Mobile pensioners: retirement migrants’ perspectives of EU citizenship and free movement

The European institutions picture EU citizens as important actors in the process of transforming EU citizenship into a “tangible reality”. By knowing and practising EU citizenship rights, EU citizens are supposed to give meaning and depth to the otherwise hollow concept of EU citizenship. What EU citizenship means for mobile citizens themselves and how EU citizens practice and evaluate their rights (“lived citizenship”) is generally not a central theme in reports and studies on EU citizenship. In this article the value of EU citizenship will be discussed by applying a qualitative research approach and by focusing on retired EU citizens’ perspectives and practice of, in particular, free movement. This article applies a comparative approach and includes EU citizens who move or return from the Netherlands to Spain or Turkey after retirement. Four groups of EU citizens move between these countries: Dutch nationals who move to Spain, Spanish nationals who return to Spain, Dutch nationals who move to Turkey and Turkish dual-nationals who return to Turkey after retirement. This article shows that migratory background, country of origin, country of retirement and the way in which EU citizenship is acquired determine retirement migrants’ perspectives and practice of EU citizenship.     

Becoming citizens of empire: Albanian nationalism and fascist empire, 1939–1943

Theory and Society - This article uses the case of Albanian nationalism during the period of Italy’s occupation of Albania (1939–1943) to challenge prevailing conceptions of nationalism...     

To be or not to be: Control and balancing of type I and type II errors

The various costs of Type I and Type II errors of inference from data are discussed. Unfortunately, other things equal, Types I and II errors are inversely related. Six methods of minimizing Type I error in studies are presented, each of which may be employed even after data are collected. Type II errors may also be minimized by a combination of study design and analytic means. Although some of these techniques must be built into the study others can be undertaken when beginning work on a data set. Only one of these techniques will increase Type I error, and those involving data reduction may decrease both types of error.     

Elephant empire: zoos and colonial encounters in Eastern Europe

ABSTRACT

Whereas zoological gardens and animal collections in North America and Western Europe are well researched from historical, philosophical, and cultural perspectives, surprisingly little attention has been paid to the history and legacy of these modernizing institutions in Eastern Europe. To bridge this gap in scholarship, I investigate the traffic in exotic animals to this region with a focus on a particular species. Historically, elephants have been considered prime symbols of the power and triumph of the colonial empire, and were thus often the jewels of colonial animal collections across Europe. In this article, I explore how the colonial origin of elephants as both big game and charismatic megafauna translates into a geopolitical context without direct overseas colonies, in order to trace the material links between species, race, transnational commodity networks, and structures of identity formation. Based on archival and bibliographic research focused on the Poznań Zoo in years 1871–1945, this article offers a critical analysis of the role of elephant performance in zoos, circuses, and travelling shows in mediating and mobilizing imperial longings. From this vantage point I suggest that studying public zoos in Eastern Europe offers a unique insight into a physical presence of colonial imperialism (via traffic in exotic species) in an area without overseas colonies, through a site where modernist models of citizenship, nationhood, and Europeanness are forged at the interface between science, education, and transnational politics. Given that zoos were crucial for the development of the biological perspective in the West, I posit a reconfiguration of zoos as ‘contact zones’ and primary sites for colonial encounter within the empire from a semi-peripheral perspective.     

To be a Disabled University Student in Finland

This study describes the learning careers of two people with cerebral palsy, how they got to university and how they are coping with the demands of the Finnish university system. The Law of support for disabled people which came into force in 1988 provides fundamental rights and support for a disabled person to cope as independently as possible in Finnish society. Universities have also opened their doors to disabled persons, though cautiously. The social, judicial and humanistic fields of science are the most popular ones as study targets of disabled students. Today there are students with cerebral palsy handicaps, visual and hearing impairments, and those with various motor handicaps studying in our universities. In addition, there is a great number of people with medical chronics such as anorectics, diabetics, epileptics and those with atrophy.     

To see and not be seen: Latin American illegal foreign workers in Jerusalem

The article describes the formation and characteristics of the new evolving community of illegal Latin American foreign workers in Jerusalem while adopting the ecological perspective, which examines human development and behaviour in various contexts of their social and cultural environments.
We have looked specifically at illegal Latin American foreign workers' reasons for and process of migration, their accommodation and living conditions, allocation of employment, daily cultural and social conditions, education and health issues concerning children and families, perceptions of relations with host culture and perceptions of well-being and future expectations.
Our findings are based on the investigation of perspectives offered by the foreign workers themselves, by representatives of the various sectors of the host culture who are well acquainted with these workers, and by the researchers themselves, demonstrating how by means of triangulation these perceptions achieve extra validity or differ.
The article further explores the contribution of the case study in the investigation of acculturation stress and migrant's well-being, and emphasizes the need to study specific populations of immigrants under specific ecological conditions.     

