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International audience ; Since 2001, political concerns over social and ethnic cohesion have stimulated new debates over citizenship and belonging in the UK. A central feature of which has been a civic requirement of new citizens to learn English. Such a debate however coincides with concerns around in-migration in Wales, and the highly contested notion that non-Welsh speakers have a civic responsibility to learn Welsh. This article aims to explore the contradictions between these two cases via research with adult language learners in Wales — a group often ignored within literature on language, identity and citizenship. In analysing learners' discourses, the article identifies the ways in which learners come to terms with such notions of responsibility. However, the article argues that by positioning language learning in Wales in relation to the development of Welsh civic institutions, and by locating learning itself as a means of expressing such civic identification to place, so the demands for linguistic accommodation by monolingual English speakers may be increasingly articulated.

Since 2001, political concerns over social and ethnic cohesion have stimulated new debates over citizenship and belonging in the UK. A central feature of which has been a civic requirement of new citizens to learn English. Such a debate however coincides with concerns around in-migration in Wales, and the highly contested notion that non-Welsh speakers have a civic responsibility to learn Welsh. This article aims to explore the contradictions between these two cases via research with adult language learners in Wales — a group often ignored within literature on language, identity and citizenship. In analysing learners' discourses, the article identifies the ways in which learners come to terms with such notions of responsibility. However, the article argues that by positioning language learning in Wales in relation to the development of Welsh civic institutions, and by locating learning itself as a means of expressing such civic identification to place, so the demands for linguistic accommodation by monolingual English speakers may be increasingly articulated.

This article focuses on the reflexive dynamics of interviewing in the context of a recent qualitative investigation of ethnic majority views of national identity in England. There is now an established literature which specifies the routine mobilisations of national identity through the course of everyday social interaction. Discourse studies also have been centrally concerned with the interview-as-topic and there is considerable work here on ethnic and racial categorizations within the interview context. Taking such work as its departure point, this article will illustrate how and why the interviewer also matters in talking about national identity. While the role of the interviewer is increasingly acknowledged in qualitative research, there has been little attempt to consider this particular methodological dilemma in nationalism research. In highlighting this problem, this article argues in favour of a more reflexive approach to the study of nationalism and national identity, one which brings to bear the researchers' own unwitting assumptions and involvement.

Front Cover -- Half Title -- Series -- Local Civil Society: Place, Time and Boundaries -- Copyright information -- Table of contents -- List of figures -- Notes on the authors -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- Sites, methods and data -- Organisation of the book -- 1 Civil society as a field of local action -- Defining civil society -- Emergence and development of the concept -- Late 20th- and early 21st-century reformulations -- Civil society, public sphere and the national scale -- Global and transnational civil society

Acknowledgements -- Contents -- List of Tables -- 1: Introduction: Nation and Class in Twenty-First-Century Britain -- The Changing Political Landscape of National Identity -- National Identities and Their Material Settings -- Popular Sentiments and the Nation -- The Political Organisation of Popular National Sentiments -- Contemporary Class Relations and the Politics of Nation -- Changing Contours of Class -- Class, Voting and Political Identities -- Nationalism, Political Parties and Class -- Neo-nationalism and Populist Politics in Europe -- Substate Nationalism and Nationalist Parties -- Nationalism 'Within' Political Parties -- and at Sub-state Levels -- Organisation of the Book -- 23 June 2016: The UK Referendum on Membership of the European Union -- 2: Resentment, Classes and National Sentiments -- Social Sites of Resentment -- Cognitive Aspects of Resentment and Action vs. Inaction -- Classes and Resentment -- Structures of Feeling: Resentment, Class and Nation -- Resentment Illustrated: Entitlement, Fairness, Civility, Community and the Lack of a Voice -- The Middle Classes -- Changes in Material Conditions of Working and Middle Classes -- Financialisation: Consequences for Working People -- Changes in Capitalism, Class Experience, Loss and Uncertainty -- Nation and Resentment: What Our Respondents Said About Their Lives, the Places They Lived and 'the Country' -- Industry, Empire and Views of the Nation -- Summary of Resentment, Classes and National Sentiments -- 3: Class and Majority English Identities -- Introduction -- Class, Imperialism and English Nationalism -- From Class to a White Racial Identity -- Englishness, Whiteness and the Ethnic Majority -- Liberal Sentiments and Popular Englishness: Continuity and Change -- Popular Sentiments and Englishness -- Shame, Embarrassment and National Decline

During the late nineteenth century, Italian immigrant settlement in Wales took the form of chain and clustered migration, based on origin-centred networks of extended family members. The original migrants' reliance on transnational family support networks endured and evolved through descendant generations. Family formation and the progression of lifecycle care exchanges served as key drivers of transnationalism between Wales and Italy. Many families established catering businesses in Wales that relied on staff recruitment from kin in Italy. Migrants' heritage and affective anchorage to Italy were maintained through 'circular' mobility premised on endogamy and shared language. In recent decades, despite a decline in endogamous marriage, transnational family interaction has continued on the basis of the ease of European Union cross-border mobility. Changing modes and motives for cyclical and return migration encompass new forms of marriage, professional and retirement migration. Based on etnographic research with three generations of Italian migrants in Wales, this article explores the relation between family social networks and local attachment in supporting transnational practices, positive integration and heritage maintainance, tracing the cultural and social change in the generational process of migration.

In this paper we examine the contested character of local civil society in rural North West Wales. Recent years have seen an increasing research and policy interest in the nature of civil society activity at the local level. In contributing to this, we argue that greater attention be paid to how relationships between civil society actors and organisations are shaped by local context. Drawing on the accounts of key individuals in a rural locality, we identify how the actors who have skills and experiences in running organisations relate to people in a disadvantaged, former slate-quarrying village in which such capacities are perceived to be lacking. Such relations between key actors, and between key actors and local people, are overlaid by divisions of class, language and incomer status, producing a contested field. We argue that these tensions have significant implications for statutory area-based regeneration projects aimed at community empowerment, which, in the worst instances, work to reaffirm rather than overcome such divisions.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to use survey data collected from 453 respondents, from over 40 countries, to determine the current levels of use of benchmarking as an improvement technique. It identifies where and how benchmarking is implemented within organisations and compares the popularity of benchmarking against other improvement tools. Finally, it provides an evidence based opinion on whether benchmarking is a fad or an established management technique.Design/methodology/approachAn on‐line questionnaire was used to collect data. The questionnaire was translated into five languages and promoted by the Global Benchmarking Network, a network of benchmarking competency centres, representing 21 countries. The data were then analysed using SPSS statistical software.FindingsThe analysis suggests that benchmarking (informal and formal) is used by a majority of organisations although best practice benchmarking is only used by a core minority. Benchmarking effectiveness compares favourably with effectiveness of other improvement tools and a majority of respondents intend to continue using benchmarking in the future.Research limitations/implicationsThe responses from some of the countries that participated were small in number. This study also relied on a single respondent from each organisation. Inter‐country comparisons were not carried out.Practical implicationsBenchmarking will continue to be used to support the improvement of operations. For organisations that currently use benchmarking the paper provides some insights into how to obtain the full benefits from benchmarking. For those that do not use benchmarking the paper highlights how other organisations are using benchmarking to obtain operational benefits.Originality/valueThe paper presents a multinational survey of benchmarking. Carried out a quarter century after the start of benchmarking's growth, it helps to establish if benchmarking is an established improvement tool or a management fad. It also positions benchmarking relative to other improvement tools and is the most complete study on benchmarking adoption to date.