This PhD is an interdisciplinary research project in the field of public health, youth studies, sociology and cultural studies about the sexual lives of 16 young Nepalese aged 16-24 living in London. The research uses ethnography and biography to explore social and cultural factors affecting sexual health and lifestyles of Nepalese young people in the changing world. Sexual health still remains a taboo, which brings struggle for Nepalese young people to negotiate their sexual lives within Nepalese families and community. The current study explores young people’s reflections of their sexual lifestyles and experiences, which is embedded in the sociocultural norms and patterns of the society, and their interactions with families, community and broader social structures. The findings suggest that detailed examinations of the connectedness between agency and social context provide more clear understanding of the everyday sexual lives of young people. The changing lifestyles of Nepalese young people in the western world provide accessibility to the new ways of living in experiencing sexual lives through transforming leisure activities and creating multiple opportunities for sexual intimacies and relationships. The popularity of nightclubbing and changing attitudes towards sexual lifestyles create concerns for sexual health risks and vulnerability as well as conflict within family because of sociocultural dominance towards relationships and marriage. The data suggest that young people negotiate with several challenges, such as caste issues and parental consent, while transforming love relationships into love arranged marriage. It was found that lack of communication on sexual matters within family fuel the issues of trust and promote secret relationships and females are widely discriminated at different levels within Nepalese society. These structural factors along with lack of appropriate sexual health knowledge and education limit expressions of positive sexual lifestyles and relationships among Nepalese young people. Intersectionality in this study is used to investigate key structural influences of sexual health and lifestyles at multiple levels. This research uses grounded theory to develop a tentative social ecological model, adapted from an ecological model, to understand the positive sexual health experiences of Nepalese young people.

This study is about the consequences of feminised migration on migrant women workers, on their families and on the Philippine society as a whole. The continued dependence on migration and increasingly, women‘s migration, by the Philippine government to address unemployment on one hand, and by the Filipino families on the other hand, to secure employment and a better life, has led to social change: change in migrant women‘s sense of identity and personhood; restructuring of households and redefinition of families and gender relations and the rise of a culture of migration. To understand these social changes, the study focuses on the return phase of migration situated within the overall migration process and adopts a gendered and feminist approach. Existing theories of return migration cannot adequately capture the meanings of the return of migrant women workers. Studying return through a gendered approach allows us to reflect on the extent migration goals have been achieved or not, the conditions under which return takes place for a migrant woman worker and various factors affecting life after migration for the migrant women and their families. Return of the women migrant workers cannot be neatly categorised as voluntary or involuntary. It is gendered. It is involuntary, voluntary, and mainly ambivalent. Involuntary return was influenced by structural limitations arising from the temporary and contractual type of migration in jobs categorised as unskilled. Voluntary return was mainly determined by the achievement of migration goals, the psychological need to return after prolonged absence and by the need to respond to concerns of families left behind. Ambivalent return was caused by the desire to maintain the status, economic power, freedom and autonomy stemming from the migrants' breadwinning role; the need to sustain the families‘ standard of living; as well as the apprehensions of a materially insecure life back home. The socio-psychological consequences on families and children of migrant women are deep and wide-ranging. Similarly, women migrants, though empowered at a certain level, had to face psychological and emotional consequences upon return influenced by persistent gender roles and gender regimes. By analysing the impact of gendered migration and return on the societal level, the study has broadened and deepened the conceptualisation of the phenomenon of culture of migration by bringing other elements and factors such as the role of the state, human resources, sustainable livelihood, national identity and governance.

Volume I is divided into two papers. The first is a literature review that explored the emotional experience of professionals who work with victims of domestic violence. Twelve papers are evaluated and the evidence of negative and positive effects is presented. The second is a qualitative study with young people, their mothers and their grandmothers which explored resilience after domestic violence. Data was analysed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis. Four themes regarding the memories of domestic violence, newfound stability, acceptance and strength and continued and re-scripted attachments were found. Volume II consists of five reports. The first describes the assessment of a 13-year-old boy with low self-esteem. His needs and strengths are formulated from two approaches: cognitive-behavioural and systemic. The next discusses a behavioural intervention and single case experimental design for a 15-year-old male presenting with challenging behaviours. The third paper outlines a Person Centred Care training program for staff working with older adults. The fourth is a case study of two siblings in local authority care. To consider care-plans, a formulation is informed by the complex trauma literature. The final report was an oral presentation of an admission assessment of a young woman in a high secure hospital.

African Caribbean women in the United Kingdom are more likely to be biomedically defined as overweight or obese than the general population and have an increased risk of developing obesity related chronic illnesses. For healthcare professionals to engage in meaningful discussion about weight management and; for the development of targeted intervention, it is important to have an understanding of alternative discourses of health and wellbeing that may be held by women of this ethnic group. This qualitative research explores the discursive construction of health and wellbeing with regard to body shape and size for African Caribbean women. To address issues of under representation in applied health research, a novel research method was developed. Thematic analysis was used to identify the contours of the discourse and themes from the data were explored within the wider social contexts from which they emerge. The importance of post memory; trust of healthcare systems and; meanings of wellness are central concepts for understanding health beliefs and behaviours of African Caribbean women. Findings demonstrate the importance for research design take into account the dynamics of seldom heard communities to encourage participation and elicit rich data that is useful for healthcare practice.

