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Contemporary professional social work can be characterised by increased textualisation (after Iedema and Scheeres 2003) with written texts mediating most action. At the same time, writing, as a key dimension to social workers' practice and labour, is often institutionally unacknowledged, becoming visible primarily when identified as a "problem." This paper draws on a three year nationally funded UK-based research project to offer a situated account of contemporary professional social work writing, challenging dominant institutional orientations to writing in professional practice. The paper outlines the specific ways in which social work practices, including writing, can be characterised as being 'in flux'. Drawing on ethnographic data and adopting a Bakhtinian (1981, 1986) oriented approach to voice, the paper explores the entextualisation of three specific social work texts, focusing in particular on critical moments (after Candlin 1987, 1997). These critical moments offer insights into key problematics of social work writing, in particular the tensions around professional voice and discourse. The paper concludes by arguing for an articulation of professional social work writing which takes account of the dialogic nature of language and the discoursal challenges experienced in everyday practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

State labour inspection has been relatively underresearched in economic and labour geography, despite its prospective role in tackling worker exploitation as part of national state regulatory strategies. This paper seeks to address this gap by critically examining state labour inspection as a government function capable of upholding labour standards within and across economic space. A key contribution of the paper is to make stronger connections between workers' spatial strategies and their ability to shape how labour inspection and standards enforcement is carried out. Focusing upon the UK and Ireland, we examine different ways in which some labour-friendly groups have sought to contest but also to support state labour inspection efforts with a view to protecting workers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a growing need to rethink ways to teach both Black and White pupils in multicultural and diverse societies. This paper reports on a study that examined the impact that preparing multicultural resources had on student teachers' perceived preparedness to represent the diversity of UK secondary school pupils. It explores the creation of teaching materials reflecting the contributions of the African diaspora undertaken by student secondary school teachers at a university in the East Midlands, UK. Consideration of the effect of this on the students' attitudes was collected via an online survey (n=30) and the findings from this analysed thematically. Findings reflect that, given 'permission' and through developing an understanding of their own agency, the students - all of whom identified as 'White' - were enthusiastic about developing resources that challenge the marginalisation of Black people in their subjects. The findings implied a need for organisations to support students to find creative ways of teaching in diverse communities and the paper explores how understandings and respectful representations of race need to infuse every aspect of contemporary curricula. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the last three decades, the role of higher education institutions (HEIs) in employability skill development has been emphasised in UK national policy. Within the same time frame, internationalisation has emerged as a key strategy in higher education (HE), nationally and globally. However, the connection between the internationalisation of higher education and developing graduate employability is an understudied area of research. This paper addresses an identified gap in extant literature by examining the intersection of internationalisation, employability and the international student experience. The paper focuses on non‐EU international students' perspectives which is neglected in dominant discourses on employability. Thematic analysis of data collected from 36 semi‐structured interviews with students from 11 non‐EU countries reveals the importance international students place on employability development opportunities during their study abroad. The findings highlight how international student agency is enabled or constrained within the affordances of international HE, and the implications for employability policy development in an increasingly internationalised context of the delivery of higher education. In conclusion, the implication of the findings is considered in view of the constraints on mobility brought on by COVID‐19. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on over three-years of fieldwork with a grassroots football initiative in inner-city Leeds, this paper highlights the different forms of pleasure experienced by forced migrant men within the space of the football sessions. The paper outlines how football can aid and instigate the experience of bodily, cognitive and social pleasures in spite of lives being heavily controlled by the sprawling nature of the UK border regime. Rather than isolating 'pleasure' as bodily sensation or mental stimulant, this paper moves these embodied feelings towards examining the social (in)significance of pleasures in the context of everyday lives of forced migrants. As a result, this research paper finds that these pleasures – whether bodily, cognitive, cathartic, convivial - act as a counter to the dehumanising effects of the UK asylum process by providing temporary moments of escape from pains from the past, anxieties of the present, and fears for the future. To this end, engaging in pleasure is seen here as a political act. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose Diverse narratives and practices concerned with “vulnerability” increasingly inform how a range of social issues are understood and addressed, yet the subtle creep of the notion into various governance arenas has tended to slip by unnoticed. The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of vulnerability in responding to longstanding and on-going dilemmas about social precariousness and harm.Design/methodology/approach Drawing on in-depth qualitative research into how vulnerability was operationalised in services for “vulnerable” young people in an English city, prominent narratives of vulnerability are traced, which operate in relation to a variety of often-dissonant service user responses.Findings The paper shows the governance of vulnerability as a dynamic process, informed by policy developments and wider beliefs about the behaviours of “problem” populations, interpreted and modified by interactions between practitioners and young people, and in turn shaping lived experiences of vulnerability. Patterns in this process illuminate how vulnerability narratives re-shape long-running tensions at the heart of social welfare interventions between a drive to provide