Multicultural nationalism? National identities among minority groups in Scotland’s census

This paper uses data from a new question in the 2011 UK censuses of population to investigate national identities among ethnic and religious minorities. It focuses primarily on Scotland, while presenting comparative data for England and Wales. A robust comparison of national identities between different minorities in Scotland and with similar groups in other nations of Britain has previously not been possible because ethnic and religious minority groups represent a small proportion of Scotland’s population and are weakly represented in sample surveys. The new census question on national identity therefore offers an unprecedented opportunity for this kind of analysis. The analysis is used to critically evaluate previous claims of the existence of multicultural nationalism in Scotland and previous research that has suggested that Scottish identity is relatively inclusive of people in minority groups. The findings suggest that while Scottish national identity is relatively inclusive of minorities in some respects, the conclusions of previous research should be treated with some caution.     

Devout Muslims or tough highlanders? Exploring attitudes toward ethnic nationalism and racism in Europe’s ethnic-Chechen Salafi communities

This is the first article that systematically deconstructs the idealised, widely shared view and formal self-representation of Salafis as a de-culturalised group of Muslim believers who are solely devoted to the idea of a uniform Muslim identity and are indifferent to the notions of ethnic nationalism and racism. Drawing on unique interviews with EU-based ethnic-Chechen émigré Salafis, the article illuminates the ways they draw boundaries and consequently construe their ethnic and racial identities as superior and opposed to Muslims stemming from the Middle East and Central Asia. Below the surface of coherent ideologically shaped self-representations, the diaspora Salafis’ identities reflect the idea of Chechnya’s mountainous topography being conducive to a superior ‘national mentality’, racial purity, and cultural uniqueness. Intriguingly, the diaspora-Chechen Salafis’ attitudes toward Middle Easterners and Central Asians employ a rhetoric which entails similarities with the notion of imagined geographies and to some extent resembles Western Orientalist discourse. In stark contrast to leading Salafi scholars’ statements emphasising a united Muslim identity, which are routinely echoed by outsiders, this article points out the maintenance of strong ethnic-nationalist and racist resentments amongst individual members of this religious community.     

In hindsight and now again: black male teachers’ recollections on the suffering of black male youth in US public schools

This article draws from data in a larger qualitative study on the lives of black male teachers in US public urban schools. I examine their schooling experiences as black male youth. By coupling theories of social suffering with life history methodology, this research analyzes how three black male teachers experienced frustration, marginalization, and misery as students. For these participants, academic tracking was a site of social suffering. This suffering persisted into their adult lives as classroom teachers, as they witnessed and attempted to mitigate the struggles of their own black male students. The findings in this study have implications for further research on black male teachers as well as their recruitment and retention in US public schools.     

Shifting the refugee narrative? An automated frame analysis of Europe’s 2015 refugee crisis

In 2015, Europe faced the arrival of over 1.25 million refugees fleeing from war-affected countries. The public mainly learned about this issue through domestic media. Through the use of computer-assisted content analysis, this study identifies the most dominant frames employed in the coverage of refugee and asylum issues between January 2015 and January 2016 in six Austrian newspapers (N?=?10,606), particularly focusing on potential differences between quality and tabloid media, and on frame variations over time. The findings reveal that, apart from administrative aspects of coping with the arrivals, established narratives of security threat and economisation are most prominent. Humanitarianism frames and background information on the refugees’ situation are provided to a lesser extent. During the most intense phases of the crisis, the framing patterns of tabloid and quality media become highly similar. Media coverage broadens to multiple prominent frames as issue salience sharply increases, and then ‘crystallises’ into a more narrow set. In sum, the results confirm a predominance of stereotyped interpretations of refugee and asylum issues, and thus persisting journalistic routines in both, tabloid and quality media, even in times of a major political and humanitarian crisis.     

Educating tomorrow’s reformists: factors affecting the development of undergraduates’ social progressivism

Researchers have unpacked the ways in which students participate in democracy through voting and other forms of civic engagement. However, very little empirical work has delved into how students develop socially progressive values, despite their unprecedented importance to young people during their years in higher education. Rooted in a rich historical context of campus demonstration spanning the past 75 years and current events in the United States, this inspection of college students’ social progressivism was grounded by Pascarella’s model of students’ learning and cognitive development, and uses OLS (ordinary least squares) regression to investigate the phenomenon. Analyzing data collected by the Cooperative and Institutional Research Program from 159 institutions across the United States, this study explored the predictive capacity of students’ interaction with influential agents of socialization and other variables central to undergraduates’ college experiences. Results indicate that socially progressive students tended to interact more with faculty outside of office hours and had a higher cumulative GPA. Additional findings and implications are discussed.     

