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Walter Benjamin's criticisms of dwelling and the modern interior are well known. The middle classes retreated from the alienation of nineteenth-century city life into domestic seclusion, surrounding themselves with soft furnishings in a search for comfort. In Living Rooms (2022), Sam Johnson-Schlee uses objects typically found in the living room or lounge as his starting point for the development of Benjamin's ideas. Recognising the labour invested in domestic commodities would allow us to realise our dreams of connecting with others and escaping the confines of capitalism like roots breaking out of a plant pot. The personal observations used to support the arguments reflect the experience of Generation Rent. They inform an attempt to relate IKEA's 1996 'Chuck out that chintz!' advert to crucial changes in the British housing market. The emphasis on labour largely sidelines household labour and its gendering, with the exception of the activities of 'cleanfluencer' Mrs. Hinch. The link between domestic commodities and our longing for intimacy is effectively depicted using a combination of historical research, cultural references and family stories. Plants and flowers are used throughout to illustrate specific arguments and to serve as a symbol of a different, and better, life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"George Orwell's Perverse Humanity: Socialism and Free Speech" by Glenn Burgess is a book that explores the relationship between liberalism and socialism in Orwell's work. The author argues that Orwell's vision combines both ideologies and that they are mutually dependent on each other. The book examines Orwell's views on real-world experiences, political violence, and the importance of freedom of speech. However, the book also addresses contemporary issues such as "wokeism" and the debate surrounding cancel culture, although the evidence presented in this regard may be less convincing. Overall, the book provides a comprehensive analysis of Orwell's political thinking and his contributions to the fields of liberalism and socialism. [Extracted from the article]

This paper answers the question why the Dutch state has gone from vigorously stimulating private-rental growth and liberalization to actively restricting the tenure. Answering this question is important in understanding an emergent wave of more restrictive, or even "post-neoliberal" housing policies across countries. This paper presents an analysis of the changing private-rental politics in the period following the Great Financial Crisis, combined with a quantitative study of renters' housing outcomes. The central argument is that policies promoting private-rental growth and liberalization and the subsequent turn restrictive policies are both outcomes of the state seeking to balance the property-led accumulation with middle-class residential demands. Supportive policies were the result of a presumed alignment of the interests of capital, the state and the middle classes, but ongoing liberalization has undermined middle-class housing affordability – revealing a key tension between capital and middle-class interests. This tension triggered new, more restrictive policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wealth taxes are back on the political agenda of developed democracies, but are subject to contestation. Given increasing inequality, middle classes may support wealth taxes so to redistribute wealth from the rich. However, asset appreciation has become central to the realization of life chances, so a political programme of 'wealth taxes' may appear threatening. This paper asks: what does the prospect of increased wealth taxes mean to the middle classes? Combining a relational theory approach with a qualitative focus group study in the United Kingdom, the paper highlights two especially salient meanings of wealth taxes: (1) that wealth is considered as a form of security that one builds through surplus income earned through work (thereby conflating income and wealth); which can then be (2) used to sustain an intergenerational family through the relations of inheritance. Consequently, wealth taxes take on a meaning as a double tax that penalize hardworking families. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deconstructs ways in which the white 'race' of Eastern European pupils and the class determination of their parents in the country of arrival combine to either afford or deny them racialised privileges in British education. Critically reviewing published research on Eastern European pupils in British schools, this article concludes that past understandings of 'white middle-class privilege', developed mostly in research about white middle-class nationals, cannot be applied in the same way to white-middle class migrants. This paper shows that the class and race of white middle-class migrants become re-articulated in school contexts in ways that suggest that, despite being white and middle-class in their home countries, Eastern Europeans cannot be fully white and middle class in the migration setting. Based on these insights, we offer an analytical frame for theorising this observed conundrum, making a contribution to sociology of education, race and migration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper makes a major intervention in the historiography of elites through analysis of the experience of women occupational elites born in post-war Britain. The paper draws on a new set of oral history interviews recently conducted with women born in the post-war decades with an entry in Who's Who which is the leading biographical dictionary of 'noteworthy and influential' people in the UK. The women we interviewed were all highly occupationally successful and those analysed here also attended one of twelve elite girls' schools. This article argues that our interviewees can be separated into two distinct post-war cohorts: one born between early 1940s and mid-1950s and the other born late 1950s to late 1960s. The shape and structure of the cohort's trajectories were different, their relationship to their careers were different, and, even though both groups faced sexual discrimination and unequal divisions of labour, the nature of these gendered inequalities changed too. By foregrounding elite women within this shifting historical context, this article illuminates broader trends in both classed and gendered experience and how this related to the changing nature of the economy in recent history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing upon the concept of 'care ecology', in this paper we explore migrant women's unpaid caring activities and emotional labour within the spatial orderings of the COVID-19 pandemic in and beyond Aotearoa New Zealand. In dialogue with 12 middle-class