As immigration has become a central and divisive topic in the political discourse of the UK and beyond, this thesis offers a timely portrayal of the lived experiences of those who are involved in the UK asylum process. This thesis draws on the growing literature of medical anthropology and of other disciplines on the mental health and experience of distress in asylum and refugee populations. Unlike much previous literature that focuses on one group of actors, this research offers a unique contribution to knowledge by drawing methodologically on Actor Network Theory. It is therefore concerned with the spread and circulation of mental distress among the various actors involved in the asylum process. Based on twelve months of ethnographic fieldwork conducted in the Scottish city of Glasgow, this thesis carefully unpacks the affective experiences of asylum legislation and policy using structural violence as an analytical lens. It is organised around five themes utilised to explore distress: bureaucracy, paperwork, disclosure, emotional labour, and waiting. These interrelated themes illustrate how in certain contexts, distress spreads among actors yet in others it is impeded; how distress can be hidden in or drawn out of the materiality of paperwork that exists within the process; how the various conflicting idioms of distress that exist within the cultures that make up the asylum system come together in various spaces throughout the process; and how the political economy of asylum services demands certain coping strategies among its workers. Considering distress highlights the structural violence within the asylum process that is embodied through uncertainty, dependency, discourses of suspicion and deservingness, dehumanisation, stigma and shame. This thesis contends that there is a cumulative effect from seemingly minor everyday assaults on asylum applicants’ dignity, the pseudospeciation that operates in dealing with applicants, and the inequality regarding different actors’ ability to protect themselves from distress. The research illuminates the implicit violence written into government legislation, policies and funding decisions regarding asylum applicants. It concludes that attention needs to be given to the way that the asylum process is built on, creates and recreates structural violence of which asylum applicants are the primary victims.

Young people's engagement with social network sites have predominantly been depicted in binary ways, overplaying either the risks posed by digital technologies or their positive benefits. Adopting a critical perspective, this thesis understands young people’s uses and perceptions of social network sites as continuously negotiated and deeply entrenched in their everyday lives; and analyses them within the social struggles and power structures in which they are embedded. Based on qualitative interview material with 32 young adults aged 20-25 and on an innovative research design incorporating digital prompts, this study explores the meanings that participants ascribed to social network sites and their everyday uses of the platforms. Drawing on Bourdieu’s theory of practice and Foucault’s work on power and governmentality, the thesis argues that young people actively negotiate social network sites. Yet their uses and understandings of the platforms are constituted through a 'practical knowledge' of the world which reflects existing social divisions and, are embedded within broader neoliberal narratives of entrepreneurship, choice and responsibility, producing corresponding forms of governmentality. Throughout the interviews, participants described their engagement with social network sites, for example their attitudes towards privacy or the ways in which they managed and maintained relationships through the platforms, in terms of individual choice, personal preference and growing up. The analysis of the data suggests, that their engagement were, nonetheless, substantially informed by the economic interests and the monopolies enforced by private corporations; by the technological affordances and playful designs of the platforms; by social processes of differentiation rendering specific uses legitimate; and by neoliberal discourses encouraging individual responsibility and understandings of the self as enterprise. All of the above combined to actively shape and produce participants' understandings of social network sites as 'useful' and 'necessary' tools for managing the everyday and their relationships, for maximising professional opportunities, and for engaging in practices of profile-checking and monitoring. In short, the thesis argues that young people's uses and understandings of social network sites are complex and cannot be reduced to risks or positive leverage, nor can it be understood without an analysis of the asymmetrical relations of powers between private corporations which own the platforms and users, and a critical engagement with the pervasive neoliberal discourses that shape them.

Demographic change represents the defining trend in population development of the 21st century on a global, national, and regional level. Although some countries are yet to see its impacts, others, such as Germany, have already begun experiencing the effects of demographic change. Sub-replacement level fertility since the 1970s coupled with increases in life expectancy have slowed German population growth and cause pronounced shifts in the age composition. These changes are even more noticeable on a sub-national level, where, in the context of national-level demographic change, shrinking and ageing regions are no longer transitory and exceptional but a wide-spread and permanent phenomenon. Despite the relative predictability of these trends, there is little empirical research on the consequences of demographic change on regional socio-economic conditions. This thesis analyses demographic change using the case of Germany on a regional level and considers how changes in population size and age composition affect economic outcomes and their geographical patterns. It focuses on three aspects that are central to processes of regional economic development. First, it investigates the role of demographic change in the provision of public services, using the example of primary school closures in response to falling student numbers. Second, it studies the effect of population ageing on availability and composition of human capital in regional labour markets. Third, it examines the relationship between regional age structures and patterns of internal migration, testing for evidence whether the two trends may be mutually reinforcing. Using administrative and micro-data for 332 German district regions between 1996 and 2010, this thesis documents the current relevance of demographic change for socioeconomic conditions and emphasises its future role in shaping regional economic development in ageing and shrinking countries.

