Social Invisibility Research Articles

Legal Protection for Domestic Workers: The Experience of Indonesia

Given its social and economic invisibility and the accompanying low social status, domestic work is often exploitative. This research was aimed to find out and formulate the substance of legal protection for domestic workers in legislation in the field of labor in terms of the perspective of justice. It uses a statute, case, and socio-legal approaches. It was conducted in 3 (three) major cities, namely Jakarta, Yogyakarta and Makassar. The results of research showed that the substance of legal provisions in general for the protection of domestic workers, especially in labor legislation basically has not been able to guarantee justice and legal certainty because the responsibility of State has not been implemented in the existing legal substance. The paradigm of harmonization and the principles of legal agreements in the field of labor have not guaranteed justice and legal certainty for domestic workers. It is evidenced by the view of the profession of domestic workers who are positioned as informal workers, in addition they are not being accommodated as an element protected by law, it is also related to the protection of basic rights and labor social security does not cover the existence of domestic workers.

Conceptions on the Protagonism of Women Fishing

Despite the positive rates of inclusion of women in the labor market in recent decades, there is still much to be done by the social and cultural equality of labor between the sexes. Regarding that the various professional activities still prevail sexual divisions of labor and performance of Angari of Artisanal Fisheries in Juazeiro/BA, these relationships are not very different. This work is the result of a survey conducted with women living in Angari community in Juazeiro/BA in order to assess the activities carried out by women in fishing activities as well as meet the traditional knowledge of that fishing-related community and which ones are passed on to younger people by these women. Throughout the paper, we describe what are the activities carried out by women and their culturally constructed social invisibility, women of the difficulties to maintain the support of their families and the challenges for the transmission of traditional knowledge to the younger people. The work also brings real proposals in order to disseminate the emerging need for public infrastructure policy, health and legalization of the activities developed by the fisherwomen of Angari.

Abordagem interprofissional à população em situação de rua: relato de experiência

Objetivo: Relatar a experiência vivenciada por duas acadêmicas do curso de enfermagem da Universidade Católica de Brasília, após acompanhar uma equipe de consultório na rua.Descrição da Experiência: A experiência foi vivenciada junto à equipe de uma Região Administrativa do Distrito Federal, onde foram realizadas atividades de redução de agravos voltadas à população em situação de rua. Trata-se de uma população que merece atenção especial em virtude da sua marginalização, estigmatização e invisibilidade social. A equipe interprofissional desempenha importante função social na redução de agravos, pois a interdisciplinaridade promove a troca de saberes que qualificam o produto final das ações em saúde.Conclusão: Considera-se que esta vivência junto ao consultório na rua contribuiu para a formação profissional das acadêmicas de enfermagem, pautada no desenvolvimento de posicionamento crítico e reflexivo quanto à responsabilidade social dos profissionais e gestores frente às populações específicas em extrema vulnerabilidade social.

‘Recurrent losers unite’: Online forums, evidence-based activism, and pregnancy loss

Women with recurrent pregnancy loss face unique challenges associated with the social invisibility of their condition, patchy medical knowledge about it, and often intransigent positions of doctors. We approach online forums as sites of knowledge production and examine discussions among women with recurrent miscarriages. We observe that some forum participants gather, summarize, and share experience-based and research-based information in order to challenge certain medical conceptions. We describe these efforts as an example of individual patients’ evidence-based activism enabled by new media platforms and other technoscientific tools available to the public.

Negotiating Identity and Belonging through the Invisibility Bargain: Colombian Forced Migrants in Ecuador

This article argues that an “invisibility bargain” constrains migrants’ identities and political participation, demanding their economic contributions plus political and social invisibility in exchange for tolerance of their presence in the host country. In response, migrants negotiate their visible identity differences, minimize social distance from the host population, and build informal coalitions with non-state brokers to avoid citizen backlash against overt political activism. Examining Colombian forced migrants in Ecuador, the article challenges state-centric governance approaches, underscoring migrant agency in negotiating identity to influence social hierarchies, coexistence, and human security. Its findings advance the broader understanding of migration in the Global South.

