This research examines the ways in which people manage ambiguous or problematic identities. I argue that the strategies of identity-management used are based on the ways in which different identities are performed in particular contexts. A case study of a women’s rugby team located in Bordertown, on the English-Scottish border, is used to examine this. These women possess two ambiguous identities. First, by playing a ‘man’s game’, they find themselves both integrated into and excluded from a masculine context. Second, by virtue of their location, they belong to and are rejected from both the English and Scottish national communities. The gender ambiguity is found to be irreconcilable. They are, however, able to reconcile their national ambiguity by asserting their membership of a recognisable third group - their local community. By asserting the shared bond of problematic nationality, they diminish the marginalisation caused by their gender ambiguity, and distract observers from their problematic gender identity. The performance of an ambiguous national identity, then, masks the continuing difficulties caused by the gender ambiguity. Thus strategies of identity management are found to be dependent on the social context of the individuals and identities involved, and their ability to use the interactions between different social contexts and identities to mask the ambiguity. As a result of this research, a greater understanding of the ways identity is formed and performed is reached.

This thesis focuses on understanding the lives of older women and explaining adjustment in later life. The theoretical perspective of existentialism framed the qualitative approach used to carry out the research. The data are derived from in-depth interviews with older women (ranging from 60 to 89 years) and participant observation at two day centres for older people. The grounded theory approach of concurrent data collection and data analysis was adopted drawing on the work of Glaser & Strauss (1967). Audio-typed interviews and daily fieldnotes recorded contrasting stories of women struggling with adjustment in later life with those of women enjoying a successful old age. These contrasts were found to be evidence regardless of the women's circumstances. Some women who faced a challenge to the meaning and purpose of their lives managed successful adjustment when others struggled with adjustment and some experienced depression. Understanding about these contrasting experiences is provided by the three major categories which emerged as the most significant aspects of adjustment in later life among older women: <i>explaining depression, intimacy in the lives of older women; and managing change in later life. </i>A core category of <i>searching for meaning</i> was discovered and is used to show that women engaged in a common process to make sense of their lives and the outcomes of their search affected adjustment in later life. The relationship between the major categories is explained through the properties of the core category and serves to explain how the search for meaning affects adjustment in later life. The interaction between the major categories determines whether the woman's life makes sense and structures her <i>adjustment work </i>in later life.

This thesis contributes to the understanding of how health is affected by the interaction between neighbourhood and individual socioeconomic status. It has been found that residents in high status neighbourhoods are healthier than those in low status neighbourhoods, controlling for individual status. Here it is hypothesised that such an association may not be found amongst low status individuals, because such individuals may have more detrimental psychosocial exposures in high status neighbourhoods than in low status neighbourhoods. For low status individuals, these detrimental psychosocial exposures, such as lacking social support and frequent status comparisons, may counteract positive material exposures in high status neighbourhoods. To test this hypothesis, three studies were conducted in this thesis. The first is an analysis of the difference in the association between neighbourhood status and health across individuals of different socioeconomic status, using a sample of mothers from England in the Millennium Cohort Study. The second study is similar and uses the same dataset, but instead of health, psychosocial factors were analysed. The third study, specific to London, uses data from the 2001 census to investigate the health impact of living in a low status city block within a wider neighbourhood of high status. In the first two studies, it was found that the positive association between neighbourhood status and health is weakest amongst the lowest status mothers, and whilst high status mothers were most likely to lack local friends and be depressed in low status neighbourhoods, there was an indication that in certain contexts the lowest status mothers were most likely to lack local friends and be depressed in high status neighbourhoods. In the third study, it was found that low status city blocks within high status neighbourhoods were more likely to have poor average health than those within low status neighbourhoods.

