Andi Ainun Juniarsi Nur, Ni Made Ray Rika Azzhara, Celvin Yhosep Sinaga
{"title":"Book Review: Social Work and Human Services Responsibilities in a Time of Climate Change by Amanda Howard, Margot Rawsthorne, Pam Joseph, Mareese Terare, Dara Sampson and Meaghan Katrak Harris","authors":"Andi Ainun Juniarsi Nur, Ni Made Ray Rika Azzhara, Celvin Yhosep Sinaga","doi":"10.1177/14407833241237390","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14407833241237390","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":47556,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Sociology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2024-03-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140249576","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Tensions in digital welfare states: Three perspectives on care and control","authors":"Irina Zakharova, Juliane Jarke, Anne Kaun","doi":"10.1177/14407833241238312","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14407833241238312","url":null,"abstract":"Proponents of digital transformation in welfare provision argue that digital technologies can take over tedious tasks and free resources to provide better care for those in need. Digital technologies, however, are often developed in line with a logic of control and dispositions around surveillance and efficiency which challenge careful engagements. In this conceptual article, we explore emerging tensions in digital welfare arrangements and propose an analytical framework to illuminate interrelations between care and control in values, infrastructures, and work related to the provision of welfare services. Illustrating the application of this framework with three empirical vignettes, we discuss how digital welfare technologies shape relations between state care and control. Considering theories of care in relation to the digital welfare state, we give a nuanced perspective on the contingencies of the digital transformation and add to the literature concerned with social justice by attending to everyday lived experiences in-between control and care.","PeriodicalId":47556,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Sociology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2024-03-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140249314","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Intermediaries as infrastructure: Interrogating the phatic labor of state-building","authors":"Ranjit Singh","doi":"10.1177/14407833241234675","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14407833241234675","url":null,"abstract":"Investments in the digital welfare state are often driven by the promise of removing intermediaries between the state and citizens, yet they continue to play a key role in the last mile delivery of state services. By intermediaries, I mean people who interface between bureaucrats and citizens. Their work, often as proxies for citizens, is not only to simplify bureaucratic procedures for them, but also help insulate them from bureaucratic apathy. Based on 18-months of ethnographic fieldwork, I describe the work of intermediaries around government offices, who (in)visibly support citizens in navigating the bureaucratic procedures of enrolling into Aadhaar, India's biometrics-based national identity number. Building on Julia Elyachar's conception of “phatic labor,” I position such intermediaries themselves as infrastructure and illustrate how their affective networks can be leveraged to orchestrate a form of distributive justice to ensure that being marginal does not preclude a citizen's access to welfare services.","PeriodicalId":47556,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Sociology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2024-03-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140264823","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Digitalisation and the welfare state – how First Nations people experienced digitalised social security under the Cashless Debit Card","authors":"Shelley Bielefeld","doi":"10.1177/14407833241232636","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14407833241232636","url":null,"abstract":"Digitalisation of the welfare state has intensified in recent years, with burdens unevenly distributed between technology advocates and those receiving government income support. Putting in place processes where people needing social security must meet mandatory requirements of digital literacy and divert a significant amount of their small incomes to pay for expensive technologies such as computers, smartphones, and data plans comes at a cost. This article examines lived experiences of First Nations Cashless Debit Card (CDC) holders who experienced digitalisation of their social security payments. Under the CDC, a range of restrictions were placed on purchases, spending social security income came with stigma, technology troubles meant that income was less secure, and Indigenous peoples’ autonomy was undermined. Although the CDC has since been abolished, these issues remain relevant as a new cashless social security card, the SmartCard, has been introduced in 2023.","PeriodicalId":47556,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Sociology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2024-02-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140413593","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Book Review: City of Men: Masculinities and Everyday Morality on Public Transport by Romit Chowdhury","authors":"L. Lata","doi":"10.1177/14407833241232643","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14407833241232643","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":47556,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Sociology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2024-02-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139962775","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Parallel lives or active citizens? Examining the interplay between multicultural service provision and civic engagement in Australia","authors":"F. Mansouri, Matteo Vergani, Enqi Weng","doi":"10.1177/14407833231219033","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14407833231219033","url":null,"abstract":"Over recent decades, there have been increased public debates about rising level of ethnic and religious diversity and their implications for social cohesion and intercultural relations. These contestations are often situated within a diversity governance continuum with two opposing and often extreme poles both in the policy arena as well as the academic literature. The first pole sees diversity as potentially contributing to social fissures and intercultural discord. The second pole highlights the benefits of an acceptance of diversity for cross-cultural awareness and social peace. Using empirical evidence from a multi-year project, this article assesses