‘How Do You Think I Feel? It's My Country’: Belonging, Entitlement and the Politics of Immigration

Deficit narratives have reduced the autistic young person’s sense of self to a definition of ‘lack’, characterising autistic adolescents’ self-understanding as missing an essential ‘norm’ of social influence. The research reported on here challenges such discourses, arguing that employing alternative, inclusive research methods can enable autistic adolescents to share a complex and varied sense of self. This is a self which is influenced by, and interacts with, the social arena, including the key social environment of school. The findings, as presented through poetic transcription, incorporate the views of autistic adolescent pupils who attended a mainstream secondary school. The data illustrates how the self-view can be negatively influenced by comparisons with peers, and by the judgements of those peers. It also considers how autistic adolescents attempt to position themselves, aiming to be viewed positively by their peers and teaching staff. This demonstrates an understanding of how the self can be presented in varying social contexts to influence the perceptions of others. In so doing, the findings act as a counter to deficit-focused characterisations, illustrating how the sense of self of the autistic young people involved is both conceptualised and negotiated within the social world. Keywords: autism, social self, inclusive methods

Experiences of family conflict are common in young people's accounts of homelessness, yet in‐depth explorations and conceptualisations of these experiences remain sparse. Drawing on focus group discussions with 29 participants, this article explores the accounts of young people and carers and parents about the dynamics, interactions and characteristics of family conflict. Findings highlight the primacy of verbal insults, criticisms or threats, as well as acts of aggression and violence in young people's and parent's understandings of family conflict. Feelings of mistrust, instability and a lack of safety also pervade family conflict and are considered its most impactful elements. We contend that these impacts are best understood via the concept of ontological (in)security, whereby young people's sense of self, belonging and stability are undermined by family conflict. This provides important insights for developing practice in this space, where working to remove long‐term patterns of family conflict, restoring young people's sense of self and belonging within their family, and supporting the stability and trust within a family may prove beneficial.

In contemporary globalised societies, global awareness and identification, as well as local and regional identifications (other than national identity), may all become increasingly important for guiding people's sense of belonging and purpose and in turn their self-concept. As the world has become increasingly interconnected, people increasingly identify with various cultures and worldviews within both local and global contexts. Attempts to reconcile these multiple cultural identities can lead to a sense of cultural dissonance as people struggle to integrate these identities into a coherent sense of self. Accordingly, various levels/types of cultural identifications must be integrated to establish an adaptable and coherent sense of self. In two studies among participants from the United States (N = 754), we investigate how nested cultural identification at the state, national and global levels are associated with well-being indirectly through self-concept clarity and multiple cultural configurations. Results indicate that national identification is positively, and compartmentalisation negatively, associated with self-concept clarity and in turn with well-being. State and global cultural identifications were linked to multicultural identity integration and, indirectly, to components of well-being. Results are discussed regarding the globalised proliferation of cultural identifications and the associated challenge of maintaining a stable and coherent sense of self.

While most nationalists worldwide fear immigration will dilute their national culture, pro-immigrant advocacy has become a critical element of nationalism and nation-building in Scotland. Elite-level endorsement of immigration and diversity serves Scotland’s moral and strategic interests, and is a symbol of Scotland’s distinction from England, which justifies arguments for further devolution or ultimately independence. This book dissects the central features of Scotland's social and political environment that provide an opportunity for the development of pro-immigration policy preferences, and evaluates how well those preferences are communicated with quantitative and qualitative analysis of primary and secondary data. Importantly, there is elite and mass divergence in understandings of Scottish identity and the desirability of immigration, which threatens the implementation of the government’s multicultural policies. The book illustrates the extent of the divergence and offers recommendations for how Scottish leaders can bridge the gap.

The social categories of gender, ethnicity, and nationalism constitute major tropes in contemporary anthropology for three reasons: (1) they are fundamental to people's sense of self and how they relate to their cultures and communities; (2) they can constitute forms of social stratification and one's gender, ethnicity, and nationality frequently coincide with economic and political (dis)advantage; and (3) as historically and culturally constituted social categories, gender, ethnicity, and nationalism are manifest in tremendously diverse forms around the world. The cultural and political significance of these forms of identity cannot be overestimated, not just in terms of their prevalence in diverse human societies but also to their continued salience for people's senses of identity and political ethos in the contemporary world.

