Crisis or Zemblanity? Viewing the ‘Migration Crisis’ through a Greek Lens

This intervention traces how Europe is being (re-)produced through ‘crises’ on three scales. Firstly, at the level of national territory, looking at the crisis-ridden Greek state. Secondly, through everyday border practices on the island of Lesbos and, finally, in the Mediterranean that acts as Europe’s primary locus for its aggregate (and often experimental) bordering practices.     

Utopia in Crisis? Subaltern Imaginations in Contemporary Bihar

Abstract

The Subaltern Studies Collective inaugurated an important point of departure in Indian historiography and social sciences by demanding that attention be directed to subalterns (a term adapted from Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks) as makers of their own destinies. Their scholarship raises three issues, which are discussed in this article. The first of these relates to the empirical observation about subaltern resistance to elites. The second pertains to the analytical dichotomy between elite and subaltern modes of conducting politics. The third centres on the valorisation of a putatively coherent fragment that seeks autonomy from the totality of the state. The fundamental problem with the perspective advanced by the subaltern studies scholars stems from their implicit assumption that utopian ideals centred on reclaiming dignity and asserting social equality are necessarily derivative of European Enlightenment ideals.     

Shrinking democratic space? Crisis of consensus and contentious politics in Uganda

Previously considered a reforming and promising African country, economically and politically, Uganda has in recent years suffered substantial shrinkage of democratic space. This article argues that two factors have been crucial: the gradual breakdown of minimum political consensus forged under a ‘broad-based’ government which climaxed in a relatively progressive constitution in 1995 and, second, the security imperative accentuated by the war on terror. These two are compounded by the exigencies of incumbent president Museveni’s determination to rule for life, the result being erosion of basic democratic institutions, securitisation of politics, criminalisation of political competition and upsurge in contentious politics.     

‘Social Investment’ or Back to ‘Familism’: The Impact of the Economic Crisis on Family and Care Policies in Italy and Spain

Family policies have traditionally been weak in Southern Europe. In the last two decades, however, and following a ‘catching up’ course, Spain has created new family programmes and expanded existing ones. Meanwhile, the picture for Italy during the years preceding the crisis is more of a ‘frozen landscape’. However, the diverging paths of the two countries in terms of policy reform in the years preceding the crisis do not place them in substantially different positions. The economic crisis and the austerity measures that followed have aggravated the weaknesses of family and care policies in both countries.     

A Nation of Immigrants or a Nation of Immigrant Cities? The Urban Context of Australian Multiculturalism, 1947–2011

The article documents the urban dimension of Australia's immigration experience that, since the 1940s, has seen the country become one of the world's most multicultural societies. The article argues that the greatest impact of immigration has been in the major cities, especially Sydney and Melbourne, which in recent decades have emerged as internationally‐significant immigrant hubs that, like similar immigrant‐receiving destinations across the globe, are increasingly demographically and culturally distinct from their host nation. Drawing on census materials, oral history interviews, local newspapers and other sources, we chart the demographic transformation of urban Australia from the 1940s to the present day and suggest that these changes have implications for how urban Australians — especially those resident in the two biggest cities — will understand and represent themselves and the nation into the future.     

Spain: The Forward March of Podemos Halted?

Impressive electoral performances by Podemos in its first European, municipal and regional elections have not been sustained in the Spanish general elections of December 2015 and June 2016. In the context of government austerity policies and systemic political crisis, this radical left populist party has certainly attracted much support among youth and disadvantaged sectors, and had a great impact on Spain’s political life, yet so far Podemos has not managed to become the main alternative to the conservative Popular Party. Its alignment with the old United Left has proved unproductive and controversial. There have been tensions between the organizational centralism of the Podemos leadership and a desire for more decentralized expressions of radical politics in places such as Catalonia, as well as more generally from defenders of citizen politics or the original protest orientation of the party. For some currents of the left, Podemos has become too electorally oriented. Other critics point to a failure to reconcile left-wing objectives with the desire to capitalize on initial transversal appeal, extending beyond the traditional support base of the radical left. None the less, with Spain in a period of political stasis, there are still opportunities for Podemos to play a more influential role in the future, if it can address the challenges it faces without suffering schisms in the process.     

Intolerance Toward Immigrants in Switzerland: Diminished Threat Through Social Contacts?

