Discourses of integration: Language, skills, and the politics of difference

Multilingua ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 35 (6) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mi-Cha Flubacher ◽  
Shirley Yeung
Keyword(s):  
Special Issue ◽  
National Politics ◽  
Social Categories ◽  
Politics Of Difference ◽  
Language Communication ◽  
Global North ◽  
Migrant Integration ◽  
Social Orders ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
Migrant Integration Policies

AbstractIn this introduction, we outline the most relevant concepts for this special issue on integration and the politics of difference. This introduction characterizes “integration” as a dominant policy orientation and discursive regime concerned primarily with understandings of language, communication, and skill which constitute a (trans)national politics of difference. In various sites and national contexts of the global north, migrant “integration” policies render difference and mobility the site of both discursive elaboration and management. This introduction highlights the salience of critical ethnographic analyses for understanding “integration” beyond policy realms, arguing for attention to situated practices, emergent social categories and types, political-economic stakes, logics of linguistic (dis)engagement, and the reproduction of mono- and multilingual social orders. In particular, we propose to untangle this complex by describing three central processes that run through all of the contributions and which, we suggest, are indispensable for the analysis of current and emergent regimes of integration: processes of categorization, of selection, and of activation.

Feminism and the Politics of Difference

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria O’Reilly
Keyword(s):  
Identity Politics ◽  
Women Of Color ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Cultural Difference ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
Feminist Scholarship ◽  
Politics Of Difference ◽  
Global North ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
Cultural Location

Feminist scholars and practitioners have challenged—and sought to overcome—gendered forms of inequality, subordination, or oppression within a variety of political, economic, and social contexts. However, feminists have been embroiled in profound theoretical disagreements over a variety of issues, including the nature and significance of the relationship between culture and the production of gendered social life, as well as the implications of cultural location for women’s agency, feminist knowledge production, and the possibilities of building cross-cultural feminist coalitions and agendas. Many of the approaches that emerged in the “first” and “second waves” of feminist scholarship and activism were not able to effectively engage with questions of culture. Women of color and ethnicity, postcolonial feminists and poststructural feminists, in addition to the questions and debates raised by liberal feminists (and their critics) on the implications of multiculturalism for feminist goals, have produced scholarship that highlights issues of cultural difference, division, diversity, and differentiation. Their critiques of the “universalism” and “culture-blindness” of second wave theories and practices exposed the hegemonic and exclusionary tendencies of the feminist movement in the global North, and opened up the opportunity to develop intersectional analyses and feminist identity politics, thereby shifting issues of cultural diversity and difference from the margins to the center of international feminism. The debates on cultural difference, division, diversity, and differentiation have enriched feminist scholarship within the discipline of international relations, particularly after 9/11.

Beyond the austerity-driven hypothesis: Political economic theses on penality and the recent prison population decline

2021 ◽  
pp. 147737082110006
Author(s):  
José A. Brandariz
Keyword(s):  
Prison Population ◽  
Population Decline ◽  
Theoretical Frameworks ◽  
The Past ◽  
Economic Forces ◽  
Global North ◽  
Economic Perspectives ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Spending Cuts

In what might be called the ‘austerity-driven hypothesis’, a consistent strand of literature has sought to explain the prison downsizing witnessed in many jurisdictions of the global north over the past decade by referring to the financial crisis of the late 2000s to early 2010s and its effects in terms of public spending cuts. Since this economic phase is essentially over, whereas the (moderate) decarceration turn is still ongoing, there are good reasons to challenge this hypothesis. This article delves into the non-economic forces that are fostering a prison population decline that, 10 years on, is becoming the new ‘penal normal’. The article thereby aims to spark a dialogue not only with the scholarship exploring the prison downsizing but also with certain theoretical frameworks that have played a key role in examining the punitive turn era. Additionally, the article contributes to the conversation on the need to reframe materialist readings on penality in a ‘non-reductionist’ fashion. By revisiting heterodox theses and scrutinizing the impact of recent penal changes on traditional materialist accounts, the article joins the collective endeavour seeking to update political economic perspectives on punishment and the penal field.

scholarly journals The materiality of languages in engagements with the environment

Multilingua ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Siragusa ◽  
Pirjo Kristiina Virtanen
Keyword(s):  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Environmental Crisis ◽  
Social Worlds ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Communicative Practices ◽  
Related Language ◽  
Global North ◽  
The Moment ◽  
Human Actors