migrant women, this paper sketches a complex picture of the ways informal and unpaid caring activities are conducted across multiple scales of body, home, countries of origin and Aotearoa. The findings revealed migrant women's caring activities were disturbed, intensified, and informed by spatial structures of the pandemic, including border closures, lockdowns and (in)accessibility to care services in Aotearoa and their homelands. These results highlight further that unpaid care, both at transnational and local levels, is not simply due to an individual's capacity and feelings of responsibility, but is also a collective spatial construction that is shaped by a range of social, cultural, and political factors. Our research emphasises that addressing mental health challenges of migrant women during the pandemic requires targeted policies that acknowledge their invisible emotional labour and cater to their specific needs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractNew global multi-directional migration flows are decentering extant analyses of White expatriate migration. As migration becomes more diversified, new lines of intellectual inquiry are surfacing about the experiences of middle-class non-white expatriates. This paper uses the case study of China, which with the rise in immigration, has an increasingly diverse ‘expatriate’ population. While the visibility of White expatriates in non-white-majority host countries may compel them to adopt lifestyles segregated from the local population, expatriates of Chinese heritage in China have the (dis)advantage of blending in with the local population. This paper examines the experiences of Singaporean-Chinese migrants in China where their ethnic proximity to the Chinese can be both a boon and a bane. We present our findings in three sections addressing: first, how ethnic proximity can enable mobilities including motility and a mobile sense of belonging; second, how mobilities can condition ethnic proximity as experiences of privilege but also reminders of non-belonging; and third, how participants’ change in life phases i.e. temporalities shift meanings of proximity, mobility and mobile belonging. Through highlighting the multidimensional nature of mobilities – proximity, motility, temporalities – this paper contributes to studies of middling migration, (ethnic) proximity and mobilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractDrawing inspiration from autoethnographic accounts of gentrification, this paper examines the privileges and disadvantages of middling transnationals in the private rented sector to reveal the complexity of housing decisions, thereby challenging the inclination to conceive this particular group as ‘gentrifiers’. By demonstrating the ability of middle-class migrants to prioritize their preferences while considering the challenges they face due to their newcomer status, this paper contends that housing decisions are the outcome of the interplay between migrants, rental agents, and digital platforms. In so doing, this paper highlights the gatekeeping capability of traditional and digital intermediaries in the rental market. Methodologically, this paper underscores the value of the microscopic view enabled by autoethnography, which broadens gentrification research by facilitating the recognition of emerging trends and the identification of promising areas for future research. Overall, through its reflection on the potential influences of transnational migrants on gentrification, this paper contributes to research efforts that intend to understand gentrification in relation to migration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses planning responses to middle-income informalities in Nairobi city, an increasingly significant element of informal urban development focusing on ad hoc zoning practices and regularisation. The findings highlight aspects of fractured governance, negotiated planning, and power struggles involving middle-income housing developers and other actors that exacerbate housing informalities rather than ameliorate them. The article reveals how different rationalities drive the different spheres of government functionaries, some of whom use planning systems for financial and political gain. Building on debates around 'conflicting rationalities' in planning, the paper proposes the concept of 'entangled rationalities,' which has scope to highlight the nuanced, multi-actor and non-binary nature of interactions between planning, political and development practice characterising responses to middle-income informalities in the global south cities and how this shapes urban outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reflects on how to interpret the dearth of radical activism in Zimbabwe's peri-urban areas: why Zimbabwe's urban 'subalterns' do not mobilize against the recurrent heart-wrenching demolitions of their informal settlements housing. It contributes to the understanding of how politics in context is a major determinant of informal urban and peri-urban developments in which working classes, middle classes, elites and the state are major actors. A significant proportion of demolition victims are aspiring risk-taking middle classes socially located in a double bind of the ruling ZANU (PF) party-state's jambanja empowerment-disempowerment social contract within which alternative uprising looks unfeasible. Intrinsically, jambanja is about the emasculation of prevailing laws such that, when demolitions occur, both victim and sympathizer activism is undermined by the illegality of the original housebuilding. Consequently, demolitions will persist for as long as jambanja and the pervasive structural informality of the ruling ZANU (PF) party-state endure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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

