Education and national identity in a comparative context

A missing link in the voluminous chain of prior studies on Canadian versus American identity is a comparative analysis of the impact of social studies – especially civics – education on the construction of national identity in these two North American nation-states. This article analyzes curricular documents and secondary-level school textbooks to learn more about how social studies education contributes to constructing a sense of ‘being a Canadian’ versus ‘being an American’ north and south of the 49th parallel.     

The Coptic diaspora and the status of the Coptic minority in Egypt

This paper examines the political activity of the Coptic diaspora in the United States in support of the Coptic minority in Egypt. Analysing its strategy reveals that for years it has focused on lobbying the United States and international bodies, in order to raise international awareness of the Coptic minority status. By using this strategy, it has framed the struggle for Copts’ rights in a manner that contradicts the Egyptian unity narrative, and the strategic choices of those they are struggling for. This paper shows that understanding the limitations of this strategy alongside a change in the structure of opportunities in Egypt has led to a change in the pattern of activity of the diaspora activists. Alongside lobbying for international involvement, they have developed additional strategies, including strengthening their influence in the homeland and even direct action vis-à-vis the Egyptian authorities. This paper, which emphasises the pattern of action of diaspora activists that represent minorities, directs attention to the structure of opportunities in the homeland, the variety of relationships between the diaspora and the homeland, and their effect on the ability of the diaspora activists to become a significant force in shaping the life of the minority.     

The Promethean role of Europe: changing narratives of the political and scholarly left

ABSTRACT

The gradual abandoning of the ‘socialism in one country’ doctrine during the post-war period and the intensive transformation of European social democracy in the 1990s pushed social democratic politicians and intellectuals into the front line of advocates of a unified and powerful Europe. They contributed to the inclusion of social democratic and environmentalist values in the EU’s official narrative. The success of European integration and George W. Bush’s presidency created the narrative of the Promethean role of Europe. Scholars with a social democratic or environmentalist background created this narrative and it was also shaped by authors’ national contexts.     

西南边境跨国婚姻子女的国家认同——以广西大新县隘江村为例

西南边境地区跨国婚姻子女的国家认同具有一定的特殊性.在国家归属方面,他们认同自己是中国人,但也为自己的母亲难以加入中国籍而遗憾;在政治认同方面,他们比同龄人冷漠;在法律认同方面,他们也面临一些迷茫.对于西南边境跨国婚姻所生子女在国家认同过程中遇到的特殊情况,需要给予更多的关注和研究.     

论文化扩张主义与文化自治主义

文章论述了美国文化霸权扩张主义的历史基础和理论基础,着重探讨了美国通过经济技术援助、教育文化交流及大众传播媒介等基本方式进行文化霸权扩张的行径。文章还分析了文化自治主义的历史根源、理论基础和基本方式。     

边界与国民:现代国家边疆建设中的双重型构

近现代以来欧洲民族国家模式在世界范围的拓展,带来了国家主权边界的清晰化,以及政治制度、经济发展、公共事业等国家力量在边境两侧的差异化实践。中越边境峒中镇段的经验表明,伴随有效的国家边疆建设介入边界地区,边民的国家意识逐渐被清晰化的边界和差异化的国家力量所形塑,边民在适应清晰化边界的过程中,国民身份与认同逐渐超越边民身份与认同。由此,现代民族国家完成从物理边界到国民身份的双重型构。     

The uses and abuses of history: understanding contemporary U.S. immigration*

This article focuses on history, specifically on how history affects our understanding of contemporary immigration. The spotlight is on the United States and the two massive immigrations of the last one hundred and forty years as well as on the integration of immigrants and their children. History is what the present chooses to remember about the past, and to that extent it inevitably distorts. This distortion is what is meant when I use the phrase abuses of history. Myths about the past, selective retellings, cherry-picked examples – they all shape how the story of immigration in the United States is perceived today. History, however, can be an extremely effective and illuminating tool. In examining the uses of history, the article pays special attention to the way that earlier immigrants and their children had an impact on cultural, social, and political institutions and patterns, which, in turn, helped shape the context for present-day arrivals. History, in fact, can deepen and expand our understanding of the contemporary immigrant and second generation; it can also provide some useful hints about the future.     

The enduring importance of national identity in cooperative European Union Borderlands: Polish university students' perceptions on cross-border cooperation in the Pomerania euro-region

European integration, through euro-regions, voluntary zones of cooperation across national borders, and the eastward expansion of the Schengen Zone have transformed Europe borderlands into sites of bi-national collaboration. This study evaluates how a group of Polish university students living in the Pomerania euro-region view the new ease of cross-border mobility and the types of cross-border activities they engage in. If the experience of students in the border city of Szczecin is reflective of other European borderlands, than cross-border cooperation has not diminished the importance of the border as a mental marker of nation-state boundaries or the importance of national identity.     

