Journal of Sociology

This article explores the meaning of home to older Chinese migrants and what they do to construct a sense of home as they live and age in Australia. We conducted in-depth interviews with 20 older Chinese migrants (80 per cent aged 60+), who were born in mainland China and Hong Kong. Unlike the traditional interview method, we asked each participant to provide two photographs, which signified the concept of home to them and used these as visual elicitations for interviews. The findings from an inductive thematic analysis of the data show that the location of their adult children, home gardens, and cultural objects play a significant role in giving the participants a feeling of home in Australia. The study highlights that ageing in a foreign land involves older migrants’ continuous (re)integration of people and places in both the old country of origin and the new country of resettlement.

Gender data are presented from a study into sociology PhD completions and student research outputs during enrolment at Australian ‘Group of Eight’ interdisciplinary schools of social science. Findings confirm views and impressions offered by Australian sociology academic leaders. The present data contributes to this wider discussion by describing patterns in the contemporary cohort of sociology PhD students. First, we document a stable gender composition of the discipline in Australia reflective of the literature across several decades rather than a recent feminisation process. Second, we report for this cohort of contemporary PhD sociology completions in Australia women and men publish at similar rates during candidacy. Third, there is no significant gendered difference between students at any level of research output production. Fourth, methodological approaches used by sociology doctoral students confirm the epistemological domination of qualitative analysis in this current cohort of sociology PhD theses.

The roles played by professional frontline service providers in the implementation of refugee settlement policy in Australia have not been researched in depth. Australia plays a leading part in settling 18,740 refugees annually. This qualitative investigation interviewed 20 professionals engaged in this activity in Launceston, Tasmania and employed Lipsky’s concept of ‘street-level bureaucrats’ to explicate their decision-making processes as they implemented public policy. The findings suggest that the majority of participants contextualised and individualised the delivery of benefits and services. In doing so, their worldviews, values, and professional experience led them to ‘turn a blind eye’, ‘bend the rules’, or even engage in bureaucratic versions of guerrilla warfare to achieve what they believed to be the best outcome for their clients. This research is significant because it demonstrates that street-level bureaucrats may escape the constraints of neoliberal managerialism by exercising creative beneficent discretion that aligns with policy objectives.

Immigrants of the 1.5-generation (1.5-ers) differ from first- and second-generation immigrants because they are generally better immersed in the culture of the host society than the first generation; yet, compared to the second generation, they often have to renegotiate their identities in relation to parents, colleagues at work, and people in the host society during the processes of migration. Drawing on interview data from Taiwanese 1.5-ers in Australia, this article takes a further step and points out that in addition to the identity struggle between home and host country, Taiwanese 1.5-ers also identify as ethnic Chinese (Huaren) and constantly negotiate between these three identities (Huaren, Taiwanese, and Australian). This article argues that identity negotiation and hybridization is in nature a re-politicization process in which respondents are fully aware of the political meanings and power disparities of each identity. It is also a process whereby Taiwanese 1.5-ers mobilize, downplay, and hybridize specific identities based on time and context.

This article explores the attitudes and beliefs of 38 people who made claims of anti-white racism in a national survey that measured the extent and variation of racism in Australia. Quantitative analysis of survey data reveals that those who make claims of anti-white racism are nearly twice as likely as the rest of population to hold negative views about cultural diversity and immigration, to identify ‘out-groups’, and to self-identify as racist. They are also much less likely to recognise the existence of white privilege in Australia. Discourse analysis of these participants’ open-ended survey responses reveals their attitudes stem from a belief that their white national identity, and the privilege and ownership that accompanies this, is under threat. They view this ‘threat’ as a form of racism they are victims of. These discourses of anti-white racism reflect key mechanisms of institutional racism, in particular white privilege.

