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A Paper Presented to the Alternative Futures and Popular Protest Conference, at Manchester Metropolitan University, April 2006

This study utilises a theoretical framework developed from the interpretive frames approach. I will offer a hermeneutic conception of ‘orientational frames’ that has a number of advantages over the more usual, largely positivist, application of the approach. This research is based on ethnographic fieldwork within the Sheffield Social Forum (SSF) from the inception of the group, through its involvement in a UK network of local social forums, to the attendance of members of the SSF at the 2004 edition of the European Social Forum. As such, it relates to processes at a number of levels: the creation of a local organisation; the networking of local organisations nationally; and their involvement in an international event. Data will be drawn from each of these levels in order to argue that despite important ideational continuities the SF movement contains substantially shifted emphases, and the development of novel connections between familiar ideas that signal a new politics of the social forums.

Please download a .pdf version of this paper from this link: Another Ideology?

From late 2005 to early 2006 I worked with a group of Somali refugees and asylum seekers in Sheffield. The group had emerged around concerns about Somali children’s achievement in school and hoped to find out what sorts of particular problems their children might face. Together we designed a survey based on a bilingual questionnaire; the survey was carried out by Somali volunteers and the group worked together to interpret the results.

The final report was presented at a large meeting of policy makers, service providers and service users at Sheffield Town Hall in March 2006. The report includes data about the Somali community’s concerns about education; about the culture gap between youth and parents; and about the kinds of solutions that Somalis hope to see. A number of best practice solutions are described, most strikingly the highly successful efforts of Somali link workers in Tower Hamlets.

The Somali group Link Action is currently working with the Northern Refugee Centre to bring about some of the potential solutions described in the report.

You can use this link to download the report in .pdf format: Somalis in Sheffield (2.7MB). For a hardcopy version, please contact the Northern Refugee Centre.