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This article explores the gap between people and rule (demos and kratos) in democratic societies by exploring the history and practice of broad-based community organising, as applied by London Citizens, United Kingdom (UK). The paper outlines the origins of this model of politics and how it has been translated from the United States to London and the UK. The paper highlights the power of mobilising the demos to put pressure on the decision-making governance structures that determine the kratos. While London Citizens does this through kratos-at-a-distance, the article goes on to explore how hyper-local, neighbourhood-scaled governance structures—'community councils'—could provide a powerful tool to further connect demos to kratos. Such councils could underpin a democratic revival that combines representation and participation at the scale at which people still live their lives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents information about the University of Brighton's third annual conference on Human Resource Management (HRM) in the Hospitality Industry, held in London, England on February 10, 1994. The focus of the conference was "Changing Structures and Changing Responsibilities." Gill Maxwell of Glasgow Caledonian University talked of "Competitiveness and Human Resource Management in the UK Hotel Industry." Her paper examined the case for a central role for HRM in the industry against the background of the general organisational status and structure of HRM. It discussed the structures and responsibilities of the HRM function in two units of international hotel chains where HRM is, untypically for the industry as a whole, viewed as centrally important. Sandra Watson and Norma D'Annunzio-Green of Napier University, Edinburgh, in their paper, "The Influence of Organisational Structure on Personnel Management: A Move to Human Resource Management," investigated the implications of organisational restructuring on labour management within the industry.

This paper will chart the multiple ways that regulated tenants in my family home of Webb Place, a tenement building in Kensington, London, experience gentrification-induced displacement. I then discuss how community and creativity play a part in their resistance and survival. Landlords and property management companies have subjected regulated tenants, in this specific context, to a long process of 'slow violence' and displacement that has included negligence and harassment intended to stress, harm, anger, and ultimately push out residents. Not only does this 'slow violence' occur behind the closed door of the building but so does resistance to it. Communal interaction and creativity have helped regulated tenants to mock power structures and repurpose space while also trying to survive the gentrification of their home. While this displacement is not unique to regulated tenants, this paper adds to much-needed theoretical work that centres on regulated tenants—indeed, in-depth analysis of gentrification and displacement among this subfield is essentially non-existent in the UK, until now. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper analyses conflicts associated with policies to protect the built heritage. Such conflicts relate to a host of tensions between private and public concerns and specifically between pro-development and pro-conservation approaches. To examine these cleavages, the paper operationalises private and public concerns over heritage by asking if there is a recognisable set of justifications that policy-makers use for supporting a pro-conservation or alternatively a pro-development approach? To do this, the paper looks at appeals decided by Her Majesty’s Planning Inspectors in London. The findings show that although they are not dichotomous, public and private interests in heritage development can be factually recognised in the setting of appeals. Moreover, the paper finds that Planning Inspectors often channel conflicts through the prism of certain public interests, namely, protecting architectural and physical attributes of the building and its surroundings. Although inspectors are instructed to actively weigh in other (potentially overriding) considerations in heritage appeals, such as socio-economic and proprietary issues, these considerations do not appear to have the same standing within the decision-making process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Young people arriving alone in the UK due to forced migration face significant hardships including, but not limited to, their history of experiences, current and future uncertainties, and cultural differences. This paper took a critical perspective of current dominant theories of refugee youth through in-depth exploration of lived experiences of coping. Following the authors' involvement in a community youth project and consultation, five young people took part in individual interviews. The participants were living in semi-independent accommodation in or near London, and were all male, while four identified as Muslim and one as Christian. Using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA), a culturally relative understanding of coping was developed. These young people were found to be taking active roles in managing their lives in the context of extensive loss, and gaining independence through connection to others. Religious practices were important, with young people making sense of their experiences through worldviews shaped by religious beliefs. While religion was described predominantly in a positive and beneficial light, an area for further investigation is the experience of religious struggle, and how this may impact experiences and coping. Implications for support for young people both from services and in communities are suggested. