Looking forward into the past: Partido Nacionalista Vasco and the immigrant question in the Basque Country

ABSTRACT

This article examines the discursive and political response to immigrant-generated diversity by Partido Nacionalista Vasco (PNV) in the Basque Country of Spain. A much-ballyhooed fact about PNV is that its founder, Sabino Arana, articulated a racist nationalist doctrine in the late nineteenth century. Alarm bells were raised in the early 2000s when the Basque Country became a destination for foreign immigrants arriving in Spain from Latin America and North Africa: do foreign immigrants pose a threat to Basque national identity? The PNV's answer to this question has been a clear ‘no’. Rather than distance itself from its past, however, party elites legitimate the inclusive and compassionate attitude towards foreign immigrants through selective discovery of the Basque national narrative. While sceptics of ideational variables are quick to suggest that nationalist elites manipulate the past to serve current purposes, this article suggests that such an interpretation does not do justice to the subtle ways in which symbols, myths, and images of the past have shaped the worldviews of PNV elites in the realm of immigration.     

Seeking a Mexicana/Mestiza1 Ethic of Care: Rosa’s Revolución of carrying alongside

Abstract

This Chicana Critical Feminist Testimonio reveals a Mexican/Mexican-American Ethic of Care particular to the needs and strengths of Mexicana/o students and Testimonios of struggle, survival informing one Mexican/Mexican-American female educator of predominantly Mexican/Mexican-American students. This work, theoretically framed within Chicana and Black Feminisms, is part of a larger ethnographic study conducted through multiple methods. Findings reveal Rosa’s Mexicana/Mestiza Ethic of Care, a (re)incarnated social justice revolution carrying education as ethical imperative toward uplift. Findings have implications for all educators to protect and sustain ongoing struggles for equity and dignity for Mexicana/o youth and all those on the margins of schooling.     

Empire or Imperialism: Implications for a 'New' politics of resistance

Globalisation raises questions about the capacity of the nation-state to function within the national interest. Hardt and Negri argue that nation-state sovereignty is in decline and that Empire -- a new supranational and deterritorialising form of sovereignty -- has superseded it. The question then arises, where does sovereignty reside if it is no longer existent within the nation-state. It is here that post-colonial theory may well provide insights as post-colonial subjects have had to confront these issues. The following questions are explored through a critical engagement with recent social theory. What is the relationship between the biological and political body within such a context? Furthermore, what are the implications of this for a politics of resistance?     

Adulteration of pure native blood by aliens? mixed race kapya in colonial and post-Colonial Myanmar

ABSTRACT

Colonization may be viewed not only as loss of sovereignty and territory but also of ‘purity’ of a native race to an alien power. After the British colonized Burma in the late nineteenth century, they brought in Chinese and Indians to the sparsely populated colony as labour for new administrative and economic activities. Intermarriage, mainly between native Burmese women and men of alien races – British, European, Chinese and Indian – was thus inevitable. Mixed-race peoples – kapya in Burmese – were then born out of these relationships, and their identities became a key political issue in colonial Burma. Importantly, all natives, foreigners, and kapya were British subjects at that time. Independent Burma from 1948 through 1962 was not expressly anti-foreigner/kapya; working to naturalize those who had overstayed or remained. However, the Ne Win government from 1962 through 1988 was openly against ex-foreigner and kapya citizens, passing a new citizenship act in 1982 to downgrade their citizenship to a second class tier. The Myanmar Citizenship Law (1982), which remains in force, has downgraded the legal, political and social stature of ex-foreigner and kapya citizens. A more problematic and racist term thway-nhaw or ‘adulterated’ race has come to the fore, being used in official law-like language in recent years and highlighting the racist roots of the Myanmar Citizenship Law.     

