Sampling refugee groups: The example of Syrians in Turkey

Quantitative surveys among refugees not only advance our scientific understanding of forced migration, but they also provide political and civil society actors with the information they need to take measures to improve their protection and living conditions. These actors often need to acquire such information within a short period of time. However, the methods to access and survey this group to gain valid findings are subject to scientific debates. Based on a survey among Syrian refugees in Turkey, this article demonstrates a study design that generated valid knowledge about this population within a limited amount of time and resources. As a unique feature of the article, we compare our sample with four other sources of information to scrutinize how well it resembles the target population. As we can show, although point estimations differ to some extent, the internal distributions of sample characteristics are comparable across sources confirming the success of our sampling method.     

Schools and Refugee Children: The Case of Syrians in Turkey

Education is the most effective tool for migrant and refugee integration. When successfully provided, it is particularly useful for eradicating the traces of trauma among refugee children, offering means to social mobility and enhancing social and structural integration into society. This article introduces schooling options for Syrian children in Turkey and deals with how school types shape experiences of these students through the accounts of their parents with attention to the notion of institutional habitus. Drawing on a comparative qualitative case study of refugee children in Temporary Education Centres and Public Schools in Turkey, it specifically investigates how schools with their practices, organization, and regulations contribute to or hinder the integration and adaptation of Syrian refugee children to school and society in Turkey.     

Refugees and Elections: The Effects of Syrians on Voting Behavior in Turkey

In the wake of the Syrian civil war, more than three million people have fled to Turkey, which now hosts the largest refugee population on earth. Making up 4.42 per cent of the total population in Turkey as of February 2018, Syrian refugees are nevertheless spread unevenly within its borders. The ratio of refugees to the local population ranges from as high as 99per cent in the city of Kilis to as low as 0.05per cent in Sinop. This article presents findings from the empirical study of the effect of this geographical variation on election outcomes in Turkey, after the arrival of major refugee populations in 2012. Drawing on a unique subnational dataset and ordinary least squares (OLS), generalized least squares (GLS), and difference‐in‐differences (DiD) regressions, the study compares cities hosting few refugees (control group) with cities with large refugee populations (treatment group) to determine whether significant differences in voting patterns emerged. Our findings show a negative, but insignificant, impact on the incumbent party. The findings have policy implications for Turkey as well as any country that experiences a considerable flow of refugees.     

Media Discussion on the Naturalization Policy for Syrians in Turkey

This study focuses on the public opinion on the naturalization policy for Syrians in Turkey. It analyses news media coverage in the religious, far‐right newspaper (Yeni Akit), a centre‐right newspaper (Hürriyet), a social democrat newspaper (Cumhuriyet), and a socialist‐left news portal (Solportal). The research question is: What are the metaphors, arguments, and omissions produced by media of different ideologies about the possible citizenship of Syrians in Turkey? The results show that metaphors and arguments differ according to ideological stance, suggesting that the current political polarization in Turkey affects the public's acceptance of Syrians and challenges Turkey's established migration policy. Each ideological stance accepts Syrians on a selective basis, implying that universal naturalization of Syrians is not welcome; instead, there seems to be consensus favouring naturalization according to socio‐economic criteria. These results indicate a need for a change in migration policy, especially concerning disadvantaged Syrians.     

Framing Gender Equality in the European Union Political Discourse

In the last decade, the European Union (EU) approach to genderequality has broadened to new concepts, such as gender mainstreaming,and new issues, such as "family policies", "domestic violence",and "gender inequality in politics". However, the frame analysisof policy documents in these new areas shows, first, that eachissue has developed its own particular features, and, secondly,that the broadening of the EU-political discourse on genderequality has not led to a deeper framing of the issues in termsof gender equality. The lack of EU competence in these areas,the status of the policy documents, and differences in the actorshaving a voice and being referred to in the documents are proposedas possible explanations for its framing.     

