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The migration of people affects the geographical distribution of the population and the demographic composition of areas over the short, medium and long terms. To recognise and respond to the corresponding needs and challenges, including consequences for service provision, social cohesion and population health, there is a continuing need to understand migration patterns of the past and present. Area classifications are a useful tool to simplify the inherently complex data on migration flows and characteristics. Yet, existing classifications often lack direct migration measures or focus solely on cross-sectional data. This study addresses these limitations by employing Group-based Multi-Trajectory Modelling (GBMTM) to create a longitudinal, migration-specific classification of Great Britain's wards from 1981 to 2011, using six migration indicators. Using UK census data, we reveal six distinct migration clusters that highlight the rapid growth in studentifying neighbourhoods, the continuous influx of migrants into inner cities, and a noticeable North-South divide in terms of movers’ tenure enforced by persisting income selectivity. Additionally, the geographical distribution of clusters shows a common pattern in urban areas irrespective of size or location. The longitudinal perspective of our GBMTM classification highlights trends and changes in migration patterns that are not well reflected in either the general purpose or the cross-sectional migration classification that we used as comparators. We conclude that the method presented and the classification generated offer a novel lens on migration and provide new opportunities to explore the effects of migration on a variety of outcomes and at various scales.

Whilst people’s migration outcomes may be influenced by climate change, the interaction of heat with migration and migrants is little understood. This scoping review explores the relationship between heat and human migration, focusing on i) whether and how heat functions as a driver of migration, and ii) how migrants are impacted by heat across the migratory journey. Four databases were searched for peer-reviewed literature to identify studies reporting on the heat-migration nexus through 18 June 2021, alongside a grey literature search. Of 12,149 peer-reviewed and 476 grey literature records, 187 articles were screened in full, resulting in the inclusion of 50 records (47 peer-reviewed, 3 grey). Publications assessed the impact of heat on human migration (n = 32), or the experience of heat among migrants (n = 18). In the former, 16/32 report a significant positive association where exposure to heat increases the likelihood of migration or intention to migrate. Moderating factors in the heat-migration pathway include other climatic factors, agricultural productivity, economic opportunities, age, and gender. The vast majority of studies assessing the impact of heat on migrants reported negative impacts of heat (such as heat related illness, heat stress and premature mortality) among migrants compared to non-migrants. Heat impacts were aggravated by poor infrastructure, insufficient workplace adaptations, lower educational level, and socio-economic factors. Findings suggest heat may influence migratory patterns in terms of people’s intention to move, risk when on the move, and consequences of heat for settled migrants. However, the heterogeneous results suggest heat may not be a driver of migration in all contexts. No literature reported on a so-called ‘temperature threshold’ above which migration is certain. Developing comparability in measurements of heat, heat impacts, and definitions of environmentally-induced migration and migrants may support future research on, risk reduction for, and response to the impact of heat on migration and migrants.

The increasing fortification of borders produces new urban forms of irregular migration. This paper invokes the concept of “borderzone departure cities” as urban constellations created where global migration routes meet blocked borders in cities which become jumping‐off points from which migrants try to depart. The paper examines Athens and Calais as borderzone departure cities located at both sides of the EU Schengen area. By focussing on the Athenian City Plaza squat and the makeshift Calais Jungle camp as emblematic yet relational spaces of departure, the paper moves beyond the squat/camp divide to better understand how irregular migrants struggle against hostile bordering apparatuses through urban practices of meanwhile inhabitation and mobile commoning. The paper illustrates how these spaces were variously assembled, run, and experienced to form the conditions for movement and stay, each holding different potentials for creating solidarity infrastructures and negotiating forms of migrant citizenship to support the uncertain urban realities of those stuck on the move.

The age of migration finds its physical manifestation in the immigrant neighbourhoods of European cities. These ‘ethnic enclaves’ have received much attention from the public, as well as policy makers. Conventional wisdom holds that policies are required to confront such concentrations. Several European countries have implemented measures to achieve a spatial balance – be it through settlement bans or allocation quotas – in the name of fostering immigrants’ integration.However, the scholarly verdict on the relationship between segregation and integration is still pending. This article aims to contribute a novel approach, namely discourse analysis of immigrants’ Facebook groups. To this end, it first establishes the level of segregation in six cities (three in Germany and three in England) using data held by municipal archives. Second, it scrutinises 119 Facebook groups of Pakistanis and Turks in these cities, with a total of 2665 posts. This exploratory analysis suggests that desegregation might be causative for downwards assimilation and transnationalism, whereas ethnic enclaves might provide the basis for a pluralist mode of integration. Therefore, it argues for a re-evaluation of the suitability of dispersal policies for shaping the transformation of ever more European cities into multi-ethnic metropolises.

