The research reported in this thesis examines the social construction of ethnic and gender identities by British-Muslim pupils, from a critical, feminist, discursive position. The research draws upon critical, feminist conceptualisations of identity which challenge positivistic Social Psychological theories of ethnic identity for constructing British-Muslim young people in racist and sexist ways. The aims of this study were to (i) identify ways in which young people conceptualise their identities with regard to 'race', gender and religion and (ii) consider young people's constructions of racism and sexism, particularly within the context of school. Analyses suggest that the young men constructed 'Muslim' identities, through which they positioned themselves as 'not western', and asserted hegemonic masculinities. These constructions are contrasted with previous literature, in which second generation Asians are conceptualised as choosing between 'British' and 'Asian' identities. The young men used discourses of 'culture' to position themselves both as 'not proper Muslims' (in comparison to Muslims in Bangladesh) and as 'authentic' Muslims (in comparison to Muslim women in Britain). These constructions are discussed in terms of the young men's talk about the duties of 'being a man'. Analyses of the female discussion group data suggest that the young women reproduced and resisted stereotypical discourses of themselves as oppressed, 'passive victims'. In particular, young women conceptualised arranged marriages in terms of 'choice', positioning forced marriages as 'not marriage'. The theme of choice is also reproduced in discussions around the wearing of dbuttah and educational careers, in which the young women emphasised their own agency. In comparison to the young men, the women constructed 'British Muslim' identities. The differences in the young people's identity constructions are discussed in terms of their resistance to racist discourses and the negotiation of masculinities and femininities. Similarities in the young people's use of 'race' discourses are also highlighted, through their construction 'Black' and 'Asian' identities.

In this study, I utilise a race-based methodology through the lens of critical race theory, to interrogate the lived experiences of highly skilled visible minorities who are recently "landed"1 immigrants to Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. I also employ critical discourse analysis to scrutinise the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (IRPA) 2001 in its many guises to expose and challenge the hidden ideology behind its language, and text. This study highlights the interface of skilled immigration, racialisation, foreign education and economic integration. The argument is made that systematic discrimination rooted in historical and structural perception of visible minorities2 as the “Other”, and the normativation of racialisation (past and present), is a contributory factor in employers’, institutions and licensing associations’ devaluation of foreign credential and international work experiences. During this qualitative race based research, I undertook several in-depth semi structured interviews of highly skilled visible minority immigrants. A combined narrative/life history inquiry approach shaped the resultant data gathering and enables the voices of the participants to be heard. The life history approach allowed the study participants to discuss not only themselves, and their lives, but also the social, economic and political spaces that they inhabit, thus communicate how structure and agency intersect to produce the circumstances of their lives. This study uses life history narratives to map their migratory and immigration process before, during and after their arrival in Canada. The Federal Skilled Worker Program (FSWP) of Canada is based on the embodied human capital of migrants. Canada actively recruits immigrants with the rhetoric that Canada needs their skills. Over half of Canada’s annual immigrants enter as Highly Skilled through the Economic Classes Part Six Regulation of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act 2001. Many immigrants, particularly visible minorities, find their skills, education and prior professional experiences undervalued. Upon arrival, these immigrants encounter a variety of credential assessments and qualifying examinations; these are varied depending on the province they have chosen to call their new home. Frequently, these skilled immigrants find that access to professions and trades are barred through unregulated licensing and registration requirement, institutional biases, perceived fluency of language as well as the subjective and oft requested but elusive, ‘Canadian experience’. The work documents and examines the institutional, political, ideological, social and economic obstacles encountered by the research participants through the implementation of the Federal Skilled Workers program, and how they have had to adapt to the circumstance they find themselves in. The study agrees with Gillborn, (2005), that " the most dangerous form of 'white supremacy' is not the obvious and extreme fascistic posturing of small neo-Nazi groups, but rather the implicit routine privileging of white interests that goes unremarked in the political mainstream" (p.485). This research also makes uses of critical discourse analysis to dissect policy rhetoric and jargon. Its aim is to discover the truth behind Canada’s expansive, supposedly colour-blind, meritocratic skilled immigration policy, bolstered by participants’ own words as spoken. The study offers a number of suggestions to overcome/mitigate these barriers in general and for visible minorities in particular.

