This article considers the out-migration of young people from the Welsh-speaking heartlands in terms of their aspirations and hopes for the future. The original doctoral research (2014), is based on Hywel Jones’ (2010) work, which argues that young people born outside of Wales are four times more likely to migrate from Wales than young people born here. The research attempts to establish the main factors that affect rates of out-migration among young people born outside of Wales and those born into non-native families. The article concludes that the main drivers of rates of out-migration among this group are factors such as sense of belonging and the extent of community integration, rather than solely economic factors. In particular, it examines how culture, nationality, and considerations pertaining to the Welsh language have an impact on this trend, which has important implications in terms of the linguistic retention of the ‘traditional’ Welsh speaking areas.

‘D.J. a fi’ draws on aspects of the work of Welsh author D.J. Williams and examines their potential to inspire the creation and inform the analysis of contemporary site-specific performance. Williams’s memoir, The Old Farmhouse, provides unique insights into the landscape of childhood, the located nature of memory, the dramaturgy of storytelling and the role of the teller. The author employs these insights to develop and suggest a number of practical and theoretical approaches to the use of biography, family history, domestic architecture and local knowledge in devised performance. Referring extensively to his own work, ‘Bubbling Tom’ (2000), a peripatetic solo performance staged in the village of his own upbringing in rural Lincolnshire: a guided tour of the places he knew at the age of seven – he discusses the importance of Williams’s work in inspiring dramatic forms that seek to reveal the grain of experience by addressing the intimate and familiar, the details of everyday life and its fabric.

Health services offer a privileged space to define the proper relationship of the citizen and the modern state. Individuals have been expected to make choices in health care in Wales and England since the 1980s. A new vaccine against some types of cervical cancer was recently introduced for girls. Parents are expected to consent on behalf of their daughters. This paper reports the results of the largest qualitative study in this area world-wide. It depicts attitudes to health care choice and discusses parents’ experiences of consenting or not. Parents’ decisional strategies in the face of uncertainty are analysed. Consequences of the study relate to the individuals’ relationship with the Welsh National Health Service (NHS) and to developing a concept of Welsh citizenship.

The rapidly ageing population has been identified as a major global challenge; within Wales there is a growing imbalance in the age-profiles of rural communities in particular. The demands of providing appropriate healthcare for a changing population are exacerbated by lifestyle changes associated with ageing, specifically low levels of physical activity, reduced exposure to the sun and compromised ability to synthesise vitamin D. This report focuses on two important health outcomes affected by these changes that are of increasing concern within Wales: diabetes (DM2: diabetes mellitus type 2) and falls incidence. The article critically reviews the evidence base pertaining to the relationships between physical activity, vitamin D, and both the pathogenesis of DM2 and falls incidence. Current interventions are discussed and a series of recommendations for service delivery within Wales’ rural communities are presented. We argue that there is a clear role for targeting these modifiable lifestyle factors in reducing the prevalence and severity of falls and diabetes, two growing areas of social and economic concern within Wales.

This article focuses on the effects of music on sufferers of dementia as a means of communicating through familiar songs within a Welsh context. The fieldwork is based on the author’s experience singing to the accompaniment of the Celtic harp at an assessment unit for dementia and at resident homes for the elderly on the Llŷn Peninsula during the Summer of 2010 and presents insights gained from observing patients recalling familiar songs when conversation was difficult. On this basis, the article examines the way in which music can assist patients who suffer from this condition, describing and analysing the results.

This paper offers a brief examination of the approach taken by the Welsh Language Board, as the principal language policy and planning body in Wales, to aspects of prestige planning and the Welsh language. It describes how devolution, and the recent, first ever, national review by the Welsh Assembly Government of Welsh language policy, provide the immediate context for the work of the Welsh Language Board. The key policy document resulting from that review, Iaith Pawb, is critically analysed and the relationship to it of prestige planning is identified. The Welsh Language Board’s practice of prestige planning is discussed in relation to the discourses of neo-liberalism and post-colonialism in a way that highlights the Board’s focus on consumers rather than citizens.

Welsh-medium education has long been seen as an effective language planning tool in order to transmit the Welsh language in Wales. According to the 2001 Census, there has been a substantial increase in the numbers of Welsh speakers 3–15 years old, especially in south–east Wales, since the 1991 Census. The aim of this paper is to elaborate upon this quantitative data by providing qualitative data with regard to the main reasons and incentives for parents to choose this educational option for their children. The study location is Cwm Rhymni, Caerffili county. A combination of quantitative questionnaires and qualitative in-depth interviews were administered amongst parents from the meithrin, primary and secondary school sectors in Cwm Rhymni. The reasons why parents choose this educational system for their children were cultural, educational, economic and personal. However, it is pertinent to note from the outset, that the parents chose Welsh-medium education for their children in this area for mainly cultural reasons, rather than economic reasons which featured heavily in past studies such as research by Williams et al. (1978) on bilingual education in the Rhondda. This study is the first in a larger corpus of work and one that hopes to address the existing lacunae in the Sociology of Language in Wales, especially as there is a lack of Sociology of Language studies through the medium of Welsh in Wales.

With the publication of its Welsh-medium Education Strategy in April 2010, the Welsh Assembly Government recognised the leading role of Welsh-medium education in the field of bilingual education throughout Europe and the world during the last fifty years. As the system further develops with increasing numbers of pupils choosing bilingual education in Wales, it is emphasised that it is important to be aware of the patterns and models available in other bilingual communities that successfully integrate bilingualism or multilingualism into their provision so that we can understand their relevance to our particular situation in Wales. This article gives an overview of the most recent developments in bilingual education in an international context and considers the important issues that emerge as this type of education continues to develop to cater for the needs of pupils in bilingual and multilingual communities throughout the world in the twenty-first century.

Max Weber is recognised as one of the foremost founders of modern sociology. This volume places him in the tradition of sociology and outlines some of his major contributions: his idea of 'verstehen' or 'sociological imagination', his involvement in the great debate about the relationship between capitalism and the Protestant religion, and his 'ideal types' or definitions of the basics of particular regimes.

An illustration of the life of Karl Marx: his ideas, the roots of his philosophy and his influence on the world. 

Emile Durkheim was the first to hold a university chair in sociology, and his ideas remain of fundamental importance to all who want to understand the origins of the subject. He adopted the image of society as an organism, each part of which has a particular role to play in ensuring the well-being of the whole body. His ideas include an analysis of the social origins of religion, in particular the suggestion that any religious worship is 'worship of society'; its emphasis on what he called 'anomie' as the root of dispute and unrest in the life of an individual and society; and his original and important study of suicide as a social phenomenon. His influence is seen in fields as diverse as criminology on the one hand and literary criticism on the other.

Digital resources introducing the core ideas, concepts and principles of Politics.