Implications For Social Justice Research Articles

The role of sport in juvenile justice: benefits according to key informants

There is a strong body of literature underscoring the potential of sport programs to contribute to broad health benefits and positive youth development (PYD) for young people. However, benefits are dependent on a variety of factors including the purpose, structure and setting of programs. Justice settings provide potentially critical spaces for realizing the benefits of sport, but barriers in access among justice-affiliated youth persist, and little is known about programs in this setting. This paper describes a qualitative study exploring juvenile justice administrators’ perceptions of programs in their facilities. We find that administrators believe their programs contribute to positive relationships and other important aspects of youth development. Further, programs provide opportunities to practice treatment skills and support re-entry. We conclude that while individual PYD features are reflected in administrators’ perceptions of sport, programs also served a broader role for families, facilities, and communities with implications for social justice through sport.

Advancing understanding of unionization in the hospitality industry: the role of attitudes toward unions and social justice

Hospitality, where unions are rare, is a significant employer of women, youth and migrants, many of whom work as temps and part-timers. This translates into modest livelihoods and vulnerability to socio-economic shocks, which has social justice implications. This study explores the mediating role of attitudes toward unions in the relationship between attitudes toward social justice and the intention to join a union at two points in time. It draws on data collected among UK hospitality workers in March 2022 (T1) (N = 253) and February 2023 (T2) (N = 151). The research also examines how circumstances influenced employees’ views and the hypothesized relationships. The results indicate that attitudes toward unions were a full mediator in the relationship between attitudes toward social justice and the intention to join a union at both T1 and T2. Furthermore, there was a positive association between attitudes toward social justice and attitudes toward unions at T1 and T2. The findings suggest that, for hospitality workers and potentially precarious workers at large, the perceived social justice orientation of unions significantly influences their willingness to engage with unions. This thirst for social justice among employees reflects the evolving expectations and values within the labor force. Unions should, therefore, position themselves as champions of a fairer and more equitable society rather than just advocates for individual member interests. The study, while framing the analysis around the concept of social sustainability, contributes to workforce research in tourism and hospitality.

Resourcing Their Own Aspirations: First-In-Family Young People and DIY Career Counselling

ABSTRACT The relationship between career counselling and widening participation is increasingly capturing the attention of educational researchers, especially those interested in its social justice implications. International research on first-in-family students demonstrates the continual class-based barriers they are faced with which influence their progression into and through higher education. Career counselling has an important role to play in both supporting first-in-family students to not only enter university but also set them on a career trajectory which allows them to fulfil their aspirations. However, access to effective forms of career counselling remains fragmented and highly dependent on social class. This article explores how first-in-family students engage in what we call ‘DIY career counselling,’ where they draw on their informal networks and the internet to enhance their understanding of their future prospects and possible trajectories. Their efforts suggest a strong desire to learn more about what university can offer them and how they can position themselves advantageously in the job market; furthermore, their efforts also suggest a consumerist awareness that the career counselling on offer in their secondary schools was lacking.

Hukum Ekonomi dan Pembangunan Berkelanjutan: Studi Kasus di Negara-Negara ASEAN

Economic law and sustainable development are two interrelated concepts that influence public policies in ASEAN countries. This research aims to analyze the relationship between economic law and sustainable development in ASEAN countries, as well as the challenges and opportunities faced by these countries in implementing the principles of sustainable economic law. The research method used is a normative juridical approach, namely by examining laws and regulations, official documents, and related literature relating to economic law and sustainable development in ASEAN countries. The results show that there are variations in the level of engagement and commitment of ASEAN countries in realizing economic law and sustainable development, depending on factors such as social, political, economic, and environmental conditions in each country. The research also identifies several important issues that need to be addressed by ASEAN countries, such as the need for legal harmonization, enhanced regional cooperation, protection of human rights, community empowerment, and effective law enforcement. This research provides recommendations to improve the quality and effectiveness of economic law and sustainable development in ASEAN countries, and its implications for social welfare and justice in the region.