Elever des porcs dans une ville d’Afrique de l’Ouest : arrangements entre acteurs pour gérer la proximité ville-élevage

Alors qu’un nombre croissant d’études s’intéressent à l’agriculture urbaine, l’élevage urbain de porcs reste méconnu. Pourtant, il est présent dans de nombreuses villes du Sud et procure un revenu à de nombreuses familles. Cette étude visait à dépasser les analyses centrées sur des aspects techniques de ce type d’élevage pour s’intéresser plus largement au cadre social et spatial dans lequel des éleveurs élèvent des porcs en ville. Elle reposait sur une démarche empirique qui a permis de saisir les conditions du développement et du maintien de l’élevage de porcs dans la deuxième ville du Burkina Faso, Bobo-Dioulasso. Dans cet article, il est question des pratiques des éleveurs à petit effectif, et plus particulièrement du rôle que jouent les arrangements entre acteurs dans la mobilisation des ressources à la fois techniques et sociales qui sont nécessaires à la conduite et au maintien de ce type d’élevage. Les résultats soulignent que les éleveurs de porcs ont une logique de mobilité réduite : les arrangements qu’ils développent avec d’autres acteurs se basent sur une mise en invisibilité de l’élevage à la fois politique, spatiale et sociale, et les liens qu’ils développent pour accéder à des ressources externes sont ancrés dans le temps et dans un voisinage proche. L’environnement social et spatial au sein duquel ils évoluent est central pour la conduite quotidienne des élevages autant que pour leur pérennité à court et moyen terme.

Under the Flyover: Homeless People, Power of Choice and the Practice of Autonomy Through an Exchange Fair

Abstract AS IT IS CONSIDERED A FLOW ZONE, NOBODY PAYS ATTENTION TO FLYOVERS IN THE CITIES NOR TO THEIR REGULAR INHABITANTS, HOMELESS PEOPLE. REGARDLESS OF THEIR SOCIAL INVISIBILITY, HOMELESS PEOPLE DO NOT SOLELY ADOPT STRATEGIES TO FIGHT AGAINST MARGINALISATION BUT ALSO ATTEMPT TO ACHIEVE CERTAIN ECONOMIC AUTONOMY. THIS PAPER FOCUSES ON A LOCAL ECONOMIC EXPERIENCE, WHERE HOMELESS PEOPLE, UNDER A LARGE BRAZILIAN FLYOVER, GET TOGETHER TO ACTIVELY PARTICIPATE IN AN EXCHANGE FAIR WHERE A SOCIAL CURRENCY IS USED. I ARGUE THAT WE MUST DRAW ATTENTION TO THE EMERGENCE OF DIFFERENT AND COMPLEX FORMS OF COLLABORATIVE WORK AND COLLECTIVE CONSUMPTION, SINCE THEY MAY RESCUE CITIZENSHIP, PROMOTE A CERTAIN KIND OF ECONOMIC AUTONOMY, AND CONSTITUTE A POWERFUL TOOL AGAINST SOCIAL INVISIBILITY. I ALSO DISCUSS THE DIFFERENT CONSUMPTION PERSPECTIVE THAT HAS BEEN CONSOLIDATED THROUGH THIS INITIATIVE, BY BRINGING FORWARD OTHER FORMS OF CONSUMPTION NOT BASED ON SOCIAL DISTINCTION.

'Ayn mika: Traumatic experience, social invisibility, and emotional distress of sub-Saharan women with precarious status in Morocco.

Morocco has become a permanent transit country for tens of thousands of sub-Saharan migrants heading to Europe. Many of these migrants are women who have a precarious legal status and can no longer reach Europe, whose borders have been considerably securitized since September 11, 2001. They also have no wish to risk their lives again returning south across the Sahara Desert. This paper discusses the results of an exploratory research project conducted in Morocco on the relationships between the sub-Saharan migrant women's traumatic experiences, social invisibility, and emotional distress in the context of a massive securitization of Euro-Mediterranean borders.

