The movement Caravana de Madres de Migrantes Desaparecidos; a transnational social movement uniting Central American mothers from Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and Nicaragua whose children have disappeared in Mexico while migrating to the US, is part of a Latin American tradition where a mother-centered kinship system is at the center. The movement has managed to reunite more than 300 families. The concept of motherhood is important in forming the identity of this particular movement, when making their voices heard in the public sphere to find their disappeared children, fight for migrants rights and for social change. In what ways does the concept of motherhood influence the Caravana de Madres de Migrantes Desaparecidos’s struggle and communication for social change? How does the movement’s use of motherhood as a primary identity marker contribute to or hinder the movement's struggle for human rights and development?  To explore these questions we have collected data primarily through semi-structured interviews with members of the movement. We have also included other material such as recorded meetings, articles and videos for the contextual data in our content analysis. Our theoretical framework spans from more general theories on social movements and transnational movements to post-colonial theories on feminism and development, especially the Women Culture Development Approach (Bhavnani et al. 2016). Theories that concern cultural trauma and collective identity are also included since these are of specific relevance to the particular social movement of our case study.  We found that besides spreading awareness on the widespread issues of migration and enforced disappearances, the movement is contributing to both gender autonomy and empowerment for the mothers of the Caravana de Madres de Migrantes Desaparecidos. In the process of joining the movement many women undergo a journey from being a victim in mourning to becoming a social activist who encourages the engagement of even more women in social change initiatives. This in turn has long lasting effects on social change in their home countries. Unfortunately, we found that since their male spouses often are not part of this process, when returning home many mothers experience a backlash in terms of gender equality.

MARTINA HYNKOVÁ: ‚JINÉ SVĚTY' ŽEN JAZZOVÉ SEKCE V OBDOBÍ TZV. NORMALIZACE ABSTRACT This master thesis deals with the Jazz section of the Musicians' Union in the normalization period. It was an amateur organization which existed from 1971 until 1986. It took an active part in the area of jazz and united an extensive jazz community. The thesis aims at gender aspects of female Jazz section's activities and roles. The research question can be formulated as follows: Which strategies of living did female members of the Jazz section choose during the normalization? The thesis is based on a biographical method consisting of six interviews with former female members of the Jazz section. Those interviews were made via an episodic narrative interview. The author revealed the following strategies of living: accession to the Jazz section community, being an active member of the community, going abroad to visit cultural events, contact with dissent and living in two worlds. Making of these other worlds by female members of the Jazz section thus became strategies of living on their own.

We are currently in a learning process to understand new social structure of the contemporary society.  We have to see ourselves as a social collective, as we together learn about the new medium and its consequences. The new possibilities have provided us with a freedom and at the same time restraints. Freedom of the free word and that we can connect globally, restraints from  the urge of always being connected and get acknowledgement to feed our own identity and self. As the need of being acknowledged has increased, our own integrity and holding on to our own  set of principles have decreased.     The aim of this thesis is to investigate to what extent social media has come to affect the sense of identity and integrity, and finding out where the limit between what is considered to beand to be public is, as the virtual world has been integrated with the traditional society.

