Search Results (8)

The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic has prompted scholars to investigate the consumption phenomena during public health emergencies. Nonetheless, there remains a limited understanding of how quarantine measures influence consumer behavior, particularly in relation to food consumption. This study employed five studies to examine the impact of quarantine on consumers’ food consumption choices (hedonic consumption) through the lens of emotion regulation and attribution theories. The findings revealed the following: (1) Quarantine measures during public health emergencies encourage consumers’ hedonic consumption. (2) Quarantined individuals exhibit heightened deservingness compared with those who are not quarantined, leading to an increased willingness for hedonic consumption; (3) Furthermore, individuals in voluntary quarantine demonstrated stronger deservingness than those in mandatory quarantine, resulting in a greater propensity for hedonic consumption; (4) Resilience moderated the effect of quarantine on hedonic consumption. Individuals with low resilience exhibited stronger deservingness and were more inclined to indulge during quarantine than their high-resilience counterparts, who showed no significant differences between quarantine and non-quarantine conditions during public health emergencies; (5) The interactive effect of deservingness and self-control influenced consumers’ hedonic consumption choices during quarantine events. Specifically, individuals with high self-control abilities mitigate the impact of quarantine on unhealthy consumption, providing insights for developing interventions to improve mental health and sustainable allocation of consumption resources during public health crises. Full article

Economic inequality has been linked to changes in individual risk-taking behavior, yet the underlying mechanisms remain underexplored. In this study, I examine whether feelings of relative deprivation from upward social comparisons influence risk preferences. In the randomized experiments, participants were exposed to false information feedback designed to evoke feelings of relative deprivation, and their risk aversion was assessed through hypothetical and incentivized gambles. The results indicate that exposure to relative deprivation reduced risk aversion among men in incentivized lottery experiments, while it had no significant association with risk aversion for either gender in hypothetical gambles. Additionally, relative deprivation lowered perceived social standing and increased anxiety and concerns about personal deservingness—emotional outcomes commonly associated with experiences of relative deprivation. This study provides suggestive evidence that social comparison may influence risk preferences among men through emotional changes and offers insights into how societal inequality affects individual preferences. These findings have important implications for policy interventions aimed at addressing economic disparities and their behavioral consequences. Full article

This article traces the imperial roots of the contemporary asylum–welfare nexus. It explores how English colonial governance exported Poor Law legislation firstly to colonial America (USA) and secondly to British North America (Canada). It argues that these three countries are an Anglophone shared moral space of law and governance, revealing the common unresolved contradictions underpinning contemporary debates about who ‘deserves’ entry, under what conditions, and why. Historical perspectives unsettle assumptions about the primacy of national geopolitical borders and the exceptionalism of contemporary migration. This article uses historical sociology to trace why and how national sovereignty took primacy over municipalities in controlling the mobility of people and the concomitant moral underpinnings. It then draws on new empirical research in three pioneering ‘sanctuary cities’ to explore how cities contest the entwining of welfare and migration governance. However, the article explores how these initiatives often reproduce justifications based on ‘deservingness’ and ‘contribution’. Through tracing the common threads that led to these forms of governance, we can understand they are not self-evident. A historical perspective allows us to ask different questions and open realms of alternative possibilities. Full article

During the COVID-19 health crisis, the Spanish Government launched a series of urgent measures to protect the population from its economic effects. At first, it seemed that sex workers would have access to this protection, given that, technically, their access to the star measure, the IMV (anagram in Spanish for Ingreso Mínimo Vital) (minimum living income), was explicitly expressed. However, in the end, this group was excluded as the final text specified that only those deemed to be victims of gender violence, sexual exploitation, or trafficking could access said measure. We propose to study the usefulness of the concept of deservingness of social benefits to explain this lack of protection in a framework that takes into account political power contexts, the empirical observations of sex workers on their level of access to the IMV, and an exploration of its association with the theoretical construct of deservingness. Through a revision of secondary sources, interviews with key informants, and applying discourse analysis, we found these connections and the evident exclusion of sex workers from the social benefit. Likewise, we found that social stigma and moral and ideological judgments are behind this undeservingness and confirm a process of “NGOization” of care for this group that implies the depoliticization and professionalization of civil society entities such as NGOs. Full article

