News from the Fafo frontpage July-September 2011

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New article on political engagement among young adults in multicultural settings in Norway

September 2011
Fafo research director Jon Rogstad has together with Viggo Vestel at NOVA published the article "The Art of Articulation. Political Engagement and Social Movements in the Making among Young Adults in Multicultural Settings in Norway" in Social Movement Studies, 10(3). Participation in conventional politics, such as elections, membership of organizations and political parties, is relatively low among young adults of ethnic minority background. Instead, engagement seems to find its way through aesthetic and other expressive channels of influence drawing on new technologies, impulses from transnational youth culture traditions, and both street riots and less conflictual actions. The aim of this article is to grasp a potential social movement in the making, by exploring the processes of articulation through which young people from immigrant families in Norway express their political engagement.
Read more about the article The Art of Articulation. Political Engagement and Social Movements in the Making among Young Adults in Multicultural Settings in Norway

The difficult bit: the Arab spring after Libya

16 September 2011
The outcome of the Libyan conflict leaves the Arab world's wider political momentum to be decided by the interplay between mobilisation and repression, says Fafo's senior researcher Mark Taylor in this commentary at Open Democracy.
Read the commentary The difficult bit: the Arab spring after Libya

New Noref-report on women’s participation in UN peacekeeping operations

6 September 2011
Fafo researcher Kathleen M. Jennings has published a new report for the Norwegian Peacebuilding Centre entitled: Women's Participation in UN Peacekeeping Operations: Agents of Change or Stranded Symbols? The report contends that many of the claims justifying women’s increased participation in PKOs are at present inflated – unsurprisingly so, given the still extremely small presence of uniformed women personnel in these missions – and are based on “affirmative gender essentialisms”. It concludes that more systematic research is needed to examine the ways in which women peacekeepers contribute to the operational effectiveness of peacekeeping missions, and how these contributions differ (or not) from the performance of male peacekeepers.
Download the article: Women's Participation in UN Peacekeeping Operations: Agents of Change or Stranded Symbols?

New article on part-time work in 'old' and 'new' part-time work regimes

18 August 2011
Fafo-researcher Heidi Nicolaisen has published the article "Increasingly Equalized? A Study of Part-Time Work in 'Old' and 'New' Part-Time Work Regimes" in Nordic Journal of Working Life Studies, 1, 1 2011. In her article she compares equalization in banking in three countries: two 'old' part-time work regimes, Norway and Sweden, and Ireland, where part-time work started to increase more recently. She argues that further equalization may be hindered by 'soft' regulations and a gradual normalization process that also normalizes disadvantages associated with part-time work and the category of the 'working mother'.
Download the article Increasingly Equalized?

New article: The potential role of mother-in-law in prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV

16 August 2011
Fafo-researcher Marina Manuela de Paoli has together with researchers from the University of Bergen, Bergen University College and Muhimbili University College of Health Sciences in Dar es Salaam published a new article in in BMC Public Health 2011, 11:551. The article is called "The potential role of mother-in-law in prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV: a mixed methods study from the Kilimanjaro region, northern Tanzania". The authors found that decreasing influence of the mother-in-law and increasing prominence of the conjugal couples in issues related to reproduction and child care, reinforce the importance of continued efforts to include male partners in the PMTCT programme (prevention -of-mother-to-child transmission of HIV). The potential for involving mothers-in-law in the infant feeding component, where she still has influence in some areas, should be further explored.
Abstract

New article: Ethics or access?

August 2011
Fafo-researcher Guri Tyldum has published the article “Ethics or access? Balancing informed consent against the application of institutional, economic or emotional pressures in recruiting respondents for research” in International Journal of Social Research Methodology. In this article, Tyldum shows how groups with low human and social capital are less likely to volunteer to participate in research, if participation entails no direct personal benefits for respondents. Consequently, if our research was to be based solely on volunteers, our knowledge of social practices would be biased in favour of groups with high human and social capital, who are also more likely to have their voices heard in other arenas. In order to get access to all respondent groups, various forms and degrees of institutional, economic and emotional pressure are widely used to recruit respondents for interviews. Although such practices are common, it is still taboo in many research communities to acknowledge that pressure is applied. Tyldum argues that research communities could benefit from acknowledging more of the ethical problems linked to the problems of access, and widen our focus, from one strongly focussed on informed consent to a wider awareness of factors that can entail risk of harm for participants.
The article is available online: Ethics or access?

Child mobility in Senegal

August 2011
Fafo was co-organizer of a seminar on children's mobility at Cheikh Anta Diop University in Dakar on 30 July. Our partner IPDSR (Institut de Population, Développement et Santé de la Reproduction) presented, among other things, our new joint project web, which is prepared by Sigbjørn Åmdal (pictured) at Fafo. The project consists of two surveys on climate change and the role of children in household risk management strategies in rural Senegal. Fafo-researcher Anne Kielland (pictured) abd Ibrahima Gaye from ENEA (Ecole Supérieure d'Economia Appliquée) have published the first report on child mobility in Senegal. In her presentation, Fatou Binetou Dial from IPDSR focused on the results from 48 focus groups that organized in parallel with the field work during the second survey.
Project web: Children and Household Risk Management
Report: Child mobility and rural vulnerability in Senegal
Dial's presentation: Draft report (in French)

New article: Employment of disabled people in Norway and the United Kingdom

6 July 2011
Fafo's research director Inger Lise Skog Hansen has together with WRI-researcher Tone Alm Andreassen and IES-director Nigel Meager published the article «Employment of disabled people in Norway and the United Kingdom. Comparing two welfare regimes and why this is difficult» in Scandinavian Journal of Disability Research, Vol. 13, No. 2. The article explore the differences in employment of disabled people between Norway and the United Kingdom, and discuss the significance of the two countries belonging to different welfare regimes when it comes to disabled people's relation to the labour market. The authors argue that this is first and foremost due to different ways of defining and measuring disability.
Read more and download the article Employment of disabled people in Norway and the United Kingdom

New report: The salafis are coming – but where are they going?

4 July 2011
Fafo-researcher Jacob Høigilt has published the report The salafis are coming – but where are they going? at Noref. The Salafist movement has recently become a political actor in post-revolutionary Egypt but, despite intense media attention and serious sectarian incidents, its political impact is likely to remain limited. Three different strands of Salafism can be distinguished In Egypt. The traditional Salafi movement, established in the early 20th century, originally placed great emphasis on the purely doctrinal aspects of religion and was unconcerned with politics. In this report Høigilt analyses these three strands and their different ways of political engagement.
Read more about and download the report: The salafis are coming – but where are they going?

New project: Peacekeeping, Poverty, and Development: Towards an Understanding of the Gendered Peacekeeping Economies in the DRC, Sudan, and Liberia

4 July 2011
Fafo-researchers Morten Bøås and Kathleen Jennings have been awarded a three-year research grant from the Research Council of Norway. The project focuses on what Bøås and Jennings call “peacekeeping economies”, which encompass the skilled, semi-skilled, or unskilled jobs available to local staff in UN offices or NGOs that accompany the UN presence (usually secretarial or translation-based, as well as cleaning, cooking, driving, guarding, etc); unskilled and mainly informal work such as housecleaning, laundering, cooking, running errands, etc for international staff; service jobs in the establishments that cater to internationals; and participation in the sex industry. Key aspects of enquiry include the effect of peacekeeping economies on livelihoods and on gender relations in the affected societies. The project team includes researchers from the London School of Economics, the Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Centre, and PRIO.
More information on Peacekeeping, Poverty, and Development