This paper first reviews how England's middle-class Puritans developed various anxieties regarding their socioeconomic security in the emerging capitalist economy of early modern England. It then investigates three local land practices developed by Puritan colonists in New England to better secure their status in the New World, as revealed in a survey of town proceedings from Watertown, Massachusetts, from 1634 through 1773. These were restricting access to landownership, 'warning out' poor outsiders beyond town bounds, and managing land use. These practices enabled the middle-class, small-scale property owners who dominated local government in colonial Watertown to preserve the utility of land assets for future generations, manage the tax burden they associated with poor relief, and prevent conflicts arising among users of private and shared property. In doing so they maintained their households' status in keeping with their notions of material and spiritual well-being. The paper aligns these practices with later local land practices, including restrictive covenants and zoning, that middle-class communities have used to manage the particular pressures they face in the development of capitalist economies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This Special Feature reflects on how cosmopolitanism is inscribed and refracted in non-western cities with global city ambitions. We focus on Asia and the Gulf to provide a counter-reading of cosmopolitanism from various cities with both unstated or explicit non-integration policies, ranging from metropoles where migrants and foreigners correspond to a small minority (such as Tokyo and Seoul), to globalizing cities where migrants constitute a substantial minority (such as Singapore) or to cities where they constitute a large majority (such as Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and Doha). The papers explore how cosmopolitanism works in situations strongly marked by racial, ethnic, social, and gender hierarchies, in cities characterized variously between the two extreme poles of 'mixing' and 'segregation', and reflecting on different ways of managing diversity. They examine how categories of difference are constructed, not only by the state (cosmopolitanism from above), but also by migrants themselves (cosmopolitanism from below). The papers examine how different categories of 'migrants'—from highly skilled professionals to low-skilled, and middle-class migrants, and from students to 'second generations'—strive to be part of the city while negotiating opportunities and constraints emanating from the envisioned cosmopolitanism of the global city. Taking the perspective that cosmopolitan urbanism goes beyond notions of a 'melting pot', métissage, or integration, we instead focus on the politics of inclusion and exclusion that shape the juxtapositions and encounters between different social groups. In this spirit, this Special Feature revisits cosmopolitanism through non-western cities to reconceptualize cosmopolitan urbanism outside the prevailing western paradigm of integration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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

This paper considers negotiations of social identity across British-born Bangladeshi, Indian and Pakistani professionals who experience racial / ethno-religious marginality alongside relative socioeconomic privilege. Drawing on 20 semi-structured interviews, it finds that beneath the generalised salience of British identity to their sense of self, the racialised limits of national belonging are implicit in discussions of social identity. The ways in which class is brought to bear in identity work which often seeks to subvert and/or align with British middle class norms underscores the relationship between the racialisation of class and the racialisation of the nation. This paper also identifies different modes of identity construction around the racialised idea of the nation across dimensions of religion and gender, and thus also stresses the need to consider the heterogeneity of the British South Asian middle classes when analysing the material and symbolic dimensions of their group belongings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper studies the Common Man political caricatures by R.K. Laxman, a staff cartoonist at the Times of India, to understand dominant political discourses in postcolonial India. It argues that constructs like the 'common man' and 'vote bank' through popular cultural discourse like caricatures have a critical impact on the political landscape of the country. While the former is associated with an urban English-educated middle class, the latter is used to denote the socially marginalised sections of the electorate voting en masse as a form of political assertion. The latter is perceived as an aberration in the modern secular democracy and its political voice is often delegitimised. Further, the former is associated with economic liberalisation, development and anti-corruption. The paper demonstrates how Laxman's Common Man is a proponent and mascot of these in the popular imagination. Thereby indicating that the popular cultural archive has indeed had a visible impact on the political, economic and sociological cartography of the nation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a city where violence against women is an everyday reality and a highly contested subject, gendered claims to the city are also fraught with possibilities and problems. This paper evaluates some of these issues through speech act and resilience of young, unmarried, middle-class women in Delhi, India. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, this paper explores how these women navigate public spaces, respond to violence and fear, and claim their rights to the city. I argue that these women's speech act and resilience are forms of everyday resistance to the violent gender order in the city. The paper also demonstrates that violence, fear, speech act and resilience are interlaced into women's everyday lives. In turn, I argue, the divide between gendered violence and women's agency is not discreet spaces but are relationally produced in a city where pluralities, contradictions, and contestations are embodied realities for women. Speech act and resilience thus provide spaces for meaningful discussions on how women (re)articulate their place in the city amidst gendered violence and fear. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the early 2010s, new independently owned artisanal cafés serving coffee along with Western-style meals and desserts emerged in Malaysia. These cafés flourished despite the presence of the nation's traditional coffee shops (kopitiam) and international coffee chains like Starbucks Coffee. This paper aims to explicate the processes of identity- and place-making through consumption in traditional kopitiams in relation to modern café spaces by considering how varied consumption suggests an intrinsically sociopolitically charged habit of Malaysians. Extending Richard Peterson's theory of cultural omnivorousness, this paper is framed by the fluidity in class identity formation of urban consumers, and argues that consumers are agents of change which is primarily self-fashioning. While Malaysian coffee house-goers appear to be culturally omnivorous, there is a deep sense of contention in preserving the kopitiam space as a non-halal eatery. This ethnographic study contributes to a deeper understanding of how Malaysia's racialised politics has shaped the eating habits of its multiracial society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Integration refers to socio-economic and cultural incorporation of migrants into a host society, which should adopt measures to encourage their adaptation by