Beyond Categories: A Flow-Oriented Approach to Social Justice on Online Labour Platforms

Online labour platforms (OLP) are transforming long-established employment relations, raising questions for researchers and policymakers alike as to the social justice implications of this increasingly pervasive, algorithmic, and platform-mediated form of work. In investigating this issue, this paper makes a case for complementing current category-based approaches to social justice, prevalent in literature and policy on OLPs, with a flow-oriented approach that recognises the diversity of gig-work trajectories when it comes to the situated enactment of social (in)justice. Inspired by the recent work of Tim Ingold and building upon seminal work on social justice by Rawls and Sen, we develop a synthetic framework for revealing the social justice implications of OLPs, in terms of the enactment of opportunities and/or barriers, from three perspectives: access to resources, capabilities to function, and correspondences with flows. The latter perspective temporally reinterprets the former two and offers a processual flow-oriented approach to social justice. We further substantiate and showcase the value-added of our approach through an empirical investigation of different gig-working stories on the Amazon MTurk platform and discuss how our flow-oriented approach leads to revealing social justice implications not foregrounded through other approaches. Finally, we derive remedial design and policy principles that can serve to reshape dialogue about social justice on OLPs, both theoretically and practically, in a manner that is more relevant and responsive to the fluid and evolving realities faced by gig-workers.

The Effect of AI-Enabled Credit Scoring on Financial Inclusion: Evidence from One Million Underserved Population

We studied the effect of adopting an AI-enabled credit scoring model by a major bank on financial inclusion as measured by changes to the approval rate, default rate, and utilization level of a personal loan product for the underserved population. The bank served over 50 million customers and used a traditional rule-based model to evaluate the default risk of each loan application. It recently developed an AI model with higher prediction accuracy of default risk and used the AI model and the traditional model together in assessing loan applications for one of its personal loan products. Although the AI model could be more accurate in estimating default risk, little is known about its impact on financial inclusion. We investigated this question using a difference-in-differences approach by comparing changes in financial inclusion of the personal loan product adopting the AI model to that of a similar personal loan product without adopting the AI model. We found that the AI model enhanced financial inclusion for the underserved population by simultaneously increasing the approval rate and reducing the default rate. Further analysis attributed the enhancement in financial inclusion to the use of weak signals (i.e., data not conventionally used to evaluate creditworthiness) by the AI model and its sophisticated machine learning algorithms. Our finding is consistent with the statistical discrimination theory, as the use of weak signals and sophisticated machine learning algorithms improves prediction accuracy at the individual level, thus reducing the reliance on group characteristics that often lead to financial exclusion. We elaborated on the development process of the AI model to illustrate how and why the AI model can better evaluate the underserved population. We also found the impacts of the AI model heterogeneous across subgroups, and those with missing weak signals saw smaller improvements in the approval rate. A simulation-based analysis showed that simplified AI models could still increase the approval rate and reduce the default rate of the underserved population. We further discussed the compliance and generalizability issues about using AI and privacy-sensitive data in credit scoring. Our findings provided rich theoretical and practical implications for social justice by documenting how an AI model designed for improving prediction accuracy can enhance financial inclusion.

Teachers’ Use of Knowledge in Curriculum Making: Implications for Social Justice

Curriculum work is a key part of teachers’ practice and involves engaging with different types of knowledge. The way in which teachers use this knowledge will influence pupils’ experience of the curriculum in their classroom. In the globalised world of the 21st century, knowledge questions are important considerations, as schooling is situated in inequitable systems and social structures. This qualitative research study examined teachers’ use of knowledge as they made the curriculum in their classrooms. Data were generated via interviews with primary school teachers in Scotland and thematically analysed. Five types of knowledge were identified and then critically examined using Nancy Fraser’s framework for social justice. This enabled examination of the implications of teachers’ use of knowledge in their curriculum work. Findings were congruous with previous research on this topic, highlighting the complexity of curriculum work. Our analysis suggests that while the focus on ‘pupil-centred’ education is important, as it acts to recognise pupils in curriculum work, the redistribution of knowledge is a key consideration in the globalised and digitised present day. Digital tools and spaces not only provide access to information but also provide new opportunities for inequity and oppressive social relations; continual reflection on the knowledge flow into schools is an important consideration for both teachers and policy-makers.