Sociologia da Infância: traçando algumas linhas

Tis paper presents the dossier on Sociology of Childhood (SC) which aim is to take children and their childhoods away from social invisibility, once they appear only in and as statistics (child mortality, child labor, school performance, etc.) or as a setting for social life (studies on family, work, etc.), to place them at the center of the social relations scene, as protagonists, seeking to evidence their agency. Te paper discusses conceptions of children and childhood in the Sociology of Childhood terrain, indicates the epistemological and methodological

O habitus no mundo do trabalho: uma apropriação da categoria de Bourdieu

This article is part of a doctoral thesis in development whose empirical research motivated the construction and preparation of a bibliographic survey about the category of habitus in Bourdieusian theory, with the aim of building a reflection on the relationship between the meaning of habitus in Bourdieu (1980), in the specific field of work, and illness from the process of productive restructuring, recovering old paradigms that condition the contemporary reality. It starts from the understanding that work is the element that clarifies the social mediations necessary to apprehend the history of society, and, therefore, it is not a field that is excluded from Bourdieu's conceptual universe, but constitutes it in the proportion in which it integrates and influences the habitus of social agents. In this sense, we problematize the author's contributions, relating them to the discussions carried out by the sociology of work, valuing those concerning the ideopolitical determinations of the "new neoliberal reason" for the phenomenon of social precariousness of work and the consequences for the subjectivity and illness of workers. In this sense, it is understood that the multi-causal nexus between the habitus of social precarization of work and the process of psychological suffering remains in the social invisibility, either because of the political intentionality, or because of the automated and immediatist rationality present in our society.

Comment from the Field

Hosted on 25 and 26 July 2016 by Katherine Runswick-Cole the Research Centre Social Change at Manchester Metropolitan University, Theorising Normalcy and the Mundane brought together academics, activists, practitioners, and students. Organized in association the University of Sheffield, Sheffield Hallam University, and the University of Chester, Theorising Normalcy and the Mundane invited critical debate around the concept of being human, and opened sites of discussion to resist and redefine this concept.Chaired by Cassandra Ogden (University of Chester), Jonathan Harvey (University of Southampton) presented his keynote entitled (Re)claiming a Sociological Understanding of Acquired Brain Injury: Towards a (Re) Imagining of the Identity of Brain Injury Survivors. Drawing upon findings from his own research, he questioned the ability of diagnostic labels to capture the multifaceted nature of what it means to be human, and discussed the lives of acquired brain injury (ABI) survivors as a means of reconsidering this category. He suggested that the (re)construction of identity is both unpredictable and long-term, evolving far beyond the timing expectations of rehabilitation. In addition, he explored the way in which ABI survivors reported a new normal, and questioned whether this learning journey occurs within the confinements of rehabilitation or upon (re)entering the familiar, intimate space of the home. To conclude, he argued a sociological theorization of disability.In the opening panel Deconstructing Normal, Elizabeth Tilley (Open University) revealed how the forced sterilization of women labelled learning difficulties continues in the present day. She argued that decisions made for rather than with women impede their reproductive rights and perpetuate methods of professional power. She also discussed the navigation of ethical tensions that arose due to the risky nature of researching the experience of contraceptive choice women labelled a learning difficulty. Next, Grainne O'Connor (Open University) explored the relationship between an owner and their assistance dog, particular attention to how this relationship plays out in social encounters. For her, social encounters alter depending on whether the owner is present through the assistive dog, or through their own body. She argued that these encounters result in a feeling of social invisibility, as the owner is perceived through the filter of the assistance dog. Finally, Lindsay O'Dell (Open University) deconstructed the normative nature of developmental tasks. With the aim to re-frame understandings of autism in positive ways, the paper critiqued developmental trajectories as inherently harmful, perpetuating a practice that positions autistic children against measures of ideal childhood.In the panel, The Human, Sumaira Naseem and Rebecca Lawthom (Manchester Metropolitan University) proposed the academy as a site considering and contesting this taken-for-granted category. They discussed assessment as a practice contaminated by technological quantification, and shared possible ways that we can (re)humanize academic practices. They suggested that by starting disability, the practice of assessment opens up different ways of learning and sharing knowledge that can transform the academy. Following this, Suanne Gibson and Melanie Parker (Plymouth University) reflected on their kaleidoscopic approach to disability that emerges from their entangled identities. That is, by positioning their distinct lenses and perspectives together, they are able to obtain a unique refraction of the world. This diffractive methodology is, as they argued, vital to reflect on what disability reveals about education, social justice, and the self in a neoliberal capitalist society, and is crucial to enable practice that can make a difference in the world. Finally, Louise Hickman (University of California) engaged the audience in her presentation through vocal participation. …

THE PERCEPTIONS OF AGING AMONG GAY AND LESBIAN OLDER ADULTS: SOCIAL EXCLUSION OR INCLUSION?