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the impacts of the PREVENT Counter-Terrorism Strategy. The conclusion is reached that violence may be being promoted rather than prevented by government attempts to counter 'radicalisation' and 'extremism'. The motivation for this paper is the author's experience of the PREVENT Counter-Terrorism Strategy in a school in east London; and its main recommendation is that counter-extremism strategies can and should be contested. This conclusion, and the explanation for it, is reached by using a critical realist approach to Critical Discourse Analysis, supported by the framework of the semiotic triangle in the context of Bhaskar's transformational model of social activity. This brings in a time dimension that, it is argued, has previously been neglected in critical realist versions of Critical Discourse Analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 1997, over 50,000 homes have been demolished to allow for the "renewal" of council estates in London. This has involved the "decanting" of short and long-term tenants, as well as those leaseholders who bought their homes under "right to buy" legislation. Often described as "social cleansing", the racialized dimensions of these displacements remain under-explored despite asizable literature documenting the connections between race, place and state-subsidized housing in Britain. Drawing on interviews with Black, Asian, and Minority Ethnic estate residents– including many active in housing movements– this paper shows that this displacement is understood in relation to histories of racial discrimination, the destruction of ethno-cultural infrastructures, and long-standing racialized inequalities. These themes resonate with apolitics of resistance grounded in aracialized class consciousness that seeks to intervene more broadly in the politics of capital and the state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With analysis occurring during a heightened concern with the Black Lives Matter movement and knife crime in the U.K., this paper aims to delineate the characteristics of a street code, constituting a specific dominant and often hegemonic form of 'street masculinity' found on an inner-city housing estate in London called Maxwell. The fieldwork ran over nine months in 2019, involving 48 Black, Asian, and minority ethnic men aged 18–22. Using an ethnographic methodology, the principal methods of data generation were observations, interviews and informal conversations. The main theories this study draws on to understand 'street masculinity' were Connell's and Messerschmidt's dominant, hegemonic, subordinate and complicit masculinity forms. Findings centre on data from two young men who exemplify different patterns of masculinity performing the street code. Findings are presented under a series of characteristics that make up the game of the 'on-road' street masculinity and include (1) authenticity, 'swagger' and not being 'pussy'; (2) a preparedness for violence; (3) knife-carrying; (4) a presence on the digital street. Although this way of living drove a desire for respect and group status, there was also an underlying and pervasive sense of vulnerability derived from risk-taking and anticipation of danger. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using data from the 2001 Census Special Migration Statistics, this paper explores ethnic variations in the propensity to migrate, the effectiveness of net migration in redistributing ethnic populations, and the connectivity between places that results from ethnic migration. London has by far the largest concentration of ethnic minority populations in Great Britain and plays a key role in the national internal migration system. By decomposing the net migration balances of boroughs into those within and across London's outer metropolitan boundary, the paper reveals different spatial processes of decentralisation and dispersal as well as centralisation when comparing ethnic groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

London's selection as hosts for the 2012 Olympic Games was a significant moment for Britain. It was a chance to reinforce, through sport, a collective and inclusive British national identity. Most international sporting contests draw on English rather than British loyalties and identity constructions. This might have been especially important for members of the large British Asian diaspora, many of whom feel excluded from ethnically exclusive and narrowly White notions of 'Englishness'. This paper is framed within a post-London 2012 period and examines the role of sport in constructing and negotiating British Asian national identities. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with young British Asians in two English cities. For those who rejected an English national identity through sport, the Games presented an opportunity to connect with a more inclusive British version of sporting allegiance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper builds upon Colin McFarlane's 2011 call inCityfor an ‘assemblage urbanism’ to supplement critical urbanism. It does so by mapping the spatio-political contours of London's 21st-century housing crisis through the geophilosophical framework of Deleuze and Guattari'sA Thousand Plateaus([1980] 2013, London: Bloomsbury] and Hardt and Negri's analysis of the metropolis inCommonwealth(2009, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press). The paper examines the Focus E15 housing campaign based around a group of young mothers in the East London borough of Newham. In 2013, the mothers were living in the Focus E15 foyer supported housing unit for young people in Newham, but they were subsequently threatened with eviction as a result of welfare cuts. After successfully contesting the mothers’ own prospective expulsion from the city, the campaign shifted to the broader struggle for ‘social housing not social cleansing’. The paper draws upon participant observation at campaign events and interviews with key members. The Focus E15 campaign has engaged in a series of actions which form a distinctive way of undertaking housing politics in London, a politics that can be understood using a Deleuzoguattarian framework. Several campaign actions, including temporary occupations, are analysed. It is argued that these actions have created ‘smooth space’ in a manner which is to an extent distinctive from many other London housing campaigns which are rooted in a more sedentary defensive approach based around the protection of existing homes and communities—‘our place’. It is such spatio-political creativity—operating as a ‘nomadic war machine'—which has given rise to the high-profile reputation of the Focus E15 campaigners as inspirational young women who do not ‘know their place’. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Cityhas, from its inception, paid close attention to London, to the ‘World City’ or ‘Global City’ ideologies underwriting its concentration of wealth and of poverty and to challenges from among its citizens to the prevailing orthodoxy. This paper focuses on London's extreme experience of the housing crisis gripping the UK—itself the European nation with the fastest long-term growth of average house prices and widest regional disparities, both driven by overblown financialisation and the privileging of rent as a means of wealth accumulation, often by dispossession. Londoners’ experiences stem partly from four decades of neo-liberal transformation and partly from accelerated financialisation in the last two decades and are now being accelerated by the imposition of ‘austerity’ on low- and middle-income people. The social relationships of tenancy in social housing, private tenancy and mortgage-financed owner-occupation are, however, divisive and the paper ends by identifying what may be the beginning of a unified social movement, or at least a coalition, for change. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The paper argues that gaining an effective perspective on the London housing crisis requires an understanding of what is happening at the highest levels of the real estate market (£2 million+). It is based on data collected over two and a half years (2013–15) of research amongst the London elites through the ESRC (Economic and Social Research Council) project ‘Life in the Alpha Territories: London's “Super-Rich” Neighbourhoods’. It unpacks terms such as ‘foreign investor’ and frames the specificity of London as a global city, as well as using ethnographic and interview data to understand how actors who impact upon the city understand their role themselves. Distinctions are drawn between those who buy houses in Mayfair to shore up capital and middle-class Chinese investors, who buy flats to rent them out as investments. It differentiates between different types of ‘empty’ houses, and also considers the impact of ‘old’ elite families selling up and moving out who also purchase properties for their children in areas adjacent to traditional ‘elite’ hotspots, creating further ripples of gentrification, price rises and unaffordability. Eschewing the facile conflations of the populist press, this paper shows how capital flows into London, resulting in a mix of misplaced and mismatched investment—fuelling the building of the wrong types of units at the wrong price points. The paper also examines how the underuse of land deeply affects London well beyond its traditionally elite and ‘prime’ areas. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

For most analysts, Brexit reveals the highly contingent power of finance and the clear limits to its ability to influence crucial policymaking outcomes. By contrast, I contend that UK-EU negotiations demonstrate the unique capacity of finance to secure substantial commercial protections relative to all other business sectors and that the structural sources of the City's political power remain exceptionally robust. Elaborating a notion of 'structural interdependence', the paper demonstrates how policy officials on both sides came to perceive that the future prosperity and stability of their economies relied upon maintaining open trading relations in financial services. This necessitated broad continuity in access to London's deep financial markets for EU firms and preservation of the City's leading role in the UK growth regime. In establishing these claims empirically, I document an extensive range of contingency measures designed throughout December 2018-April 2019 that would function to protect the financial industry from economic disruption in the event of a no-deal Brexit. The outcome illustrates how finance benefits from a form of structural power that does not require instrumental mobilisation, but rather shapes policy decisions on the basis of deeply entrenched and commercially vital cross-border financial entanglements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines narratives of learning and occupational advancement amongst migrants employed in 'low-skilled' jobs, based on in-depth interviews with secondary-educated East and South Europeans living in the London region. Our findings indicate that many achieved varying degrees of professional gratification, progress, and skills development within occupational sectors typically associated with unattractive conditions, limited benefits or opportunities to get ahead. Participants' narratives of achievement expand the relatively limited literature that challenges common perceptions of occupational mobility and professional development as the terrain of the 'highly skilled'. Furthermore, we examine how migrants made sense of their career opportunities and success. We discuss two discourses, centred on 'hard work' and 'creativity' respectively, through which participants challenged and reconfigured traditional 'high'-'low-skilled' divides. Our findings contribute to critiques of traditional understandings of migrant human capital and simplistic 'high'-'low-skilled' distinctions in two ways: by documenting the less visible experiences of learning and career progress amongst secondary-educated European youth who enter 'low-skilled' employment abroad, and by calling attention to subjective understandings of occupational mobility and the new 'symbolic boundaries' around skills, broadly construed, that migrants redrew in their reflections on career progress. