The Increasing Political Power of Immigrants from the Former Soviet Union in Israel: From Passive Citizenship to Active Citizenship

The immigrants in Israel from the Former Soviet Union (FSU) followed a different pattern of political growth than other immigrant groups. Their increased power began on the national level and moved down to the local level, rather than from the periphery toward the centre – the pattern followed by the Oriental Jewish immigrants. We can trace three stages in the development of their political power.
The first stage was during the 1992 elections when the immigrants attempted to organize their own list. Though they failed, the results of the election strengthened them because they were given credit for the left's victory, giving them a sense of political effectiveness.
The second stage came during the 1996 elections. It was a defining moment for the former Soviet immigrants' political power. In this stage external factors and internal factors reinforced each other. The change in the electoral system made it possible for the immigrants to vote for their community on the one hand and for a national figure on the other, thus resolving their identity dilemma.
The local elections in 1998 marked the third stage in their political strength. They found the immigrant community better organized, with an improved understanding of its local interests, the capacity to put forward a strong local leadership, and a stronger link between the immigrant political centre and the local level.     

Cultural Citizenship

This paper seeks to give a sense of the diversity of work that falls within the boundaries of 'cultural citizenship'– a term it locates as emerging from the problematisation of traditional citizenship models by issues of identity and mediation. This paper outlines three distinct strands of cultural citizenship theory, which respectively emphasise multiculturalism, the politics of cultural texts, and dialogical communication. Subsequently, this paper conducts a brief analysis and critique of these strands, enabled by an interrogation of the ways in which they each define and deploy the term 'culture'. It is argued that for cultural citizenship to develop a more coherent terminological 'face', a balance must be struck between a commitment to specificity, and the appeal of abstracted re-imaginings of civil society.     

Gendered Citizenship

This paper considers the manner in which citizenship, rather than being a gender neutral concept, is in fact highly gendered in ways that are detrimental for women and often leads to their exclusion – both theoretically and practically – from the category of citizen. Traditional definitions of the concept of citizenship are outlined before moving on to highlight feminist critiques that have sought not only to reveal the masculine bias inherent in these traditional conceptions but also to rethink the concept of citizenship in ways that can accommodate women as well as men. Finally, the paper concludes with a consideration of the way in which processes of globalisation and the resulting changes in the role of the nation state – traditionally seen as the key site in relation to citizen rights and duties – requires the rethinking of citizenship, paying particular attention to the consequences that these social changes have for women.     

Dealing with power struggles in clinical and educational settings

When power struggles occur, the implications for early intervention are numerous. Trying to intervene with a person who has already reached the anger phase of crisis can often be like trying to stop a train by standing on the railroad tracks and holding up one's hands. As a direct result of early and purposeful intervention using simple and accessible techniques (i.e., self-awareness, awareness of others' messages, prioritization, decisiveness, consistency, communication), professionals can create an environment of safety and trust in which all individuals feel heard. In this manner, all needs can be addressed without allowing potentially negative interactions to escalate to levels at which restraints, ultimatums, and consequences are needed. In addition, the likelihood of success increases with early intervention. By recognizing that, in many cases, winning and losing power struggles is accomplished at the expense of treatment and educational goals, enlightened professionals can not only avoid future confrontations but also effect desired client or student outcomes.     

Treatment issues of patients who engage in power struggles

Patients who use a predominance of anal defenses pose particular problems in the first stage of treatment. The frame and structure of psychoanalysis (i.e., reserved session time, policy of missed sessions, frequency of sessions, use of the couch) and psychoanalytic psychotherapy often create and provoke intense defensive behavior. The defensive behavior can be expressed in a power struggle with the therapist. Premature termination of treatment is a significant threat particularly since a working alliance has not yet developed. Parameters may need to be introduced initially, in order to engage and keep the patient in treatment. A clinical case is offered to demonstrate treatment considerations.For all of us engaged in clinical work, it may be especially relevant to be reminded that one of the greatest indignities is regularly endured by our patients, no matter how gently we cushion the blow, or how much we strain our empathic resources. I am referring here to the indignity of being an adult in therapy, while simultaneously allowing the emergence in the transference of infantile aspects of ourselves that the adult part of ourselves experiences as so humiliating and demeaning, and further, having to share it with another adult. Segel, N. (1981), p. 474     

Books and Citizenship

This article takes up the question of world history teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge by reporting on two separate but related projects. In the first, we briefly discuss an empirical investigation one of the authors conducted into the ways that pre- and in-service world history teachers think about, organize, and make meaning of separate and discrete world historical events, first for themselves and then for their students. It demonstrates the value of world history teachers making multiple connections among world historical events from the biggest to the smallest ones to construct dynamic and coherent pictures of the past for themselves and their students. In the second project, we discuss our innovative history lab, a course designed to help undergraduates enrolled in a world history course “see” the pedagogical moves their world history instructors make. We designed this pedagogical history lab to foster future teachers’ understandings of the content knowledge needed to teach world history while they are learning world history as students.     

Training for Citizenship

Schools throughout the United States provide instruction on democracy, voting, and major institutions of government, but often excluded from the curriculum is a central reality of our political system: the role of money in elections. This article provides background information and pedagogical strategies to help teachers foster productive discussions on this issue. First, we summarize recent increases in U.S. election spending and five schools of thought on how to address this trend. Then we present various classroom discussion and assessment strategies for supporting students’ learning about our current campaign finance system and its potential alternatives. These processes can facilitate students’ development of important civic knowledge and skills and also fulfill a variety of state and national standards.     

