9/11 changed the face of maritime transport that is responsible for moving 80% of everything we consume. Ports are vital hubs in that maritime transport and any disruption there instantly affects global trade. To protect the global supply chain from crime and terrorism, both must be disrupted locally in the port by port police and security officers that are responsible for port security at operational level. Public and critical criminological attention to these key security actors, however, is virtually non-existent. This thesis therefore explores how their occupational realities and identities are (re)established in two major European ports, by providing an ethnographic account. To do so, the thesis builds on multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork in the ports of Rotterdam and Hamburg between 2011 and 2012, during which everyday policing and security work has been documented, followed by a thematic analysis. The key argument runs thus: the port is a local space for the global trade, which is underappreciated and underestimated by the public, and has its police and security professionals in place both aboard and on shore who protect and defend that vital trade site. The aggressive commercialist governmentality that goes on behind that vital global trade is unwillingly yielded to by these guardians but not without any bottom-up resistance. They condemn the volatile commercialist governmentality that is embodied in management, competitive and careerist colleagues and authoritarian multi-agency partners, as well as in port companies and shipping companies. The State and global market they protect, is simultaneously a threat to them. This contradiction influences their occupational identity, making it inherently conflicted and affecting their performance in the port securityscape to the extent it can create threatening situations that cause the very dangers they are supposed to prevent and eradicate.

In this thesis I develop a psychosocial approach to prejudice and discrimination among the Mexican-origin population in the U.S. state of Arizona. I argue that although the Mexican-origin population has been oppressed and discriminated against by the dominant white population for centuries, this minority group has its own history of intra-group prejudice and discrimination. Moreover, I argue that the attitudes and behaviours of Mexican immigrants and Mexican Americans, and the interactions between them, are influenced by three main elements: 1) structural factors (such as exploitation and inequality); 2) dominant ideologies (such as colonisation and white supremacy/superiority) and; 3) cultural commonalities between Mexican immigrants and Mexican Americans (in particular, the Spanish language). Within this context, I employed approximately thirty free association narrative interviews, notes based on ethnographic and participant observations, amongst other data sources (such as newspaper articles and informal interviews), to reveal much about the unconscious dynamics and processes under which Mexican immigrants and Mexican Americans interact. In the first half of the thesis I describe the social and political context of Arizona, which includes the history of the Mexican-origin population in that state as well as the implementation of the anti-immigration law, Senate Bill 1070 and its effects on the Mexican-origin population. In addition to this, I describe the methodology I used to conduct this research (participants, types of interviews and analysis of the collected data). In the second half of the thesis, I analyse prejudice and discrimination coming from ‘outside’ and ‘inside’ the Mexican-origin population with the use of psychoanalytic (Freud, Klein, Dalal), sociological (Douglas, Jimenez, Clarke) and post-colonial theories (Fanon, Memmi, Bhabha). In conclusion, I argue that the phenomenon of prejudice and discrimination among Mexican immigrants and Mexican Americans in Arizona cannot be reduced to psychological nor sociological explanations but that it needs to be addressed and approached by several disciplines.

The current language teaching and learning environment in British higher educational establishments appears to have two main characteristics. Firstly, an unprecedented number of students from various cultural backgrounds now study in the UK, including students with a cultural background that is very different from the Anglophone educational culture. Secondly, Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) remains the prevailing teaching method used in higher educational establishments, however, CLT is based on assumptions that relate closely to the Anglophone language teaching and learning environment. This study poses a question of whether CLT should continue to be valued and relied upon in this new international teaching and learning environment. Out of many non-Anglophone educational cultures in the world, Japanese educational culture was selected as the focus of this study to help explore this question. In the empirical study, two teaching methods, Japanisation and CLT, were used to investigate the impact of Japanese educational culture in a British university's Japanese language teaching classes where the British educational culture currently dominates. The study was conducted for one semester at the University of Southampton. The concept of Japanisation is drawn from the study of the Japanese car manufacturing industry and is transferred to a language teaching context. The study was investigated by tests (two assignments and Reading and Written Test) that provided quantitative data, questionnaires that provided quantitative and qualitative data and classroom observation that provided qualitative data. There was no statistically significant difference between the two teaching methods regarding attainment in the two assignments. However, Japanisation was associated with significantly improved results in the Reading and Writing Test, compared with CLT. These results seem to suggest that embedding elements of Japanisation and Japanese educational culture into the teaching of Japanese to non-Japanese speakers in British language classrooms might possibly enhance students' learning of reading and writing skills. This study also presents possibilities as to how the Japanese educational cultural method of teaching could be incorporated into the teaching of Japanese to non-Japanese speakers. In addition, this study indicates that language teachers facing a multicultural classroom might consider the international students' educational cultural expectations and needs in learning. Those who develop the teaching curriculum are encouraged at a strategic level to examine other educational cultures and teaching practices from non-Anglophone countries and assess how they may be combined with CLT to reflect the new international characteristics of teaching and learning environments.

