This thesis examines how New Labour policymakers and Black and Minority Ethnic (BME)-led race equality organisations articulated and connected themes of nation, multiculture and ‘race’ equality in policy discourse and discussions over the New Labour period. My study extends previous accounts of New Labour and multicultural discourses by incorporating the significant, but not always influential, role of BME civil society actors in such policy discussions. My research draws on documents and archival material from and interviews with policymakers and race equality actors. I analyse this data using a qualitative thematic approach to discern changing policy discourses and claims about the state of the multicultural nation and the place of race equality within it. In the study I suggest that, after a promising start, New Labour policymakers came to understand the relationship between nation, multiculture and race equality as a troubled and troubling one. At the same time, the three BME-led race equality organisations that I focus on in my research struggled to counter government discourses of parallel lives, community cohesion and Britishness that were detrimental to efforts to combat race inequality. Policy and policy discursive interventions of BME-led race equality organisations were thrown off course not only by New Labour but also by ‘new ethnicities’, and the idea of complex and diverse BMEness’. BME-led organisations have struggled to engage with this latter destabilisation, let alone develop a politics capable of overcoming such issues. I therefore end my thesis by suggesting that, if BME-led race equality organisations are to shape policy debates on race equality, there is much hard labour and re-thinking about BMEness and re-organising for them still to do.

Much of the literature has framed the study of Taiwanese politics in terms of the persistent existence of certain informal institutions like factional politics, patron-clientism, heijin (political corruption), and finally, heidao (gangsters). These institutions are perceived to be more characteristic of a third world country, and inappropriate to Taiwan, given it's advanced economy and democratic system. This thesis looks at the contemporary phenomenon of heidao. Heidao, in the strict sense of the word, are a new class of wealthy and powerful people from the countryside who have accumulated their wealth through dubious means and then run for political office. The thesis relies primarily on ethnographic research and it focuses on the life histories of a few rural politicians who are reputed to be heidao, namely Legislator Yen Ching-piao of Shalu Town, and the Jen brothers from Dajia Town, Taichung County. This thesis borrows the 'big man' or 'man of prowess' model from the traditional political culture of Southeast Asia. It compares the Taiwanese heidao with the Thai chaopo (godfather), rural politicians from Taiwan and Thailand. I argue two things. First, that contemporary anxiety in Taiwan about heidao represents a clash between two incompatible notions of politics and governance. The dominant notion involves contemporary western ideas of politics based on the ideal of good governance, transparency, integrity, and honesty, which predominate in the urban areas. The other involves traditional notions of power and politics based on the ideal of a benign and paternalistic patron which is prevalent in the rural areas. Second, scholarly literature portrays Taiwanese politics as anomalous. This is a result of using idealized categories of politics and governance that are characteristic of a western liberal democracy. The anomaly disappears when we look at the country within the broader context of the traditional political culture of Southeast Asia, Heidao are really Southeast Asian big men.

This research examines the presence of organised criminal groups in prison and its influence on inmate’s interaction and on the prison system of Rio de Janeiro. Information collected from a series of in-depth interviews with prisoners and ex-prisoners, members and non-members of the criminal groups and authorities of the criminal justice system, suggests that the current social organisation of prisons is working favourably towards the further development of organised crime and deviant behaviour. Prisoners are subordinated not only to the prison administration but also to the gang leaders. If a convict had no links with drug trafficking prior to incarceration, they definitely create one behind bars. Ninety-eight percent (98%) of interviewees from the sensitive sample engaged in drug trafficking while in prison. Off-brand inmates, those who are the less conspicuous convicts, end up engaging in illegal activities to avoid retaliation, perpetuating then a cycle of violence in a fragmented geopolitical gang space behind bars. Political pressure towards the validity of the classification system stratified by gang affiliation has impacted on the prison administration to create multiple categories of prisoners, which are mutually exclusive. This has had pervasive impacts on penal affairs such as allocation of sentences, lack of vacancies and disruption of prisoner’s routine. The research shows that the State goes beyond classification of inmates by gang affiliation; it has incorporated elements of gang’s violent tradition to assess and influence justice and prisoner’s progression. This study offers an interesting scope for a comparative analysis through the study of anti-prison gang strategies. Experiences around the globe have been driven to target gangs with racial and ethnical rivalries. Prison gangs in this study are devoted to a more capitalist goal: the monopoly of illegal drug markets in the streets. Such understandings and contextualizing make a significant contribution to re-examining the role of inmate culture as well as the value of contemporary penal reforms designed to making the penal institutions more responsive and interventionist in addressing inmate needs.

