No abstract

BackgroundThe SHARP study was set up to evaluate the short (1 year) and longer-term (2 year) effects on health and wellbeing of providing new social housing to tenants. This paper presents the study background, the design and methods, and the findings at one year.MethodsData were collected from social tenants who were rehoused into a new, general-purpose socially-rented home developed and let by a Scottish Registered Social Landlord (the "Intervention" group). These data were collected at three points in time: before moving (Wave 1), one year after moving (Wave 2) and two years after moving (Wave 3). Data were collected from a Comparison group using the same methods at Baseline (Wave 1) and after two years of follow-up (Wave 3). Qualitative data were also collected by means of individual interviews. This paper presents the quantitative and qualitative findings at 1 year (after Wave 2).Results339 Intervention group interviews and 392 Comparison group interviews were completed. One year after moving to a new home there was a significant reduction in the proportion of Intervention group respondents reporting problems with the home, such as damp and noise. There was also a significant increase in neighbourhood satisfaction compared with Baseline (χ2 = 35.51, p < 0.0001). Many aspects of the neighbourhood improved significantly, including antisocial behaviour. In terms of environmental aspects and services the greatest improvements were in the general appearance of the area, the reputation of the area, litter and rubbish, and speeding traffic. However, lack of facilities for children/young people and lack of safe children's play areas remained a concern for tenants.ConclusionThis study found that self-reported health changed little in the first year after moving. Nonetheless, the quantitative and qualitative data point to improvements in the quality of housing and of the local environment, as well as in tenant satisfaction and other related outcomes. Further analyses will explore whether these effects are sustained, and whether differences in health outcomes emerge at 2 years compared with the Comparison group.

Rehousing has substantial impacts on residential conditions and on psychosocial benefits, and lesser (possibly indirect) impacts upon mental health. Housing is a complex intervention applied to a heterogeneous group for a range of reasons. Hence its impacts result from different aspects of residential change for particular types of household.

The empirical focus of this article is an analysis of the self-identities of English-born persons living in urban Scotland. The material is theorised relative to the debate between modernist conceptions of identity and post-structuralist notions of identification. The researchers construct a fourfold typology of 'English' migrants that helps to problematise the nature and diverse meanings of 'Englishness'. The search to understand why many English migrants avoid the 'English' label in statements of self-identity leads to consideration of work on neo-tribes and problems of identification in fluid societies. A secondary, but also important, aspect of the paper is the exploration of 'accent' as a marker of 'identity'. This proves important in bounding the English service class in Scotland, otherwise an invisible migrant population.

The paper explores the mobility implications of internationalisation and commercialisation of the service class. Theorisation of the survey points to five main issues: first, the role of migration of service workers as part of a network of flows linking the core of the state with regional economies; secondly, the disproportionate concentration of service-class migration in one particular city within a regional economy; thirdly, the inadequacy of a nested hierarchical model of service-class migration; fourthly, the functional disconnection of local service employment from the circuits of movement of new service-class migrants; and, finally, the necessity of professional transient migration for the successful economic performance of the wider regional economy. The study is based on analysis of English migrants living in four Scottish urban areas.