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The COVID-19 outbreak and the far-reaching lockdown measures are having direct and indirect effects on complex social domains, including opportunities for crime offline and online. This paper presents preliminary analyses about the short-term effect of COVID-19 and lockdown measures on cyber-dependent crime and online fraud in the UK. Time series analyses from data about crimes known to police between May 2019 and May 2020 are used to explore the extent to which cybercrime has been affected by the COVID-19 outbreak. More specifically, we examine whether cybercrime has suffered an increase during the months with the strictest lockdown restrictions, as an effect of the displacement of crime opportunities from physical to online environments. Results indicate that reports of cybercrime have increased during the COVID-19 outbreak, and these were remarkably large during the two months with the strictest lockdown policies and measures. In particular, the number of frauds associated with online shopping and auctions, and the hacking of social media and email, which are the two most common cybercrime categories in the UK, have seen the largest increases in the number of incidents. The increase in cyber-dependent crimes has mainly been experienced by individual victims rather than organisations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Do members of the committees under the Open Method of Coordination (OMC) find that there are coalitions of specific member states in these committees? If so, then what kind of side payments hold these coalitions together? For the first time in scholarly literature, and based on an empirical investigation, the findings in this paper document that two opposing coalitions - with the United Kingdom and France as the respective leaders - exist in OMC committees where mutual learning is the raison d'etre. In the existing theory on this subject in the EU, it is claimed that consensus decision-making leads to a weakening of coalition-building. All three committees analysed in this paper build on consensus decision-making, which is achieved after intensive meetings between all the members. However, it is contended that the 'argumentative contest' working method of the OMC committees leads to more - not less - coalition-building. On the basis of a test, it is also shown that these committees are primarily held together by side payments in the form of 'promises relating to policy among the like-minded'; however, 'payments allied to subsequent decisions' add to the cement of the coalition-building processes stemming from the OMC working method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article begins by examining UK government discourse on welfare and migration for the period 2010-2016, viewed here as the expression of a distinctive process of moralisation. This discourse is characterised by claims to fairness, responsibility, and austerity, and explicitly sets domestic welfare dependency and migration in opposition to each other. Its operationalisation is traced through a formal mapping of civic stratification in relation to both domestic welfare and freedom of movement within the European Union, while also noting the absence of supporting empirical evidence. The article then looks to the informal aspect of civic stratification, and the role of political discourse in negatively shaping the moral standing of both domestic welfare recipients and EU migrants. Together with the uneven impact of welfare reform, their discursive opposition provides an important amplification of common understandings of the Brexit vote as delivered by the 'left behind' (Goodwin, M. and Heath, D. (2016) 'The 2016 Referendum, Brexit and the Left Behind', The Political Quarterly 87(3): 323-332). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses the notion of 'haunting' to explore how even those who might be considered to be particularly individualized are inhabited by the traces of the lives of others. The paper works with a single detailed case study taken from UK based research on the personal lives and values of people living outside the conventional cohabiting couple. It develops a psycho-social-analysis of interviews with Ben, a black English man in his 50s who is a 'strong' case of the individualization of personal life. Ben represents himself as highly self-reliant and self-sufficient, yet his narratives repeatedly return to the central importance of his long dead father; the paper suggests that his interviews, and his subjectivity, are 'haunted' by the ghost of his father. It explores the ways in which conflicted issues of gendered and racialized belonging and identification, and questions of ethical subjectivity, are worked out in relation to his dead father. The paper is informed by psychoanalytic and sociological writing on psychic and socio-cultural processes of haunting, particularly the work of Christopher Bollas and Avery Gordon. It contributes to the re-thinking of sociological theories of individualization, challenging sociology to take seriously a psychoanalytically inspired ontology of relationality, and the impacts of past relationships on subjectivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Working fewer than full-time hours has been seen as a crucial way in which women workers can balance demands from home and paid work. But working part-time holds a range of negative repercussions for other aspects of worker's lives, in particular their economic well-being. Examining objective and subjective indicators of economic well-being, the paper uses data from the European Community Household Panel Survey to consider the ramifications of working short hours for women in Europe. The paper is concerned with the generalisability of the very weak situation of part-timers in Britain. It asks whether and how the economic problems faced by women at the bottom of the occupational hierarchy differ according to societal context. The papers shows that part-time low level workers had the lowest monthly wages relative to their compatriots in each country examined, though the intensity of wage disadvantage varied substantially across the