Navigating difficult family relationships in rural Mongolia
Veronica Gruca discusses the challenges of maintaining family ties in Mongolia in the face of complex relational dynamics.
Relationships, communities and investment: what our recent CRFR blogs tell us
Over the past year, the CRFR blog has hosted contributions from researchers and third-sector partners working across youth work, policing, volunteering and family support. Each blog focuses on a different and unique issue. But as we reviewed the writings, it was striking to see that they all have a shared message about what helps young people, families and communities to thrive.
Rebuilding Trust – How Police and Young Marginalised People Can Shape Better Relationships
Alan Mackie explores one of the most pressing challenges for contemporary policing: how to repair and strengthen relationships between young people and the police in resource-deprived communities.
Small acts, big impact: how communities can support families through everyday challenges
Jean Lowe discusses how communities can support families through everyday challenges, and the reasons that can impact someone’s willingness to offer and/or receive a supportive action.
What Happens to Friendship When We Marry? Insights from Urban India
Himalika Mohanty discusses how marriage and anticipated motherhood reshape friendships among urban middle-class adults in India, particularly for women.
Beyond the Youth Worker: Why Families Are the Missing Link in Youth Work
Olivia Darby discusses their recent research on youth work and family engagement. The WONDER Foundation works in over 20 countries across Africa, Asia, Europe and Latin America to empower women and girls to get the education they need to exit poverty for good.
Muslim women’s entrepreneurial spaces as spaces of care and solidarity in Delhi, India
Entrepreneurship is commonly associated with productivity and performance, infrastructures, and more recently “start-up” culture. But what when entrepreneurship is grounded in informal, home-based, small-scale businesses driven not by capitalistic notions of profit making but instead by feminist notions of care and empathy?
Who Do You Think We Are?: The Seen and Unseen in Family History
Read Yoshinori Kasai on how we search for our roots, uncovering the records, memories, and hidden gaps that shape family histories in Japan and elsewhere.
Thinking of Children’s Socializing
Read Yoshinori Kasai on how children build connections within their communities, drawing own his research on how a traditional folk event once provided an important opportunity for children to socialize.
Beyond Religion: Social Functions of Japan’s Traditional Pilgrimage Groups
Read Yoshinori Kasai on Japan’s traditional pilgrimage associations and their social functions, including the Ise-kō, an organization formed to carry out pilgrimages to the Ise Shrine, one of Japan’s most revered Shinto shrines.
Youth work in Scotland: Lifelong impact, urgent challenges
Last week, Youth Scotland released ‘Acting on Funding’, highlighting the huge challenge of securing sustainable funding for youth work. Earlier this year, with Youth Link Scotland, we published The Power of Youth Work, a longitudinal biographical study which explored how youth work shapes lives far beyond adolescence. Together, these studies tell a clear story: youth work matters, not just in the moment but across the lifecourse.
Is it possible to truly understand the value of volunteering?
Read Bethany Sikes, Research and Policy manager at Volunteer Scotland, on the challenges of articulating the impact of volunteering, and work carried out with social value specialists State of Life to evidence the difference volunteering makes to people’s wellbeing.
Caring Together Yet Apart: Emotional and Spatial Negotiations in Informal Childcare Work in Istanbul, Turkey
Most research on migrant care work traces women’s journeys from the Global South to the Global North, where they care for someone else’s children while leaving their own behind. But what happens when this story unfolds within the Global South, in a context marked by a care deficit and an informal care economy? Read Dr Canan Neşe Kınıkoğlu on recent research in Istanbul, which stands out as a significant hub for migrant care within the Global South.
“The Pill. Angry chuckles.” Exploring contracepting through poetry
Marie Larsson has been researching contraceptive experiences and practices for almost 10 years, primarily using “traditional” qualitative methods. In this blog, Marie reflects on her new project, delivering a creative workshop using guided poetry methods, targeted an interdisciplinary audience with a particular interest in, or experience of working with, issues related to contraception, sexual and reproductive health, or pregnancy and STI prevention.
Baos and Bagpipes: Exploring sibling influence on the lived experience of Scottish-born Chinese individuals
Louise Ho has explored how, in the context of the Chinese diaspora in Scotland, the role of siblings extends beyond childhood companionship, delving into the complexities of cultural identity while also reflecting on their own experiences.
