The politics of global youth participation

This article critically examines increased opportunities for youth participation in global political affairs created by the United Nations and its member states in the 2010s. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork and interviews at three global youth conferences, this study demonstrates the operationalization of participatory governance, a current mode of global politics, that seeks to engage multi-stakeholders in a seemingly more democratic and egalitarian process. It investigates how the structure and culture of participation mechanisms found in international political processes limited youth engagement. Young people expressed both dissatisfaction with what they perceived to be their inability to participate meaningfully and their desire to fulfill their human right to participation. The author argues that this reflects the construction an ideal global youth-citizen today as marked by an individual’s exercise of compulsory participation as a self-governing and responsible subject. Participation is employed as a mode of governance so that young people may instrumentally advance thier life chances against the insecurities of social risks imposed on them in the retreat of state provisions. The study underscores the need to critically examine the institutionalization of political youth agency.     

Visibility as Resistance by Muslim Americans in a Surveillance and Security Atmosphere

Based on ethnographic data on South Asian Muslims in Los Angeles and analysis of publications of the largest Muslim organization in North America, this article shows how Muslim Americans manage their hypervisibility in the post‐9/11 security atmosphere, which has intensified after ISIS terrorist attacks at home and abroad. At the individual level, Muslim Americans try to distance themselves from the “Muslim” label, which associates them with “terrorists.” Instead, many self‐categorize into the seemingly more favorable “moderate” identity, which could sometimes render Muslims politically passive. Contrastingly, Muslim organizations strive to construct a “Muslim American” identity that can allow Muslims to engage in mainstream politics by reframing Islam as compatible with American values. Theoretically, this article engages with the scholarship on security, surveillance, and visibility to show how the observed's visibility is not always only repressive but can also be used to resist imposed categories. However, findings reflect how the racialization of Muslims and the security regime give these strategies a double edge—while providing some advantages, these do little to dismantle Muslims’ hypervisibility and the security atmosphere. Overall, findings shed light on the contemporary issue of Muslim identification—not just in terms of how others see Muslims but also how Muslims see themselves.     

Muslim Political Activism or Political Activism by Muslims? Secular and Religious Identities Amongst Muslim Arab Activists in the United States and United Kingdom

Scholarship on Muslim political mobilisation in the West has developed as an important counterpoint to public discourse, which has tended to cast Muslims as a threat to social cohesion, liberal democracy, and national security. But even as scholarly literature has shed light on civic participation among Muslims, it has sidelined the diversity of political identities and values that motivate them. Most, if not all, Muslims in the West find their identities politicised in some way, but the question of whether this leads to a consensus amongst Muslims about the role of religion in public life often remains unexamined. In this article we draw on interviews with seventy-eight activists in Britain and the United States who are both Muslim and Arab to complicate ideas about the political mobilisation of Muslims in the West. Respondents, we show, are far from unified in their views on religion as a basis for political action and mobilisation. Some are keen to place Islam squarely in mainstream political spaces; most, however, are insistent that Islam should remain a private faith and identity and that political mobilisation should take place under the aegis of Arabness or other ‘secular’ identities. Using theoretical perspectives on the public sphere, we explain the complexity of our respondents' political identities and activism. Our overall aim is to broaden perspectives on the ways in which people from Muslim backgrounds participate in public, political life in Western contexts.     

Building alliances: Defending immigrant rights in rural Oregon

Political participation in the rural United States has often been narrowly defined within the confines of electoral politics. Increasingly, participants in rural US social movements have highlighted the shortcomings of democracy defined purely in terms of electoral politics in favour of a more participatory model of politics that focuses on the social and cultural rights of those who are often formally or informally excluded from the liberal definition of citizenship. This article highlights the process of claiming rights as cultural citizens in a political context where there are efforts through the formal political system—usually in the form of ballot referendums at the state or local level—to further limit the rights of specific constituencies such as gay, lesbian and transgendered individuals or immigrants. A second focus of this article is on the dynamics of solidarity and alliance building between different kinds of social movements acting in concert to push for cultural rights and then formal rights for each other's constituencies. The article specifically seeks to illustrate how two organizations that share quite different constituencies and agendas can effectively collaborate in regional and state-wide campaigns in the rural state of Oregon, while also honestly discussing their differences and difficulties in working together.     

American Studies in the time of Empire

Abstract

This article argues that in terms of political economy, political/military power, and culturally, the USA is 'worlded' in two important ways. In terms both of power and self-perception, the national space of the USA is no longer contained within the boundaries indicated on political maps, but has come to encompass the globe, projecting the nation onto a global space. At the same time, intensified population flows into the USA – part of the same process – 'worlds' the USA from within, transforming American society. These contemporary developments need not be projected upon the past, but they do enable us to see the past in different ways – with colonialism integral to the US national formation both in North America and elsewhere. The article suggests on these grounds that an American-centered view of the USA, understanding the US as a sui generis formation is insufficient to understand the US past or present; such an understanding requires constant attention to the entanglement of the USA in the world and of the world in the USA.     