taking over its norms and customs. Recently, the 'local turn' has entailed studying migration and integration in cities. In this paper, I engage with the Pakistani middle-class migrants' lives in Dubai. It emerges that they feel integrated in their everyday life by sharing practices and experiences in a multicultural environment. Integration is conceptualized from a bottom-up approach meaning that it moves beyond the state intervention to focus on how people perceive and experience integration in their everyday life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Working-class students often face more challenges in securing graduate-level jobs than their middle-class peers. This paper applies the concept of boundary crossing in studying the experience of Finnish business graduates from a working-class background (n = 27) and asks what types of boundaries they have faced and how they have managed them on their pathway through and after university studies. We identify three major boundaries: getting the actual study place, learning to be a student in university and graduating and getting a job in the graduate labour market. Our findings indicate that successful transitions are possible, as the Finnish higher education system enables them in many ways. However, successful boundary work demands socialising to the norms and values of the new social field as well as renewed relationships with one's social background. This paper discusses the implications of these findings for the development of inclusive policies and practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the construction of a national and supra-national culinary identity in Slovenia in the decades since its independence from Yugoslavia through the TV chefs Valentina and Luka Novak's celebrity cookbooks. As they cook for the nation, they establish the idea of what is to be "Slovene" in post-socialism. Based on an analysis of the spin-off cookbooks from their popular TV series Love through the Stomach broadcast on Slovene television from 2009 to 2014, the paper discusses their complex navigation between various aspects of Slovenia's history, as the chefs distance the cuisine from its Yugoslav past and explicitly reorient its food culture toward Central Europe. In doing this, they reflect and reinforce larger discourse shifts that have been taking place in Slovenia since the 1980s and through which its political and media elites prepared the ground for Slovenia's entry to the EU in 2004, distancing themselves from its "Balkan" neighbors and embracing its European essence. This paper shows how such shifts can be reflected in culinary texts, such as cookbooks, contributing to the understanding of everyday food texts as political texts. The paper also demonstrates the role of the Slovene middle-class elite as culinary trendsetters in the post-socialist period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the limits of Indonesian civil society activism in advancing democratic politics. This activism, mainly by middle-class reformers, has not only failed to prevent democracy from being hijacked by illiberal interests but also contributed to justifying the deepening of political illiberalism. A predominantly anti-political approach among civil society activists mainly aims to establish new institutions and policy designs to generate reforms, while allowing entrenched power relations to remain unchallenged and to pervade new institutions. Meanwhile, social protests mobilized by this kind of activism, both on the streets and social media platforms, also tend to be sporadic and have no clear leadership and structure, while protest demands are often contradictory, making these too weak to challenge anti-democratic interests. This paper challenges existing studies that extoll Indonesian civil society activists for their success in advocating certain legislation, policies, and institutions. The weakening of the Indonesian Corruption Eradication Commission (Komisi Pemberantasan Korupsi, KPK) illustrates how even trusted democratic institutions equipped with extraordinary powers and capacities are vulnerable to vested interests. Not only have Indonesian civil society activists failed to defend the KPK, but many of them have justified attempts to paralyze this agency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper contributes to the understanding of the dynamic and the relational nature of identity-formation among skilled middle-class migrants. Following the idea that identities are never singular nor static, but multifaceted, active and have a processual character, the authors specifically analyse two dimensions to the identity of qualified Mexican migrants in the US and the interplay between them. Drawing on findings from a mixed-methods research project (an online survey and semi-structured interviews) with skilled Mexican middle-class migrants in the US, the paper explores how skilled Mexican migrants preserve their ethno-national identity (their 'Mexicanness') in reaction to a hostile socio-political reception context in the US. This study further shows how these migrants recreate their class identity and show tendencies to distance themselves from what they perceive as lower-class Mexican migrants and the dominant popular Mexican and Latin-American cultural expressions. Throughout the paper the lived experience of migration is examined while highlighting the ways in which it impacts the migrants' identities, their concept of self and feelings of being and belonging. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Centred on the growing working-class district of East Oxford, this paper makes a detailed analysis of how church-based leisure was organised and experienced in the period c.1870–1914 to discover what role it played for those it involved. Making use of church magazines (themselves little-used sources), it challenges the assumption that all working classes in this period had access to commercial leisure, contests the notion that church leisure was a tool of the middle classes to improve and contain working-class leisure time, and demonstrates the reach of church-based leisure beyond its religious mandate. The paper argues that the development of church-based leisure in East Oxford was born of its socioeconomic context and shaped by the local community into an affordable, accessible and inclusive means of collective enjoyment and personal achievement, sustained by creative and diverse financial strategies. Rather than reflecting a discrete church culture distinct from that of secular entertainment, the research reveals a complex interaction between spheres of influence reaching far beyond church and chapel. The way in which church-based leisure functioned in East Oxford brought clear benefits both to individuals and to the wider community––benefits which could