This thesis aims to investigate the impacts of the 73rd Amendment of the Indian Constitution on the lives of rural women in Orissa, India. The Amendment, which mandated ‘not less than one third’ women at all three levels of the Indian Panchayati Raj institutions, is considered to be an historical intervention of the State. Concerns and apprehensions were raised, questioning its practicability, such as the fear that quotas on such a large scale could never be filled or there would never be large enough numbers of women candidates, and if they came at all, they would be prevented from exercising any real power. However, far beyond expectations, millions of uneducated and poor rural Indian women have responded with great enthusiasm. I have undertaken an empirical study in eight Gram Panchayats (the institutions that work at the village level), in Cuttack Sadar Block in Orissa. My field study took place in two periods between July 2008 and February 2009 (with a gap of one month in between). I followed a feminist methodology with multiple methods, consisting of: participant observation, focus groups and in-depth interviews, with 38 participants. I attempt to focus on the different levels of barriers which my respondents face in their new roles and how they are negotiating with their families to overcome these obstacles. Drawing on my investigations, I suggest that my participants have gained confidence and expertise in the performance of their public roles and that quotas have provided them with an opportunity for this. They have negotiated within their private circles to overcome the age-old barriers of a patriarchal society and their negotiations have, so far, been hopeful. They have taken the male members of their families and communities into their confidence, which has helped them to overcome these constraints. Based on my participants’ words, I argue that empowerment is context-specific and gender quotas have proved to be helpful for my participants in creating an enabling environment, which in turn helped most of these women to become more effective in a public sphere.

There is a dearth of knowledge about the experiences of primary school aged left-behind children in the family, school and the community. The term “left-behind children” has occurred in a variety of literature in China since the end of 1980s when the huge population flows from rural areas to urban areas began. A review of the existing research literature suggests that emergence of left-behind children in China is the result of some unique features of rural migration to the cities in China. Their parents’ migration has a significant impact on their welfare and wellbeing in every respect. The overall aim of this research is to explore the experiences of children’s being left behind at home, at school and in the community from the perspectives of four main groups of stakeholders: left-behind children, their guardians, their parents and their teachers. This thesis challenges the view of left-behind children as an event, but instead argues that it is a dynamic process of choice and change with a variety of outcomes. As this is only a small scale survey with the intention of exploring whether the more detailed case studies are typical of the experiences of a wider group of children, in-depth interviews were undertaken with twelve left-behind children and one not-left-behind child in three different stages. The research suggests that negative effects of their parents’ migration can also be seen to be cumulative and to create a negative ‘trajectory’ through which momentum for change developed, developments which seemed impossible to resist. However, both left-behind children and their parents are not always passive victims of the adverse outcomes. A number of parents make complex assessments of the child’s well-being and negotiate with carers and potential carers.

During the past two decades, a body of literature has emerged on marriage between Taiwanese men and South-East Asian women. Almost all the studies that explore aspects of the lived experience of female marriage migrants have mentioned the role of mothers-in-law, but these older women were rarely the central focus. This thesis examines the experiences of Taiwanese mothers-in-law in families with cross-border marriages, based on in-depth qualitative interviews with 20 women with South-East Asian daughters-in-law; it raises questions about how these women position themselves, both during and after their sons’ marriages and how they manage their lives with someone who comes from a different cultural background. The study shows women who are actively engaged in varied strategies across different family life stages in order to meet their expectations of seeing their sons married and having a docile daughter-in-law. In their attempts to accomplish their sons’ marriage, they not only become involved in the marriage decision but also provide all sorts of assistance to ensure that their sons will marry a traditional spouse. After marriage, the agency they develop to negotiate their relationship with these foreign women is influenced both by their previous experience as daughters-in-law and by gossip in the women’s communities. However, these women do not necessarily hold absolute power in this family setting, despite the constraints placed on their foreign daughters-in-law and their disadvantaged position as immigrants. They still encounter difficulties in adapting to the dissimilar cultural values, behaviour and practices that are brought by their foreign daughters-in-law. Through studying these women’s stories, I have expanded knowledge about families with foreign daughters-in-law and therefore added a new dimension to the study of cross-national marriage relationships.

