Further income redistribution is an obvious way of alleviating child poverty. However, whether this effectively improves life chances of children growing up in poverty is debated, and there might be less expensive ways of doing so. Drawing on competing models explaining intergenerational persistence of poverty, this thesis investigates some of the links between childhood poverty and later economic outcomes in the UK. Aiming to identify policy areas where intervention would be helpful, it examines continuities and changes over time in these links and mechanisms that create them, analysing longitudinal data from people born in 1958, 1970 and the 1980s. This thesis shows that a negative effect of childhood poverty on adult earnings remains for the 1970 cohort (although not for the 1958 cohort), even after controlling for educational attainment in particular, and for other individual and family characteristics. This appears to be a reason that intergenerational persistence of poverty is stronger for the younger cohort. Teenage occupational aspirations do not seem to explain this residual effect, but unemployment in early working life contributes to it. An original contribution is the investigation of different effects of childhood poverty on later onset of and exit from unemployment, and the relative strength of the effects of parental worklessness and income poverty on these outcomes. A main finding is that income poverty more strongly affects the rapid onset of unemployment following employment, although parental worklessness appears to be associated with the slow exit from unemployment. The results suggest that policy interventions in education or (potentially cheaper) interventions affecting youth aspirations would not completely remove the disadvantage experienced by children growing up in poverty. There is therefore evidence that further income redistribution would be beneficial in improving their future life chances, while the findings suggest that the design of income redistribution also matters.

This thesis offers new insights into the challenges and opportunities brought by European Union (EU) integration policies by taking as a case study the process of accessing EU funding in Romania and its impact on the performance and reproduction of contemporary entrepreneurial identities. It is based on 16 months of ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Romania between June 2007 and September 2008. The thesis argues that EU funding - as an economic process shaped by EU anticorruption practices, policies and assumptions – configures new political and economic subjects through intertwined vocabularies of corruption and crime, a mix of formal and informal entrepreneurial practices and the commodification of finance. This dynamic process concomitantly enables Romania’s top-down integration into the EU through the adoption of transnational regulations, institutions and anxieties and Romania’s bottom-up integration into the EU through the assimilation of the EU funding regulations into the vernacular practices of doing business.

This dissertation addresses the question of to what extent growing numbers of older people who might have similar preferences regarding public intergenerational transfers (family and pension policies) will limit the scope of future social policy reforms in Germany. We are interested in to what extent the shift in the country's demography will trigger a so-called "gerontocracy." As a theoretical framework, we combine Mannheim's concept of political generations with a demographic life-course approach. According to Mannheim, growing numbers of a societal group, combine with unified preferences within the group, enhance the group's political power. To empirically test this hypothesis, we use three analytical steps: First, we analyse the future age composition of the German population, including familial characteristics, using a micro-simulation approach. The results suggest that the number of older people will grow substantially over the coming decades, particularly the share of older people who will remain childless and who will not be married. Second, we analyse preferences regarding redistributive social policies according to age, parity, and marital status, based on recent survey data. Generalised Linear Models and Generalised Additive Models are applied to examine what the effects of fdemographic indicators are on these preferences. Results show that older people are less in favour of transfers ot the younger generation than their younger counterparts. This is particularly true of childless interviewees. Third, we explore the extent to which these developments are likely to have an impact on the political sphere. How do policy makers perceive ageing and the preferences structures found? How do elderly interest groups define their roles in light of these results? In-depth interviews with these stakeholders provide a mixed picture: whereas most interviewees are convinced that older people have gained more power due to their bigger population share, there is little awareness of differences in policy preferences between various demographic groups. The biggest challenge for social policy makers is, therefore, to find ways to mediate between these two interesrs. if they fail to do so, a conflict of generations might become a realistic scenario for Germany.