“My Father Told Me That If I Didn’t Get Married, I’d Be Done For.”
I am Chinese and it seems that I have always lived under the persistent prodding of my elders. From childhood, when I was urged to speak and walk, to my teenage years, when the pressure was on to study hard, and now, as an adult, to marry.
Young People and Contraception
Throughout human history, there has always been a desire and need to contracept. That is, a desire to prevent or be able to plan pregnancies or prevent against sexually transmitted infections (STIs).
In this blog, Dr Marie Larsson introduces her new research briefing, which outlines and summarises the key findings and insights from her research on young people’s experiences and practices with contraceptives in Sweden.
Struggling families in Britain: Addressing the absence of ethnic minority lone mother families in scholarly and policy work
Sarah Akhtar Baz writes on her doctoral research, which aimed to attend to the neglect of Pakistani and Bangladeshi lone mother families in both scholarly and policy work, focusing on the lived experiences of lone mothers living in a Northern English city.
How Streamers and Viewers Offer Support and Care on Twitch
The rise of live streaming platforms creates new ways for people to connect with one another, and for the provision of support and care that is completely mediated by technology.
Read more on Eva Duncanson’s research, which looks at the relationships between streamers and their viewers on the platform Twitch.
Family Estrangement and the Evolution of Social Policies to Recognise It
There are a growing number of media articles seeking to address a ‘new epidemic’ of family relationships going ‘no contact’. However, there has been surprisingly little research on why family ties are not lifelong and the impact of this.
How is the value of co-producing research understood?
Helen Berry began her doctoral research just over a year ago, exploring the co-production of research. But her journey through the subject matter began before that.
Read more on the challenges of defining co-produced research, what we know of its outcomes, and how Helen’s project is expected to add to collective efforts in troubling reductive framings of research ‘impact’.
What is care? And what does it look like? Co-creating the ‘Images of Care’ exhibition.
When you hear the word “care,” what images come to mind? Read more about a brilliant exhibition, ‘Images of Care’, which was developed out of extensive participatory research with the desire to show a more balanced view of care in later life.
“It’s all human stories” – Teachers’ Relational Agency to Accommodate Migrant Students in Scotland, Finland and Sweden
The Teaching That Matters for Migrant Students (TEAMS) Project aimed to uncover how teachers make use of relational agency in supporting migrant students in Scotland, Finland, and Sweden. Read Cecilia Gialdini, the projects Postdoc Fellow, on the projects findings.
Reconceptualising Resilience – A CRFR Seminar
At our final seminar last term, CRFR had the pleasure of welcoming our Associate Director, Lisa McDaid, and her colleague Stephanie Wyeth, from the University of Queensland to reflect and reconceptualise ‘resilience’. In this blog, CRFR Co-Director Emma Davidson, and CRFR PhD Student Maddi Bunker, offer there insights from the day.
NETREP Project Update
Have you thought about having (or not having) children or starting a family? This is the question we discussed with 55 participants interviewed in Scotland, Finland and Portugal in our ongoing research project.
Launch of Children and Society Special issue – Conceptualising and Researching Child and Youth Activism
We are thrilled to announce the launch of a new Children & Society special issue, ‘Conceptualising and Researching Child and Youth Activism’. Co-edited by colleagues at the Children and Young People Thematic Hub
Welcome to our newest CRFR Associate Directors
Welcome to our newest CRFR Associate Directors, Fiona McQueen and Guanyu Jason Ran, who introduce themselves and provide information on their research interests.
Shruti Chaudhry: CRFR’s new director
Shruti Chaudhry is Chancellor’s Fellow in sociology at the School of Social and Political Science at the University of Edinburgh. She completed her PhD at Edinburgh sociology. Before arriving at Edinburgh, she worked in the field of gender and development in India.
Opportunities for connection and support around self-managed abortion
Abortion provision in the United Kingdom has undergone significant changes in recent years. 2018 saw permissions in Britain for home use of the second of two medications used in early medication abortion (EMA). And, in 2019, abortion was decriminalised in Northern Ireland.
Bleeding in the Field: Reflections on Fieldwork and Menstruation
Looking back at my fieldwork, I would have perhaps not felt that dilemma when I had to go out to meet a participant while experiencing excruciating pain, had I been primed to consider the possibility of such situations beforehand. I was not prepared to tackle this ‘problem’ during my research because of the entrenched notion of researchers as able bodies with the ability to align with the institutional level of productivity at a compressed time.
