In response to the fact that academic projects on lay participation in China written in English have been very scarce, and also the views of the three schools of Chinese scholars, this thesis will conduct a thorough review of lay participation in China. Chapter 1 of this thesis firstly outlines the worldwide situation regarding lay participation. Chapter 2 sets out the historical background to the growth of lay participation in China, by recounting the various forms of and experiments with lay participation during China’s history. Chapters 3 and 4 study the status quo of the sole form of lay participation in China today, that is, the mixed tribunal system. Chapter 5 looks into the contribution that lay participation could potentially make to Chinese society. Chapter 6 offers some proposals with regard to the prospective direction for developing lay participation in China, from a realistic perspective. The thesis finds that lay participation has been neither declining worldwide, nor has been absent during China’s history. It also finds that although the mixed tribunal system in China today faces an array of problems, lay participation may potentially contribute to Chinese society in terms of a better justice system and improved democracy. After clarifying the prospects for continuing lay participation in China and proposing possible reformative measures, my thesis concludes that the system, with careful reconstruction, deserves a position in China’s future legal system; and that the leftist proposal, to abolish lay participation in China, should be rejected.

This thesis sits at the junction of asylum history and Anglo-Jewish history, specifically Scottish Jewish history, and contributes new perspectives to scholarship on histories of both psychiatry and Anglo-Jewry. It explores the lived experiences of Jewish patients admitted to the royal asylums of Edinburgh and Glasgow between 1870 and 1939 using a range of both quantitative and qualitative archival sources. A discussion of the relevant literature that has focused on ‘Anglo’ asylums and Anglo-Jewry, particularly on Scottish asylums and Scottish Jewry, provides the historical context for the research questions being asked about how Jewish patients admitted to the royal asylums were understood, diagnosed and treated. The quantitative Jewish patient population is presented, discussing: demographic variables such as gender distribution, age at admission and the patient’s marital status at admission; social variables such as ‘class’ as regards a patient’s accommodation within the asylum and their occupation; diagnostic variables such as the mental disorders identified; and finally institutional variables such as a patient’s discharge status and the length of a patient’s stay within the asylum. This Jewish patient profile is compared to control samples of non-Jewish patients to detect similarities and differences between the two groups, providing scope for the qualitative accounts that follow. Qualitative sources are then used, pulling out a number of individual case histories as detailed exemplars of broader claims, spread across three substantial chapters. The first qualitative chapter draws on several of the themes presented in the discussion of relevant literature, such as matters of Jewish demography, migration, family dynamics, social standing, cultural experiences and the like, as these intersect with the ‘asylum lifecycle’, meaning periods spent in and outside of the asylum by these patients. This material opens a door to the Jewish patient experience through the discussion and analysis of several themes, such as: family, community, immigration status, social class, migration histories, big and small and the asylum lifecycle with respect to patients who experienced multiple admissions to asylums. The next chapter’s overarching theme is the Jewish body – all aspects of Jewish embodiment; of embodying Jewishness – in the asylum. This theme is further broken down into specific areas for discussion, such as: the male Jewish body; poisoning, because historically Jews have been associated with the act of poisoning; the diagnostic criteria as it was applied to Jews during the period under investigation; the role of language within the clinical encounter; and troublesome patients. The goal here is to illustrate how the Jewish body was often seen as inherently different from other (British) asylum patients and therefore pathologised because of those differences, such that in certain situations merely being Jewish suggested a likelihood of being mentally unstable and possessing a mental illness due to the Jewishness association. The final qualitative chapter concentrates on Jewish women and their experiences within Scottish asylums, highlighting some of the gendered differences within that experience when compared to the male Jewish experience of madness that was primarily tackled in the previous chapter. This chapter discuses Jewish women and their place within the Jewish community and wider Anglo-Scottish society, and further it addresses the perceived close relationship between Jewish women and mental illness, itself complicated by the extent to which the woman concerned sought to live up to a vision of the perfect Jewish mother while also being judged through an idealized version of domestically content British (middle-class) womanly reserve. Final conclusions are added which summarise the contributions made by the thesis, and speculate about further inquires that might be conducted in this field.