‘It was about claiming space’: exposure to Asian American studies,ethnic organization participation,and the negotiation of self among southeast Asian Americans

Despite the growing number of Asian American Studies (AAS) programs and Asian ethnic organizations across colleges and universities since the 1970s, surprisingly little empirical research examines the role of these aspects of higher education on Asian American identity. How do the roles of AAS curriculum and Asian American student organizations (Asian American activities) influence southeast Asian American college students’ ethnic and panethnic identity formation? Drawing on 50 in-depth interviews of 1.5 and second-generation college-educated Asian Americans, this study finds that the exposure to Asian American activities shapes respondents’ racial and ethnic identity construction. Specifically, the exposure to Asian American activities: (1) evokes an informed assertion of a contextual panethnic identity; (2) serves to trigger an assertion of a hyphenated American identity; and lastly, (3) plays a direct, but differing, instrumental role on identity construction among different Asian American sub-ethnic groups.     

A Study on the Change in Occupational Structure of China’ s Ethnic Minorities

The occupational structure of the employed population and its changes reflect the level of economic development and the change of social status of a population group .Based on cen-sus data , this paper analyzes the occupational structure of the employed population of China ＇ s ethnic minorities.It shows that： 1 ） Among the employed population of the eth-nic minorities （ excepting those people who are en-gaged in forestry , animal husbandry and fishery , etc., a proportion which is higher than the overall population or the Han ） , the proportion is lower than in either the overall population or the Han population . 2 ） The gender differences and directional change of the occupational structure of the em-ployed population indicates that the status of women was gradually promoted during the period 1990 to 2010. 3） Seen from the proportion of those engaged in mental labor versus physical labor;the proportion ethnic minorities engaged in mental labor is low . 4） The degree of diversity in the occupational structure of the ethnic minorities has made some improvement. 5 ） The ethnic differences in occupational structure are obvious . 6） The urbanization level and the educational level of the population are the key factors which determine the occupational structure of the em-ployed population . From this study , we feel that the degree of so-cial exclusion of the ethnic minorities has gone up during the past ten years .This ＂going up＂ has lead or is leading to social problems .Hence, it is necessary to pay high attention to this issue .Re-garding this, the author thinks that , firstly, sup-port to ethnic minority education should be en-hanced;secondly , the proportion of ethnic minori-ty people in civil servant recruitment should be im-proved;thirdly, the proportion of the employment of ethnic minority workers in projects in ethnic mi-nority regions should be stipulated .     

‘If it weren’t for rugby I’d be in prison now’: Pacific Islanders,rugby and the production of natural spaces

This paper examines the positive role of sport in building social cohesion and the accrual of social and cultural capital for many young Pasifika men. In the process, we also critique the disciplinary discourse, underpinned by bio-racism and commodification, which is enacted on the bodies of Pacific Island men in the context of post-colonial, neoliberal, Australia. This results in over-representation in the rugby codes, manual labour, the security industry, and in prison. Of specific interest to this paper are the ways in which certain spaces, and the means to occupy them, become naturalised. This naturalisation serves to obscure the actual regulatory, and at times exploitative, function of sports; instead positing them as exemplars of individualism and self-governance. In positioning neoliberalism as the reengineering, rather than simply the deregulation, of the state, sports such as rugby enact considerable disciplinary power over the bodies of a minority ethnicity. We refer to this diversion from conventional working class employment opportunities as ‘sportfare’. Qualitative data for this paper has been drawn from several independent studies engaging with Pasifika communities in Australia.     

Speed,timing and duration: contested temporalities,techno-political controversies and the emergence of the EU’s smart border

ABSTRACT

Practices of border control increasingly rely on digital biometrics in order to sort and filter cross-border movements. But while its effects are well examined in migration and border studies, less is known about the intricate ways in which biometric bordering is politically negotiated and socio-technically put into practice. Therefore, in this paper, I trace the contested emergence of one particular scheme of biometric border control currently in the making: the EU’s Smart Borders Package. Proposed by the European Commission in 2013, it aims at digitally registering all third-country nationals’ entries to and exits from the Schengen area, while simultaneously accelerating the border crossing of certain travellers. I argue that, unlike other forms of biometric bordering, the Smart Borders Package problematises border control primarily on the level of its temporalities and constitutes the speed of border crossings, the timing of control as well as third-country nationals’ duration of stay as distinct objects of governing. Meanwhile, the project’s political negotiations have sparked techno-political controversies that repeatedly brought it to the brink of failure. Yet, these controversies have significantly enhanced the intelligibility and practicability of biometric bordering, contributing to the emergence of what I call the self-service border.     

