Genealogy

This paper explores the concept of migration, and its causes and effects, with a focus on international migration. Various journal articles, reports, and policy documents are reviewed to address the controversies concerning the concept and key issues of migration. The paper indicates that migration is not only a contested concept, but migration research has resulted in different outcomes. It is mainly affected by personal, socio-economic, and political factors associated with the origin and host countries. Similarly, scholars have been asking the question, “who is a migrant?” for decades without a definite answer. It is also important to consider “what would happen after migrants obtain host country citizenship”: would they continue to be migrants, the host countries’ citizens, or both? This paper contributes to advancing our knowledge and broadening our understanding of the concept of migration and key issues associated with it. It also serves as a base for further discussion. Full article

The semiosphere reflects universal and culturally determined characteristics. Heraldry is one of the most complex sign systems. Alive and flexible semiotics is urgent for studies. The aim of this paper is to mark the axiological character of Russian and British sovereign state armorials with an accent on animals. Based on both Russian and British research, this paper focuses on syntactics and pragmatics of arms analyzed in a synchronic and diachronic manner. A cross-cultural comparative approach to Russian and British armorial bearings can be viewed as a novel contribution. The paper embraces structural and semantic aspects, the temporal and pragmatics sphere and Jargon du blazon. English heraldry is relevant to the European tradition, and the Russian one has political value. For both countries, it is associated with foreign influence. The system of European coats of arms is coherent with the institution of property and war, and the Russian one with inheritance. For Britain, heraldry was one of the culture-forming components, and for Russia, it was just one of the elements of culture. Full article

We examine the identity of British Poles born in the UK, whose parents arrived as allied servicemen and their families, seeking asylum following WW2. The two authors are from this community, and here examine their British-Polish identity along with other second-generation Poles in the UK. These individuals grew up in distinct communities exposed to the Polish language and culture but with restricted contact with communist Poland. The themes of response to parents’ trauma experience, Polish identity in childhood and in midlife, Polish language, and visiting family in Poland were explored. Many described parents as secretive about the horrors of war but keen to retain and propagate their Polish identity. Some felt they were not fully Polish, but their identity increased with access to modern Poland as adults. The Polish language was important to identity but linked to feeling inadequacy when not fluent. Visiting family in Poland enhanced identity, was valued, and provided information on family history. European identity was adopted by some to cover both their British and Polish identity. Genealogy and family history are popular and linked to community, and British Poles have a distinct contribution and a voice in showing how identity can emerge out of family trauma. Full article

The surname Fitzpatrick is readily identified as Irish. Until recently, the traditional Fitzpatrick surname narrative was of a medieval super-progenitor named Giolla Phádraig. His offspring, the eponymous Mac Giolla Phádraig, it was said, somehow came to dwell in every Irish province; yet this is an Irish surname myth that works to erase the history of ancient ‘Fitzpatrick’ clans. This article demonstrates how deconstructing the surname Fitzpatrick, through working the hyphen of gene-eaology, is a practice of decolonisation. Via genetic data and archival records, dominant clan identities are disrupted, while connections with lost clans are re/membered. Critical analysis dismantles the dominant narrative imposed by colonial strategies and reconnects people with kinship groups and forgotten forebears. Questions arise from the deconstruction of an Irish surname. How might new clan identities be imagined, and how is losing a dominant surname narrative negotiated? Full article

Early childhood education (ECE) institutions in Norway highly value nature and outdoor activities. The framework plan for kindergartens encourages that children get insights into the origin of food. The approach for imparting this knowledge incentivises foraging in kindergartens. The eco-ethology of humans is dependent on cultural values and practices and what is available for harvest in the local environments in different seasons. This paper explores the incentives and motivations for foraging in kindergartens in Norway through a qualitative approach. The data was collected from Sámi and Norwegian ECE professionals through on-site video documentation, group interviews, in-depth semi-structural interviews, and field notes. It was analysed using reflexive thematic analysis, in which the researchers had an active role in the process through reflexive engagement with theory, data, and interpretation. Three themes related to the incentives and motivations for foraging were found: (1) “viewpoints of nature”, (2) “transfer and production of knowledge”, and lastly (3) “motives and meaning for foraging”. Norwegian ECE professionals seemed to view nature as a place to explore outdoors (termed friluftsliv) and Sámi ECE professionals used nature for a practical purpose (termed meahcci). Nature was used by all the ECE professionals for transfer and production of knowledge. The motives and meaning for foraging in ECE settings in Norway originated from the cultural values of purposeful use of nature’s resources. Further studies are needed to investigate the prevalence and importance of foraging practices in ECE, especially in terms of its significance to education for sustainability. Full article

