Past events

May: Dr Natalie-Anne Hall (Lecturer in Social Sciences, SOCSI)

MEAD Seminar: Wednesday 8 May, 1-2pm (hybrid)

Brexit, Facebook, and Transnational Right-Wing Populism

Venue: Glamorgan Building -1.55 (basement)

This is a hybrid event. Those joining online (if your travel is disrupted by the planned train strike) please email mead@cardiff.ac.uk  for the link.

In Brexit, Facebook, and Transnational Right-Wing Populism (2023, Lexington Books), Natalie-Anne Hall takes Brexit as a case study for examining the consequences of the transnational diffusion of racist and right-wing populist politics on social media. Through an innovative multi-method study with a group of avidly engaged pro-Brexit Facebook users during the tumultuous post-referendum period, Hall explores the effects of this participation on the on- and offline experiences of these individuals and on their interpretation of events surrounding Brexit. The book examines the socio-political and technological opportunities that led to these individuals’ engagement with right-wing populist politics, and the consequences of this engagement for transnational White victimhood and what Hall coins “Right victimhood.” These misplaced victimhoods work in tandem to legitimate illiberal and exclusionary ideologies and reproduce racism. The newly significant discourse of Right victimhood posits that progressive cultural and minority rights agendas are in fact malevolent oppression of those with conservative views. This discourse is perhaps more powerful, Hall argues, than White victimhood, as it is able to circumvent accusations of racism by framing the issue as one of freedom of political attitudes. Meanwhile, Right victimhood legitimates hostile attitudes towards minorities by demonising “left-wing” minority rights advocacy. In this talk, Hall demonstrates how the “mainstream” political issue of Brexit acted as a catalyst for engagement with White victimhood and Right victimhood discourses, and how these connected pro-Brexit Facebook users to far-right political ideologies, including the conspiracy theories of the “Great Replacement” and “Cultural Marxism”. She will also discuss how such engagement has had reverberating consequences for recent reactionary right mobilisations, including the Conservative Party’s “war on woke”.

Dr Natalie-Anne Hall is a newly appointed Lecturer in Social Sciences at Cardiff University. Her research centres on online engagement with contentious politics and contested truth, particularly right-wing and racist ideologies. She holds a PhD in Sociology from the University of Manchester and was postdoctoral research associate on the Everyday Misinformation Project at Loughborough University. She previously worked at HM Inspectorate of Prisons, and has lived and studied in Australia and Japan.

May: Dementia Awareness Week (In-person event)

Led by the Alzheimer’s Society and supported by Dr Sofia Vougioukalou (CARE) & Kemba Hadaway-Morgan (SOCSI), Grangetown Pavillion

Date and Time: 13 May 2024, 3.30-5.30pm

Ethnic Disproportionality in the Child Welfare System in Wales: a Linked Administrative Data Study (Dr Yongchao Jing, Research Associate, CASCADE)

Wed 11 October (1-2pm) Online

Email Mead for the Zoom link

Abstract

A long-identified concern in the field of child welfare is that ethnic minority children are overrepresented in the child welfare system compared to their percentage in the total population, a phenomenon commonly referred to as racial/ethnic disproportionality. This pattern of intervention is troubling because it results from ethnic bias in the child welfare system and/or systematic socioeconomic disadvantages for ethnic families, both of which reflect ethnic inequality that needs to be addressed. Research on ethnic disproportionality in the UK is still scarce, mostly in England and focused on Children Looked After and Children on Protection Register, rather than the wider population of Children in Need. Drawing on the population-based Children in Need/Children Receiving Care and Support (CIN/CRCS) administrative records, we link these records to Census 2011 to improve the missing data of ethnicity on children in the welfare system. Our analyses describe the level of ethnic disproportionality for CIN/CRCS from 2011 to 2020. Ethnic disproportionality provides not only compelling insights into patterns of existing inequalities, it also raises further questions on interventions as how to improve children’s welfare service for social equity. This research advances the field in several important ways. First, we improve data quality of CIN/CRCS by data linkage. Second, we explore the wider and under-researched group of CIN/CRCS. Third, we are the first in the UK to describe the trend of ethnic disproportionality over a 10-year period. Fourth, the observation window of this research covers a period that coincides with both the change of legal framework in the definition of children for whom data are collected first seen in 2017 and the 2019-2020 years with COVID-19 pandemic disruptions, offering a rare opportunity to observe how administrative changes and exogenous interruptions may affect the level of ethnic disproportionality observed in the child welfare system.

Biography

Dr Yongchao Jing holds a DPhil in Sociology from the University of Oxford. Before joining CASCADE, her work on labour market inequality analysed cross-national survey data with quantitative methods. She was also involved in projects on migration and children’s mental and physical health. She is now a Research Associate on a Health and Care Research Wales funded project Ethnic and Religious Inequalities in Children Welfare (ERICA) exploring ethnic inequality in children’s social care by applying complex data linkage techniques with administrative data in Wales within SAIL databank.

Ethnicity and diversity research and practice at SPARK  – the UK’s first social science innovation park

Friday10th of November 2023, 10-12 noon, SPARK room 0.47

Organisers: Anna Skeels (SPARK Hub) and Sofia Vougioukalou (MEAD & SOCSCI)

This networking session is jointly organised by the SPARK Hub and MEAD the Migration, Race, Ethnicity and Diversity Research group at SOCSCI. It is aimed at researchers and professionals based in or affiliated with SPARK. The session will include lightning talks (3-5 minute inputs) and small group discussions. It is aimed at fostering greater collaborations between academia, third-sector organisations, public bodies and the Welsh Government and can lead to the development of new projects. Please register your interest in presenting your work, please email skeelsa1@cardiff.ac.uk with a few sentences about the work you’d like to present by the 30th of September.