children from Indonesia and the Philippines understand, engage and react to changes in their everyday lives in their parents' absence. While many children had no say over their care arrangements, some were able to assert their agency in influencing their parents' decisions and eventually migratory behaviours. Their thoughts and actions reinforce the importance of including children's views in development and migration studies to improve both the children's and families' well-being, and make migration a sustainable strategy for all., (© 2019 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.)

This paper addresses methodological challenges of investigations of international migration, including difficulties in obtaining information about representative samples of migrants and both their origin and destination location. Our project used an origin-based sample with a destination focused survey and interviewed 91% of migrants from a community in Nepal to any destination and shares techniques employed. Our procedures and high response rate constitute a significant improvement in survey methods that permit the creation of unbiased data on migrants and allow the study of migration in conjunction with origin communities., Competing Interests: Conflict of Interest Statement: Dr. Ghimire is also the Director of the Institute for Social and Environmental Research in Nepal (ISER-N) that collected the data for the research reported here. Dr. Ghimire’s conflict of interest management plan is approved and monitored by the Regents of the University of Michigan.

Between October 2013 and July 2016, over 156,000 children traveling without their guardians were apprehended at the US-Mexico border and transferred to the care of the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR). During that same period, ORR placed over 123,000 unaccompanied migrant youth-predominantly from Central America-with a parent or other adult sponsor residing in the US. Following placement, local communities are tasked with integrating migrant youth, many of whom experience pre- and in-transit migration traumas, family separation, limited/interrupted schooling, and unauthorised legal status, placing them at heightened risk for psychological distress, academic disengagement, maltreatment, and human trafficking. Nonetheless, fewer than 10% of young people receive formal post-release services. This paper addresses the paucity of research on the experiences of the 90% of children and youth without access to post-release services. To bridge this gap, this article: (a) describes the post-release experiences of unaccompanied youth, focusing on legal, family, health, and educational contexts; (b) identifies methodological and ethical challenges and solutions in conducting research with this population of young people and their families; and (c) proposes research to identify structural challenges to the provision of services and to inform best practices in support of unaccompanied youth., Competing Interests: Disclosure Statement: No potential conflicts of interest are reported by the authors.

In Kenyan communities, religious leaders are important gatekeepers in matters of health and public morality. In a context that is generally homophobic, religious leaders may aggravate or reduce stigmatization of sexual minorities such as gay and bisexual men, and other men who have sex with men (GBMSM). Literature indicates mixed results in efforts to encourage religious leaders to work effectively and sensitively with issues regarding HIV and sexuality. This paper describes the implementation of an engagement intervention with religious leaders from different denominations, which took place following a homophobic hate attack that was led by local religious leaders, at an HIV research clinic for GBMSM on the Kenyan coast. After the homophobic attack, tailored engagement activities, including a comprehensive four-day online sensitivity training course took place between June 2015 and October 2016 in the Kenyan coast. HIV researchers, together with trained GBMSM activists, organized the series of engagement activities for religious leaders which unfolded iteratively, with each subsequent activity informed by the results of the previous one. Facilitated conversations were used to explore differences and disagreements in relation to questions of scripture, mission, HIV, and human sexuality. As a result, researchers noted that many religious leaders, who initially expressed exceedingly negative attitudes towards GBMSM, started to express far more accepting and supportive views of sexuality, sexual identities, and same-sex relations. This paper describes the changes in religious leaders' discourses relating to GBMSM, and highlights the possibility of using engagement interventions to build trust between research institutes, religious leaders, and GBMSM.

Global health funding bodies are increasingly promoting and offering specific funding support for public and community engagement activities, in addition to research and programme funding. In the context of this growing commitment to engagement work, we need to find ways to better support contextually appropriate and meaningful exchanges between researchers and community members. I argue that, rather than focusing solely on how to involve communities in engagement with global health research, we should also pay attention to the quality and depth of the involvement of researchers themselves. This is an often overlooked dimension of community engagement in both practice and the literature. In this paper, I present three contextual factors, which created logistical and attitudinal obstacles for researchers' involvement in meaningful engagement in a global health research unit in Nepal. These comprised implicit and explicit messages from funders, institutional and disciplinary hierarchies and educational experiences. Lessons were drawn from an exploration of the successes and failures of two participatory arts projects connected to the research unit in 2015 and 2016. Both projects intended to foster mutual understanding between researchers and members of their research population. As an engagement practitioner and ethnographic researcher, I documented the processes.