Funder: National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Great Ormond Street Hospital Biomedical Research Centre, Objectives: Maternal factors shape the risk of infant undernutrition, however the contributions of age at marriage versus age at pregnancy are rarely disentangled. We explore these issues in a population from lowland rural Nepal, where median ages at marriage and first pregnancy are 15 and 17 years respectively and marriage almost always precedes pregnancy. Methods: We analyzed data on first‐time mothers (n = 3002) from a cluster‐randomized trial (2012–2015). Exposures were ages at marriage and pregnancy, categorized into groups. Outcomes were z‐scores for weight (WAZ), length (LAZ), head circumference (HCAZ), and weight‐for‐length (WLZ), and prevalence of wasting and stunting, for neonates (

While many countries with low birth rates have implemented policies incentivizing fathers to take parental leave with the anticipation that it will contribute to raising birth rates, there is scant research empirically testing whether fathers’ uptake of leave is pronatalist. Existing research is limited to a few European (mostly Nordic) countries, and it is unclear whether there exists a positive causal relationship. Using mixed methods, this paper seeks to explore the processes and mechanisms by which fathers’ uptake of parental leave impacts intentions for additional children in South Korea, a country characterized by lowest-low fertility and low but rapidly expanding uptake of leave by fathers. Results based on multinomial logistic regression models suggest that in comparison to fathers who expect to take their first leave shortly, fathers with leave experience are less likely to report couple-level intentions for another child, significantly so at parity two. Interviews of fathers with parental leave experience confirm that fathers attenuate their fertility intentions downwards in light of the difficulties of childcare during their leave. While these intentions may change further down the line and/or couples may decide to continue an unplanned pregnancy, results suggest that fathers’ parental leave has an anti- rather than pronatalist effect in South Korea. This study demonstrates that in countries with poor support for the reconciliation of employment and childcare, equalizing the gendered division of parental leave may not be sufficient to see a reversal in its fertility trends.

Many studies have addressed how current immigrant size affects the strength of xenophobia from the perspectives of intergroup contact and ethnic competition theories. Can native residents’ current xenophobia be explained by historical immigrant size? To explore this question, we use historical immigrant size and a survey dataset to investigate the long-term effects of historical immigrant size on current xenophobia in Japan. The results show that historical immigrant size increases current xenophobia in Japan, which may be due to previous negative contact experiences between immigrants and native residents, and the negative effects persist. The implications of these findings for our understanding of the relationship between immigrant size and xenophobia are discussed.

In their stereotypical forms, love-marriages are self-arranged and often take place across caste or community boundaries. Arranged marriages are parentally arranged and usually conform firmly to notions of caste endogamy, except in instances of love-cum-arranged marriage where the parents may agree to publicly endorse the love-choice of their child. “Forced marriages” are those in which one or the other parties to the marriage do not give their free consent. In this paper, I consider the spectrum of care within which British South Asians arrange a child’s marriage such that what is outwardly an act of care is experienced as an act of force, be this physical violence or emotional coercion. I also examine the ways in which the child’s rejection of this arrangement is sometimes nevertheless re-framed as a form of consent. Drawing on ethnographic research with those who have experienced a “forced marriage” I examine the processes through which care is constructed and comes to be re-imagined by looking at the ways in which care articulates questions of choice, marriage, gender and sexuality.

In September 2013, King Mohammed VI announced sweeping reforms to Morocco’s migration policy that promised to break with decades of repressive border control, respect human rights, and open the pat...