Examining educational inequalities in two national systems: a comparison of the North African second generation in France and the Mexican second generation in the United States

This paper aims to compare the educational outcomes of children of immigrants in France and in the United States to highlight the ethnic educational inequalities in both countries. The comparison focuses on children from two groups: North Africans in France and Mexicans in the United States. By using two longitudinal datasets, the French Educational Panel Survey and Add Health, we examine aspirations, expectations, and secondary attainment in the two contexts. We explore in particular the role of parental education on attainment. Immigrant families have high educational aspirations in both contexts. North-African families express higher aspirations than native French with similar background, while there are no significant differences between second-generation Mexicans and the majority group net of parental education. Second-generation children are disadvantaged in school in both countries; they are more likely to drop out and less likely to graduate from high school, but most of the disadvantage is related to their social background. Net of social background, the Mexican second generation does not differ from the majority group while the North African second generation is more likely to get the French high school diploma than their peers of French origins, in line with their high aspirations. However, North Africans are more likely to receive the technological baccalauréat than the general baccalauréat.     

A mind to stay: on encountering the panhandle of Texas

Venturing into unfamiliar territory, reflective travellers struggle to place it as much as to place themselves in it. In this article, the author draws on six nineteenth‐century accounts to examine ways in which that struggle has taken place in and around what is now known as the Texas Panhandle, in southwestern United States. Interplay of political and natural boundaries was characteristic of many twentieth‐century conflicts and continues to inform conflict in the twenty‐first century, so the experience of the Panhandle, which was placed in the context of a series of nineteenth‐century border disputes, may prove instructive.     

中美冲突趋向“非零和”

核武器、远程投射和精确制导技术的掌握使中美两国在未来可能的军事冲突中互无绝对的胜算,经济全球化又使中美两国的经济利益交融互补,因此,在军事和经济两方面的钳制之下,中美之间可能被激化的冲突已不可逆转地趋向“非零和”。     

Interest groups and strategic constructivism: business actors and border security policies in the European Union

Evidence suggests that business lobbying shapes European Union (EU) border security policies, but there has been no detailed empirical and theoretical work detailing how interest groups exert influence in this domain. Building on strategic constructivist accounts of policy-making, the article argues that EU border security policies have been tailored to the preferences, identities, and frames of business actors through three key processes. Policy preferences are co-constituted by business actors through strategic communication, identities are constructed to gain political legitimacy through strategic legitimation, and social contexts are framed to fit business interests through practices of strategic contextualisation. I use evidence from in-depth interviews with key actors in the field of EU border security policy-making, participant observation at key border security events, and analysis of key policy documents to build the argument.     

Remapping American-ness: Heritage Production and the Staging of the Native American and the African American as Other in 'Historyland'

The American tourism industry in the 1950s helped to produce certain notions of America, or what it meant to be American, at a time when these identities were in flux. Visitors to 'Historyland', an attraction that reconstructed a nineteenth-century Wisconsin logging town, could experience a living lumberjack community, as well as an 'authentic' Indian Village and a dining car restaurant with black waiters. The Native Americans and African Americans, by performing their 'historic' roles, were staged as examples of 'the other' which European American tourists could encounter, and against which they could define their own sense of American-ness.     

Institutions,inculcation, and black racial identity: pigmentocracy vs. the rule of hypodescent

This research paper investigates the effect political institutions have on black racial identity. In particular, I study individual inculcation in contexts where political institutions institutionalize either of two forms of racial social structures – a pigmentocracy (the Dominican Republic), or the rule of hypodescent (the US South), and the effect such inculcation has on black racial identity. I sampled 101 respondents from the Dominican Republic and 102 from the state of Mississippi, USA. Consistent with the basic assumptions of my hypotheses, respondents in the Dominican Republic study sites showed a weaker degree of identification with blackness vis-à-vis something ‘whiter’. Nevertheless, respondents in the Dominican Republic sites demonstrated a stronger identification with blackness than what most conventional observers would have anticipated. Respondents in the Mississippi study sites showed a stronger sense of identification with blackness. Surprisingly, however, Mississippi respondents demonstrated a larger degree of neutrality than expected in their belief of being of a mixed racial heritage rather than just a black African heritage.     