Looming struggles over technology for border control

Abstract

New technologies under development, capable of inflicting pain on masses of people, could be used for border control against asylum seekers. Implementation might be rationalized by the threat of mass migration due to climate change, nuclear disaster or exaggerated fears of refugees created by governments. We focus on taser anti-personnel mines, suggesting both technological countermeasures and ways of making the use of such technology politically counterproductive. We also outline several other types of non-lethal technology that could be used for border control and raise human rights concerns: high-powered microwaves, armed robots, wireless tasers, acoustic devices/vortex rings, ionizing and pulsed energy lasers, chemical calmatives, convulsants, bioregulators and malodurants. Whether all these possible border technologies will be implemented is a matter for speculation, but their serious human rights implications warrant advance scrutiny.     

Citizenship and postmodernity

Citizenship has to be taught in the UK as a new strand in the school curriculum. This citizenship initiative is intended to replace a general feeling of political apathy among the young, yet the initiative itself is leading to concern about what citizenship is and how it can be taught. Citizenship teaching may fail if there is too great a dissonance between the sincerity of citizenship and postmodern scepticism. Hermeneutical philosophy can provide an antidote to doubt and connect the various levels of meaning in our lives: the personal, the local and the global. Citizenship with a global component can succeed by enabling us to compare ourselves with countries where postmodern doubt is not prevalent, as shown in a collaborative project with the Department for International Development.     

Citizenship of Roma after the split of Czechoslovakia: A social problem to be faced by other multinational states

The division of Czechoslovakia into two independent republics in 1993 has far-reaching implications for the citizenship rights of the Roma and Sinti minority population. During the period of so-called socialism, their situation developed very differently from that of related groups living in Western Europe as their cultural identity was totally destroyed by the paternalism of the communist regime. The fundamental political change in 1989, and the advent of a market economy, affected the Roma population more than other Czech citizens. With the ending of a joint federal nationality many Roma living on Czech territory, being regarded as of Slovak origin, lost their citizenship status totally. To acquire Czech citizenship stringent conditions were applied which they were unwilling or unable to meet. The discriminatory nature of the nationality law in the Czech Republic was criticized by European Union and human rights experts, and some non-governmental organizations have also taken up the case. This paper raises fundamental issues of legally sanctioned exclusion and discusses the implications of citizenship concepts for other post-communist countries.     

Unresolved struggles: Educating social workers in Aotearoa New Zealand

This article introduces key themes that arise throughout the history of social work education and are central to the education of social workers today. Curriculum and the goodness of fit between agency demands and professional standards, accreditation, provision of social work courses, and more recently, the competency movement, have constantly been significant, albeit in changing forms. In New Zealand, cultural awareness and knowledge of indigenous models for practice together with re-organisation of social service delivery systems have implications for social work education. Managerial devices such as the purchaser/provider split and risk/case management approaches to social work and their impact on social work education and practice are discussed. The role of the national accrediting body and the ensuing tensions around accreditation are discussed. A discussion of opportunities and concerns for the future considers relationships between those who teach social work, those who practice it, their employers and the role of Industry Training Organisations.     

Community struggles and the shaping of democratic consciousness

Grass-roots protest activities against economic growth have often been viewed as particularistic, random, self-interested actions that have little significant impact on the larger political economy or movements for social change. This article, however, provides an alternative framework for understanding these community conflicts by examining the structural contradictions of political life that frame such conflicts and by showing, through a case study of a toxic waste protest, the ways in which these structural contradictions are subjectively experienced in the process of political protest. This integrated analysis thus shows how ordinary citizens may develop a more active, participatory concept of democracy.     

Governability and Women's Citizenship

SUMMARY

The fragility of Latin American democracies places the subject of gendered citizenship as an important issue in the context of a most needed democratic governability. This article first develops a proposed nexus between democratic governability and gender equality and assumes the need to place women within a universe of citizenship, as an inherently inclusive democratic perspective would require. We emphasize what we see as women's citizenship deficit according to a traditional definition of the political. The second part of the article analyzes the insertion of Mexican women in the construction of citizenship on the basis of empirical material drawn from the second National Survey on Political Culture and Practice of Citizenship. We then present some conclusions, with an eye on what Victoria Camps has called the public virtues, such as solidarity, responsibility and tolerance, as democratic values of the first order and as characteristics of a gendered citizenship within new political spaces. We believe the fragile democracies of Latin America and the important quality of democratic governability can be strengthened if a new form of gendered citizenship, more inclusive of women's concerns and practices, is recognized and nurtured.     

Citizenship on the margins: Citizenship,social work and social action

Drawing on a critical synthesis of the two main citizenship traditions, so as to construct citizenship as both a status and a practice, linked through the notion of human agency, the article explores citizenship's exclusionary and inclusionary sides within both a national and international framework. Within a national framework, the implications of citizenship's ‘false universalism’ are explored as the basis for a recasting of citizenship in a way that addresses the tension between universalism and particularity or difference. Within an international framework, a human rights perspective is introduced as a means of challenging citizenship's exclusion of nation state outsiders, most notably immigrants and asylum-seekers. This approach draws upon a multi-tiered conceptualisation of citizenship stretching from the local through to the global.

Some implications for social work practice and policy are then discussed in relation to support for active citizenship in deprived communities and anti-poverty action in which poor people themselves have a voice. This includes a brief consideration of political exclusion; the potential of self-help groups and community social work and development work; and user-involvement. The article concludes that citizenship offers social work a framework that embraces anti-poverty work, principles of partnership and anti-discriminatory practice and an inclusionary stance.