The thesis investigates the policy-making process underpinning the poverty-alleviation programmes created in Chile during the 1990s and the first part of the 2000s. Three programmes developed by the governing Concertacion Alliance during this period are selected. The un-researched characteristic of this subject in Chile is the main reason for choosing this topic. The thesis maps and explains the policy-making process of the three programmes, by identifying main events, actors and mechanisms behind the unfolding of events. Data is obtained from 32 interviews applied to key process actors to obtain their narratives of the processes. The Multiple Streams Model of the policy-making process is employed as theoretical framework. Results highlight that the processes occur in a highly closed fashion inside government. The main actors involved are the President and his ministers who are able to command the events that lead to the creation of a new programme. The political stream plays a fundamental role in the process as the pro-equity approach of the governing coalition creates a window of opportunity for the introduction of poverty-alleviation programmes. The problems stream is also important, thanks to the availability of poverty statistics that are produced every two years by the Concertacion Alliance governments. However, the processes differ from the Multiple Streams Model as no independent policy stream was found to exist. Instead, solutions are created by governments in a punctuated manner and during a short timeframe to accomplish political deadlines, when the government considers that the problem deserves to be addressed. The absence of a policy stream is explained by the policy monopoly that the government enjoys in the poverty arena, where no policy contestants exist. In particular, Chilean social policy experts constitute a small and non-articulated group of individuals usually excluded from the policymaking process, enabling the government to ignore them.

This thesis reports the findings of an empirical research project investigating deprivation in a predominantly rural area of southern Scotland. Many of the social and economic problems afflicting rural communities have been investigated in recent research, and this thesis makes a contribution to this body of work by addressing the relative paucity of primary information about rural deprivation in Scotland. An extensive review of the literature on deprivation reveals that it is usually discussed with specific reference to either city or predominantly urban areas. In this study the focus was on the varied manifestations of deprivation experienced by those living in the rural areas and in small towns in an attempt to shed light on how deprivation is perceived in those two types of geographical area. Analysis of the survey data involved the use of both qualitative and quantitative methods. Considerable differences were found between the experiences and perceptions of what constitutes deprivation in small towns and in the neighbouring countryside. The findings suggested that experiences of deprivation are to a considerable extent place specific; there was not a simple 'urban' - 'rural' split. It was also apparent that small towns may have more in common with larger urban areas when it comes to socio-economic problems such as deprivation than they do with their rural hinterland. In attempting to relate experiences of deprivation to the range of anti-deprivation initiatives operating in south-west Scotland, it was found that its economic components are almost always addressed. However, other issues commonly identified by people living in disadvantaged area's have yet to be similarly addressed. The main conclusion to be drawn from this study is that while a rural-urban split exists in residents' experiences of deprivation, individual geographical areas of the same type (i.e. rural or urban areas) display unique characteristics. From this it follows that policies to counteract deprivation and associated socio-economic problems must take account of the specific needs of individual areas rather than rely on more generalised formulations.

This study is concerned with the development of the tenants' movement and housing struggles in post-War Glasgow. It seeks to locate the changes relating to housing struggles in the context of wider social and economic changes within the `locality'. Glasgow's public sector tenants' movement has been in existence for over 60 years and there is a wealth of undocumented housing struggles that have played an important part in the history of working class life in the city. The analysis taken in this dissertation seeks to conceptualise these housing struggles in a framework based around the concept of social reproduction. It is with a class analysis of relations of reproduction, as opposed to consumption cleavages, that we can understand housing struggles at a local level.

Participation has been linked with better health outcomes for young people in a range of settings, with an extensive literature extolling the benefits of a participatory approach to youth-focused HIV-prevention programs in particular. However the processes of participation, and how the ideals outlined in the participation literature can be achieved in the difficult circumstances in which many youth health promotion programs operate, are less often discussed. This thesis responds to calls for more nuanced documentation of situated participatory practices by developing a detailed and contextualised analysis of youth participation in a Photovoice project in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea. The analysis draws upon data generated over a ten-month period (photo-stories, individual interviews, written accounts of participation, group discussions, artefacts produced during participatory analysis, and field-notes) to describe how participation in a project of self-reflection and self-representation can support dialogical engagement and the demonstration of critical thinking. The thesis explores the relationship between these psycho-social changes and young people’s subsequent ability to enact strategies to improve their health and well-being. Findings challenge idealised representations of youth participation, demonstrating that young people’s ability to act is mediated and bounded by the health-related contexts in which they live. They also demonstrate a disconnect between youth health priorities and the priorities of the programs ‘targeting’ them; and point to the importance of HIV-prevention programs working to support ‘in-between’ spaces where youth and community leaders can connect in order to affect wider social environments. In providing a detailed examination of a Photovoice process, this thesis extends the theoretical basis of an increasingly popular participatory research tool. In analysing the relationship between young people’s participation in a research project and their ability to take action on health, this thesis also contributes to social psychological understandings of the pathways through which participation may impact upon health, and in particular affect efforts to prevent HIV.