This study used mixed-methods design to explore BBVs/STIs risk and protective practices among international students in Sydney from East Asian and sub-Saharan African countries and territories, before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with twenty international students from East Asia (N=10), and sub-Saharan Africa (N=10) to explore sexual practices, and the socio-cultural factors shaping these practices. Additionally, an online anonymous survey (N=149) was conducted to investigate BBVs/STIs protective practices and their predictors. Semi-structured interviews were also conducted with sixteen international students from East Asia (N=7), and sub-Saharan Africa (N=9) to explore how the COVID-19 pandemic impacted BBVs/STIs risks. Qualitative data were analysed using reflexive thematic analysis method while quantitative data were analysed using logistic regression model at 0.05 alpha level. Analysis of the interviews data revealed that participants perceive sexual norms in Australia as permissive and casual. In line with sexual script and social norm theories, some participants indicated that it is near impossible to maintain sexual abstinence norm in Australia. Interestingly, some participants hold the view that BBVs/STIs are rare in Australia. This perspective could impact BBVs/STIs risk practices as indicated in interviews data around condomless sex. Condomless sex was a common BBVs/STIs risk practice among participants who are sexually active in Australia. Factors shaping this practice include curiosity, condom-related stigma, alcohol use, seeking greater intimacy and pleasure, and gender stereotypes. Findings from the quantitative data showed that sexual acculturation was the only modifiable predictor of BBVs/STIs protective practices (OR = 0.883, 95% CI = 0.820–0.952). Thus, participants with greater acculturation were less likely to report BBVs/STIs protective practices. Moreover, findings from the qualitative data indicated that pre-COVID BBVs/STIs risks were elevated by the COVID-19 pandemic among some sexually active participants. The findings of this thesis provide evidence for contextualised sexual health services for international students from more conservative cultures. Such services should be cognisant of perceptions around sexual norms with the aim of supporting international students to manage migration-related changes in their sexual practices in a safe manner. Additionally, it is vital to address structural barriers to reduce risk, and strengthen BBVs/STIs protective practices among this population.

Policies banning women domestic workers from migrating overseas have long been imposed by labour-sending states in the Indo-Pacific region. This article presents the complexities surrounding such bans by developing an overarching model of a migration ban policy cycle, which provides a theoretical framework for understanding the circumstances under which migration bans arise and play out. It examines the history of migration bans for four prominent labour-sending states – Indonesia, Nepal, the Philippines and Sri Lanka - to assess the causes, outcomes and extent of regional convergence of these policies. In doing so, we uncover two prominent policy narratives. The first involves labour diplomacy, where countries employ bans to negotiate superior working conditions and rights for migrant workers. The second concerns paternalist states as ‘protector’, where states are primarily motivated to reaffirm traditional gender norms. We conclude that migration bans have been most effective, both in curbing departures and achieving desired outcomes, when they are primarily motivated by labour issues and not gender politics. Nevertheless, even when used as a form of diplomatic negotiation, migration bans heighten the vulnerability of domestic workers to exploitation by pushing them into irregular pathways fraught with risk.

Attachment is the inborn bias of human children to seek the availability of familiar caregivers in times of stress. It has been observed from ancient times and in many cultures, and scaffolds further physical, cognitive, and socioemotional development. The security of these relationships is shaped by the continuity and quality of the child-rearing environment, and is independent of biological ties to the caregiver. In this chapter, the child’s right to a “good-enough”—that is, at least minimally adequate but not necessarily ‘best’--family life and the importance of a stable network of attachment relationships is highlighted. Legal issues raised by multi-parent care, including questions around the use of attachment-based assessments for custody decisions, are addressed. Attachment theory is well equipped to inform what caregiving arrangements children need, and legislators, judges, and lawyers may consult it as a source of insight into “good-enough” care arrangements in the interest of the child.

Dispersal has acquired an increasingly central role within state-led border control strategies in Europe and North Africa. Scholars have, however, tended to apprehend dispersal in its geographical dimension, failing to interrogate bordering beyond spatial distancing from the territorial edges of the state. Furthermore, dispersal strategies in non-European countries are underexplored. We start filling these gaps by examining how dispersal operates in Morocco – a country where, since the announcement of a new migration policy in 2013, the routine internal dispersal of groups of darkskinned people racially profiled as ‘illegal sub-Saharan’ by Moroccan police forces has become commonplace. Drawing on extensive qualitative fieldwork conducted between 2016 and 2019, as well press articles and NGO reports, we advance a dynamic understanding of bordering by analysing how the repeated spatial relocation of migrant people works through and in tandem with mechanisms of dispossession. We draw together literature on dispersal as migration governance and on dispossession as containment, proposing that dispersal activates practices of dispossession that expand the reach of bordering beyond spatial distance, turning it into an embodied technology: migrant people profiled as ‘sub-Saharan’ experience bordering as a form of inflicted hypermobility and a condition of protracted, unbearable living to which they are confined

The Registrar-General’s Returns are an integral source for historical demographers. Concerns have been raised however, over the geographical accuracy of their pre-1911 mortality figures when institutional deaths were not redistributed to place of residence. This paper determines the extent of the distortions caused by institutional mortality in the context of aggregate infant mortality rates for London’s registration sub-districts. The potential of two alternative methods to ‘correct’ these distortions is then assessed. The first method uses indirect estimation techniques based on data from the 1911 Fertility Census, and the second exploits the rich detail available from the Medical Officer of Health Reports. Through narrowing the focus to seven London registration sub-districts over the years 1896-1911, it is shown that both suggested alternative methods remove the institutional mortality biases found in the Registrar-General’s figures, yet they come with their own limitations.