Analisis Pandangn Fikih Siasah Terhadap Tindakan Terorisme: Implikasi Terhadap Keamanan Dan Keadilan Sosial

This research aims to explore the views of Fikih Siasah on acts of terrorism within the context of Islam and their implications for security and social justice. In pursuit of this goal, we employ a literature review methodology as our research framework. The analysis results indicate that a profound understanding of acts of terrorism and efforts to address their consequences is essential. Terrorism often poses threats to societal security and affects the principles of social justice. To create a safer and more just society, cooperation among nations, the international community, and individuals is required. This abstract reflects the urgency and relevance of the topic in the constantly evolving global landscape and emphasizes the importance of global collaboration in addressing this challenge.

Unyielding humanity from catastrophic ruins: new political society for social and environmental justice after Bhopal

ABSTRACT This paper analyzes the ways in which a site of catastrophic ruins transpires as a new political society for critical social and environmental justice. Predicated on two and half months of fieldwork in Bhopal – consisting of 60 interviews with gas and water victims and activists, archival research, and observation of sites and events – the paper specifically explains how the Bhopal Movement, the longest-running social movement in post-colonial India, has become an exemplar of what I call ‘unyielding humanity,’ one that rejects conciliatory posturing and ad-hoc solutions, constraining states and corporations alike to meaningfully address the ongoing social and environmental mutilation of Bhopal. Underlining the agency, targets, means, objectives, and determinations of the subaltern people, the paper illustrates how this women-led movement poses triumphant challenges to dominant narratives by focusing on the politics of long-term, intergenerational suffering. Findings indicate that prolonged marginalization can give rise to distinct forms of politics, diverging not only from labor and identity politics but also from various environmental justice movements that have been theorized emphasizing primarily material, visible, and immediate consequences. The paper holds implications for social and environmental justice struggles worldwide.

The EU Just Transition Concept and Its Application in the Case of the Just Transition Mechanism

Abstract The aim of the article is to delve into the question of how the just transition concept that is mainly implemented by the jtm, is determined at the EU level and which are its specific characteristics. The article analyses the concept of just transition and its relation to the concepts that address the social justice implications of the environmental, energy and climate policies. Αdditionally, it examines how certain elements of the concept are incorporated in certain EU Key Strategic Documents. The Just Transition Mechanism is analysed in light of the specific criteria of the just transition concept. The main message is that the EU has adopted a rather limited approach in regard to the determination of the regulative elements of the “just transition” concept and that there is a need for a systematic consideration of the social implications of the EU Decarbonisation and Environmental Policies in their whole spectrum.

Analyzing the Impact of Gender-Inclusive STEM Curricula on Enhancing Female STEM Literacy: Implications for Social Justice and Economic Equilibrium

Analyzing the Impact of Gender-Inclusive STEM Curricula on Enhancing Female STEM Literacy: Implications for Social Justice and Economic Equilibrium

Social Justice Implications for Development Communication: A Case Study of Body Dissatisfaction Disorder

The aim of this study was to broaden development communication on how it deals with building the capacity of people to live meaningful and expressive lives. We examined users of Facebook and Instagram who exhibit body dissatisfaction beliefs and eating disorder (ED) behaviours. An important objective was to examine the prevalence of body dissatisfaction among young adult users of social media. Another objective was to examine if body dissatisfaction among these users is associated with ED behaviours. The target population for the study constituted students at a midsize university in the United States. A self-administered web survey was used to collect information about individuals’ use of social media and its relation to body dissatisfaction, and consequently the prediction of ED behaviours. Correlational analyses were performed to answer the research question and test H2. Hierarchical regression was run to test H1. Regressions corresponding to the path model were run to test H3a and H3b. This study showed the prevalence of body dissatisfaction among users of social media, an association between body dissatisfaction and unhealthy eating behaviours, and further provided empirical evidence that attitude, norms and behaviour control exert an influence on intentions, which then influence disordered eating behaviour. The need for the present study was precisely to establish such a theory-based premise. This study then demonstrated how social media may be used as sites for development communication to combat and mitigate unhealthy physical appearance-based feelings and ideas, and potentially stop them from developing into more serious problems such as EDs.