not be accessed through commercial leisure––and demonstrate the unique role of church leisure in a working-class suburb, a function hitherto unexplored and poorly understood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most developing countries are plagued with harsh economic realities, which motivate them to seek sustainable economic growth and development in line with goal eight of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. To this end, this paper investigated the source of external financing that is most helpful for achieving inclusive growth in lower-middle-income West African countries. The study is a panel analysis of annual data extending from 2000 to 2019. The study employed the Emirmahmutoglu and Kose Bootstrap Granger Causality Test, Westerlund Cointegration Test, Common Correlated Mean Group estimation technique, and Augmented Mean Group estimation technique for econometric analyses. The long-run empirical results from the study showed that both foreign direct investment and foreign aid have positive and significant effects on inclusive growth, although the impact of foreign direct investment is greater than that of foreign aid. A bi-directional causality was also found to exist between inclusive growth and foreign direct investment, while no causal relationship was detected between inclusive growth and foreign aid. Given the study's empirical outcomes, it is recommended that West African countries prioritize macroeconomic policy reforms that provide enabling conditions for foreign direct investment to thrive rather than pursue foreign aid that more often than not are misdirected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In his theory on delinking, Amin shows how Africa is linked to global Capital. For Amin, it is in this link that Africa's underdevelopment resides. An important element in this linking process is the role that the comprador bourgeoisie plays in its relationship with global Capital, which facilitates the continued underdevelopment of Africa. Amin raises the question of the role that the African comprador bourgeoisie played as agents of imperialism in keeping Africa linked to Europe. From this standpoint, Amin presents the possibility of approaching Africa's underdevelopment from another dimension – the possibility of exploring Africa's underdevelopment as an internally driven process initiated by home-grown African capitalists who accumulate for their own account. Extending the logic of the comprador bourgeoisie, this paper argues that Capital in Africa is responsible for internal under development. African Capital too, together with international Capital consciously participates in under developing Africa. We argue that internal underdevelopment is based on a capitalist logic that contains all the standard phenomena associated with Capital, namely, inequality, unemployment, and poverty. Furthermore, exploring the rise of our case studies, viz; the Dangotes, Motsepes, and the Dos Santos', we show how instrumental each of them are in the internal underdevelopment of Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Smartness in smart grids and cities is an assemblage of devices that produce data as truth claims and deploy new modes of governance focused on chal (deception, cunning) and bal (power) with a promise to reduce losses and maximise profits. Building on postcolonial geographies, the paper argues that chal (छल) and bal (बल) are central to understanding the deployment of smart grids in India. Managers use the idea of the practice of chal and bal by political citizen-subjects, and the disorder of governance this causes, to justify the deployment of smart infrastructure. However, the paper shows that smartness can be understood as automation, and deployment from a distance, of chal and bal by a capital-state nexus to counter the chaliya (छलिया) (deceptive/cunning/cheat/trickster) citizen-subjects. Planners and implementers expect data and digitalisation to bring order by (re)training and excluding lower-level workers and consumers. These promise to reduce resource losses, making electricity utilities profitable. Rather than being distinctly corporate or clearly in the domain of the state, smart is situated at the fracture of public and private resources, and political and civil spaces. By developing a postcolonial analysis of smart grids and focusing on the 'inbetweeners', electricity utility staff and middle-class citizen-subjects, the paper furthers the understanding of smartness and subalternity of elites. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper evaluates two hypothetical budget-neutral reforms that shift resources from family tax expenditures to family cash transfers. We evaluate these reforms using a structural labor supply model based on the microsimulation EUROMOD model and EU-SILC data. We find that both reforms have an inequality-decreasing impact. However, when looking at labor supply responses for different household types, we show that the reforms have a non-negligible impact, especially for females in couple households. Additionally, we show that females in the middle of the income distribution in particular reduce labor supply in response to the reforms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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

Migration for survival is commonly associated with refugees and asylum seekers who flee persecution, wars, and natural calamities. Yet, in Nigeria, university-educated, gainfully employed middle-class youth insist that leaving is a matter of survival and not a choice. This distinction is signalled by japa, a recently popularised term for 'to run' or 'to flee'. Young Nigerians view migration as an escape from intolerable domestic conditions – prolonged university strikes, overturned development progress, and unprecedented currency inflation. In practice, japa follows formal procedures but favours quick departures. But by framing migration as fleeing, youth emphasise their refusal to cope. Foremost, they emphasise urgent respite over rationalised projects of social reproduction or status maintenance. Scholars, however, tend to overlook emotional or existential motives for voluntary migration and essentialise survival drives to forced migration. Drawing on 21 interviews with Nigerian youths, this paper shows a need to rethink survival migration, particularly how we value destinations compared to departures, conflate urgent desires with immediate exits, and privilege social functions over individual sentiments. By analysing youth's interpretations of what survival means, we enrich our understanding of African migration beyond the binary of elite strategies for social reproduction or fateful journeys of forced migration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract\nLAY SUMMARYIn this