the key assumptions underlying these oppositional approaches through a study of the provision of social services to multicultural communities and its association with civic engagement and national belonging. Study findings show that access to multicultural services is significantly associated with higher levels of civic engagement among migrants, rather than social exclusion and urban segregation.","PeriodicalId":47556,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Sociology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2024-02-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139801074","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Parallel lives or active citizens? Examining the interplay between multicultural service provision and civic engagement in Australia","authors":"F. Mansouri, Matteo Vergani, Enqi Weng","doi":"10.1177/14407833231219033","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14407833231219033","url":null,"abstract":"Over recent decades, there have been increased public debates about rising level of ethnic and religious diversity and their implications for social cohesion and intercultural relations. These contestations are often situated within a diversity governance continuum with two opposing and often extreme poles both in the policy arena as well as the academic literature. The first pole sees diversity as potentially contributing to social fissures and intercultural discord. The second pole highlights the benefits of an acceptance of diversity for cross-cultural awareness and social peace. Using empirical evidence from a multi-year project, this article assesses the key assumptions underlying these oppositional approaches through a study of the provision of social services to multicultural communities and its association with civic engagement and national belonging. Study findings show that access to multicultural services is significantly associated with higher levels of civic engagement among migrants, rather than social exclusion and urban segregation.","PeriodicalId":47556,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Sociology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2024-02-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139860953","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Working against the clock: digital surveillance in US Medicaid homecare services","authors":"Alexandra Mateescu","doi":"10.1177/14407833231226097","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14407833231226097","url":null,"abstract":"This article explores the implementation of a digital verification system known as Electronic Visit Verification (EVV) across homecare services for older and disabled adults within the US Medicaid program. EVV systems are used to conduct daily check-ins through GPS tracking and biometric identity verification. While touted as a means to identify and deter “fraud, waste, and abuse,” the digital monitoring also generates detailed data trails on the lives and habits of service recipients, as well as constraining their daily movements. Drawing on qualitative interviews with workers and clients, I argue that this case study calls attention to how harms from digitalization of social welfare provision emerge from workplace surveillance and labor management, and how EVV becomes a tool for more finely tuning classifications of different types of paid and unpaid care. The burdensome digital compliance hurdles reinforced older employment tensions between the state, care workers, and public benefits recipients.","PeriodicalId":47556,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Sociology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2024-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139814125","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Working against the clock: digital surveillance in US Medicaid homecare services","authors":"Alexandra Mateescu","doi":"10.1177/14407833231226097","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14407833231226097","url":null,"abstract":"This article explores the implementation of a digital verification system known as Electronic Visit Verification (EVV) across homecare services for older and disabled adults within the US Medicaid program. EVV systems are used to conduct daily check-ins through GPS tracking and biometric identity verification. While touted as a means to identify and deter “fraud, waste, and abuse,” the digital monitoring also generates detailed data trails on the lives and habits of service recipients, as well as constraining their daily movements. Drawing on qualitative interviews with workers and clients, I argue that this case study calls attention to how harms from digitalization of social welfare provision emerge from workplace surveillance and labor management, and how EVV becomes a tool for more finely tuning classifications of different types of paid and unpaid care. The burdensome digital compliance hurdles reinforced older employment tensions between the state, care workers, and public benefits recipients.","PeriodicalId":47556,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Sociology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2024-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139874195","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Stuck between the Global North and South: Middling migrants in Australia and Singapore","authors":"Sylvia Ang","doi":"10.1177/14407833221088040","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14407833221088040","url":null,"abstract":"The literature on ‘middling transnationals’ is growing, although studies on Asian middling migrants are still relatively lacking. Current understandings of middling migrants are also frequently fixed on migrants’ mid-level skills and their middle-class status. Drawing on interviews with Nepali migrants living in Melbourne, Australia and mainland Chinese migrants living in Singapore respectively, this article considers how their middling visa status and imaginaries interact with anxious desires. The article argues, first, that migrants from the Global South experience heightened anxious desires due to imaginaries oscillating between the Global North and South. Second, and relatedly, the article argues that migration regimes keep migrants compliant through managing their anxious desires. By detailing the experiences of different groups of Asian migrants in separate migration regimes, the article aims to highlight the heterogeneous experiences among migrants originating from the Global South, and the techniques used by different states to produce temporary and compliant migrants.","PeriodicalId":47556,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Sociology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2023-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138625271","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}