This study used an oral history (OH) and reminiscence work (RW) approach to explore childhood memories of Merseyside, England, United Kingdom, in the period following the Second World War. Interviews were conducted with ten volunteers between 60 and 70 years of age from communities across Merseyside, collecting unique reminiscences. The researcher used a qualitative research approach to obtain and analyse the findings. Semi-structured interviews were conducted on a one-to-one basis and findings were analysed thematically according to emergent themes. Firstly, the interview transcripts were analysed to identify the social conditions which impacted on childhood experiences. Then, the researcher created a Memory Tree Model (MTM) and revisited the same participants to focus on the reflective aspect of the reminiscence process itself; thus, each participant was interviewed twice, allowing adequate scope for reflection. The researcher wrote a series of memoir chapters to present and discuss the research findings in a way that captured the essence of childhood and adequately represented the impact of reminiscence. This thesis explores the social conditions of childhood during the post war years in Merseyside and in doing so has prompted the researcher to develop a tool to support the reminiscence process. Overall, the participants found the experience to be a positive one, with therapeutic benefits, even when recalling negative memories. The majority of the participants (n=9) found the Memory Tree Model and reflective reminiscence work interview easier and more supportive than the open-microphone oral history interview. Each of the participants continued to reminisce in the months between the first and second phase of interviews and had started to engage in reminiscence with their families. The results were linked to the research and practice outcomes of a heuristic model of reminiscence to explain the impact that reminiscence had on those who took part. In theorising the use of both an oral history and reminiscence work approach, this thesis informs others working with reminiscences, in better understanding the impact on those who are engaging in this type of research. It also demonstrates an understanding of the relationship between social research and community engagement. The researcher was given the opportunity to disseminate the findings in a public forum via an exhibition at the Museum of Liverpool Life (MLL); this established that both OH and RW can be a positive experience for participants and enrich the wider community. Recommendations for future practice include increasing access to public reminiscence workshops, enabling people of all ages to benefit from its qualities. This would be an enriching practice in society, not only facilitating the process of reminiscing, but also bridging gaps between generations and cultures, building networks and bringing communities closer together. The research contributes to the body of knowledge by providing insight into the social conditions of childhood in post-war Merseyside through a set of unique and candid childhood memories. The researcher achieved this by opting to use a multi-method participatory approach for gathering the research findings; a pictorial tool was created and used to support the participants in this process. Furthermore, a collaborative approach fostered community engagement in the form of an interactive museum event which provided a platform for public engagement and additional memory sharing.

The body is the fleshy substance of citizenship. However, analyses of the body and of citizenship have remained largely disconnected, with limited intersection between the two. Traditionally, citizenship has been associated with the ‘public’ sphere and the body with the ‘private’ sphere resulting in the distancing of the body from citizenship in popular and scholarly discourses. This demarcation has resulted in the exclusion of particular groups of people from being able to achieve full citizenship based on corporeal difference. This thesis argues that the separation of the ‘public’ and ‘private’ spheres perpetuates the marginalisation of disabled people. Through developing the concept of embodied citizenship, this thesis offers a useful lens through which to view the experiences of disabled young people’s everyday lives and to bring into focus the comingling of the ‘private’ and public’ spheres. Using data gathered from interviews with 18 disabled young people, with physical impairments, in Scotland, it explores the ways in which disabled young people negotiate their everyday lives. Thematic analysis of the data identified that participants’ inclusion and participation in the ‘public’ sphere were explicitly bound to their experiences of the ‘private’ sphere. Participants’ greatest feelings of exclusion were felt around everyday experiences often associated with the ‘private’ sphere such as intimate relationships, sexuality and toileting. Exclusion from these purportedly ‘private’ areas of social life resulted in negative impacts for participants’ sense of self and psycho-emotional wellbeing, impacting on their engagement with the ‘public’ sphere, and thus their sense of full citizenship.

