‘The politics of free speech’

The present article addresses the support and supervisional relations of Palestinian Israeli single mothers vis-à-vis their families and communities. It links the theoretical discussion on intersectional analysis with power relations and gender. In this article I focus on the importance of employing analytical models that take into consideration the internal variance within this social category of ‘Palestinian Israeli single mothers' which emerge due to the contradictory social trends typifying Palestinian society in Israel today – models that examine the implications of the complexity of women's lives in discrete locations, the changes society is undergoing, together with processes of discrimination and the strengthening of conservative trends. The article is based on data gathered during in-depth, semi-structured interviews that were conducted and analyzed with a commitment to the principles of feminist research.     

‘No more Turkish music!’ The acculturation strategies of teachers and ethnic minority students in Flemish schools

ABSTRACT

While considerable research has focused on the process and factors affecting acculturation, there is little research that investigates how members of minority and majority groups define acculturation in educational settings. Ethnographic research and qualitative interviews in three secondary schools in Flanders (Belgium) show that teachers and ethnic minority students have different ideas and expectancies regarding the concept ‘integration’, which appears to affect student–teacher relationship. Berry et al.’s [1989. “Acculturation Attitudes in Plural Societies.” Applied Psychology: An International Review 3 (2): 185-206. doi:10.1111/j.1464-0597.1989.tb01208.x.] acculturation orientations are used as a theoretical template to analyse teachers’ and ethnic minority students’ discourses about acculturation. Analyses reveal that students of immigrant descent perceive acculturation mainly in terms of the establishment of intergroup contact. In contrast, teachers find it harder to disconnect cultural maintenance from contact and participation. By suggesting some form of cultural adoption, teachers hope to socialise their ethnic minority students into the culture of the dominant ethnic group and prepare them for their future. These distinct interpretations of ‘integration’ in everyday life (which actually refers to acculturation) often leads to misunderstandings between ethnic minority students and their teachers, even to conflict, as many students feel that their cultural background is disparaged and not fully valued in school.     

‘God,patria and home’: ‘Reproductive politics’ and nationalist (Re)definitions of women in East/Central Europe

Abstract

I argue that through complex processes of social construction of gender, women in East/Central European societies are seen primarily as reproducers of the nation. One effect of such definitions is the enforcement of reproductive policies which amount to the nationalization of female bodies.

After a brief assessment of reproductive policies during the state‐socialist period, an overview of the contemporary debate within the post‐communist universe of discourse, and of the policies enacted by the new East/Central European regimes, I argue that within the framework of the emerging masculinist cultures in East/Central Europe, masculinity becomes increasingly identified with the public domain; in contrast, women are progressively confined within the ‘private’ sphere, identified with holding the primary responsibility for the family. Definitions of femininity along these lines have been influenced by the emergence of a particular form of ‘reproductive politics’ supported by post‐state‐socialist movements stressing the right of the nation to mobilize all of its resources, and thus, to subjugate women for the ‘national good’.     

‘I feel myself to be a world citizen’: negotiating Turkish and Alevi identity in Melbourne

The complexity and heterogeneity of modern multicultural societies can both highlight and obscure the diversity which exists within identity groups. Whilst the majority of the Turkish community in Melbourne are Sunni Muslim, significant groups of ethnically, religiously and linguistically different communities also exist. Recent research with women who participate in activities at the Alevi community centre in Melbourne has brought to light many of the issues which are faced by individuals who are doubly excluded from the mainstream of Australian life and culture as migrants and from the mainstream of Turkish diasporic life through a non-Sunni Islamic religious orientation. For some, but not all of these women there is also an added dimension of difference through embracing their Kurdish ethnicity and linguistic background. Both first and second generation Alevi women use a range of strategies to locate themselves within what one respondent called the ‘rose garden’ of Australia since the advent of immigrant diversity.     

Genderacing immigrant subjects: ‘anchor babies’ and the politics of birthright citizenship

Birthright citizenship is often a subject of important national debates on immigration. From a historical perspective, the influx of Mexican and Chinese immigrants to the United Stated has elicited politically charged efforts to deny the right of US citizenship to their children. Based on a review of popular discursive frames concerning the politics of birthright citizenship, this essay identifies and critiques the arguments from both ends of the political spectrum. We conclude that, by and large, the substance of their legal and philosophical arguments is old, hackneyed responses from decades ago. However, on many symbolic levels, the current rhetoric is quite uncharacteristically caustic, with a focus on racialized and gendered discourses among nationalist groups. We seek to explain why this is the case. Framed as ‘genderacing immigrant subjects’, this essay examines the politics of naming (or nomenclature) through the construction of the racially gendered referent in public discourse, thereby ascribing socially resonant meanings that naturalize a call for draconian policy measures in order to socially engineer the national body.     