The aim of this PhD is to draw together two very different strands of rural geography, namely: young people and partnerships. Partnerships and young people have been the subject of growing debate and, although there is interest in both areas, there has been little work carried out that combines the two to date. The aim of this thesis is to address that gap by studying one particular partnership, part of whose remit was to address issues and concerns of the rural young. Young people, despite initiatives such as youth councils, and youth fora, still operate in the shadows of the decision-making process and, as such, do not enjoy full participation; they are occupying a world in which adults still make decisions on their behalf. This is exacerbated by the fact that the decisions that are made are done so from an adult, rather than a young person’s, perspective. Considered from this position all young people, not just those in groups considered to be socially disadvantaged, are excluded by virtue of their youth and their powerlessness in an adult world. Partnerships, that is a group of public, private and voluntary actors working to a shared goal or goals, should have the capacity to overcome this lack of participation, as a significant portion of the partnership rhetoric is based upon integrating voices from the ‘top’ and the ‘bottom’. Hailed as the new form of governance, such collaborative partnerships are being increasingly utilised to deliver goods and services that were previously the exclusive domain of local government. Nevertheless, in their turn, partnerships are also vulnerable to issues of power, conflict and accusations of ineffective working practices. The thesis examines these two disparate groups through a study of one such partnership. However, despite the emphasis on ‘bottom-up’ input, this particular partnership did not have direct representation from the young. This compromised not only its ability to draw young people’s voices into political debate, but also problematised, from a research point of view, the ability to gauge how effective integrative approaches really are. This was overcome by drawing on action research as a methodology which, in effect, situated the researcher between both parties; on the one hand, acting, as far as an adult can, as a ‘voice’ for the young, and on the other, as a researcher, in a position to follow the partnership and gauge the success of integrative approaches to policy-making. Through a combination of focus group discussions and self-completed questionnaires, key findings are: although young people do not see themselves as deprived, they experience exclusion through a paucity of rural services that is exacerbated by their geographical position along a continuum of rurality; young people are not a homogeneous group - although incremental differences in age may be small, the physical and social needs of a 12 year old or a 14 year old are significantly different which, when overlooked by planners, results in the creation of inappropriate facilities; young people exercise power over each other through their own social codes and practices that excludes some groups either socially or spatially; that there is a considerable amount of intergenerational suspicion that is embedded in the cultural practices of adult/child relations. These findings, and more, were reported to the partnership, which, although unable to implement change itself, was able to provide a springboard from which to broadcast the concerns of the young and one particular concern, inadequate transport, was eventually brought into policy recommendations. The results suggest that, although the effectiveness of the partnership was hampered by the fluidity of its membership and the delay in creating a strategic framework, it was its ability to network, during and even post-partnership, that was its greatest strength. The thesis concludes with suggestions for further research.

The scale of the current global obesity epidemic and the implications of this for health, functionality and economics, dictates that assessing the origins of overnutrition must become a priority in all research fields. To date anthropometric historians have mainly utilised institutional sources providing height and occasionally weight data for a sample of the working class who experienced deprivation. Tailoring institutions offer new, innovative sources for the field; uniquely measuring body shape in its entirety and sampling the upper-middle classes and elites. Anthropometric data for waist circumference, hip circumference and leg length has been collected from Morris & Son tailoring establishment in Barmouth, North West Wales and from Henry Poole & Co. ‘Savile Row’ tailors in Mayfair, London. This data from the second half of the nineteenth century has been nominally linked to census and probate records and cross-referenced with contemporary medical tracts and modern epidemiological literature to highlight obesity related health risks within both populations. Results indicate that 'diseases of affluence' permeated many nineteenth century class groups. Both waist circumferences and hip circumferences increased over the life span. Furthermore, Barmouth’s economic transition from a port to a tourist destination appears to have placed individuals' health (when measured by early adult waist-hip ratio) at greater risk than the overall wealthier customers attending Savile Row. The Barker hypothesis may be relevant - an influx of wealth being of greater detriment to health in later life than consistent affluence. For Henry Poole & Co.’s customers an elite lifestyle enabled girths to expand, increasing the risk of chronic diseases but seemingly protecting them from infectious pathogens. In later life, during the second half of the nineteenth century, it would appear that optimal waist circumferences to reduce mortality were larger than current recommended levels.

This thesis reconstructs and interprets the evolution of legal culture in the Saxon city of Freiberg in the sixteenth century. It challenges the notion that early modern state institutions were punitive and disciplinary; and instead posits that in Saxony, they were flexible and sought to maintain social harmony. While previous scholarship has favoured a sociological approach, based on the concept of social control, this thesis employs a legal anthropological optic to study the interaction of state institutions and social life holistically. The focus is not just on how state institutions sought to regulate social life, but also on how ordinary people used institutions for their diverse purposes. The goal of this methodological approach, based on Lawrence Friedman’s concept of legal culture, is to assess the relative position and interaction of the people, the judiciary, and the law in early modern Germany. Probing the interactions of the court and the residents of Freiberg reveals that the court was primarily a record-keeper and a mediator. For the former, it logged and transcribed all manner of transactions: peace pacts, loans, and house purchases; and Freibergers readily turned to the court to get a formal record of an obligation. For the latter, the court was rarely a site of punishment, rather it was a place where conflicts were regulated, and bonds forged. At court, Freibergers fostered ties to one another. Neither of these roles, record-keeper or mediator, are ones traditionally ascribed to early modern courts. Only by considering by the culture of a court does either become apparent.

The present study offers an in-depth examination of the institutional framework within which money operated as an economic agent in the Roman empire. Analyses focus on Classical Roman Law as reflected in the writings of Roman jurists from the second and early-third centuries CE. The legal sources are augmented by documentary materials, which give independent, albeit sporadic, evidence for actual practice. The thesis follows current trends in economic history to adopt approaches advanced by New Institutional Economics (NIE), while generally accepting Keynesian claims for the endogenous nature of money. Its innovative contribution is in suggesting a complexity-oriented approach to modelling the behaviour of money in the Roman empire; seeing money as a complex economic phenomenon, i.e. as a diverse and manifold apparatus which allows for new patterns of activity to be created by individuals, who self-adjust their use of it to the continuously evolving system in which they operate. The thesis is divided into four parts. The first is introductory. The second concerns the legal institutional framework for economic interaction; with discussions generally organised according to Roman legal categorisation, and considers developments in the role allocated to money in legal definitions for exchange transaction. The third part examines two study-cases of money-related institutions, namely, the instrument of interest, and interest-bearing deposits, demonstrating how money stimulated the interconnected dynamics within and between legal traditions operating under Roman regime. The fourth and last part is dedicated to a more general analysis of the complex nature of Roman money, attempting to model the historical example of Roman money with the help of complexity-oriented visualisations.