Duzentos anos após seu falecimento, as obras de Jane Austen ainda ecoam nas pessoas. Elas têm sido adaptadas das formas mais variadas, nas mais diferente mídias. Os Diários de Lizzie Bennet é um projeto transmidiático que transpõe o romance Orgulho e Preconceito (1813) para uma vídeo-série veiculada no YouTube de 2012 a 2013 de forma serializada. Esta pesquisa analisa de que forma temas que influenciam a vida das mulheres, como casamento, classe social e dinheiro, foram transpostos do período regencial inglês para a Califórnia-EUA do século vinte-um. Esta análise considera que ambas as obras são compostas por duas camadas de significado: a primeira é constituída pela comédia romântica que dialoga com a cultura popular; a segunda é mais profunda, através da qual a crítica social é revelada. No que tange ao referencial teórico, a relação entre a noção de subjetividade na virada do século dezenove e a expansão da vida privada na esfera pública no século vinte-um, conforme Jon Dovey (2000), é base para compreender como a estrutura de ambas as narrativas contribui na produção de significado. As discussões sobre feminismo e pós-feminismo na cultura popular de Angela McRobbie (2009) e Imelda Whelean (2010) tornam possível a observação da construção dos temas. Em Orgulho e Preconceito, as instituições sociais estabelecidas não são amplamente questionadas. Em vez disso, a composição da subjetividade dos personagens, especialmente das mulheres, revela a crítica a elementos sociais da época. Os Diários de Lizzie Bennet, a seu turno, desafiam as representações da mulher provenientes da cultura popular pós-feminista. A análise da adaptação revela que as mulheres ainda estão restritas a determinados papéis sociais assim como aquelas situadas no romance. Ainda há a necessidade de se encontrar equilíbrio. / Two hundred years after her demise, Jane Austen’s works still resonate with people. They have been adapted in numerous ways through different media. The Lizzie Bennet Diaries is a transmedia project, which transposes the novel Pride and Prejudice (1813) to a videoblog series aired on YouTube from 2012 to 2013 in a serialised mode. This investigation analyses the ways issues concerning the lives of women, such as marriage, money and social class, were adapted from Regency England to twenty-first century California-USA. The analysis understands both works as consisting of two layers of meaning: a romantic comedy layer which converses with popular culture, and a deeper one through which social criticism is revealed. In theoretical terms, the relationship between the notion of subjectivity in the turn of nineteenth century and the spread of private life into the public sphere in the twenty-first century, as proposed by Jon Dovey (2000), informs the analysis of the structural elements of both narratives which contribute to the production of meaning. The discussions on feminism and post-feminism in popular culture by Angela McRobbie (2009) and Imelda Whelehan (2010) make it possible to observe the construction of the themes. In Pride and Prejudice, the established social institutions are not overtly questioned. Instead, it is the composition of the characters’ subjectivities, especially those of women, which reveals criticism on the social context of the time. The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, for its part, challenges the established representations of women as informed by postfeminist popular culture. In the end, it seems to propose that women are, in fact, still restrained by social roles, just as the ones in the novel are. There is yet a need to find balance.

Increasingly, culturally and ethnically diverse environments provide an abundance of ordinary, everyday intergroup encounters, especially in public settings---often consisting of a conglomeration of positive and negative experiences. Yet few intergroup contact studies have focused on measuring and assessing contact in public settings. Reasons for this include both theoretical and methodological considerations. However, before the impact of mundane, everyday encounters on prejudice reduction can be assessed, it is necessary to examine the following questions: (1) Which situations are perceived as intergroup contact by participants? (2) How do individuals conceptualise where the boundaries for contact lie? (3) How are public and private forms of contact typically experienced? (4) Do they differ in the ways researchers have assumed in the past? and (5) Which methods are most appropriate for assessing public encounters? How can memory bias, temporality and locatedness be taken into account? Using qualitative, quantitative and near-time in-the-field methods, the following research examines these aspects in both public and private settings and provides first insights into how a novel method---the Contact Logger---can be used to assess the effects of public and private contact on attitudes. A three-day diary/interview study (N=17) explored how contact is experienced, understood and conceptualised in a variety of everyday intergroup contexts. This was followed by a survey study (N=525) that examined the boundaries of what is typically perceived as being contact. Insights from both studies fed into the development of a context-aware mobile application, which enabled the capturing of near-time intergroup encounters in situ. The usability of the resulting research tool---the Contact Logger---was tested, leading to further refinements. Following an initial feasibility study (N=104) that explored contact between young and older people, a field experiment (N=112) examined intergenerational contact in public and private contexts. Data collected with the Contact Logger were analysed on aggregate and day-to-day levels, and where possible compared to traditional retrospective survey data. Results from the first two studies indicated that while traditional intergroup encounters, such as contact with family and friends, are clearly conceptualised and viewed as contact, experiences and perceptions of contact in public settings are more disparate. Moreover, effects of such contact on attitudes are dependent on the idiosyncratic meaning attributed to the specific encounter as well as past experiences. Near-time data from a field-experiment (Study 5) provided evidence that intergroup encounters reported in situ compared to retrospective survey data differed in key variables (i.e., contact quality, duration, perceived status and group typicality). Correlational analyses between near-time and retrospective measures showed less correspondence than expected. Further, additional day-to-day analyses revealed that attitudes towards older people were less positive during weekends than weekdays, indicating that attitudes may be more dynamic than previously thought. Findings, as well as the different methodological and theoretical approaches, are critically discussed. Finally, a broad range of further applications for the Contact Logger are presented and important limitations are discussed.

