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A foreword to the "Graduate Journal of Social Science" is presented.

There has been increasing interest in English-language scholarship in recording the narratives of people who speak little or no English, including migrants. Researchers across the disciplines have shown how language both constructs and describes identity. In this article I examine the methodological and epistemological implications of changing the language in which narratives are presented. I argue that these are important in all cross-language research, since all researchers are responsible for how they present others in their work. Using migrant writing, some by Hoffman, I argue that many researchers do not address the implications of their involvement in producing identities within their narratives. They, in effect, assume that identity is constructed and presented in exactly the same way whatever language is involved, and that changes of language are unimportant. Finally, some developments in cross-language research are examined and the value of cross-disciplinary research is discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article we focus on recent literature on the housing needs of older people from minority ethnic communities. Such research has undoubtedly benefited particular communities in demonstrating that their needs have been neglected to date. However, the terminology used to describe ethnicity often assumes an unproblematic black–white divide in that it defines communities as discrete and homogeneous groups. Moreover, whilst much research in this field is described as concerned with 'black and minority ethnic' communities, it is in effect about specifically defined 'black' communities with little or no room for other minority ethnic communities. We argue in this paper, using two examples, that this has consequences for resource distribution and for funding of initiatives to help minority ethnic communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the research process, as in life generally, people construct their ethnic identity and changing ways. In this process, time is both a resource and a tool for construction. Looking at research into polish communities in Britain, it is argued that time, far from being a measure of a pre-existing reality, is instead auto/biographically constructive of selves, identities and realities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Argues that research on British Poles has focused on a particular and limiting set of definitions of what it means to be Polish. Neutrality and objectivity of the notion of community; Process of inclusion and exclusion; Gender and ethnicity in a community; Challenging and reinventing constructs.

This article discusses some of the different ways researchers have looked at issues of translation and representation across languages. Across many disciplines, including sociology, anthropology, philosophy, cultural studies and socio-linguistics, writers and researchers are concerned with how language is used to construct representations of people in written and oral accounts. There is also increasing interest in cross-disciplinary approaches to language and representation in research. Researchers argue that there is now an intellectual climate that is, more than ever, open to the theoretical interchange between linguistic and social research. Within health, social care and housing research there is a rapidly growing volume of writing on, and sometimes with, people whose first language is not English. However, much empirical research in these fields remains at the level of findings about groups of people with the issue of how they are represented remaining unexamined. The links to the literature cited above are rarely made.