This seminar celebrates the launch of the paperback version of Collaborative Arts-based Research for Social Justice (published by Routledge). This text focuses on the ways that social inquiry might be carried out with marginalised groups to promote social justice. The seminar includes discussion of some of the book’s themes including the power of the arts to critically explore those elements of life that are often hidden or disregarded. Drawing on a range of colourful examples, it will be argued that the arts can startle us out of complacency and enable a different way of knowing the social world.

Victoria Foster is Senior Lecturer in Social Sciences and Associate Director (External Relations) of Edge Hill University’s Institute for Public Policy and Practice (I4P). Her work is concerned with social justice issues and all her research has involved collaborations with organisations outside of the university. Victoria’s ESRC funded doctoral and postdoctoral research was carried out at a Sure Start programme in North West England and involved developing a range of arts-based methods to evaluate people’s experiences of the programme. Since then she has worked on NIHR funded participatory research with parents of babies requiring neonatal care, and evaluations of several arts programmes. These include a drama-based crime prevention programme at the Royal Court Liverpool and an innovative educational programme carried out by the European Opera Centre. She is currently developing on an arts-based research project at a local community farm, exploring the politics of food production.

Since the economic crises of the late 2000s, European centre-left parties have tended to suffer electorally. One policy proposed as a solution to the social democratic malaise is universal basic income: an unconditional, regular payment to each citizen. This paper explores the arguments for UBI from a social democratic perspective, examining its potential to deal with structural challenges including automation, gender inequality and labour market precarity. The key contention of the paper is that UBI is an unconvincing policy remedy for centre-left parties. It is unlikely to win widespread public support, may exacerbate not solve the problems its advocates identify, and could compromise investment in other key policy areas. A more persuasive strategy is expanding welfare states while complimenting traditional redistributive measures with ‘predistributive’ approaches; a strategy that, as the surge of Labour in the UK’s 2017 general election demonstrated, still has the capacity to win widespread public support.

Daniel Sage is Senior Lecturer at Edge Hill and a social policy researcher with interests in UK and European welfare state research. He is chiefly interested in public attitudes to the welfare state, subjective wellbeing and social policy, the sociology of unemployment and basic income. In addition to his position at Edge Hill, Daniel is a Research Associate with the social democratic think-tank Policy Network. He has been the lead author on three Policy Network reports, including 2017’s The Case Against Universal Basic Income.

Dr. Malcolm Torry is Director of the Citizen’s Basic Income Trust, and a Visiting Senior Fellow at the London School of Economics. He is the author of Money for Everyone (Policy Press, 2013), 101 Reasons for a Citizen’s Income (Policy Press, 2015), The Feasibility of Citizen’s Income (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), and Citizen’s Basic Income: A Christian social policy (Darton, Longman and Todd, 2016).

This talk will introduce an edited book on return migration and psychosocial wellbeing (Routledge, 2017) edited by Zana Vathi and Russell King. The book contends that the study of psychosocial wellbeing in the context of return migration uncovers essentialised assumptions on the effects of migration on people, as well as broader ideologies of power, home and belonging. The presentation is based on the introductory chapter of the book which offers a critical review of the most recent research conducted on the return migration-psychosocial wellbeing nexus included in this edited volume. Four main interlinked themes are identified: the role of context in the interface between return and psychosocial wellbeing; reassessing volition in the context of return; post-return mobilities and enabling citizenships; the effects of age, gender and intersectionalities. Overall the research presented in the book shows that the often negative outcomes for return migrants in the process of return and resettlement in the countries of origin contrast with assumptions held at state level, which inform migration policies and return and repatriation programmes. The findings have significant policy implications which should inform states’ return policies, should they wish to remain faithful to human rights conventions and their legal obligations.

Dr Zana Vathi specializes in migration studies and has been conducting interdisciplinary research in this field since 2005. She is author of 30 different publications in the field of migration, including Migrating and Settling in a Mobile World: Albanian Migrants and their Children in Europe (Springer 2015) and Return Migration and Psychosocial Wellbeing: Outcomes for Migrants and their Families (Routledge 2017, with Russell King). In addition, Zana has published widely in some of the most renowned journals in the field of migration, such as International Migration, Ethnic and Racial Studies, Mobilities, Childhood, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, etc. Zana’s research has been funded by the Marie Curie Actions of the European Commission and the British Academy. She has served as international expert in the field of migration for organizations such as MPC/EUI, Terre des Hommes and the IOM. Emerging new avenues of her research focus on complexity and the links between the spatial and the psychosocial in the context of migration.