Abstract Communication, an apparently intangible practice, does in fact affect the way people engage with their social worlds in very material ways. Inspired by both ethnographic and archival-driven research, this special issue aims to fill the gap in studies of language materiality by addressing entanglements with other-than-human agencies. The contributions of this special issue on verbal and non-verbal communicative practices among Indigenous peoples and ethnic minorities in the Global North and the South interpret language materiality as practice- and process-oriented, performative, and embodied relations between humans and other-than-human actors. The articles cover three major sub-themes, which ostensibly intertwine to a greater or lesser degree in all the works: (in-)visible actors and elements-related language; language materiality narrating and producing sociality; and the emotions and affect of language. The topic of this special issue, the materiality of languages, manifested in multiple engagements with the environment, proves particularly critical at the moment, given the current environmental crisis and the need to comprehend in more depth social relations with numerous other-than-human agencies.

scholarly journals Opportunity management of the COVID-19 pandemic: testing the crisis from a global perspective

2021 ◽  
pp. 002085232199210
Author(s):  
Sabine Kuhlmann ◽  
Geert Bouckaert ◽  
Davide Galli ◽  
Renate Reiter ◽  
Steven Van Hecke
Keyword(s):  
Crisis Management ◽  
Global Perspective ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
National Politics ◽  
Institutional Reforms ◽  
Institutional Conditions ◽  
Institutional Settings ◽  
Windows Of Opportunity ◽  
Cross Country ◽  
Crisis Responses

This article provides a conceptual framework for the analysis of COVID-19 crisis governance in the first half of 2020 from a cross-country comparative perspective. It focuses on the issue of opportunity management, that is, how the crisis was used by relevant actors of distinctly different administrative cultures as a window of opportunity. We started from an overall interest in the factors that have influenced the national politics of crisis management to answer the question of whether and how political and administrative actors in various countries have used the crisis as an opportunity to facilitate, accelerate or prevent changes in institutional settings. The objective is to study the institutional settings and governance structures, (alleged) solutions and remedies, and constellations of actors and preferences that have influenced the mode of crisis and opportunity management. Finally, the article summarizes some major comparative findings drawn from the country studies of this Special Issue, focusing on similarities and differences in crisis responses and patterns of opportunity management. Points for practitioners With crises emerging in ever shorter sequences of time, governing turbulence and using crises for strategic institutional decisions has become an increasingly important issue for policymakers. Aiming at effective and proportionate responses, policymakers must take the institutional conditions, administrative traditions and relevant actor constellations of crisis management into account, which are key to learn from other countries’ experiences. Comparing these experiences and analyzing the politics of crisis governance from a cross-country perspective may help policymakers to identify strengths and weaknesses of their own national/regional approaches and to seize crisis-related windows of opportunity for institutional reforms at the national and international levels.

scholarly journals Urban Developmentalism in East Asia: Geopolitical Economies, Spaces of Exception, and Networks of Expertise

2017 ◽  
Vol 44 (3) ◽  
pp. 395-403 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jamie Doucette ◽  
Bae-Gyoon Park
Keyword(s):  
East Asia ◽  
Interdisciplinary Research ◽  
East Asian ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Urban Research ◽  
Introductory Article ◽  
Asian Urbanization ◽  
A Site ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
Planning Policies

This special issue highlights an exciting range of contemporary, interdisciplinary research into spatial forms, political economic processes, and planning policies that have animated East Asian urbanization. To help situate this research, this introductory article argues that the urban as form, process, and imaginary has often been absent from research on East Asian developmentalism; likewise, the influence of developmentalism on East Asian urbanization has remained under-examined in urban research. To rectify this issue, we propose a concept of urban developmentalism that is useful for highlighting the nature of the urban as a site of and for developmentalist intervention in East Asia. We then outline the contribution made by the articles in this special issue to three key themes that we feel are germane for the study of urban developmentalism across varied contexts: geopolitical economies, spaces of exception, and networks of expertise.

scholarly journals A Queering-to-Come

2020 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 363-376
Author(s):  
Kirk Fiereck ◽  
Neville Hoad ◽  
Danai S. Mupotsa
Keyword(s):  
Queer Theory ◽  
Historical Time ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Colonial Archive ◽  
Global North ◽  
To Come ◽  
Academic Study

This introduction outlines the idea of the queer customary and how various African articulations of it engage, contest, and nuance central concerns of queer theory produced in the global North, particularly around ideas of normativity—hetero and homo. It speculates on the customary’s reworking of temporality and what that reworking does to historical time and the problems and possibilities in reading the colonial archive in the search for a useable past for both lived African sexual and gendered experience and the academic study of it. The customary is seen as an iterative containment of ancestral time, a powerful form of self-fashioning in the present, and as an invitation to futurity. Brief framings of how the various essays in the special issue elaborate what we are calling the queer customary follow.