Galatea and Pygmalion glances: perception and strategies of the ‘other’ in front of (pre)judices

One of the most universally recognized mechanisms in the sociology of education is the Pygmalion effect: the expectations and prejudices of teachers (from a position of power), projected onto the students, have the potential to become a self-fulfilled prophecy – either positive either stigmatizing. But what elements are used to build these expectations? In this interaction how relate Pygmalion (professors and directors expectations) and Galatea (stigmatized students strategies)? What institutional and political alternatives can be used to combat these – racist? – prejudices? Based on a research of young immigrants pathways from various ethno-racial groups (mostly Latinos), over the period 2007–2011, this article exposes that: moreover than the critical importance of teachers in students’ pathways, it is also important reconsider how the perceptions and strategies of stigmatized students are nuanced, ambivalent, and creative.     

The mediated politics of place and people: picturing the ‘contested place-making’ of Irish Travellers at Dale Farm

This article discusses meanings of people–place relationships, relating to ethnicity–class–gender intersections. The case examined concerns the ‘contested place-making’ of Irish Travellers at Dale Farm (UK), where the Travellers were eventually evicted from a place they owned. The material consists mainly of online slideshows in the Guardian. Visuals and place share the role of concretizing news, situating them and underlining their truth claims. Hence, news visuals are well suited for discussions of relationships between places and peoples. The study comprises theories of media, place and identity, relating to mobility, minorities and globalization. Methodologically, compositional analysis, discourse-theoretical method and an intersectional approach are combined. The place conflict is rarely understood in terms of justice. Instead, ethnicity–class–gender intersections appear as significant in the imagery, countering certain old stereotypes, but also connecting to discourses of ‘threatening minorities’, and ‘bad mobility’. Manifested through excessive imagery of barricades/fences/walls/gates, ‘identity management’ meets ‘place management’, detaching some identities from some places. The Travellers thus appear as anomalies, separated from others. This is partly connected to the slideshow format, where linguistic elaboration on motifs is very limited, partly to the selection of certain themes and motifs in the slideshows, and partly to the societal politics surrounding the issue.     

Italian Americans in the ‘Bocce Belt’: ‘Old World’ memories and ‘New World’ identities

This essay examines the development of an ethnically and racially segregated resort landscape in the Catskill Mountains of upstate New York in the twentieth century. Focusing on the history of Italian American resorts clustered primarily in Greene County, New York, it demonstrates that ethnicity continued to shape the social and cultural lives of many European immigrant New Yorkers and their families well after World War II. Ethnic resorts provided vacationers with an insulated recreational environment in which group identity and transatlantic ties – both real and imagined – could be fostered and sustained. However, the flexibility of these ethnic identities and the pervasive discrimination against African Americans at ethnic resorts in the 1940s and 1950s reveals the extent to which European Americans had largely internalized a sense of white ethnic identity by the postwar decades. The history of ethnic resorts in the Catskills sheds light on the process by which generations of European Americans in New York City negotiated these multiple ethnic, national, and racial identities.     

Whitewashing the nation: racist jokes and the construction of the African ‘other’ in Greek popular cinema

This article explores representations of race in three Greek popular films of the 1970s and 1980s. The portrayal of African characters in these films is antagonistically positioned in relation to the dominant, ‘whitewashed’ Greek national narrative which relies on the nineteenth century idea that Greece is the progenitor of European civilization. Often masquerading itself as ‘just a joke’, the discourse of these films narrates the African Other as lacking in terms of culture, intelligence and beauty – the three central categories upon which the idea of the ‘white supremacy’, according to Cornell West, is historically constructed in modernity. Tightly woven with this idea (largely introduced in Greece by the leading European powers), these films enunciate explicitly colonial viewpoints in a country that was neither a colonial power nor at the geopolitical center of the European project. The article argues that the racialized representations of these films are an effect of appropriating the Eurocentric idea of historicism, where the ‘progress’ and ‘backwardness’ of groups and nations are measured according to how effectively they perform the values of modernity.     

Refugees,migrants, neither,both: categorical fetishism and the politics of bounding in Europe’s ‘migration crisis’

The use of the categories ‘refugee’ and ‘migrant’ to differentiate between those on the move and the legitimacy, or otherwise, of their claims to international protection has featured strongly during Europe’s ‘migration crisis’ and has been used to justify policies of exclusion and containment. Drawing on interviews with 215 people who crossed the Mediterranean to Greece in 2015, our paper challenges this ‘categorical fetishism’, arguing that the dominant categories fail to capture adequately the complex relationship between political, social and economic drivers of migration or their shifting significance for individuals over time and space. As such it builds upon a substantial body of academic literature demonstrating a disjuncture between conceptual and policy categories and the lived experiences of those on the move. However, the paper is also critical of efforts to foreground or privilege ‘refugees’ over ‘migrants’ arguing that this reinforces rather than challenges the dichotomy’s faulty foundations. Rather those concerned about the use of categories to marginalise and exclude should explicitly engage with the politics of bounding, that is to say, the process by which categories are constructed, the purpose they serve and their consequences, in order to denaturalise their use as a mechanism to distinguish, divide and discriminate.     