Since the economic recession of the 1990s, Finland has experienced the proliferation of charity food aid as a means of helping people who are afflicted by poverty. However, so far little research has been conducted regarding the food aid recipients. This article gives discursive, demographic, and experiential insights into charity food provision and reception in Finland. Drawing on quantitative survey data, online discussion data related to news published on Finnish newspapers’ web pages, and observation and interviews with food aid recipients, this article sheds new light on Finnish food aid recipients from three perspectives. First, public perceptions about food aid often portray food recipients as dishonourable and responsible for their own poverty. Secondly, the survey data shows that the main reason for people resorting to charity food aid is deep economic disadvantage, and further, that there is an unequal accumulation of disadvantage among the food aid recipients, illustrating internal diversity. Third, observational and interview data show that from the food recipients’ perspective, the food aid system has only a limited ability to answer even their immediate food needs, and for the recipients, food aid venues can become not only socially significant, but also socially demanding and emotionally burdening places. Full article

To contribute to the understanding of gender inequalities within the workplace, this article explored gender differences in claims-making for career advancement and how they depend on workplace contexts based on unique German linked employer–employee data. Applying organizational fixed-effects models, we found that women were less likely than men to make claims, especially when they had children, and that this was related to their working fewer hours. The gender gap in claims-making further depended on workplace characteristics that influenced women’s ability and their feeling of deservingness to work in more demanding positions. Although claims by mothers’ increased in work–life supportive workplaces, highly demanding workplace cultures seemed to hinder women’s attempts to negotiate for career advancement. Thus, the dominance of the ideal worker norm was a relevant driver for the gender gap in claims-making. Whereas this gap in making claims was found to be only partially related to the workplace gender structure, the formalization of human resource practices, such as performance-based evaluations in the workplace, fostered mothers’ claims-making, indicating that these evaluations were used to legitimize their claims in the workplace. Full article

Immigration has been a major trend in the last decades in Europe. However, immigrant access to the social security systems has remained a contentious issue having gained additional salience in light of the recent asylum-seeking developments. We focus on welfare chauvinism, the idea that immigrants should not participate in welfare resources, as an attitudinal dimension. We seek to answer two primary questions: To what extent are different types of objective and subjective material deprivation related to welfare chauvinism? What is the role of the recent asylum seeker influx? Using European Social Survey data and employing binary and generalized ordered logit models with country fixed effects, we find perceptions of deprivation to be more meaningful than objective factors related to potential job loss, and some relationships depend on the specific type of deprivation. On the country level, in line with the deservingness of asylum seekers as a group, higher levels of asylum seeking are related to lower levels of welfare chauvinism, while GDP per capita is not associated with welfare chauvinism. Finally, the generalized ordered logit model shows that some relationships vary according to the strictness of welfare chauvinism, which would not be visible in a conventional ordered logit model. Full article

The aim of this study is to analyze women’s reflections about how experiences of im/migration from rural to urban settings in Monterrey, Mexico, influence their everyday life experience and health and that of their families. The participants were eight women from heterogeneous indigenous backgrounds, one woman with a mestizo background, two health professionals, three persons from organizations supporting indigenous groups, and two researchers. I collected data from personal observations, documents, and interviews that I then analyzed with a critical ethnography methodology developed by Carspecken. The women emphasized that food habits were the first to be adapted to circumstances in an urban everyday life constrained by working conditions. Together with their experiences of discrimination and violence, urban living determines the challenges and the priorities of daily life. Urban life affects how they perceive and treat their own and their family’s health and wellbeing. Nevertheless, their sense of belonging and home remains in their communities of origin, and they strive to reach a balance in their lives and preserve a connection to their roots, motherhood, and traditional knowledge. However, the women handle their im/migration experiences in diverse ways depending on their own conditions and the structural forces limiting or allowing them to act in decisive life situations. Im/migration is not just a matter of choice; it is about survival and is influenced by social determinants and “structural vulnerability” that influences and/or limit human agency. These, together with an unsustainable economic situation, make migration the only option, a forced decision within households. Structural forces such as social injustice in welfare policies restrict human rights and rights for health. Social determinants of health can constrain decision making and frame choices concerning health and childbearing in everyday life. Full article