This study pursues two objectives. Empirically, it examines how legislative exclusion is produced in South Africa and how gig workers experience it in their everyday working lives. Theoretically, it develops an interpretive account of the relationship between political and economic processes that are ordinarily treated as separate domains, reading political and regulatory exclusion as constitutive of the forms of economic insecurity and precarity that participants describe rather than as their determinant. The study is framed by the concept of legislative exclusion, understood as the process through which state action constitutes a category of workers as falling outside the scope of labor law; precarity, platform capitalism and algorithmic management are used to elaborate the processes through which that exclusion operates and the conditions with which it is associated. A qualitative phenomenological design was adopted. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 10 purposively sampled gig workers in Johannesburg working across e-hailing, delivery, freelancing and content creation, and the data were analyzed using reflexive thematic analysis. The sample spans two structurally distinct segments of platform labor, which are analyzed separately throughout: location-based work (e-hailing and delivery), which is geographically tethered, capital-intensive for the worker and in principle regulable by the national state; and remote online work (digital freelancing and social media content creation), which is contracted across borders and mediated by clients and monetization programs rather than by dispatch algorithms. The analysis reads exclusion as actively produced rather than merely absent: a statutory definition of the employee that platform work is arranged to fall outside, a jurisdictional architecture that renders the responsible corporate entity difficult to reach, and a recent transport regulation that recognizes e-hailing while leaving the employment relationship untouched. These instruments do not bear on the two segments equally: the transport regulation reaches location-based drivers alone, whereas remote online workers are addressed by no domestic instrument at all. Exclusion is in turn bound up with unbounded working hours, exclusion from employment benefits and the absence of any accessible dispute-resolution forum, though it is lived differently in each segment. Location-based participants described unreviewable deactivation and the transfer of vehicle, fuel and licensing costs; online participants described client non-payment, unenforceable informal agreements and dependence on opaque monetisation and visibility rules. The study contributes an interpretive account in which legislative exclusion is understood as a structuring condition through which risk is transferred to workers, platform and client authority is rendered unreviewable, and disadvantage is compounded over time.
Keren Beja Weinberg, Miguel A. Maldonado, Manuel Moyano
This qualitative study explores how Sudanese asylum seekers living in Eilat, Israel, narrate belonging under conditions of prolonged legal and institutional ambiguity. Based on semi-structured in-depth interviews with 30 participants, the study examines everyday experiences across employment, education, welfare and health services, and housing, while remaining open to emergent themes, including the role of the Sudanese community. The analysis combines a multidimensional integration framework with intergroup contact theory to assess how participation in key domains interacts with status relations and institutional support. The analysis identified five interrelated themes: traumatic rupture and forced displacement; institutional rejection upon arrival; Eilat as a space of partial reconstruction; conditional belonging; and the dual protective and constraining role of the Sudanese community. Across employment, housing, education, and welfare and health, participants described functional integration and everyday stabilisation without corresponding legal security or broader social inclusion. Contact with members of the host society was described as largely instrumental, whereas co-ethnic networks provided essential material and emotional support in a context where opportunities for bridging ties remained limited. The study contributes to contemporary debates on conditional belonging by offering an empirically grounded account from a peripheral city in which labour demand coexists with constrained civic inclusion.
This study examines how Peruvian mothers who have settled in Japan for decades rework their identities as mothers. These women were raised with the belief that being a good mother means constantly watching over and protecting their children. But in Japan, child-rearing pushes children toward independence from a young age. This study asks: What happens when these two different approaches of mothering meet? We interviewed 21 Peruvian mothers who had lived in Japan for 17–35 years. The analysis identified four identity positions to this cultural friction. The first is holding firmly to Peruvian maternal scripts (“Ideological Retention”). The second is following Japanese conventions in public while keeping Peruvian ways at home (“Compartmentalization”). The third is moving away from inherited protective scripts and adopting Japanese norms of independence (“Assimilation”). The fourth is blending elements of both into a maternal self that is “neither the one nor the other” (a “Third Space”). This study helps us understand that migrant mothers do not simply choose between their home and new cultures. Instead, they actively work to create a way of mothering through a process we call Reflexive Continuity that makes sense for their unique situations.
Catherine L. Quinlan, Elizabeth R. Rollins, Rasheda Likely, Delphia Smith, TaVshea Smith
This research is part of a larger goal to capture the heritage, lived experiences, and scientific and cultural capital of Black people in the United States in the science curricula. This research examines the impact of a Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) physics curriculum created for the K-12 classroom, which began with the lived experiences and narratives of an African American engineer. Multimedia and other curriculum products were developed and implemented using best practices in science education pedagogy. Participants were Black homeschoolers ages 3 to 14 and their parents located in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. Implementation was virtual, with Black homeschooled children meeting weekly on Zoom for 1 hour for a total of 8 weeks. This study used a pragmatic approach that combined the disciplinary expertise of multiple researchers to identify the best frameworks for capturing the emergent themes and essence of the interactions from video recordings and transcripts. Schema theory and Funds of Knowledge served as frameworks to explore and explain the large volume of video dialogues and transcripts emerging from this implementation. The study revealed themes and patterns which support best practices in content creation that centers Black narratives and lived experiences in the science curricula. The research has important implications for creating curricula that center cultural and heritage knowledge in meaningful ways in the science and STEM curricula using interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary approaches.
Women’s family–career conflict (WFCC) has received growing attention, yet evidence on its implications for women’s job performance remains fragmented, particularly in the South African public sector. This study systematically reviews existing literature to examine the factors associated with WFCC, its implications for job performance, the role of organisational support and workplace policies, and the contextual conditions shaping these relationships. A systematic literature review was conducted using secondary scholarly literature, with the study-selection and reporting process informed by PRISMA 2020 guidelines. The literature was analysed thematically. The findings show that WFCC does not have a uniform effect on job performance. While some studies associate higher levels of conflict with reduced performance and employee engagement, others report weak, mixed or context-dependent relationships. The review further shows that organisational support, flexible working arrangements, supportive leadership and family-friendly policies can reduce the pressures associated with competing family and career responsibilities. However, their effectiveness depends on organisational culture and how policies are implemented. The study highlights the need for South African public-sector organisations to strengthen supportive workplace and performance-management practises that recognise employees’ family responsibilities.