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Since the late 1970s, many towns and cities across the UK have faced processes of deindustrialisation thoroughly transforming the social and cultural landscape for the local population. Middlesbrough, in the North East of England, underwent transformation from labour markets dominated by iron, steel and chemical industries to a reliance on new forms of insecure, flexible service sector employment, typified in this study by call centres. Call centres emerged in the 1990s as a cost-saving efficient delivery system for companies to handle customer contact through the marriage of telecommunications and new information technologies. As a new form of employment, call centres have become popular among academics and journalists. This study aims to explore how the changing nature of capital accumulation, prompted by an ideological shift towards neoliberalism, served to change the fabric of society by placing value on competition, consumer culture and individualisation whilst shifting Britain from a manufacturing economy to a service economy. In specific locales such as Middlesbrough this radically altered the social landscape. Call centres emerged as a lifeline for those seeking employment in a town with historically high levels of unemployment. This study, based on covert ethnographic work as a call centre worker and in-depth interviews with call centre employees, will show what call centre work is like; how management strategies work towards efficiency, productivity and targets, how employees feel working in often stressful and difficult circumstances, and how technology dictates the work process thus preventing employees from controlling the pace of work. Furthermore, this study will investigate how social change central to the emergence of the call centre also created a culture which traps young people into a cycle of earning and consumption limits their options for future betterment and alters the very nature of their identity and perceptions of social class.

Background: Social inequalities in health represent one of the greatest challenges to public health today. Traditionally, studies investigating health inequalities have treated gender, ethnicity, and socioeconomic position as independent and additive explanatory variables. Consequently, important health inequalities that exist at the intersection of social groups remain invisible and unaccounted for. Aim: An intersectionality framework was employed to investigate the role of intersections of gender, ethnicity and socioeconomic position in explaining health inequalities among adults living in England. The objectives of the study were firstly, to establish whether intersections of gender, ethnicity, and socioeconomic position in health are present among adults in England, and secondly, to explore the contextual and explanatory factors perceived to underlie these intersections. Methods: A sequential explanatory mixed methods design comprising a quantitative phase followed by a qualitative phase was employed. In the quantitative phase, data from the Health Survey for England 2004 were analysed to test for significant interaction effects between gender, ethnicity, and socioeconomic indicators, with three measures of subjective health. In the qualitative phase, a subset of significant interactions relating to Pakistani and White English survey participants were explored using semi-structured interviews with 25 Pakistani and White English women recruited in South Yorkshire. Findings: The quantitative analysis identified 15 significant interaction effects (P<0.05). Each dimension of inequality (i.e. gender, ethnicity, socioeconomic position) was found to significantly interact with at least one other on one or more health outcome. The qualitative analysis revealed how overlapping systems of discrimination were perceived to underlie the burden of poor health experienced among Pakistani women living in England. Conclusions: This thesis demonstrates both quantitative and qualitative evidence for intersections of gender, ethnicity, and socioeconomic position in health inequalities in England. These findings highlight the need for policies seeking to reduce social inequalities in health to take account of intersectionality.

How teachers think about inequality in terms of what they aspire to and how they defend their views is surprisingly similar in the three study countries, Kenya, Mexico and the UK, despite their different positions in the world economic order. I attribute this to the near global hegemony of neoliberal logics concerning what is seen as being desirable and how things work. What differ are the terms in which inequality is defined and the form that critiques of inequality take. In particular, questions of respect and inferiority / superiority are verbalised in the middle and poorer countries and not in the richer country. The most important message to come from this work is that in thinking about inequality at the world level, it is important to talk about inequality with people from different points in the world, rather than concerning ourselves mainly with what the rich think of the poor or what the poor think of the poor. Through better understanding the experiences and constructions of world inequality according to people differentially positioned within this inequality, we can more fruitfully learn about the nature of what these findings, and those of many others, illustrate to be a very damaging situation. These findings suggest that the energy for change is least likely to come from richer countries as the more powerful critiques often stem from people living where they see and experience more challenging aspects of world inequality.