Paid maternity leave policy attracts considerable attention in Australia and internationally, not least because taking a maternity break and employment re-entry benefits economies, businesses and well-being. The literature on factors contributing to a positive relationship between paid employment, reproduction and caring is fragmented and continues to highlight the complexity of the matter. Drawing on qualitative interviews, and Williams’ theory of domesticity ideology and Pocock’s work/care regimes, I examine women’s paid employment re-entry experiences and management strategies following maternity leave in higher education in Australia. This analysis develops a critical conceptualisation of women making ‘constrained choices’ and ‘forced decisions’ to manage work/care, and relates to gender inequality in the workplace–household intersection; taking a step back in paid employment; outsourcing housework; and the complexity of childcare. Findings highlight the need for support models to promote work/life balance in the context of debates about gender equality and flexibility, and the workplace–household intersection.

Indigenous fathers play a central role in the lives of Indigenous children growing up strong. For Australia’s Indigenous people, growing strong includes the possession of heightened levels of health, education and cultural knowledge. This article focuses on Indigenous fathers and how they understand the importance of sharing cultural activities with their children. We argue that the sharing of Indigenous cultural practices, and the subsequent telling of this narrative, are key enablers for Indigenous fathers to assist their families to flourish. We analyse qualitative data from the Longitudinal Study of Indigenous Children to explore what components/aspects of Indigenous culture fathers perceive will assist children to strongly mature, how culture is transmitted, and what barriers fathers face in this process. Results show that according to participants, learning about culture, family and identity are components to helping children prosper, with collecting food the most common activity used to achieve this end.

Blended learning and flipped classroom models are increasingly encouraged in higher education, where notions of flexibility and technological development inform institutional systems and strategies. This article presents results from an Australian study on redesigning and delivering an introductory sociology course using a combination of such models. Four central elements of the redesign are highlighted: overall course format; use of mini-lectures; face-to-face activities; and our assessment model. We present analysis of students’ and instructors’ understandings and experiences of the redesign over three course iterations to offer insight into the unfolding and responsive dynamics involved in implementing blended and flipped models. We aim to contribute to the ongoing implementation of similar models in the context of changing institutional environments and expectations, as well as to broader projects for pedagogical enrichment in sociology.

This article presents a theoretical reflection on genocidal processes. In the first place, we will propose the compatibility of the paradigm of permission with the paradigm of obedience, which would allow us to talk about tolerated genocidal acts, encouraged genocidal acts, and actively pursued genocidal acts. As we open up to the paradigm of permission this would lead us to challenge the explanations which regard genocidal processes as ruptures from civilization, from the moral order, and from the logic in everyday life in modern societies. It will be argued, in second place, that a paradigm of continuities would allow us to explore genocidal processes in a more accurate way. We will go on, then, in our third section, to the details of three processes which operate both in genocidal processes and in everyday life in modern societies: the categorization and construction of ‘others’, the construction of weakness, and the construction of superfluity.

This article is a qualitative analysis of how people aged in their 30s and 40s use dating apps and websites to repartner following relationship separation or divorce. While ‘mid-life’ is a period of significant relationship churn, there is little sociological research that addresses how people in this age group use digital dating technologies to repartner. Drawing upon in-depth interviews with a small group of Australians, the article shows how dating technologies help ‘thicken’ thin dating markets associated with time pressures and access to the night economy, but also loss and convergence of friendship networks unique to mid-life. The study highlights the impact of gender on digital repartnering experiences, particularly experiences of online safety, and introduces the concept of ‘emotional filtering’ to describe how past relationships specifically shape the repartnering process for this middle-aged group.

Until recently, studies of hospitality have been less prominent within the broader context of studies of global mobilities. Yet, both are entangled. In this special section of the Journal of Sociology, we explore the effects of narratives of ‘migration crisis’ or ‘refugee crisis’ in contemporary, intersected global and local politics and studies of hospitality. In doing so, contributors bring hospitality and mobility studies into closer dialogue by turning their attention to the dilemmas of intimate life and refugee hosting.