The US President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief

This article analyses the US response under former President George W. Bush to the global HIV/AIDS epidemic at the intersection of neo-conservatism and neo-liberalism, highlighting the various ways their distinct gender logics collide to reproduce masculine privilege and gender inequalities on a global scale. The President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) is the United States global HIV/AIDS policy and is the largest commitment made by any single nation for an international health project. My analysis is based on PEPFAR's ‘formal’ policy texts, including its authorizing legislation, five-year strategic framework and specific policy directives for recipient organizations. In addition, I examine more ‘informal’ texts like Congressional reports and Presidential speeches delivered by George W. Bush on various occasions. Drawing on a rich body of feminist ethnographic work in the fields of global governance, international political economy, organizational theory and sexuality and masculinity studies, the following article examines the various ways market-based norms and practices can legitimate the moral imperatives of neo-conservatism to promote ‘traditional’ values and institutions in the global South as leading solutions to global problems and insecurities.     

Migrant encounters with neo-colonial masculinity: producing European sovereignty through emotions

The EU/European political community’s reaction to irregular migrants is ambivalent. On the one hand, migrants are produced as people to be pitied, rescued, and saved. On the other hand, they are feared, despised, and left to die. The article explores this ambivalence from a gender perspective and asks how sovereign masculinities are produced through emotional performances in the politics of migration control and management. It will be argued that emotions such as fear, disgust, and compassion are performed in the biopolitical security governance of irregular migration by producing a “socially abject” life as its object. This is a life that is to be killed, despised, and saved. Encounters between the irregular migrant and a European border security actor constitute a neo-colonial masculinity. During the moment of the encounter with the other’s life, sovereignty is produced through emotional performances of border security actors. The discussion concludes with illustrations of how racialized bodies and lives are produced as objects of fear, disgust, and compassion through European neo-colonial masculinity. The article speaks to the debates in the literature on masculinities in global politics, emotions and politics, and critical border studies.     

The Factors that Make and Unmake Migration Policies1

Migration policies often fail to achieve their declared objectives or have unintended consequences. This article discusses three sets of reasons for this: factors arising from the social dynamics of the migratory process; factors linked to globalization and transnationalism; and factors within political systems. Effective policies are often hampered by the one‐sided explanatory models used to explain migration, as well as by interest conflicts in both domestic and international politics. In many cases this leads to migration policies with contradictory objectives or hidden agendas. The article goes on to discuss some elements of a conceptual framework for improving policy formation and possible components of fairer and more effective migration policies at the national, regional and global levels.     

Muslim American Women in the Post-11 September Era

Political events can serve as an impetus for civic engagement or disengagement. The events of 9/11 have directed attention toward US Muslim communities and occasionally inflamed anti-Islam and anti-Muslim sentiments. This article explores the impact of the 11 September events on hijab-wearing Muslim American women. These events and the negative perception of Islam have paradoxically given rise to Muslim women's public presence and paved the way for their political engagement. Their efforts, however, have been hampered by Orientalist and Islamic fundamentalist ideologies, each advancing its own constructs of Muslim women; one seeking to ‘save’ them and the other to ‘protect’ them. Muslim women have found both ideologies oppressive. As a result, they have been actively challenging these ideologies in American society at large and within their own Muslim communities. Through civic engagement and participation in Muslim organizations, these women have been making efforts to redefine themselves, claim their space, secure their rights and advance the causes of Muslim American communities.     

Editorial: The Urgent Need for Global Action to Combat Climate Change

Abstract

Within the study of global politics and global political economy there has been an increase in literature within the last few years on the growth of resistance movements geared toward challenging the hegemony of US-inspired neoliberalism. This article questions much of the normative literature that is emerging, particularly from international political economy, on the nature of resistance and the anti-globalization movement. Using the case of Britain as an example, it argues that it is necessary to assess the various parts of the movement before any claim to counter-hegemony or counter-movement can be made. By looking at the various fragmented anti-globalization strategies and struggles that have been articulated within Britain, we also warn that any potential progressive or emancipatory ‘counter’ project is likely to suffer both from potential reactionary forces and from the lack of a clear transformative agenda.     