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Developing on Granovetter’s classic work on embeddedness in systems of social relations, this paper proposes the concept of ‘differentiated embedding’ to explore how migrants negotiate attachment and belonging as dynamic temporal, spatial and relational processes. When Poland joined the EU in May 2004, the large flow of migrants to the UK was perceived by many migration researchers as heralding a new form of transient mobility associated with short-term, temporary and circular migration, and high levels of transnationalism. Relatively little attention was paid to how these migrants were integrating in local contexts. Based on 20 in-depth interviews and network mapping with Polish migrants, resident in London for a decade, I examine why participants extended their stay and how their decisions were shaped by interpersonal relationships locally and transnationally. London as a ‘superdiverse’, global city offers place-specific opportunities for building networks and developing processes of embedding. Nonetheless, a focus on networks risks overlooking the wider structural context in which migrants live and work. Thus, I argue, there is a need for a differentiated concept to capture the nuanced interplay of structural, relational, spatial and temporal embedding. This concept not only captures multi-scalarity and multi-sectorality but also levels of belonging and attachment. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Individualised behaviour change interventions can result in greater effects than one-size-fits-all approaches. Factors linked to success include dynamic (vs. static) tailoring, and tailoring on behaviour, multiple theoretical variables, and participant characteristics. XP is a very rare (∼100 UK patients) genetic disease, involving an inability to repair ultraviolet radiation (UVR)-induced damage, resulting in skin cancers and eye damage from an early age, and mean life expectancy of 32-years. Management involves rigorous UVR photoprotection, which is often inadequate, and no interventions have been published. UK-based care is personalised and delivered by a multidisciplinary team at the National XP Service in London. Following an intensive, mixed-methods formative phase with patients diagnosed with XP (n-of-1, qualitative interviews, objective UVR measurement, cross-sectional survey) and relevant stakeholder consultation (clinical and patient/public teams), the 'XPAND' intervention was developed. This paper describes the comprehensive and novel tailoring and personalisation processes used to deliver the intervention. XPAND consists of core and personalised modules targeting cue-based (time of day, weather, symptoms), belief-based (motivation, priority), self-regulatory (effort, barriers, planning), and emotional (stress, self-consciousness, mental exhaustion) factors, social support, disclosure, habit, and willingness, using appropriately-matched BCTs. A-priori, phase I data and a baseline profiling questionnaire (data sources) were used to allocate modules to participants ('personalisation') and to adapt module content ('tailoring'). Iterative decisions about delivery were based on patient response to feedback, identification of additional barriers (e.g. reasons for varying protection across contexts), and emergence of new barriers as improvements in protection were attempted or achieved (e.g. appearance concerns). Dynamic multi-level personalisation and tailoring based on mixed-methods in XPAND allowed for insights and decision-making not possible with cross-sectional quantitative or qualitative methods alone. Data collection and allocation/adaptation methods may be of use in other rare conditions where small patient numbers mean that within-participant, individual-level delivery is well-suited and feasible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

Legacy promises from London 2012 meant that those working in sport in local, non-host areas in Britain were expected to facilitate more sporting opportunities for local citizens. Legacy preparations occurred in the context of many other constraints that stemmed from Government budget cuts and provision of leisure-time sport and other leisure activities. This paper presents new evidence on a significantly under-researched area of leisure studies, namely: the experiences of those delivering leisure-sport opportunities in a non-host city and how they responded to national legacy promises. Using Elias's concept of the double-bind, we explain the 'crisis situation' in which some local sports workers were enmeshed and how their acceptance of 'fantasy-laden beliefs' of expected demonstration effects from mega-events exacerbated their 'crisis'. We also draw upon participants' post-Games reflections to consider how future host nations may wish to leverage greater leisure-sporting legacies from a mega-event. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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 aims to forecast the performance of Great Britain and Northern Ireland in the 2012 London Olympic Games. Previous research has relied primarily on population size and gross domestic product (GDP) to predict Olympic performance but the methodology used here follows the approach of Shibli and Bingham (2008), who predicted that China would win 46 gold medals in Beijing 2008. This approach is based on the thesis that elite performance is now more a matter of managed public investment and therefore less dependent on non-controllable variables such as population size and GDP. The Shibli and Bingham forecasts proved to be the most accurate forecast made, even though it was five medals short of China's total of 51 gold medals. In this paper, we extend the analysis to include total medals as well as gold medals and conclude that Great Britain and Northern Ireland will win 27 gold medals in London 2012 and 56 medals in total. Furthermore, we can reasonably expect Great Britain and Northern Ireland to win medals in 15 sports and 18 disciplines. If our forecasts prove to be accurate, then on all four measures 2012 will be Great Britain's best performance in the Olympic Games since 1908. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports the findings from an evaluation of a pilot interprofessional training ward project for pre-qualification medical, nursing, occupational therapy and physiotherapy students. This initiative required sustained collaboration from staff based in two National Health Service (NHS) trusts and four schools in three universities. The ward was based on a model of interprofessional education developed in Sweden, but adapted in the light of this experience and also to meet the needs and aspirations of the training ward stakeholders in London. The training ward was evaluated using a multi-method design. Data were collected from all participants involved in this pilot: students, facilitators and patients. The findings from the evaluation are presented and discussed. This paper pays particular attention to the collaborative experiences of the students, staff and institutions involved in this initiative. In addition, 1-year follow-up data collected from the students who had, by then, qualified as clinical practitioners are reported. The paper presents conclusions from the evaluation, and comments on the training ward's strengths, limitations and future development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the relationship between social class and parental agency. It does so through an analysis of the findings of a recently completed qualitative research project exploring parental voice in relation to secondary schools. The first part of the paper presents a summary of a typology of parental interventions. This illustrates some of the differentials between parents in terms of their access to and deployment of a range of social, cultural and material resources, all of which translates into varying levels of effectiveness in finding and using a voice in their relationship with their children's school. The second part of the paper focuses on the middle-class parents at both schools, suggesting that more nuanced differences in their attitudes to various educational issues (namely discipline and appropriate parental involvement) are closely linked to the class fractions which they belong. It is argued that, despite the broad title of 'middleclass', variations within this general grouping in parental education, occupational pathways and spatial mobility affect their approaches to the education of their children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

British cities and residential suburbs were originally developed under a modernist growth logic: separating home from work, with little concern for energy use. But recent political and social priorities such as climate change and energy security have created an imperative to reduce domestic energy use, with many existing dwellings rendered "obsolete" on account of their poor energy efficiency. This precipitated a need to develop domestic retrofit – the modification of building fabrics and systems to improve their energy efficiency – as an urban infrastructure. The UK Government responded in 2011 with policies such as the "Green Deal", through which coalitions of actors in cities including local authorities, voluntary sector organisations and private businesses were encouraged to experiment with place-based retrofit. This paper examines the challenges and effects of developing a domestic retrofit infrastructure in a North London borough under particularly challenging policy conditions. We develop a hybrid framework for understanding the process and product of this place-based experimentation and through this we ask two questions: 1. How did both local and national conditions enable and limit the development of this infrastructure? 2. Was the emerging urban infrastructure functional and equitable? In Haringey's case, a strong local political agenda positioned retrofit as a development opportunity and vehicle for reducing inequality, but national priorities around market-making and technological fixes dominated emerging responses. Whilst Haringey's efforts in a difficult policy context did result in retrofits and improvements to around a thousand properties, the emerging infrastructure of retrofit services was incomplete, inequitable and temporary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper sheds light on the question of how domestic elite preferences drive states' foreign policies by studying British efforts to suppress maritime piracy in the South China Sea in the 1920s and 1930s. The archival record shows that the British conducted military interventions, which included destroying entire Chinese villages, principally to serve the private aims of London business elites. Absent these parochial interests Britain ignored pirate attacks, including attacks on British-flagged ships. This finding challenges the standard structural explanation, put forward by global public goods scholars, that powerful maritime states suppress piracy to protect universal access to the global maritime commons. It does so through a detailed examination of the principal example cited by this argument's supporters: historical British counter-piracy efforts. Understanding why states pursue their foreign policies also provides a greater understanding of why powerful states choose to serve as global public goods providers in some instances but not in others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines the changes and challenges of the public examination system in the United Kingdom. What were changes; Investigations by the University of London Examinations Council (ULEAC) and the National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER); Findings and conclusions.

