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First-generation college students in the United States are a unique demographic that is often characterized by the institutions that serve them with a risk-laden and deficit-based model. However, our analysis of the transcripts of open-ended, semi-structured interviews with 22 “first-gen” respondents suggests they are actively deft, agentic, self-determining parties to processes of identity construction that are both externally imposed and potentially stigmatizing, as well as exemplars of survivance and determination. We deploy a grounded theory approach to an open-coding process, modeled after the extended case method, while viewing our data through a novel synthesis of the dual theoretical lenses of structural and radical/structural symbolic interactionism and intersectional/standpoint feminist traditions, in order to reveal the complex, unfolding, active strategies students used to make sense of their obstacles, successes, co-created identities, and distinctive institutional encounters. We find that contrary to the dictates of prevailing paradigms, identity-building among first-gens is an incremental and bidirectional process through which students actively perceive and engage existing power structures to persist and even thrive amid incredibly trying, challenging, distressing, and even traumatic circumstances. Our findings suggest that successful institutional interventional strategies designed to serve this functionally unique student population (and particularly those tailored to the COVID-moment) would do well to listen deeply to their voices, consider the secondary consequences of “protectionary” policies as potentially more harmful than helpful, and fundamentally, to reexamine the presumption that such students present just institutional risk and vulnerability, but also present a valuable addition to university environments, due to the unique perspective and broader scale of vision their experiences afford them.

In 2009, the Liberal government of Ontario released their first “streamlined” poverty reduction strategy to end child poverty in the province. The strategy was renewed in 2014, and an updated strategy was released in 2021 by the Conservative government of Ontario. Based on ongoing research, this chapter explores how these Poverty reduction strategies mobilize a historical conception of low-income urban environments as threats to child development. I show that, rather than end poverty, these conceptions are used to justify community revitalization efforts that displace low-income populations while prioritizing and benefiting private market investment. Central to these strategies is the figure of the child, who is constructed as innocent and vulnerable, requiring protection and saving from the perils of poverty by middle- and upper-class interventions. The chapter concludes by examining the neoliberal logic that continues to inform the 2021 strategy.

This paper intends to argue against the idea of an asocial business arena by reiterating the original philosophical underpinnings of theories on the creation of society, societal institutions and the relationship between society and societal institutions. This paper posits that business and ethics, though initially aligned, have been systematically maligned and distorted. The authors present a theoretically justified argument that business and ethics can and should seamlessly exist in the same realm.

This is a theoretical study that endeavors to go back to the original theories on business and society to challenge the view that business ethics is an oxymoron. For this purpose, the authors survey and interpret the scholarly works of Adam Smith, Aristotle and John Locke.

Given the economic debacles faced by the USA and the world economy in the past two decades, this study argues that one significant factor for these financial disasters could be that the original ideas about self-interest, societal interest, the free market system and the relationship between society and its constituting components, i.e. individuals, groups and institutions, have been distorted over time. Based on the interpretation of the original ideas around business and society, the authors find that some distortion of the original theories have indeed occurred.

This study is going against a well-established prevalent idea that business ethics is an oxymoron. It is claimed that the endoxa about business and its place in society often represents misinterpretations of the original ideas on the relationship between business and society. The originality of this work lies in challenging this dangerous idea by revisiting by journeying back in philosophical history to cut through the ideological scar tissue and reach the original arguments surrounding society and societal institutions.

This paper aims to understand what reflexivity means and explores which types of reflexivity could be applied within social marketing practice as a critical approach to overcoming failures.

This paper is a critical literature review.

The study proposes a typology for a reflexive approach to social marketing practice to overcome failures. The typology is built on self and critical reflexivity, simultaneously allowing social marketers to reflect on external and internal factors that may affect the individual's role and could negatively affect social marketing practice unless otherwise considered. The types of reflexivity discussed are not prescriptive; instead, the authors intend to provoke further discussion on an under-researched but vital area of social marketing.

The proposed typology is conceptual; an empirical investigation to gain social marketer's views would further enhance the effectiveness of the applications of the typology.

Social marketers could use the proposed typology for future practice.

This is the first study that conceptualises various types of reflexivity within social marketing practice to overcome failures.

Various philosophers and thinkers have discussed the importance of thinking and philosophising about the concept of ‘place’. A necessary structure of human experience, place is vital to the very foundation of human experience. More than the geography or arrangement of places, place is a concept that moulds human experience and contributes to understanding oneself and the world. Place has also been used to explain political motivations and issues such as citizenship, diaspora and migration. Despite its importance, place has not been problematised enough and has been neglected in studies of intersectionality. For instance, the role and influence of place in a person's diversity wheel and the interlocking web of oppressive structures have been reduced to either racial, class or gender categories. As a result, current critical theories fall short in drawing up the effects of place on intersectionality. This chapter, therefore, proposes the need to develop a critical place theory. It highlights the role that place-aspects play in the oppression and marginalisation of individuals. Moreover, it also examines the relatively new concept of placism as an analytical framework that can be used to explain varying oppressive placial structures.