Law and Identity in Spatial Contests

Law has had a traditional reference to land, conceived as territory, in the notion of a jurisdiction, where the law of the land applies equally to all individuals. Recent critiques of this view have suggested that a plurality of laws may apply in particular places. How this spatial pluralism impacts on dominant views of law is considered through two instances in which law has interacted with competing conceptions of place and territory in relations between European and Indigenous Australians. Space, law and identity are seen to constitute each other in complex forms. Indigenous beliefs and practices challenge the claims to universality of Western conceptions of law and space deriving from Roman law and spatial practices.     

Towards a Critique of the Socio-logos of Justice: The Analytics of Raciality and the Production of Universality

Fear of police terror has long been a daily facet of the lives of economically dispossessed people of colour in the urban spaces of North America, Europe, Latin America, and elsewhere. This essay addresses the conditions of possibility of the form of race injustice manifested in racial profiling and police brutality. It challenges the centrality of the logic of exclusion - the view that race is only politically and socially significant when race identification is explicitly or implicitly used to justify discrimination - in the understanding of race injustice. It explores the political-symbolic processes that have produced the mechanisms of racial power of which police brutality is a most dramatic example. To elaborate this critique of the logic of exclusion, I discuss the newspaper account of an episode of police terror in a favela of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. What the examination of the newspaper coverage of the Chacina de Vigário Geral reveals, is that this form of race injustice indicated the operation of meanings produced in an analytic of raciality , encompassing the various instances of manufacturing the modern concept of the racial - the science of life , the science of man , and the sociology of race relations.     

Navigating health care: brokerage and access for undocumented Latino immigrants under the 2010 Affordable Care Act

ABSTRACT

Brokerage is a prominent mechanism that explains access for Latino immigrants to many American institutions. However, few studies examine the dual nature of brokerage in answering questions on access to health care for undocumented Latino immigrants. The growing importance of Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs) and ethnic navigators connecting immigrants to health care under the 2010 Affordable Care Act calls attention to the duality of brokers and its role in access. The study draws from 44 in-depth interviews with providers, clinic directors, navigators, and immigrant patients and two years of fieldwork in FQHCs in California’s San Francisco Bay Area (2011–2013). Results show that brokers enable access through coaching and myth-busting but they also hinder it through scrutiny and bureaucratic filtering. The widespread dependence on brokerage, I argue, leads to ersatz brokerage, such as when providers navigate the health-care system for the undocumented without the appropriate linguistic resources or coordination. Furthermore, the study shows that the duality in brokerage generates misinformation, churning, and alienation. Understanding the relational processes that both include and exclude vulnerable populations from needed services enhances theories of immigrant integration and can help design more efficient policies and address inequalities related to documentation status.     

Achieving the sustainable development goals: surfacing the role for a gender analytic of migration

ABSTRACT

This paper forms the introduction to the Special Issue: Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) through the Gender, Migration and Development Nexus. This article takes a broad look at the changing dynamics of migration and development through the feminisation of globalised labour flows and the gendered experiences of categorisation by states and multilateral bodies, and the gender-specific vulnerabilities and outcomes of human mobility. We illustrate how a more nuanced approach to the SDGs that incorporates gender and migration is needed in order that policy and programming designed to achieve the 2030 Agenda is accurately informed and appropriately framed. In this paper and this Issue, we argue, that it is necessary to confront the SDGs with a deeper understanding of gender, migration and development in order to illuminate the interconnected globalised and transnational realities of gendered labour flows. With this aim in mind, we look to civil society participation and the role of the existing human rights architecture, as the key to ensuring that a deep, wholistic and ultimately universal application of the SDGs can be achieved addressing those populations whose rights to development have been undermined by dint of their migration or flight and applying a gender analysis to our understanding of migration and development.     

