A robust literature has shown that surveillance disproportionately targets poor people of color through the criminal justice and welfare systems. However, little empirical research traces the ...mechanisms through which surveillance reproduces inequality in other domains, such as subsidized housing, where private actors including property owners and landlords do the work of surveilling tenants. In this article, I apply the theoretical lens of surveillance to the case of subsidized housing to explore the symbolic and material consequences of being monitored at home. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 67 low-income Black mothers in the Sunnyside neighborhood in Houston, Texas, I argue that the scrutiny mothers face in and around their homes reproduces inequality through two key mechanisms. First, surveillance creates a home environment devoid of privacy, that mothers liken to being in prison. Mothers interpret this scrutiny as an effort to control and contain them because of their race, reinforcing racialized notions of presumptive Black criminality. Second, surveillance heightens the material risk for mothers of being caught breaking rules, which paves the way for eventual eviction and exacerbates poverty. Although mothers develop strategies to counter and at times resist disciplinary monitoring, these efforts come with drawbacks that can make surviving poverty harder. Taken together, these findings suggest that being surveilled at home not only diminishes low-income Black mothers’ status in society, but also pushes them into deeper economic precarity. This research extends our understanding of the reach of surveillance into the lives of the poor even in spaces considered to be private.
Questions arose at the 2018 Western States Communication Association conference as to whether mindfulness is necessarily a depoliticizing trend in the communication discipline or whether a critical ...or radical version can be useful for scholar-activists from marginalized locations. A nuanced definition of mindfulness, one that assumes some kind of sustained mindfulness practice, is offered. The definition allows space for or even requires and expects work toward social justice. Although the discipline has been slow to study or consider mindfulness, the essays that follow here explore whether and how mindfulness can be a useful addition to the discipline.
Abstract
The expansion of precarious work in recent decades has motivated a large body of research on its implications for health. While considerable work has focused on whether precarious work ...undermines health, much less is known about why it matters. To fill this gap, this paper offers and tests a conceptual model whereby the effects of precarious work on health are mediated by social marginality, specifically reduced self-efficacy, weaker social integration, and lower social capital. All three mechanisms are understood as both social consequences of precarious work and important determinants of health. Empirically, we use data from the European Social Survey and investigate (1) conditional direct effects of precarious work on self-rated health and (2) extent of mediation via the three mechanisms. Furthermore, we assess the generalizability of the model across five welfare state regimes that prior work has deemed to be important moderators of the health–precarious work relationship. Results indicate precarious work has significant conditional direct effects and indirect effects through all three mediators that significantly reduce effect of precarious work on health. This is robust in the general sample and for four of five welfare state regimes. These findings highlight a previously unexplored vector connecting precarious work to health and indicate that the effects of precarious work on perceptions of self and social relations is a key link to poorer health. The study also expands conceptualization of the broad role of socioeconomic status for health inequalities and furthers understanding of the mechanisms at work.
Abstract
The Roma are Europe’s largest minority group and face extensive discrimination across the continent. Drawing on a survey of Roma and non-Roma households in twelve Central and Eastern ...European countries, we analyze the extent to which legal cynicism, as a cognitive frame, is connected to the avoidance of helpful social institutions. We thus expand existing research on legal cynicism to focus on individuals’ contacts with potentially helpful institutions that can buffer inequality. We conclude that the interplay of legal cynicism and system avoidance, which have provided deep insights into the reproduction of structural disadvantage in American cities, also provide us with international insights into the causes of inequality and minority disadvantage across hundreds of towns in Central and Eastern Europe. In this way, legal cynicism and system avoidance work to reproduce durable inequality.
Un fantasma recorre América Latina: la desaparición forzada es un pasado que se perpetua en el presente, de las dictaduras militares del cono sur y las guerras civiles centroamericanas hasta el ...conflicto armado colombiano y la guerra contra las drogas en México. Más de 80.000 desaparecidos forzados interpelan a la sociedad colombiana que se niega a reconocer. ¿Por qué nos cuesta hacerlo? Este artículo propone siete hipótesis interpretativas para su comprensión más allá de la indiferencia y la normalización social de la violencia: su reconocimiento tardío y esclarecimiento reciente, la participación de agentes de Estado por acción u omisión, la pluralidad de violencias como contexto, la incidencia del negacionismo del conflicto armado, la criminalización y la estigmatización de las víctimas, la marginalidad social y el anonimato de las víctimas, y las asimetrías en las políticas públicas para afrontar los distintos hechos de violencia.
A ghost runs through Latin America: enforced disappearance is a past that is perpetuated in the present, from the military dictatorships of the southern cone and the Central American civil wars to the Colombian armed conflict and the drug war in México. More than 80,000 forced disappeared persons question Colombian society that refuses to recognize. Why are we having trouble doing it? This article proposes seven interpretative hypotheses for their understanding beyond the indifference and social normalization of violence: its late and recent recognition, the participation of state agent by action or omission, the plurality of violence as context, the incidence of denialism from the armed conflict, the criminalization and stigmatization of the victims, the social marginality, the anonymity of the victims, and the asymmetries of public policies to deal with the different types of violent acts.
Abstract
Social networks of minoritized societal groups may be exposed to a unique structural force, namely that of social exclusion. Using a national sample of people in same-sex and different-sex ...relationships in the Netherlands (N = 1,329), this study examines sexual orientation as stratifying factor in social networks. Specifically, it is a comparison of their size and composition. Overall, the networks are similar but a few differences stand out. People in same-sex relationships have larger networks than people in different-sex relationships, which are made up of fewer ties with the family-of-origin and more friends. This lends support to the families-of-choice hypothesis and suggests that people employ resilience strategies, such as alternative community building, to counteract social exclusion from families-of-origin. The results further show that men in same-sex relationships have the fewest same-gender ties in their networks out of both men and women in any relationship type. Overall, the results show that sexual orientation is a dimension worthwhile studying as a stratifying factor of social networks both standing alone and at the intersection with gender.
The aim of this study was to examine the association between multimorbidity and (i) loneliness, (ii) social exclusion and (iii) network size, respectively.
Cross-sectional data from a German ...representative sample of community-dwelling adults aged 40 and over was used (N = 7604). Multimorbidity was indicated with the presence of two or more diseases. Self-rated loneliness was assessed with a short form of the validated De Jong Gierveld Loneliness Scale and social exclusion was measured with a validated scale developed by Bude and Lantermann. Counts of important people in regular contact represented the network size of respondents.
Multimorbidity was present in 68% of the sample. While controlling for potential confounders, multiple linear regression analysis yielded that multimorbidity was associated with increased loneliness (b = 0.08; p < 0.001) and increased social exclusion (b = 0.10; p < 0.01). Multimorbidity was also associated with an increased network size (b = 0.27; p < 0.001).
While there was an association between multimorbidity and increased social exclusion as well as increased loneliness, regressions also revealed an association between multimorbidity and an increased network size. Although the association between multimorbidity and our outcome measures is weak, its complex nature should be investigated further using a longitudinal approach.
As part of the global Smart Cities movement, the Switching on Darwin programme foregrounds digitally enhanced government and urbanism. While promoting its environmental and democratizing potential, ...software-enhanced CCTV, LED lighting and geofencing were among the first components rolled out. In practice, these technologies will impact adversely on Aboriginal people, already disproportionately targeted by criminal justice processes. By integrating multiple ‘smart’ technologies with ‘public safety’ agendas, such Smart City developments provide the potential for intensified criminalization of visible minorities.
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