The Arctic occupies an important place in Western imagination, in particular in the development of colonial and Southern (Western) power. Through a process of co-research and community-based video making, the researcher and student researchers made several group and individual video projects investigating the North, to reclaim, celebrate and educate. The project media contributes to the expanding field of politics of representation and knowledge to empower the social and cultural perspective and expression of the Arctic people. This thesis analyses collaborative video documentation created by Aurora College Adult Education students in Inuvik who designed the research guide, interviewed, filmed, edited and also created personal video projects. It examines the North, Newcomers to the North and The South Through Northern Eyes – and their cultural and social implications and how those implications effects communications, within the North and between the North and South. From a Northern perspective of homeland and adaptation, the Southern binary of assimilation and Modernity have been incorrect, disruptive and discriminatory and it fails to interact with Northern realities of paradox, pragmatism and strength. It argues that that the dominant Southern perspective with its power-centered negative and inaccurate perceptions and portrayals need to be disempowered and discarded for authentic Northern narratives with intertwining concepts of story, voice, image and culture. Representations and experiences, present and future, are vastly different stories when told from the perspective of the North. This research endeavors to act as a conduit to contribute the direct academic voice of Northern peoples, contexts and truths through knowledge co-production and video creation. Drawing on public sociology, visual sociological theory, cultural studies, Northern studies, education and the reexamined "post"-colonial theory, this interdisciplinary thesis covers ideological processes, cultural politics, community practices and social issues that have shaped this cultural clash. Hence, this study is textually based, describing the video narratives and academically situating the work in Northern discourse becoming central and dominant in Northern research and education. This thesis tries to restart/reframe the conversation on the representation/knowledge of the Indigenous peoples of the Western Arctic and its evolving identity, power and place in the global world.

The British state has introduced increasingly restrictive immigration legislation in recent years, as part of an effort to create a hostile environment for undocumented migrants. For instance, the 2014 and 2016 Immigration Acts further criminalise working without papers, renting property, and driving as an undocumented migrant, in addition to restricting access to health care. Restrictive legislation has not, however, managed to deal with irregular migration, but increases breaches of immigration law. Instead of lowering net immigration, these new restrictions simply limit access to rights, and create vulnerability among undocumented migrants, which is experienced differently by men and women. Women without official immigration status mostly work and live in the domestic sphere, which can offer protection from the state. However, undocumented migrant women often experience domestic violence and work in exploitative settings, which are difficult to challenge, due to the fear of deportation and lack of access to support networks located in the public sphere. The question arises how undocumented migrant women perceive and learn about their rights while being confined to the private sphere. As little is known about the lives of undocumented migrant women in the UK, this thesis explores the role that rights and the law play in their lives. I draw on interview data, participant observation in migrants’ rights organisations, and sample applications to regularise immigration status based on human rights law, in order to investigate how undocumented migrant women perceive and relate to the law, how it structures their everyday lives, and the mechanisms they develop for survival. I analyse how the few existing rights that undocumented migrant women can claim are stratified and thus difficult to access. To claim rights, the women need free legal representation, which they find in community migrant support organisations that play a crucial role in actualising rights.

This thesis traces the settlement and history of an East Delhi resettlement colony, and the everyday and associational lives of its residents. Settled by the state at the height of the Emergency in 1976, from jhuggies demolished at the centre of the city, Punarvaspur sits within a longer history and politics of planning by the colonial and postcolonial developmental state. As such, Punarvaspur and neighbourhoods like it have long been, and continue to be the site of debates and anxieties about the place of ‘the urban poor' in the city, and of much NGO and political work. As the subjects of large-scale demolitions of housing and livelihood in the course of resettlement, residents' experience of these debates has been far from abstract. Even after 30 years, the aftermath of the resettlement still shapes social relations in the close physical spaces of Punarvaspur. For residents their frequent designation as ‘slum dwellers' makes them the subject of much development work, while by extension also labelling them as ‘illegal' ex-squatters. Drawing on the work of social theorists and geographers, particularly the work of Henri Lefebvre and Doreen Massey, the main aim of this thesis is to explore the spatial dimensions of the politics of development, through the lived experiences and spatial practices of its residents. By tracing how the socio-historical roots of planners' dominant ‘representations of space' are neither fixed, static, nor uniform, it can be seen how they are modified by the ‘spatial practices' and lived experiences of city dwellers as they are traced out over the fabric of Delhi. For instance, the space of the neighbourhood becomes a medium for the organisation and articulation of social relations in its public spaces. This can been seen in the marking of public spaces by groups through speech, organisational affiliations and concrete devotional shrines. Similarly, residents, NGOs, local politicians and others deploy ideas of morality, respectability, and difference to limit and enhance the agency and ability of themselves and others to act in the public space of the neighbourhood. In this way certain locales are understood as being in need of development as relationships around development are inscribed in space.