“The wheelchair really is just a piece of athletic equipment to play the sport of basketball”: The experience of college athletes with disabilities navigating social inclusion and exclusion

This study examines the experiences of youth with physical disabilities navigating social inclusion and exclusion and their engagement in activism through college wheelchair basketball. Studies on disability frequently examine marginalization of, and challenges faced by individuals with disabilities, which can reinforce stereotypical understandings of individuals with disabilities. Yet the attention to youth’s participation in sports, particularly competitive sports that illuminate their strengths and resilience, allows us to identify and discuss effective strategies for supporting the social inclusion of youth with disabilities. As part of our focused ethnography on one U.S. collegiate wheelchair basketball team, we conducted in-depth individual interviews with players and coaches. Participant youth described wheelchair basketball as mediating both social inclusion and exclusion. Their involvement in wheelchair basketball expanded the opportunities for self-growth, participation in social activities, and access to higher education. They, however, highlighted their differences from other athletes without disabilities, including unequal treatment of wheelchair basketball compared to “stand-up” basketball, which motivated them to engage in activism. Participants described strategies they have employed to increase the awareness of their games and educate their classmates about disability and wheelchair basketball. These narratives suggest implications for social justice, particularly the need to raise the voices of youth with disabilities, and strategies for supporting their engagement with advocacy roles and activism.

Collective Memories and Community Interventions: Peace Building in Northern Ireland

This paper examines the role of community interventions in post-conflict settings. The focus is on peacebuilding through the shaping of collective memories, achieved through the transformation of social ties. By addressing community interventions, this paper opens the black box between interventions by formal institutions (such as peace treaties, trials, or truth commissions) and outcomes. It is based on a study of one specific cross-community initiative in Belfast, Northern Ireland, which – in 2012 – employed a Transitional Justice Grassroots Toolkit. Document analysis is complemented by interviews with participants and organizers to reveal the role of pedagogical practices, mediated by cohort effects, in facilitating cultural transformation through group interactions. This paper suggests how community interventions can change collective memories, cultural trauma, and related identities of the conflict, away from their polarized and polarizing forms, and it explores implications for future peace and social justice.

Sustainability is not a thing: It's hard work! Recognizing the middlemen of operations and maintenance for feminist energy systems in India's Sundarbans

The work it takes to operate and maintain energy systems is essential yet often missing from public and scholarly discourses on energy transitions. Such discourses often reduce sustainability to a property of energy sources and/or technologies, thereby discounting the hard work it takes to sustain energy systems in the long term. Building on insights from feminist theory, the paper conceptualizes this work as care work – key to the reproduction of energy systems past the original moments of design and production – and considers the question of who cares for energy systems as having both social justice and sustainability implications. Informed by primary data collected during 15 months of fieldwork on an island of India's Sundarbans, the paper connects two separate conversations in ERSS: the first aims at exploring the gender-energy nexus; the second calls attention to those figures who mediate between energy technologies and users – the “missing middlemen” of energy studies. In India's Sundarbans, it is men who care for energy systems, yet their care work is devalued. Showing how the devaluation of middlemen's work cannot be abstracted from their identities at the intersection of gender and other markers of difference, the paper provides an illustration of what feminism can offer to energy studies. Animated by a political commitment to enact a vision of feminist energy systems, the paper seeks not only to advance scholarly conversations but to help imagine a different type of society – where the work of energy system reproduction counts towards achieving sustainable energy objectives.

Mapping the social implications of platform algorithms for LGBTQ+ communities

LGBTQ+ communities were among the first to appropriate the Internet to experiment with their identities and socialize outside of mainstream society. Recently, those platforms have implemented algorithmic systems that curate, exploit, and predict user practices and identities. Yet, the social implications that platform algorithms raise for LGBTQ+ communities remain largely unexplored. Drawing from critical platform studies, science and technology studies, as well as gender and sexuality studies, this paper maps the main issues that platform algorithms raise for LGBTQ+ users and analyzes their implications for social justice and equity. To do so, it identifies and discusses public controversies through a review and analysis of journalistic articles. Our analysis points to five important algorithmic issues that affect the lives of LGBTQ+ users in ways that require additional scrutiny from researchers, policymakers, and tech developers alike: the ability for sorting algorithms to identify, categorize, and predict the sexual orientation and/or gender identity of users; the role that recommendation algorithms play in mediating LGBTQ+ identities, kinship, and cultures; the development of automated anti-LGBTQ+ speech detection/filtering software and the collateral harm caused to LGBTQ+ users; the power struggles over the nature and types of visibility afforded to LGBTQ+ issues online; and the overall enactment of cisheteronormative biases by platform affordances.