services that might mitigate social precariousness and an impetus towards regulating behaviour.Originality/value The paper argues that although gesturing to inclusivity, the governance of vulnerability elaborates power dynamics and social divisions in new ways. Resulting outcomes are evidently varied and fluid, holding the promise of further social change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Immigration detention and deportation are being increasingly utilised in many countries as key state responses to irregular migration. These practices work together to force migrants to their countries of origin or third countries, offering limited choice about whether to stay or leave. Drawing on a multi-sited ethnographic study of British immigration detention, this paper explores how detainees negotiate deportability and their accounts of the spectre of departing the United Kingdom, often against their wishes and occasionally by force. It analyses how deportability and the institutional structures and logics of immigration detention coalesce to shape detainees' understandings of their positions and options as deportable subjects. The paper highlights the materiality of return from immigration detention and the complexities and multiplicities of how detainees account for their possible departures in relation to the themes of identity, belonging, and home. British immigration removal centres can be understood as 'sites of struggle' in which those subject to detention and deportation negotiate these interconnected practices, acting as best they can within coercive and isolating carceral institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Children who use augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) are multimodal communicators. However, in classroom interactions involving children and staff, achieving mutual understanding and accomplishing task-oriented goals by attending to the child's unaided AAC can be challenging. This study draws on excerpts of video recordings of interactions in a classroom for 6–9-year-old children who used AAC to explore how three child participants used the range of multimodal resources available to them – vocal, movement-based, and gestural, technological, temporal – to shape (and to some degree, co-control) classroom interactions. Our research was concerned with examining achievements and problems in establishing a sense of common ground and the realization of child agency. Through detailed multimodal analysis, this paper renders visible different types of practices rejecting a request for clarification, drawing new parties into a conversation, disrupting whole-class teacher talk-through which the children in the study voiced themselves in persuasive ways. It concludes by suggesting that multimodal accounts paint a more nuanced picture of children's resourcefulness and conversational asymmetry that highlights children's agency amidst material, semiotic, and institutional constraints. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article centres the testimonies of young hijabi Britons as social landscapes shift toward ideological culturalism. Exploring the idea that culture is the defining element of social life and that individuals are bound to closed cultural categories, it sets out a context of endemic cultural racism, as voices from across the political spectrum marshal the veil to vilify Islam and promote cultural homogenization. The paper reports on a qualitative study privileging the testimonies of 18 hijabi women, aged between 18 and 26. It advances "everyday culturalism", a social standpoint that shapes everyday relations to reflect culturalist ideologies and undermine cultural plurality. Three themes illuminate the young women's experiences of being addressed in ideologically embedded ways: the white scripted hijabi subject; harm, silencing, and exclusion; and resistance through re-narration. Ultimately, participants' reflections reject culture as the organizing force for selfhood, instead, asserting hijabi identities as multi-vocal, contextually contingent and contradictory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Adolescents, as a consequence of identification with popular culture, have been described as having homogenous consumption patterns. More recently, however, it has been recognised that 'glocalisation' (global practices reworked to fit local contexts) affords an opportunity for differentiation. This paper considers a recent UK phenomenon, namely that of the US high-school prom, and seeks to explore the ways in which this ritual has been adopted or adapted as part of youth culture. The method employed here was mixed methods, and included in-depth interviews with those who attended a prom in the last three years, as well as a questionnaire distributed amongst high-school pupils who were anticipating a high-school prom. The findings illustrate that the high-school prom in the UK is becoming increasingly integrated into the fabric of youth culture, although, depending on the agentic abilities employed by the emerging adults in the sample, there is differing appropriation of this ritual event, particularly in relation to attitudes towards and motivations for attending the prom. A typology of prom attendees is posited. This paper contributes to our understanding of this practice in a local context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies intersectional multiplicity by encompassing the ways individuals shape relationships between social structures and their science identity. We discuss the science lives of two sixteen-year-old British South-Asian Muslim women studying in a single-sex independent school in London, both of whom aspire to science careers. Adapting McCall's 'intracategorical complexity' in favouring a case study approach, we present the multiplicity of our participants' relationships with exclusion and inequality, discrimination and privilege within their lived social settings, and how these relationships shape their identities and ambitions to become scientists. Our findings reveal that despite their similarities in their societally ascribed intersectional makeup, Ayesha and Hanya differ in viewing their intersections as challenges and/or opportunities. They both portray agentic control towards 'going against the grain' as future women scientists by negotiating their intersections as they develop their science identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent attention to the phenomenon of 'beds in sheds'—outbuildings used illegally for residential accommodation—suggests that shelter informality is increasing in the UK. Reflecting concerns about its apparent proliferation, the issue has been increasingly prominent on government and media agendas, framed in terms of illegal immigration and rogue landlordism, with policy announcements accompanied by high‐profile police and border agency raids. While little firm evidence exists on the scale, nature and causes of this type of informal shelter provision, this paper takes as its starting point the discursive construction of informality in the specific context of the UK, exploring the role of key agentic and structural factors therein. It suggests that an emphasis on agency in government and media accounts may risk obscuring the structural factors (including state policies) involved in the production of informality, as well as the interaction between agency and structure. The case of shed housing demonstrates how informality is produced by a complex interplay of structural and agentic factors characteristic of many global Northern cities, captured by the notion of 'informality as practice' which derives from debates focusing on Southern cities. At the same time, it shows how discourses around informality may be mobilized in the service of specifically context‐driven ideological agendas, in this case relating to immigration and welfare. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite much time and attention by academia and policy to bring about cohesion between core and peripheral regions, still there are large disparities of wealth and outcomes. Recent literature suggests that part of the problem lies in the ways that core regions represent peripheries in discourse and practice (Willett and Lang, 2018; Willett 2016; Lang et al. 2015), meaning that peripheries need to find better ways to challenge negative core representations of place. This paper argues that a critical ontological perspective based on Deleuze and Guattari's (2004) affective assemblages can help to understand this phenomenon better. The paper uses this framework to explore the periphery as a complex adaptive organism -or a periphery-assemblage. Local government is identified as an important structure, potentially enhancing and facilitating better adaptation to change. Using this perspective, and a research methodology that uses creative techniques to uncover the meanings underlying performed responses, the paper takes a case study of local government in Cornwall in the South West of the UK. Research was conducted between May and June 2016. It is claimed that one way for peripheries to challenge core representations more effectively would be to enhance communications within local government, which can better channel and develop information flows within peripheral regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Temporary workers in low-skilled roles often experience ‘hard’ HRM practices, for example the use of the Bradford Factor to monitor absence, rather than using incentives to reward attendance. However, this peripheral workforce has become increasingly diverse in the UK since the A8 European Union expansion, which has seen over a million migrants from central and eastern Europe register to work in the UK. Importantly, there is also heterogeneity within this group of workers, for example between those who intend to migrate for a short period of time then return, and those who are more settled and wish to develop a career. By considering the particular case of absence management, this paper examines how these different groups of migrants respond to HRM practices. The key contribution of the paper is to examine how different groups of migrants experience these practices, rather than simply comparing migrant and native workers as two homogeneous groups. The paper presents data from the food manufacturing sector in the UK. In total, 88 semi-structured interviews were conducted with operations managers, HR managers, union convenors and workers on permanent, temporary and agency contracts. In addition, data from informal interviews and observation at five companies are presented. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper examines the change agency of equality and diversity (E&D) officers with a specific emphasis on the role of extra-organizational influences and resources. The paper is informed by qualitative material collected through interviews with E&D officers from 20 higher education institutions in the UK. The paper offers an evidence-based analysis of the utility of extra-organizational mechanisms and intervention programmes for organizational E&D agenda and for the agentic influence of E&D officers. The paper contributes to both academic literature and policy-making. We present original empirical insights into the change agency of E&D officers by exploring the impact of extra-organizational bodies as potential mechanisms for support and influence. At the policy level, the paper provides evidence on the value of extra-organizational resources and tools that are produced by policy bodies in promoting progressive E&D agendas in organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Purpose -- The purpose of this paper is to examine the nature of the legal relationship tying workers to employers. It explores how the individual who is categorised as an employee is distinguished from a self-employed or independent contractor or a worker. The common law tests for classifying employment status are analysed against a backdrop of emerging research literature. Recommendations for reform are provided, drawing from the work of prominent scholars such as Mark Freedland and Simon Deakin. Design/methodology/approach -- The paper reviews court decisions and examines arguments raised in relation to the binary divide between employed and self-employed. The paper is largely conceptual. Findings -- This paper has shown that divergence between law and realities of employment still puzzle modern law reformers and judges alike. The common law test have proved to be inadequate and new solutions have been recommended. One of the suggest solutions is to import the doctrine of good faith into the tests. Originality/value -- The paper makes recommendations that will further refine and clarify the employment relationship in a bid to create a more inclusive "labour law" capable of protecting a wider range of atypical and vulnerable work relations. This paper will inform managers on the challenges in relation to classification of employment status brought about by the growth in atypical work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we exploit the complementarities between agency theory and resource dependence theory to investigate the influence of regulatory monitoring on financial reporting quality in the higher education sector. Our setting is U.K. universities. Using 14 years of data over the period 2002–2015, we find that financial reporting quality, (proxied by discretionary accruals), improves with the intensity of monitoring and resource dependence (proxied by the proportion of funding from regulators/funding bodies). However, this positive influence is mitigated in the presence of a pre‐discretionary deficit, a proxy for the threat of regulatory intervention. A net benefit from monitoring remains for those universities with low levels of regulated funding but in those where there is high dependence the monitoring benefit is reversed and a pre‐discretionary deficit is converted to a small reported surplus. Both agency and resource dependence theories offer explanations for these findings. Agency theory predicts increased financial reporting quality with increased monitoring and also a reduction in financial