Funder: Comisión Nacional de Investigación Científica y Tecnológica; doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100002848, Funder: Cambridge Commonwealth, European and International Trust; doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100003343, The present article explores the social and subjective dimensions of the biological clock and its implications for reproductive time through a qualitative study based on 40 life story interviews of women from Santiago de Chile. Although the narrative of the biological clock has become a prevalent frame for addressing reproductive time in the context of late childbearing, age-related infertility, and the use of assisted reproductive technologies, few studies engage in an in-depth analysis of the biological clock—its boundaries, dynamics, and the particular ways in which it shapes women’s views and experiences of reproductive time. The present article aims to advance current knowledge on the intersection of time, reproduction, and biopolitics by arguing that the biological clock regulates reproductive time by shaping the boundaries and dynamics of female fertility through the clock. By determining reproductive time as quantitative, standardised, linear, and irreversible and by outlining the passing of time through pressure, risk, and burden, the biological clock determines when it is possible and desirable to have children and regulates reproduction, gender, and the female life course. These findings highlight the importance of critically addressing the narrative of the biological clock and its implications for women’s views and experiences of reproductive time.

Mortuaries were death duties owed to parish priests. The early sixteenth century was a pivotal moment in their long history. In 1529, an act of parliament significantly altered these dues. This article explores mortuary practices in the preceding decades. It examines what mortuaries were, who gave them, and what purpose they served. The importance of local custom is emphasised. The article reconsiders the modern view that mortuary dues were generally disliked. A more complex attitude explains both why mortuaries were reformed and why they would survive for centuries thereafter. Mortuary dues exemplify the symbiotic relationship between law and custom.

In 2013, Morocco announced the adoption of a new, ‘humane’ migration policy. The implementation of the reform, however, has been characterised by an apparent contradiction: while Morocco has leveraged the humanitarian and international orientation of the policy as a foreign policy tool, this new political framework has not so far been translated into law and has been accompanied by persisting violations of migrants’ rights, especially in border areas. Most literature on the topic observes these discrepancies as a sign of the incomplete or ‘indecisive’ character of Moroccan migration policies. Building on the literature on human rights politics and migration policy, in this article we ask instead: what do these contradictions tell us about the trajectory of the Moroccan state, and its relation to the international human rights regime? These discrepancies, we argue, speak to the process of regime hybridisation that has characterised Morocco’s political transition since the 1990s. Morocco’s transition from authoritarianism to a hybrid political regime has been marked by political openings towards liberalism, social mobilisation, and closer engagement with the international human rights framework, which have helped Morocco recraft its international image as a ‘modern’ and ‘stable’ country. These phenomena, however, have coexisted alongside the survival of practices of authoritarian rule. The National Strategy on Immigration and Asylum (SNIA) conforms to Morocco’s formal alignment to the international human rights regime. However, the lack of legal harmonisation grants the state the flexibility to manoeuvre the policy according to its European and African foreign political interests, thus leaving the progress in terms of migrants’ rights vulnerable to sudden setbacks.

This article demonstrates, using evidence from church court depositions, that women's experience of service in early modern England was more varied than scholarship suggests. Moving beyond its conception as a life-cycle annual occupation, the article situates service within individual life-stories. It argues firstly, that service extended across the whole of women's working lives and secondly, that employment arrangements took a wide range of forms. Service for women is shown to have been flexible, varied and contingent, employing a diversity of individuals under a variety of different employment agreements.

Drawing on interviews conducted in Brussels, Dakar and Accra between September 2017–March 2018, this paper discusses the responses of domestic policy actors to the EU’s migration policy proposals in the two West African countries of Senegal and Ghana. EU-African cooperation in migration is mediated by the domestic context that the EU’s migration agenda is ‘received’ in, and the preferences and responses of policy communities in the countries that are the intended recipients of the EU’s governance approach. While existing studies have examined preference formation on the part of European actors in the EU’s external migration agenda, the preferences and agency of African actors and how these shape the EU’s external migration governance remain under-examined. Looking primarily at domestic contestation in the area of returns and readmission, this paper demonstrates that the preferences of policy actors in the receiving country are formed in a shifting domestic context and have an impact in determining the ability of the EU to achieve its aims and preferred governance strategy. In addition, it is shown that organisational and bureaucratic dynamics can influence cooperation outcomes.