Nation and empire: English and British national identity in comparative perspective

Theory and Society -     

Vulnerability and disability: a citizenship perspective

This article discusses vulnerability and disability focusing on inclusion and citizenship, inspired by Martha Nussbaum’s capabilities approach and Martha Fineman’s vulnerability theory. A public speech held at the 200th anniversary of the Norwegian Constitution is used as an exemplary case. The speaker, a woman with Down syndrome, challenges the Norwegian politic of inclusion. By drawing on perspectives from Nussbaum and Fineman, the article argues that a political concept of the person must emphasize individuals as vulnerable together with a recognition of disability as inherent in humanity. Vulnerability and disability are equally important for building future societies characterized by non-discrimination and equal citizenship.     

Making sense of the new geography of citizenship: Fragmented citizenship in the European Union

Theory and Society -     

Multiculturalism at play: young people and citizenship in Australia

This article analyzes an Australian theatre program that engaged diverse youth in (re)visioning citizenship and multiculturalism by creating new notions of belonging and altering perceptions of Aboriginal culture and its value in Australia. This kind of work – where young people's understandings of inclusion and diversity can be unsettled, critiqued, and developed – is crucial because current approaches to Australian multiculturalism tend to rely on Anglo-centric norms and fail to account for indigeneity. Drawing on participant observation and semi-structured interviews, I argue that youth theatre based on reflexive practices and cross-cultural sharing may offer a useful tool for young people's education for inclusive citizenship in a multicultural, super-diverse context. When practiced thoughtfully, such programs can offer space for rethinking citizenship and belonging in ways that recognize the centrality of Indigenous culture and critically reflect on the limitations of the dominant culture's reliance on Anglo cultural norms and ideas.     

Epilogue of empire: East Timor and the Portuguese postcolonial catharsis

The demonstrations of solidarity with East Timor that occurred in Lisbon in September 1999 were the first major political demonstrations since the fall of the dictatorship in 1974. Solidarity with East Timor demonstrated the importance to the Portuguese of emotional and cultural ties to people whom they saw as sharing their language and Catholic religion. These commonalities have a clear colonial history and are now being reconstructed around the idea of Lusophony, which is taken to be the core of a Portuguese postcolonial identity. East Timor, a Portuguese colony that was occupied by Indonesia after the Portuguese revolution of 1974, used diacritical signs such as Portuguese and Catholicism in its nationalist struggle against Indonesia. These signs are the cultural patrimony of a local creole elite and are exaggerated in Portuguese perceptions of East Timor. The colonial and postcolonial ironies of this case of mutual constitution of identity are analyzed.     

Who's making global civil society: philanthropy and US empire in world society

Theories of US hegemony commonly ignore the role of American philanthropy in the contemporary transformations of world society and the globalization of capitalism. In this essay, I suggest that the philanthropic foundation, and with it the institution of philanthropy, is being invigorated by the expansion of its domestic role to foreign activities and to globally framed activities within the USA. I propose that US philanthropy exports American understandings of democracy and simultaneously organizes global reflexivity through citizenship education for the US populace. I offer a preliminary theoretical interpretation of the empirical patterns of international grant-making activities by US foundations, considering John W. Meyer's concept of 'instrumental culture' and some arguments made by Foucauldian 'governmentality' scholars. I emphasize the need to conceptualize the cultural-symbolic and organizational dimensions of hegemony and suggest further sociological analysis of philanthropic activities as integral to current politically and economically led transformations of societies around the globe.     

Reframing agrarian citizenship: Land,life and power in Brazil

This paper investigates the changing relationship between land, citizenship, and power in Brazil, where land-related policies have historically served to situate political and economic rights in the hands of an elite land-owning minority. In response, contemporary grassroots movements in Brazil, including the Landless Rural Workers Movement (Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra, or MST) advocate the substantive transformation of what I develop here as a new form of “agrarian citizenship”, in which political participation, local food production, and environmental stewardship redefine the ongoing constitution of the relationship between land, state, and rural society. Based on extensive interviews, participant observation and document analysis from 2004–2006, this ethnographic study examines the contours of how changing notions of agrarian citizenship are negotiated among members of a growing body of social groups demanding land redistribution and reasserting agrarian culture in Brazil. By developing and enacting new forms of political participation that involve the transformation of personal and collective values and practices, rural activists such as the MST envision the redistribution of land as a material right, but also view the transformation of the land-society relation as an equally public responsibility.