Learning and development occur in many spaces both within and outside formal education settings. This chapter explores progress and possibilities of a knowledge exchange programme with a third sector organisation involved with community development, playwork and youth work in an urban area of the East Midlands. Theoretical concepts draw on a growing international interest in intergenerational play (Graves, 2002) and ‘cultural circles’ (Gill, 2020) as a method of challenging power and communication barriers between practitioners and families from diverse ethnic backgrounds. Using Foucault, post-structuralist feminism and autoethnography, as well as insight from a knowledge exchange partnership – the chapter offers a critique of a national initiative aimed at addressing ‘holiday hunger’ and community engagement. Practitioners in international contexts may benefit from the chapter’s attempt to address a series of co-constructed questions that include:

1. How do we raise the profile of children’s play as a non-negotiable starting point for universal service provision to children and young people?

2. What can be done to ‘connect’ diverse communities living in close proximity and sharing amenities within urban areas?

3. How can we celebrate differences whilst designing universal services, which promote social cohesion through play and leisure spaces?

How do we raise the profile of children’s play as a non-negotiable starting point for universal service provision to children and young people?

What can be done to ‘connect’ diverse communities living in close proximity and sharing amenities within urban areas?

How can we celebrate differences whilst designing universal services, which promote social cohesion through play and leisure spaces?

This chapter offers a critical evaluation of the concept and application of global carceral archipelagos designed as punitive barriers to refugees. With a focus on policies and practices in Australia for over two decades, the chapter shows how more recently, the European Union (EU) and the United Kingdom (UK) are also adopting similar strategies to Australia in a pattern of Western countries turning their backs on their human rights obligations. The histories of colonial practices of the racialisation of certain minorities within and outside nation-state borders are an important aspect of understanding contemporary bordering regimes that exclude refugees. The chapter discusses examples of resistance, as well as alternative politics emerging from refugees who have suffered from the carceral border complex, drawing on creative and collaborative work and practices.

This article problematises the international student label by critically examining the mechanisms that actively portray international students as necessarily different, deficient and uncritical. It broadly aims to tackle the following issues: (a) to challenge the underpinnings of the international label; (b) to uncover the role of neo-essentialist representations of cohorts of students labelled international in sustaining financial exploitation and deficit narratives; and (c) to criticise the current hyper-internationalisation strategy widely adopted by UK HEIs.

The paper mainly relies on findings from research that adopted narrative inquiry to explore the experiences of students labelled international. Data were collected via a series of interviews with 15 postgraduate students at a university in the north of England. The paper also makes use of brief statistical analyses to provide a general overview about the status of UK higher education (international student admission, net economic impact and income).

The paper reveals the underpinnings of the international label and how it is mobilised to other non-UK-domiciled students. The paper equally establishes a strong link between hyper-internationalisation and the (un)sustainability of the UK’s higher education sector.

The research is expected to raise important questions around the experiences and realities endured by students labelled international. In particular, the paper challenges the international label and the mechanisms that sustain the label at institutional levels.

The paper calls for abandoning the international label as a marker of a presumed difference. Equally, the paper highlights the current unsustainability of the UK’s higher education sector and suggests a gradual cap on international tuition fees to alleviate some of the educational inequalities endured by students international, and to ensure the sustainability of the higher education sector.

This is the first research that openly challenges the international label and substitutes it by “students labelled international”. Equally, this is the first paper that recommends to cap international tuition fees on account of findings from students' narratives and statistics that reveal the unsustainability of the UK's higher education sector. Finally, the paper’s conceptual contribution includes a reference to the idea of hyper-internationalisation.

This chapter focuses on book bans in an American context via embedded power relations and overlapping cultural and political spheres. In particular, it examines how those who face the biggest impact, namely, public high school students, navigate their marginalized position as minors, to challenge the structures of authority represented by their parents and school administration. This chapter demonstrates the importance of personal identity claims, social networks, and the power of knowledge of one’s First Amendment rights, as mobilizing forces for students to demand social change. Case studies of protest by students to overturn book bans are examined. The purpose is to understand the effect of state prohibitions on education that strengthen a student’s symbolic power as a force in society, and in some cases, fosters resistance through community-level activism.

With global migration, the number of ethnic minority and migrant women receiving maternity health care in dominantly Anglo-European societies has increased significantly but they consistently have among the worst pregnancy and maternal outcomes. This paper aims to analyse gaps in structural (migration-related inequalities) and cultural (responsiveness to ethno-cultural practices) competencies among maternal health practitioners in Aotearoa New Zealand (NZ).

Using a semi-structured interview guide, in-depth interviews were conducted with 13 maternal health practitioners in NZ. Data were analysed using a thematic analysis framework.

The results highlight significant barriers around language and communication, cultural stereotyping by professionals, ethnic women’s own constraints around family and cultural expectations and their lack of knowledge about reproductive health. In addition, practitioners’ own ethnic differences are inseparable from their approach to structural and cultural competencies; there were instances of ‘over-’ or ‘under-’ reading of culture, practitioner constructions of ideal pregnancies and anti-racism concerns that shaped maternal care practices that were sensitive to, but also marginalised, ethnic migrant women who attended maternity services.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the only study in NZ that examines the impact of complex dynamics of migration and culture on knowledge, beliefs and values of practitioners, in context of their own personal biographies. Identifying strategies to improve the way diversity is practiced in hospital settings can be transformational in improving maternal outcomes for ethnic migrant women in NZ.