RETROACTIVE RESPONSIBILITY:

State redress for abuse and neglect in children’s homes has been debated in all Scandinavian countries since early 2000s. In Sweden, an official apology was issued in 2011, and a temporary law enabled Swedish care leavers to apply for compensation of SEK 250,000 during 2013 and 2014. In Denmark, proposals for an official apology have repeatedly been turned down in Parliament. In this article, I compare argumentation for and against state redress in the two countries. Any claim for historical justice raises questions about how to understand the injustices committed: do they safely belong to the past, or to an extended present? Using the concept ‘politics of time’, I show that Danish opponents of the proposed apology have stressed the time distance, while proponents for state redress in both countries have stressed the need to deal with all too present memories of abuse. Another main argument against state redress in the Danish political debate was that we should not anachronistically judge historical actors against the moral framework of the present. I argue that a ‘retroactivity dilemma’ is inevitably raised in redress processes, and discuss the changing notions of retroactive responsibility during the Swedish policy process.     

HISTORICAL JUSTICE THROUGH REDRESS SCHEMES?

The Swedish redress scheme intended for victims of historical child abuse in out-of-home care compensated only 46% of claimants who sought economic compensation for past harms. This article explores the reasons behind this comparatively low validation rate by investigating a) how the eligibility criteria of the Redress Act were evaluated by the Redress Board; and b) the justifications and underlying values used when applications were rejected with reference to the fact that reported abuse was not deemed to be sufficiently severe according to past standards. Victim capital, which determines how vulnerable or credible a victim is perceived to be by others, as well as competence and narration, are essential aspects for this type of legal proceeding. The article demonstrates that the claimants had to traverse a complicated web of criteria to be awarded compensation. The outcomes for claimants were affected by how the past was conceptualized in this legal setting, what competences the victims themselves possessed, what competence and resources the administrative system offered, and the extent to which the decision-making process fragmented victims’ narratives.     

HISTORY OF CHILD WELFARE: A Present Political Concern

ABSTRACT

Since the 1990s, an increasing number of inquiries into the history of children’s out-of-home care have shown that child welfare sometimes failed to protect children. In this Special Issue, we explore how the Nordic countries have responded to allegations and scandals of historical child abuse within child welfare, and also how history matters in these political processes. We ask how Nordic societies have acknowledged past historical child abuse and how they aim to deal with its legacy. Attempts to redress, and provide compensation for, past failures are discussed in the context of transitional justice.     

Struggling with child domestic work: what can a postcolonial perspective offer?

Majority World working children's voices have attained some prominence in debates over their well-being. Many have defended their right to work, challenging Minority World understandings of children's ‘best’ interests. Yet employers' voices remain sidelined, raising questions over the extent to which the discursive and material spaces of children's work have been decolonised. A postcolonial perspective on children's work challenges suggestions that Majority World adults (and societies) need western guidance on how children ought to be raised. It also creates opportunities to look beyond western discourses of economic exploitation, to the potential for more-than-economic relationships between working children and their employers.     

广州市低收入群体户外活动的时空排斥及其影响机制

低收入群体的社会公平问题是城市发展中的重要问题之一。随着时间地理学的兴起,居民时空间活动为探讨低收入群体的社会排斥提供了一个新视角。文章引入“活动排斥”概念,构建了一套定量衡量居民活动时空排斥程度的指标体系,归纳出时空排斥的衡量因子,将对时空排斥问题从描述统计层面深入到排斥衡量与解释层面。研究发现：低收入群体在活动空间范围与活动等级、丰富度等多个层面与整体评价水平存在差异,户外活动确实受到排斥。这种排斥现象受到受刚性活动时间及个体的社会经济属性等因素的明显制约;居住社区周边的设施服务供给、邻里社交网络等因素分别作用于各个时空排斥维度。     

Effect of Maternal Mortality on Survival of Under-Five Children

With regards to children who are born shortly before their mother's death (index), the cumulative proportion of survival up to 60 months of age was significantly lower (0.39 vs. 0.81) than those born just before the last child (penultimate) of the same mother. Such a difference is mainly due to high mortality in the first six months of age. Over the period between 1974 and 2005, survival improved among the penultimate but not the index children. For index children, the cumulative proportion of survival up to 60 months of age was significantly higher (0.79 vs. 0.51) if adopted by other households by the age of 15 days compared to those who stayed in their own households. Again for index children, the cumulative proportion of survival up to 60 months of age was significantly higher (0.82 vs. 0.70) for those who stayed in their own households where a grandmother was present compared to the presence of other female household members.     

Troubling meanings of family and competing moral imperatives in the family lives of young people with a parent who is at the end of life

ABSTRACT

This article draws on a narrative study of young people with a parent who is at the end of life to examine how family lives are troubled by life-limiting parental illness. Young people struggled to reconcile the physical and emotional absence of family members with meanings of ‘family’; the extent to which young people could rely on family to ‘be there’ in these troubling circumstances was of practical, emotional and moral significance. Our discussion is situated in the context of an English end of life care policy predicated on the ideal of a good death as one that takes place at home accompanied by family members. We explore how the shift away from family as a site for nurturing children towards family as a space to care for the dying is experienced by young people, and consider how these competing moral imperatives are negotiated through relational practices of care.     