Inspired by the work of Christine Sleeter and Avril Bell, among others, the articles that comprise this Special Issue seek to respond to questions focused on the relationship between family history and the processes of migration and colonisation and how this might impact on a family’s sense of itself today [...] Full article

Poetry is an ideal tool to convey participant voices in social research as it compresses the meaning and essence of participant narratives through using evocative sensory words that illuminate nuances of lived experience. Expressive poetics is an emerging arts-based research method that facilitates a multi-sensory and relational analytical process. In this article, the authors describe and illustrate an adapted expressive poetics research method through highlighting the experiences of Two Spirit, lesbian, gay, transgender, or queer (2SLGBTQ) Indigenous youth that participated in a culture-centered HIV prevention curriculum. It is our hope that through creating dialogic poems, we deepen and nuance the salient experiences of participant youth, acknowledge our relationship through adding our creative response to their calls for care, and create a model for others to engage in a similar process. In a time when 2SLGBTQ bodies are increasingly targeted and policed, it is more important than ever to center and amplify these voices. Full article

Heraldic traditions in southeast European countries are similar, as are the histories of their state emblems and coat of arms. Their development could be classified into three periods: (1) from the founding of the states until the end of World War II; (2) the socialist period; and (3) the period of democratisation after the collapse of socialism. The focus of this work is the processes of the adoption of coats of arms. The descriptions are taken from the appropriate legal documents. This paper examines the emblems and coats of arms of modern southeastern European, or Balkan states, Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, Romania, Slovenia, and Serbia. Full article

Beatrix Frangepán (* c. 1480, +(27 March) 1510) from the Counts of Veglia (Krk), Modrus and Zengg was a descendant from one of the leading families of the Hungarian–CroatianHungarian–Croatian late Medieval Kingdom. She became wife of Crown Prince János Corvinus-Hunyadi and later of Margrave Georg Hohenzollern-Brandenburg. From her first marriage, she had three children. One of these, Kristóf, who died young, was buried together with his father in Lepoglava (Croatia). Recently, successful archaeogenetic analyses have been performed on the remains of János and Kristóf Corvinus-Hunyadi; and in the course of these studies, the family background of Kristóf’s mother, Beatrix Frangepán, became an important factor. The present study provides a nine-generation family tree of Beatrix Frangepan as a complementary data pool for an eventual expansion of the archaeogenetic studies. Preliminary results of archaeological study of the supposed grave of Beatrix Frangepán are also reported. Full article

In most Western European societies, surnames pass from generation to generation and in cases where surnames are shared by fathers to children, the Y chromosome passes down from fathers to male offspring in the same way as surnames do. The aim of this study was to ascertain the patrilineal relationship between individuals with the surname “Castilla” and their respective Y-chromosome haplotypes. The toponymic surname “Castilla” is part of the Spanish royal family. Genealogical studies of this surname have allowed the formulation of different hypotheses about its origin, most of which were centered in Burgos. To shed some light on the origin of the surname Castilla and to investigate the possible co-ancestry behind the living carriers of this surname, markers located in the Y chromosome-specific region were analyzed in a sample of 102 men whose paternal surname was Castilla. The study aimed to establish the minimum number of founders and the expansion time of the lineages from our sample. Two major haplogroups were identified: R1b and E1b1b-M81. The high frequency of the E1b1b-M81 haplogroup in comparison to that of the general Spanish population, its low haplotype diversity, and its young TMRCA (323+/− 255 years CE) are compatible with the historical timing of the obligation to use surnames. However, the coincidence of the most common haplogroup in the Castilla sample and the most frequent haplogroup in the Spanish general population, R1b, makes it difficult to identify founder haplotypes/haplogroups in the history of the Castilla surname. Full article