Fetishised liberty,the fear of the other and the global juridical rule in Iraq

The US-led military invasion of Iraq in March 2003 was a further development in the global economy of violence which has progressively not only made Iraqis redundant as national-political subjects but has also stripped them of civility, without which no form of power can become legitimate, and turned them into a 'disposable population'. The projection of global disorder onto Iraqi national borders made the country a testing ground for the USA to establish its sovereignty in the global space that had become 'paranoid' in post-11 September 2001. The promotion of democracy and freedom, the ethical companions of this imperial expansion, was a global transposition of the national role assumed by the liberal state as the agent that constitutes free people. Thus, the Truth of the liberal state as the giver of liberty was deployed by the imperial power as the agent destined to turn the Truth into the Goal (Telos) of history, of which everyone, Iraqis or otherwise, becomes a subject at the expense of being a historical subject -- acting in history. Far from expanding, however, a democratic politics in which power and right are kept apart through recourse to the notion of legality, the military invasion was a juridical exercise of power in which right becomes the right of the ruler to rule. Without politics and a hegemonic construction of the universal mediated by association of citizens the fear of the Other remained uncivilised. While the global ruler has perpetuated and normalised this fear through recourse to the notion of 'just war' the Iraqi 'surrogates' for popular intervention have launched with a deadly consequence their own version of this notion.     

Parental migration and disruptions in everyday life: reactions of left-behind children in Southeast Asia

ABSTRACT

Increasing feminisation of transnational labour migration has raised concerns over potential ‘care crises’ at home, and consequently a ‘care deficit’ for children left in origin countries. Our paper focuses on how left-behind children from Indonesia and the Philippines understand, engage and react to changes in their everyday lives in their parents’ absence. While many children had no say over their care arrangements, some were able to assert their agency in influencing their parents’ decisions and eventually migratory behaviours. Their thoughts and actions reinforce the importance of including children’s views in development and migration studies to improve both the children’s and families’ well-being, and make migration a sustainable strategy for all.     

Securing the diasporic ‘self’ by travelling abroad: Taglit-Birthright and ontological security

ABSTRACT

In recent years, the literature on diaspora politics has focused primarily on why and when migrant or ethno-religious groups adopt a diasporic stance and mobilise on behalf of their homeland. The ability of a community to sustain a diasporic stance across generations is less explored and often assumed to be dependent on discrimination in the host country or events in the homeland. By contrast, this article focuses on internal dynamics of the Jewish-American community to explore the development of Taglit-Birthright – a free educational trip to Israel offered to young Jewish adults. Drawing on the concept of ontological security – security of identity and subjectivity – I argue that the decision to invest in such a costly and experimental programme was the result of two perceived threats to Jewish diasporic identity: the threat to the diasporic narrative and the threat to the relationship with the homeland. Evidence for this claim is generated through interpretation of internal documents, media reports, and secondary literature.     

Race,ethnicity, young people and offending: the elephant in the room

ABSTRACT

Can we start to say Race again when discussing youth and justice? This demand emerges from the findings of the participatory action research reported in this article. Fifty young people, in custody or in contact with youth offending teams (YOT), discussed the support that would enable them to desist from offending behaviour. Race was a prism through which they saw their experience. Rather than naming racism, family appeared to be a covert, legitimate, way of talking about identity, solidarity and difference. Family ties, overlaid with experiences of race and racism, could be reasons for engaging in behaviour that was seen as criminal. Family, overlaid with ethnicity, could become a source of support to enable young people to cope with the challenges of being involved in and desisting from offending behaviour. At a time where policy and political language has shifted from rac(ism) to a culturalist discourse focused on ethnicity or religion, naming Race and racism remains vital. Only by acknowledging the differentiating power of Racism can the experience of young people in contact with YOT be understood. Only by appreciating the value of shared experience of race (within families and communities) can appropriate pathways towards alternative futures be offered.     