The slow violence of fortress conservation creates conditions for socially unjust ‘voluntary’ relocation

The creation of inviolate Protected Areas for the conservation of charismatic carnivores displaces forest-dwelling communities and reduces their access to vital forest-based livelihood resources like timber, wild food, commercial gums-resins, fuel, and fodder for livestock. We illustrate how exclusionary projects to conserve the Asiatic Lion and the African cheetah in Kuno National Park have adversely affected forest-based livelihoods and the indigenous tree tenure system of the Sahariya, a particularly vulnerable indigenous group in central India. This article traces the social justice implications of long-term restrictions on forest access and how these shape people's response to government attempts to relocate them. The empirical analysis is drawn on long-term livelihood data from two phases of household surveys conducted in 2005 and 2017. In addition, qualitative fieldwork (conducted in 2017 and 2023) and geospatial analysis were used to analyse the spatial dynamics of the increasingly restrictive forest access. The study highlights that quantity collected of chir (the gum-resin of the salai or Boswellia serrata tree) declined by 46 % during the study period. Systematic state restrictions on collecting non-timber forest produce (NTFP) unleashed a process of ‘slow violence’ on the Sahariya, steadily eroding their ability to survive in the forest. This has forced the Sahariya of village Bagcha to acquiesce to ‘voluntary’ relocation. Socially just biodiversity conservation policy should critically examine the inherently political processes underlying ‘voluntary’ relocation and strive to look for more inclusive coexistence alternatives.

Discipline, Erasure, and Silenced Subjectivities: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Florida's 2022 Parental Rights in Education Act

This critical policy analysis is concerned with the discursive linguistic practices and social justice implications surrounding the passage of Florida's controversial “Parental Rights in Education Act” (PREA), which enacts limitations on classroom instruction involving topics related to gender and sexuality. Foregrounding this essay lays a call for social work scholarship to recognize the significance of the critical semiotic and post-structural turn in social science research, which evinces the importance of attending to the nuanced relationship between discourse, power, ideology, and identity formation. As a field espousing the tenets of social justice and commitments to the broader aims of social equality, social work holds an inherent investment in understanding the politics of language and, by extension, the language of emancipatory change. Informed by critical discourse analysis (CDA) and feminist post-structural thought, this analysis brings to the forefront the relevance of discourse, language, and semiotics as crucial objects of inquiry and seeks to examine what norms are in operation in the context of this legislation. What can discourse reveal about the nature of the social problem as postulated by PREA, and what discursive implications might it contain? Ultimately, this analysis contends that PREA represents a new threshold of educational and queer surveillance, best understood when bracketed by the ideologies of neoliberalism, cis-/heteropatriarchy, and the concomitant articulation of transphobia.

The Construction of Climate Change Discourse in Online News Comment Sections: A Critical Discourse Analysis

This study examines the construction of climate change discourse in online news comment sections using Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). The study highlights the importance of language and power dynamics in shaping climate change discourse and the need to consider social justice implications. The findings suggest that media coverage significantly shapes public perceptions of climate change, and efforts should be made to promote scientific literacy and prioritise the needs of vulnerable communities in climate change mitigation and adaptation efforts. The study provides recommendations for media outlets, policymakers, and the public to raise awareness about the urgency of climate change and ensure equitable and just solutions.

Teacher professional autonomy in an atypical government school: matters of relationality and context

ABSTRACT Teacher professional autonomy is important to teachers’ work satisfaction, efficiency, well-being, and empowerment. However, it cannot simply be defined as freedom from control because it is relational and contextual. In this paper, we examine the relationality and contextual sensitivity of teacher professional autonomy at ‘Newstall’ College, a senior secondary government school in Australia. The paper draws on a larger study that examined the social justice implications of school autonomy reform in four Australian state education systems. Newstall College was one of the five case study schools included in this study. Findings generated through in-depth interviews with eighteen staff members (including teachers, professional staff, the deputy principal and the principal) are presented that examine teacher professional autonomy. Conceptualising teacher autonomy as relational and contextual, the paper provides insight into the ways in which teacher autonomy was enabled at this school.