Ageism and heterosexism as social exclusion processes can contribute to the social invisibility of gay and lesbian older adults. This contribution wishes to shed a light on the perceptions of aging and on the place of older gay and lesbian people in society, as perceived by gay and lesbian older adults. It is based on the results of semi-structured individual interviews conducted with 22 gay and lesbian older adults aged 60 and over. The participant’s discourses reveal, among others, two elements: a lack of social recognition and visibility of gay and lesbian older adults in society as well as the willingness to assert themselves and take their place. The discussion will propose a reflection of the intersection between sexual orientation, age and generation to examine the dual process of social exclusion, due to ageism and heterosexism, and of social inclusion.

“A boy, being a victim, nobody really buys that, you know?”: Dynamics of sexual violence against boys

The aim of this study was to present the dynamics of sexual violence against boys. Interviews were conducted with four male victims of sexual abuse between the ages of six and 10, as well as four psychologists employed in the health care system and involved in the treatment of sexually abused boys. Results were examined using thematic content analysis, based on six deductively identified themes corresponding to the following stages of sexual violence against children and adolescents: preparation, episodes, silencing, narratives, repression and overcoming. The results suggested that proximity between victims and offenders, who were mostly adolescent boys, was a facilitator of abuse. The interviews also revealed that victims faced significant levels of disbelief and discrimination. Lastly, the findings pointed to the importance of protective actions and of the system itself, though all practitioners perceived the latter as flawed and unprepared to handle cases involving sexually abused boys. These findings underscore the social invisibility of sexual violence against boys, due to the low number of referrals as well as the disbelief and discrimination, which permeates the management of these cases.

A invisibilidade social e política dos agricultores familiares e seus reflexos nas relações com o Estado

http://dx.doi.org/10.5007/1807-1384.2017v14n2p113O presente artigo tem por objetivo fazer uma reflexão a respeito da invisibilidade social e política de alguns segmentos sociais, dentre os quais se destacam os agricultores familiares, e sobre os reflexos dessa invisibilidade na seara jurídica, visto que este segmento, com frequência enfrenta embates judiciais em decorrência do descumprimento da legislação ambiental. A metodologia empregada no trabalho foi a consulta aos arquivos do Ministério Público da Comarca de Viçosa – MG e análise processual. Conclui-se, com o trabalho que a invisibilidade social e política se estende para a área jurídica porque tais grupos sociais encontram dificuldades de acesso não apenas à informação, mas também aos mecanismos de defesa.

El precio de acceder a lo digital: conflictos de centralidad entre el capital cultural y el capital TIC en clases medias y bajas de Bogotá, Colombia

Mastering digital technologies has become a necessary skill in the academic, workplace and social spheres. Being disconnected —not using technological communication devices or not having control over them— leads to situations of inequality of opportunities and social invisibility. The following text includes the theoretical framework formulated by Bourdieu and from there, it proposes the category of ICT Capital as an advance towards understanding issues related to digital access and its transforming social relationship. The most significant findings show how current individuals subordinate their cultural capital, forms of interaction, languages, consumption of cultural goods, symbolic and statutory legitimacy to the technological experience of the digital world.

Vulnerabilities and recognition: a life story approach to links between youth and violence in marginalized neighborhoods in Buenos Aires, Argentina

We present the results of a study analyzing the experience of young people with violence in marginalized neighborhoods, examining the links to processes of vulnerability and recognition. We used the methodological strategy of life story reports, built on semi-structured interviews with ten young people 18 to 26 years of age, with their spaces of sociability in marginalized neighborhoods in Greater Metropolitan Buenos Aires, Argentina. Following the theory's lines, we simultaneously built, coded, and analyzed the data, using the Atlas.ti package. Recording the young people's experiences with violence allows visualizing the dynamic and multidimensional nature of their processes of vulnerability, identifying the links to forms of recognition (affective, legal-moral, and ethical-social), the denial of which at different moments in their lives generates situations of disparagement or social invisibility.

