Irish Journal of Sociology

Meaning is basic to social life. Without it we are, as Bourdieu put it, like fish out water. And yet, within mainstream sociology, meaning is taken for granted. There are two questions. Is it important to try and get at meaning? And, if yes, how do we do so? In this article, I argue that we have progressed much theoretically from the debate that took place between Schutz and Parsons back in the 1960s. It is as if meaning and structures are opposite sides of the same coin but we either look at one side or the other: we cannot address them simultaneously. However, I argue that to do good sociology, it is necessary to try to marry what is going on in the actor with the way in which the actor is constituted within social structures. Given that we can only develop an approximate understanding of any actor and that we can only develop an approximate understanding of social structures, any attempt to link the two is necessarily tentative but, nevertheless, worthwhile.

The study focuses on how registered psychiatric nurses in a high-dependency unit in Ireland utilise informal and formal supports to cope with risk and trauma in the workplace, including threats of physical violence and verbal abuse. Increasingly, research and policy acknowledge that risk management and emotional trauma affect the workplace performance and general well-being of Registered Psychiatric Nurses. However, there is a paucity of Irish social scientific research on how psychiatric nurses negotiate informal and formal networks, to cope with workplace risks every day. Drawing on qualitative interviews, this paper ascertains how psychiatric nurses interpret everyday risks and how they draw upon support networks (e.g. family, co-workers) to cope with workplace stressors. The findings show that Registered Psychiatric Nurses who were interviewed create boundaries between informal and formal networks that help them to cope with workplace risks. Our study indicates that in this context, organisational supports are seldom used by Registered Psychiatric Nurses, even in times of crisis. A core contribution of the work is that it affirms the importance of co-workers in how Registered Psychiatric Nurses negotiate workplace risks and makes recommendations on how formal organisational supports might be improved.

Despite research demonstrating the health promoting effects of social support, few studies have examined the moderating effect of functional social support on everyday unfair treatment for migrant communities. This study investigates whether functional social support moderates the association between unfair treatment and poor self-rated health for Irish migrants to the UK. Analysis of a purposive sample of Irish migrants in London was conducted (n = 790). Interaction was analyzed via hierarchical logistic regression. Irish migrants who perceived unfair treatment were over three times more likely to report fair/poor health (odds ratio = 3.47, 95% confidence interval = 2.0–6.02). Higher levels of support in times of crisis were associated with reduced poor health. Higher levels of instrumental or practical support from neighbors moderated against the negative effect of unfair treatment on self-rated health (odds ratio = 0.29, 95% confidence interval = 0.08–0.96) and had a protective stabilizing effect. Instrumental support may have a protective-enhancing effect for female migrants. Results support other studies which indicate that instrumental support is most influential in the context of adversity. Interventions that promote neighborhood social capital may build resilience to unfair treatment for migrant communities in large cities.

The paper examines the contours of employment change in England and Wales between 1921 and 2011 using data from the respective Censuses of Population. The main focus of the analysis is on four related sets of phenomena: changing patterns of employment across industrial sectors, changes to patterns of gender and paid employment, changes to occupational segregation by gender and the changing contours of locality differences within England and Wales over the period. Various sociological debates about structural change are probed in detail. The paper concludes that whilst there have been a range of significant changes to these phenomena, there have also been some marked structural continuities.