The Massachusetts experience of health care reform before the Affordable Care Act of 2010 reveals a moral economy of care in which expanded access was met by neoliberal demands for accountability and cost control. Publicly-subsidized health insurance programs in the U.S. are deeply concerned with managing and regulating low-income residents' access to and coverage for medications. By focusing our attention on the new forms of social relations invoked by specific techniques of governing, analyses of accountability can help us understand the ways in which subjectivities are shaped through their encounters with overarching social and economic structures. This paper presents qualitative findings from a four-year, prospective study that combined two waves of survey and chart-based data collection with four qualitative methods. Medicaid patients are made accountable to their medication regimens as they must track their supply and obtain refills promptly; regular blood tests carried out by health care providers verify their adherence. Both patients and their physicians are subject to cost savings measures such as changing lists of covered medications. Finally, patients struggle to pay ever-increasing out-of-pocket costs for their medications, expenses which may keep patients from taking their medications as prescribed. The fraught relationship between trust, accountability and verification finds emphatic expression in the moral economy of health care, where the vulnerability of the sick and their hope for a cure confront policies designed to hold down costs.

It is well-documented that established networks in a destination increase the chances of an individual moving to that destination, but rarely have migration scholars examined how these networks are linked to the duration of one's stay. This paper examines whether the presence of kin and/or friends known at a location prior to moving is associated with one's duration of residence. Presumably, having both kin and friends already at a destination will be associated with the longest residence spells, since migrants would likely maximize their access to diverse network resources. Using residence history data on 1069 Malawians from the Migration and Health in Malawi (MHM) Project from 2013, subtle gender differences emerge in this relationship via discrete-time event history analyses. Women who knew some friends, but no kin, prior to migrating have a significantly lower likelihood of moving away in any year compared to those who did not know anyone, or only kin. For men, knowing some friends, but no kin, does not represent a significantly lower likelihood of leaving compared to those who knew no one or only kin prior to migrating.

Growing understanding of spirituality at the end of life demands more theoretical research on the subject. Empirical studies have highlighted the need for exploring philosophical and cultural concepts to facilitate a fuller understanding of spirituality at the end of life. This paper explores Indian philosophy to inform the conceptualisation of spirituality at the end of life in the Indian context. Three key themes from discourses on spirituality at the end of life have been analysed: the concept of the human person, the purpose of life and the meaning of death. The human person is from and of the Divine, eternal and is capable of cognition and experience. The purpose of human life is to unite with the ultimate Reality, the Divine, by living life righteously according to prescribed ways and by achieving detachment from the illusion of the world. Death is part of life and not that which ends it. The moment of death is an opportunity for the ultimate transformation, Moksha. Analysing these philosophical foundations can provide the contextual frame for understanding the spiritual needs of palliative care patients and their families and the possibility of developing culturally relevant approaches to providing spiritual care at the end of life.

The MMR - maternal mortality ratio - has risen from obscurity to become a major global health indicator, even appearing as an indicator of progress towards the global Sustainable Development Goals. This has happened despite intractable challenges relating to the measurement of maternal mortality. Even after three decades of measurement innovation, maternal mortality data are widely presumed to be of poor quality, or, as one leading measurement expert has put it, 'guilty until proven innocent'. This paper explores how and why leading epidemiologists, demographers and statisticians have devoted the better part of the last three decades to producing ever more sophisticated and expensive surveys and mathematical models of globally comparable MMR estimates. The development of better metrics is publicly justified by the need to know which interventions save lives and at what cost. We show, however, that measurement experts' work has also been driven by the need to secure political priority for safe motherhood and by donors' need to justify and monitor the results of investment flows. We explore the many effects and consequences of this measurement work, including the eclipsing of attention to strengthening much-needed national health information systems. We analyse this measurement work in relation to broader political and economic changes affecting the global health field, not least the incursion of neoliberal, business-oriented donors such as the World Bank and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation whose institutional structures have introduced new forms of administrative oversight and accountability that depend on indicators.

This paper focuses on older Turkish labour migrants and their spouses, who mostly came to Vienna as young adults in the 1960s and thereafter. They are now entering retirement age and constitute a significant part of Vienna's older population. I analyse their understandings of transnational ageing, their social ties and feelings of social embeddedness. For those still mobile, active participation in one of Vienna's Turkish cultural/religious/political associations is identified as a particular source of social embeddedness. I argue that these voluntary associations provide an important place for older migrants to strengthen social ties and are relatively easy to access, including in old age. Nevertheless, I demonstrate that older Turkish labour migrants are exposed to several forms of discrimination, some of which are felt especially strongly in old age, including a lack of adequate institutionalised late life care. In the discussion of the paper, I critically revisit the debate on ethnicity as a resource versus ethnicity as a vulnerability factor in old age. I argue that this debate is misleading since it camouflages other central social categories and relations. I conclude by suggesting closer attention be paid to the specific but multiple generational experiences of older labour migrants and their spouses.