Cyberbullying has become increasingly problematic over the past decade with extreme instances of young people committing suicide due to their victimisation. While the prevalence of cyberbullying along with its effects have been researched and identified, the theoretical underpinnings for determining why young people engage in these behaviours has been under researched. A clear understanding behind the motivations into cyberbullying as exclusion is necessary in order to help decrease the behaviours as well as addressing deficiencies in defining what cyberbullying is. This study used a mixed methods design, first using quantitative data via a survey designed to target pupils (n=450) in three Catholic Secondary schools in Glasgow, Scotland. Second, qualitative data was collected through interviews with educational professionals (n=13; nine teachers, four non-teacher educators). The discussion of findings focuses on the perceptions of cyberbullying through the eyes of educators and how they understand and recognise the exclusionary process. To facilitate understanding cyberbullying as exclusion, the results of this study were explored through the lens of the Established and Outsiders framework. The research finds that while teachers are undereducated and uninformed on social media and cyberbullying, young people continue to increase their knowledge and access to these sites for both socialisation and exclusion, which is having a significant effect on their physical and mental well being. While most young people surveyed claim not to have been victims of cyberbullying, the evidence from both the survey and interviews agree that girls were more likely to engage in cyberbullying as both victim and bully. Teachers from the three participating schools experienced challenges in understanding and recognising cyberbullying and the usage of social media by young people. Their abilities to recognise these behaviours were often underpinned by their lack of training in areas of technology in conjunction with their negative attitudes toward social media. This study enriches the wider literature by examining cyberbullying as exclusion through the lens of Elias’s Established and Outsider framework, providing a novel approach to understanding the exclusionary process. The study also provides evidence asserting the need for providing in-service teachers education, training and support in understanding and recognising cyberbullying behaviours.

Wales is commonly divided into ‘more Welsh’ and ‘less Welsh’ places, although very little is known about the ‘least Welsh’ parts of Wales (dubbed ‘British Wales’ in Balsom’s ‘Three Wales Model’). Indeed, some contemporary analyses claim that devolution has made Wales ‘more Welsh’ to the extent that British Wales no longer exists. However, these claims of cultural homogeneity overlook the persistence of regional class divisions in Wales, with the ‘least Welsh’ parts of Wales remaining the most affluent. This thesis contributes to the understanding of this overlooked region by exploring Welsh identity in the British Wales town of Porthcawl. Using a longitudinal ethnographic approach, I investigate how locals negotiate a Welsh identity and whether class and place influence this process. Yet this is not just a study of local place: my analysis of everyday Welshness is located within a wider Gramscian theoretical framework which conceptualises devolution as a process of passive revolution. My study finds that locals feel very Welsh, undermining ideas that British Wales is ‘unWelsh’, and that place influences local identification with Welshness. Locals understand Welshness to be hierarchical, and measure their own Welshness against discursively constructed ideals of linguistic Welshness and working class Welshness (the latter being more prominent). Using Bourdieu, I show how locals work to reconcile the clash between their local (middle class) habitus and the national (working class) habitus. Understood as a working class habitus, Welshness has both positive and negative connotations. Locals subsequently move towards and away from Welshness in different contexts. The micro helps illuminate the macro, and everyday life in Porthcawl is punctuated by Welshness, rather than being structured by it. Whilst the molecular changes of devolution are observable in Porthcawl, locals occupy a British cultural world, and the national deixis remains British. These findings are indicative of a post-devolution interregnum.