reporting quality to avoid costly regulatory intervention. Resource dependence theory predicts that both these effects will increase with increased dependence on resources from a key provider. These findings extend our theoretical understanding of financial reporting quality of universities, contribute to the limited literature on financial reporting quality in the not‐for‐profit and public sectors, and contribute to the exploration of the use of alternative theoretical frameworks in the domain of public sector accounting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports on a three-year action research project action investigating the relationship between assessment as a social structure and the agency of students within a preparatory course for postgraduate international students at a UK Russell Group University. Action research into academic writing assessment within this highly constrained context was informed by critical realism, which allows for impacts of assessment on students to be conceptualised as 'absence', in this case of agency and for change to be understood as the 'absenting of absences.' An initial reconnaissance stage precipitated the implementation of an intervention called processfolio. The first intervention cycle involved one class of 14 students; the second cycle widened the scope to three classes. A range of data sets was employed at each cycle, including interviews, and the students' processfolios. Students demonstrated varying stages of critical consciousness of assessment as a constraining social structure and, through the processfolio, some found space to resist and make agentic choices. Through the iterative process of action research, it became clear that the real purpose of the processfolio was to use assessment itself as a tool to absent the negative impacts of these assessment practices, thereby subverting and disrupting assessment as a social structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much literature views South Asian women in the UK through the prism of arranged marriage and, when discussing gender-based violence, forced marriage. Little attention is paid to South Asian women's experiences of dating, with no commitment to marriage. This paper is based on qualitative research using the theoretical framework of Black Feminist Theory and Intersectionality to analyse how women, who feel they are making their own choices and exercising agency by dating, can, through gendered power dynamics be pressured into marriages. This paper explores how such experiences can elucidate the manifestations of forced marriage and adds to this complex picture of how women entering an intimate relationship of choice, can be entrapped into forced marriage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reconceptualises a classic theory (Kanter 1993[1977]) on gender and leadership in order to provide fresh insights for both sociolinguistic and management thinking. Kanter claimed that there are four approved 'role traps' for women leaders in male-dominated organisations: Mother, Pet, Seductress and Iron Maiden, based on familiar historical archetypes of women in power. This paper reinterprets Kanter's construct of role traps in sociolinguistic terms as gendered, discursive resources that senior women utilise proactively to interact with their predominantly male colleagues. Based on a Research Council funded1 study of 14 senior leaders (seven female and seven male) each conducting at least one senior management meeting in the U.K., the paper finds that individual speakers can transform stereotyped subject positions into powerful discursive resources to accomplish the goals of leadership, albeit marked by gender. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many worldwide live in households with multiple generations of related adults. This paper shows that the number of UK multigenerational households has been increasing but UK multigenerational households have been little studied. The research found that the motivations for multigenerational living are diverse and reflect multiple intersecting structural pressures, including an ageing population, worsening housing affordability and later household formation amongst young people. These intersect with individual circumstances, such as divorce or illness, to make multigenerational living the most practical option for some families. However, forming a multigenerational household is also often an individual and family choice, based on the expectation of mutual benefits brought about by multigenerational living. The research suggests that the extent to which living in a multigenerational household is a positive experience is determined by an individual's degree of agency and choice in the arrangement, rather than an ability to cope with wider structural pressures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the ways in which public sector research scientists make sense of and seek to develop their careers within their current organizational, policy, social and cultural contexts. It argues that to access such understandings, both structure and agency and the relationship between them need to be considered. Using empirical evidence from research in the United Kingdom and New Zealand, this paper further develops Barley's (1989) structuration model of career. It highlights the diverse (and frequently intersecting) institutional contexts in which research scientists seek to develop their careers, and their characteristic modes of engagement with such contexts, and utilizes the concept of career scripts to illustrate the dynamic interaction between these dimensions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to popular understandings, children grow from a state of dependence to eventually become independent adults. Interdependence helps to disrupt the in/dependence binary and is a useful concept for making sense of the experiences young people with variations in sex characteristics in relation to healthcare. This study used semi-structured interviews with 32 health professionals, 33 caregivers and 12 young people recruited in the UK and Sweden. The analysis is guided by the questions: (1) how do young people, carers and health professionals position themselves in the adult/young person relationship in the context of healthcare? (2) how is the (in/ter)dependence of young people imagined when young people, carers and health professionals talk about healthcare? Our analysis shows how carers and health professionals might support dominant understandings about young people growing towards independence while providing little opportunity for young people's agency and voice. Interviews with young people gave clear examples of their negotiating relational ways of being, seeking agency in the context of healthcare and not simply becoming independent of adults. This analysis also draws attention to the ways young people might be silenced within healthcare contexts. The present paper is based on secondary analysis of data from the SENS. It works with concepts of relationality and interdependence to draw out the possibilities of voice and agency for