This thesis considers the role of community media in contemporary media policy developments of Anglophone Sub-Saharan Africa. The study is broadly located within the discourse on ‘shapers' of media policy developments. The empirical materials draw upon various case studies of media regulation and community press and broadcasting media campaigns in South Africa, Ghana, and Nigeria. The case studies were conducted using mixed methods approach in a qualitative way. The methodological logics underpinning data presentation and analysis are explanation building and cross-case synthesis. The thesis shows that there have been substantial media policy changes with progressive effects across Anglophone Sub-Saharan Africa in the last two decades. Enabled by the growing deregulation of media environments, there is a robust and complex culture of community media in the region. Community media institutions, working alongside a plethora of allies and drawing on a range of communication and participatory platforms, are exerting significant impacts on media policy decisions. The degree of their effectiveness, however, is affected by political, legislative, and economic processes, as well as by differences in technology, business philosophies, available funding regimes, and structures for audience participation. The engagements of community media with governments in media deregulations have established a new model for understanding media policy and for media deregulations. But, regardless of the changes in media policy, there are still specific policy concerns that underline what brings additional pressures to community media. The study concludes, firstly, that the contribution of community media to policy making still requires greater public recognition. Secondly, that there is need for the pressures on community media to be quickly redressed in order to improve their effectiveness as policy activists. This could be achieved through: a new understanding of media policy as advanced by alternative media organizations; an ‘open' administrative approach to inform participatory policy decision-making; the expansion of protective frameworks for small media in a bid to preserve their emancipatory potency; and the use of social and digital media to strengthen campaigns for policy reforms.

The purpose of this qualitative inquiry was to examine retrospective experiences of bullying among a diverse sample of ethnic minority and lesbian, gay, and bisexual college students. This study examined the language that college students used to describe forms of peer aggression that they may have experienced or observed during their elementary, middle school, or high school years. The ways in which they made meaning of their experiences of peer aggression and interpreted effects of such experiences were assessed. The specific meanings that participants attached to the term `bullying' were also explored. This study attended to the influence of multicultural group memberships on language usage and meaning-making of peer aggression. Finally, this inquiry included an exploration of the impact of stigma upon assuming or avoiding personal identification as a victim of peer aggression. This qualitative investigation employed individual interviewing with college students in order to explore the primary research questions and utilized constructivist grounded theory methods and analysis. According to the results, issues of cultural identity and cultural context emerged as strong themes in this investigation. Peer aggression experienced by culturally diverse individuals often involved identity-specific peer interactions which occurred within or emerged out of cultural context. The implications of these results are that attending to culture and context may be crucial to gaining an understanding of the social worlds of minority-identified people and to developing more culturally relevant research and practice. The findings also support calls for continued research on the role of culture in the nature of and meanings associated with bullying. Moreover, the results indicated that the participants tended to minimize experiences and outcomes of bullying and to distance themselves from stigmatized victim identities. These factors may undermine constructions of bullying as a social problem and thus warrant further attention by claims-makers interested in drawing attention to this issue.

This thesis argues that we can better understand the relationship between socio-economic status and subjective wellbeing (SWB) by considering more carefully to whom and how people make comparisons and what is meant by SWB. It questions existing knowledge with new empirical evidence and frameworks for both ‘reference groups’ – the people to whom we (may) make comparisons – and SWB. These contributions are situated within existing social comparison, norm and identity theories from economics and psychology. Using two large datasets from the United States and England, over 300 reference group measures are created. Nearly 4K models are analysed, adjusting for multiple comparisons. Although the results should be interpreted cautiously due to issues of endogeneity, they suggest that upward comparisons to others’ socio-economic attainment do matter for SWB and are almost always negative after accounting for individual attainment and multicollinearity. Comparisons to others of a similar age and to perceptions of those in ‘society’ matter most consistently. Socio-economic attainment in and of itself, however, is not sufficient to improve how people feel even if it improves their thoughts about how well their lives are going, and it is difficult to escape the negative effects of relative socio-economic status. Negative effects are evident across the distributions of SWB and absolute socio-economic status, for both women and men, and across age groups. It is not possible to dismiss the idea that comparisons to others’ socio-economic attainment do not matter – and yet, achieving socio-economically in absolute terms does not guarantee a life free of misery and full of happy and meaningful moments, either, even if this should be the ultimate aim of people and social policies. These results can inform normative debates about optimal resource distributions in societies and underscore the importance of considering how well people are doing socio-economically in relative and not only absolute terms.

