Publications

Wales is often compared favourably to other countries because of its commitment to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and lower levels of school exclusions. Systematic analysis of policy documents reveals the dominance of a rights-based discourse in approaching the challenge of school exclusions, which are explained in terms of socio-economic circumstances…

Given the anticipated negative impact of Brexit on the U.K. economy, it might be expected that self-employed individuals would have favoured remaining in the European Union. However, the self-employed are also more likely to have certain demographic characteristics that are associated with voting leave in the 2016 referendum. We investigate such potentially offsetting influences using…

Can we remake local economies from scratch – not through political struggle but by design – to solve wicked problems and transform urban governance? Such questions are raised by an emergent trend within urban experimentation that emphasises participation and commoning in designing peer-to-peer provisioning systems through a platform logic. This article deconstructs the discourses animating…

In this paper, we examine the role of migrant women in civil society in Wales in a triply-hostile environment created by UK government policy since 2010. Drawing on interviews carried out with EU migrants between 2016 and 2017, we outline the active support and care work provided by these women to migrants and others and…

Welcome from the WISERD director Featuring a variety of news from across the WISERD partner institutions and some of the latest additions to the WISERD blog, I hope this edition of WISERD News demonstrates our ongoing contribution to social science research and the ways in which we are influencing policy in Wales. Against a background…

Objective We explored (1) social, cultural, and economic capital in spousal carers of people with dementia; (2) profiles of carers with different levels of capital; (3) whether the identified profiles differ in levels of stress and positive experiences of caring, and likelihood of depression over time. Methods Baseline (2014–2016), 12-month, and 24-month follow-up data were…

Network effects, economies of scale, and lock-in-effects increasingly lead to a concentration of digital resources and capabilities, hindering the free and equitable development of digital entrepreneurship, new skills, and jobs, especially in small communities and their small and medium-sized enterprises (“SMEs”). To ensure the affordability and accessibility of technologies, promote digital entrepreneurship and community well-being,…

The rise of subversive religious beliefs has been recently documented as related to the politico-economic radicalization of places that feel left behind. When is the traditional local religious institution so socio-economically inefficient in providing hope for “not walking alone” to become substituted by subversive religious beliefs on the market for hope? This article suggests a…

Recent, UK-based studies have focused on the construction of working-class masculine identity and documented changes and softer displays among young men. This article contributes to this literature and is based on ethnographic research conducted in Wales, UK, and a sample consisting of the most marginalised working-class young men often associated with protest masculinity, homophobia and…

There is now an extensive literature on the related concepts of soft power and modernity. The former is sometimes known as cultural or public diplomacy and is an international relations factor in what is now called hybrid conflict or even war. As is well-known, Joseph Nye, an American political scientist, coined the term “soft-power” in the early 20th Century….