sample. The research did not uncover a universal positive correlation between women's relative wage positions and individual level measures of economic well-being, however. The most prevalent association between working part-time in a low level occupation and facing a weak economic position occurred at the level of household economies. The paper concludes by asking how we best research economic well-being, including whether it should be approached via an individual or household level analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the effects of 'welfare to work' and 'making work pay' policies such as tax credits on job quality in the wider labour market. It examines the consequences of two policy approaches to the problem of work incentives for the unemployed. One approach is greater conditionality of benefits systems, of which the extreme case is workfare; the other is transfers to supplement low wages. It is argued that both approaches, individually or in combination, threaten to set up vicious circles, creating yet more of the problems they attempt to solve. Through qualitative interview material from Britain, France, Germany and Belgium, from a recent international project supported by the EU,[sup 1] the paper illustrates how the responses of the unemployed to the four countries' benefits systems and insertion programmes structure the effects of these policies on the labour market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper suggests first, that in the recent literature on welfare states, while family change has received considerable attention, the issue of gender equality has not. Second, it examines the nature of welfare state change, in particular the recasting of the work/welfare relationship, focusing on the UK in comparative perspective. Building on Peter Hall's (1993) framework, the paper argues that the policy developments associated with the new work/welfare relationship represent very different levels of change in different countries. Nevertheless, from a gender perspective, it is argued that the changes amount to a modification of the masculinist model of work and welfare and its generalization to women. This has profound (and sometimes ambiguous) implications for women's role as unpaid carers. Finally, the paper suggests that a gender-centred model of welfare state change highlights the need to develop policies that value and redistribute care work, and in particular that address the issue of time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores how early career academics negotiate precarity in the higher education sector in the United Kingdom under the amplified uncertainties brought by the COVID-19 pandemic. Our preliminary findings based on the semi-structured interviews with nine early career academics (six women and three men) shed light on varying experiences of early career academic precarity with regard to working and life routines, and their participation in the job market. We argue that early career academics' gender, employment status, and their university affiliations influence the degree to which they are able to instrumentalise and negotiate precarity during the pandemic in the UK. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite numerous studies that have demonstrated widening social inequalities during the COVID-19 pandemic, we do not yet see research on whether the surge in social inequalities would also have unequal consequences for people's subjective experience. By linking the countrywide Understanding Society COVID-19 longitudinal survey with the latest wave of the main-stage survey, we examine whether and how the psychological costs of economic lockdowns are unevenly distributed between UK-born and foreign-born working men. Findings provide direct evidence for a widening gap in mental well-being resulting from the widening socioeconomic gap between immigrant and native-born working men, during COVID-19 lockdowns. Employment disruption does not necessarily hurt mental well-being of the native-born, as long as their income is protected. For immigrants, however, work hour reduction is generally accompanied by psychological costs, with greater mental suffering among immigrant men who experience work hour reduction without income protection – particularly in the extreme scenario of reduction to no work hours. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a methodology for using survey data to understand the composition of elites, through analysing the pool of potential members. An occupational-based measure of ‘potential power elite’ (PPE) is created and compared with other measures of occupational advantage. It is argued that this measure can be utilised to explore if the processes causing certain social groups to be under-represented in elite positions are around selection or the population recruited from. We provide analysis of elite positions in the UK and Sweden, demonstrating differences in terms of the potential pool of elite members and the occupational histories of people of those employed in roles associated with elite recruitment. We argue that understanding the composition of the PPE provides a more nuanced analysis of the processes of meritocracy in accessing positions of power and social influence. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Despite embracing the rhetoric of transnational flows and networks, comparative research on media content continues to fall prey to methodological nationalism. When it comes to empirical measurement, researchers often, despite their best intentions, fall back on techniques that assume that the discourses circulating within particular nationally bounded communicative spaces are homogenous. In this article, we developed a set of propositions and analytical approaches that should help to overcome this impasse, and used them to examine the newspaper debates on the EU Constitutional Treaty in seven European states: the Czech Republic, Germany, France, the Slovak Republic, Slovenia, Switzerland, and the UK. We suggested that instead of focusing solely on comparisons between nationally bounded communicative spheres, we should also look at differences between class-related communicative