Framing and Temporality in Political Cartoons: A Critical Analysis of Visual News Discourse*

Les caricatures politiques constituent une forme visuelle du discours des médias. Les sociologues rejettent généralement leur valeur idéologique en raison du fait qu'elles offrent aux lecteurs des exposés absurdes des conditions du « problème » putatif et ne doivent pas être prises au pied de la lettre. Toutefois, c'est par l'humour que les caricatures se sont emparées du bon sens et l'ont renfoncé, et par conséquent ont permis au public de classifier, d'organiser et d'inter‐préter activement ce qu'ils perçoivent ou vivent relativement à l'actu‐alité dans le monde à un moment donné de façon significative. Dans le cadre des théories interactionnistes de Goffman et de Mead, deux caricatures illustrant la dernière « crise » des « vagues d'immigration » déferlant au Canada seront étudiées. Political cartoons are a form of visual news discourse. Sociologists normally dismiss their ideological import on the grounds that cartoons simply offer newsreaders absurd accounts of putative “problem” conditions and are not likely to be taken very seriously. Nevertheless, it is through comedic conventions that cartoons seize upon and reinforce common sense and thus enable the public to actively classify, organize and interpret in meaningful ways what they see or experience about the world at a given moment. Informed by the interactionist theories of Goffman and Mead, two cartoons illustrating the recent “crisis” of “migrant waves” to Canada will be examined.     

Actional Legitimation: No Crisis Necessary

This article articulates the fundamental nature of "legitimacy" to public relations research and sets forth actional legitimation as a productive new area for public relations studies. After tracing the development of the idea of "corporate legitimacy," this research distinguishes between institutional and actional legitimacy. Although institutional legitimacy has formed a basis for studies of crisis communication, image, values advocacy, and issue management, actional legitimacy studies allow for the study of more day-to-day public relations activities in which publics have a more immediate impact on corporate policy. The article concludes that actively studying strategies of legitimation for specific corporate policies would produce useful scholarship that builds on extant legitimacy literature.     

叙利亚危机的媒体话语与话语政治分析

叙利亚危机持续三年多,受到了全球媒体的关注。本文以叙利亚、美国、俄罗斯和中国四个国家主要媒体2013年8月至11月对叙利亚危机的报道为语料,从话语分析和话语政治视角探讨话语选择背后的权力和意识形态动因,考察不同意识形态的国家媒体如何从各自立场和利益出发,对同一社会现实进行不同的话语建构,从而揭示出同一事件蕴藏的媒体话语之间的博弈与意识形态之间的竞争。本研究是基于五层次话语政治分析框架的案例分析和实证研究,可以为中国政府的中东战略和对外话语体系建构提供参考。     

Economic Crisis and Marital Problems in Turkey: Testing the Family Stress Model

This paper applied the family stress model to the case of Turkey in the wake of the 2001 economic crisis. Using structural equation modeling and a nationally representative urban sample of 711 married women and 490 married men, we tested whether economic hardship and the associated family economic strain on families resulted in greater marital problems. Our results showed a modified family stress model applies to Turkey. In contrast to most previous research, economic strain had a direct effect on marital problems, and the indirect effect of strain, via emotional distress, was only significant for women. The results were interpreted in light of social and cultural factors that condition how economic distress affects marital relations.     

Germany's Anti-Foreigner Crisis: State Disunity and Collective 'Forgetting'

Abstract: Employment of foreign labor in Germany is generally perceived as a recent phenomenon; Germany's pre-war experiences with foreign labor do not figure prominently in public discussion. This article analyzes the active omission of this aspect of the past as an important feature of German social memory. Drawing largely on Ulrich Herbert's research, the forgotten' history of pre- and post-war experiences with foreign labor is summarized. This provides a perspective on the significant parallels between conflicts today and those of prior periods and exposes a fundamental conflict within the state regarding the use of foreign labor. Anti-foreigner violence is reinterpreted as representing a failure of the state to maintain ideological unity without periodically responding to powerful and enduring anti-foreigner pressure.     