The recent phenomenon of internet-based crowdfunding has enabled the creators of new products and media to share and finance their work via networks of fans and similarly-minded people instead of having to rely on established corporate intermediaries and traditional business models. This thesis examines how the creators of free content, specifically webcomics, are able to monetise their work and find financial success through crowdfunding and what factors, social and psychological, support this process. Consistent with crowdfunding being both a large-scale social process yet based on the interactions of individuals (albeit en mass), this topic was explored at both micro- and macro-level combining methods from individual interviews through to mass scraping of data and large-scale questionnaires. The first empirical chapter (comprising of two survey and interview-based studies) investigated how members of the webcomics community made use of the Internet and social media to read and post content, interact with other readers and artists, and how they monetise these efforts. Creators and readers were found to use a large range of websites for webcomic-related activities; social media and the ability for creators and readers to get to know each other online is hugely important, often as important as the content of the work itself. Creators reported having diversified ‘portfolio careers’, and avoided relying on a single source of income as any one might fail at any time. The use of social media was found to be vital to all stages of the monetisation process; primarily because creators must build a dedicated community that is willing to spend money on them. Crowdfunding was found to be one of the biggest routes to monetisation, particularly as it lessens the risk of creating merchandise, combines selling items with a strong focus on interaction, and allows the main creative output to remain free. The second empirical chapter reports a large-scale scraping-based study of webcomics crowdfunding campaigns across the two major platforms most commonly used by creators, namely Kickstarter and Patreon. The two platforms were shown to exhibit distinctive characteristics. Kickstarter follows the traditional rewards-based model whilst Patreon is subscription-based, a model which is rising in place of paywalls which have traditionally failed. Both Patreon and Kickstarter provide varied benefits but also some dissatisfactions were found. Kickstarter does not equal a steady income and Patreon rarely provides full-time income levels. Even when Kickstarter projects are hugely successful, they rarely do more than pay for the fulfilment of a particular project specifically, which does not tend to cover living expenses or provide a wage. While Patreon does allow creators to receive a recurring income, this rarely exceeded $1,000 a month. The final empirical chapter reports the findings of a study of psychological attitudes amongst crowdfunding backers and considers this in the light of psychological theories of giving and reciprocity. The study investigated why backers are motivated to give to webcomics campaigns, and their underlying attitudes towards giving, including factors that may convince them to give more. The main reason for backers to choose to support a crowdfunding campaign was found to be because they are existing fans of the specific webcomic or more generally, the campaign’s creator. The other main motivation given was the intention to more generally support the surrounding community. These two motives were strongly manifest amongst backers on both platforms, but they lead to different behaviours as Kickstarter backers tend to consider rewards more important than community. Kickstarter is more self-regarding and directly reciprocal, Patreon more other-regarding and generally reciprocal. Patreon backers are not more or less altruistic but they are more motivated to give by all reasons other than rewards, which they do not consider important. Both selfish and other-regarding reasons are involved on both platforms, and neither seem to crowd-out the other. In conclusion, people tend to pay for free content because i) they are fans and they want to own an item related to that fandom, or ii) they are fans and they want to be supportive and allow that fandom to continue. Overall, subscription-based crowdfunding was implicated as being the most suitable for creators who work on the internet, giving away free or intangible content, such as podcasts, webcomics, or livestreaming, whilst creators who work offline with tangible products that may appeal to a wider audience may find more success with rewards-based funding.

Chapter 1 introduces the work, providing an overview of the common themes underlying the research and outlining the focus and approach particular to each project. Chapter 2 proposes a game-theoretic model that shows how moral preferences can emerge endogenously to promote material outcomes and traces their relationships with the fundamentals of the environment. The analysis indicates that the instilling of moral values can act as a commitment mechanism that counteracts the detrimental effects of behavioural biases. The greater the effect of such biases on the agents’ decisions (and, thus, payoffs), the more expanded the scope for morality. The study in chapter 3 tests the performance of a leading account of social preferences, namely the model of inequality aversion proposed by Fehr and Schmidt (1999), in tracking behaviour. It does so through an appropriately designed experiment. The aim is to evaluate if the account can consistently anticipate people’s behaviour. The results suggest that the model performs well only with respect to people that exhibit either very high or very low aversion to advantageous payoff inequality. The study in chapter 4 repeats the exercise reported in chapter 3, this time with respect to an account of social preferences that builds on the idea of social norm compliance, in particular, the one proposed by Krupka and Weber (2013). The aim is again to evaluate if the model performs well in consistently tracking people’s behaviour. The results do not offer much support for the explanatory power of the model. The individuals that exhibit the least concern about adhering to social norms and are choosing the payoff-maximising options are the only ones the actions of whom match the model’s predictions. Chapter 5 summarises the findings of this thesis and concludes.