This study investigates the ownership and leasing of plots of land by women in four regions of England throughout the nineteenth century including Oxfordshire and surrounding counties (agricultural); West Yorkshire (industrial); London (the metropolis); and Durham ( mining). Innovative research was linked to standard econometric analysis utilising a new source of information about land, namely the books of reference produced by the railway companies. These books had unique advantages, particularly as legal documents scrutinised by Parliament and the public. Information was compiled about 23,966 plots including their uses and details of ownership, leasing and occupation; with a minimum sample of 400 plots per region, per decade. The women were recorded when identified in the documents as owners, lessors or lessees. The study compares the uses of plots with a woman owner or lessee with plots owned by men or institutions. The influence of parish characteristics and the roles of common law and equity on women’s plot ownership are considered, especially the effects of the Married Women’s Property Acts of 1870 and 1882. On average women owned 12.4 per cent of the sampled plots and leased 3.8 per cent, with regional variations. Plot usage and location were important at regional and parish level with women adapting their ownership to local economic conditions. Differences were found between the uses of women-owned plots and those owned by men and institutions. The greatest percentage of women-owned plots everywhere were owned or leased by women with no male or institutional co-owners. There was a multi-regional, long-term time trend towards a greater involvement of women in plot ownership during the century, with a spike in women’s ownership in Yorkshire and London during the Railway Mania. The Married Women’s Property Act of 1870 reduced women’s ownership of plots in every region except London, whereas the 1882 Married Women’s Property Act had mixed effects across the regions. Overall, the research challenges the view that legal and social constraints confined women’s ownership of land to wealthy widows and spinsters and shows that ownership was far more widespread than has been supposed.

This thesis aims to improve historical knowledge of Australian refugee policy between 1976 and 1983, a unique and transitional moment in the nation’s history and in international refugee movements. The discussion will be based on original evidence drawn from archival records and oral history interviews, and informed by a broad literature which recognises that refugee policy is a product of varied political imperatives and historical context. First, Chapter Three reveals that because the Fraser government could not deport the Indochinese boatpeople who sailed to Australia, it sought to approve their refugee status in order to legitimate its announcements that only ‘genuine’ refugees were being admitted. In doing so, the Fraser government was required to defend the processing of boat arrivals to the public and within the bureaucracy. Chapter Four finds that historical and political considerations informed the Fraser government’s choice not to reject or detain boat arrivals but to instead introduce legislation against people smuggling. The chapter presents new evidence to disprove claims expressed in recent academic and media commentary that the government’s Immigration (Unauthorised Arrivals) Act 1980 (Cth) marked a particularly harsh stance and that passengers on the VT838 were deported without due process, and draws from ideas within the literature concerning the need for states to promote the integrity of the refugee concept. Chapter Five contributes to international literature on refugee status determination procedure by studying the Australian government’s assessment of non-Indochinese. Through a dataset created from UNHCR archives it is found that the quality of briefing material and political considerations could influence deliberations on individual cases. Chapter Six contributes to literature on in-country processing, revealing how Australia’s programme in Chile and El Salvador was a means of diversifying the refugee intake but caused tensions between the Department of Immigration and the Department of Foreign Affairs.

The main theme of this thesis is the social, economic and political response of a single community to economic dislocation in the interwar years. The community under consideration is Clydebank., The thesis is divided into several parts. Part I establishes the development of the burgh and considers the physical framework of the community, mainly in the years before 1919. The town's characteristics are examined in terms of population structure and development between the world wars. In the last part of this section there is a review of the economic structure of the burgh and changes occurring in it between 1919 and 1939. In Part II consideration is given to the actual extent and form of the unemployment affecting Clydebank at this time, and comparison is made with other communities and geographic/economic areas. Attention is then focussed more narrowly on the actual individuals suffering unemployment in the burgh during the 1930s, in an attempt to personalise the experience of the unemployed. Part III reviews central and local government responses to the situation in which Clydebank found itself oetween 1919 and 1939. Central government policies discussed include unemployment insurance, public works, the Special Areas legislation, assistance in the construction of the 534 "Queen Mary" and the direction of financial support to areas of particular need. Amongst local authority actions described are additional local support for the poor, public works, efforts to attract new industry to the town, attempts to deal with the housing problem which was particularly acute at times of high unemployment and measures to maintain health standards in the community. In Part IV the responses of the community to unemployment and government policies are detailed. The burgh's commercial sector is surveyed as are developments in leisure provision, religion, temperance and crime, and local politics. A number of individual responses are also given consideration such as migration, commuting, changes in birth and marriage rates and suicide.