Thesis advisor: Shanta Pandey / Thesis advisor: Vincent Fusaro / It is well established that employment conditions are a key determinant of health, including mental health. Research conducted in the wake of deindustrialization and the onset of neoliberal reforms—reforms that significantly weakened the collective bargaining power of workers—has consistently shown that job loss, perceived job insecurity, and temporary employment increase the risk of depression, anxiety, and psychological distress. The secular erosion of standard employment relationships compounded by specific exigencies introduced by the Great Recession (2007-2009) has resulted in a concerning rise in precarious employment: employment forms characterized by stagnant wages, irregular working hours, and lack of fringe benefits are now the norm rather than the exception. This dramatic change in the conditions of employment has been especially challenging for Millennials, many of whom were entering the workforce at the time of the Great Recession and experienced high levels of unemployment. As the converging challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, technological advances, and inequality threaten to further destabilize Millennials’ participation in the labor market, research is needed to better understand the interplay between precarious employment and mental health as well as risk and protective factors for mental wellbeing. To date, few studies examining the health implications of precarious employment have focused on young adults. Moreover, research on the relationship between job precarity and mental health has relied primarily on cross-sectional studies. This dissertation contributes to this literature, leveraging nationally representative panel data from the Panel Study on Income Dynamics to 1) identify subgroups of precarious employment (PE) trajectories among Millennials residing in the United States following the Great Recession (2009-2019); 2) examine associations between PE trajectory subgroups and mental distress; and 3) explore the moderating role of social welfare benefits on the relationship between PE and mental distress. A total of 1303 Millennial respondents were included in the study. Growth mixture models identified three subgroups of PE trajectories across the study period: nearly three-quarters of respondents belonged a subgroup experiencing stagnant employment quality, a second subgroup (16% of the sample) faced declining employment quality, while a third subgroup (12% of respondents) enjoyed steadily rising employment quality. Millennials in the negative EQ growth class compared to the low- and high-growth subgroups were more likely to have lower levels of educational attainment; to be divorced, separated, or widowed; to be low-skill, white- or low-skill, blue-collar workers; and to have mothers with less than a high school level of education. With respect to the relationship between precarious employment and psychological distress, mixed-effects logistic regression models revealed that fewer years of education and widowed/divorced/separated marital status (compared to married/cohabitating status) were associated with higher odds of severe psychological distress. Models examining moderate psychological distress outcomes, meanwhile, demonstrated that Millennials who were younger, female, experiencing declining EQ over time, and single/never married or divorced/separated/widowed had higher odds of endorsing symptoms of moderate mental distress. Contrary to expectations, none of the three social welfare policies—minimum wage, state EITC rate, and state unemployment insurance replacement rate—conferred a moderating effect on the relationship between EQ and psychological distress. These findings have important implications for social work research, policy, and practice. Beyond filling an important gap in our understanding of the ways in which the shifting landscape of work contributes to young adults’ mental health, the study’s attention to the moderating role of social welfare policies on the association between PE and mental wellbeing should serve as a stepping stone for future research aimed at elucidating policies that can best protect the mental health of workers in a political and economic climate marked by accelerating technological change and rising labor contentiousness. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2024. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Social Work. / Discipline: Social Work.

No / This article makes critical observations about the popular examination of dying and its care, identifies the key challenges to modern dying, and argues for a public health approach to end-of life care. Only by adopting a global and non-clinical perspective on the human experience of dying can we address people’s concerns where these arise—in their own homes and workplaces—and to offer alternatives to the more radical choices offered by modern medicine.

This thesis examines narratives of the future and their impact on late-modern constructions of the self. The argument is made that neo-liberal narratives have effectively promoted an idealised narrative of the self that views the achievement of a desired future for individuals as primarily a function of personal autonomy, effort and intention. The thesis contends that this narrative is promoted in society through multiple trajectories involving an array of social forms and institutions. Education policy and media are considered as exemplary examples of the sorts of social forms and institutions where this idealising narrative is promoted. A limited range of education policy narratives and media narratives are then examined. The position is taken that the adoption of neo-liberal ideals of the self relies on a supporting context of other narratives of the self and society. These are explored. A governmental framework (Rose, 1998) is used to consider the implications for child and adult subjects of the adoption of an individualised culpability for future success, or lack of success within what is argued is a subjectifying discursive regime of the self. Resistance to this governing regime is considered from a number of theoretical perspectives. The contention is made that effective resistance is likely to be local, partial and continuous rather than involving or resembling a disjunctive ideological shift. The thesis engages with post-structuralist ideas and hence is written from a perspective that necessarily incorporates a local and personal narrative.

