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This article adds to literatures bridging the divide between internal and international migrations by investigating patterns of internal mobility following the international move of post-accession Polish migrants to the UK. Our analysis is based on a large-scale qualitative study carried out among 83 Polish migrants living in urban and rural locations in England and Scotland. We analyse the reasons behind their initial choice of location in the destination country and the propensity for subsequent internal mobility after arriving in the UK. We consider the role of family characteristics, migration channels, and time in the spatial moves the migrants undertake. In our analysis, we differentiate between residential mobility (which was generally very high among our study participants) and internal mobility (undertaken by one-third of our sample). Our research findings indicate that migrants who arrive through recruitment agencies and do not have children (with them in Britain) are the most internally mobile, whereas those who arrive through personal networks (of family, friends, or acquaintances) and with (especially school-age) children are the least likely to relocate after arriving in the UK. Moreover, it appears that migrants with families are more willing to make urban to rural moves, whereas young and childless migrants favour rural to urban relocations. Notably, the internal migration of some of our (childless) study participants was sometimes interspersed with short-term return migration. Finally, the general propensity to move internally seems to decrease with time: once the migrants secure permanent employment and stable accommodation, they are less willing to uproot again.

Glasgow is a city well known for bringing together a ‘housing need’ with a ‘housing supply’. Post-accession Poles are the most recent population to fill the ‘void’ in Glasgow’s ‘unpopular’ and therefore low-demand housing in areas of social deprivation. In this paper we will focus on the intersection of individual paths with institutional projects occurring at specific temporal and spatial locations: through examining the housing-seeking activities of migrants and the low-demand accommodation letting activities of, for example, the Glasgow Housing Association. In the paper we examine the meanings, processes, experiences, and perceived advantages (for migrant families and for housing associations) and also the disadvantages associated with post-accession Polish families taking up and being potentially ‘steered’ into tenancies in particular areas of Glasgow. Keywords: Poland, European migrants, post-accession, social housing, Glasgow, housing associations

This paper explores whether and in what ways young people's perceptions and experiences of higher education (HE) can facilitate the transmission within their social networks of social capital both upwardly (from child to parent) and horizontally (from sibling to sibling), and thus can potentially provide bridging capital to family members, especially in families with little or no prior experience of HE. It utilises data from a project that explored the embedded nature of decision-making about HE amongst a group of 'potentially recruitable' adults and their wider networks. The study researched 16 networks, and the resultant sample of 107 individuals included six teenagers and 15 young people in their twenties. The paper concludes that, despite the general emphasis within existing theoretical approaches to network capital on the downward transmission of social capital, the educational experiences of younger generations can be critical in shaping the perceptions of other (including older) network members, albeit not always in ways that encourage formal educational participation.

Much contemporary theorising on educational decision-making starts from the premise that the process of decision-making is a deeply embedded social practice, which is inextricably linked to behaviours, attitudes and dispositions which hold sway within an individual's social network. Drawing on data from a project focusing on decision-making amongst non-participants in higher education (HE) who are nonetheless 'potentially recruitable' to HE, this paper uses the sociological concept of ambivalence as a useful tool in exploring their educational decision-making within a broader network-based approach. In focusing on the ways in which individuals manage contradictions and tensions within their networks, and how the ways in which they manage these tensions are linked to broader structural factors, the concept provides a framework which is able to bridge social structure and individual agency. The concept of ambivalence provides a useful complement to other frameworks which focus on the degree to which forms of advantage and disadvantage are transmitted between and within different social groups and specific social contacts, and suggests a mechanism by which existing social relations are either reinforced or challenged through individual actions in the realm of education.

Gaining informed consent from research participants is widely regarded as central to ethical research practice. This article reports on research which sought to identify contemporary practice in this area amongst researchers working in fields where research participants are often constructed as vulnerable within the research process, and where their potential involvement tends to be mediated by institutional gatekeepers. Drawing on telephone interview and focus group data, the article focuses specifically on the experiences of researchers working with children and young people. It highlights the tensions experienced by many researchers between a personal commitment to an ethical framework which seeks to prioritise the agency and competency of children and young people, and the conditions imposed upon them by working within institutional settings where these principles may be undermined. This research suggests that the consent practices of child- and youth-orientated institutions, however much frowned upon, tend to go largely unchallenged by researchers, to the detriment of the rights of children and young people to opt in and out of research on their own behalf.

Embarking upon a pre‐university gap year is an increasingly popular option among British students. Drawing on Brown et al.’s work on positional conflict theory and the increased importance of the ‘economy of experience’, this paper seeks to explore this growing popularity and argues that the gap year’s enhanced profile raises important questions concerning the processes by which certain groups of young people are able to gain advantage over others during a period of educational expansion. Indeed, it is arguably no coincidence that the gap year’s popularity has taken off in parallel with this expansion, as the gap year emerges as an important means of ‘gaining the edge’ over other students in the context of increased competition for entry to elite institutions.

(1999). Watching the Backlash: the problematisation of young women's academic success in 1990s Britain. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education: Vol. 20, No. 2, pp. 249-266.

The funding criteria for the Technical and Vocational Education Initiative included a high‐profile commitment to equal opportunities for boys and girls. By including such a commitment, the architects of TVEI implicitly assumed that it was possible for TVEI to act as an agent of change with respect to gender divisions within schooling (and, indeed, beyond). This paper firstly considers whether TVEI was actually setting itself a theoretically impossible task given that socialist feminist critiques of education are largely based on the premise that schools overwhelmingly serve as agents for the reproduction of sexual divisions of labour. It then briefly considers the emphasis which the policy developed once TVEI was in operation, and finally questions the origins of the policy, suggesting a number of alternative reasons for its inclusion, in contrast to the somewhat contradictory ‘official’ justifications. The paper concludes that “whilst TVEI undoubtedly had an important catalytic effect in putting gender i...

The funding criteria of the Technical and Vocational Education Initiative included a high profile commitment to equal opportunities for boys and girls, as well as a commitment to the provision of work experience. This paper presents data from a case study of work experience provided under the auspices of ‘Masonfield’ TVEI project, a project which had a strong commitment to tackling gender inequalities in education. It is argued that the nature of work experience ‐‐ by definition explicitly allied to the needs of the labour market ‐‐ made it virtually impossible for the project to meet its equal opportunities objectives in this area. Furthermore, work experience may have served to reinforce — if not exaggerate — existing sexual divisions within the local labour market. Whilst TVEI may now be consigned to educational history, work experience continues to thrive — yet increasingly within a policy framework which ignores equal opportunities considerations.

This paper provides an overview of recent research and theorising relating to contemporary patterns of household formation amongst British youth. The first part provides a necessarily brief summary of current trends, focusing on both the initial process of leaving home and on the different outcomes of that process. The second part considers the theoretical models which underpin research on household formation, highlighting first the defining characteristics of dominant models of constraint, before moving on to examine the potential relevance of recent sociological theorising on the changing nature of social relationships in the context of late modernity. The paper concludes that whilst economic factors have undoubtedly acted as powerful catalysts for recent demographic trends, serious consideration should also be given to the importance of changing attitudes towards traditional forms of household and family living prevalent amongst contemporary youth.