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Purpose This study aims to outlines the findings of the first qualitative evidence synthesis of empirical research on the impact of the No Recourse to Public Funds (NRPF) rule which prevents most temporary migrants from accessing social security benefits in the UK. Design/methodology/approach The review used the 2020 Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses protocol guidelines. Data were analysed by using Thomas and Harden’s (2008) thematic synthesis methodology. An initial 321 articles were identified from 13 databases, of which 38 studies met the inclusion criteria. Findings The key insights were that NRPF causes destitution and extreme poverty and has a disproportionate impact on racialised women. Studies found that support services were underdeveloped, underfunded, inconsistent and had a culture of mistrust and racism towards migrants. Migrants were often fearful of services due to concerns around deportation, destitution and state intervention around children. Research limitations/implications The review focussed on qualitative research. Future empirical and theoretical research is needed in the following areas: NRPF as a practice of everyday bordering, the role of the Home Office in creating and sustaining the policy; differing gendered experiences of NRPF; and a broader geographical scope which includes all four UK nations and takes an international comparative approach. Originality/value Despite an estimated 1.4 million people in the UK with NRPF (Citizens Advice, 2020), there is little policy or theoretical discussion of the experience of having NRPF or the implications of the rule. This lack of analysis is a significant gap in both our understanding of the landscape of poverty in the UK, and the ways in which immigration policies create extreme poverty. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is the first systematic qualitative review on NRPF, bringing together the research evidence on how NRPF negatively affects outcomes for migrants, local authority and voluntary sector responses to NRPF and theoretical perspectives on NRPF.

Fusicoccin (FC), an activator of the plant plasma membrane H+-ATPase, induces several components of plant pathogen resistance responses, including defence hormone biosynthesis and pathogenesis-related (PR) gene expression. The mechanism by which these responses occur, and the effect they have on plant-pathogen interactions is unknown. Here, we show that PR gene expression in response to FC in tomato (Lycopersicon esculentum Mill.) plants does not strictly require the common defence hormones, salicylic acid, jasmonic acid and ethylene. We also show that FC-induced PR gene expression requires neither Ca2+ nor reactive oxygen species, typical early pathogen-resistance response signals. The possibility that PR gene expression is related to FC-induced dehydration stress is also discounted. Finally, we show that the defence responses elicited by FC in tomato are not sufficient to confer resistance to the bacterial pathogen Pseudomonas syringae. Rather, FC increases the rate and severity of disease symptom formation in an ethylene-dependent manner.

Agroecology is an alternative paradigm for agriculture and food systems that is simultaneously: (a) the application of ecological principles to food and farming systems that emerge from specific socioecological and cultural contexts in place-based territories; and (b) a social and political process that centers the knowledge and agency of Indigenous peoples and peasants in determining agri-food system policy and practice. Historically, agroecology is associated with a multifaceted body of transdisciplinary knowledge. The academic literature emphasizes the role of scientists in developing an interdisciplinary agroecology over the past ninety years. However, the practice of agroecology is much older, with deep roots in many Indigenous and peasant societies of Africa, the Americas, Asia, Australia, Europe, and Polynesia. Although these societies never adopted the term “agroecology,” their time-tested practices in growing food and fiber illustrate many principles of modern agroecology. The transdisciplinary field of research on agroecology examines how agroecology contributes to equitable and sustainable food and fiber production, processing, distribution, and consumption. Agroecology builds on people’s knowledge, Indigenous management systems, and local institutions through “dialogues of knowledges” with social science, natural science, and the humanities. The study of Indigenous and peasant agri-food systems has thus been pivotal for the development of both agroecology and anthropology. The agroecological perspective is based on a transformative vision of the relationship between people and nature. Economic anthropology has unearthed a wide diversity of systems of economic exchange that are informing work on agroecology, including the vital importance of Indigenous and peasant economies, gift economies, circular economies, subsistence, and economies of care. These are pushing agroecologists to think outside of the box of dominant commodity capitalism. Agroecology is also based on a radical conceptualization of knowledge systems, whereby work on cognitive justice, epistemic justice, Indigeneity, and decoloniality is upending the dominance of Western, scientific, Eurocentric, and patriarchal worldviews as the basis for the future of food and agriculture. Agroecology is also underpinned by radical notions of democracy and new conceptualizations of popular education, transformations in governance, and empowering forms of participation. While the transformative agenda offered by agroecology is deeply contested by proponents of industrial and corporate food and agriculture, agroecology is increasingly important in academic and policy debates on sustainable food, farming, and land use. Exploring the relationship between agroecology and anthropology is both fruitful and timely because it can help re-root agroecology—which is increasingly at risk of becoming an abstract and devitalized concept—in the fundamentally localized practices and culture of agri-food systems.