This paper examines the unusual opportunities for motoring leisure provided by the modernistic landscape of the Great West Road in the inter-war period. This suburban arterial road had become ribboned by new Americanized factories, which featured 'Californian' white elevations, floodlit at night. This modern roadscape, likened to the 'great white way of an exhibition' by John Betjeman, attracted leisure drivers who would cruise the new road, experiencing a sensation of displaced Americanization and modernity. Using David Nye's work on technological sublimity, this paper positions the Great West Road as a special space for driving as a new leisure experience, distancing this period from the exploration of the countryside that typified motoring in the previous decades. The paper uses material from motoring magazines, architectural sources and poetry to explain the nature of this sublimity through leisure driving. Not being California, the juxtaposition of wet British weather and this road could also provide a misty and mysterious driving experience. As the inter-war period drew to a close, some commentators saw this road as tawdry and vulgar. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws on social capital theory to discuss the way social class plays out in the friendships of teenage students. Based on data from individual interviews and focus groups with 75 students in four London secondary schools, it is suggested that students tend to form friendships with people who belong to the same social-class background as them. Social-class ‘sameness’ is considered to be an element that importantly exemplifies the quality of their friendships, and hence close, inter-class friendships were significantly less common than close, intra-class ones. In addition, class differentials were evident and often reproduced by students, even in the context of the rarer inter-class friendships. This paper concludes that social class is of continuous importance in teenagers’ lives and despite some agentic negotiation of class boundaries, as in the case of omnivorousness, students’ friendship networks are dynamically informed by class inequalities. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

London's internationally acclaimed "cycling revolution" was characterised by an unprecedented investment in cycling infrastructure, particularly cycle lanes manifesting as Cycle Superhighways or Quietways. Despite the hegemony of cycle lanes in London's overarching cycling paradigm, the London Borough of Hackney has historically achieved the city's highest rates of cycling and a long-standing reputation as a cycling borough in the absence of cycle lanes. Instead, Hackney has always opted for spatial interventions (such as filtered permeability, a borough-wide 20 mph speed restriction, and speed humps). This paper challenges Hackney's reputation as a cycling borough and the alleged success of its spatial interventions. I argue that Hackney's privileging of spatial fixes treats spatial interventions as apolitical and value-neutral, which ignores inequities entrenched in cycling. I also argue that Hackney has taken for granted its high rates of cycling, therefore effectively adopting a cycle-blind (akin to race-blind) and cycle mainstreaming (akin to gender mainstreaming) approach to cycling policy and interventions. Consequently, Hackney's spatial interventions for cycling raise the profile of already-visible privileged cyclists (white, middle-class men – the middle-aged men in Lycra, or MAMILs, and the hipsters) for whom cycling is a lifestyle choice while further erasing "invisible cyclists" for whom cycling is an economic necessity. In order to be a relevant and sustainable mode of transportation for Hackney residents, equity and social justice must foreground the borough's approach to cycling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

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 an era when university museums in the UK are engaging new audiences, this paper examines University College London's (UCL) museum and focuses on issues of knowledge, participation and community. Drawing on diverse collections and interests, this paper examines how competing ideologies relating to teaching and research collections raise complex internal political issues in encompassing diverse audiences. At the heart of this are matters of knowledge, institutional and personal memory, possession and control. This paper demonstrates how participatory approaches are as much about the management of knowledge and securing research funding as they are about education and inclusiveness. In doing so, this paper raises some germane questions about the future direction of the university museum in an era when universities are democratising access to academic knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper conducts a form of racial archaeology in relation to the areas of Brixton and Brick Lane in London. Both inner-city areas are strongly associated with meanings related to race and difference. This paper examines some of the dominant ways though which Brixton and Brick Lane became represented in key policy texts. It investigates how these representations changed through time and identifies three different moments that have dominated the evolution of multiculturalism in local political discourse: a moment of racial pathology, where race is viewed as a problem of space or in space; a moment of reflection, where race is perceived through the lens of cultural difference; and a moment of celebration, where cultural difference is represented as an asset to be capitalised upon by acts of local regeneration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1908, London