Figures of the cosmopolitan

In contemporary European social and political thought, cosmopolitanism is frequently closely linked with the modern cultural citizen, who is open to the variety of global cultures and can participate equally at al levels of society from the local to the global. The cosmopolitan or privileged national moves freely and, from a secure vantage point, is at home anywhere. However what I suggest in this paper is that there is a darker dimension, which is too easily forgotten in the celebratory figures of the cosmopolitan based on unfettered movement and consumption of places. There is another cosmopolitan figure which draws upon an ambiguous historical baggage where the rootless and flexible outsider was treated with suspicion and hostility. In 20th century Europe, cosmopolitanism often epitomised the Jew with divided allegiances and little attachment to the land, and more often at home in the city, unlike indigenous populations. Today the fear of divided loyalties and transnational political participation falls in particular upon Europe's Muslim populaitons, who must demonstrate that they are not cosmopolitan. Thus what is interpreted positively in the privileged national is deemed to be negative and problematic in the migrant.     

Symbolic Economies: Money,Neoliberal Law and National Politics in Argentina

In this article, I examine Argentina's neoliberal reforms throughout the 1990s from a Marxist theoretical perspective, analysing how money, monetary policy and law constitute a fundamental mode of ideological regulation in neoliberal capitalism. Situating this analysis in the context of the capitalist crisis of the mid-1970s, the article discusses the politics of effacement that in Argentina's case paved the way for the use of monetary policy as a form of social control intended to embed the nation-state into global capitalism. Examining economic legislation, macro-economic policies, political ideologies, consumer discourses and pension privatization, I analyse how the neoliberal monetary regime ideologically underpinned a whole state imaginary based on exchange rate parity with the US dollar. Further, I investigate the ideological function of money in symbolically reordering the relationships of workers and citizens to the state, capital and culture. The article concludes with an exploration of the political significance of the monetary collapse of the Argentine neoliberal reform in 2001–2002, comparing Argentina's crisis of hegemony with that of other states within global capitalism.     

Figuring the future in Los(t) Angeles

Abstract

This article examines Los Angeles' symbolic relation to the rest of the US, deriving from its multi-layered political, social, economic, racialized and environmental complexity. Metropolitan Los Angeles has become 'a dystopian symbol of Dickensian inequalities and intractible racial contradictions', according to historian Mike Davis. Rather than representing America's modernity, Los Angeles has come to symbolize 'the collapse of the American Century'. Accordingly this article explores the motives of African American writers in representing Los Angeles as a politically and environmentally disastrous living space and a figure for the state of the nation. The value that black writers place upon and celebrate in the multiple range of urban ethnicities is at odds, not only with the class and racialized political and economic hierarchies of the city which oppresses its black residents but also contrary to contemporary dominant models of American citizenship. The article considers work by Chester Himes, Octavia Butler and Walter Mosley and argues that within and without the borders of the US, labels like 'minority' or 'ethnic' literature ghettoize, marginalize and minimize its significance. Yet the work of these authors currently carries the weight of the search for a more ethical and moral sense of responsibility for the state of a nation skidding down the path of increasing inhumanity, injustice and disregard, not only for the majority of its own population but for the majority of the residents of this planet. These works are significant acts of dissent from the perpetuation of injustice in contemporary politics, from the increasing extremes of wealth and poverty, and from the parasitic relation of the US to the environment.     

The Contagiousness of Conflict: E.E. Schattschneider as a theorist of the information society

Elmer Eric Schattschneider (1892-1971) was one of the most distinguished US political scientists of his day but beyond an isolated footnote, his work rarely receives much attention today. This paper suggests that there is much in Schattschneider's work that deserves renewed attention. In 1960, Schattschneider published The Semisovereign People , a study of the transformation of US politics from a set of regional hegemonies to a genuinely national political system. While this may seem arcane to students of the information society, The Semisovereign People actually offers a conceptual toolkit for understanding the way in which new information and communications technologies are changing the global political landscape. In an era of satellite television, the Internet and the mobile phone, Schattschneider's key concepts of scope, visibility and the socialization of conflict provide powerful insights into the politics of a globalizing world. E.E. Schattschneider thought he was writing a book about the nationalization of US politics in the middle of the twentieth century in fact what he actually wrote was a theory of political globalization.     

The missing politics of muscular liberalism

The article examines the idea of muscular liberalism, first invoked by David Cameron as a paradigm of assertive policymaking in opposition to ‘state multiculturalism’. The rhetoric of muscular liberalism is present across western Europe, but its political effects have not been convincingly explored. In scholarship on ethnic minority integration, a ‘stimulus–response model’ credits Muslim intransigence as the trigger for the muscular stance. Other commentators put muscular liberalism into a genealogical perspective but do little to consider the circumstances of its political deployment. Working towards an alternative account, the article examines two instances of muscular liberalism in Britain: the campaign against ‘Sharia Courts’ and the ‘Trojan Horse’ affair. Different from the concern with historical continuity or stable potentials of liberal normativity, it draws attention to political operations and strategic calculations that characterize the deployment of muscular liberalism in British politics.     