The chronological period from the beginning of the Chalcolithic Age to the end of the Bronze Age on the Iberian northern sub-plateau of the Iberic Peninsula involves interesting social and cultural phenomena, such as the appearance of the Bell Beaker and, later, the Cogotas I cultures. This work constructs a genetic characterisation of the maternal lineages of the human population that lived on the northern sub-plateau between 5000 and 3000 years ago through an analysis of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), a kind of genetic marker that is inherited through maternal lineages, unaltered from generation to generation. Population and cultural questions are investigated through mtDNA analyses. This study intends to shed light on the following questions. Were individuals who were buried together in multiple or collective burials biologically related through their maternal lineages? Were there distinct maternal human lineages in the same or different geographical areas if different material cultures (Bell Beaker and Cogotas I) were associated with the arrival of new human populations who established close biological relationships with the endogenous populations? Or could this be the result of the transmission of knowledge without human populations mixing? Another important question is whether the material cultures were related to the female populations. We analysed 91 individuals from 28 different archaeological sites of the Iberian northern sub-plateau from four different chrono-cultural periods (Pre-Bell Beaker, Bell Beaker, Proto-Cogotas I, and Cogotas I), from the end of the Chalcolithic Age up to the Bronze Age. There were two historical moments of new populations arriving: the first during the Pre-Bell Beaker period, associated with the K mtDNA haplogroup, and the second during the Proto-Cogotas I culture, with new lineages of the H, HVO, and T haplogroups. Neither of these new population flows were directly associated with the maximum development of the two main material cultures Bell Beaker and Cogotas I, so they must have occurred immediately beforehand, during the Pre-Bell Beaker and Proto-Cogotas I periods, respectively. However, we cannot discard an association between the populations and material cultures. Curiously, it has also been observed that there was also a tendency towards multiple burials, in which the individuals who were buried together belonged to the same maternal lineage, during these two periods of population change. This study has shed some light on the populational changes that occurred through these different periods in this specific geographical area of the northern sub-plateau of the Iberian Peninsula. Full article

Records of asylums, schools, and benevolent organisations that intervened in the lives of disabled children in Scotland during the long nineteenth century have survived to varying degrees in public and institutional archives. This might suggest the existence of detailed primary source material that stands in contrast to the sparse data about those disabled children who ‘escaped’ the attention of organisations that aimed to support and direct their lives. However, the records of these formal organisations are inconsistent in what they reveal about the lives of the children under their patronage. This article explores the challenges presented by the records of three organisations, namely, the Scottish Institution for the Education of Imbecile Children in Larbert, Edinburgh’s Gayfield Square blind school, and East Park Home for Aiding Infirm Children in the Maryhill district of Glasgow. Among the deficiencies of surviving institutional records are the frequent paucity of insights into the lives of their young residents. This article will consider how some of their life journeys can nonetheless be researched by marshalling data from the likes of mandatory registration records and decennial census enumerators’ books. In addition to benefits afforded to genealogists, such records provide historians with materials from which disabled lives can be reconstructed and analysed. Full article

This paper outlines a study of surnames used by various Jewish groups in the Land of Israel for Ashkenazic Jews, prior to the First Aliyah (1881), and for Sephardic and Oriental Jews up to the end of the 1930s. For the 16th–18th centuries, the surnames of Jews who lived in Jerusalem, Safed, Tiberias, and Hebron can be mainly extracted from the rabbinic literature. For the 19th century, by far the richest collection is provided by the materials of the censuses organized by Moses Montefiore (1839–1875). For the turn of the 20th century, data for several additional censuses are available, while for the 1930s, we have access to the voter registration lists of Sephardic and Oriental Jews of Jerusalem, Safed, and Haifa. All these major sources were used in this paper to address the following questions: the use or non-use of hereditary family names in various Jewish groups, the geographic roots of Jews that composed the Yishuv, as well as the existence of families continuously present in the Land of Israel for many generations. Full article

Generally, men in sub-Saharan Africa make reproductive decisions that affect their partners. We examined the predictors of fertility desires among married men across three age cohorts: 20–35 years, 36–50 year, and 51–59 years. Using the 2014 Ghana Demographic and Health Survey dataset, we conducted ANOVA and multivariate binary logistic regressions on 1431 monogamous married men aged 20–59 years. Two indicators of fertility desire are constructed: (i) the comparison of men’s ideal versus women’s ideal family size, and (ii) the desire for more children. The results indicate that the fertility desire of men is stronger than that of women. The predictors of fertility desire are age, parity, religion, contraceptive use, wealth quintile, couples’ age difference and couples’ difference in education. At ages 20–35 years, men using modern contraceptives were more likely to desire more children compared with those not using any modern contraceptives. However, at ages 36–50 years, men using modern contraceptives were less likely to desire more children. This finding suggests that men change their fertility desires in response to changes in their ages. Full article