spaces. By adopting such an approach, we can acknowledge both sub-national segmentations of communicative spaces and transnational linkages, while at the same time not losing sight of the importance of the national. The results support our initial contention that the research on European mass communication ought to move beyond comparisons between national units and the levels of their respective Europeanization, and examine how European issues are conveyed in media catering to different social classes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main question this paper seeks to tackle is whether men and women, as some argue, commit themselves to employment differently or for different reasons. The focus is thus on the mechanisms behind non-financial employment commitment (such as the possible effect of family situation, occupational position, and of different work-related preferences and experiences). The question is comparatively investigated in Sweden and Great Britain, where, in spite of many similarities, the existence of different societal/cultural contexts with relevance for gender and work has been suggested. The results in this paper suggest that the most important motivator for non-financial employment commitment is interesting work, which was found to have a positive effect both as a work goal and as experienced in the workplace. Although women and men in both countries displayed quite similar patterns, some country and gender differences appeared in the way occupational position and degree of education relate to this type of commitment. Higher occupational position and education where more clearly related to higher degrees of commitment for British women than for British men, while the Swedish gender pattern was reversed. In the concluding discussion, possible explanations and implications are discussed, and avenues for further research are suggested. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Currently, deregulation of social welfare provision is underway throughout Western Europe. The major tendency is for disorganisation, together with the emergence of welfare markets. This is also changing the way elderly people are provided with personal and socio-medical services. Focusing on domiciliary eldercare, the paper explores if this is accompanied by a change in what Kohli has termed the moral economy of old age welfare. Departing from a general reflection on the organisation of social services in modern welfare capitalism the paper sketches evolutions in the eldercare system of three major European countries, with a special focus on the role of civic rationales and professional norms in the organisational field under consideration. It is argued that the moral economy of eldercare has become fluid, thus implying a broader transformation in the societal treatment of old age. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1999, the British Government stated its resolve to end child poverty within a generation. In doing so it recognised both the extent of child poverty in the UK and the moral imperative to do something about it. At around the same time, a government study of ethnic minority employment was undertaken, which was to lead to the establishment of the cross-departmental ethnic minority employment task force (EMETF) and a Public Services Agreement target for the Department for Work and Pensions on closing the ethnic minority employment gap. Despite apparent overlaps between these two agendas, given that many minority ethnic group families have children, and worklessness is one of the main causes of child poverty (though by no means the sole one), they were not really integrated. Nor has integration between them been seen - or encouraged - in European reporting processes covering topics linked to social inclusion and exclusion. In 2006, however, a link was made when the EMETF asked for a paper on child poverty to form the background to its work. This article builds on that initial link, discussing the intersection between child poverty and ethnic minority unemployment policy by illustrating the extent of child poverty as ethnically differentiated and exploring the ways in which it is related to aspects of employment. It goes on to consider the policy implications for both employment policy and income maintenance policy more generally, before examining the obstacles to an integrated approach both in terms of knowledge/understanding and the ways in which the two policy areas are conceived. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the United Kingdom, New Labour articulated a consumerist view of the relationship between the public and public services. Its view of the citizen-as-consumer was the source of considerable political controversy and debate – both within and beyond public services. In this paper, I explore four aspects of consumerism in relation to social care in the United Kingdom: the political context of the rise of the ‘citizen-consumer’; the place of the citizen-consumer in social care policy; the responses of organisations providing social care to consumerist pressures and lastly the impact of consumerism on characteristic tensions in public services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most comparative studies of job autonomy and learning opportunities find that workers in Scandinavian countries are better off. Recent studies have challenged these findings, showing low job quality, particularly in the lower private service sector in the Scandinavian countries. The aim of this article is to examine whether the autonomous and learning-intensive working life of Scandinavia also applies to people without higher education. It explores if there is a gap in job autonomy and informal job learning between educational groups, and if this gap varies across the social democratic systems of Sweden, Norway and Denmark on the one hand, and the liberal systems of the United Kingdom and Ireland on the other. Drawing on quantitative micro-data from PIAAC (2011/2012), this article demonstrates that Scandinavians with no education above upper secondary school do experience greater job autonomy than their counterparts in the British Isles. Moreover, the gap