hosted the fourth Olympic Games. A centrepiece of the Olympics, still in a nascent form after their creation in 1896, was the marathon, a foot-race of approximately 40 km. The race was run from Windsor Castle to the Olympic Stadium at Shepherd's Bush in July 1908, and quickly became famous for its controversies, such as the judges' assistance that helped Dorando Pietri over the line, and the questionable amateur status of Canadian runner Tom Longboat. This paper will concentrate on the route of the race: on how it was planned by the Polytechnic Harriers, how it was managed on the day, how it contributed to the development of 'marathon fever' after the Olympics, and what it tells us about the growing suburban landscape of Edwardian London and its hinterlands. The paper will end with a survey of the route today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Implementing the new degree in social work in Britain will require practice agencies to deliver an increased number of practice learning opportunities to students undertaking social work training. Indeed the Practice Learning Taskforce (2004) estimates that, in London, a 70% increase from 2002/3 to 2006/7 will be needed. In order to achieve this practice agencies are being urged to transform themselves into learning organisations. Given that social work programmes in many areas are already struggling to find sufficient placements for their students this is likely to be hugely challenging. Research carried out by Lindsay & Tompsett suggests that, in order to achieve this, social work agencies need to bring planning for practice learning more centrally into the organisation's strategic planning. This paper presents a case study of the author's experience in an English social services department that attempted this. It concludes that practice agencies, in moving towards becoming learning organisations, need to pay attention both to the structural arrangements they develop and the organisational processes involved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the value of reflexive pedagogical approaches in the teaching of academic communication and writing. We focus on a course developed for pre-degree foundation students at a London higher education institution. Drawing on the students’ learning journals, we examine their reflections of the approaches practised on the course. Reflexive pedagogical approaches place emphasis on the contextualized and subjective learner, challenging dominant scientific discourses and opening spaces for students to critically reflect on their learning experiences and the ways that they can positively build on these throughout their university journeys. The course recognized the students’ contributions and understandings through the group work and their journal writing, shifting the emphasis from outcome to process and from competition to collaboration. However, reflexive pedagogical approaches are problematic and the paper examines the dilemmas that we faced in taking this approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Little is known about the social composition of migration affecting British cities, despite the currently high political salience of this issue. This is principally because of the very limited availability of reliable city-scale data on such migrant characteristics as occupation and income. This paper uses the Regional Migration Tables from the 1991 Census to document the migration of labour force members to and from Britain's larger conurbations, distinguishing six main Social Groups defined on the basis of occupation. It is found that all eight areas were net losers of economically active people, that all six Social Groups were generally contributing to these net losses and that, in every case except London, there was a strong positive relationship between social status and the rate of net out-migration to the rest of Britain. This latter case suggests the need for further work, which would benefit from the more detailed migration datasets that are promised from the 2001 Census. Key words: Metropolitan migration; social selectivity; Great Britain; labour force; Population Census. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In his 1967 photo essay “The monuments of Passaic” the American land artist Robert Smithson presented a New York suburb as a seedbed of urban entropy. His research methods, publication strategies and reflections on decline provided a touchstone for the generation of cultural mappers that followed. But have theoretical expectations of metropolitan space perhaps shifted? Is it not in the city centre, rather than periphery, that decay is thought to set in? In which case, what forms – material, cultural, political – does it assume? And what, meanwhile, has become of the suburbs? In an inversion of the Passaic essay, this narrative takes the reader, first by train and then on foot in search of new ruins at the heart of a metropolis. The city is London and the destination Kings Cross, the largest building site in Europe and marketed as tomorrow’s neighbourhood of leisure and information. By way of an art practice, and through the lens of an art and architectural history, the paper reports on the site – its structures and objects, as well as the acts and interventions that the Kings Cross marketing machine has failed to sublimate. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The emphasis of this paper is on the differential impact of Labor Government policies on the City of London in the years 1964-7. Three different areas of Government policy are distinguished and it is shown that Government-City relations in each area had their own very distinct characteristics. Whether or not the policies in a particular area were framed in such a way as to satisfy the perceived interests of the financial institutions was closely related to respective Government-finance power resources and to their respective strategies and objectives. These conditions varied in each of the three policy areas. Controversially, it is argued that the Wilson Government's strategy was informed throughout by Labor party ideals and that these were pursued with loyalty and great skill in the face of much hostility from the City. The final section draws on the analysis of the present paper to indicate just how misleading the standard accounts of City-Government relations have been. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