Becoming cosmopolitan: encountering difference in a city of mobile labour

ABSTRACT

Many who move countries today do so for work, and labour mobility – both temporary and permanent – is the mechanism by which countless people (both movers and stayers) come into contact with cultural difference. The domain of mobile labour is thus an important context through which to consider the transformative possibilities of encounters with racial and cultural difference. Situated within debates on everyday multi-culture and vernacular cosmopolitanisms, this essay considers the question of intercultural encounter at work in relation to the layered histories of race and variegated citizenships of mobile labour in Singapore. Exploring the micro-nature of cosmopolitan practices, the paper considers under what labour conditions might an outward-looking cosmopolitan sensibility and a convivial openness to otherness emerge among migrant workers, as against a set of survival-based intercultural capacities. I reflect specifically upon two cases of ‘incongruous encounter’ in workplaces reliant on precariously employed migrant labour: a mainland Chinese man and a Filipina woman who, because of Singapore’s racialised system of work visas, find themselves working in South Asian restaurants in Singapore’s Little India. They both engage ‘cosmopolitan practices’, yet their sensibilities differ sharply. Their stories highlight how, in a place like Singapore, the ‘encounter’ needs to be understood within a regime of mobile labour, situated racial hierarchies, and a highly stratified system of work visas. I further suggest that situational factors such as the nature of work including its spatial and temporal qualities, the mixture of co-workers, and recognition relations with superiors all mattered in framing the affective atmospheres of encounter. In a context of forced encounter, I argue that learnt capacities to function and interact across difference should not necessarily be romanticised as a cosmopolitan sensibility.     

Trading numbers vs. rights? Accounting for liberal and restrictive dynamics in the evolution of asylum and refugee policies

ABSTRACT

The recent evolution of asylum and refugee policies in developed countries has been characterised by two apparently contradictory dynamics. Efforts to limit the number of asylum applicants have coincided with the strengthening of rights for asylum seekers and refugees inside existing protection systems. The ‘numbers vs. rights’ model seeks to explain such counter-veiling trends as a trade-off, as the result of attempts to manage costs within given budget constraints. The model suggests that high numbers of migrants will tend to go hand in hand with attempts to restrict their rights, while low numbers will typically be associated with more rights. This paper provides a critical analysis of the model when applied to asylum and refugee policies and examines its explanatory purchase through the analysis of longitudinal data on visa and asylum statistics. We argue that while the model provides an interesting framework through which to analyse executive decisions in this field, it underestimates the opportunities and constraints provided by the institutional context in which policy choices are made. We argue that ‘over-time’ variation in the influence of non-majoritarian institutions (in Europe, increasingly those operating at the EU level) provide a more compelling account of the dynamics of asylum and refugee policies over time than the political economy predictions of a ‘number vs. rights’ trade-off.     

Imagining Métissage : The Politics and Practice of Métissage in the French Colonial Exposition and Ousmane Socé's Mirages de Paris

Je demeure cependant persuadé, malgré les dangers d'une possible confusion, qu'il faut 'oser la métaphoreé … C'est-à-dire entreprendre de poser une question qui est und des fondements de l'interprétation, de la critique, un des modes de la connaissance: comment un homme, une société, choisissent-ils de 'se représenter par la meétaphore', comment trouvent-ils des formes, des objets particuliers devant lesquels ils se disent dans un élan d'imagination ou de conformisme: 'je suis ça'? [Nonetheless, I remain persuaded, in spite of the dangers of a possible confusion, that one must 'dare to take up the metaphor' … That is, to undertake asking a question which is one of the foundations of interpretation, of criticism, one of the modes of knowledge: how a man, how a society, chooses to represent itself through metaphor, how it finds forms, particular objects, before which it tells itself, in a burst of imagination or conformity, 'that is me'?] (de Baecque, 1993, p. 15) Aimer, c'est pouvoir s'imaginer. [To love, is to be able to imagine oneself.] (Socé, 1964 [1937], p. 91)     