Françoise Král, Social Invisibility and Diasporas in Anglophone Literature and Culture: The Fractal Gaze

Françoise Král, Social Invisibility and Diasporas in Anglophone Literature and Culture: The Fractal Gaze

Recognising and responding to young people with learning disabilities who experience, or are at risk of, child sexual exploitation in the UK

In the UK, child sexual exploitation (CSE) has received considerable attention in the last few years, with evidence pointing to an increased risk for young people with learning disabilities. However, no study has specifically focused on this and little is known about how best to protect, identify or support this group. This paper is based on a UK study which examined the identification of, and support for sexual exploited young people with learning disabilities. Data collection included surveys of all local authorities in the UK and of a sample of services supporting vulnerable or disabled children, in-depth interviews with 34 professional stakeholders and with 27 young people with learning disabilities who were at risk of, or who had experienced CSE. This paper provides an overview of the study and identifies areas for improvement in policy and practice including the need for education, training and awareness raising amongst young people, their families and professionals; tackling social isolation, disempowerment and invisibility of young people with learning disabilities, and the need for full implementation of government guidance with a spotlight on this group of young people.

"They call me a woodsman": cognitive and social aspects on the relationships between woodsmen and forest researchers

Woodsmen or "mateiros" are people who are commonly hired or contracted to work as special local collaborators, often guiding scientists inside the forest, providing local names of plants and other useful information. We interviewed forest researchers and woodsmen to unveil the process of forest science production in the coastal zone of Northeast Brazil. The concept of network is used as a basis for discussing the connections involving forest knowledge production in and outside scientific academic environments. We presumed that the so-called social invisibility of woodsmen would be a consequence of the asymmetric relationship they have with formal researchers. Information from the interviews was analyzed by means of thematic coding through the content-analysis technique. We found that the "woodsman" category is mainly an academic construct; a designation attributed generally in an unilateral way by scientific professionals towards some people who work as local experts on plants and other components of forest ecosystems. All of the woodsmen we found were men with a low degree of formal education. Researchers tended to recognize woodsmen as bearers of some indispensable information, although treated as a subordinate and local source of knowledge. Although most researchers realized that woodsmen are key collaborators, most of them never referred explicitly to the aid received from these partners. People from both groups agreed that woodsmen are more and more difficult to find. We suggest that forest researchers dealing with woodsmen should develop a more critical vision on the social relationships in which they are involved while doing fieldwork.

SPEAKING TO THE MALE WORLD: CASTE AND PERFORMANCE OF WOMEN PLAYWRIGHTS

The nearly 170 years old modern proscenium theatre in Marathi Language is considered to be an important cultural identity of the progressive Marathi middle class. Its text- intensive nature renders importance to the playwright who shapes theatrical social knowledge through plays in a major way. Historically, writing of plays acquired importance in the colonial period because the theatre had become an important site to construct colonial public discourse particularly with respect to nationalist aspirations of the middle class and the nineteenth century reform movement for women. Though the generally observed social invisibility of women is true of the colonial Marathi theatre as well, it happens to be more a case of non-recognition of women playwrights than a reality. It is a primary observation that the Marathi women playwrights have been writing independent social, humourous, historical or mythological plays for approximately the last 110 years even when their plays did not always stand a chance of performance. Considering continuity of their writing as their collective “performance” and as an act of intervention in the theatrical discourse in defiance of objectification and reduction in masculine reflection, I would like to explore the intentions and methods of their writing through two contemporary examples of playwrights namely, HirabaiPednekar (1885- 1951) and Girijabai Kelkar (1886-1980). I submit that if the meaning of being a woman playwright in colonial modern Marathi theatre is to be an agency of social thinking and change, then the feminine agency does not receive its due credit because of social prejudices against categories of caste and gender.