Manchester has long been a model for the class divisions characteristic of British Victorian cities, and this segregation has largely been attributed as a spatial phenomenon as informed by qualitative sources from the period. The digitization of historical source material, however, allows for quantitative assessments of residential differentiation. By analysing patterns of residential distribution using nineteenth-century, individual-level census data, it is revealed that early Victorian Manchester was characterized more by residential heterogeneity than segregation. In light of this finding, this article revisits the source base for early Victorian Manchester in order to reconcile the differences in the physical and social dimensions of segregation for a more accurate and holistic understanding of urban dynamics and the mechanisms of class formation. It explains this dissonance by exploring the city’s architectural, occupational, and cultural structures: while rich and poor lived cheek-by-jowl in the industrial city, temporal rhythms of employment, institutionalized cultures of class, and emerging modes of urban maintenance and discipline all produced practices which differentiated and isolated one class from another.

Drawing on the dynamic and historically layered relationships among Africa, China, and the West, a “triangular system” serves as an analytical framework for understanding the evolution of studies of African literature in China. Tracing a four-stage periodization reveals how Western epistemologies have shaped Chinese interpretations of African literature. At the same time, it also illuminates China’s efforts to assert intellectual autonomy. A fluid, geometry-based triangulation model that accommodates multiplicity, foregrounds African agency, and fosters direct Afro-Chinese literary engagement is essential for meaningful South-South collaboration in literary studies, which must resist epistemic dependency and nationalist instrumentalization, and instead emphasize mutual learning and structural transformation.

This article reconsiders the method of constitutional interpretation employed by the Australian High Court, in light of the lack of formal amendments to the Australian Constitution. The Court eschews any power to change the meaning of the Constitution, including to keep pace with contemporary needs and values. That is in large part because section 128 of the Constitution vests power in the people and their representatives to change the Constitution – and thus it is said, it would be undemocratic for the Court to change the Constitution for them. But section 128 has fallen into desuetude: constitutional referendums are rare, and rarely succeed. This requires a reassessment of the values served by the interpretive method of the High Court, though this article concludes that this method remains normatively sound. It does serve democracy – though only in a thin sense of that term. More importantly, it preserves the institutional legitimacy of the High Court.

Global crises have wreaked havoc on the world economy, causing severe instability and retrenchment of employees in many countries. This necessitates interrogating the retrenchment laws that seek to resolve issues and encourage fruitful outcomes throughout the work ecosystem. This article explores stakeholders’ perceptions of Zimbabwe’s retrenchment laws. The research utilised a qualitative approach with 68 participants, including employers, employees, trade unionists, legal practitioners, and labour consultants. The study revealed that employers were not utilising available special measures to avoid retrenchment. Stakeholders faced challenges such as difficulties in interpreting the retrenchment sections in the Labour Act, distance, processes which are lengthy and costly, and compliance. Further, this study underscores the tension between organisational survival and employee rights, framed through proximity justice and organisational justice theories. The primary recommendation is that retrenchments should be carefully planned, well-thought-out, and purposefully carried out in order to prevent legal disputes. Employers should exercise patience to carry out a thorough analysis of the problems before retrenching employees. Although this research sought to increase knowledge of retrenchment laws, such findings call for additional research using longitudinal and cross-sectional field surveys.

The 1970s oil shocks sparked high and persistent inflation in advanced economies, also tied to the collapse of the Bretton Woods international monetary system in 1971 that left monetary policy without a stable institutional reference framework. Only in the following decades did a new monetary regime emerge, centered on inflation targeting schemes adopted by independent central banks. Beyond this, other factors affected inflation persistence, namely wage-price spirals rooted in automatic wage adjustment mechanisms, and fiscal policies financed thanks to the regulatory requirement for the central bank to purchase unsold public debt. This article gives a concise analysis of the rationale and provides descriptive evidence of the role these institutional aspects played in the 1970s, suggesting how their evolution has reduced the likelihood of 1970s-style inflationary episodes today. A structural VAR-based counterfactual exercise confirms that absent wage and fiscal pressures inflation persistence would have been significantly lower.

This article investigates why moments of semiotic silence, or minimal engagement, occur in Facebook practices among Filipino migrant workers engaged in grassroots organizations working for migrants’ rights. We investigate how members and leaders of these organizations subjectively and intersubjectively assess moments of semiotic silence through their discourses. Taking a sociolinguistically grounded chronotopic approach, we show how they make sense of these moments by invoking a multiplicity of space-times related to sociopolitical constraints, their working situation, communication with family, and the organizing of migrants. This study provides empirical data, highlighting the importance of identity, materiality, and media ideology in understanding grassroots social media practices and political engagement. On this basis, we come to understand a broader range of ways in which migrant workers use or do not use social media in relation to community involvement and public discourse. (Social media engagement, grassroots organizing, chronotope, identity construction, media ideology, materiality, migrants’ rights)