The development strategies being promoted in the EU – Europe 2020 and the 2014-2020 Cohesion Policy – aim to supersede the presumed incompatibility between efficiency and equity through a policy approach tailoring interventions to the key specificities of all territories, including the most disadvantaged. In this view, the socio-economic progress of lagging regions would help keeping under control any increase in inequalities potentially associated with the economic development process. However, the idea of promoting spatially-targeted interventions in economically backward areas has been conceptually questioned, and the effectiveness of the Cohesion Policy programme in poorer regions is yet to be convincingly proven. In the policy framework underpinning EU strategies, a key role is assigned to the quality of regional and local government institutions. Public institutions are conceived as instrumental for identifying and solving the bottlenecks inhibiting economic growth and perpetuating social exclusion in poorer places. Nevertheless, local governments may also be responsible for wastes and misallocations of financial resources. While theoretical contributions on the importance of government institutions for regional and local development abound, empirical evidence on their functioning is scarce. Through which mechanisms they influence the design and outcomes of public policies is unclear. Drawing from cross-country investigations and case-studies in the European context, the four quantitative studies composing this Thesis contribute to shed light on these related issues. Focusing on the United Kingdom, the first paper evaluates the economic and labour market impact of EU Cohesion Policy. Counterfactual analyses demonstrate that EU regional policies may have a beneficial impact on the labour market and growth path of peripheral regions. The study warns over possible negative repercussions of a discontinuation of EU financial support to poorer areas, a result of obvious relevance for the country after ‘Brexit’. By exploiting panel samples of EU regions, the second and third papers shed light on the role of government institutions for the returns of regional investments and for labour market and social conditions in Europe. The second paper examines the link between institutional quality, transport infrastructure investments, and economic growth. It shows that improvements in secondary (local) roads are conducive to a better economic performance only in presence of sound regional governments. The third paper investigates the extent to which the factors at the centre of European growth strategies – institutions, innovation, human capital and transport infrastructure – contribute to the generation of employment and to social inclusion in EU regions. The evidence produced suggests that regional government institutions have been essential to mitigate social exclusion issues in EU regions. The fourth paper focuses on Southern Italy to examine how public finances are distorted by ‘local governments captures’ operated by organised crime. Collusions between mafia and local politics have a significant impact on the selection of investments and on the collection of fiscal revenues. The local policy agenda is modified to the advantage of the interests of organised crime. Overall, the evidence emerging from this Thesis suggests that policy interventions have the potential to boost the economic and labour market performance of the less developed EU regions. However, any favourable policy outcome (both in terms of efficiency and equity) is conditioned by the competence and the goodwill of government institutions responsible for defining development targets and enforcing investment plans. When politicians are conditioned by illegal pressures from criminal groups, investment decisions follow special interests rather than general welfare goals. In turn, inadequate governance harms the economic impact of selected interventions. The results are particularly relevant for the lively debate, within economic geography, on the pre-conditions and policy measures enabling ‘smart and inclusive’ development at the sub-national level.

This thesis explores the channels by which armed conflict may have wider regional effects through socio-economic spill-over effects. Collier (1999) has explored the economic consequences of civil war and other authors such as Murdoch and Sandler (2004) and de Groot (2010) have sought to verify the existence of neighbourhood effects through quantitative, large-N studies. These studies have only found mixed evidence of a net negative effect and have failed to identify the channels through which conflict affects neighbouring countries. This thesis adopts a case study approach to complement the longitudinal studies that have dominated the analysis of spill-over effects, focusing its primary case study on the example of Zambia, which experienced prolonged exposure to conflicts in Rhodesia, Mozambique, Angola and the DRC. Progressing from a survey of potential spill-over effects postulated in the existing literature, this thesis finds that the actual neighbourhood effects on Zambia have been more numerous and more ambiguous than previously acknowledged. In separate chapters on trade and investment, human capital and migration, food security, and military expenditure, this thesis assesses the range of effects by which these conflicts affected Zambia’s development. The thesis argues that trade and investment, agricultural policies, food security, and the escalation of government debt were affected by the pattern of regional instability, often in unexpected ways that defy easy generalisation. In addition to the Zambian case, the thesis offers a comparison with examples from Malawi, Belize, Jordan and Thailand. These supporting case studies demonstrate that the mechanisms identified in the study have widespread relevance in varied conflict situations, but that the net effect of individual channels of spill-over are dependent on local risk factors and policies. The thesis concludes with the provision of a framework outlining the various channels by which spill-over occurs, the risk factors involved, and possible policy responses.