essay, we argue that the 7-eyed model of clinical supervision (as well as most models in psychotherapy) are in need of “queering.” What we mean by “queering” is to make the model adaptable to the wider work with gender, sex, sexuality, erotic, and relationship diversities (GSERD) in clinical supervision. It is applicable to supervisors and/or supervisees and the clients who identify outside the societal heteronormative, mono-normative, and cisgenderist norms. Psychotherapy and psychology, and by extension, clinical supervision, have been criticised for being white, middle-class, heteronormative, and euro-centric. This article will provide a framework and guidance for clinical supervisors on how to adapt the 7-eyed model to diverse populations.The field of psychotherapy is generally embedded in white and heteronormative assumptions. These assumptions also apply to clinical supervision. This paper explains how we can adapt the 7-eyed model of clinical supervision to be more effective for clients and supervisees who are outside of the societal norms and marginalised, to foster an anti-oppressive practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although many towns had race meetings in the past, most survived only a short time. It has been rare that the reasons why so many failed have been explored. Most simply stopped without any local newspaper explanation. This microstudy of a small local northern race meeting is very suggestive about just how complex and precarious the survival of any meeting could be, and aims to encourage further research. Kendal, the largest town in Westmorland, had very occasional low status race meetings in the eighteenth century on its Fell Side. But in 1820 annual races were revived on a new course to the east of the town, and the following year a new improved course was constructed to the west. The new races, the only ones in Westmorland at that time, lasted only fifteen years, from 1820 to 1834. This paper explores their nature, and the complex reasons lying behind the rise and fall of Kendal's so-called 'race week'. It starts by exploring its beginnings and describing the varied attractions that the 'race week' offered: wagering, heavy drinking, gaming and trickster activities, entertainments, a band, balloon ascent, dramas, social meals, dancing, assemblies, Wombwell's menagerie, wrestling and cockfighting. It assesses the numbers and nature of the crowds attending. It then examines the complex reasons lying behind its brief growth and rapid decline. A perfect storm of problems came together: political divisions between the powerful landowning Tory Lowthers who held Westmorland and growing Whig and Reform opposition, which affected finances, patronage and elite attendance; middle-class Kendal attitudes, and dissenter religious opposition; funding problems; decline of gentry interest; inferior racehorse entries; low status jockeys; and bad weather. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper explores a phenomenon of growing divisions within the Polish football supporters, namely between the hooligans and the rest of devoted supporters. There are three primary aims of the paper: 1) to explain the origin of the more apparent division in the devoted supporters' community; 2) to characterize the division, and thus – 3) to analyse its potential consequences. The paper draws on 96 interviews with football supporters and a desk research conducted within two different research projects. The analysis shows that divisions occurred as a result of the exploitation of supporters' cultural, symbolic and economic resources by hooligan groups. What developed as a consequence was a sense of distinct interests between hooligans and the rest of devoted supporters. We interpret this arising awareness using Marx's categories describing transformation from 'class in itself'" to "class for itself". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a response to a recently published article in this journal entitled 'Precarious privilege: personal debt, lifestyle aspirations and mobility among international school teachers' by Rey, Bolay, and Gez (2020. "Precarious Privilege: Personal Debt, Lifestyle Aspirations and Mobility Among International School Teachers." Globalisation, Societies and Education, 1–13. doi:10.1080/14767724.2020.1732193). In this follow-up paper, we take the notion of 'precarious privilege' as the starting point for theorising an emerging concept derived from our recent research into teachers' experiences of turnover in the field of International Schooling. We call this concept 'transition capital', which encompasses a newer 'positive sociology' approach, imagining the social reality of being a teacher in an International School setting as being a mixture of both the negative and positive. We believe that the concept of 'transition capital' complements the notion of 'precarious privilege' by recognising the paradoxical nature of the teacher experience. It also attempts to go beyond it by showing how the positive and the negative are dialectical in nature. We also seek to flesh out the burgeoning concept of 'transition capital' by explaining its origins in the notion of 'resilience capital' and sketching a future research agenda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding heteronormativity through the 'lived sexualities' of single women in urban Bangladesh, who are rarely included in any discourse of sexuality, this paper looks at middle class women who do not conform to marriage normativity but who carve out a space of social respect, acceptance and happiness through a long process of negotiation and careful navigation. Taking the intersectionality of gender, class and sexuality as its focus—this qualitative study seeks to understand the tactics of avoidance and the strategic routes women employ in their everyday lives as they negotiate heteronormative prohibitions to pursue sexuality and pleasure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores how four young women narrated accounts of their interactions with their male peers in the engineering classroom. Drawing on data collected in a qualitative case study conducted at one high-performing English university, this paper details how the four women described two different versions of laddish masculinity evident within their engineering classroom; a hostile laddish masculinity, and a 'friendly' or 'genial' upper/middle-class laddish masculinity. Whilst the hostile lads were seemingly frowned upon and socially excluded, the 'friendly' or 'genial' upper/middle-class lads appeared largely liked and tolerated by the women. This paper thus adds to our understanding of women's current experiences in engineering education, and works to extend research in the area of laddism in formalized learning contexts in higher education (HE). In