Psychosis most commonly first occurs during adolescence or early adulthood, disrupting the social and occupational transitions characterising this time. Studies on social and occupational outcomes in psychosis have tended to focus on observer-rated, dysfunction-based outcomes. However, mental health services are increasingly adopting a personal recovery model; focusing on facilitating hopeful and individually meaningful lives. Social inclusion is paramount to personal recovery but there is a need for greater awareness of the processes by which mental health services facilitate social inclusion for young people with psychosis. Cognitive models and research with longterm psychosis service users suggests that negative self-beliefs contribute to poorer social outcomes in psychosis, whereas personal recovery models emphasise the role of hopefulness and therapeutic relationships with optimistic mental health professionals. This thesis first investigates a structural model of social inclusion and its association with hope and negative self-beliefs for healthy young people (n= 387). Then the processes by which young service users' self-beliefs, therapeutic relationships and professionals' beliefs influence social inclusion are explored using directed path models (n= 51). Directed path models then test how professional characteristics, focusing on attachment styles and job attitudes, facilitate therapeutic relationships (n= 61). Finally, the contributions of self-beliefs, therapeutic relationships, professional beliefs and social inclusion in predicting vocational outcomes are explored (n= 51). Current findings support the relative importance of hopefulness over negative selfbeliefs in social inclusion for young people with and without psychosis. Hope appears particularly important for adolescents compared to young adults. Positive relationships with optimistic professionals predict service users' hopefulness, social inclusion and vocational activity. Findings suggest that professionals' own attachment style and job attitudes may aid in positive therapeutic relationship formation. These findings encourage a greater focus on therapeutic relationships and service users' hopefulness in youth psychosis service provision. Professional training should encourage greater awareness of professionals' own attachment style and job attitudes, and how these factors impact on positive therapeutic relationship development.

This is a small scale, qualitative research study, based on focus group and interview data from eight participants across two workplaces. The participants are workers involved in supporting those young people who are unable to live with their families during their transition to adulthood: they are drawn from two services within the same local authority, leaving care and a specialist adolescent support service which provides housing and support for homeless 16 and 17 year olds. A review of the literature in this field identifies a gap in the research, with few studies focussed on the voices of workers engaged in this specific area of work. I have used three analytical frameworks (thematic, narrative and voice-centred relational) to explore the data from different perspectives. Positioning the data in this three-dimensional framework has enabled me to produce an in-depth analysis, considering more than simply the content of participants' responses. My findings are presented as a reflexive account, exploring how the respondents talk about their work. The data suggests that the talk falls into two broad areas: workers positioning themselves within a framework of organisation(s) and workers positioning themselves in relation to individual young people. A picture emerges from the data of two quite different workplaces. The relative structure and clarity of the leaving care personal adviser's job role appears to unite this group of workers around a more coherent script for talking about the work they do. In contrast, the workers from the specialist adolescent service openly acknowledge that there are differences of approach within their organisation, and appear to lack a shared way of articulating their role. The way in which the workers position themselves within the organisation also differs between the two groups: the leaving care workers talk passionately about the division between ‘us' (workers) and ‘them' (management). The specialist adolescent workers barely mention their managers, and there is little talk of a group identity (an ‘us'). These workers talk about the relationship they develop with individual young people as an intervention in itself. This relationship is conceptualised in various ways, with the clearest construct being parent-child. There appears to be a difference between the two organisations in the way in which this parent role is enacted: leaving care workers talk of an organisational corporate parenting responsibility, whilst workers from the specialist adolescent service talk more freely of thinking and acting as a good parent. In relation to their direct 1:1 work, the majority of participants describe using conversation to facilitate the development of problem solving skills, encouraging reflective thinking through the process of co-creating narrative. These emotional and cognitive skills are talked about as more valuable than specific practical independent living skills. The data suggests that emotional labour is acknowledged and managed very differently in these two workplaces. The leaving care group found it difficult to talk about the emotional aspects of their role, and this plays out in different ways in the interviews. Some participants describe struggling to manage the emotional impact of their work, otherwise struggle to articulate the emotional content of the work. As a group, they retreat from talk of emotional involvement with young people, distancing themselves by stating that it is beyond what is possible within their role. In contrast, the workers from the specialist adolescent service talk more comfortably about their emotional responses to the work: they appear to feel safer using themselves in their work, and seem better able to contain this emotional labour within the overall professional boundaries of their role. Workers talk of ‘making a tiny impact' - acknowledging the potential for their support to make a positive difference in young people's lives, whilst also highlighting the limitations of their role.