Structural Heterogeneity in Europe

2020 ◽  
Vol 19 (6) ◽  
pp. 756-784
Author(s):  
Stefanie Hürtgen
Keyword(s):  
European Integration ◽  
Economic Integration ◽  
Structural Heterogeneity ◽  
Spatial Theory ◽  
The Political ◽  
Dependency Theory ◽  
The Core ◽  
Core Dynamics ◽  
Global North ◽  
Political Economic

Abstract Structural heterogeneity is probably the most important category of dependency theory to characterize the “development of underdevelopment” in the Global South. Should it therefore be a provocation to speak of structural heterogeneity in Europe? No, this article argues, because with reference to Osvaldo Sunkel, Fred Scholz and Neil Brenner among others, the political-economic logic of transnational economic integration based on socio-spatial fragmentation now also encompasses the Global North; or more specifically: the structural logic of economic transnationalisation and sociospatial fragmentation constitutes the core dynamics of European integration. So, the critical development debates of the 1970s should be rediscovered as pioneering concepts and updated in terms of spatial theory in the sense of a local solidarity perspective.

Transnarodowa kwestia społeczna. Migracje i nierówności społeczne

2021 ◽  
pp. 21-40
Author(s):  
Thomas Faist
Keyword(s):  
Social Inequalities ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Social Question ◽  
The Public ◽  
Ecological Aspects ◽  
The Social ◽  
Global North ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
And Migration ◽  
Political Economic

The social question is back. Yet today’s social question is not primarily between labour and capital, as it was in the nineteenth century and throughout much of the twentieth. The contemporary social question is located at the interstices between the global South and the global North. It finds its expression in movements of people, seeking a better life or fleeing unsustainable social, political, economic, and ecological conditions. It is transnationalized because migrants and their significant others entertain ties across the borders of national states in transnational social spaces; because of the cross-border diffusion of norms; and because there are implications of migration for social inequalities within national states. The first section discusses the structure of social inequalities in migration and the politics around it. It starts, first, by elaborating upon the commonalities and differences of the social question in the 19th and 21st centuries and then, second, asks whether the increasing relevance of location compared to class for income and life chances has replaced voice as a main response by exit. This is followed, third, by an elaboration of the nexus between social inequalities and migration, i.e. migration being both an antecedent and a consequence of social inequalities. Fourth, the focus moves to the main changes in migration control, its externalization from border control to remote control. This is followed, fifth, by a consideration of the other side of the coin, internalization processes in countries of destination and origin, driven by processes such as marketization and securitization of migration. The second section then moves on to sketch one of the main challenges, the need to include ecological aspects into the discussion of the social question. The analysis concludes with reflections on the shifting form of the transnationalized social question. Finally, the outlook discusses the role of social scientists in discussing the transnationalized social question in the public sphere.

Raising African Voices in the Global Dialogue on Care-Leaving and Emerging Adulthood

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 6-15 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adrian Du Plessis van Breda ◽  
John Pinkerton
Keyword(s):  
Emerging Adulthood ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
The South ◽  
African Experience ◽  
Global North ◽  
North And South

Globalization of knowledge and scholarship raises the challenges of dialogue between Global North and South. Northern knowledge and voice remain privileged, while writing from the South often goes unread. This is true also in emerging adulthood and care-leaving scholarship. The special issue of Emerging Adulthood titled “Care-Leaving in Africa” is the first collection of essays on care-leaving by African scholars. It presents both care-leaving and emerging adulthood scholars from the Global North a unique opportunity to consider the implications of a rising African voice for global dialogue. This article, coauthored by scholars from North and South, argues in favor of North–South dialogue but highlights several challenges inherent in this, including the indigenizing and thus marginalizing of African experience and scholarship and divergent constructions of key social concepts. The authors argue the need for mutually respectful discourse between North and South and present specific recommendations for fostering such global dialogue.

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