The EU's Role in the Fight Against Racism and Xenophobia: Evaluation and Prospects After Amsterdam and Tampere

The Treaty of Amsterdam has strengthened thepossibility of the European Union (EU) adoptingmeasures in the fight against racism and xenophobia.These can be based both on the extendednon-discrimination clause of Article 13 TEC and newArticle 29 TEU relating to common action in thecontext of the area of freedom security and justice.So far EU action has concentrated on public awarenessmeasures, increasing the exchange and the analysis ofinformation on racism and xenophobia, and improvingjudicial cooperation and cross-border training in thisarea. The scope of EU action continues to be limited,however, because of the absence of a `mainstreamingclause', very limited funding and structural deficitsin the decision-making system. Both the new AmsterdamTreaty provisions and the renewed emphasis placed onthe fight against racism and xenophobia by the TampereEuropean Council of October 1999 should be used forextending the EU's role in this area which is ofcrucial importance to its credibility as a politicalcommunity.     

Precontractual Duties of Disclosure: A Comparative and Economic Perspective

If during precontractual negotiations a person deliberately keeps quiet about facts which he knew or should have known were of particular importance to the other party that party may avoid the contract on the ground of deceit if, and only if, a duty of disclosure can be found to exist. What are the conditions that must be satisfied to assume the existence of such a duty of disclosure? The European legal systems merely offer vague formulas with little or no operational power. Can economic theory provide more precise criteria? The general principle should be that a negotiating party must proffer information in his possession which is material to the other party's decision. However, economic analysis suggests that a party should be allowed to withhold material information if the information is “productive” and was costly to obtain unless its acquisition and disclosure were owed under a contract for value. These rules are discussed in the light of a number of cases from various European jurisdictions.     

troubling romance tourism: sex,gender and class inside the Argentinean tango clubs

This article aims to explore and make theoretical sense of a stream of tourism that blurs the boundaries between sex, romance and intimacy, and diffuses the line between affectionate and economic relations. The empirical scope is the expanding international tourism of tango dancing—meaning the increasing number of people from all over the world travelling to Buenos Aires to dance tango and engage with the local tango culture. In contrast to women's sex tourism on the beaches of Jamaica and Ghana, the relationships evolving in the Argentinean dance halls only occasionally lead to sexual affairs and temporary romances, but they are still part of a sensual geography made up of a transnational skin-to-skin intimacy. In addition, the relations between local dancers and tourists rarely result in economic transactions of sex for money; however, they engage with a growing market of intimate dance services and are part of the economic injustices and exotified projections of our post-colonial time. Hence, this article seeks to shed critical light over a broader area of transnational romance. The case of tango evokes new sets of critical queries regarding the trade of bodily intimacy and affection; the consequences of economic inequality in the area of heterosexual romance; and the production of class morals and racialised gender regimes. Through an exploration of these intimate practices, discourses and sets of emotions produced in this particular context, a complex landscape of market forces and close-embrace dancing unfolds.     

Organisierte Zivilgesellschaft im EU-Verfassungsprozess: Partner des Regierens oder Konstituent politischer Ordnung?

A new role has been ascribed to civil society within the EU-constitutional process. It is not only regarded as a partner in governance but also as a constituent of the emerging EU-polity. Civil society appears in this process primarily as the structure of voice that is articulated in relation to EU-governance and that claims to represent European citizens. The article proposes an analytical framework and a methodology of how to analyze civil society in its role as constituency. The research agenda is linked to the intermediary and the representative function of organised civil society as a transmission belt of legitimatory discourse on the EU. In order to reconstruct how potential interests, identities and normative ideas relating to the legitimacy of a EU constitutional order are contested within national politics, our research draws on a survey of German civil society organisations in three sectors: a) consumer interest organisations, b) churches and religious organisations, and c) women and gender equality groups.     

Assumptions in the European Union biofuels policy: frictions with experiences in Germany, Brazil and Mozambique

The biofuel project is an agro-industrial development and politically contested policy process where governments increasingly become global actors. European Union (EU) biofuels policy rests upon arguments about societal benefits of three main kinds - namely, environmental protection (especially greenhouse gas savings), energy security and rural development, especially in the global South. Each argument involves optimistic assumptions about what the putative benefits mean and how they can be fulfilled. After examining those assumptions, we compare them with experiences in three countries - Germany, Brazil and Mozambique - which have various links to each other and to the EU through biofuels. In those case studies, there are fundamental contradictions between EU policy assumptions and practices in the real world, involving frictional encounters among biofuel promoters as well as with people adversely affected. Such contradictions may intensify with the future rise of biofuels and so warrant systematic attention.     