between educational groups in terms of job autonomy is smaller in Scandinavia than it is in the liberal systems. Regarding informal learning opportunities, the relative disadvantage among workers without higher education seems to be associated with selection into occupations with few opportunities for informal job learning, in Scandinavia as well as the British Isles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I am applying a rights-based approach to childhood social exclusion that, following Sen's capability approach as one formulation of such a rights-based approach, sees social exclusion as the failure of people to have access to critical capabilities relating to their integration into society. The implications of this approach will then be applied to the relation between education and social exclusion, where it is shown that education has a critical impact on mitigating or reinforcing social exclusion. Taking such a capabilities-based approach implies a shift away from a concentration on average achievement generated by an education system to the low end of the achievement distribution and the ability of the education system to raise the performance and integrate the most disadvantaged students. The paper investigates how education systems in Europe and other industrialized countries are achieving this goal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper identifies and seeks to resolve the paradox that British social policy appears to have diverged from its EU partners in the period since membership and to have converged with that of the USA. Existing historical institutionalist approaches stress common regime characteristics of Britain and the USA in explanation of British difference from other member states. The present paper challenges such accounts and argues that the explanation lies in the transformation (and demise) of the post-Imperial/Commonwealth system of political economy in which the British economy (and related social policy) was embedded. This transformation has also produced internal problems within the British state giving rise to its reorganization with devolved Assemblies in Scotland and Wales. The final part of the paper addresses how this latter development has created a 'fault-line' in the British social policy debate with the possibility of reversing the trend toward Americanization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the work-family conflict as perceived by working parents in two European countries, Spain and Great Britain (GB). Using data from the International Social Survey Programme, ISSP 2002, we examine the factors that explain the high level of conflict in the two countries, for both men and women. Whereas sex, age and having children at home impact the level of conflict in Spain, education level as a proxy for class is more relevant in the GB. The contrasting perceptions of the work-family conflict in the two countries may be taken as indicators of each country's stage in what has been called the 'modernization process'. This study seeks to understand the relationship between the level of 'modernization' and the perception of a high level of conflict in the attempt to reconcile the work-family conflict, focusing on the process of 'individualization' on the one hand and measurement of 'the perception of the level of conflict by sex' on the other. The study argues that the difference between these high levels of conflict is explained by variables that refer to ascribed status in Spain (a pro-traditional model) but to acquired status in GB (a non-interventionist model) indicated by the influence of education level as a variable resulting from a person's effort. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While there is a growing body of research which explores the dramatic changes of higher education, following recent policies of widening participation and 'internationalisation', to date much of the research has focused on discrete 'non-traditional' groups. Based on qualitative data gathered from international and widening participation students, we explore the crossovers and parallels of their experiences, which is not to say that both groups are the very same. Indeed, it is the resistance to a 'fixing' positioning that this paper charts, negotiating points of sameness and difference. We suggest that there is failure to consider widening participation and internationalisation as two, intersecting, agendas, (re)producing class and race. Theoretically, such an approach offers an insight into contemporary class analysis in the context of mobility and racism, to comprehend how social divisions are complexly lived, where middle-class 'international' students may risk losing (and gaining) privilege, in (dis)similar ways to their working-class 'home' counterparts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies of intergenerational class mobility and of intragenerational occupational mobility have of late tended to diverge in their concerns and methodology. This reflects assumptions regarding the increasing part played by education in intergenerational mobility and the decreasing part played by class origins in intragenerational mobility, once education is controlled. The paper contributes to the questioning of these assumptions on empirical grounds. Analyses are made of the occupational mobility of men in three British birth cohorts over the course of their earlier working lives. We find that while educational qualifications have a strong effect on occupational attainment, this effect does not increase across the three cohorts; that class origins also have a significant effect, and one that does not decrease across the cohorts; and that features of work-life experience, in particular the frequency of occupational changes, likewise have a persisting effect, independently of both education and class origins. Secular changes in mobility processes are thus scarcely in evidence, but the analyses do provide strong indications of a cohort effect. Men in the 1958 birth cohort, whose first years in the labour market coincided with a period of severe recession, de-industrialisation and high unemployment, would appear to have experienced various lasting