Despite widespread public awareness, climate change remains a low priority compared to other public issues. This study’s starting point is the normative importance of public discourse about climate change in representing and legitimising public actions as responses to climate change. The study also explores public connection, how and to what extent the public engage with public discourse about climate change. The study has two main elements: (i) a discursive content analysis of 55 corporate, governmental and NGO websites, based on advertising, a widely consumed form of media discourse that has received relatively little attention in this context; and (ii) 23 semi-structured public interviews. A small number of individual domestic emissions reduction actions, often framed as unremarkable and uncontroversial, dominated the media sample, reflecting corporate communicators domination of this discourse. The same actions were integral to interviewees’ understanding of climate change, not due to acceptance of their efficacy, but a lack of awareness of alternative forms of action. Five linguistic repertoires used to frame these actions in the media sample are described in detail. Public connection to climate change reflected the strength of people’s wider public connection, both their talk about public issues and the quality and quantity of their news use. Overall, public connection to climate change was weak, reflecting low media coverage and norms of ‘climate silence’ in everyday life, resulting in a lack of opportunities for climate talk or deliberation about climate actions. The study identifies the need for both greater opportunities for public involvement in agenda setting, and more public interest content, in both the media and academia. These weaknesses of public connection to climate change reflect many wider concerns about public connection to democratic politics. The study highlights the crucial role that the construction of public opinion plays in legitimising both specific climate actions and a wider shift to a low-carbon society.

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No description available.

While economic research has demonstrated that the richest 1 percent in terms of income (and to a lesser extent in terms of wealth) in the UK have increased their relative advantage since the 1980s, there is little empirical research on how these individuals perceive changes in economic inequality (Chin, 2014). Following in the tradition of research on ‘elite’ perceptions of inequality (Reis and Moore, 2005), my research investigates how economic inequality, measured by top income and wealth shares, is perceived by the top 1 percent of income earners in the UK. To understand these phenomena, I interviewed and surveyed 30 participants. Additionally, I analysed data from the Great British Class Survey (GBCS) to triangulate the findings. Participants’ perceptions of top income shares closely relate to their views on the production of top incomes. For instance, GBCS data show that respondents with the highest incomes tend to select meritocratic items as important for career success. Meanwhile, a majority of interviewees, termed ‘economic evaluators’, narrate top incomes as resulting from rational, economic evaluation processes (Lamont et al., 2014), based on the idea that ‘the market’ is the best instrument for the distribution of resources. Intersectional privilege can be reconciled with ideas of a neutral market, because economic evaluative processes are gendered, ‘raced’ and classed (Skeggs, 2004a). Due to vast absolute differences between those at the top, participants view inequality from the perspective of ‘relative (dis)advantage’; while recognizing their advantage compared to the general population they experience relative disadvantage (based on Runciman’s (1966) ‘relative deprivation’) compared to others higher up the distribution. As a result, participants overestimate top income and wealth shares. Due to beliefs in markets, participants’ heightened awareness of inequality does not translate into general concern for inequality, particularly among economic evaluators. My study highlights the importance of the evaluative processes narrated as constituting top incomes for top income earners’ perceptions of economic inequality.

This thesis develops a social psychological approach for the study of comprehensive sexuality education (CSE) aimed at youth in contexts of ‘precarity’ (Butler 2009) where wider political systems structure differential experiences of insecurity and marginalisation (e.g. widespread poverty, high HIV prevalence, gender inequality, generational differences). It emphasises the need for greater analytical focus on how change interventions are actualised, from conception through to evaluation. It argues that current framings of CSE in such settings, reify and depoliticise the local-global contexts which situate and shape interventions, and that existing methods neglect the dynamics and interactive aspects of implementation, which are key influencers on programme outcomes. Using the theory of social representations in a dialogical framing, this thesis conceptualises CSE interventions as a form of knowledge encounter; as situated spaces of strategic engagement between local-global knowledge cultures, enacted through the interpretative and communicative practice of differently positioned actors, agencies and artifacts. Through an ethnographic case study of an award-winning CSE intervention aimed at youth in urban Tanzania which had ‘disappointing’ outcome results, methodological and analytical focus is placed on three core points of interaction: the representations of knowledges on youth sexualities and their strategisation for behaviour change in curricula; youth sense-making of this curriculum knowledge in relation to the [sexual] relationship opportunities available to them; and the processes of communicative engagement (i.e. activities) which make up the intervention. The analyses provide greater context to the outcome results by illustrating how local-global precarity shapes behaviours, implementation practices, and overall change potentials, yet how it is either ignored or minimised in CSE curricula, and reporting and evaluation activities. Such neglect is seen to only further marginalise youth and overburden implementing actors. Whilst precarity is potentially beyond the scope of a CSE intervention, it is argued that more explicit focus needs to be put towards researching the specific insecurities that precarity causes in localities, and that these need to be factored into behaviour change theorisations, activities, and evaluations. In this way CSE interventions are conceptualised as spaces through which theorising on possibilities for relational forms of agency in precarity can be developed.