London's housing crisis is rooted in a neo-liberal urban project to recommodify and financialise housing and land in a global city. But where exactly is the crisis heading? What future is being prepared for London's urban dwellers? How can we learn from other country and city contexts to usefully speculate about London's housing future? In this paper, we bring together recent evidence and insights from the rise of what we call ‘global corporate landlords’ (GCLs) in ‘post-crisis’ urban landscapes in North America and Europe to argue that London's housing crisis—and the policies and processes impelling and intervening in it—could represent a key moment in shaping the city's long-term housing future. We trace the variegated ways in which private equity firms and institutional investors have exploited distressed housing markets and the new profitable opportunities created by states and supra-national bodies in coming to the rescue of capitalism in the USA, Spain, Ireland and Greece in response to the global financial crisis of 2007–2008. We then apply that analysis to emerging developments in the political economy of London's housing system, arguing that despite having a very low presence in the London residential property market and facing major entry barriers, GCLs are starting to position themselves in preparation for potential entry points such as the new privatisation threat to public and social rented housing. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Cyclical synchronization of home prices has important implications for monetary (and other) policies. Regional house price divergence, even over a business cycle, can inhibit labour mobility and prevent workers from moving to where they could add most to their own wages and overall growth. We study house price co-movement across the different UK regions with a method, that, unlike previously employed techniques, allows for time-varying estimates. We find first, that the UK exhibits more home price divergence compared to previously reported results for the US. Second, regions near London exhibit the most co-movement, and those further from London the most divergence. Third, London itself is in the 'middle of the pack' in terms of synchronization compared to other regions. This may reflect London's status as a 'global city' and being the destination for housing demand from sources abroad. Lastly, segmentation has clearly been increasing, rather than decreasing in recent years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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 examines the development of road freight transport operations to, from, and within London, from medieval times to the present. Until the twentieth century, road transport was the dominant mode within London but was less important for goods moved between the rest of the country and the capital. However, since the mid-twentieth century, road transport has also dominated goods movements to and from London, mainly through technological developments in goods vehicle speed and size. Since the introduction of a Mayor of London in 2000, there has been much interest in the efficiency and sustainability of road freight transport measures at a London level. Analysis suggests that present day journeys from London generate approximately four times fewer vehicle miles per tonne lifted than in the 1830s and nine times fewer than in the 1690s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Tube Challenge consists of visiting all stations of the London Underground in the least possible time. The competition started in 1959 and the current record was established in August 2013. This paper shows that under some simplifications, this problem and some of its variants can be cast as a Generalized Traveling Salesman Problem, as a Traveling Salesman Problem, as a Rural Postman Problem or as a Chinese Postman Problem defined on a directed graph. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the relationship between devout Iranian Shi'a in London and an intra-diasporic secularism referred to as ‘non-Islamiosity’—a discourse, sensibility and mode of practice through which some London Iranians construct, experience and live diasporic identity, community and consciousness in a way that marginalises, excludes or eradicates (only) Islam. It is argued that intra-diasporic relations of power vis-à-vis Islam and non-Islamiosity play a pivotal role in shaping the sensibilities and religious experience of devout Iranian Shi'a, for many of whom ‘real life’, to a significant degree, takes place within the diaspora. These Muslims are incapable of ‘othering’ non-Islamiosity in the same way that they can distance themselves from ‘British society’, due to the fact that they have an emotional, moral and political stake in the Iranian diaspora. Thus, they are drawn into a relationship in which they see little choice but—as they describe it—to make concessions to non-Islamiosity. [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]