Although the number of parents with learning disabilities is difficult to accurately assess, some researchers believe that the numbers of people becoming parents has increased in recent years, in part due to the effects of de-institutionalisation. However, the research literature in this area shows that the some parents with learning disabilities have been judged as having deficits in their parenting skills and that some parents are treated more harshly than non learning disabled parents by the child protection system and are more likely to have their children removed. Very little has been written about this experience from the perspective of the parents themselves. Although it is known that both consenting and non-consenting adoption has long lasting psychological effects, including feelings of loss and stigma on non-learning disabled birth parents. In particular parents who do not consent to the adoption of their children are thought to be a highly underepresented and disenfranchised group. This piece of research used an interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) to explore the experiences of parents with learning disabilities who have lost their children to fostering, adoption or other care arrangements. Six parents with learning disabilities were interviewed; this included five mothers and one father. From the (IPA) analysis of the interview data three super ordinate themes emerged. The first, 'issues related to identity and power' included the interview participants accounts of their how their learning disabled identity effected their access to power and knowledge and their relationship with others. The second 'being a parent' documented the participants' experience of parenthood, including parental self-concept and attacks on parenthood. The third theme 'losing the child' explored the participants' emotional reactions to their loss, their understanding of this event and how they accommodated to their changed circumstances. The parents generally did not appear to describe themselves as learning disabled, but their daily lives and experience of parenting were greatly affected by the power and control they felt others exerted over them. Parenthood gave them a valued identity outside of being learning disabled but this identity was subject to constant attack. This led to long term negative psychological consequences including feelings of loss, anger, guilt, self-blame and depression. It is hoped that this study will help services and professionals that assess and support parents with learning disabilities to understand the issues from the parents' perspective and provide them with support if their children are removed from their care.

The settlement of nomads in the Sudan is examined through an analysis of the performance of the scheme at Khashm el Girba in geographical, economic and social terms. The first chapter deals with the methodology of the approach, while the next two chapters respectively give the background to the settlement of nomads in general, and the scheme at Khashm el Girba in particular. The following four chapters assess the success of the scheme's attempts to settle the nomads in a physical sense, and through economic performonce in and social conditions arising from the project's implementation. It is shown that, while there is a high rate of tenancy allocation, the actual numbers settled fall considerably below the expected level. It is further demonstrated that, due to various problems experienced on the scheme, the crop rotation barely provides an adequate income for the farm tenant, except were sufficient resources already exist to allow the required inputs. This results in many settlers retaining interests in their former way of life - pastoralism - while the economic structure of the society is perpetuated, thereby increasing the disparity between rich and poor. In the national context the scheme is shown to be successful, contributing significantly to the annual national budget. Socially the increased irevision of education and health facilities is shown to be beneficial, although malaria and bilharzia remain serious health problems. It is concluded that, while the scheme cannot be viewed as a couplets success, the settlers, through their adaptations, have achieved their own success by integrating crop production with livestock rearing, and that such an integration is a rational approach to the conditions existing in the area. It is therefore suggested that in future more attention need be paid to the people involved in agricultural production, as it is they who ultimately determine the overall performance of any scheme.

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The central focus of this thesis is how professionals in Singapore negotiate occupational mobility in their career life-course. The research seeks to understand the factors that underpin and guide individual aspiration and motivations when making occupational moves within career trajectories. Occupational mobility is fast becoming the norm among the international skilled labour force, creating a need to understand how such flexibility can be used advantageously, at the national level, for workforce management. The approach taken in this study conceptualises the career landscape as a field, and analyses mobility at the political, social and individual levels. It examines the power that is enacted by government on its citizens and the reflexive meaning making of individuals participating in occupational mobility. The empirical work consists of interviews with ex-teachers and ex-engineers in Singapore. The thesis presents an analysis of their narratives and identifies generic skills acquired in pre-employment training and in employment as a key to understanding how professional individuals are negotiating occupational fields. Amongst the achievements of the research is the understanding of what happens when individuals move from one occupation to the next. The research attempts to humanise the 'human resource' and present, through individual narratives, the individual's perspective on the changing nature of work, the need to participate in boundaryless work contexts and their involvement in occupational mobility. The thesis further illustrates the complexities that surround mobile behaviours of workers within an Asian context, and presents ways of understanding the needs of such professional workers so that they can negotiate the contemporary advanced economy landscape more effectively. The resulting conceptual framework attempts to explain how mobile Asian professional workers negotiate occupational mobility within a context that is influenced by conservative Confucian ideologies that place nation before self, and community before family. The research further emphasises the role that state-initiated lifelong learning structures play in creating the mobile worker and explores how generic skills facilitate occupational movements. It discusses the importance of contextualised skill acquisition and practice for subsequent recontextualisation in a new occupation and also aligns current career discourses to the perceptions that these individuals have of their occupations. Finally, the role that lifelong learning is perceived to play when considering the need for career adaptability competences, the space for recontextualisation of skills and the ideologies that influence individual occupational mobility are presented. By looking at those who have participated in it themselves, this research explores how individuals engage in occupational mobility and explains how control can be maintained over people's personal aspirations in the grand occupational mobility scheme.