Tobacco denormalization is a widely accepted tobacco control strategy, shaping policies and programs throughout the United States as well as globally. In spite of widespread beliefs about the effectiveness of tobacco denormalization approaches, concerns about their emphasis on stigmatization have emerged. Social science research on smoking stigma raises questions about the potential iatrogenic consequences of tobacco denormalization approaches. Few studies have considered how smoking stigma may be internalized differently by different people, particularly those who experience stigmatization because of other socially-ascribed makers of inequity (e.g. race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality). The intersection of multiple stigmas may work to intensify the "social isolation and marginalization" that some people already experience (Greaves & Hemsing 2009; pg S127). This paper presents results from a pattern-level analysis of focus group and interview data from a study investigating smoking-related stigma and perceptions of tobacco denormalization approaches among 15 low income Black women who smoke in the San Francisco Bay Area. Our analysis revealed a cycle where Black women's experiences with structural oppression resulted in stress and the use of cigarettes to cope with that stress. Though the connection between smoking and stress is well documented in previous research, our analysis further revealed the additional contribution of the stigmatization of smoking and how it intensifies inequity for Black women who smoke. Implications of these findings for tobacco control and prevention are discussed.

Prior research has found that persistently delinquent youth or more violent youth were less popular than their less delinquent peers (Young, 2013). However, recent research has also found that weapon carrying is associated with being more popular in adolescence (Dijkstra et al., 2010). The present paper examines the perceived popularity of adolescents who carry weapons in comparison to those who both carry and use weapons in acts of violence or threatened violence. Data consist of two waves from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health. Analyses use OLS regression with lagged predictors. This paper found no differences in number of friends between weapon carriers and weapon users. However, among both male and female gang members, those who did not use or carry weapons (abstainers) named significantly fewer friends than weapon users. Among females, weapon abstainers both named and were named by significantly more people than weapon users. These differences were not observed for males. Implications of these results and directions for future research are discussed., Competing Interests: Disclosure Statement: The author reports no conflicts of interest.

Not only did the criminal corpse have actual medicinal and magical power for Europeans, it also had social and cultural meaning as an object, a curio or secular relic. This paper considers the appeal of notorious bodies. From books bound in the skin of a criminal, to preserved and exhibited heads, from fragments of the hangman's rope to the exhibition of the skeleton, the story of the afterlife of criminal bodies and the material culture most immediately associated with them begins with the collection and exchange of bodies and moves into contemporary preoccupations with authenticity. This paper considers the bodies of three notorious criminals of the eighteenth century: Eugene Aram, William Burke and William Corder. It ends with some reflections on the glamour of the authentic body of a notorious or celebrated individual - using the response to the discovery of the body of Richard III as an example.

Family meals, as acts of domestic food provisioning, are shaped by the competing influences of household resources, food preferences and broader cultural norms around dietary practices. The place of children's food tastes in family meal practices is particularly complex. Food tastes stand in a reciprocal relationship with family food practices: being both an influence on and a product of them. This paper explores how parents think about and respond to their children's food preferences in relation to family meal practices. A qualitative study was conducted with residents of Sandwell, UK. The results presented here are based on the responses of nine key participants and their families. Photo elicitation methods generated participant food photo diaries that were used to inform subsequent interviews. A thematic analysis revealed two contrasting ways of incorporating children's tastes into family meal routines: (1) 'what we fancy' and (2) 'regulated'. The former entails repeatedly consulting and negotiating with children over what to cook for each meal. It is supported by the practical strategies of multiple and individually modified meals. The latter relies upon parents developing a repertoire of meals that 'work' for the family. This repertoire is performed as a series of 'set meals' in which any requests for variation are strongly resisted. Our findings add to the small body of literature on household food provisioning and suggest that achieving the idealised ritual of the family meal is underpinned by a range of values and strategies, some of which may run counter to health messages about nutrition.

In Canada and other western nations there has been an unprecedented expansion of criminal justice systems and a well documented increase of contact between people with mental illness and the police. Canadian police, especially in Vancouver, British Columbia, have been increasingly at the forefront of discourse and regulation specific to mental health. Drawing on critical discourse analysis, this paper to explores this claim through a case study of four Vancouver Police Department (VPD) policy reports on "Vancouver's mental health crisis" from 2008-2013, which include recommendations for action. Analyzed is the VPD's role in framing issues of mental health in one urban space. This study is the first analysis to critically examine the VPD reports on mental health in Vancouver, B.C. The reports reproduce negative discourses about deinstitutionalization, mental illness and dangerousness that may contribute to further stigma and discrimination of persons with mental illness. Policing reports are widely drawn upon, thus critical analyses are particularly significant for policy makers and public health professionals in and outside of Canada.

