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A literary criticism is presented of the English novel "Bleak House," by Charles Dickens. Particular focus is given to the characters of the book's scavenging through rubbish, including in search for waste paper. An overview of the book's representation of the England's economic and social conditions in the 19th century, including of the slums of London, England, is provided.

Black and minority ethnic students (BME) are a significant constituency in vocational education and training (VET) and FE in England. Despite this recent research on race and VET has become a marginal concern. Insofar as current VET research addresses social justice, race appears to be a supplementary concern. Although there is a substantial literature addressing race and education, this focuses primarily on schools and higher education. This paper examines why there is a need to develop a research agenda that analyses participation, outcomes and experiences of BME VET students, particularly those on ‘non-advanced’ programmes (equivalent to European Qualification Framework Level 1–3) with uncertain labour market outcomes and who are arguably being ‘warehoused’ in low status courses. The paper reflects on the historically specific reasons for the dearth of research on race and VET, drawing on a scoping exercise of the literature to evidence this. We conclude by offering a provisional analysis that identifies recent shifts in participation among BME groups, locating this in its socio-economic and historical context. Our analysis reaffirms that VET remains a significant educational site for BME groups, but it is a complex racialised site which makes the current neglect of race and VET in academic research deeply problematic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent developments in the field of machine learning offer new ways of modelling complex socio-spatial processes, allowing us to make predictions about how and where they might manifest in the future. Drawing on earlier empirical and theoretical attempts to understand gentrification and urban change, this paper shows it is possible to analyse existing patterns and processes of neighbourhood change to identify areas likely to experience change in the future. This is evidenced through an analysis of socio-economic transition in London neighbourhoods (based on 2001 and 2011 Census variables) which is used to predict those areas most likely to demonstrate 'uplift' or 'decline' by 2021. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications of such modelling for the understanding of gentrification processes, noting that if qualitative work on gentrification and neighbourhood change is to offer more than a rigorous post-mortem then intensive, qualitative case studies must be confronted with – and complemented by – predictions stemming from other, more extensive approaches. As a demonstration of the capabilities of machine learning, this paper underlines the continuing value of quantitative approaches in understanding complex urban processes such as gentrification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores how the population of England and Wales in 2001 and in 2011 was spatially concentrated by a range of demographic, social and economic characteristics. Where members of population sub-groups tend to live apart from members of other sub-groups then the population may be regarded as geographically unequal. In the UK, debates about the north–south divide have reflected the principal geographical division in public perception, with wealth and health inequalities at the forefront. This analysis uses variograms to characterise the differences between areas over multiple spatial scales. There is evidence for stronger spatial structure (more distinct spatial patterning) in variables including car and van availability and ethnicity than in age, self-reported illness, and qualifications, and these relate to urban–rural differences in the former variables. The key contribution of the paper is in using directional variograms and variogram maps to show marked differences in population concentrations by direction with, for example, north–south differences in qualifications being (on average) greater than those in the east–west direction. However, for most variables which show increased variation (and thus suggest increased geographical inequalities) between 2001 and 2011, increases are proportionally similar in all directions. Only in the case of self-reported ill-health does the north–south (or, in this case, north west–south east) divide appear to have increased. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws on recent research on the construction of new religious buildings by diverse faith communities in the London Borough of Ealing in West London to compare the navigation of local planning processes in the realization of new permanent structures for worship. While existing research emphasizes barriers for minority faith communities, this paper suggests that faith communities are successful local actors able to navigate local planning governance particularly through accumulated expertise and social capital networks, although there are marked differences in capacity and experience between different faith groups. There is also evidence of the mobilization of narratives of "instutionalised multiculturalism" embedded in local policy documents in support for faith communities, but ongoing on-going austerity cuts since 2010 have reduced the capacity of the local state to support projects. Finally, the paper suggests that these planning processes indicate changing ideas of the nature of the suburbs and suburban multiculturalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper emerges from an ethnography of the economic and cultural life of Rye Lane, an intensely multi-ethnic street in Peckham, South London. The effects of accelerated migration into London are explored through the reshaping and diversification of its interior, street and city spaces. A ‘trans-ethnography’ is pursued across the compendium of micro-, meso- and macro-urban spaces, without reifying one above the other. The ethnographic stretch across intimate, collective and symbolic city spaces serves to connect how the restrictions and circuits of urban migration have different impacts and expressions in these distinctive but interrelated urban localities. The paper argues for a trans-ethnography that engages within and across a compendium of urban localities, to understand how accelerated migration and urban ‘super-diversity’ transform the contemporary global city. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Female genital mutilation (FGM) is defined by the World Health Organization to include: ‘procedures that intentionally alter or cause injury to the female genital organs for non-medical reasons’. It is a practice that affects many females in England and Wales and as a result, specific legislation has been introduced to tackle it. This paper explores the development of the criminal and civil law relating to FGM in England and Wales. It discusses the advantages and disadvantages of the approaches adopted and considers whether they are effective. The paper concludes that the creation of a specific criminal offence has proved to be ineffectual; that the introduction of civil FGM protection orders is a more appropriate and effective means of combatting the practice and that legal measures need to be supplemented by non-legal interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Studies on migration and integration in Britain have noted the paucity of research on ‘new’ migrants, especially ‘illegal’ migrants and asylum seekers. This paper focuses on one understudied group – Albanian immigrants and their children – and looks at their migration and settlement, based on sixty interviews conducted in two phases either side of a 2003 mini-amnesty that gave many indefinite leave to remain. This regularization is the fulcrum around which our analytical narrative is built. Focusing on the interaction of migrants' agency with host-country structure, the paper shows that an unsettled asylum policy and delays in implementation have had deleterious effects on migrants' integration and sense of belonging, even after citizenship acquisition. As they search for a social and ethnic positioning within a multi-ethnic host society, the eventual realization of Albanians' migration project is accompanied by culture shock, intergenerational difference and ambivalence towards integration. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper explores the idea of ‘superdiversity’ at the city level through two churches with different approaches to architectural visibility: the hypervisible Universal Church of the Kingdom of God and the invisible Igbo Catholic Church, both in North London, guide our exploration of invisible Nigerian London. Although Nigerians have lived in London for over 200 years, they live beneath the radar of policy and public recognition rather than as a vital and visible element of superdiversity. This paper argues that we can trace the journeys composing Nigerian London in the deep textures of the city thus making it visible, but this involves re-mapping space and ethnicity. It argues that visibility is vital in generating more open forms of urban encounter and, ultimately, citizenship. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper is based on evaluative research in an inner-London borough on a programme designed to raise self esteem and deter minority ethnic young people from involvement in crime and participation in gangs. The aim of the programme was to work with young people 'at risk' or involved with gangs, violent crime and who may use weapons and to divert them from this behaviour. Essentially, the paper explores the way in which minority ethnic young people can be equipped to develop social capital. The paper firstly applies a brief contextual understanding of urban minority ethnic young people's experiences of school and 'street life'; secondly, it will describe the background and aims of the programme; and thirdly it will discuss whether and how the programme contributed to developing trust; to notions of awareness and empowerment; self-esteem and identity; and how it impacted on their social and family relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper develops a cross-classification of material deprivation and lack of digital engagement, at a far more spatially disaggregated level than has previously been attempted in the UK. This is achieved by matching the 2004 Index of Multiple Deprivation (IMD) with a unique nation-wide geodemographic classification of ICT usage, aggregated to unit postcodes. The results of the cross-classification suggest that lack of digital engagement and material deprivation are linked, with high levels of material deprivation generally associated with low levels of engagement with ICTs and vice versa. However, some neighbourhoods are 'digitally unengaged' but not materially deprived and the paper investigates the extent to which this outcome may be linked to factors such as lack of confidence, skills or motivation. As with material deprivation, there are distinctive regional and local geographies of digital unengagement and these have important implications for digital policy implementation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The last twenty-five years have seen an erosion of the public sector with whole industries being sold off and made into private companies. Even those roles that have remained in the public sector have undergone enormous change, with the importation of ideas and practices formally associated with businesses. Reforms have led to cost-cutting and an increase in managerialism. This paper sets out what is meant by a profession and then explores whether the reform and modernisation agenda has enhanced the profession of social work or whether it has been to the detriment. It is asserted that social workers have seen a reduction in their ability to act independently and that professional knowledge has therefore been eroded. The tensions between these changes and social work values are discussed. The author posits that the reforms have not contributed to service user's life opportunities. It is concluded that that, alongside the manageralism agenda, social work's poor media profile and the fact that many social workers do not want to be considered professionals has contributed to the continued lack of professional standing. Initiatives that may help with improving the profile of the social work profession and outcomes for service users are discussed—although it is noted that the current government's commitment to these aims appears limited. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much of the literature on the urban legacy of the 2012 Olympics Games emerging in recent years has emphasized the form that development has taken and the ways in which this aligns (or not) with specific promises made in terms of regeneration before the Games. Though plenty of discussion of planning procedure has occurred in this context, less emphasis has been placed on how the process, rather than the products, of urban change has been envisioned through legacy planning and urban design, and the significance of this for regeneration. Given that London's much-heralded 'regeneration legacy' was, from the early days of the Olympic bid, portrayed as a long-term process aimed at addressing historical issues of socio-economic disparity in East London, and that planning and urban design would play key roles in anticipating it, this contribution to the literature is timely. The paper focuses on the period from 2008 to 2018, beginning with the launch of the what was called the Legacy Masterplan Framework. Drawing on empirical analysis of documents describing the main stages of legacy planning and design between these years, it then examines how regeneration as a 'futurescape' encompassing numerous aspects of timing and temporality has been anticipated, planned and evolved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is based on a literature review undertaken for the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister in 2004 (Buchanan et al., 2004) on the impact of government policy in England and Wales for children aged from birth to thirteen at high risk of social exclusion as recorded up until May 2004. It describes the concept of 'social exclusion'; its meaning for children; the aims of government policy; the specific impact of government policy on vulnerable families and children in need (including children needing child protection and all 'looked after' children) as defined by the 1989 Children Act. The paper demonstrates that although progress has been made, there are still major areas of concern. The more discursive parts at the end of the paper reflect the views of the author and later thinking, and were not part of the original submission to the Social Exclusion Unit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following the closure of the steelworks in Teesside, North‐East England, this paper focuses upon social class inequality and the re‐scripting of place. The study explores local responses to programmes such as Benefits Street and Location, Location, Location filmed in Middlesbrough. The study contributes to transnational debates on urban territorial stigmatisation in three ways. First, by extending the gaze from "spectacular" sites of multi‐ethnic urban unrest, to consider seemingly "mundane" post‐industrial peripheries. Second, by identifying how the recipients of spatial stigma might demonstrate agency through various acts of popular resistance including place re‐inscription. This includes developing alternative narratives of place, through commemorating Teesside's rich industrial heritage, supporting ex‐steelworkers, and challenging governmental stigma and media geographies declaring Middlesbrough to be a "benefits town" and the "worst place to live in the UK". Third, by considering the unfolding of place as event, where contingency, complexity and unpredictable constellations and re‐inscriptions might emerge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Extensive research explores how increasing ethnic out-group populations in society affects inter-group attitudes. Drawing on the threat and contact hypotheses, this study develops and tests a framework examining the role of segregation in the out-group size/prejudice relationship. We suggest that whether increasing minority share in a community generates processes of contact and/or perceived threat will depend on how segregated groups are from one another. This, in turn, will determine when high minority share communities have positive, negative, or null effects on inter-group attitudes. Using data from white British individuals in England, we observe that community segregation moderates the effect of community percent non-white British on prejudice, as well as mechanisms of positive inter-group contact and perceived threat. Residents of more homogeneous communities report relatively warm inter-group attitudes, regardless of how segregated they are. Residents living among high proportions of out-group where the groups are integrated report an improvement in out-group attitudes. It is only residents living among large out-group populations where groups are more segregated from one another—at the nexus of high minority share and high segregation—who report colder out-group attitudes. This higher prejudice is driven by both lower positive contact and higher perceived threat in these communities. Using two waves of cohort panel data, longitudinal analysis provides more robust evidence in support of the diversity-segregation nexus framework: communities becoming more ethnically mixed and segregated see prejudice increase, while those becoming more mixed and integrated see stable, or somewhat improving, relations. Collectively, this paper shows that mechanisms of positive contact and threat appear conditional on both the size of out-groups in an area and how segregated groups are from one another, generating key differences in when and how increasing ethnic out-group size affects inter-group relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper considers how shifting laundry practices and technologies associated with dirty washing have over time summoned different spaces, socialities and socio-spatial assemblages in the city, enrolling different actors and multiple publics and constituting different associations, networks and relations in its wake as it travels from the home and back again. It argues that rather than being an inert object of unpleasant matter, whose encounter with humans has been largely restricted to certain categories of person for its transformation to re-use, and thus passed unnoticed, the paper explores how laundry practices have figured in producing and reproducing gendered (and classed) relations of labour, and enacting multiple socio-spatial, and gendered, relations and assemblages in the city, which have largely gone unnoticed in accounts of everyday urban life. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper examines the processes by which middle-class belonging is generated, through the exploration of social and spatial trajectories in narratives of residential choice and mobility. It is based on an understanding of residential choice as indicative and constitutive of social mobilities. In particular the paper builds on the discussion of the match between habitus and field that lies at the root of the notions of middle-class belonging and place attachments to draw attention not only to the conditions under which ‘fit’ is possible, but also acknowledge that belonging is a dynamic process, generated and maintained through residence that feeds back into understandings of classed identities. This paper argues that residential space is not just appropriated to reflect pre-existing tastes and lifestyles, but may also contribute in the transformation of habitus to fit to particular neighbourhoods and ways of living. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper investigates the social ties forged by Romanians in London with migrants of different origins in work and non-work contexts to offer a more nuanced view of ‘bridging’ social ties and related discussions of ‘everyday’ cosmopolitanism. Contrary to the overemphasis on ethnic ties seen as a form of bonding in migration research, the paper shows how Romanians bridge informally with many other migrants based on shared ‘non-native’ status. Alongside non-ethnically marked commonalities, ethnicity emerges as an important ingredient of cosmopolitan socialization, yet without necessarily signalling coexisting ethnic identities, as commonly assumed. Romanians' experiences further show that despite providing significant social and cultural capital, bridging ties with migrants, rather than natives, rarely accrue effective resources for social mobility. The findings suggest the need to disaggregate and qualify current understandings of ‘bridging’ social ties usually depicted in positive terms and uniformly as cross-ethnic relationships, or only linked with the ‘mainstream’ population. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

With the ongoing shift in the dynamics of retail development toward inner-city sites, mega-retail-led regeneration schemes have emerged as an important strategy for place marketing in the entrepreneurial city of London. While a number of studies have attempted to examine the effects of these schemes, the focus of previous studies has been limited to their wider economic and environmental effects. However, few studies have empirically investigated their impact on surrounding neighborhoods, particularly deprived neighborhoods. This paper investigates the effects of the Westfield London Shopping Centre on changes in housing price levels in the surrounding neighborhood of White City/Shepherd's Bush, in order to determine whether mega-retail-led regeneration schemes are a key determinant in the process of gentrification. A difference-in-differences analysis was used to assess differentials in the change rates of housing prices between control and treatment groups following the development of Westfield London. It was found that Westfield London development caused an increase in the change rate of housing prices of the treatment group relative to that of the control group. These findings indicate that mega-retail-led regeneration schemes may be a main cause of the pricing out of neighborhood residents who cannot afford the resulting increased rents and for altering the characteristics of neighborhoods and their social networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In England, deprived neighbourhoods were the focus of a number of policy initiatives constructed by the previous Labour government. The evaluations of these programmes and other earlier interventions have shown that attempts to improve neighbourhood socioeconomic outcomes might be affected by people selectively moving in and out of targeted areas. Nonetheless, there is very little evidence that provides an appreciation of this effect. This paper examines the effect of internal migration on the concentration of low-income families in neighbourhoods in England during 2002–07 using a multilevel growth curve model. Explanatory variables in the model include the regional area and district type of a neighbourhood as well as whether the neighbourhood is ranked within the 20 per cent most deprived in England. The findings suggest that deprived neighbourhoods increase their concentration of poor families at a faster rate than all other neighbourhoods. However, the increase is marginal. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper assesses the relationship between state and society in interwar rural England, focusing on the hitherto neglected role of the Rural Community Councils. The rise of statutory social provision in the early twentieth century created new challenges and opportunities for voluntarism, and the rural community movement was in part a response to this. The paper examines the early development of the movement, arguing that a crucial role was played by a close-knit group of academics and local government officials. While largely eschewing party politics, they shared a commitment to citizenship, democracy and the promotion of rural culture. Many of them had been close associates of Sir Horace Plunkett. The Rural Community Councils engaged in a wide range of activities, including advisory work, adult education, local history, village hall provision, support for rural industries and an ambivalent engagement with parish councils. The paper concludes with an assessment of the achievements of the rural community movement, arguing that it was constrained by its financial dependence on voluntary contributions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper focuses on private equity in the UK and is set in the context of debates about transformations in the City of London. The article focuses on a particular concept of trust as expressed by senior members of the private equity sector. The argument developed is based on interviews with five senior founding partners of private equity firms who talked to us about their background and education, their understanding of how private equity worked and the basis for successful money making and their relationships with those inside and outside the organization. All interviewees strongly asserted the need for absolute trust between senior partners as an essential condition for the successful operation of their business. At the same time, their description of trust in this context was that while it is deep, it is also easily broken, and that once broken, the breach cannot be forgiven. We call this 'brittle trust': asserted to be simultaneously strong while extremely fragile. The paper argues, drawing on Diego Gambetta's work on the Sicilian Mafia, that this concept of 'trust' reflects a particular understanding of the practice of private equity as a high risk, tough and unforgiving business that nevertheless requires high standards of personal integrity. The study allows us to understand something more about the social ideals that were built into this financial sector by its founders, which we argue formed a crucial part of the transformation of the financial sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article uses a new method to gauge eighteenth-century crime. It counts the crimes committed against metropolitan London's justices noted in newspapers and in the Old Bailey Sessions Papers, and finds crime more prevalent than current historiography acknowledges. The article contests current claims that the manner in which newspapers noted crime constructed their readers' perception of crime, making their readers believe crime was much more horrific, and the judicial system much more just, than readers would otherwise have thought they were. The article also argues that some crimes were attacks on the powerful because they were powerful. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In contrast to the US environmental justice movement, which has been successful in building a networked environmentalism that recognises—and has impacted upon—national patterns of distributional (in)equalities, campaigns in the UK have rarely developed beyond the local or articulated a coherent programme of action that links to wider socio-spatial justice issues or effects real changes in the regulatory or political environment. Our purpose in this paper is to extend research which explores the spatial politics of mobilisation, by attending to the multi-scalar dynamics embedded in the enactment of environmental justice (EJ) in north-east England. It is an approach that is indebted to recent work on the scalar politics of EJ, and also to the network ideas associated with actor-network theory (ANT)-inspired research on human–nature relations. Our account provides preliminary reflections on the potential for an “assemblage” perspective which draws together people, texts, machines, animals, devices and discourses in relations that collectively constitute—and scale—EJ. To conclude, and building upon this approach, we suggest future research avenues that we believe present a promising agenda for critical engagement with the production, scaling and politics of environmental (in)justice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues for an alternative response to the 'consumer society' hypothesis for 18th-century England, which is seen to focus on large-scale development and obscure the relations between people and objects. Returning to Marx's theories regarding 'consumer fetishism' and utilising Bruno Latour's work on hybrids and the human and the non-human, the paper considers the manner in which people used objects and objects used people. Utilizing the courtesy books and 'it-narratives' of the 18th century and the later works of Jane Austen, the paper argues that goods should not be seen only as commodities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws on the experience of researching British South Asian women's lives in London as a female British Asian researcher to explore how cultural commonality and difference is shaped by agency and interaction in the research process. It examines these issues through a discussion of how the shared cultural identity of the researcher and the interviewees emerged as both a point of commonality and difference in the research process; with the researcher being `positioned' in terms of both as a result of the interviewees' agency in interpreting their cultural commonality. In particular, issues of ‘Indianness’ and religion emerged as points on which interviewees exercised agency and interpreted the researcher's cultural identity. This was the basis on which they claimed commonality or difference and this assessment consequently impacted on their interaction with the researcher. The article suggests that more attention needs to be given to how assumptions made by interviewees regarding the cultural identity of the researcher through their agency and interaction in the research process shapes interview dynamics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following the Children Act 2004 and the launch of the ‘Every Child Matters: Change for Children’ programme, England has embarked on the most ambitious changes in children's services for over a generation. While the government presented the changes as a response to the Laming Report into the death of Victoria Climbié, they are much more than this. They build on a number of ideas and policies that had been developed over a number of years, which emphasize the importance of intervening in children's lives at an early stage in order to prevent problems in later life. This paper provides a critical analysis of the assumptions that underpin the changes and argues that the relationships between parents, children, professionals, and the state, and their respective responsibilities, are being reconfigured as a result, and that the priority given to the accumulation, monitoring, and exchange of electronic information has taken on a central significance. What we are witnessing is the emergence of the ‘preventive-surveillance’ state, where the role of the state is becoming broader, more interventive, and regulatory at the same time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Social & Cultural Geography is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article, through a detailed examination of the private papers of the English landed elite, argues for the important place of anger in early modern society. It investigates the verbal expression of rage, from irritation to fury, in men and women: why it was aroused, how it was articulated, its effects, and in what circumstances anger was regarded as a legitimate response. Anger was a forceful invitation to renegotiate unsatisfactory aspects of relationships. It spotlighted deficiencies in duty, unacceptable conduct, disrespect, broken promises, and frustrated expectations. The article also challenges the prevailing approach to the history of emotions and suggests that we move from a model of linear repression to one of situated experience. Rather than postulating the gradual suppression of unacceptable emotions, historians should examine the conventions governing the expression of emotions in context, as well as the many perspectives on what was acceptable behaviour and what was not. Focusing on the situated use of emotions brings to light the different emotional mentality of the seventeenth century which linked emotions in unfamiliar ways. It also enables to us to uncover the interaction of emotions and how individuals engaged in daily life with cultural scripts, as well as bringing us closer to unravelling the emotional system of early modern England. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The high prevalence of mental disorders among women in prison is recognised worldwide. In England and Wales, successive governments and independent reports have argued that the equivalent of community care in prisons is acceptable but that some mental health assessment units (MHAUs), staffed by professional clinicians, should remain. These have not been researched.Aims: This paper aimed to explore patterns of use of a MHAU in a women's prison in England and to test the hypothesis that it was being used only, as intended--to hold women pending transfer to a health service hospital or in a bona fide crisis.Methods: Anonymised data on all women transferred to one MHAU between 1 January 2008 and 31 August 2010 were obtained from the prison files and subjected to descriptive analysis.Results: Less than a third of these women were transferred to an outside hospital; this group stayed longest in the unit. An overlapping group of 52% of the women was under a special assessment, care in custody and teamwork protocol because of suicide or serious self-harm risk. Thus, 188 (68%) admissions fulfilled national protocol criteria for MHAU admissions. Two in five women admitted were released or returned to ordinary prison locations. Nevertheless, over 80% of the women were known to external mental health services, and 64 (30%) were so unwell on arrival in prison that they were transferred directly to the MHAU. Over a third of admissions were of women admitted more than once during the 32 months of study, and this was significantly more likely after release from prison directly to the community.Conclusions: Our hypothesis was not sustained, and it seems unlikely that this prison MHAU is unique in being used outside its strict remit. A shift from studying the epidemiology of mental disorder in prisons to the epidemiology of mental health needs could benefit this vulnerable group and the wider community alike. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the rising use of commercial medical assistance in early modern England. We measure individual consumption of medical and nursing services using a new dataset of debts at death between ca. 1670 and ca. 1790. Levels of consumption of medical services were high and stable in London from the 1680s. However, we find rapid growth in the provinces, in both the likelihood of using medical assistance and the sums spent on it. The structure of medical services also shifted, with an increase in "general practice," particularly by apothecaries. The expansion in medical services diffused from London and was motivated by changing preferences, not wealth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Ankara Review of European Studies (ARES) / Ankara Avrupa Çalışmaları Dergisi (AAÇD) is the property of Ankara University European Union Research Centre and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Studies of gentrification in London have shown that some groups of middle-class people have been attracted to poor and multi-ethnic areas of inner London in part because of their social and ethnic mix. However, the attraction has often not translated into everyday interaction. In an earlier account of gentrification in Brixton this de facto social segregation was typified as a process of ‘social tectonics’. In this paper we compare two ethnically and socially mixed neighbourhoods, Peckham and Brixton, that at different times have represented the ‘front line’ of gentrification in London. We examine the extent to which the gentrification of Brixton in the late 1990s is being mirrored by the gentrification that is occurring today in Peckham – a similarly mixed and counter-cultural area of South London. Whilst we identify continuities between the gentrification process in these two areas separated by a decade of boom and recession, we suggest that the Peckham example demonstrates the need for a more developed approach to the issue of social mixing than that implied by the social tectonics metaphor. Specifically, we argue that there is a need to explain how the presence of classed and ethnic ‘others’ can be central to the formation of identities within some middle-class fractions in such enclaves in the inner city, and how attitudes and neighbourhood practices can change over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

London today hosts more than 200,000 Italian people. A traditional point of arrival for Italian migrants since the nineteenth century, London is a setting characterised by the presence of the ‘old’ classic economic migration – of those who left Italy mainly in the 1950s and 1960s, and the ‘new’ migration, made up mainly of highly-educated people in the professional, academic and arts sectors. These two groups differ as regards their time of arrival, socio-economic characteristics and educational background, and they rarely have the chance or find the need to interact. This paper is based on interviews with representatives of Italian institutions and associations, and with ‘old’ and ‘new’ Italian migrants; participant observation of Italian events happening in London; and some elements of discourse analysis. By means of this empirical material, I aim to show that, besides their well-known differences, the ‘old’ and ‘new’ communities present striking similarities in their migration narratives. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article argues that the notion of ‘superdiversity’ implies an investigation of diversity that goes well beyond the nature of migration origins and trajectories. To probe the academic value of superdiversity, I situate it within broader academic debates, suggesting that it is necessary to distinguish between superdiversity as a malleable social science concept – a set of variables that researchers conjunctively investigate – and superdiversity as a context in which these variables play out in complex social patterns. I argue that complexity is an integral aspect of superdiversity, before explaining how innovative research methods were used to investigate superdiversity in a dual-site project in London and Toronto in order to explore its relevance for global comparative research. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper draws on research with Vietnamese businesses in London which seeks to challenge some of the traditional views of transnational entrepreneurship. These have focused primarily on entrepreneurs embedded in both home and host countries and the need for regular travel between the two to manage the business. In contrast, this study suggests that transnational entrepreneurship today is more fluid than previous studies have suggested and is often characterised by multi-polar (rather than bipolar) links. Travel is also less relevant in the current age of ‘super-connectivity’. The research explores how Vietnamese entrepreneurs in London draw on various forms of transnational capital to further the development of their business, and develops a framework to measure the degree and extent of the transnational embeddedness and dependency of the business. The results suggest that transnational entrepreneurship amongst ethnic minority entrepreneurs today is better viewed as a continuum rather than a set of discrete business types. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The question of whether and how ethnic diversity affects the social cohesion of communities has become an increasingly prominent and contested topic of academic and political debate. In this paper we focus on a single city: London. As possibly the most ethnically diverse conurbation on the planet, London serves as a particularly suitable test-bed for theories about the effects of ethnic heterogeneity on prosocial attitudes. We find neighbourhood ethnic diversity in London to be positively related to the perceived social cohesion of neighbourhood residents, once the level of economic deprivation is accounted for. Ethnic segregation within neighbourhoods, on the other hand, is associated with lower levels of perceived social cohesion. Both effects are strongly moderated by the age of individual residents: diversity has a positive effect on social cohesion for young people but this effect dissipates in older age groups; the reverse pattern is found for ethnic segregation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we examine the contradictory migration experiences of Indian youth who recently moved to Britain on a student or temporary work visa and discuss the perspectives of their middle-class families in Gujarat. Like many young people in developing countries, our informants dreamed of going to the West to earn money and improve their prospects at home but ended up in low-status, semi-skilled jobs to cover their expenses, living in small guesthouses crammed with newly arrived migrants. Why did these young people leave India and go to London and what do they get by moving abroad? Based on research in London and Gujarat, our findings show that the decision to migrate is shaped by a combination of individual and social motivations. These young people moved to London not only to earn money and gain new experiences but also to escape family pressures by living away from their parents. Their parents encourage them, though they are aware of the difficulties their children face in London. They regard the migration as a requisite precautionary strategy to maintain their status as middle-class families in India, thereby safeguarding the next generation's future prospects. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Focusing on the working experiences of the French highly skilled in London's financial and business sectors, this paper examines the impact of ongoing pan-European variegation on intra-EU highly skilled migration in two key respects: firstly, in its role as a driver for mobility, through its association with divergent opportunity structures across different nations and regions; and secondly, as a potential obstacle to the successful realization of such opportunities, post migration, where mobility exposes the highly skilled migrant to new and embedded forms of difference. Such differences necessitate adaptations, and the acquisition of new inter-cultural competencies, that go on to mediate the experience, evaluations and outcomes of such opportunity-driven mobilities. In unpacking the particularities associated with the mobilities of specific populations (the French), to specific places (London) we seek to contribute to a people and place-sensitive understanding of the relationship between spatial mobility and social mobility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The increasingly diverse character of London's multicultural landscape has shaped how migrants interact with(in) the different spaces of the city. This process entails both settled and incoming migrants' participation in place-making; a mutual imbrication that might promote the long-settled migrants' evocation of a lost terrain. This article unpacks that process by looking at the Latin American social football scene of South London, specifically a space known asla cancha(the pitch). This was founded by Chilean political refugees during the 1970s and it has incorporated Latin American ‘economic’ migrants and ‘local’ Britons through time. Starting from the evocation of a lost ‘golden age’ ofla cancha, the paper unpacks this space's contested, complex and changing nature. It presents diaspora space, community and belonging as lived processes. Through this depiction, the assumptions of homogeneous and isolated migrant communities are challenged, as are the diaspora's nostalgic claims that also emerge from them. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper investigates the migratory strategies of highly skilled French migrants in London's business and financial sectors. Drawing on qualitative data with 37 participants from this under-researched group, we contribute to the growing interest in micro-level analysis of the motivations, experiences and trajectories of highly skilled migrants. Unlike other studies which either focus on Intra-Company Transfers (ICTs) or exclude them entirely, we capture the complexity and fluidity of migrants' trajectories by including people on expatriate contracts as well as spontaneous movers. In so doing, we interrogate several key dimensions of highly skilled migration. Firstly, we examine the varied expectations and motivations of the French highly skilled moving to London. In particular, we highlight the fluidity of career trajectories as migrants transform their contractual position over time. Secondly, we examine how migrants negotiate the balance between mobility and career and personal emplacement, and how family considerations inform that process. Finally, we consider the extent to which these migrants may be described as ‘Eurostars’ or ‘super-movers’, and question whether these ideal types herald new forms of migration or a particular life-stage. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper examines how the globalized nature of London's service sector redefines spatial relationships for recent migrants working in the health and hospitality industries. Findings from the qualitative data demonstrate that recent temporary migrants to the UK employ broader strategies to secure employment than accounted for by current theories. The migrants in our case studies overwhelmingly utilized global and local recruitment and employment agencies, as well as sought employment in industries already established as ‘ethnic economies’. We suggest that this might be attributed to a lack of interaction with established co-ethnic immigrant communities; temporary migration trajectories; and living arrangements with co-migrants. We conclude by emphasizing the need to broaden our understanding of ethnic economies and social networks in light of these changing spatial relationships that have emerged through the globalization of the service sector in the UK. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Despite aiming to provide minority ethnic groups with material equality and protection from discrimination, the British ethno-cultural system of recognition has perpetuated social differentiation which is difficult to transcend. Drawing from interviews with informants and 10 in-depth case studies with Latin American and Latino-British families in the Yorkshire and Greater Manchester regions of the north of England, the paper explores the fraught relationship between these migrants and their multicultural framework of incorporation. Significant here are the contested understandings of the Latin American collective identity, combined with the diversity of migration trajectories, socioeconomic backgrounds and life-course needs of migrants and their children, which contribute to soft pan-ethnic identifications among the participant population. It is argued that, by encouraging migrants and their descendants to seek recognition through absolute ethnic differences, multicultural recognition systems can reproduce colonial categories and fail to respond to the diverse social and life-course needs of migrants. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper addresses the later careers of two almost entirely forgotten Bohemian Neo-Latin poets, Venceslaus Clemens (1589-1637), and Jan Sictor (1593-1652). These men were among the many Protestant academics displaced by the Thirty Years War, but unlike some of their better-known contemporaries, Clemens and Sictor were abject failures. Nevertheless, their failure illustrates the miserable lot of the displaced continental academic in the period, unable to adapt fully to new and challenging circumstances. This aspect of the literary and intellectual impact of the Thirty Years War has been understandably underplayed, but stories of failure are nevertheless instructive and indeed essential for a balanced picture of the intellectual impact of war. This study employs archival and bibliographical evidence to reconstruct the biographies and fortunes of these two men as they tried their luck, with very limited success, in the Low Countries and England in the 1630s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The recent report of the Milburn Review into Social Mobility highlights the under-representation of young people from lower socio-economic groups in higher education and encourages universities and others to act to remedy this situation as a contribution to greater social mobility. The paper uses data from the Longitudinal Study of Young People in England to examine the relationship between social background, attainment and university participation. The results show that differences in school-level attainment associated with social background are by far the most important explanation for social background differences in university attendance. However, there remains a small proportion of the participation gap that is not accounted for by attainment. It is also the case that early intentions for higher education participation are highly predictive of actual participation. The results suggest that although there may be some scope for universities to act to improve participation by people from less advantaged backgrounds, a much more important focus of action is on improving the school-level achievement of these students. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

There is considerable interest in the role of inequality in affecting social outcomes yet there is also uncertainty and disagreement about the appropriate scale at which to measure inequality within such analyses. Whilst some have argued for larger-area inequality measures to be used there are good theoretical, empirical and intuitive grounds to think that local inequality may have relevance as a driver of social ills. This paper explores whether differing understandings of ‘local’ inequality does—or can—matter and, if so, within which contexts this is the case. Contrasting findings across the two areas support the notion that local inequality does have relevance to social outcomes but that the socio-spatial context matters. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper will examine the views and experiences of Black youths living in socially deprived areas of London in order to examine the way in which they recognise the term ‘Black neighbourhood’ as a resource for ethnic identity formation and collective mobilisation. Despite the apparent problems that are typically associated with ‘Black neighbourhoods’ for many Black youths, these neighbourhoods also represent urban spaces through which a range of bonding social capital resources are generated including ties of reciprocal trust, solidarity and civic participation. These spaces hold intrinsic value for these young people providing them with a sense of wellbeing and belonging. However, the analysis will also show that the young people’s experiences of the neighbourhood are not always positive ones, and such spaces create negative outcomes for Black youths residing there. In particular, the data will highlight the restrictive capacity of ‘Black neighbourhoods’ and the various ways in which they limit Black youths’ opportunities to ‘get on’ in terms of social mobility and their ability to move beyond neighbourhood boundaries. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper explores the concept of domestication as a way of attending to urban public spaces and the ways in which they come to be inhabited. It argues against the tendency in urban scholarship to use the term pejoratively and interchangeably with words like pacification or taming to express concerns relating to the corrosion of public life. Rather, the aim here is to develop domestication as a concept attentive to the processes by which people go about making a home in the city. Given the tremendous investment, enthusiasm and amount of policy directed towards urban development and regeneration over the past decade, it is argued that it is vital that urban scholarship continues to develop tools and concepts for offering fine-grained attention to the spaces that get produced by these interventions and to the social dynamics within them. These arguments are developed through a case study of the Prince of Wales Junction in London. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]