Social capital is a rich topic in the development literature. Despite this, there is an incomplete understanding of how social capital is formed when placed within the enabling or constraining structure of Global Value Chains. While governance of Global Value Chains is well understood as a powerful force that shapes the participation of farmers, the literature to date has not effectively explored the extent to which governance may shape participation among farmers. The aim of this thesis is to explore how, if at all, governance shapes the formation of two types of farmers' social capital: structural and cognitive. Within the context of Peru's Alternative Development Program, where there is a purposeful effort to develop the social capital of farmers, qualitative research was conducted on two case study Global Value Chains: cacao and palm oil. Interviews were conducted with stakeholders across the Global Value Chain, from farmers and collective organisations to exporters and importers. The case studies revealed that governance can be an enabler of structural social capital formation, but its role is shaped by the institutional context and existing attitudes towards social structure. Governance can be an enabler or barrier to cognitive social capital formation, depending on the nature of the governing relationship between buyer and supplier. To date, the literature on social capital formation has typically focused on factors internal to a collective group. The findings in the thesis shed light on the role of exogenous structures on the formation of social capital.

This thesis engages with debates around cultural work and culture-led regeneration by exploring the working conditions encountered and experienced by visual artists who have located in Margate and Folkestone, two towns in Kent (South East England) which have pursued culture-led regeneration. It draws on, and contributes, to critical debates on cultural labour and the conditions of cultural work as well as long-standing debates around culture and creativity as drivers of urban regeneration. It establishes the ways in which artists’ labour is integral to culture-led urban policies, and further critically explores the quality of such work, looking at the conditions under which it proceeds, and the values and meanings individual workers ascribe to it. The thesis demonstrates that culture-led urban strategies represent a locus of economic exploitation for the artists implicated in them. This accords with other studies that provide evidence of artistic, and other forms of cultural, labour as wholly beset by economic and social structures that instrumentalise cultural value, and undermine any intrinsic value or meaning to cultural labour. However, this thesis also provides a ‘defence’ of artists’ work. While noting the continuing inequalities, marginalisation and exclusionary effects of neoliberal working conditions and practices, this thesis demonstrates that creative cultural work is not fully colonised by the market, and that within the cultural industries there remains the possibility of ‘good work’. This thesis concludes that although economic exploitation and insecurity are common, workers are able to draw upon pre-existing cultural discourses that sometimes allow them to produce value and meaning in their work in ways that evade capitalist logics.

Some of the psychological problems associated with epilepsy have their origins in the ability of people with epilepsy (PWE) to engage in meaningful and appropriate social interactions. PWE often report difficulties in social settings, yet there is a paucity of research investigating the socio-cognitive skills of this group. This thesis aimed to investigate these skills and relate them to the patient's perceived impact of epilepsy on their social competence. An additional objective was to see whether studying social cognition in focal epilepsy might provide some insight into the organic basis of social cognitive abilities in the normal population. The thesis consists of four separate studies which aimed to investigate social cognition and social functioning in patients with focal epilepsy. With this in mind, a test battery assessing a range of skills linked to social cognition was administered to a cross section of experimental groups (N=95). These included patients with seizure foci in the right frontal lobe (RF), left frontal lobe (LF), right temporal lobe (RT), left temporal lobe (LT) and a group with idiopathic generalised epilepsy (IGE). A normal control group (NC) and a frontal head injured (FHI) group with no epilepsy were also recruited for the study. In Studies 1 and 2 theory of mind (ToM) deficits were apparent in people with RF and LT epilepsy. These groups demonstrated impairment in the appreciation of false belief and deception at first and second order levels of intentionality. They also exhibited deficits in the appreciation of pragmatic language when attempting to infer the meaning underlying hints given by story characters. These impairments were in part attributable to deficits in narrative memory in the LT group. In Study 3 embedding problems within a social context significantly facilitated conditional reasoning in the NC, LT and RF groups but not in the other experimental groups. This finding was unexpected and suggests a double dissociation between ToM and social conditional reasoning. Study 4 investigated the extent to which socio-cognitive impairment was associated with the perceived impact of epilepsy on everyday social functioning. No statistically significant relationship between these variables was found, although a significant negative correlation between education level and impact of epilepsy was observed. Taken together the findings suggest that impairment in ToM may be a particular feature of right frontal lobe pathology and that social conditional reasoning and ToM may be functionally dissociated. PWE do not appear to have insight into their social functioning difficulties, which may well reflect underlying pathology. In light of this, future research should obtain objective measures of social competence from `significant others'. This is the only series of studies to date to assess social cognition in people with frontal lobe epilepsy (FLE) and temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) within the same design. It is also the first time that social conditional reasoning in epilepsy has been systematically assessed and represents one of the largest lesion studies within the field of social cognition. It is hoped that some of the test material used in the thesis, may prove to be a useful and inexpensive clinical resource to help identify PWE who are at risk of reduced social competence, and in localising the site of seizure foci in patients during clinical audit, particularly where anterior foci are suspected.