The construction of ‘illiterate’ and ‘literate’ youth: the effects of high-stakes standardized literacy testing

High-stakes standardized literacy testing is not neutral and continues to build upon the legacy of dominant power relations in the state in its ability to sort, select and rank students and ultimately produce and name some youth as illiterate in contrast to an ideal white, male, literate citizen. I trace the effects of high-stakes standardized testing by using the voices of 16 youth who failed the Ontario Secondary School Literacy Test (OSSLT) to illustrate how the ‘illiterate youth’ revealed to students, schools, and communities by this test is culturally and socially constructed. In an age where multiple literacies are more and more valued, standardized literacy testing acts as a form of social control projected upon the ‘adolescent’ body that has historically been deemed ‘other’ or ‘deficient.’ Just as colonized subjects needed to be ‘civilized,’ so youth now need to acquire a state defined literacy in a competitive and fast paced learning environment. This article helps to demonstrate how power operates on marginalized youth through standardized literacy testing that is being used transnationally.     

The ‘isolated ethnics’ and ‘everyday ethnics’: region,identity, and the second-generation Midwest Asian American experience

While studies have documented the Asian American experience in the past two decades, a dearth of research exists on those who grew up in the Midwest. How do Midwest Asian Americans experience their co-ethnic community, culture and pan-ethnic identity? Drawing from in-depth interviews of second-generation Midwest Asian Americans, an analysis of the data reveals two patterns of experiences, including: isolated ethnics and everyday ethnics. The findings are framed around issue of ‘access points’ to the co-ethnic community, and its influence on ethnic identity formation. This research highlights the importance of geographic community context on acculturation of Midwest Asian Americans.     

The devil is not in the detail: representational absence and stereotyping in the ‘Trojan Horse’ news story

Using content analysis, this study investigated the coverage of the Trojan Horse news story aiming to ascertain whether its representation by the British press emphasized ‘Islamist extremism’ over ‘poor school governance’. The sample coverage was extracted from five national newspapers and ranged from 9 June (the date of release of the Ofsted Advice Note) to 26 June 2014. Our analysis shows that the coverage reported evidence of Islamist ideology much more frequently (61.5%) than evidence of poor governance (38.5%). This suggests that the Trojan Horse news story was predominantly represented as a case of Islamist extremism and therefore covered in an unbalanced manner. Such a partial coverage relied on ideological dualisms and negative stereotypes to represent Islam and Muslims, and on the textual strategy of selecting some features (extremism) whilst omitting others (governors’ professional misconduct). This bias has arguably diverted attention away from systemic problems within the national school system whilst reinforcing Islamophobic discourses.     

How cities shape refugee centres: ‘deservingness’ and ‘good aid’ in a Sicilian town

While scholars have devoted increasing attention to the dynamics at play within refugee centres, analyses have often been driven by the ‘exceptionality’ of these institutions, overlooking the ways in which what happens inside the centres is largely connected to what goes on outside of them. Building on ethnographic fieldwork in a Sicilian refugee centre and the surrounding town, this paper investigates the extent to which economic, historical and political configurations inform how local actors conceptualise aid and how they interact with refugees on a daily basis. Overall, the study found that both centre workers and the general population mobilise moral arguments that can only be understood in light of dynamics that are external to the centre itself. These findings ultimately point to the extent to which state-level dysfunctions influence popular images of what a ‘deserving’ refugee might look like as well as local understandings of the ‘right way’ of providing help.     

Migration Management and Humanitarian Protection: The UNHCR's ‘Resettlement Expansionism’ and Its Impact on Policy-making in the EU and Australia

Since the late 1990s, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has been a key actor in the resurgence of refugee resettlement in global debates on asylum and refugee policies. This article investigates the dynamics of the international organisation's ‘resettlement expansionism’ within the UNHCR as well as its impact on policy-making. Firstly, it analyses how the UNHCR has increased its expertise production and dissemination as well as its operational focus on resettlement. Secondly, it assesses the policy-making impact of the UNCR's ‘resettlement expansionism’ in two distinct contexts: the elaboration of the EU's new joint resettlement scheme and the recent increase of resettlement places by 40% in Australia, a traditional country of resettlement. Lastly, it discusses potential implications of this research in regards to the evolution of the global refugee regime and, more conceptually, to the study of knowledge production and expertise in migration and refugee policy.     

Encounters between the ‘oppressed’ and the ‘oppressor’: rethinking Paulo Freire in anti-racist feminist education in Sweden

With the aim of rethinking Paulo Freire’s theory and its practices in race/ethnicity and education, this article uses intersectionality to deepen our understanding of differences among the oppressed and break the opposition between the oppressed and oppressor. Based on an ethnographic study carried out at a feminist adult educational institution in Sweden, the author examines the positionality of migrant students and feminist teachers and how they react to othering in the educational process and in Swedish society. The author also argues for the importance of intersectionality as a way to help both the conscientization of the oppressed and the radical task of the liberatory teachers. It is crucial to untangle gendered and sexualized racism, especially in specific contexts where race and gender intersect to construct a binary between a ‘superior us’ and a ‘barbaric Other.’ Conscientization and intersectionality are particularly useful for probing the complicated processes of othering and combating different forms of oppression and racism in an era of globalization in Western countries.