Background: Empirical evidence has demonstrated adverse associations between parental nonstandard work schedules (i.e., evenings, nights, or weekends) and child developmental outcomes. However, there are mixed findings concerning the relationship between parental nonstandard employment and children's body mass index (BMI), and few studies have incorporated information on paternal work schedules. Objective: This paper investigated BMI trajectories from early to middle childhood (ages 3-11) by parental work schedules at 9 months of age, using nationally representative cohort data from the United Kingdom. This study is the first to examine the link between nonstandard work schedules and children's BMI in the United Kingdom. Methods: We used data from the Millennium Cohort Study (2001‒2013, n = 13,021) to estimate trajectories in BMI, using data from ages 3, 5, 7, and 11 years. Joint parental work schedules and a range of biological, socioeconomic, and psychosocial covariates were assessed in the initial interviews at 9 months. Results: Compared to children in two-parent families where parents worked standard shifts, we found steeper BMI growth trajectories for children in two-parent families where both parents worked nonstandard shifts and children in single-parent families whose mothers worked a standard shift. Fathers' shift work, compared to standard shifts, was independently associated with significant increases in BMI. Conclusions: Future public health initiatives focused on reducing the risk of rapid BMI gain in childhood can potentially consider the disruptions to family processes resulting from working nonstandard hours. Contribution: Children in families in which both parents work nonstandard schedules had steeper BMI growth trajectories across the first decade of life. Fathers' nonstandard shifts were independently associated with increases in BMI.

This article offers an innovative attempt to construct an empirically-based estimate of the extent of syphilis prevailing in two contrasting populations in late eighteenth-century Britain. Thanks to the co-incident survival of both a detailed admissions register for Chester Infirmary and a pioneering census of the city of Chester in 1774 taken by Dr John Haygarth, it is possible to produce age-specific estimates of the extent to which adults of each sex had been treated for the pox by age 35. These estimates can be produced both for the resident population of Chester city and comparatively for the rural region immediately surrounding Chester. These are the first estimates of the prevalence of this important disease produced for the eighteenth century and they can be compared with similar figures for England and Wales c. 1911–1912.

This article examines the history of immigrant business proprietors in England and Wales between 1851 and 1911. The newly available electronic version of the Census (I-CeM) allows all business proprietors in each Census year to be identified, and provides birthplace information that allows entrepreneurs from different countries to be compared to each other and to business proprietors born in the United Kingdom. Immigrant populations had higher rates of business proprietorship than the English and Welsh-born population. This article argues that this was caused by labour market structure and demography rather than cultural differences between English- and foreign-born business proprietors.

Despite an impressive rise in school enrolment rates over the past few decades, there are concerns about growing inequality of educational opportunity in China. In this article, we examine the level and trend of educational mobility in China, and compare them to the situation in Germany, the Netherlands, the UK and the USA. Educational mobility is defined as the association between parents’ and children’s educational attainment. We show that China’s economic boom has been accompanied by a large decline in relative educational mobility chances, as measured by odds ratios. To elaborate, relative rates of educational mobility in China were, by international standards, quite high for those who grew up under state socialism. For the most recent cohorts, however, educational mobility rates have dropped to levels that are comparable to those of European countries, although they are still higher than the US level.

This article explores the effects of the growth in married women's employment upon the dynamics of British marriages in the post-war period. Drawing on popular sociology, newspapers and women's magazines from the 1950s and 1960s, it shows how shifting patterns of women's labour, linked to longer term demographic and socio-economic trends, prompted considerable debate about the stability and future of marriage. Whilst some argued optimistically that the employment of wives strengthened marriage through the material security guaranteed by a second wage and by building greater commonality of interests between spouses, other sources point to a more complex picture. Working wives were seen to imperil marital harmony because of the challenge they posed to men's ‘traditional’ identity as providers and to the legitimacy and modernity of the full-time housewife-worker in the home. The article concludes that paid work made a significance difference to marital power relations in this period; women's wages did not free them wholly from economic dependency, but they nonetheless offered a small slice of financial autonomy and elevated wives' status within the marriage relationship. Paid work thus offers historians an analytical thread of continuity linking the 1950s to later decades of change in women's lives.