Interactive TV, a new media service based on an amalgamation of traditional TV watching and Web-based features, has turned consuming TV programmes and value-added services into an individual and interactive experience. This research aims to stimulate thinking about the changing role of interactive TV as it moves from a passive medium to a more active medium, enabling learning opportunities for young adults previously confined to the personal computer (PC) domain. This new paradigm of interactivity for education and learning offers personalised and innovative ways to learn that differ from learning in traditional academic courses. To ensure that TV-based learning is adequately supported, the research provides teaching and learning materials through electronic media. A Taiwanese educational TV multimedia home platform (MHP)programme entitled 'Follow Me after School', which is composed of science topics, reference materials, study quizzes and interactive functions, is used to facilitate teaching through screen-based media and stimulate youths' after-school learning activities. Joshua Meyrowitz's 'situational' approach is adopted to form the methodological framework of this work. The framework incorporates a set of quantitative questionnaires and the formation of youth groups to watch interactive TV's edutainment programmes. The methodology also involves qualitative data-collection methods, such as participant media activities recorded on a guided, open-end, diary-style form and multitasking analyses, to provide in-depth understanding of learners' experiences in the new media environment. Drawing on new technologies' involvement in children's educational and social experiences, this research focuses on pre-adolescents in Taiwan and presents a scenario demonstrating that although well-designed interactive TV has highly elevated technological capabilities, it cannot change the fact that children's TV watching at home is mostly a social and shared activity. Watching TV is a major part of routine activity in a family environment, neither complemented by nor substituted for PC-related behaviours in certain time, space and social-cultural conditions.

The empirical evidence associating people with mental distress and social injustice is unequivocal. This thesis offers a least reductive, structured qualitative exploration of how different social justice outcomes for people in this social group happen. To achieve this the study explores whether and how the capabilities approach can be applied to provide a normative means of explaining the social justice experiences of people with mental distress. It does this through conducting and analysing individual interviews with twenty-two people living in Glasgow who have recent in-patient experience of psychiatric hospital, sixteen participants being interviewed twice. The interviews are framed by combining concepts from the capabilities approach with relevant sociological literature, seeking to: understand the relationship between personal, social and structural factors affecting lived experiences; consider the character of social justice experienced and conceptualise this using concepts from the capabilities approach; take a critical realist approach to understanding how social justice experiences may be produced and reproduced; pursue these aims with regard to both values-based research principles from the survivor-influenced literature and participation principles from the capabilities approach. By critically interpreting empirical data using capabilities concepts and sociological concepts, the analysis is able to combine what had been two separate fields of study (Holmwood, 2013) and provide an original interpretation of how social injustice tends to be reproduced. The substantive findings explain how different social justice outcomes for people with mental distress are shaped by living with mental distress, experiencing the psychiatric system, and living in society. Although participants tend to have characteristics of ‘surviving’, or living with ongoing social injustice, a minority have characteristics of thriving. Some participants within both characteristic groups also experience ‘being outside’ dominant social norms. Methodologically the study demonstrates that concepts central to capabilities such as Conversion Factors and the domains approach can be operationalised to explain social justice outcomes for this social group, adding to and critiquing these concepts in the process. Theoretically, the thesis proposes a nascent critical capabilities model of mental distress, reinforcing the compatibility between the capabilities approach and critical realism, so providing a further contribution to the sociology of mental distress.