Over 85% of the people survive stroke; and of those, over 80% are discharged to the community. However, the majority do not recover completely. Loss of identity is a commonly reported experience after stroke. Studies focus on the individual survivors' use of their own cognitive resources to adapt to change, rather than examining the effects of social interactions on stroke survivors' identities. Social relationships are the foundation upon which survivors rebuild skills to engage with the world, yet little is known about the ways in which families, friends and neighbours provide a context for the recreation of a sense of self and activities after stroke. This article draws on situational analysis grounded theory analysis of in-depth individual interviews with nine middle-aged survivors of stroke. In situational analysis, the original grounded theory methods proposed by Glaser and Strauss are used; however, the situational context, and how environments and relationships influence actions, is explicitly analysed. Our objective was to understand the ways in which family, social, and community resources might enhance stroke survivors' participation in personally meaningful activities over the long term. The qualitative accounts of these survivors reveal how social support helped them maintain or more importantly regain a position in society. Following any life-changing event, people's sense of self is fluid. A relevant social position entitles stroke survivors to become actively involved in setting their own goals and maintaining a positive identity. However, as these participants attested, stroke impaired their social position and resources to reject an imposed social position. It was difficult for these survivors to construct a valued social identity without the support of other people. Future studies should explore the consequences of social interactions with others and how social attitudes about stroke disability affects individual's activity options, professional practice, and ultimately development of a positive poststroke identity.

Bioconservative commentators argue that parents should not take steps to modify the genetics of their children even in the name of enhancement because of the damage they predict for values,...

Hi Reddit! I’m Dr. Kate Greenberg, assistant professor of adolescent medicine at the University of Rochester Medical Center. Here, I serve as director of the Gender Health Services clinic, which provides services and support for families, youth, and young adults who identify as transgender or gender non-conforming. Transgender men and women have existed throughout human history, but recently, Caitlyn Jenner, Laverne Cox, and others have raised societal awareness of transgender people. Growing up in a world where outward appearance and identity are so closely intertwined can be difficult, and health professionals are working to support transgender people as they seek to align their physical selves with their sense of self. At our clinic, we offer cross-gender hormone therapy, pubertal blockade, and social work services. We also coordinate closely with urologists, endocrinologists, voice therapists, surgeons, and mental health professionals. Hey all! I’m here and answering questions. First, let me say that I’m pretty impressed with what I’ve read so far on this AMA - folks are asking really thoughtful questions and where there are challenges/corrections to be made, doing so in a respectful and evidence-based fashion. Thanks for being here and for being thoughtful when asking questions. One of my mantras in attempting to discuss trans* medicine is to encourage questions, no matter how basic or unaware, as long as they’re respectful. I will use the phrase trans/trans folks/trans* people throughout the discussion as shorthand for much more complex phenomena around people’s sense of self, their bodies, and their identities. I’d also like to say that I will provide citations and evidence where I can, but will also admit where I’m not aware of much evidence or where studies are ongoing. This is a neglected area of healthcare, and as I tell parents and patients in my clinic, there’s a lot more that we don’t know and still need to figure out. I’m a physician and hormone prescriber, not a psychologist or mental health provider, so I’ll also acknowledge where my expertise ends. Edit: Thanks to everyone for the questions and responses. I will try to come back this evening to answer more questions, and will certainly follow the comments that come in. Hope this was helpful. Moderator Warning: We know that many people have strong feelings about this issue, if you are unable to comment in a civil manner, it would be best to not comment. Our policies on hate-speech will be rigorously enforced, and violators will find their accounts banned without warning. /r/science is about discussing the science of issues, not your personal biases or opinions.

Existing research indicates that social crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic reshaped young people's sense of self, but little is known about what identities emerging adults construct in their pandemic narratives. Following propositions of narrative identity and Terror Management Theory, this qualitative study investigated Chinese emerging adults' identity construction in their narratives of the national outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in late 2022. Participants were 62 college students invited to share their pandemic experiences with reflections. Thematic analysis of the data suggests that the participants shared their pandemic experiences as a process of managing their death terror activated in the pandemic which threatened their sense of self and meanwhile motivated them to reconstruct who they are in the world. Based on their meaning-making capacities, the participants disclosed death awareness and vulnerabilities, adopted a temporal perspective in storytelling, emphasized their interpersonal and social connections, and made meaning out of the pandemic experiences to defend against death terror. As an outcome of their narration, a conformer-explorer identity was constructed in their pandemic narratives and we proposed a dialectical model to capture the dynamics of the construction. Although with limitations, this study contributes to our understanding of the functions of mortality salience on narrative identity among emerging adults in collectivist cultures during crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic.

People who take antipsychotics, and people who are prescribed antipsychotics without taking them, experience effects which are not frequently discussed: effects on their identity and sense of self. Qualitative research indicates the relationship between taking APs and identity is multilayered, and changeable. Taking APs can restore people to their earlier, pre-symptom sense of self. Being prescribed and taking APs can also, on the other hand, be experienced as damaging, erasing and dulling people's sense of who they are. This complexity deserves exploration in clinical practice, which we believe is currently not done routinely. More work is needed to understand whether, and how, the relationship between identity and APs is being addressed. We outline the importance of having discussions in a clinical space around identity, and a sense of agency, on the grounds that true recovery-oriented care, which enacts shared decision-making principles, demands it. Further, we argue that it will allow for better therapeutic alliance and trust to be forged between clinician and client, ultimately leading to better care.