young people with variations in sex characteristics in healthcare contexts. • Youth with variations in sex characteristics are sometimes silenced in the clinic. • There is sometimes too little room for youth agency in healthcare. • A relational approach could improve the healthcare experiences of young people. • Working towards interdependence, not simply independence, can support youth. • It is important to value knowledge that is based on intersex lived experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article asks how well new developments in family life are reflected in law and policy, with a particular focus on donor conception. There has been an unprecedented 'opening up' of family life in recent decades; this increased diversity is, at least in part, linked to developments in reproductive technologies, including gamete donation. In family lives touched by donation, genetic relations with 'donor connections' take genetic connectedness beyond traditional notions of kinship. There is not yet an established social script for how to understand what constitutes meaningful connectedness in reproductive donation. Focussing on the UK context specifically, where assisted conception is highly regulated, this article examines on the one hand, how UK law and policy portray meaningful connectedness in the context of donation, and, on the other hand, how well this fits with connectedness as experienced within egg and sperm donor communities. Drawing on original data from UK law and policy analysis, and empirical interview data with egg and sperm donors and their kin, our analysis shows important disparities between law and policy, and the empirical evidence, suggesting a need for an overhaul of UK donor conception law and policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents findings from an interpretative phenomenological analysis with 20 students from socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds who were accepted onto a Foundation Year in Oxford University. It explores the factors that impacted on their decision to apply to a prestigious university and student's views on their transition to the prestigious university. The analysis highlighted four key factors: (1) The complex relationship students had with their schools and the wider education system; (2) The strong sense of agency they showed in overcoming a range of systemic and structural barriers; (3) Social relationships with family members, peers and the wider community; (4) The importance of the Foundation Year model in supporting transitions to the university. The identified factors have two key implications: (1) a need to engage in system-wide structural reform that empowers students to develop an agentic approach to HE choices and (2) a need for prestigious institutions to ensure that schools and teachers are empowered with cultural capital and knowledge of the admissions processes to support students' applications in an equitable way. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the UK, design is regulated through a system of control for the public interest, which aims to promote quality in the built environment. This system is primarily implemented by local planning professionals with political oversight. These agents are afforded high levels of discretion in the interpretation and implementation of policy and guidance, yet little is known about how they perceive this system or operate within it, creating a 'veil' over the decision-making process. This paper engages with the attitudes and perceptions of these agents through in-depth interviews and Q-Methodology, articulating six unique discourses (the Discretionary Champion, the Civic Advocate, the Rule-Breaking Regulator, the Subjective Theorist, the Self-Assured Evaluator and the Prescriptive Pragmatist) that shed light on a contested arena, identifying how planners understand and approach the control of design, utilise their individual agency, and consider their capacity to pass judgement on design matters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines factors driving the agentic practices of young women who are privately educated. The analysis informing this paper comes from a three-year study, in which 91 young women aged 15-19 years were interviewed. Four private schools in one area of middle England participated in the research, and over half of the young women were re-interviewed 12-18 months later. Our starting point is the degree to which particular orientations within families are aligned to those being promoted within the various private schools in our study. The affective experiences of alignment but also of disorientation within and between the family and the school, drive significant forms of internal conversation ( Archer, 2003). In this paper we examine two kinds of internal conversations found within our study - one that is assured and optimistic, and another, which is more fractured. These different internal conversations lead to the emergence of differing projects of the self, expressed through practices that by their very nature of being committed to self-directed progress can be understood as being agentic. The consequences of these different projects of the self suggest that the reproduction of class privilege cannot be taken for granted - but is always provisional and contested, even among those who are privately educated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Collaboration was legislated in the delivery of integrated care in the early 2000s in the UK. This research explored how the reality of practice met the rhetoric of collaboration. Theory: The paper is situated against a theoretical framework of structure, agency, identity and empowerment. Collectively and contextually these concepts inform the proposed model of 'collaborative agency' to sustain integrated care. The paper brings sociological theory on structure and agency to the dilemma of collaboration. Methods: Participative action research was carried out in collaborative teams that aspired to achieve integrated care for children, young people and families between 2009 and 2013. It was a part time, PhD study in collaborative practice. Results: The research established that people needed to be able to be jointly aware of their context, to make joint decisions, and jointly act in order to deliver integrated services, and proposes a model of collaborative agency derived from practitioner's experiences and integrated action research and literature on agency. The model reflects the effects of a range of structures in shaping professional identity, empowerment, and agency in a dynamic. The author proposes that the collaborative agency model will support integrated care, although this is, as yet, an untested hypothesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: In the United Kingdom (UK), it is predicted that economic cuts and a subsequent increase in child poverty will affect those already on the lowest incomes and, in particular, those living in lone-parent families. As a result, the informal pedagogic encounters within the family that contribute to the development of physical