论"族格"——试探民族平等与民族自治、民族自决的哲学基础

文章提出"族格"的概念,认为族格是自然赋予的,即天赋的每个民族无论大小强弱都具有平等的权利和尊严."人格"是"族格"的哲学基础,族格是人的群体的抽象人格,在多民族国家里,少数民族完整的"人格"的实现离不开"族格"的保障."族格"包括民族政治权利的平等和文化上的多元.文章以从自然法权推导出的族格理论揭示了民族平等、民族自治、民族自决理论等的哲学渊源,阐释了正确的民族理论和民族政策. "族格"理论对于正确认识和处理民族问题提供了新的视角,对于构建国家、民族之间和国家内部各民族之间的和谐关系具有一定的理论价值.     

Islamic Jurisprudence of Minorities (Fiqh al-Aqalliyyat): The Case of the Palestinian Muslim Minority in Israel

This article examines the doctrine of Jurisprudence of Muslim Minorities (Fiqh al-Aqalliyyat) in the context of the Palestinian Muslim community in Israel. The first part discusses the origins and goals of Fiqh al-Aqalliyyat. After outlining the particular historical and political context of the Palestinian minority in Israel, the article focuses on the ethno-religious political mobilization developed by the Muslim community vis-à-vis the state’s strategies of control and domination, and points out the difficulties involved in the application of Fiqh al-Aqalliyyat, as used in “Western” states, for the reality that Muslims face in Israel. The article suggests a vigilant approach toward the Jurisprudence of Minorities, as we argue that, when applying it in this context of the Muslim community in Israel, this doctrine has two substantial limitations. The first is theoretical and it concerns the doctrine’s current incapability to distinguish between different types of minorities, as well as failing to recognize a difference between various political regimes and societal lives that might be inherently less or more accommodating or even hostile to minorities, and Muslim minority communities in particular. The second limitation relates to the political dimension and the lack of consideration for the status of the Palestinian minority as an indigenous and national minority and not an immigrant minority. Their status as national minorities, at times also as indigenous peoples, who are perceived as entitled to group-based “self-government rights”, poses a serious challenge to this doctrine’s scope and viability.     

Strange passages: carceral mobility and the liminal in the catastrophic history of American deportation

In the early twentieth century, the United States developed an integrated, continental deportation network based on rail travel. This new state apparatus would enable the restrictionists’ dream of immigration control and speed the elimination of those they deemed unfit for American life. It set a template for mass removal that would expand in the century to come. Scholars of immigrant detention and removal commonly employ Victor Turner’s concept of liminality to understand migrant experiences, but this paper suggests the need for an expanded theorization of the liminal as manifold rather than singular. Drawing on deportee case files and literature from the early twentieth century, this paper explores the complex, variegated and painful liminalities of the deportation journey. It argues that power affected deportees’ experience of space and time across different liminal zones and interprets the embodied catastrophe of deportation for migrant communities. If traumatic experiences reconfigure the meaning of time into a ‘before’ and ‘after’, deportation was an ongoing catastrophe that offered little sense of completion.     

中缅边境安全协同治理：现有体系、实践困境与优化路径

边境安全是国家安全的重要维度,边境安全治理是国家安全治理的重要内容。协同治理为边境安全治理提供新的理论视角与实践路径。当前,中缅边境安全协同治理初具雏形,形成了主体、机制和技术三个层面的协同关系。中缅边境安全协同治理在具体实践过程中存在主体性困境、制度性困境、效能性困境和资源性困境。构建中缅边境安全协同治理新理念、优化中缅边境安全协同治理机制、提高中缅边境安全协同治理主体能力、拓展中缅边境安全协同治理外部环境是提升中缅边境安全协同治理成效的重要路径。     

中外边境毗邻城市的功能互动与少数民族地区经济发展

在沿边少数民族地区实施沿边开放战略过程中,其所属的边境城市与毗邻周边国家的边境城市之间的功能互动,是实现区域整体发展的集中体现与关键所在。本文就此对于这种中外边境城市功能互动的概念、形式、意义以及发展对策等进行了探讨、归纳与说明。     

The Smooth Transition: Spain's 1978 Constitution and the Nationalities Question

Nationalist movements have played a key role in Spain's democratic transition, contributing decisively to frame the Spanish state in its present shape. This article will focus on the role of Constitution-making in providing the legitimacy needed in democratic transitions affected by the rise of sharp ethno-national conflicts. Among the contributing factors to the Transition's success the following are stressed: the Monarchy as a cohesive unitary symbol; the neutralisation of the Army's influence in political life; and a pragmatic, civic, a-nationalist leadership in Madrid.