Justice-centered computing scholarship has made significant efforts in broadening the participation of underrepresented groups, particularly along the lines of race, gender, and class. However, the role of immigrant students' national identities in these efforts have been largely ignored. In this lightning talk, we present preliminary findings from an ongoing study that explores the perspectives of computer science teachers - who work in classrooms with students from diverse national backgrounds - about national identity and national culture. The study examines how these computer science teachers understand the role of students' national identities and national cultures within the CS classroom. Our study was guided by the following research question: how do computer science teachers understand the national identities and national cultures of their students? We focus on three findings: first, the role that teachers place on national identity and national culture in students' sense of self, second, the ways in which teachers understand how national culture intersects with students' family cultures and age groups, and third, the influence of national identity and national culture on students' learning experiences within the classroom. These insights provide nuanced perspectives to broadening participation efforts in computer science education.

In this article I discuss three of Lebanese filmmaker Maroun Baghdadi's films that were made during the Lebanese Civil War: Little Wars, Land of Honey of Incense and Outside Life. The article shows how the three films use male characters to comment on the non-rational nature of the war, focusing on the representation of violence in the films. Violence is discussed as a condition of masculinity, but also as a performance aiming at the assertion of one's identity. As the war threatens to usurp people's humanity and sense of self, the male characters in the films struggle with their own masculinities. Baghdadi goes beyond dominant representations of masculinity as spectacle, to highlight the fragile side of the masculinities on display in the films. I argue that the films, viewed in chronological order, show how the Civil War results in a gradual descent into dehumanization in general, and increasingly brings masculinities under threat in particular.

Cultural studies often utilize the arts to explore a group's history, ideology, and customs. However, an important question arises: when and how can we engage young readers in reflecting on the role of art in shaping cultural identities? This paper examines how children's books serve not only as artistic expressions but also as powerful narratives that illustrate the profound impact of the arts on people's lives, traditions, heritage, and sense of self. The study focuses on twelve children's picture books featuring characters who engage deeply with the arts—either as a means of overcoming life's challenges or as a form of creative self-expression. By applying New Historicism and social semiotics theory to the analysis of these books, this research aims to uncover the ways in which they offer authentic and meaningful insights into the role of the arts in shaping both individual and collective identities. Cultura studies often utilize the arts to explore a group’s history ideology, and customs However, an important question arises: When and how can we get young readers to think about the role that art plays in people's cultural identities? In this paper, we'll take a look at how children's books are more than just a kind of art; they tell tales about how the arts impact people's lives in profound ways, molding their traditions, family trees, and sense of self. Twelve children's picture books are the subject of the research, all of which include characters that have significant interactions with the arts, either as a means of overcoming obstacles in life or as a means of expressing themselves creatively. By incorporating New Historicism and social semiotics theory into the books' content, we may see how they could provide genuine and deep insights into how the arts contribute to individual and collective identities.

This paper explores Aboriginal people's multiple sense of selves in suburban situations. While the Aboriginal self has been usually conceived as forged through relationships with kin, in the contemporary world, Aboriginal lives are constrained by a genealogical understanding of Aboriginality, that is, one based on descent. This understanding is endorsed by the state system, by Aboriginal and non‐Aboriginal organisations, and by non‐Aboriginal people. In the suburbs there are different ways in which people come to understand and identify their Aboriginalty. Drawing on ethnographic field‐work in south‐west Sydney, this paper explores these forms of identity, how they are perceived, and the effects this has on their sense of self. The focus is on two individuals with different backgrounds and understandings of what it is to be Aboriginal. The increasing role of Aboriginal organisations to offer new forms of relatedness is also discussed.

The purpose of this article is to explore the potential contribution of Axel Honneth's critical theory of recognition to empirical and normative debates on global justice. I first present, very briefly, an overview of recent theories of global distributive justice. I argue that theorists of distributive justice do not pay enough attention to sources of self-respect and conditions for identity formation, and that they are blind toward the danger of harming people's sense of self even by well-intentioned redistributive policies. Honneth's theory suffers from complementary shortcomings; it is anti-technocratic but largely oblivious to the global nature of many contemporary justice claims. Given this situation, I seek to broaden the theory's scope by outlining transnational extensions of the recognition principles of love, rights and solidarity identified by Honneth. In conclusion, I show how utilizing a broadened conceptualization of the struggle for recognition allows us to better understand the changing logic of justice-oriented foreign policies.