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This study focuses on health and well-being amongst the Roma community in the "Old Camp" settlement in the Neapolitan Municipality of Scampia. The research is based on long-term ethnographic fieldwork carried out in the camp, amongst Romani residents and non-Romani people who played a role in the life and health of the camp's inhabitants. The study is informed by the World Health Organization's (1946) holistic definition of health, and by work on the social dimensions of health which has grown following Marmot and Wilkinson's (1998) seminal volume. These approaches see health not just in clinical terms, but rather understand well-being as including physical, psychological and social dimensions which are inextricably linked. The study argues that Roma communities should not be perceived as unique "monolithic" populations, but as being composed of individuals, with personal thoughts, feelings and perceptions, different ways of leading their lives and different life experiences including recent migration histories; struggles to exercise their right as asylum-seekers; and conflicts resulting from being born in a territory that does not easily recognise their right to citizenship. During fieldwork, Roma explained their personal perceptions of wellness and illness and of the impact of state and local policies on their well-being. Key-findings were that Roma's sense of well-being is affected by racism, discrimination, and intercommunal mistrust which has adverse effects on relationships between Roma communities and government agencies. A further significant finding was that there are generational tensions within the Roma community, opening the possibility of changes in communal customs and structures. By presenting the perceptions of the Romani themselves regarding their well-being, and their congruence with a holistic approach to health and well-being rather than a narrowly clinical one, the study may inform effective health policies at a local, national and international level.

The New Labour government placed communities at the heart of urban regeneration policy. Area deprivation and social exclusion were to be addressed through rebuilding community in deprived areas, a process involving tenure diversification and the building of bridging social capital to support community empowerment, increased aspirations and wide-spread mutually supportive relationships. There is, however, little empirical evidence that tenure mix is an effective means for achieving the social goals of neighbourhood renewal. This thesis contributes to the mixed tenure debate by exploring the impact of regeneration on community. The research was guided by theories of social structure and cultural systems and argues that the regeneration process may give rise to social divisions and conflict between community groups, inhibiting culture change. The research was conducted on a social housing estate located within the West Midlands region. The findings represent the views of local residents and community workers and suggest that greater recognition needs to be given to the role intimate social ties play in community sustainability, that the provision of supportive services must be balanced with individual self-efficacy, and that regeneration policy should focus less on what new homeowners can bring to a community and more on what community can already offer.

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.

The greater visibility of Chinese films brought by the wider global access and circulation has not satisfied the culturally specific understanding of Chinese cinema. The subject/object power relations stemming from the legacy of colonial and postcolonial discourse hinders the arrival of a better-balanced cross-cultural reading. The visibility of cinema provides a visual spectacle, it also challenges the audience with a communication of the epistemic side of visibility which feeds the images meaning and imagination and facilitates a more balanced culturally specific understanding. However, the epistemic side of visibility remains invisible under power-engaged cross-cultural reading. This study suggests that the sentimental provides a possibility for a better-balanced cross-cultural understanding through its provision of empathic connection with the culture, history and the psyche. Home-longing/homecoming is claimed to the basis that the Chinese culture is built upon. Defined as the sentimental, this affective mode has been manifested across Chinese cinema abundantly through visual representation. The various articulations of the sentimental in face of the global and transnational homogeneous force further prove the deep-rootedness of the sentimental. The sentimental fashions as an affective link that establishes an empathic engagement in cross-cultural analysis. Through reading eight Chinese films made since the 1990, this study illustrates the relationship between the visual spectacle and the sentimental in Chinese cinema. Although the eight films are all from mainland Chinese directors, this study is carried out with the awareness of the sharing of Chinese culture within the Chinese language cinema where this study locates.