This study set out to answer the question: In what ways do social work practitioners in Philippine municipalities manage competing mandates? The research question was informed by a number of theoretical propositions outlined in Chapter 1 and a particular construction of social work as described in Chapter 2. The approach taken was to ground the study in a particular practice setting, with the study participants being social workers serving as Municipal Social Welfare and Development (MSWD) Officers in Philippine municipalities.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 517-547). Also available on the Internet.

No description available.

This work develops an opportunity for transgressive resistance to discursively formed structures of material and theoretical power and closure, based on a methodology of amateurism. The concept of amateurism draws heavily on the writing of Edward Said. This work synthesises Said with a broader corpus of postcolonial theory, following a theoretically postcolonial trajectory which applies the lessons from that referent to an engagement with traditional theoretical and cultural closure. The central thesis of the engagement follows a critique of strong ontology and vertical epistemology, or of expertise. Through an examination of health policy around birth, and sociological approaches to health, that critique is deployed to invigorate a new critical direction for the Left with a focus on subjectivity, social policy, social democracy and substantive citizenship. / Thesis (Ph.D.) - University of Adelaide, School of History and Politics, 2008

This work develops an opportunity for transgressive resistance to discursively formed structures of material and theoretical power and closure, based on a methodology of amateurism. The concept of amateurism draws heavily on the writing of Edward Said. This work synthesises Said with a broader corpus of postcolonial theory, following a theoretically postcolonial trajectory which applies the lessons from that referent to an engagement with traditional theoretical and cultural closure. The central thesis of the engagement follows a critique of strong ontology and vertical epistemology, or of expertise. Through an examination of health policy around birth, and sociological approaches to health, that critique is deployed to invigorate a new critical direction for the Left with a focus on subjectivity, social policy, social democracy and substantive citizenship. / Thesis (Ph.D.) - University of Adelaide, School of History and Politics, 2008

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 517-547).

This dissertation explores the diverging social spending patterns in labour-abundant regimes in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). It is motivated by two main research questions: 1. Why have social spending levels and social policy trajectories writ large diverged so drastically across labour-abundant MENA regimes? 2. How can we explain the market persistence of spending levels after divergence? To answer the first question, this study develops a theory about the emergence of authoritarian welfare states. It argues that autocratic leaders need both the incentives and the abilities to distribute welfare for authoritarian welfare states to emerge. The former are shaped by coalition building dynamics at the onset of regime formation while the latter are conditioned by the external environment. At the level of incentives, broad coalitions emerge in the presence of intra-elite conflict and the absence of salient communal cleavages and, if present jointly, provide a strong incentive for welfare provision. Conversely, a cohesive elite or salient communal division entail small coalitions with few incentives to distribute welfare broadly. At the level of abilities, a strong external threat to regime survival is expected to undermine the ability to provide social welfare in broad coalitions. Facing a 'butter or guns' trade-off, elites shift priority to security expenditures and the population accepts that because no alternative regime could credibly commit to neglecting external defence in the presence of external threats. Only an abundant resource endowment can provide the necessary resources to avert this trade-off. To answer the second question, I rely on two important mechanisms in the welfare state literature to explain path dependance. The first one can broadly be summarised as 'constituency politics' in that beneficiaries of social policies succesfully avert deviations from the spending path in the form of systemic reforms or large-scale spending cuts. Mobilisation of these constituencies should be particularly vigourous if initial advantages conferred to these groups habe been reinforced over time, for instance, because these groups grew in size or got entrenched in the state administration. The second mechanisms are spill-over effects to unintended beneficiaries who can over time become important gatekeepers against path divergence. Methodologically, the study is characterised by a mixed-methods approach which combines quantitative tests with the analysis of qualitative evidence in the form of arhcival material, newspapers, and field interviews. Moreover, the study also follows a multi-level approach in that the viability of the argument is tested comparatively at the cross-country level and process-traced at the micro-level in two in-depth case studies of Tunisia and Egypt.