‘Why is our love an issue?’: same-sex marriage and the racial politics of the ordinary

This article analyzes the implicit white racial normativity underpinning the socio-legal struggle for same-sex marriage in Canada. I argue that discursive representations of ‘ordinary lives’ require alignment with terms of neoliberal citizenship – the privacy of property and intimacy – that hold whiteness as the unspoken yet aspirational ideal. As a contestation of heteronormative citizenship, same-sex marriage is not simply a politics of sexuality but also a politics of race.     

‘Mile vs Transition’—a Perfect Informant in the Slushy Swamp of Serbian Politics?

When it launched a TV series ‘Mile vs Transition’ in 2003, Radio B92 intended its hero, Mile from Cubura, to be taken ironically. Fighting a relentless rearguard campaign against transition (from the introduction of Euros and seat-belts to good manners and work ethic), and embracing the stereotypical backwardness of the Serbian character, Mile was projected as what Serbian citizens should not be. Instead, Mile became a popular hero whose anti-modern, anti-European tendencies were widely embraced, seemingly without any irony. I argue that as a composite photo-robot of the Serbian Everyman (thus a perfect informant), and a moral chameleon, Mile emerged as an ambiguous hero not just because of the content of what he does and says, but because of the ironic play he affords. It is precisely this ambiguity, this indeterminate irony that makes him such an icon of Serbia's current predicaments—not just a symptom, but also an apt figure, a hieroglyph for post-Milosevic, post-Djindjic Serbia's inchoately felt conundrums.     

Diversity,rights or privileges? Denunciation of multiculturalism, ‘political correctness’ and anti-racism of the ex-Commander of Scotland Yard Ali Dizaei

The widely disseminated court verdict on the former Scotland Yard commander, Ali Dizaei, as a violent bully and a liar at the end of his first trial in February 2010, brought about a noted denunciation of multiculturalism as ‘political correctness’. The jury's decision on the abuse of power by the Iranian-born officer was used by the denunciators to condemn the politics of rights that aligned multiple ethnic and racial identities as equal. The denunciation is looked at as a contingent mobilisation of the apolitical subject that is loitering on the boundary of politics calling for the ‘end of politics’ marked by the exclusion of the Other. At the same time the trial revealed that by advocating a policy designed to subsume particular ethnic and cultural belongings within a universal exercise of rights Dizaei had been able to resume his cultural differences as a source of privileges among his compatriots. Drawing on the incident as a result of which Dizaei had to stand trial and later a re-trial, using various sources, the paper examines the tension between the exercise of rights and privileges built into multiculturalism. The pertinence of the sources used to highlight the tension remains largely unaffected by the questioned reliability of the main witness of the prosecutor and the Appeal Court judges’ decision to order Dizaei's re-trial. The paper argues that multiculturalism sets in motion the incompatible agencies of the citizen, the member of a political community, and Man whose role is inscribed within civil society. Thus, the exercise of equal rights calls for dis-identification of the subject as a social and cultural agent. Such dis-identification, however, is displaced when the subject asserts his identity as Man, the bearer of unequal relations based on class, gender and race. In making provision both for the exercise of rights as well as the assertion of identity multiculturalism becomes instrumental in the subsumption of cultural differences within rights and the resumption of these differences in the articulation of privileges. The mediation of multiculturalism in the realization of rights and privileges accounts for the Iranian-born officer's oscillation between subsuming his cultural differences within British citizenship and resuming these differences in asserting his identity as an Iranian among the diasporic community. Using the notion of cultural diversity Dizaei was able to keep at arm's length the two spheres of rights and identity that allowed him to claim ‘not to be one of them’ thus oscillating between claiming the rights of a British citizen and the privileges of an Iranian magnate. The noted disruption in his power game that brought Dizaei to sit in the dock was the result of a failed attempt by the Iranian-born officer to contain the growing tension in his advocated multiculturalism arising from his simultaneous resort to rights and privilege.