The Combined Effects of Self-Referent Information Processing and Ruminative Responses on Adolescent Depression

Adolescents who develop depression have worse interpersonal and affective experiences and are more likely to develop substance problems and/or suicidal ideation compared to adolescents who do not develop depression. This study examined the combined effects of negative self-referent information processing and rumination (i.e., brooding and reflection) on adolescent depressive symptoms. It was hypothesized that the interaction of negative self-referent information processing and brooding would significantly predict depressive symptoms, while the interaction of negative self-referent information processing and reflection would not predict depressive symptoms. Adolescents (n = 92; 13–15 years; 34.7 % female) participated in a 6-month longitudinal study. Self-report instruments measured depressive symptoms and rumination; a cognitive task measured information processing. Path modelling in Amos 19.0 analyzed the data. The interaction of negative information processing and brooding significantly predicted an increase in depressive symptoms 6 months later. The interaction of negative information processing and reflection did not significantly predict depression, however, the model not meet a priori standards to accept the null hypothesis. Results suggest clinicians working with adolescents at-risk for depression should consider focusing on the reduction of brooding and negative information processing to reduce long-term depressive symptoms.     

Different Trajectories of Depressive Symptoms in Children and Adolescents: Predictors and Differences in Girls and Boys

The development of depressive symptoms in childhood and adolescence can follow different pathways. This study examined heterogeneity in the development of self-reported depressive symptoms and the predictive influence of mothers’ depressive symptoms, the number of life events, and loss events via growth mixture modeling over a four-year period in a large community sample of German children and adolescents (N = 3,902; mean age 11.39 years; 49.6 % female). This procedure was conducted for the total sample as well as for separate samples of girls and boys. Four different classes of trajectories for the total and the girls’ model were identified, but only three classes for the boys. Girls showed higher intercepts and stronger increases in symptoms over time, whereas boys displayed stronger decreases. In the total model, mothers’ depressive symptoms and the number of life events significantly increased the level of depressive symptoms. In the gender models, only mothers’ depressive symptoms showed significant influence on the level of symptoms in girls and boys, whereas for life events this was only true for boys. In every model, the significant predictors discriminated at least between some classes. Loss events showed no significant influence in any model. In sum, there are meaningful differences in the development of depressive symptoms in girls and boys. These results have several implications for prevention and future research.     

Who Am I and Where Am I From? Substitute Residential Home Children’s Insights into Their Lives and Individual Identities

Abstract

Decisions regarding children’s residential care reorganisation are primarily based on an adult’s perspective of children’s wellbeing and care. While these adults tend to be well-intended and base their decisions off relevant evidence, the children’s perspectives ‐ which reflects their actual lived experiences ‐ is almost never considered. However, since children are experts of their own lives, they should have the right to participate and express their opinion: Their point of view could be of great value in developing residential child care. In this article, we provide SOS children’s insights into their own life experiences and individual identities. The data was collected during an ethnographic research in one of Estonia’s SOS Children’s Villages (SOS CV). This article aims to answer to following research questions: 1. What are the main topics in SOS children’s stories when they talk about themselves and their everyday lives in substitute homes? 2. What kind of identity can be determined from children’s stories? 3. How can the subtext within the children’s stories be used to develop a child-centred residential care? In this article, we present and discuss several key-findings. First, it is important to note that there are gaps in the children’s life stories, as they sometimes lack information about important people and events in their lives. Second, this lack of adequate information can damage the children's identities and, in turn, undermine their development. Third, the opportunity to talk about important life events encourages the children to ask questions, as they are interested in obtaining additional information to complete the gaps. Fourth, the children’s stories indicate the shortcomings of substitute homes, related to both culture and communication.     

Women's Voices in Swedish Towns and Cities at the Turn of the Twentieth Century: municipal franchise,polling, eligibility and strategies for universal suffrage

This article examines women's polling and eligibility in the municipal elections in Swedish cities and towns in the decades round the 1900 turn of the century. The aim is to present the patterns of suffrage, voting behaviours and representation that emerge from statistics produced by the women's movement and to discuss how these relate to the women's movement's strategies for women's political citizenship and national suffrage. The results are furthermore analysed in comparison with eighteenth-century conditions, when legally competent women who paid taxes could vote in some elections.     

Unveiling the Forbidden: Same-sex Love as a Motif in Lydia Wahlström’s Writing

This article investigates how the historian and writer Lydia Wahlström (1869–1954) wrote about same-sex passions in a time when homosexuality was forbidden by law and tabooed in literature. There were of course also, during the first decades of the 1900s, many people who lived in same-sex relationships, some of them openly enough that this can still be discerned in the historical material. Lydia Wahlström was among them. She was active in the suffragist movement and one of its most prolific leaders, speakers, and writers. Wahlström was awarded a doctorate in history in 1898 and then became the director of studies at the Åhlinska School for girls in Stockholm. Alongside this, she wrote numerous articles and non-fiction books on a wide range of subjects as well as three romans-à-clef. In these novels, she wrote about the love that dared not speak its name, but she had to draw a veil over the forbidden motif in order to write about it. The interesting thing is that Wahlström did not mask the controversial motif more than that the observant contemporary reader could understand the underlying meaning in the novels and that it becomes even clearer to those who read her autobiography that was published many years later. This article deals with writing about same-sex love in a profoundly homophobic time.