This paper explores the interplay between the human rights and drug control frameworks and critiques case law on medicinal cannabis use to demonstrate that a bona fide human rights perspective allows for a broader conception of 'health'. This broad conception, encompassing both medicalised and social constructionist definitions, can inform public health policies relating to medicinal cannabis use. The paper also demonstrates how a human rights lens can alleviate a core tension between the State and the individual within the drug policy field. The leading medicinal cannabis case in the UK highlights the judiciary's failure to engage with an individual's human right to health as they adopt an arbitrary, externalist view, focussing on the legality of cannabis to the exclusion of other concerns. Drawing on some international comparisons, the paper considers how a human rights perspective can lead to an approach to medicinal cannabis use which facilitates a holistic understanding of public health.

This paper presents draws on interviews with individuals who have experience of creating, maintaining and utilising Facebook sites in memory of a loved one who has died by suicide. We argue that Facebook enables the deceased to be an on-going active presence in the lives of the bereaved. We highlight the potential of the Internet (and Facebook in particular) as a new and emerging avenue for the continuation of online identities and continuing bonds. Our study offers unique insight into survivors' experiences of engaging with the virtual presence of their deceased loved one: how mourners come and go online, how this evolves over time and how the online identity of the deceased evolves even after death. We discuss how Facebook provides new ways for people to experience and negotiate death by suicide and to memorialise the deceased, highlighting the positive impact of this for survivors' mental health. Finally, we describe the creation of tension amongst those who manage their grief in different ways.

This paper is an analysis of the social interaction between drug sellers, their clients and local health care workers within a medical trial that introduced rapid diagnostic tests for malaria into private sector drug shops in Mukono District, Uganda. It locates the introduction of a new technology to test blood and a system of referral within the context of local concerns about the choice and evaluation of treatment; and the socially legitimated statuses, roles and hierarchies within the local health care system. Based on the multi-layered interpretation of 21 focus group discussions, we describe three key aspects of the trial central to local interpretation: openly testing blood, supervisory visits to drug shops and a new referral form. Each had the potential to shift drug shop vendors from outsider to insider of the formal health service. The responses of the different groups of participants reflect their situation within the health care system. The clients and patients welcomed the local availability of new diagnostic technology and the apparent involvement of the government in securing good quality health services for them from providers with often uncertain credentials. The drug shop vendors welcomed the authorization to openly test blood, enabling the demonstration of a new skill and newfound legitimacy as a health worker rather than simple drug seller. Formal sector health workers were less enthusiastic about the trial, raising concerns about professional hierarchies and the maintenance of a boundary around the formal health service to ensure the exclusion of those they considered untrained, unprofessional and untrustworthy personnel.

This paper explored how imaginary audience and personal fable ideations contribute to adolescent indoor tanning intentions directly and indirectly through the way they shape pro-tanning attitude and association with peers who use tanning beds. Five hundred and ninety-five male ( n = 207) and female ( n = 387) adolescents, ranging in age from 11 to 19 ( M = 16.87; SD = 1.34) years completed a cross-sectional survey. Measures included imaginary audience, personal fable (three dimensions: invulnerability, uniqueness, and omnipotence), pro-tanning attitude, association with peers who use tanning beds, and tanning bed use intentions. Bootstrapping analyses documented that imaginary audience ideations are indirectly associated with indoor tanning intentions through the mediation of pro-tanning attitude and association with peers who use tanning beds. Of the personal fable ideations, only invulnerability ideation is indirectly associated with indoor tanning intentions through the mediation of association with peers who use tanning beds. Design and evaluation of interventions and campaigns to reduce indoor tanning must be targeted to adolescents varying in imaginary audience ideations differently.

This paper presents an abbreviated version of a verbatim script developed from oral history interviews with individuals key to the development of counselling and psychotherapy in Scotland from 1960 to 2000. Earlier versions were used in workshops with counsellors and pastoral care practitioners to share counter-narratives of counselling and to provide opportunities for conversations about historical and contemporary relationships between faith, spirituality, counselling and psychotherapy. By presenting intertwined histories in a readers' theatre script, the narrative nature of lives lived in context was respected. By bringing oral histories into virtual dialogue with each other and with contemporary practitioners, whether through workshops or through publications, the interplay between individual, institutional and societal narratives remains visible and open to change.