Between Litigation and Legislation: The WTO as the Missing Middle

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Ewing-Chow
Keyword(s):  
Missing Middle

scholarly journals Social Polarisation at the Local Level: A Four-Town Comparative Study on the Challenges of Politicising Inequality in Britain

Sociology ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 003803852097559 ◽  
Author(s):  
Insa Koch ◽  
Mark Fransham ◽  
Sarah Cant ◽  
Jill Ebrey ◽  
Luna Glucksberg ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Study ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
Community Analysis ◽  
Common Features ◽  
Social Polarisation ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Missing Middle ◽  
Insight Into

This article examines how intensifying inequality in the UK plays out at a local level, in order to bring out the varied ways polarisation takes place ‘on the ground’. It brings a community analysis buttressed by quantitative framing to the study of economic, spatial and relational polarisation in four towns in the UK. We distinguish differing dynamics of ‘elite-based’ polarisation (in Oxford and Tunbridge Wells) and ‘poverty-based’ polarisation (in Margate and Oldham). Yet there are also common features. Across the towns, marginalised communities express a sense of local belonging. But tensions between social groups also remain strong and all towns are marked by a weak or ‘squeezed middle’. We argue that the weakness of intermediary institutions, including but not limited to the ‘missing middle’, and capable of bridging gaps between various social groups, provides a major insight into both the obstacles to, and potential solutions for, re-politicising inequality today.

Youth Studies, Housing Transitions and the ‘Missing Middle’: Time for a Rethink?

2013 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 118-129 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven Roberts
Keyword(s):  
Young Men ◽  
Social Resources ◽  
Youth Studies ◽  
Transitions To Adulthood ◽  
Lack Of Fit ◽  
Youth Research ◽  
Communal Living ◽  
Missing Middle ◽  
Determining Factor

A recent but growing trend in studies of young people's lives has been to highlight that there is a ‘missing middle’ in the youth studies research agenda. It has been argued that much youth research focuses on either successful or very troubled transitions to adulthood, with the lives of those who might simply be ‘getting by’ representing an empirical absence. Building on previous work that has addressed how such a missing middle can add to our understanding of educational experience and attainment, labour market engagement and participation, and issues of identity, this paper pays attention to the housing transitions, careers and aspirations of a group of ‘ordinary’ and apparently unproblematic working class young men. Because they do not represent groups that have been of especial interest in youth studies to date, their experiences problematize the on-going utility of dominant conceptual frameworks used to explain housing transitions. In addition to their ‘lack of fit’ with ideal type typologies, the young men also reveal the shifting nature of attitudes towards communal living ‘which is traditionally associated with middle class students’ in combination with the continuing role of social resources as a determining factor in their housing transition.

scholarly journals The missing middle: Central Arctic Ocean gaps in fishery research and science coordination

Marine Policy ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 85 ◽  
pp. 79-86 ◽  
Author(s):  
T.I. Van Pelt ◽  
H.P. Huntington ◽  
O.V. Romanenko ◽  
F.J. Mueter
Keyword(s):  
Arctic Ocean ◽  
Central Arctic Ocean ◽  
Fishery Research ◽  
Missing Middle

Locating Afghan History

2013 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 132-134 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nile Green
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
The Other ◽  
Historical Process ◽  
Historical Scholarship ◽  
History Of ◽  
Missing Middle ◽  
Two Bodies

Afghanistan's 20th century has long been seen through an analytical dichotomy. One concentration of historical scholarship has sought to explain the fraught progress of Afghan nation-building in the 1910s and 1920s. A second has sought to explain the unraveling of the Afghan nation after 1979. Weighted toward the decades at either end of the century, this dichotomized field has been problematic in both chronological (and thereby processual) and methodological terms. On the level of chronology, the missing long mid-section (indeed, half) of the century between the framing coups of 1929 and 1979 has made it difficult to convincingly join together the two bodies of scholarship. Not only has the missing middle further cemented the division of scholarly labor but it also has made it more difficult to connect the history of the last quarter of the century to that of the first quarter (except as a story of parallels), rendering them discrete narratives of development, one ending and the other beginning with a coup. The problems are deeper than this, though, extending from questions of chronology and process to matters of method. For if in its focus on nationalism and nation-building the first-quarter scholarship is framed within the neat boundaries of national spaces and actors, then in its focus on the unraveling of the nation and its peoples through the consequences of Soviet intervention, the last-quarter scholarship elevates nonnational actors as the key agents of historical process.

scholarly journals The Missing Middle: Filling the Gap Between Walkability and Observed Walking Behavior

2017 ◽  
Vol 2661 (1) ◽  
pp. 103-110 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Herrmann ◽  
Geneviève Boisjoly ◽  
Nancy A. Ross ◽  
Ahmed M. El-Geneidy
Keyword(s):  
Walking Behavior ◽  
Missing Middle

scholarly journals Drinking Carling Out of Stella Glasses: People and Place in the Missing Middle

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathryn McEwan
Keyword(s):  
Young People ◽  
Focus Groups ◽  
Social Mobility ◽  
Phenomenological Approach ◽  
Housing Estate ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Private Housing ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Qualitative Phenomenological ◽  
Missing Middle

As trends of social and economic change allow precarity to inch into the lives of those who may have been more accustomed to security (Standing, 2011, 2014), this paper addresses the response of some young people who are caught “betwixt and between” in potentially liminal states (Turner, 1967). Those whose families have undertaken intra- or intergenerational social mobility and who have made a home in a place, Ingleby Barwick in Teesside, that seems to be of them and for them—an in-between place that is seen as “not quite” middle or working class. This paper draws data from a research project that adopted a qualitative phenomenological approach to uncover the meaning of experiences for participants. Methods included focus groups and semi-structured interviews through which 70 local people contributed their thoughts, hopes, concerns, and stories about their lives now and what they aspire to for the future. Places, such as the large private housing estate in the Northeast of England on which this research was carried out, make up significant sections of the UK population, yet tend to be understudied populations, often missed by a sociological gaze attracted to extremes. It was anticipated that in Ingleby Barwick, where social mobility allows access to this relatively exclusive estate, notions of individualism and deservingness that underlie meritocratic ideology (Mendick et al., 2015; Littler, 2018) would be significant, a supposition borne out in the findings. “Making it” to Ingleby was, and continues to be, indicative to many of meritocratic success, making it “a moral place for moral people” (McEwan, 2019). Consequently, the threat then posed by economic precarity, of restricting access to the transitions and lifestyles that create the “distinction” (Bourdieu, 1984) required to denote fit to this place, is noted to be very real in a place ironically marked by many outside it as fundamentally unreal.

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