Schools,Bullying, and Inequality: Intersecting Factors and Complexities with the Stratification of Youth Victimization at School

Bullying within United States (US) schools is a growing concern among parents, school officials and policymakers. In early 2011, the first‐ever White House Conference on Bullying Prevention was held in hope of addressing bullying within US schools. Although the social, political, and media attention is increasing, it is important to consider the complexities and disparities associated with school bullying. In this article, four of the wide array of influences that increase the vulnerabilities of youth to be a victim of bullying at school are reviewed: (i) race and ethnicity, (ii) being and immigrant, (iii) gender, and; (iv) sexual orientation. Understanding and acknowledging the inequalities associated with school bullying, as well as the policies implemented in response, is instrumental for the US’ efforts towards providing safe, healthy, and democratic learning environments.     

Global development and precarity: a critical political analysis

ABSTRACT

Precarity as a concept has come to be conceived as a distinctive experience of neoliberal development, especially in the European context. The experience of precarity, according to some, has influenced efforts aimed at living otherwise from the precepts of neoliberal development. Yet, for others, precarity is producing a ‘new dangerous class’. However, despite different perspectives of the effects and implications of precarity, the analytical purchase and political utility of the concept has received insufficient attention. In this article, we hope to contribute to critical debates on the limitations of ‘precarity’ as a concept for critical political analysis. We argue that in the dominant use of precarity as an analytic of inequality, particular experiences are rendered as historical universals. Consequently, these (particular) experiences are disconnected from global social and political relations of inequality, while at the same time reinforcing a linear and reductionist conception of development. We demonstrate that the temporal scheme represented by the notion of the ‘age of post-Fordism’, which serves as a crucial marker of the explanatory framework of precarity (in Europe), actually misconstrues the politics of global development through inequalities. Moreover, the tendency to focus on subjectification as conditioning the formation of a ‘new’ dangerous class, entails far-reaching omissions of actual transnational political struggles against domination and inequality. Instead of precarity, a critical engagement with the politics of global development ought to be the subject of analysis for understanding contested relations of affluence, insecurity and inequality.     

Muslim Women,Moral Visions: Globalization and Gender Controversies in Indonesia

Since 1998, Indonesia’s democratization has produced contentious public debates, many of which revolve around issues of gender and sexual morality. Yet such controversies not only often focus on women, but also involve women as participants. This article examines how Muslim women activists in two organizations adapt global discourses to participate in important public sphere debates about pornography and polygamy. Indonesia’s moral debates demonstrate an important way in which global discourses are negotiated in national settings. In the debates, some pious women use discourses of feminism and liberal Islam to argue for women’s equality, while others use Islam to call for greater moral regulation of society. My research demonstrates that global discourses of feminism and Islamic revivalism are mediated through national organizations which shape women’s political activism and channel it in different directions. Women’s political subjectivities are thus shaped through their involvement in national organizations that structure the ways they engage with global discourses. The Indonesian case shows not only that the national should not be conflated with the local, but also demonstrates the significance of national contexts and histories for understanding global processes.     

Framing Identity Politics: Right-Wing Women as Strategic Party Actors in the UK and US

ABSTRACT

Women’s political underrepresentation in right-wing parties remains a global phenomenon. Despite their rejection of “identity politics,” the United Kingdom’s Conservative Party and the United States’ Republican Party have launched formal initiatives to recruit women legislative candidates. In this article, we ask: How do right-wing women advocate for increasing women’s representation within parties that explicitly reject group identity politics? More specifically, we examine 1) how party elites frame the UK’s Women2Win and the US’s Project GROW campaigns, and 2) the role that women play in each of these initiatives. Through interviews with party elites and content analyses of news articles and campaign materials, we show that right-wing women in both countries function as strategic party actors, advocating for women’s representation tactically within the specific ideological and electoral context of their party.     

The Politics of Migrants' Transnational Political Practices

This article critically examines transnational political engagement of migrants and refugees in local, national and global political processes. Based on inductive reading of existing scholarship and in particular the author's own research on Turks and Kurds in Europe, the article discusses key concepts and trends in our understanding of why, how and with what consequences migrants engage in transnational political practices. These practices, this article suggests, are influenced by the particular multilevel institutional environment, which migrant political actors negotiate their way through. This environment includes not only political institutions in the sending and receiving country, but also global norms and institutions and networks of other nonstate actors. Finally, the article argues for critical examination of the democratic transparency and accountability of migrants' transnational networks in any analysis of their long and short‐term impact on domestic and global politics.