Since 2015, the notion of hospitality has been a guiding principle and a key demand for individuals and organisations that provide direct support to refugees in Europe. Through a set of interviews conducted with volunteers active in the Refugees Welcome movement in Britain, France and Italy, this article explores the motivations and experiences of individuals who practise (private) hospitality by hosting refugees in their homes. Looking specifically at the ‘responsibility’ that emerges from the practice of hosting, we show that the experience of private hospitality is based on narratives stressing feelings of love and family-like relations, and thus creates the expectation of an affective connection between the host and the guest. We maintain that this process is highly ambivalent as it risks creating and reproducing everyday intimate bordering processes.

This article is based on ethnographic fieldwork in an Italian reception centre for male ‘unaccompanied minors’. Drawing on the concepts of ‘hostipitality’ (Derrida), the Black Mediterranean, and ‘intimate citizenship’ (Plummer), we examine the political ambivalence of hospitality for young African men as they transition to adulthood and how this is experienced through the intersections of age, gender and race. The biographical transition to adulthood thus offers a unique empirical opportunity to examine the extent of hospitality, as the (uninvited) Black child guest crosses the threshold into being an unwanted, potentially deportable, ‘invader’. Drawing from the young men’s images (art and photographs) and narratives, we discuss their experiences of differential anti-Blackness during their migration journeys and how hegemonic notions of masculinity circumscribe the quest for legal citizenship and the meaning of adulthood. While capitulation to gender normativity bolsters claims to citizenship, racism is a continuing and profound threat to ontological security.

This article draws on narrative interviews with volunteers in an English charity, providing temporary accommodation to destitute migrants and refugees. The aim is to investigate the ethical and emotional complexities and ambivalence of the tensions between hospitality and hostility, and conditional and unconditional hospitality, with a focus on stories of empathy. The article engages Ken Plummer’s concept of ‘intimate citizenship’ within the context of what William Walters calls the assent of ‘domopolitics’. The latter refers to how immigration is narrativised as a threat to the domestic order of the nation. Hosting, in this regard, has the potential to invert the logic of domopolitics, where the aspiration to govern the state like a home is one that can encounter contingent socialities of care, generosity and hospitality.

This article examines the hospitality practices of pro-migrant civil society organisations in Istanbul. Drawing from qualitative interviews, we focus on intersecting gendered, professionalised and faith-based aspects of pro-migrant activities and explore the ways that politically and morally charged ambivalences of hospitality practices are articulated and negotiated. Moreover, by contextualising Turkey’s religious and geopolitical particularity as a gatekeeper of Europe, we work with Derrida’s concept of plural laws to investigate hospitality practices towards refugees in Istanbul. Civil actors’ intentions and attempts to be good citizens, Muslims, and care providers expose the intimate aspects of hospitality – a segue into discourses of displaced subjects’ (gendered) deservingness. By portraying how macro–micro, global–local and public–private relations condition hospitality practices, we observe how globalisation is lived intimately, influencing perceptions of deservingness and the prioritisation of displaced subjects’ needs.

This article examines how hope for a different culture of hospitality has been articulated during the long summer of migration of 2015 in Germany by juxtaposing Angela Merkel’s ‘Wir schaffen das’ speeches with the cross-border migrant March of Hope. The article suggests that while Merkel’s rhetoric opens the horizon to a more hospitable Europe, her policies of humanitarian securitisation ultimately redistribute hope away from migrants and towards a German nation imagined to be in need of protection from them. Subsequently, the article turns to the March of Hope to see how the gesture of hospitality embedded in Merkel’s rhetoric was reinterpreted and resisted. It shows that cross-border marches reveal affective infrastructures of care and hospitality that extend beyond the humanitarian border enacted by the state. These infrastructures provide the space for intimate negotiations of citizenship in which the relationality of social life is not framed through the racialised emergency logics of biopolitical control.