Intolerance toward immigrants has recently reached noticeable highs in Switzerland. Referring to the conflict theory, the perception of a specific group as a threat tends to lead to intolerance toward that group. The expectation of a negative relationship between threat and tolerance is nevertheless not assumed to be universally valid for all members of society. In particular, the contact theory assumes that intercultural encounters should promote positive attitudes toward culturally different individuals and groups. Using a new and unique data set, our Heckman selection models reveal that Swiss who view rising immigration to mean a loss of economic privileges and an erosion of Swiss cultural values are less tolerant toward immigrants. Moreover, our results indicate that contact with immigrants may moderate this effect. However, not all group settings are able to reduce the perceived threats in a similar way, and not all sorts of social contact are able to foster tolerance toward immigrants.     

Concession or compromise? The politics of abortion in United Germany

Most GDR policies instituted to secure women's equality between 1949 and 1989 have been dismantled in the name of German unity, including freedom of choice regarding abortion. That right ceased to exist in May 1993, when the Constitutional Court imposed a number of western restrictions on eastern women as the new law of the land. This study addresses the post‐unity search for an acceptable compromise between the western constitutional mandate of foetal protection and the eastern guarantee of a woman's right to choose. It argues that a three‐year reform process which should have provided a positive introduction to the art of democratic compromise served instead as a negative socialising experience for Germans in the new Lander. Besides denying them a chance to render a meaningful policy contribution to their new state, the nature of the process has distorted East German perceptions of the quintessential ‘balance of power’ between legislative and judicial institutions under democracy. ‘Compromise’ has been attained, but consequences for the German Rechtsstaat are not all positive.     

Japanese Demographic Crisis in View of Marx’s Capitalist Law of Population

ABSTRACT

In more than four decades, Japanese society has rapidly intensified a tendency towards a very low fertility rate with a smaller number of children. It is generally confirmed that a society needs a total fertility rate of at least 2.1 in order to avoid a decline in its total population. The total fertility rate in Japan was still 2.14 in 1973, when the period of high economic growth in the post-World War II ended. It continued to decline to 1.26 in 2005. It then recovered somewhat in 2015, as the post-war “junior” baby-boom generation reacted to its last chance to have children. However, the recovery is temporary, and the Japanese total fertility rate is estimated to slide again in the 2020s. This article examines this transition through a re-examination of Marx’s capitalist law of population. This approach rejects the naturalist theory of population and directs attention to Japan’s demographic decline in the context of neo-liberal policies in contemporary capitalism.     

Migration and the Global Crisis: New Prospects for Return? The Case of Ecuadorians in Europe

This article explores the impact of the current recession on Ecuadorian labour migration to Europe. Several factors affect the evolution of this migration system: receiving countries' policies, the labour market demand (and its deterioration) and the scope for the self‐maintenance of migrants' social networks. We especially focus on a relatively less studied issue: emigrant policies, symbolised, in Ecuador, by a pervasive emphasis on migrant return, somewhat echoed even in Spain, as a destination country. Still, a massive return scenario is implausible in the light of migrants' family stabilisation abroad, and of the uncertain prospects for development in their motherland. Even during a worldwide recession, the ‘hidden agendas' in migration policies, along with the distinct time‐scale and the self‐feeding potential of a long‐distance migration system, should be critically appreciated.     

The Italian Welfare State in the Crisis: Learning to Adjust?

Abstract

After a decade of inertia, that left it unprepared to withstand the blow of the great recession, the Italian welfare state has witnessed significant changes since 2012. Externally driven consolidation in the wake of the sovereign debt crisis spurred yet another wave of social policy reforms after that of the 1990s. These reforms did not however invariably entail retrenchment. Both the Monti and the Renzi governments combined liberalisation with expansion of social rights, particularly in income support. As a result, the Italian welfare state looks more comprehensive than it was before the crisis. At the same time, there was no overall strategy of welfare modernisation based on coordinated social investment measures. The changes in Italian social policy since the outburst of the great recession highlight the importance of domestic politics interacting with external drivers of change. They also facilitate an assessment of the opportunity structures for further reforms in a political system that appears to be veering again towards consensus democracy.     

Decolonization in Reverse: The Iranian Oil Crisis of 1951–53

The decolonization process in the 1940s and 1950s in Middle Eastern states under Great Britain's informal influence did not aim at recognizing the same type of independence of these states as that enjoyed by Britain and the United States. In the 1940s Washington laid the groundwork for its leading role in Iran during and following the Iranian oil crisis, whilst London with the assistance of the Americans in part reasserted British influence after the crisis. The United States achieved a paramount position in Iran with the assistance of its oil companies and through cooperation with Great Britain, and at the expense of the latter and the Soviet Union.     