The supply of, and demand for, housing in Aotearoa, New Zealand, is in a state of crisis. With all other areas of social deprivation, Māori are impacted disproportionately in the housing space, and have been locked out of the housing market. In order to address this crisis, a range of government, community and iwi initiatives have been established in Tāmaki Makaurau (Auckland) to provide various housing interventions, from emergency housing, accommodation supplements and subsidies to transitional housing, home ownership programmes and papakāinga (Māori settlement, village) development opportunities. Marae Ora, Kāinga Ora (MOKO) is a Kaupapa Māori (Māori approach) research project created to explore the role of marae (cultural centre) and kāinga (village, settlement) in supporting the wellbeing of whānau (family group), hapū (extended kinship grouping), iwi (extended kinship–tribal grouping) and communities, which includes the potential provision of housing. Five marae in the South Auckland landscape are partners in this research and bring to life the prospect of their contribution to housing solutions for their local Māori communities. This article presents some valuable insights into the aspirations of each whānau involved with the five marae with regard to their perspectives and developments with marae-led housing provision. Full article

Documenting and finding lost family history proves as daunting as locating vital statistics, but the effort to perform such a genealogical feat should be undertaken, for good reason, as the resulting information can prove rewarding. This commentary discusses research methods, effective methods, and materials for finding documentation of family history with a special emphasis on African American genealogy. Commonly used strategies are listed with successful examples and recommended sources. The article concludes with an affirmation of the value of research on ancestors beyond just vital records. Full article

The Nigerian Middle Belt is the epicentre of violent conflicts between Fulani herders and sedentary farmers over land and agricultural resources called eco-violence; existing research has not adequately addressed the persistence of these conflicts. Using Social Representations Theory (SRT), this paper examines empirical case studies conducted in April 2018 and May 2022 in Benue State, Nigeria, to determine why these conflicts persist. The paper argues that contending parties anchor, objectify, and socially represent past contestations in pre-colonial, colonial, and post-colonial Nigeria in present-day realities and events in the Middle Belt, leading to the re-experience of collective memories and their consequences on people’s violent collective behaviour. Consequently, people resort to violence to redress present grievances viewed through the prism of past events. To promote sustainable peace when tackling deeply-rooted conflicts, it is essential to comprehend the historical context and the significance of collective memory while employing a comprehensive strategy for conflict resolution. Implementing the Cognitive Reappraisal Technique to address issues related to collective memories is critical to this approach. Full article

Different types of disasters, whether natural or human in character, lead to the significant loss of human lives. In the latter case, the quick action of identification of corpses and human remains is mandatory. There are a variety of protocols to identify victims; however, genetics is one of the tools that allows an exact identification of the victim. However, several factors may interfere with this identification, from the biological samples’ degradation not allowing the analysis of nuclear information, to failure to dispose of biological samples from family members. Access to certain family members could be a determinant of the proper choice of genetic markers that allow the identification of the victim, or his/her inclusion in a given genetic maternal or paternal lineage. New advances in the field of genetics are soon expected to allow for the identification of victims from disasters with only their biological postmortem samples; it may also be possible to draw a robot portrait of a victim’s most likely physical characteristics. In all cases, genetics is the only modern tool with universal character and can be used in essentially all biological samples, giving and identification of more or less accurate statistical character, depending on whether nuclear or lineage markers are used. Full article

Factors leading to racial and ethnic differences in non-marital fertility, which account for nearly 41% of all births in the U.S., are not well understood. This study examines how mother–child relationships and parental control shape the likelihood of having a non-marital birth in adulthood among non-Hispanic White, non-Hispanic Black, Hispanic, and non-Hispanic Asian women from 1994–2009. This paper uses data from Waves I, III, and IV of Add Health (n = 7171) and event-history analysis to find that mother–child relationships are associated with the likelihood of having a non-marital birth, with variation by race and ethnicity. Maternal warmth and communication in adolescence are associated with a decreased likelihood of having a non-marital birth in adulthood, but only among non-Hispanic Black and non-Hispanic Asian women. Parent–child relationships are dynamic and can have lasting impacts on children’s fertility behaviors across the life course. Full article