At the centre of one of the most well-known and seemingly intractable societal conflicts in modern history, a movement of Jewish and Palestinian Israelis has tried over the decades to work towards equality, a shared society, and positive inter-group relationships. Within this movement is the community of Wahat al-Salam - Neve Shalom (‘Oasis of Peace’ in Arabic and Hebrew), where 30 Jewish families and 30 Palestinian families have chosen to live together and run educational outreach projects to share their theories about peace and equality with others in Israel-Palestine. Key to this moral endeavour is dialogue, which really means being able to talk through difference; villagers believe in talking with each other despite the political and social barriers that may stand in their way, and making those very socio-political differences into objects of discussion. This thesis, based on 17-months fieldwork in Wahat al-Salam - Neve Shalom, explores three puzzles with implications for the mission of the community as well as anthropological theory. First, what kind of language ideologies underlie the idea of talking as a tool for peace? Second, what concept of difference do community members have, given the potentially negative implications of either emphasizing or downplaying difference? Third, what motivates people in social movements to live their ethical ideals in the everyday? Given the highly politicised context in which the villagers live, and the moral objectives they live by, even seemingly banal linguistic choices can affect relationships. Friendships across difference can be formed, strengthened, or fall apart as the result of verbal and non-verbal interactions — energising those involved when they go well and producing feelings of discomfort or embarrassment when they do not. In sum, this thesis suggests that everyday ethical approaches to difference draw on a mixture of political awareness and sensitivity, explicit theories about the way to engage with others, and the internal dynamics of interactions. These internal dynamics bring up moments of ambiguity that require reflection but also provide the potential for people to challenge their differences and how best to deal with them.

This thesis looks at different aspects of workers mobility, firms organization and the political economy of elections. In the first chapter, I analyse—both theoretically and empirically—the effect of an exogenous credit supply shock to the organization of the firm. The understanding of these mechanisms is fundamental to rationalize the real economic consequences of an aggregate negative shock at the micro level and to understand how the organization of the firm can be the target of specific policies that can attenuate the impact of capital shortage on the real economy. The second chapter considers knowledge as a key determinant to the competitiveness and the success of a firm. I start from the idea that firms and their managers acquire knowledge via a variety of different channels, which are often difficult to track down and quantify. By matching employer-employee data with trade data at the firm level-which is itself a novelty in the trade literature the chapter sheds light on the nexus between the export experience acquired by managers in previous firms and their current firm performance. The third chapter embeds labor mobility in multi-country dynamic version of an Eaton and Kortum framework to explain how migration, together with trade, affects the welfare of natives and migrants in different regions in Europe. In the last chapter, I look at the effect of higher turnout on political outcomes. I exploit the exogenous variation in weather conditions on the day of elections and the geography of a country—Italy—to instrument for turnout. Results of the instrumental variable combined with a first difference model explain how a larger political participation affects the electoral outcome.