Reshaping EU Attitudes? The Case of Social Democratic and Radical Left Parties in Spain and Italy

Since the beginning of the Great Recession, the issue of European integration has become increasingly salient in many European polities. The European left has adopted a different stance toward European integration, both in terms of economic and welfare‐state integration. On the one hand, radical left parties (RLPs) have always opposed a process of integration dominated by neoliberal logic; on the other hand, the social democratic parties (SDPs) have appeared as one of the main pro‐EU party families, identifying the EU as a privileged space in which to promote the building of a European social model. In this paper, we propose a binary comparison between RLPs and SDPs in Italy and Spain with a qualitative content analysis methodology. Our results show that albeit the crisis brought SDPs closer to a Eurocritical stance vis‐à‐vis the social‐Europe, this dimension along with the political integration are still dividing issues for the RLPs and SDPs families.     

Islamic Campus Preaching Organizations in Indonesia: Promoters of Moderation or Radicalism?

ABSTRACT

This article asks whether campus preaching organizations such as the Indonesian Muslim Students Islamic Union (KAMMI) and Hizb ut-Tahrir Indonesia (HTI) serve as potential breeding grounds for radicalism or, alternatively, do they serve as institutions that promote political moderation and prevent radical action among young university-age Muslims. Utilizing insights from inclusion-moderation thesis, it concludes the answer to these questions depends on whether these groups are willing to accept Indonesia’s democratic political system. These determine the tactics the groups chose to promote their agenda to potential recruits. While KAMMI is willing to moderate its strategies, HTI is unwilling to do so and continues to promote its agenda through secretive means, although it formally rejects radicalism and extremism.     

Hollowing out or filling in? Taskforces and the management of cross-cutting issues in British government

This article considers the problem posed by the need to build policy coherence across the levels of government but with a focus on the strategic role of the centre in the hollow state. It considers the Social Exclusion Unit (SEU) as an example of a structure, the taskforce, designed to meet the demands of coherence-building. It concludes that, far from the centre being hollowed out, resulting in a permanent loss of capacity, there is a growing emphasis in the core executive on strategic co-ordination and the emergence of institutions such as the SEU indicate a counter-tendency to hollowing out: filling in.     

Official Russian identity discourse in light of the annexation of Crimea: national or imperial?

Close examination and analysis of the Kremlin’s framing of Russia’s annexation of Crimea reveals that domestically it was presented in unprecedented national irredentist terminology, aiming at reunifying the Russian nation in one state. The Russian nation was largely described in ethno-lingual or ethno-cultural terms, while the Russian state was all but explicitly declared as a nation–state of ethnic Russians. The official identity discourse was marked by the recasting and unprecedentedly strong reassertion of boundaries between the Russian and Ukrainian nations, legitimizing Russian claims to Crimea. However, the changing references to the crisis in Eastern Ukraine illustrate how the Kremlin’s identity rhetoric is still mainly guided by considerations of political necessity, rather than dictated by some national or ideological vision. Significantly, the focus of the Russian official identity discourse shifted from the state to the nation. This marks a decisive departure from Putin’s earlier largely statist rhetoric in the 2000s, and a new stage of maturation and official acclamation of national ethnicization trends launched during his third presidential term. After years of sitting on the fence, the Kremlin reinvented itself as an active and initiating player in the nationalism field.     

Back to the Suitcase? Emigration during the Great Recession in Spain

The complex and multidimensional economic crisis experienced by Spain since 2008 significantly altered migration patterns in this country. Large scale unemployment contributed to slow down migrant inflows and accelerated out-migration flows in Spain. The media coverage of these processes created a distorted image of the patterns of migration affecting Spain during the crisis. Although the incipient economic recovery has not had a major impact in terms of modifying the migration dynamics triggered by the crisis, the media attention to this issue has substantially decreased without questioning its previous approach to the phenomenon. This article presents extensive data from a wide range of sources covering the period 2008–2016 to extract detailed information about the reality of crisis-era migration flows in Spain, and discusses the extent to which the media treatment of the issue has contributed to a partial and misleading view of the causes and consequences of the new Spanish emigration.