Imagine a Man: thinking about positive masculinity
The purpose of the research was to develop and deepen our understanding of the issues affecting boys and young men, learning how they felt about masculinity and growing up and the impact on risk taking. We found a more positive and complex story than we’d expected.
Companionship and family-building in the complex planetary future
What might the future look like in terms of how family and intimate lives are composed? How do cultural expectations of childbearing collide with changing family forms and challenging environmental, social, and economic contexts, and what does this mean for traditional notions of ‘the family’?
Newest CRFR Co-Directors, Michelle King-Okoye and Kaveri Qureshi
Our newest CRFR Co-Directors, Michelle King-Okoye and Kaveri Qureshi share some information about themselves, their research interests and their plans for CRFR.
Launch of a new Research Network on children’s human rights
Scotland is making great strides in implementing children’s human rights and human rights more broadly. To maximise the impact of these ground-breaking changes, Scotland’s research community needs to be poised to critique, support and evaluate this implementation.
Academic bodies – a reflection on the experience of pregnancy during PhD studies
My pregnancy wasn’t planned.
I was in the middle of writing my MSc by research dissertation and I just asked – the universe, God, the small bundle of cells growing inside me – “please, let me have this. Please don’t betray me now, we came this far.”
How do we choose between destitution and exploitation?
When a man drove up to Mark in an expensive car and offered him work, Mark thought it sounded excellent. It was 2009 and he’d fallen on hard times. In fact, he was homeless. The man said he’d pay Mark £50 a day, give him food and somewhere to stay.
A space for quiet activism: A ‘public living room’ in an Edinburgh library
What comes to mind when you think of activism? People gluing themselves to a road? Or, shouting and chanting with banners outside parliament? Did you know there is a quieter, more hidden form of organised political action which fosters and mobilises relationships as a key lever of change?
The secret pathways of relationality: uncoupling beyond the couple
‘What a foamy mixture a couple is. Even if the relationship shatters and ends, it continues to act in secret pathways, it doesn’t die, it doesn’t want to die’. So observes Olga, the protagonist in Elena Ferrante’s crushing novel The days of abandonment. Olga’s observations come from within the scene of her unravelling
Just the fault of religion?
Are some organisations more likely than others to sexually abuse children, due to their unique beliefs and behaviour? Or is it the risk factors they share with other, different organisations which enable abuse to continue unchecked?
Dis-connected lives? COVID-19’s impact on rural Scottish communities
Professor Philomena de Lima considers the many ways in which rural communities have been affected by the pandemic, while also offering some of her own insights of life in COVID-19 times from a Highlands and Islands perspective.…
How parents organised work and childcare during the pandemic
For the majority, the COVID-19 pandemic is an unprecedented situation. It has affected every sphere of life including work, education, leisure, and childcare. Parents have been more likely than non-parents to be furloughed and to have reduced income. Indeed, more than 30% of parents reported reduced income in the first three months of the pandemic, although this ratio had decreased to 17% by December 2020.
The Legacy of Orkney for Child Protection
Thirty years ago on 27 February at 7 am, police and social workers took nine children from four family homes on South Ronaldsay, Orkney, under Place of Safety Orders. These cited group sexual activity, including “ritualistic music, dancing and dress”. The case, with its “dawn raids,” became a cause celebre – and remains so to this day.…
Looking to capture practices of intimacy in times of social distancing
In Japan, COVID-19-time has been marked by avoidance of “the 3 Cs“: closed spaces, crowds and close-contact situations. The term, selected late last year as the most popular new word of 2020, encapsulates governmental advice, recommended but not legally enforced.…
Children’s hearing system fails to address child sexual exploitation
Research by Barnardo’s Scotland and the Scottish Children’s Reporter Administration considered 44 cases where child sexual exploitation (CSE) was referenced in reports (mostly by police or social work). They also considered 30 more cases where researchers identified the child as a very likely victim.…
Inclusion of parents and LGBTQ youth in teen dating violence research and prevention programs
In North America, teen dating violence among adolescents is a significant health concern. LGBTQ youth disproportionately experience bullying, peer aggression, suicide and peer harassment. In the United States, 1 in 9 adolescent women and 1 in 12 adolescent males have experienced a form of TDV…