This research examines the trajectories that young men and women in Mexico experienced during their transition to adulthood in the 1980s and 1990s. The study, particularly, considers two groups of significant markers of adulthood: social transitions (leaving education, entry into the labour force, parental home leaving), and family formation transitions (first sex, first partnership, and first birth). The thesis investigates the ways that these transitions were experienced among Mexican youth: first, by establishing the main interactions between social transitions and family formation transitions to adulthood; and second, by providing evidence of the main trajectories followed by young men and women in their passage to adulthood from a life course perspective. Applying Event History techniques to retrospective data from the 2000 Mexican National Youth Survey, results show that young men and women experienced different patterns of trajectories in their transit to adulthood marked by a strong gender component. While young men showed a lag between the experience of social and family formation transitions characterized by work-oriented trajectories, young women often experienced almost simultaneous occurrence of social and family formation transitions leading to predominantly family-oriented trajectories to adulthood. Differences between urban and rural respondents were also found to be significant. Another conclusion of the study is that many young people found great difficulty in obtaining their first job after leaving education, leading to high unemployment. Despite the lack of employment opportunities for Mexican young people, family formation transitions were not substantially postponed until later ages unlike many developed nations. The findings also confirm the importance of education on the experience of transitions to adulthood. The study shows the need to restructure the Mexican educational system to enable young people to work and study simultaneously, without having to leave education immediately after entering the labour force. These findings highlight the need to strengthen and reinforce current education policies to stimulate labour force participation of young women.

This thesis explores the ways in which social workers conceptualise childhood, and the significance of those conceptualisations in the development of child-directed practice. The research described in the thesis was primarily carried out in Iceland working directly with Icelandic social work practitioners. The methodology adopted used an action research approach in which young people, who had interacted with social services, were engaged as research consultants. The thesis evaluates such an approach paying particular attention to the approach as a method for generating new knowledge, and its usefulness for the development of social work practice. The concept of child-directed practice brings together theoretical debates within the sociology of childhood with practical insights from the action based research findings to develop an approach to social work practice that is directed by children in their interests and by principles of social justice and equality. A constructionist grounded theory perspective was taken in the data gathering and analysis. The action research approach involved three key elements. First, the conceptualisations of childhood of the social work practitioners, and how this affected their practice, were ascertained through qualitative semi-structured interviews and group discussions. Secondly, the young people, acting as a group, were engaged to ascertain their views on how they would like to see social workers treat them. Their knowledge and perspectives were central to the data gathering and intervention with practitioners. Thus, in the third and final element, social work practitioners attempted to develop their practice so that it became more child-directed. Changes in their conceptualisations of children caused shifts in power and control, making their working relationships with children more reciprocal and equal. Evaluation of the action based research approach showed that it can act as a catalyst to changes in social work practice that are beneficial to children.

This thesis analyses the situation of refugees from Bosnia-Herzegovina that arrived in Britain as part of an organised programme. It represents a contribution towards the theoretical understanding of refugees, and develops and refines the theories of other authors. The author used field research methods based on techniques developed in ethnographic studies to generate empirical evidence on the social organisation of Bosnian refugees in Britain. Throughout the thesis it is argued that the situation of the refugees can only be understood through an examination of the influences affecting the refugees, before, during, and after their arrival in Britain. At every stage of the refugees' experience, control over the course of their lives has been taken away from the refugees. The war that took place in Bosnia-Herzegovina became constructed as an ethnic conflict, although there was no strong Muslim identification before the war. The programme removed options over country and place of residence, and created a measure of dependency. Longer term policies of community development, originally designed to meet the perceived needs of labour migrants, have been directed towards the refugees and imposed a model of organisation. Combined with temporary protected status, this has removed control from the refugees and prevented the formation of a new collective or individual positive life project. Refugees from Bosnia-Herzegovina represent a new type of refugee in Joly's typology. This is a type of refugee that had no collective project in the country of origin, and also no collective project in the country of exile, and that is unable to make a decision on return because of the constraints around them.