How women use family networks to facilitate migration: A comparative study of Irish and Polish women in Britain

Within migration studies there has been a tendency to focus on a single case study of a particular national group. Adopting a comparative approach may raise new and interesting questions or challenge conventional thinking on migration. While on the surface, at least, Irish and Polish migrants would appear to have many commonalities, there has been surprisingly little comparative analysis of these two groups. Drawing on my own research on these migrants in the British context, I focus on women as a large but under-researched aspect of both groups. This paper suggests ways in which such a comparison could be undertaken by using social networks as a useful comparative tool. A social networks perspective not only allows a probing analysis of migration strategies, but also provides a framework within which to compare across different migrant groups, such as for example, examining the role of family networks (here and there) in migration processes. In addition, this approach enables an examination of dynamism over time and how migrants develop relationships within spatially dispersed as well as locally embedded ties.     

A Paradigm Shift in the Practice of Family Law: A Response to Mosten and Traum

In their article, Interdisciplinary Teamwork in Family Law Practice, Mosten and Traum promote the use of an interdisciplinary, team‐based approach to family law practice. This commentary focuses on the two pronged shift in the current zeitgeist of family law practice. First, Mosten and Traum guide us away from an historically adversarial approach to family law practice, in which attorneys advocate for the legal rights of a single client, to a more holistic approach in which the focus is on the Family Global Case. Furthermore, the push toward Family Global Case shifts the focus away from discrete legal issues associated with reorganization to empowering families to self‐determine through their reorganization. This shift follows the movement in both medicine and mental health away from direct intervention for people with disorders to promoting wellness for at‐risk yet healthy individuals. The second prong of Mosten and Traum's approach is a movement toward more collaborative interdisciplinary functioning. However, the shift in the practice of family law from the sole practitioner working alone to being one member of a broader multidisciplinary team focusing on the future well‐being of the family brings with it not only issues of professional role definitions but also the development of a new combined set of ethics and models for training. These are discussed in detail.