This thesis investigates socio-economic integration of men and women immigrants (‘Old’ and ‘New’) relative to United Kingdom (UK) born White in the UK labour market. In order to assess my research hypotheses I use both cross-sectional and panel data based on the world’s largest panel survey: UK Household Longitudinal Study (UKHLS), (data collected between 2009 and 2014). The first two essays are cross-sectional studies examining access (or lack of access) to the professional class and pay asymmetry of these groups, while, the third paper, uses the full potential attributes of a ‘strict balanced’ panel to investigate occupational status transitions and earning trajectories using a more refined parsimonious random effects model approach. The main findings show that the labour market performance of immigrants differs from that of UK born White in several important ways. The education and experience of immigrants are subject to different ‘rewards’ to those of natives, and immigrants will usually end up in jobs that are a poor match for their education. These findings are in line with the results of the literature in this field. The main contributions of this thesis are twofold: substantively, the thesis addresses and explores the heterogeneity in the groups studied in terms of observable and unobservable characteristics. Also, this study is among the pioneering research being conducted with the re-scaling of complex survey weights associated with the UKHLS.

The story of indigenous peoples’ knowledge systems, also known as indigenous knowledge (hereafter IK), is a complex one tangled with different and sometimes conflicting interests, values, and interpretations from a variety of disciplines, or specialized fields. A number of international treaty and trade agreements that want to ‘harness’ IK also turned it into an object of global governance, as this PhD study argues. This study also argues that the well-being of IK has gradually emerged as a global agenda for sustainable development and intergenerational justice, which constitute the defining characteristics of contemporary discourse of heritage. Consequently, IK issues and debates have become more versatile and multifaceted with a widening scope and mounting stakes. This is a sociological and legal study of knowledge that analyses the epistemological struggle resulting from different understandings of the nature and purpose of IK, which has causal relationship with the inadequacies of the governing regimes documented in this study. This study argues that such struggle and inadequacy form the core problem for IK governance. Furthermore, this study takes a novel approach guided by indigenous peoples’ epistemology, which represents ties between ecology, landscape, and people in a web of connections, to argue that IK is a cross-cutting subject and a form of emplaced knowledge. Hence it is not simply a property issue or debate as most literature tends to focus on. This study further argues that what constitutes the cornerstone of IK claims by indigenous peoples is essentially biocultural diversity that nurtured and sustained IK as well as IK-holder communities as distinct peoples. Through an interdisciplinary approach of synergy and synthesis, this study developed a number of original ideas and frameworks to analyse this complex story of IK. By doing so, this study shows how IK is a challenging subject that is inevitably political; it is also tangled with inherently heterogenetic and incoherent regimes of governance, from intellectual property and trade to environmental governance and development to natural and cultural heritage and human rights. This study takes these regimes as sites of inquiry in the tradition of critical theory to further unpack and problematize the development imperative and the private-property-based system exercised by these regimes. Finally, this study concludes that IK governance can make or break vulnerable groups like indigenous peoples to a point of prosperity or deeper poverty and extinction. Therefore, it requires particular care with an integrated approach. This study aims to fill an important gap in the literature with recommendations for future policy and research.

Since the late 1980s Alevi identity has become increasingly visible in a transnational context. Alevis in Turkey and across various European countries have contributed to this process through active involvement in local, national and cross-border activities. From the 1980s on, mainly Kurdish and Alevi people from Central and Eastern parts of Turkey have migrated to Britain, established cultural centres and places of worship (cemevi) and gained cultural rights and public visibility. Through ethnographic research conducted mainly in London and partly in Istanbul, I explore Alevi identity building in Britain within a transnational context in which they strive to gain recognition both in Britain and in Turkey through equal citizenship (eşit vatandaşlık). My research contributes to Alevis’ visibility in academia and sheds light on the concepts of transnationalism and identity through empirical evidence. Alevi identity is a central motivation for mobilising Alevis and they construct their identity in a dynamic process that involves links with Turkey, symbolic attachment to homeland based identities and their new experiences in the receiving country, engaging in various cross-border practices on the supranational and transnational levels. The two levels interact; a universal human rights discourse and the institutions that promote it strengthen Alevi claims on the transnational level in both their interactions with the Turkish government and translocal activities. They not only use this human rights discourse instrumentally in their claims making but also argue that it is a component of their belief system. In both private and public spheres, Alevis continue to express their identity in opposition to, or difference from, the Sunni majority in Turkey through emphasising morality over religious practices, liberal gender attitudes and claiming their inherent compatibility with the host society’s norms. By integrating these principles into their communal activities, Alevis in Britain also construct their identity as one that is progressive, inclusive and in opposition to assimilation.