This thesis attempts to account for post-Soviet Russian national identity and nationalism ‘from below’, employing the ‘thick descriptions’ of the nation reproduced by ordinary Russians across social and generational lines. It examines the current equilibrium in mainstream nationalist hegemonic discourse, shedding light on the vitality of the nation as an ‘imagined community’. In doing this, nationalism is viewed as a set of discursive formations that make claims about how or what the nation is or should be. A central aim in this research is to highlight what discursive constructions are shared or contested across a representative sample of the Russian population. In order to offer a meaningful assessment of nationalist discourse, this research employs ethnographic fieldwork driven by a grounded theory approach. With fifteen months of fieldwork in three Russian cities, this permitted room for exploration and siginificant redirection of the research focus. This helped reveal the interconnections between certain common, foundational elements of national identity and the structure of a dominant nationalist discourse. Previous research has often focused on the challenges of Russian nation-building given the complicated heritage bestowed by the Romanov and Soviet empires. This thesis identifies certain historical and cultural factors vital to the shaping of Russian national identity today. It also identifies a current hegemonic nationalist discourse and unpacks how it is relevant to the majority. This dominant discourse is built on certain myths and versions of normality, much of which takes the late Soviet as ‘normal’ and the wild nineties as ‘abnormal’. The thesis also explores how the above is contested. What is argued is that, at the current moment, the challenge of anti-hegemonic nationalist discourses is, for many people, neutralised by the appeal of a particular geopolitical vision. This research outlines how visions of the nation are weaved into commonly shared notions of identity and underlines how the current status quo is held together.

This thesis examines women’s everyday experiences of leisure in two neighbourhoods of urban Turkey, drawing on qualitative data derived from interviews and observations with women living in the city of Bursa. By examining the relationship between women’s leisure and their labour, everyday mobility, and socialisation at a neighbourhood level, the thesis contributes to contemporary debates on leisure within the wider feminist literature, as well as to the current growing interest in everyday life in Turkish social science literature. Examination of the feminist literature on women’s leisure suggests that contextualising leisure within the structure of women’s everyday as a whole is fundamental to an understanding of their leisure. The more contemporary feminist studies on women’s leisure focus on how to understand the dynamic and ever-changing nature of power struggles between different groups, with different capitals and identities, in a specific context. The newly emerging studies on women’s leisure within different country contexts, outside of the North American and European sphere, foreground the necessity to embed leisure experiences within socio-cultural aspects of the context, where additional dynamics, such as the role of religion or the meanings attributed to family and individual independence may significantly differ from Western societies. The current thesis builds on and expands these later works by projecting the empirical focus on Turkey and thereby shedding light on the relevance and limitations of the existing literature in explaining women’s leisure in other contexts around the world. It critically engages with the existing research on (women’s) leisure in Turkey, which is scant and embodies certain limitations. The findings presented in this study illustrate that the prevailing gender order, which confines women to the ideals of the heterosexual family, plays a central role in regulating leisure behaviour. Class, particularly, gives shape both to the existence of leisure spaces in one’s neighbourhood and constructs the “respectability” of social behaviour differently. The thesis makes an original contribution to the existing feminist leisure research in terms of rethinking traditional assumptions about leisure, broadening the definition of leisure and highlighting the significance of local cultural context. It also makes an original contribution to research on gendered everyday in Turkey by evidencing the usefulness of the concept of leisure as a lens to investigate the urban everyday, beyond the dichotomies of work time, free time, workspace, family space, production/consumption etc.

Today, the web is constantly growing, expanding global information space and more and more data is being processed and sourced online. The amount of electronically accessible and available online information is overwhelming. Increasingly, recommendation systems, which engage in some form of automated personalisation, are hugely prevalent on the web and have been extensively studied in the research literature. Several issues still remain unsolved including high sparsity situation and cold starts (how to recommend content to users who have had little or no prior interaction with the system). Recent work has demonstrated a potential solution in the form of cross-domain user modeling. This thesis will explore the design, implementation and testing of a cross-domain approach using social media data to model rich and effective user preferences and provide empirical evidence of the effectiveness of the approach based on direct real-world user feedback, deconstructing a cross-system news recommendation service where user models are generated via social media data. This will be accomplished by identifying the availability of a source domain from which to draw resources for recommendations and the availability of user profiles that capture a wide range of user interests from different domains. This thesis also demonstrates the viability of generating user models from social media data and evidences that the automated cross-domain approach can be superior to explicit filtering using self-declared preferences and can be further augmented when placing the user with the ability to maintain control over such models. The reasons for these results are qualitatively examined in order to understand why such effects occur, indicating that different models are capturing widely different areas within a user's preference space.