particular, this paper draws attention to the existence of subtle or nuanced degrees of laddism in engineering at the university under study, and highlights a possible relationship between 'lad' discourses and gendered disciplinary discourses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the past twenty years, Australia has re-directed efforts to diversify the recruitment of temporary labour and students, attracting middle-class migrants from new sources, such as Latin America. This paper explores how structural, political and socio-economic contradictions in countries of origin and destination shape Argentine migrants' everyday experiences of trying to create a new home. Drawing on ethnographic research, this paper builds on work on temporary middle-class migration to show how a 'homing' lens contributes to refining our understanding of how precarity can become protracted for middle-class migrants moving from the Global South to the Global North. The findings demonstrate that feelings of detachment from their past home but difficulty planning a future due to their temporary status exclude such migrants from the ontological stability necessary for homing. Using metaphors of 'walls' and 'skidding', we show how spatial and temporal precarity discourage emotional and material investment in their present homes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores teachers' conceptions of the ideal student, aspects of the hidden curriculum, and how each varies by neighborhood-level social class. I used a thematic analysis to analyze 30 semi-structured interviews with public elementary school teachers in the United States. Emergent themes indicate the creation of archetypes regarding the ideal student, their connection to social class, and their effect on the hidden curriculum. Most notably, teachers teaching in lower-class neighborhoods idealized the eager conformist; teachers teaching in middle-class neighborhoods idealized the well-rounded collaborator; and teachers teaching in upper-class neighborhoods idealized the independent innovator. Findings suggest that teachers' conceptions of the ideal student reflect the social conditions of the neighborhood where they teach, which impacts aspects of their teaching pedagogy and classroom-management techniques. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the experiences of Western teacher expatriates in a Shanghai international schooling organization. We explore the risks and benefits associated with transnational mobility and how teacher expatriates, as part of the global middle-class (GMC), maintain and reaffirm their middle-class status. Focusing on adaptation and constraint in professional contexts, the data illustrates how the teachers respond to new discourses and the rules of exchange in the rapidly changing Chinese education market. We operationalise transnational habitus, as a conceptual tool, to explore how certain identities are sustained and negotiated in various moments of unsettlement. As these teacher expatriates navigate new professional contexts, we see how their habitus remains heavily influenced by class and previous professional experiences in their country of origin as they engage in new work environments, in order to secure an advantageous position. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper critically examines competing media discourses about women's alcohol consumption as spectators at the Melbourne Cup, a historically prestigious annual Australian horse race. Taking a feminist poststructural lens, this paper identifies how print media representations of the female drinking subject can provide a multitude of subject positions that can be contradictory and subversive, offering possibilities for resistance to idealised middle-class gendered norms about women and drinking. This paper provides new insights into print media portrayals of "unruly" female spectators and their alcohol consumption at public events such as the Melbourne Cup. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a recent paper of Holston, López-Permouth, Mastromatteo and Simental-Rodriguez, a ring R is defined to have no subprojective middle class if the subprojectivity domain of any R-module is the smallest or largest possible. In this work, we continue to use this idea of restricting the class of subprojectivity domains to classify rings. A finitely generated (resp., cyclic) module is called fingp-indigent (resp., singp-indigent), if its subprojectivity domain consists of only finitely projective (resp., singly projective) modules. We give a characterization of rings over which finitely generated (resp., cyclic) modules are either projective or fingp-indigent (resp., singp-indigent). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the analysis of Israeli society and the experience of immigration and integration into it in the first decades after its establishment in 1948, an Ashkenazi-Mizrahi dichotomy became prevalent, and the explanatory efficacy of other contributing factors went mostly unnoticed. The academic, institutional and public discourses that focused on those among the Mizrahi Jews, who struggled to fit-in, perpetuated the early Ashkenazi establishment's biases against all that was Arab and by extension Mizrahi. Exploring socio-cultural practices - such as dress codes and choice of language, of Jews arriving in Israel from Egypt during this period, this paper will examine the role of class identity and performativity (rather than ethnicity) in shaping the immigrant experience of newcomers. Relying on multiple sources including interviews, life stories and oral testimonials, it will argue that the Jews of Cairo and Alexandria shared an urban middle-class habitus with the Israeli Ashkenazi elites; and that the performative expression of this shared identity enabled them to open doors closed to many other Middle Eastern and North African groups and paved their way into the Israeli mainstream despite their Mizrahi decent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines H-300 or Kiryat Eilon: a neighborhood in the city of Holon that exemplifies Mizrahi mobility into the new middle class. Following Cohen and Leon's seminal insights on the Mizrahi middle class, the paper analyses life stories and other daily practices of H-300 residents in order to assess their (ethno-)class identities. The picture seems to be far more complex than the one described by Leon and Cohen. Mobile Mizrahi personal experience and collective memory are indeed dominant but what they construct is not a "Mizrahi" ethno-class space but a more open and integrated "popular middle class" community. Mizrahi collective and individual experience serve as a "quarry" from which cultural building blocks are produced. The findings suggest the emergence of an all-Israeli "popular middle class" subject, distinct from the upper-middle-class layers, leading the popular classes echelons. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we focus on two types of middle-class families: those who avoid air travel for environmental reasons and those who choose to live nomadic lives, travelling with their children around the world and staying weeks or months in certain locations, mainly in Asia, South America, and Africa. We analyse data gathered from interviews with parents, blogs, fora and more traditional media, where families presented and explained their choice and offered some detailed accounts on how they perceive their travel practices and its effect on their children. The choice to combine the analysis of these seemly highly contradictory practices together is motivated by the significant similarities found in many of their narratives, both in their non-traditional travel choices that aim to challenge certain middle-class norms, and in their desire to use these unique family travel strategies for global citizenship education. We argue that such an unsettling of normative middle-class practices can be seen as the beginning of an ontological shift in the way GCE is understood and practiced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how the English educational state has consistently acted to support private schooling in areas where fee-paying schools would be otherwise financially unviable. Educational data on private school participation since the 2008 financial crisis reveals the stark regional divides between London and the South-East of England and the rest of the country. This analysis of contemporary trends is framed within a historical understanding of the spatial dualism of the English middle class in relation to education. The paper traces the policy lineages of the spatial logic of state subsidies for elite models of schooling in northern England, noting the continuity between Direct Grant grammar schools, the Assisted Places scheme and the recent conversion of private schools into state-funded academy or free schools. A review of applications from private schools to become free schools highlights, how differentiated local class structures affect the viability of elite education without state support. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Young people and their housing conditions are closely linked, since housing determines whether an individual can lead a smooth transition from dependence to independence. Nevertheless, young people across many societies face growing problems in achieving this transition, which can be attributed to rising house prices and the lack of affordable alternatives to homeownership. Moreover, young people are likely to have vastly divergent experiences and outcomes depending on their tenure. This paper explores these issues in relation to young people in Beijing. The paper argues that the housing issues in Beijing have distinct local characteristics. Drawing on a unique dataset of 83 housing stories, this paper explores housing differentiation and experiences amongst young, promising middle-class people in Beijing. This paper attempts to answer the following research questions: What factors contribute to young people's access to homeownership in light of the rising house prices in Beijing? How is homeownership differentiated by different classifications? The answers to the research questions are the key to understanding the differentiation of homeownership amongst young, promising middle-class people in Beijing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholarship on violence against women in South Asia has not adequately brought attention to the phase of romance and intimacy, before marriage, which as this paper demonstrates, is also an important site of violence. This paper locates violence in pre-marital relationships in a larger narrative of modernity in contemporary urban India, especially as experienced by educated, professional middle class women. Focusing on romantic pre-marital relationships, it delineates how these romantic journeys are considered as integral parts of narratives of freedom and modernity for the women. Yet, in unanticipated ways, these romances are imbued with insidious forms of violence, particularly of emotional and physical abuse. I also trace women's responses to this form of abuse, thereby arguing that violence comprises range of emotions, including guilt, shame, humiliation, and vulnerabilities. Furthermore, I unpack the reasons of why women might choose to continue these relationships and remain silent about their sufferings, and how eventually they overcome these experiences. Based on ethnographic methodology and in-depth interviews with middle class women working in multinational companies in Gurugram, I, thus untangle the inextricable links between violence, modernity and love. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the middle- and upper-class is typically cast as using museum patronage to support narratives that reinforce the position of dominant racial groups, this paper presents an alternative perspective. Drawing on ethnographic and archival data, I conceptually and empirically elaborate how gifts by black middle- and upper-class voluntary organizations to African American museums are enabled by racial uplift ideology and directed at nurturing counter-narratives about African Americans. As patrons of memory they aim to reconstitute recollections of African Americans by challenging master narratives of national life where they are either absent or marginalized. Gifts to black museums also support the inclusion of their own organizations and members as protagonists in this counter-memory. By turning attention to cultural patronage among black middle- and upper-class voluntary organizations, this paper demonstrates how museum patronage among elites can unsettle, rather than reinforce, master racial narratives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on theories of consumption (Barthes 1972; Veblen 1898; Warde 2016) and taste (Bourdieu 2004), this paper analyzes the changing patterns of public consumption of food and beverages in the city of Calcutta (Kolkata) in the twentieth century. Food practices are guided by cultural traditions, geography, and social position, but are also acquired in the cosmopolitan milieu of a metropolitan city. Spaces of public consumption in the city often signify some other social practices and depending on the type of food and association concerned, specific spaces of consumption reflect the scalar taste of consumers across the social strata. While switching between different similar options, the middle class’s association with spaces of consumption shifts with the improvement of the economic condition of the consumer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]