The Microlevel Discourse of Social Movement Framing: Debating Antiwar Protests on a University Listserv

Abstract

Over the past two decades, researchers have increasingly employed frame analysis in attempts to understand the genesis, development, and outcomes of social movements. Relatively little attention, however, has focused on the microlevel processes involved in generating social movement frames. This paper is an effort to link theories of social movement framing with the methodology of discourse analysis. In the following, an online debate over the legitimacy of protests against the 2003 invasion of Iraq by the United States provides qualitative data for a discourse analysis of microlevel framing processes. The debate occurred on a university listserv and involved more than 100 messages offered by 67 individuals over 16 days. Analyses reveal four distinct framing contests in the discourse. An initiating contest regarding a specific antiwar protest is found to generate three additional contests, the first about antiwar protests more generally, the second about the war in Iraq itself, and the third about the appropriateness of holding such a debate on a listserv sent to university employees. A framing process schema is offered to represent conflict between social movement and countermovement participants across the discourse.     

The South African State and urbanisation policy: Crisis and response

Towards the end of the 1970s political and economic tensions in South Africa precipitated a crisis of the State. In response to this, the last few years have seen an unprecedented attempt on the part of the government to restructure racial capitalism in South Africa. While reforms have left virtually no aspect of government policy untouched, this paper explores one particular and vital aspect of policy reform: that of urbanisation policy and regional development. It is frequently the case that internationally accepted regional development and settlement strategies, first, are adopted by governments for political rather than for developmental reasons and, secondly, are unable anyway to stimulate processes of regional development. The reasons for this relate not only to the biases which occur in the application of these strategies, but also to a failure to understand or to confront the real and complex developmental problems of the areas in which they are implemented. The case of South Africa clearly demonstrates these issues.     

The Organic Crisis of the British State: Putting Brexit in its Place

The Brexit vote was a singular event that is one symptom of a continuing organic crisis of the British state and society and a stimulus for further struggles over the future of the United Kingdom and its place in Europe and the wider world. This crisis previously enabled the rise of Thatcherism as a neoliberal and neoconservative project (with New Labour as its left wing) with an authoritarian populist appeal and authoritarian statist tendencies that persisted under the Conservative–Liberal Democrat coalition (2010–2015). The 2015 election of a Conservative Government, which aimed to revive the Thatcherite project and entrench austerity, was the immediate context for the tragi-comedy of errors played out in the referendum. The ensuing politics and policy issues could promote the disintegration of the UK and, perhaps, the EU without delivering greater political sovereignty or a more secure and non-balkanized place for British economic space in the world market.     

Secularism as a field of class struggle: State,religion, and class relations in Turkey

The dialectical relationship between secularism and capitalism, where contradictions in this relationship are resolved on the basis of class relations, results in various state‐religion relationships in different social formations. The limitations and particularities of secularism are exaggerated in countries that arrived late at capitalism, such as Turkey. These late‐developers are subject to the dynamics of uneven and combined development. This paper borrows from Marxism, particularly the theory of uneven and combined development, in order to explore the relationship between the consolidation of the modern nation‐state and its secularisation process during the bourgeois revolution of 1923 in Turkey.     

State of Control: Unknown Migrant Children

Recently, crises seem to predominate migration policymaking. They are commonly seen as critical junctures which precipitate major policy change. However, rather than creation of something new, crises can instead be vehicles for restoring the order of the past. This article examines the case of asylum-seeking unaccompanied minors in Sweden, where drastic changes have been made in the aftermath of the perceived “migration crisis” of 2015. Employing historical institutionalist theory, it examines decades of Swedish migration policymaking through analysis of state inquiries, law proposals and court rulings. It argues that the changes introduced 2015 were not qualitatively new, but rather a result of long-simmering tensions. These tensions lie between state attempts to control migration, particularly of “unidentifiable” individuals, and the rights accorded to migrants. The article shows that Sweden's migration framework of bounded universalism has gradually been altered by tools that categorize migrants, with implications for migration policy as a whole.     

No Overall Control: Experiencing Community Development in Rural Britain

The publication is a welcome addition to the limited sourcesof literature available to community-based practitioners generallyand particularly to those working in rural areas. ‘NoOverall Control’ aims to explore the reality of communitydevelopment in rural Britain, through a series of stories thathighlight the conflicts and tensions that appear to be a featureof rural change. The book starts with an outline of the issues, policy contextand the increasing though still underdeveloped research basearound community activity and community involvement in ruralareas. It then takes a micro level