activity-related values, beliefs and dispositions from a very early age will be affected. Therefore, it is vital that we gain an understanding of the place and meaning of physical activity in the lives of young people, as well as the informal pedagogic practices and the socio-cultural forces that influence individual agency. Purpose: Based on Bourdieu's key concepts, this paper explores the interplay of structural conditions and personal agency with regard to physical activity in the lives of young people from low-income, lone-parent families. Methods: This study reports on the voices of 24 participants (aged 11–14) from low-income, lone-parent families in the West Midlands, UK. These participants were engaged in paired, semi-structured interviews to explore issues of personal agency by listening to how they reported on their present lives, past experiences and future possibilities with regard to physical activity. All corresponding interview data were analysed using analytical induction. Findings: This paper suggests that young people exhibited diminished desires to engage in activity due to structural constraints of time, parents' work commitments and a lack of transport that resulted in engagement in sedentary alternatives. Informal pedagogic practices within these families were restricted due to the associated structural conditions of living in a lone-parent family. As such, young people's choice to not seek out physical activities when at home reflected a ‘taste for necessity’ resulting from a lack of cultural and economic capital, placing restrictions on physical activity opportunities that stemmed from their familydoxa. Conclusions: To succeed in fostering dispositions and opportunities to participate in physical activity, we must engage with young people from low-income, lone-parent families from an early age. Certainly though, further consideration of the informal pedagogic practices within, and the demands on, lone-parent families is required when designing any intervention or policy that seeks to enhance their current circumstances and provide opportunities for engagement in a variety of contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

What does it mean to attribute success to 'luck', but failure to personal deficiency? In 2015/16, more than 34 per cent of academic employees in UK higher education institutions were employed on temporary contracts, and the sector itself has undergone a substantial transformation in recent years in terms of expansion, measurement, and marketization. Based on two waves of interviews conducted with fixed‐term academic employees at different career stages, the article explores the narrativization of success and failure amongst staff working at the 'sharp end' of the so‐called neoliberal academy. Arguing that precarious employment situations precipitate the feeling of being 'out of control', the majority of the participants' narratives were characterized by a distinct lack of agency. The paper explores the recourse to notions of chance and the consolidation of 'luck' as an explanatory factor in accounting for why good things happen; however, in tandem with this inclination is the tendency to individualize failure when expectations have been thwarted. While accounts of fixed‐term work are suffused with notions of chance and fortune, 'luck' remains an under‐researched concept within sociology. The article thus concludes by considering what the analysis of 'luck' might offer for a fuller, politicized understanding of processes at work in the contemporary academy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Assent guidelines currently fail to include an assessment of a child's decision‐making ability, experience and interest. This paper summarises a two‐stage study, conducted in the United Kingdom, exploring perspectives on children's decision‐making power and ability within their family, as an indicator for overall decision‐making readiness. Children desired to make some decisions but knew their parents held ultimate authority. Parents believed their children could make some decisions and actively trained them through involvement in daily decisions. Researchers should strive to include children in enrolment decisions to some degree, based on a consideration of their expectations for involvement informed by their daily family context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2017 it was 20 years since the publication ofAssimilating Identities: Racism and Education in Post 1945 Britain. In this study a narrative was constructed which documents the experiences of Afro-Caribbean and Asian children and families within the English education system. It was a narrative that drew largely on the education archives of the local state. Some use was made of documentary evidence generated within the black community, including oral testimony. In the intervening years there has been a shift in history practice, including history of education, towards a broadening of the source material used in the construction of narratives, most notably the use of visual sources. These years have also seen a growing interest amongst historians of education in looking beyond schooling and investigating the educational experiences associated with other sites of learning: congresses, museums, heritage sites, libraries, community centres, etc. This paper aims to bring these two developments – research engagement with the visual and non-school sites of learning – into dialogue by revisiting the research agenda which shapedAssimilating Identitiesand addressing the question 20 years on: ‘What do they know of England who only England know?’ [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Three activists have played key roles in recent climate activism in the UK: Greta Thunberg, Dara McAnulty, and Chris Packham. Through qualitative content analysis of popular news coverage, this study explores the messages conveyed about these activists and the social inequities prevalent in media portrayals of activism more broadly. The analysis revealed that while there was content explaining and defining the causes championed by these activists, it was often overshadowed by subject-centric portrayals. The news coverage tended to emphasize the agency and influence of these individuals, while also placing undue focus on their various identity constructs. The coverage also adopted personalized and sensationalized writing strategies. Although this news coverage offered a more inclusive representation of activists in terms of disability, age, and gender, it simultaneously reinforced stereotypes, prejudice, and the authority of White, middle- to upper-class activists from the global North. These findings highlight tensions between reinforcing and challenging the privileged few who are typically allowed to represent and capture public attention and action on pressing issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of 'peopled landscapes' is based on the notion that it is not possible, nor socially or politically desirable, to remove people from the environment in the era of the Anthropocene. As such, it is necessary