Abstruse and Insecure? Irish Immigrant Identity in Modern Scotland

This paper will look at the religious and political identities that for many people have come to characterize Scottish football. Such a characterization is particularly evident in the case of the two major clubs in Scotland; the 'Old Firm ' of Glasgow Rangers and Celtic. Nonetheless, Scotland is not unique in its sport acquiring an extrasporting dimension and football in particular often has broader political resonance. As Hoberman opines (in Sugden and Bairner, 1993, p. 10), sport has no intrinsic value structure, but it is a ready and flexible vehicle through which ideological associations can be reinforced. Put another way, sport can becom e an important pointer to features of the wider society. It can reflect both the positive and negative features of a society as well as feed aspects of those features. For many people, sport, particularly football, has acquired the capacity to become both a source for, and a reflection of, important social, political and cultural identities. This article argues that such identities are intrinsic to Scottish football. Football is also sym ptomatic of the ongoing conflicts of identity that have become important to Scottish life, especially since the influx of Catholic im migrants from Ireland began in the middle of the nineteenth century.     

Beyond Islamophobia? The role of Englishness and English national identity within English Defence League discourse and politics

ABSTRACT

Unsurprisingly, most scholarship on the English Defence League (EDL) focuses on the Islamophobic nature of the group's politics. This has found that, whilst the group presents a more moderate, public-facing image, the EDL's backstage discourse is a far less nuanced brand of Islamophobia and cultural racism (Allen, C. (2011). Opposing Islamification or promoting Islamophobia? Understanding the English Defence League. Patterns of Prejudice, 45(4), 279–294; Kassimeris, G., & Jackson, L. (2015). The ideology and discourse of the English Defence League: ‘Not racist, not violent, just no longer silent’. British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 17, 171–188). A more fundamental area of EDL ideology has been left unexamined, however: what notion of ‘England’ is the EDL trying to ‘defend’? Using content analysis of EDL online discourse, this article examines how the EDL articulates, represents, and uses English national identity within its discourse and politics.     

Drivers of highly skilled mobility from Southern Europe: escaping the crisis and emancipating oneself

ABSTRACT

Since the outbreak of the crisis in Southern Europe, young highly educated Italians, Spaniards, Portuguese and Greeks have been taking their talents and expertise to other countries in search of a better quality of life and career prospects. This paper explores the characteristics of these new emigrants, the reasons for which they are leaving, and whether these reasons are shaped by the economic crisis, by pre-crisis grievances, or by other factors. We analyse original data from 6377 questionnaires collected in 4 countries through an e-survey we ran in 2013. We refer to the existing literature on the drivers of highly skilled emigration and the (un)employment situation in the four aforementioned Southern European countries which have been hardest hit by the economic crisis. We suggest that while gender is not important, age, marital status, education and satisfaction with current employment (both income related and with regard to future prospects) are important factors predicting emigration. Non-economic factors, notably career opportunities, quality of life and future prospects supersede all other considerations in the decision to emigrate for these highly educated Europeans.     

Constructing a social space for Alevi political identity: religion,antagonism and collective passion

ABSTRACT

This paper analyses the construction of an Alevi political identity in terms of cultural, social and religious values at a time when the role of religion is increasing in the political life of Turkey. It indicates the emergence of a new form of conflict and hegemonic articulation between Sunnism and Alevism that offers an alternative means of conflict resolution by the Alevi political agents within a radical pluralism and agonistic democracy. It also argues that the social construction of Alevi political identity is both a political project and an ontological question as this identity focuses on religious discourses in establishing a counter-hegemonic culture through mobilizing political ‘collective passion’.     

The emergence of Alevism as an ethno-religious identity

ABSTRACT

Alevism has been regarded as a contested identity which is difficult to define because of its ‘syncretic’ character. Attempts at definition have been overwhelmed by essentialist approaches as well as different political agendas since the fifteenth-century Ottoman period. This paper aims to trace the history of Alevism with a particular focus on historical sources such as the Velāyetnāmes and the organization of ocaks and dergahs. The paper argues that we shall see Alevism as an ethno-religious identity which is formed under different social conditions and emerged through the complexities of the organization of ocaks in a vast territory encompassing different ethnic groups.