This thesis investigates the political economy of employment polarization focusing on the implications of this phenomenon along three main research fronts. The first paper follows a methodology which resembles closely the one adopted by Goos, Manning and Salomons (2014), however it further extends this framework by testing the joint effect of routinization and labour market institutions on employment structures. The evidence provided suggests that the claim of a pervasive technology-induced polarization should be revised in order to comprise a role for the institutional component. The second paper explores whether job polarization has a feedback effect on labour market institutions and policies, so that different degrees of polarization lead to different articulations of institutions at the domestic level, thus reinforcing or altering differences in national models across the European space. The analysis finds that the job polarization experienced by a particular country in the 5 years before a reform instance is consistently among the strongest predictors of reform activity, as significant as other drivers such as GDP growth and government net debt. Moreover, a higher degree of polarization tends to be associated with more deregulation and a decrease in the generosity of the policy measure. The empirical framework is also tested against more conventional taxonomies of welfare capitalism revealing that LMEs tend to harness job polarization dynamics whereas CMEs are incompatible with job polarization which destabilizes the system leading to an increased need for reforms. The final paper asks whether the U-shaped impact on the wage distribution predicted by the job polarization literature has actually materialized in Europe. The findings show that job polarization increased upper-tail inequality (90/50) and decreased lower-tail (50/10) inequality but that employment protection legislation restrained the wage effects.

This thesis analyses agrifood work in Hawaiʻi from an intersectional, gendered perspective. It examines the intersecting social relations of production, investigating how different agrifood practices address, if at all, intersecting social inequalities. It asks, how do agroecological ‘alternatives’ address intersecting inequalities, if at all, in their work? Do forms of ʻalternative agriculture’ offer more ‘gender-inclusive’ forms of work when intersecting inequalities are considered? The research sought to address these questions by analysing three case studies which can be said to represent ‘outliers’ compared to the majority of Hawaiʻi’s agrifood production. It examines particular cases of small and collective agroecological growing practices, as well as examples of transnational seed production. The thesis utilised methods of participant observation, interviews and document analysis in order to understand how different how agrifood work is organised and how different participants in these practices make meaning of their work. It drew on analytical frameworks from agrifood studies of labour and justice and intersectional feminist and anti-imperialist political economic and ecological theorising. The research found that within the cases, agrifood practices are characterised by their diversity, and sought to draw out what I argue are nevertheless important tendencies within them. This entailed analysing the tensions, contradictions and possibilities these cases presented for addressing intersecting inequalities in their work. I showed that, in some ways, agroindustrial seed production offers more formal ʻgender-inclusive’ benefits but that agroecological practices create spaces to challenge gendered-norms on an individual and collective basis. At the same time, I suggested that projects for the recognition and inclusion of women and women’s work are highly limited when they fail to account for the ways gendered inequalities intersect with other differences of class and race, for example. At the same time, I argued that efforts to address intersecting gendered inequalities within agrifood work must attend to these contradictions, failures and possibilities and that doing so is not only revealing of some of the wider logics shaping agrarian ideals and agrifood practices, but potentially of how gendered colonialities operate.

Living arrangements of older people in Europe and the US have changed considerably in the last decades. The impact of these changes on mental health in later life is not fully understood. Making use of interdisciplinary ageing datasets (the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe and the Health and Retirement Study in the US), this thesis aims to evaluate how changes in the way older people live influence depressive symptoms in old age – focusing on two types of living arrangements: intergenerational co-residence and housing tenure. Composed of four empirical chapters, this PhD thesis makes four methodological and substantive contributions to the literature. The first chapter sets the stage for a cross-national comparison of the effect of living arrangements on depression. It assesses the comparability of commonly used depressive symptoms measures in the primary ageing datasets (Euro-D and CES-D scales). The second chapter focuses on the effect of early access to homeownership (before the age of 35) and housing stability on later life depression in the US. The findings suggest that accessing the housing ladder early on in the life course and remaining in that home are associated with both lower levels of depressive symptoms and slower progression of depression in later life. The third empirical chapter investigates the association between changes in housing tenure and depression in later life in the US. Using individual fixedeffects models, this analysis assesses whether within-person changes in housing tenure are associated with within-person changes in depressive symptoms. The analyses show that acquiring a home after 50 brings mental health benefits. The fourth empirical chapter evaluates the effects of intergenerational co-residence in 14 European countries. Using an instrumental variable approach to account for reverse causality, the findings suggest that co-residing with an adult child in the context of the 2008 economic crisis can yield mental health benefits for their parents. Taken together, the results presented in this thesis underscore the importance of living arrangements as key life course determinants of depression in old age.