This thesis argues that social relationships, developed between refugee and migrant students in the ESOLIFE college environment, can provide individual refugees with resources that can positively impact on refugees' integration into British society. The rationale of this study is based on the recognition of refugees' increased need for communication and friendship building and the lack of consideration, so far, of their relations with ESOL students from different ethnicities, as they develop through the acquisition of the English language. The theoretical framework of this study has been informed by social networks and social capital theory, within which social capital is perceived as a resource that derives from social relationships. The study has been developed and presented through the experiences and perspectives of refugees. Its methodology is based on case study, mixed methods design. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews, a survey and participant observation in ESOL classrooms of two London FE colleges. The findings highlight that refugee ESOL students do build friendships with other ESOL students from their group and to a lesser extent with students from other groups at their college. Factors that have been identified to influence the process of relationship building include gender, age, and marital status, as well as refugees' presence of their nuclear family in London and their association with the ethnic community. Although with the passing of time refugees' English language skills improve, time does not strongly affect the formation of new friendships, but has a positive impact on existing relationships. Finally, the benefits deriving from the ESOL network that may further refugees' socio-economic integration have been identified as knowledge, information and qualifications, which constitute the social capital developed in the ESOL network. However, the refugee experience, changes in the family structure and participation in the ethnic community may impact on the recognition and utilisation of these gains as potential resources that can further the socio-economic integration of refugees into British society.

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This photographically led research investigates the issues responsible for the Kharnack Nomads moving from their traditional range on the Changthang Plateau close to the Sino-Indian border, to a town 125 miles away. The practice-led element was based on two extended field-trips (2011 and 2012) during which a multi-facetted photographic record was developed. Drawing also on audio recordings, field observations, formal and informal conversations, this photographic record in turn was edited and represented using a range of strategies outlined in the written thesis. In the written thesis, a contextual overview considers critical debates concerning the depiction of the 'other' through photography with specific reference to the relationship of photography with anthropology. Further contextual research was undertaken both prior to and during the field trips to investigate the historical and contemporary issues that are contributing to the urbanisation of the Kharnack Nomads. Alongside this academic research, a logistical investigation was undertaken to facilitate practical aspects of the field research. An intersubjective methodology for the research was developed in which members of the Kharnack communities were encouraged to become participants in, rather than subjects of, the fieldwork investigation. Through this methodology outlined in the written thesis, the aim was to investigate the 'social drivers' of the urbanisation process and to develop a range of photographic strategies to visualise this experience of change. This engagement with the communities facilitated a photographic investigation into the nomad's experiences of urbanisation from the diverse positions of those who had urbanised and those who chose to continue a traditional nomadic life. The field work investigation revealed that previously published research work on Kharnack urbanisation had become outdated due to the rapid rate of urbanisation, leaving only 14 families in Changthang. Furthermore, it was found that local climatic changes experienced during recent winters were also drivers of urbanisation. This aspect has not been noted previously in the published literature. The research has been disseminated in two diverse forms. An archive of photographs was produced for the community centre in Kharnackling; it contains my images made in Kharnackling, Zara and Spagmar with spaces for community members to add captions and comments. The archive is intended as a living document reflecting the development of the community as people add their own photographs and text to it. I have also drawn upon the tradition of the public lecture to disseminate my research to academic and other institutions. The contribution to knowledge this research makes is detailed in the written thesis and concerns: The production of a photographic investigation that depicts urbanisation as experienced by the Kharnackpa Diaspora. The return of an open photographic archive to Kharnackling for community use. Documenting people's experiences of local climatic changes that have become a driver of urbanisation. Confirmation of the assertion made by Sarah Goodall in her 2007 research: 'that once they had moved to town to attend school it would be unlikely that young people would return to Changthang' (Goodall, 2007).