disadvantages in their subsequent occupational histories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By comparing the US environmental justice movement with recent European developments, this paper suggests an environmental justice framework which is based on the idea of environmental justice as a heterogeneous process rather than an analytical or normative category. Using major debates on environmental justice particularly in the UK and Germany as a touchstone, eight dimensions of environmental justice are carved out and integrated into a processual model. It is discussed how environmental justice as a process may become robust enough to integrate and react to changing natural and social conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article studies the development of social services in Britain, France and Germany since the 1980s. In this period services grew strongly and were extended to large population groups, although the welfare state was in crisis. Moreover, the power of the state was enhanced. The share of public service provision declined somewhat, but this was more than balanced by increased public funding and intensified state control of delivery. The paper argues that the rise of social services does not signal a 'new' welfare state. Rather, the belated expansion of social services compared to other areas is explained by the fact that services have become crucial for the economy and the labour market only recently. Since this was the case, they have followed the classical path of welfare state expansion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we examine the inception and development of activation in Slovenia and the UK in order to identify the rationales for its introduction, to plot the direction of reforms and to consider the outcomes of policy implementation for citizens. In this unconventional country comparison, we are interested in understanding third-order ( Hall 1993 Cpmparitive Politics 25 (3): 25-96) welfare state change as the context for the introduction of activation. The UK and, to a much greater extent, Slovenia, underwent paradigmatic changes in the goals of the economy, structure of the labour market and basis of social provisions in the late twentieth century. This provided the possibility for activation to develop a more distinct character and to be implemented to a greater extent than in other European countries. However, we argue that the nature of the activation strategies pursued in Slovenia and the UK have both retained strong flavours of their earlier policy traditions and point to the role of political institutions and arrangements in adjusting the demands of supranational organisations, particularly in the corporatist Slovenian case. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we examine the impact of temporary work on two dimensions of social inequality: income and career mobility. Additionally, we are taking a comparative perspective on this subject by comparing Germany and the UK. To investigate the effects of temporary work we use data from the German Socio-Economic Panel and the British Household Panel Study on non-self-employed respondents. The results show that temporary work does influence the system of social inequality: we found wage penalties and an increased probability of severe negative effects on the working careers of temporarily employed persons in both countries (net of education, age, and a variety of other covariates). Thus we can conclude that temporary employment represents a substantial socio-economic risk for employees. Most importantly, this holds true for both the German and the British case, two quite distinct labour market regimes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper reviews the implications for women and pensions policy in the United Kingdom in the light of recent and ongoing research in Northern Ireland. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the impact on the professions of changes in their institutional environment during the past two decades. A comparison is made between two professions - solicitors/advocates and pharmacists - in the contrasting institutional contexts of British and German society. It is suggested that, despite common pressures from the state and the market, there remains a significant degree of diversity in the way professions organize themselves in the two societies. A contrast is drawn between British modernizers and German traditionalists, but some convergence is also noted. In both Britain and Germany, professional authority and privilege can no longer be taken for granted but have to be earned by proven performance and enhanced accountability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study delineates a scheme for examining Bourdieu's theory which relates social structure and cultural consumption (the homology thesis). Interpreting homology as the exclusive mapping between the space of cultural consumptions and social structure e.g., 'high' art as the exclusive domain of the upper class, is inadequate. Bourdieu's theory allows a more refined scheme which incorporates habitus. I elaborate this scheme and derive some propositions regarding the pattern of music consumptions and social structure. A Multiple Indicator Multiple Cause model is used to examine the homology thesis directly; where in the measurement part, a latent class model is used to derive types of consumers (or space of cultural consumption), and simultaneously, in the structural part, a logistic model is used to estimate stratification effects of being in one of the types. Using survey data sponsored by Arts Council England, it is shown that the space of music consumptions is inhabited by two types of music consumers: the popular and the dominant class. Furthermore, this space is shown to be structured by social class thereby lending some support to the homology thesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In conditions of increasing economic uncertainty, a body of social stratification researchers claims that significant class inequality in life chances persists ( Breen, 1997 ; Goldthorpe, 2000 ). Can we find evidence of this, and are developments similar across countries? Differences in education systems, welfare and labour market institutions may have implications for class risks and class theory. Britain and Germany differ significantly in these institutions. Selecting the risk of unemployment as an indicator of class inequality, we investigate how this risk varies by social class in different cohorts in the two countries. Using life course data, we find that in both countries class is a good predictor of the risk of unemployment, though there is less of a difference in class risks in Germany. We find evidence of persisting inequality in both Britain and Germany. We reflect on the interaction between social class and labour market institutions for labour market outcomes, and discuss the implications of our findings for the theory and measurement of class. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study analyses differences in individual-level working poverty determinants between Germany and the UK. These differences are linked to institutional patterns at the country level. Here, we observe that the two countries differ especially in bargaining centralisation, employment protection legislation and family policy. At the same time, the levels of decommodification and labour market regulation are no longer core differences in the institutional settings of Germany and the UK, which is interpreted as a consequence of Germany's departure from a traditional conservative regime since the mid-1990s. Adopting economic and sociological approaches, we explain how Germany's closed employment system channels the effects of deregulation policies to the periphery of the labour market. Additionally, we argue that open employment relationships that dominate in the UK put specifically older employees at risk. Finally, we identify country-specific differences in the economic dependency of women, resulting from a stronger male breadwinner orientation of family policy in Germany. Accordingly, multivariate analyses based on harmonised versions of the British Household Panel Study (2002–2005) and the Socio-Economic Panel Study (2003–2006) reveal that entrants and re-entrants to the labour market, women and – unexpectedly – low-educated persons are particularly affected by in-work poverty in Germany; whereas older workers are more likely to face precarious economic conditions in the UK. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this article, subjective work goals are studied comparatively among employees in five European countries: Finland, Germany, Great Britain, Spain, and Sweden. Inglehart (2008), West European Politics 31) has claimed that a cultural shift from survival values to self-expression values also brings changing values concerning work in advanced western societies. Inglehart's thesis is tested empirically in this article by using pooled data from World Values Surveys and European Values Studies collected in 1990–1999/2000. The results do not show a clear shift from survival values to self-expression values in work goals, which contradicts Inglehart's thesis. However, there was some support for Inglehart's claims in the data. The results also pointed to differences, as well as some similarities, between these European countries regarding work goals. Advanced western countries should not then be treated as a homogenous category in future research on work goals. The support for intrinsic work goals was also analysed using four independent variables: birth cohort, gender, social class, and job satisfaction. Social class was the main individual determinant of intrinsic work goals in most of the research countries. Higher social classes valued intrinsic work goals more than lower social classes did. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The equality agenda has gained a much higher visibility in the UK and in France. Most unions have adopted specific measures to improve women's representation in their structures. However, even in highly feminised unions, women remain under-represented in union leadership positions. To understand the gap between the presence of women in the lay membership/activist population and their slow disappearance at the higher levels of the union hierarchy, this study is focused on the role of organizational contexts. We argue that to understand the feminisation of union leadership, we need to consider the characteristics of 'internal union labour markets': ports of entry, typical/atypical career routes, norms of job evaluation, internal job segregation and hierarchy, human resources management and gender-equality policies. To fully grasp the influence of contexts on the process of feminisation, specific attention to the evolution of the repertoires of action by unions is also useful. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To what extent can the experience of travel become also a journey of self-discovery leading to a reconstruction of identities? Taking 'a year out', inter-railing, going abroad on a language study or an au pair stay: these are some of the most common forms of youth travel in contemporary Europe. As almost ritual ways of moving, they may be likened to initiation journeys. This article explores the significance of travel in young people's lives, and in the process of identity construction. These issues are explored in the travel narratives of a group of young people who took part in an autobiographical and mixed method project on identities which was conducted in England and Italy. The meaning of travel in these young people's lives is appreciated through their own words and written diaries. Young people's agency and role in constructing their travel experiences is analysed, as well as the extent to which fate, in the shape of societal expectations and norms, as well as parental intervention, may actually predefine some forms of travel as 'institutional' rites of passage. Travels may offer a scenario for an individualised construction of self, which may also involve the co-participation of significant others. The experiences of young women backpackers in this study point out how travelling can still be a way of defining alternative gender identities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]