Governance Structures: Using IAD to Understand Variation in Service Delivery for Club Goods with Information Asymmetry

Club goods with information asymmetry are frequently provided through mixed economies of for‐profit, nonprofit, and public providers. Theory explaining mixed economies relies on sector to classify providers based on assumptions that sector‐level differences in how organizations either distribute or reinvest profit will affect behavior. However, this classification is overly broad and is not able to adequately capture the diversity of providers of these types of goods. The author utilizes the Institutional Analysis and Development framework to identify six “governance structures” in the for‐profit and nonprofit sectors. Governance structures are constitutional‐choice level rule variations in who has the power to make rules. I argue that there are two types of power that affect rules: (1) concentration of constitutional‐choice level decision‐making power (i.e., how many principals) and (2) proximity of monitoring and enforcement of those rules. The extent to which the constitutional rules actually guide service delivery outcomes depends on a nested rule environment. Only if there is consistency across three level of rules (constitutional, collective, and operational) can we connect sector to outcomes. The empirical reality of service delivery, particularly for club goods with information asymmetry, is far too complex for simplistic assumptions linking profit distribution or its reinvestment to outcomes. This article directs further research toward building contingent theory, with if/then conditions, based on empirical research.     

Under the one child policy regime in China: did having younger sibling(s) increase the risk of overweight and underweight status?

The implications of having any younger sibling(s) on child overweight and underweight status under China’s One Child Policy Regime are complicated by multiple factors, including potential resource dilution, the stage of economic development, changing child-rearing norm, mandated birth interval and parental son preference. Using the instrumental variable method and data from China Health and Nutrition Survey 1991–2006, we find that having younger sibling(s) generally does not affect a firstborn child’s risk of being overweight or obese, neither does it increase the risk of being underweight. The findings on underweight status suggest that the favourable effect of economic growth and child rearing practice have outperformed the resource dilution effect in basic nutrition needs through the years of the study. It implies that further relaxation of the One Child Policy should not increase the nutritional risk for children.     

Child Poverty in the American States: The Impact of Welfare Reform,Economics, and Demographics

This article identifies the predictors of child poverty rates at the state level before and after the adoption and implementation of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996. The analysis shows that the most important state‐level factors that influence child poverty rates are demographics, the health and viability of the state economy, and often the generosity, inclusiveness, and quality of state welfare programs. States with large numbers of black citizens, and those that score highest on infant mortality, teen births, births to unmarried women, children living with a parent without a high school degree, and children living with a single parent have the highest rates of child poverty. Child poverty rates are lowest in states that suffer less unemployment, and in wealthier states. States that score higher on per capita personal income, tax revenues, and taxable resources have lower child poverty rates. While specific “tough” welfare policies adopted by some states seem to have no impact on child poverty rates, we tested for the first time a sophisticated measure of the overall quality of state welfare programs. The analysis reveals that the global quality of a state's welfare programs is often an independent predictor of child poverty. States with the most generous, inclusive, and supportive welfare programs have done the best job of lowering and containing child poverty.     

STAVNE REFORMATORY:

One single institution, Stavne reformatory in Trondheim, is followed through 50 years of institutional history. What do inquiries into maltreatment and abuse disclose about the use of violence over time at Stavne reformatory? Change and continuity is discussed: what conditions may have contributed to the reproduction of violent patterns, and what conditions may have counteracted the use of violence?     

The space between: using ‘relational ethics’ and ‘relational space’ to explore relationship-building between care providers and care recipients in the home space

Geographers and other social scientists have a longstanding interest in ‘geographies of aging’ focused on the provision of care to vulnerable older populations and the challenges and experiences of caregivers [Skinner, M. W., Cloutier, D., & Andrews, G. J. (2014). Geographies of ageing: Progress and possibilities after two decades of change. Progress in Human Geography, 1–24]. This qualitative research project explores strategies for relationship-building used by home support workers and older residents according to a ‘relational ethics’ framework, enacted in the ‘relational space’ of the home environment. This framework rests on four principles: engagement, embodiment, mutual respect and environment, and argues that ‘relationships’ between care providers and care recipients must be preserved as the real essence or heart of the health care experience. Two linked conclusions are drawn from the research: that the treatment of the environment can be expanded using a social geographic lens to capture the more active influence of ‘homes’ on relationship-building and second, the relational ethics framework is useful in the home care context to characterize and ground the importance of relationships in the home care domain and the importance of home care to foster aging in place for vulnerable older persons.     

EPICENTRES OF MISSING DAUGHTERS

The spatial spread of the female child deficit in India has been explored in terms of hot spots (with high deficits) and cold spots (with more female-favourable child sex ratios). It has been argued, using the Census of India data from individual censuses, that there is a contagion effect for both hot spots and cold spots. This paper takes this discussion forward by asking whether such an effect can be seen across censuses. To do so, it develops the concept of an epicentre to see whether a hot or cold spot in one census spreads shock waves across a wider region in later censuses. The longitudinal analysis of child sex ratios over three censuses—1991, 2001 and 2011—shows that the hot spots are epicentres for the spread of female child deficits, while the cold spots display a reverse effect.