to document and develop ways to coexist and flourish.This review examines emergent scholarship about peopled landscapes and biodiversity conservation by considering invasive plant management and rewilding as social processes. While invasive plant management and rewilding are often understood as separate, thinking through social scientific research and examples from Australia and the UK, we demonstrate how both forms of human action in landscapes can be more usefully understood as social relations with nature involving social change and social action.Drawing attention to agency, practices and capacity, we show how diverse forms of human and nonhuman actions are recognised, attributed or acknowledged in biodiversity conservation in peopled landscapes.In practice, centring the idea of peopled landscapes (rather than conceiving of the environment as where the impact of people is minimised) shows how invasive plant management and rewilding can be understood as related responses to environmental problems.Flourishing and coexistence in peopled landscapes require recognition of the diverse human and nonhuman agencies that shape the politics of acceptable action, and illustrate the inseparability of environmental and social justice. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Mental Capacity Act 2005 clarifies the decision-making rights of people lacking capacity (such as people with dementia) and requires that carers and professionals support the individual in making decisions. This paper reports key findings from a qualitative study in England which examined the social process of everyday decision-making by couples living with dementia. The author identifies the various support strategies used by spouses when seeking to facilitate decision-making by their partners with dementia and highlights how these varied by gender. The paper examines the role of gendered support in influencing whether people with dementia are enabled to exercise their decision-making capacity and, in turn, if their decisional autonomy is facilitated. As the Mental Capacity Act lacks a gender perspective, the author recommends that its ongoing implementation should be strongly gendered to ensure that women with dementia receive the support necessary to exercise their capacity and agency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents findings from a Department of Health-funded study into the emotional well-being of young people seeking asylum on their own in the UK. It discusses how young people accounted for only partly disclosing information about the circumstances surrounding their quest for asylum and subsequent aspects of their lives since arriving in the UK. Foucault's panoptic mechanism and its focus on the effects of power as dispersed through scrutiny are applied as a theoretical framework to contextualise these experiences. The paper shows that young people's decisions about how much of their current or past lives they share with others are more complex than indicated by earlier research. The paper argues that, for many young people, the predominant impetus for selective disclosure was a desire to retain a degree of agency as they navigated their way through immigration, asylum, social care, health and education systems and simultaneously sought to establish themselves in the social world. These findings have implications for how social care (and other) professionals engage and work with young people seeking asylum alone. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Existing literature suggests that doctoral students' learning and experience are significantly influenced by their relationships with a wide range of people within and beyond academic settings. However, there has been little theoretical work focused on these issues, and questions of agency in doctoral study are in need of further attention. This paper draws on sociocultural theory in the analysis of interviews conducted with 33 doctoral students across four UK research-intensive universities. It focuses on agency and frames others as mediating students' experiences whether as embodied or represented in material, or imaginary form. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With its emphasis on analytical dualism and its detailed account of the concepts and methods necessary for its application, Margaret Archer's morphogenetic approach seems to provide significant potential for empirical research. over a decade after its publication, however, the potential of the approach remains largely unrealised. This paper seeks to begin to address this situation by reporting on and assessing the application of the morphogenetic approach to a longitudinal case study of information systems (IS) development and organisational change in British local government. This assessment confirms Archer's claims for the approach's value as an instrument for the production of non-conflationary practical social theory. In addition, certain features of the methodology moved the analysis of IS and organisational change beyond that of more mainstream approaches used for this type of research. However, a range of issues are identified which demonstrate that the complexity and resulting resource intensity of the approach may well work against its more widespread adoption for empirical research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nineteenth-century Britain is often seen as being the great age of liberalism. It was also a great age of engineering and building. This paper explores the interconnections between liberalism and technology, using Samuel Smiles as its point of departure. Smiles eulogised liberal individualism in Self-Help (1859), and engineers in his multi-volume Lives of the Engineers (1862). In the first part of the paper, I produce a typology of 'liberal objects' - the machine, the network, and the device - paying particular attention to the kinds of human agency such artifacts made possible. In the second part, I connect this typology to the theory of liberalism and its historical practice. Liberalism, I argue, often functioned by using technology to materialise a mode of indirect rule. Machines, networks and devices encouraged a set of practices - productive labour, mobility, health, cleanliness, attention, independence - essential to liberal subjectivity, and were promoted and imagined as such. Considering liberalism as a government of, by and through technology explains why such a supposedly reticent and inactive mode of government became so involved in the regulation of material life. It also explains the origins of the 'technological fix' - the belief that technology is the solution to any social problem - which has become predominant in the West in the twentieth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Engaging young citizens with drought risk and positive water behaviours is essential in domestic water demand management within the wider climate crisis. This paper evaluates a new research-informed, picture book—'DRY: The Diary of a Water Superhero'—that explores UK drought. The book's development was underpinned by research within the Drought Risk