This thesis seeks to interrogate the experiences and outcomes of anti-racist social work education and evaluate the pedagogic relevance and practice utility of teaching social work students about ‘race', racism and anti-racism. A mixed methods research strategy is drawn upon to explore how professional social work training prepares students to work with ‘cultural diversity' and ‘cultural difference' and to evaluate the outcomes of teaching and learning which focuses on anti-racism. The methodological position drawn upon in this thesis is a pragmatic one (Williams, 2006), which recognises the role of both nomothetic and idiographic approaches to enabling us to describe and understand how social work students and tutors experience and make sense of anti-racist social work education and the pedagogic challenges and barriers they face to engaging with this discrete area of professional education. Anti-racism is the theoretical and conceptual focus of this thesis and it encompasses a broad coalition of different perspectives and academic interests concerned with actively identifying and resisting racism. It has been characterised as a set of disparate polycentric overlapping practices and discourses (Anthias & Lloyd, 2002), whilst exhibiting a politically committed form of practice (Bhatti-Sinclair, 2011). It has also been described as a radical and oppositional project which emphasises the need to actively identify and resist racism (Bonnett & Carrington, 1996; Tomlinson, 2002). Historically it has been associated with the politics of resistance and social movements in support of decolonialisation, anti fascism and equal rights for immigrant workers (Dominelli, 2008). Frequently, it has been characterised as reflecting a radical dualism between ‘white racism versus Black resistance' (Gillborn & Ladson-Billings, 2004). Within social work education, anti-racism despite its retrenchment and appropriation into a broad ‘anti oppressive' practice model (Williams, 1999), continues to be regarded as a progressive educational strategy which has a transformative role. It is viewed as an effective approach to challenging the attitudes and values of individual students (Heron, 2008). It can also lead to ‘perspective transformation' (Mezirow, 1981), and ‘critical consciousness' through the process of conscientization (Freire, 1970). Anti-racism is therefore considered to have a valuable pedagogic role in raising awareness of racial inequalities and the processes associated with racial exclusion, whilst also providing a wider critique of the state, its culture, its institutions, ideology, legislation and policy frameworks (Singh, 2006a). The qualitative and quantitative data presented in this thesis suggests that it is possible to discover the situated experiences of teaching and learning on anti-racism and measure how these pedagogic interventions can affect and lead to knowledge, skills and attitudinal change (Carpenter, 2005; 2011). The empirical evidence drawn upon in this thesis identifies important group differences, related to age, ‘race' and experience of working with a BME service user, which are important for understanding how anti-racist social work education is experienced differently by learners, and how it leaves a complex set footprints which enable us to appreciate how this educational intervention works in different ways for different types of students. Sometimes these differences are subtle, but at other times they are more evident and suggestive of group experiences which go beyond the individual. The empirical evidence also suggests that social work educators experience anti-racist social work education as a challenging and emotionally supercharged area of the curriculum and that their levels of engagement, preparedness and commitment is often dependent upon where they are positioned socially, culturally and politically. This thesis is important because regionally and nationally there have been very few attempts to empirically capture how professional social work training programmes accommodate and evidence ‘race' equality and cultural diversity issues (Williams et al., 2009; Williams & Parrott, 2013).