What was the role of the family in individual reproductive decisions during state socialism? Can the family help to understand regional variations in fertility decline? This study provides an in-depth analysis of family relationships and their influences on individual reproductive decisions during the transition from first to second birth in Soviet Ukraine. Life history interviews are used to compare the western and eastern borderland cities of Lviv and Kharkiv, respectively, around 1950–1975. The findings reveal that regional differences in intergenerational ties and spousal cooperation shaped two reproductive strategies of transition to second birth, specifically postponing in Kharkiv and spacing in Lviv.

This paper aims to investigate and analyse the impact of the dowry and the endowment system on marriage and household patterns and on the labour market in 18th century Turin. At the same time it enquires into the reliability of the northern/southern Europe pattern for the study of this topic. Two points are developed. Firstly the paper shows that the dowry system coexists with a relatively high age atmarriage because of the specific role played by the dowry in Turin society. Indeed, thiswas not a once-and-for-all established asset but was a negotiable and flexible resource that could be manipulated by the different actors concerned in the endowment. Moreover, the payment did not always take place immediately upon marriage, nor was the money quickly available. At the same time the paper examines the economic role of dowry in Ancien Regime households: by means of a juridical procedure couples could alienate this property, and use or invest it to ensure their well-being and/or their economic situation. Final...

© 2018 Elsevier B.V. This chapter shows that networks can have large and differentiated effects on behavior and then argues that social and economic pressures facilitate the formation of heterogeneous networks. Thus networks can play an important role in understanding the wide diversity in human behavior and in economic outcomes.

Non-marital childbearing, especially within cohabitation, has become increasingly common in Britain as in other Western countries. Nonetheless, births outside marriage occur more frequently among the relatively disadvantaged in terms of income potential. Building upon previous research in family formation patterns, we examine differences by education and employment status in the proportion of marital and non-marital first births among British women and couples over the past two decades. In particular, we explore trends in educational differences in non-marital first births among women and the role of partners’ joint educational attainment in relation to childbearing within cohabitation or within marriage. We find a steady increase in cohabiting first births among all educational groups, without significant change in unpartnered births. However, differences by education in non-marital first births have not increased significantly during the observed period. Male partner’s education is negatively associated with childbearing within cohabitation, although this relationship varies according to women’s educational attainment.

The last century saw struggles for women's reproductive choices both to avoid childbearing (i.e. abortion, contraception) and to achieve it (i.e. IVF, artificial insemination). Now, after the turn of the millennium, these two approaches to regulate reproduction are combined in oocyte cryopreservation (OC), or egg freezing. With it, a new reproductive question has emerged as egg freezing simultaneously represents an active choice not to have children at present and a commitment to a future, possibly assisted, reproduction. Women's usage of OC to preserve fertility is itself an act of refusing current childbearing, thus calling into question an easy distinction between reproductive and non-reproductive behaviour. In this article, I discuss the representation of this new choice by using a selection of Dutch and UK news media pieces, focusing specifically on the implications of egg freezing for conceptualisations of the female reproductive body as site of a gendered politics of ageing.Firstly, I address the rhetorical divisions between 'medical' and 'social' motivations for egg freezing and then I argue that the media narratives around these divisions create new subject positions related to reproductive identity through which medical authority becomes extended into new parts of social life. Secondly, I address the discursive construction of the decision to use egg freezing technology in relation to the notion of the 'biological clock' and the reconceptualisations of age-specific (non-)reproductive bodies, which focus on the ovum as the locus of fertility. The news coverage of OC thus reveals a gendered politics of ageing, predicated on reproductive ability as the organising principle for the temporal structuring of life, which not only interpellates (potentially) infertile women who desire to reproduce, but also has an impact on the wider public.

This study presents initial estimates of women's labor force participation rates in preindustrial Turin. According to the population census of 1802, married women's participation rates were conspicuously low compared with the rates of unmarried women and widows and therefore deserve additional investigation. First, the study points out the value of a methodological approach based on the use of nonprincipal breadwinner-oriented sources, such as registers of applicants for poor relief. Here, all members of the family were encouraged to declare their occupations and activities in some detail in order to demonstrate concrete contribution to the survival of the family. Finally, the study discusses the occupational patterns of women employed as servants and as artisans and laborers in silk manufacturing. This highlights the crucial role played by migration flows and by women's access to skilled or low-qualified jobs in determining the extent of women's participation in preindustrial Turin's labor market.