This research study explores the importance of psychological factors in the delivery of care to individuals who are sex offenders and may have a learning disability. This is achieved through two different ways. A literature has been undertaken to question what the psychological impact is to those working with sex offenders. Findings showed that several potential harmful effects exist, which can be increased or reduced through a selection of moderating and protective factors. The authenticity of these outcomes is restricted by various methodological limitations which are described. The empirical study explores staff attitudes to working with sex offenders who have a learning disability. This cross-sectional study showed the importance of a staffs qualification, emotional response and level of burnout in determining their attitudes. Clinical implications, methodological limitations and future studies are provided. Finally a brief public domain paper provides a summary of these papers and offers recommendations for clinical practice.

This research adopted a Realistic Evaluation approach (Pawson and Tilley, 1997) to elicit and refine the theoretical understanding of how the Troubled Families programme (TFP) may have facilitated positive outcomes for a proportion of service-users within one focus local authority. A Realist Synthesis approach (Pawson, 2006) was undertaken to identify the context-mechanism-outcome configurations (programme theories) underpinning the TFP. These identified programme theories were presented to key stakeholders (parents and family support workers) to be validated, refined or falsified. The theoretical basis of the TFP was refined to explicate how: ‘a dedicated family support worker’, ‘delivering practical support’, ‘adopting a persistent and assertive approach with families’, ‘understanding families as a whole’ and ‘establishing common purposes and actions’, as theories, facilitate positive outcomes for families, as per the TFP success criteria. The findings of the present research refined understanding of ‘what works, for whom and under what circumstances?’ in relation to the TFP. To this end, findings are discussed with respect to the implications for family support practices. In addition, the implications for the practice of educational psychologists with respect to the methodology adopted as well as the area of intensive family support are also discussed.

No description available.

In advanced capitalist economies, a considerable proportion of society's labour-power is expended in the performance of unpaid labour in the household. The domestic labour per formed in the homes of the working class, mainly but not exclusively by women, is the subject of this thesis. Part One deals with theoretical questions concerning the existence and nature of domestic labour as a form of production. In it I attempt to develop a Marxist, that is, a historical materialist, analysis of domestic labour that suffers neither from functionalism nor idealism. To a great extent, new theoretical analyses grow out of the critique of already existing ones. The chapters in Part One reflect this: I present a political economy of domestic labour and an analysis of it's historical origin in the context of a critique of both Materialist Feminist theory and the Domestic Labour Debate. Part Two contains three studies in the historical development of domestic labour in 19th and 20th century Britain. Three themes are present throughout: the changing nature of the domestic labour process and the means of production employed; the relationship between working class struggle and the development of household labour; the relationship between the development of domestic labour and the social position of women. My analysis is based on the study of Marxist political economy and secondary source research into the history of wor king class household labour. It's originality lies principally in it's method of approach. To date, studies of domestic labour have generally suffered from theoretical or empirical exclusivity. The development of a detailed and rounded historical materialist analysis through the interaction of historical and theoretical research sets this thesis apart from contributions to the Domestic Labour Debate and other studies in the household labour studies tradition. This approach has led to new conclusions in relation to the political economy, the historical origin, and the historical development, of domestic labour.

Hindu women's right to independent ownership of property has been established in India since 1956. Given that legal rights have not brought about a significant increase in women's ownership of land, this thesis explores the factors that affect women's effective claim to land ownership. Taking the particular case of Hindu peasant women in small farming households in Western Orissa, it analyses their ability to claim land ownership as the outcome of bargaining. The bargaining approach, as developed by economists, and by Amartya Sen and Bina Agarwal in particular, is adopted to analyse women's access to land as an effect of women's perceptions of self-interest and perceptions of women's contribution. The thesis evaluates the legal framework as it incorporates and reflects these perceptions. It argues that law constructs women's claim to land as a right addressed to 'Hindu' women, located within the family (through succession) and informed by religious ideology. It further argues that recognising women's interests as a basis of their claim to land ownership, as 'peasant' women, located within the household and affected by their work and role within agricultural production, would widen the scope of legal analysis. This would be a starting point towards a deeper understanding of the ways in which law impacts upon women's access to land.

The central aim of this thesis is to examine the extent to which the growing pressures for equal opportunity between the sexes has forced Japanese companies to adapt and modify their employment and personnel management practices in recent years. It analyses the major social and economic factors prompting Japanese companies to adopt more open employment policies towards women since the mid-1970s and the change programmes introduced by management. The thesis especially looks at how companies have reacted to the 1985 Equal Employment Opportunity Law and in the light of this considers how far the present legislation will bring about fundamental changes in the Japanese employment system towards more egalitarian treatment of women workers. A detailed case study was conducted at Seibu Department Stores Ltd., both before and after the introduction of the EEO Law, as a critical test of the possibility of introducing equal opportunities for women in a large Japanese company. Seibu was chosen because it is a big employer of women and is a company operating in an industry which has strong economic and- commercial incentives to offer women better career opportunities. All the more important, Seibu is regarded as a 'leading edge' company in personnel management reforms. The study reveals that despite many economic and social reasons that were in favour of change towards greater sexual equality in Seibu, and especially after the introduction of the EEO Law, change towards more egalitarian treatment of women has been very limited. This study illustrates the depth of the resistance to change in the core employment practices in large Japanese companies. The present EEO Law has little potential for undermining the structural mechanisms which perpetúate sexual job segregation in the employment system. The final part of the thesis speculates on the future prospects of introducing equal opportunities for women in Japanese companies. In the light of the present socio-legal constraints, the author puts forward a number of practical policy suggestions for engendering more pervasive long-term changes towards equal employment for Japanese women.