My research takes a psychosocial approach to exploring parents' experiences of professional intervention in the aftermath of sudden, unexpected child death. In the UK all deaths of this nature are immediately subject to a Rapid Response, which includes forensic investigation, followed by a series of subsequent meetings and the obligation on professionals is to treat parents as guilty whilst also maintaining their innocence. These requirements were part of a number of recommendations arising from the Report, ‘Sudden, Unexpected Death in Childhood' (2004) known colloquially as the Kennedy Report, which was a response to the release on Appeal of three mothers, all wrongfully imprisoned for killing their children. One of the explicit purposes of the Kennedy Report is to avoid similar cases and it therefore attempts to address the complexity of balancing every parent's right to have their child's death properly investigated with the requirement to protect children who may be at risk. As a part of achieving this, the Report identifies a need for appropriate training to assist professionals in becoming sensitised to emotions being experienced by parents, in order that culpability or otherwise may be easier to discern. Despite this, the Working Party for the Kennedy Report did not include parents and this lack of direct access to their experiences is reflected in the wider field. Parents are not allowed to participate in any of the multidisciplinary meetings which follow sudden, unexpected, child death and their narratives are largely absent from literature and training material. This makes achieving the form of emotional understanding between parents and professionals advocated by the Kennedy Report difficult and thereby increases the risk of potential errors of professional judgement. This study aims to restore the voices of parents to the field of sudden unexpected child death, by engaging directly with the emotional complexity and trauma of the experience and thereby improving practice. The research is based on eight in-depth interviews with parents who have experienced the sudden, unexpected death of their child, together with investigation, but no accompanying charges. The research was prompted both by my previous role as a social worker, but primarily by my experience of investigation following the sudden unexpected death of my son Joe. My account of his death and the experiences which led me to undertake this research are offered within Chapter One and thereafter run as a thread throughout. Drawing on Hollway (2009) I have used a psychosocial approach within this thesis, to combine both the workings of the psyche and the social without diminishing or conflating either. This has enabled me to locate my experience and that of the parents within the thesis, as part of a wider exploration of how parents may be positioned and perceived following a sudden, unexpected child death. The research uses a narrative, interpretive methodology which draws from the Biographic Narrative Interpretive Method (Wengraf, 2011) and the Listening Guide (Doucet & Mauthner, 2008). Data analysis panels were used as part of the interpretive process and they are discussed and critiqued. The unexpected results produced by the panels forms a significant contribution to knowledge which is also identified. The thesis concludes that current cultural debates around ‘good death', together with heightened anxieties about safeguarding children, may lead to the construction of sudden unexpected child death as dangerous knowledge (Cooper & Lousada, 2005). Returning to the emotional understanding advocated by the Kennedy Report, I make a number of recommendations including changing the language of investigation and developing opportunities for open dialogue between professionals and parents. I also identify several original contributions made by this work, both methodologically and more substantively, which are partly evidenced by the attention it has already received within academic and wider audiences. Amongst these, the research has formed the basis of a number of Conferences presentations, a journal paper, national newspaper article and a guest appearance on BBC Radio 4. As a conclusion to the thesis I identify a need for additional in-depth research in this area, together with a re-visiting of the recommendations arising from the Kennedy Report, aimed at further policy change and improving the experiences of all those involved with sudden, unexpected child deaths.

Children in foster care are at high risk of experiencing mental health problems and tackling this issue is a key priority. Previous research suggests that the transition from primary to secondary school can be particularly challenging, as well-being declines and mental health problems increase in early adolescence. However, there is insufficient understanding of variations in the well-being and mental health of this group of children, and particularly the role played by their social interactions, relationships, and psychological attributes. This thesis includes three papers reporting on a programme of empirical research conducted to address this gap in knowledge and better understand the risk and protective factors, particularly in the peer context, for changes in mental health and well-being. The first paper focuses on current provision and reports the findings from a national survey of Virtual Schools that support the education of children in care. The second paper presents the findings of a longitudinal study with children not in care (aged 10-13 years), to test our conceptual model in the general population. This demonstrated that peer factors predict changes in mental health problems and well-being over and above parental and other adult support. The third paper presents findings from a longitudinal study of children in foster care (aged 10-14 years), to test these key pathways in our focus population. This revealed a pattern of differentiated links from peer and adult support to mental health and well-being, and identified self-efficacy as a key longitudinal predictor of change, especially when moderated by peer relationship quality. The thesis demonstrates the importance of supportive relationships with both adults and peers for the mental health and well-being of children in care. This has important implications for future work where social activities and relationship quality with peers should be considered as potential protective factors, especially in school settings.