Legally Queer: The Construction of Sexuality in LGBQ Asylum Claims

Using court decisions, interviews with legal actors, and ethnographic observations, this paper analyzes the development of sexual identity classifications for sexual minorities seeking asylum in the United States and argues that the adjudication of such claims works to consolidate and regulate sexual identities but also creates possibilities for recognizing marginalized queer identities. Asylum seekers must prove their sexual identities, and immigration officials must classify claimants as belonging to a protected group. At the inception of queer asylum law in 1990, protected categories were highly circumscribed, but the indeterminacy of the law allowed advocates and asylum seekers to challenge existing categories and stake out new claims based on their sexualities. Against the backdrop of extant criticisms of the asylum process for queers, this paper suggests that the way asylum law has been elaborated, adapted, and interpreted, particularly in approximately the past decade, offers possibilities for making unique identity claims that are not recognized in existing scholarship.     

Pflegearbeit zwischen Fürsorge und Ökonomie. Längsschnittanalyse eines Klassikers der Pflegeausbildung

Residential care work is currently characterized by two rationalization processes: a professionalization of care and a commodification of health care. From both developments may arise conflicting demands and claims for the caregivers themselves, involving a change in the action guiding basis for orientations and the notions of “good care”. Textbooks are a key foundation for the development of the nursing self-image. Based on a longitudinal qualitative and quantitative content analysis of a classic nursing education textbook a transformation process from rational caring orientations to economic orientations can be shown. This is interpreted as a hybridization of the profession rationality of care, as part of the dual nature of care: on the one hand as a concretely useful rational caring work and on the other hand as a cost-benefit calculated production and exploitation process.     

Reviving the Russian empire: the Crimean intervention through a neoclassical realist lens

Although many policy-makers and scholars maintain that international norms have altered the motivations underlying state behaviour, this article argues that states continue to pursue national self-interest, but in ways that remain understudied. While traditional realist assumptions explain a great deal of state behaviour, they have not been widely used to account for important alternative tools of state intervention, such as economic and normative strategies. Focusing on the case of Russia's 2014 intervention in Ukraine, this article offers insights into how, and under what circumstances, these tools are used to accomplish traditional state objectives. Guided by the tenets of neoclassical realism, the article argues that in the case of Russia, military force is no longer the sole, or even the primary, means used to accomplish traditional security goals. Such dynamics have significant theoretical and policy implications for contemporary international relations.     

Between Conciseness and Transparency: Presuppositions in Legislative Texts

Presupposition is the semantic-pragmatic phenomenon whereby a statement contains an implicit precondition that must be taken for granted (presupposed) for that statement to be felicitous. This article discusses the role of presupposition in legislative texts, using examples from Swiss constitutional and administrative law. It illustrates (a) how presuppositions are triggered in these texts and (b) what functions they come to serve, placing special emphasis on their constitutive power. It also demonstrates (c) how legislative drafters can distinguish between “good” presuppositions and “bad” presuppositions by weighing their main advantage, conciseness, against their main flaw, reduced transparency. The present study argues that, if employed carefully, presuppositions can be a useful stylistic means to keep legislative texts free from unnecessary clutter that merely elaborates on the obvious; however, it also suggests that, if applied wrongly, presuppositions can camouflage the duties and obligations placed on the subjects of a law and thus impede its accessibility and its efficient and effective implementation.     

The Development of Gender Role Attitudes During Adolescence: Effects of Sex,Socioeconomic Background,and Cognitive Abilities

Journal of Youth and Adolescence - How gender role attitudes develop during adolescence, and how biological, social, and cognitive factors predict this development, remains a matter of debate. This...     

LNG-Terminals ohne UVP – heiligt der Zweck die Mittel?

Natur und Recht - Infolge des russischen Überfalls auf die Ukraine möchte die Bundesrepublik Deutschland den Import von Energieträgern aus Russland – insbesondere von Erdgas...     

Blockchain Matters—Lex Cryptographia and the Displacement of Legal Symbolics and Imaginaries

Law and Critique - This article focusses on the social and legal implications that blockchain technology brings about, not only due to its ideological framework, but also, and...     

Explaining divergent responses to ethnic exclusion: evidence from two paired comparisons

This article asks why ethnic exclusion from executive-level state power leads to armed conflict in some cases but not in others. To answer this question the author develops a nine-factor model of ethnic conflict, which is used to investigate the diverging conflict trajectories of two pairs of ‘most similar’ ethnic groups. These include the Malinke in Guinea and Northerners in Côte d'Ivoire on the one hand, and Kurds in Syria and Turkey on the other. It is shown that varying responses to ethnic exclusion can mainly be traced back to three factors, which have so far been neglected in the ethnic conflict literature: the selectivity of state violence, the territorial reach of the state and the availability of cross-border sanctuaries. Ethnic rebellion occurs where weak territorial control and indiscriminate repression combine with external sanctuary. Conversely, violent escalation is avoided in a context of strong territorial control, selective repression and no external sanctuary.     

The More Things Change,the More They Stay the Same: the Swedish Local Government Elite between 1985 and 2005

This article examines the development of the main characteristics of the Swedish local political–administrative elite, by analysing repeated surveys, performed in 1985, 1991, 1999 and 2005, of all important leaders in a representative sample of 20 towns and cities. Despite the great changes that have occurred at the local government level, the local government elite retains a surprisingly high degree of homogeneity and stability over time. Although this elite has become increasingly gender equalised and professional, local problems are perceived to have become slightly more complex; meanwhile, the perceived influence and effectiveness of leaders in solving these problems has remained unchanged, probably because the perceived power and autonomy of local government to act effectively has declined somewhat. In contrast, the leaders' political capital (networks, democratic values and global relations) has remained strong and stable.