This paper will discuss and contrast and compare medical and social constructionist-influenced knowledge on obesity and ‘The Obesity Epidemic’, focusing on the contemporary UK, although literature from other Western and non-Western countries will supplement or be used as a comparator to UK sources. Although most medical and media informants identify overweight and obese people to be at serious risk of health problems and a drain on the country’s social, medical and economic resources, as well as individualising obesity in terms of both causes and solutions, research and literature from social science challenges such a view. It unveils the socially constructed nature of obesity and the obesity epidemic; reveals how vested interests may benefit from setting the agenda and presenting obesity in a certain way; illuminates the abject failure of societal prevention and cure social policy initiatives in most Western countries; highlights the importance of structural issues and social divisions and inequalities; and questions to what extent any health problems overweight or obese people may experience are due to their weight and to what extent they may emanate from the stigmatisation of and discrimination against overweight and obese people.

Lorraine Green has studied or worked in HE over a number of years at several universities, including the Universities of Cardiff, Birmingham, Manchester, Nottingham and Huddersfield University, Southbank University and Sheffield Hallam University. She is currently senior lecturer in Social Sciences at Edge Hill University. Lorraine is fairly eclectic in her knowledge and research interests but her key areas are the sociology of childhood, of the life course and of the body. Her most recent publications are the books Understanding the Life Course: Sociological and Psychological Perspectives, 2nd edition (2017): Polity, Social Policy for Social Work: Placing Social Work in its Wider Context (2016) with Karen Clarke, Polity – and the article ‘The Trouble with Touch? New Insights and Observations for Social Work and Social Care’, British Journal of Social Work (2017), 47(3): 773-792

The consumer-based pressure for academic providers – such as Colleges, HEIs and Universities – to produce a standardised and equitable product, belies a reductive potential to dilute and quash the creative dynamism inherent to open, creative and unpredictable learning environments.

Increasingly, a regimented, sanitised and technologically controlled type of spectator-based knowledge, cascaded through the ‘standard’ of Direct Instruction, serves to stifle creativity; the subsequent boredom and conformity can only serve to produce a disengaged army of knowledge-voyeurs.

This is a problem – and one that we all should take seriously – as this quite specific type of tightly structured and regulated knowledge, functionally churned out, is anathema to creative and critical thinking. Such standardised learning experiences, based on the delivery of tightly controlled information, stringently measured and meted out to uninvolved participants, produces a mould for uncritical conformists.
This does not bode well for the future; we are supposed to nurture and mentor the leaders, teachers’ managers and public service professionals of tomorrow. As such, we must rise to the intimidating economic and political challenges posed by consumer discourses – against a paradoxical backdrop of austerity – as critical and impassioned thinkers. If we wish to nurture, or become, radical and innovative problem solvers, independent and capable operators that can tackle projects and obstacles in new and adept ways, we must become and instigate the change that we wish to see.

Craig A. Hammond is Senior Lecturer in Education at Liverpool John Moores University; in addition to writing and publishing research papers, he teaches across a range of undergraduate and postgraduate programmes. Gaining is PhD in Sociology – from Lancaster University – in 2012, he has since gained recognition as a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (SFHEA). His most recent book Hope, Utopia and Creativity in Higher Education: Pedagogical Tactics for Alternative Futures, addresses and develops concepts and practices associated with democratic learning and radical creativity. He is an editor and event organiser with the Cultural Difference and Social Solidarity Network (CDSS), a Regional Co-Convenor for the Learning Skills and Research Network, a member of the LJMU Centre for Educational Research (CERES) Steering Group and the Research Group Professional Research, Practice & Learning; he is also founding editor of the Blackburn College peer-reviewed journal Prism. https://www.ljmu.ac.uk/about-us/staff-profiles/faculty-of-education-health-and-community/school-of-education/craig-hammond

This paper reports on qualitative findings of a collaborative research project on outcomes for permanence and stability of children in care involving social work teams from TUSLA, the Child and Family Agency in Ireland and researchers at the UNESCO Child and Family Research Centre, NUI Galway. Drawing on data garnered using Participatory Action (PAR) approaches and narrative interviewing techniques (cf. Wengraf 2001) with children in care and their families (i.e. parents of origin and foster parents), this paper focuses principally on the concept of permanence which in the literature is typically delineated as encompassing three strands; legal, relational, physical and ecological permanence (Stott and Gustavsson 2010). Applying social theoretical approaches to narrative, knowledge and discourses, we argue that children and young people’s interpretations of permanence frequently embody emotive stories about family and friends and are indelibly linked to ‘place’ and concepts of ‘felt security’ and ‘insecurity’.

We argue that how and where these narratives are spatially situated is also significant for understanding how they make sense of permanence in everyday life. In other words, the routine spaces and places alluded to in their stories about relationships, people and events are necessary for understanding how children and youth (re)-create and share various meanings and discourses of permanence in everyday life. We argue that children’s narratives of permanence should be interpreted as emotive, knowledge-based and inherently spatial experiences. Such an approach to understanding permanence, it is argued, is highly significant for the effective planning and implementation of policies and programmes aimed at children and youth in care. The paper also points to the significance of PAR and narrative-based research approaches for (inter)-national policy and practice involving children and youth in care.