and You (DRY) project. The book's concept and storyline were co-produced by an interdisciplinary team, including a creative practitioner. This focused on key themes: drought definitions and types; drought myths; adaptation and young people's (YP) agency. Characters and storyline were co-created to promote YP's autonomy as change agents, and to encourage intergenerational and community learning. This paper evaluates the book from three perspectives: of YP, trainee teachers (TT) and teachers. Emergent themes are triangulated: drought as a sensitive issue, subject knowledge and changes in behaviour, and YP's misconceptions about drought and place. TT also contemplated their improved subject knowledge and barriers to engaging with positive water behaviours. Teachers reflected on classroom use of the book, prior experiences about teaching drought, curriculum context and st/age of YP engaged. This paper reflects on how these insights feed into school practice and water industry outreach, in developing effective learning resources that promote a valuing of water, behaviour change and wider hydrocitizenship among YP and their communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: In this paper, we apply psychological agency theory to women's interviews of their breastfeeding experiences to understand the role of agency in relation to breastfeeding initiation, maintenance and duration. Design: Qualitative, video interviews were collected from 49 women in the UK from a wide range of ethnic, religious, educational and employment backgrounds about their breastfeeding experiences. We undertook secondary analysis of the data focusing on their accounts of vulnerability and agency. Findings: Women's agency was impacted by a variety of factors including their own vulnerability, knowledge, expectations and experience, the feeding environment and the support of health professionals in sharing decision-making and dealing with uncertainty. Conclusion: Health professionals as co-agents with women are well positioned to maintain, enhance or restore women's sense of agency. Breastfeeding goals should be included in women's birth plans. Training related to agency, continuity of care, and staffing and workload management supported by national breastfeeding policies could improve breastfeeding rates and experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

English painter Barbara Bodichon received a dynamic home education, consisting of engaging lessons, reading sessions, family discussions, sketching excursions, and trips at home and abroad. As an adult, Bodichon led a nomadic life, living between Algeria and England and travelling across Europe and America. Seeking to unpack travelling and travel letters as sources of learning, this paper studies Bodichon’s correspondence as epistolary articulations of herBildung(self-cultivation). It argues that, conforming toBildung’s idea of forging one’s individuality in interaction with the world, her travelling provided her with a variety of settings through which she extended towards the unknown and incorporated it into her sense of being. In turn, letters functioned as forums where she made sense of encountering the difference through which she individualised her subjectivity. Notwithstanding, a revised reading ofBildungpermits teasing out to what extent Bodichon’s self-cultivation was developed at the expense of certain social categories. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper assumes a network dynamics perspective to explore the charitable sector campaign known as 'Give it Back, George', which overturned a threatening tax change announced in the UK Budget 2012. We consider network activity from diverse viewpoints. Collaboration by disparate players enhanced the campaign's legitimacy, high-status actors with a tertius iungens strategic orientation eschewing the limelight while others took centre stage. While extant research has shown how lower-status actors may profit from the networks of prominent individuals, we demonstrate that the reverse may apply. We suggest that elite actors who activate ties and bring together disconnected others are often less visible than apparent dominant actors. Social movements are not always reformist but may be deployed by elite incumbents to preserve the status quo. The story we narrate here is therefore less concerned with field transformation than with field preservation at the elite level when faced with threatening change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this paper is to present a legal theory of agency selection. The theory posits why certain legal forms of agency are chosen when agencies are created by the executive branch of government. At the core of the theory is the idea that the executive branch chooses agency forms that strike a politically optimal balance between maximising its control while minimising its legal and political accountability for agency activities. This optimal balance is determined on an issue by issue basis. As such, the rise of the regulatory state has provided a means by which the executive branch of government has been able to strategically choose to divest itself of and minimise its legal accountability for the administration of government while, at the same time, maintaining effective political control of the administrative arm of government. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Research Excellence Framework has led to increased scrutiny on the volume/quality of writing produced by academics within higher education institutions. This paper describes the initiation of a writing support programme for teacher educators in a new university and analyses its impact. A key finding has been that supporting staff to write is not simply a case of ‘hurrying them along’ but requires understanding of the particular barriers to writing for this group. We show how tailored interventions, with emphasis on professional development rather than the explicit demand for publications, may be a fruitful approach towards encouraging staff to write and publish. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper explores the reasons why people exit the UK labor market early and some of the barriers working against them returning. The specific focus is a qualitative exploration of three out of work individuals, approaching the age of 60, each of whom had experienced poverty and periods of worklessness during their lifetime. The fieldwork took place in 2016 and was part of a wider mixed methods study about retirement, which used data from the 1958 birth cohort study. Researchers used narrative interviews to uncover the lived experiences and realities of these three people's lives, and applied a life course perspective to understand how the accumulation of advantages and disadvantages during their lives shapes their attitudes and expectations. The data also show the effects of money, health, and previous employment on their decision making, and how structures such as social class, gender, and poverty are represented in and through the stories they tell. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]