Criminalising Academia: The Protection of State Information Bill and Academic Freedom

This article assesses the implications of the controversial Protection of State Information Bill for academic freedom in South Africa, specifically for communications, media and journalism studies. The Bill requires the security cluster to classify sensitive documents on national security grounds. Academic teaching and research can help citizens to understand whether the security cluster is acting in the universal interest, rather than the interest of a political elite; it can also be used to assess media performance in reporting on national security matters. Using a critical approach to the concept of national security, I argue that the Bill favours secrecy over openness, and South Africa’s embrace of the human security definition of national security has contributed to the problem. This overemphasis on secrecy is likely to reduce the few spaces that exist in academia for critical, emancipatory work on security issues, which could hobble the sector’s attempts to understand the deeper processes at work in the security cluster. If such enquiry is marginalised, then the higher education system risks becoming an instrument for continuity rather than change in South Africa’s existing, highly unequal power relations: relations that are being maintained increasingly by force.     

a migrant ethic of care? negotiating care and caring among migrant workers in London's low-pay economy

A care deficit is clearly evident in global cities such as London and is attributable to an ageing population, the increased employment of native-born women, prevalent gender ideologies that continue to exempt men from much reproductive work, as well as the failure of the state to provide viable alternatives. However, while it is now acknowledged that migrant women, and to a lesser extent, migrant men, step in to provide care in cities such as London, there is less research on how this shapes the nature, politics and ethics of care. Drawing upon empirical research with low-paid migrant workers employed as domiciliary care providers in London, this paper explores the emergence of a distinct migrant ethic of care that is critically shaped by the caring work that migrant women and men perform.     

Linkages and Connections: A Framework for Research in Information and Communication Technologies, Regional Integration, and Development

This article examines the relationship between information and communication technologies (ICTs) and regional integration as a pathway to socioeconomic development in Africa and South America. Both regions share a colonial legacy often characterized by stronger economic ties to the developed world than within the regions. In recent decades, regional organizations have been involved in efforts to strengthen the infrastructure for ICTs, as well as the enhancement of economic and political integration as strategies to achieve development. However, the literature continues to show distinct research agendas that unwittingly overlook the connections between these areas. This article proposes a theoretical framework combining research on integration, ICTs, and development. It provides a brief analysis of each region and its ICT initiatives, the potential impact on regional integration, and how this relates to development. We suggest possible applications of the framework to identify and research the processes of integration and expected outcomes of development.     

Paid Family Leave,Fathers’ Leave‐Taking,and Leave‐Sharing in Dual‐Earner Households

Using difference‐in‐difference and difference‐in‐difference‐in‐difference designs, we study California's Paid Family Leave (CA‐PFL) program, the first source of government‐provided paid parental leave available to fathers in the Unites States. Relative to the pre‐treatment mean, fathers of infants in California are 46 percent more likely to be on leave when CA‐PFL is available. In households where both parents work, we find suggestive evidence that CA‐PFL increases both father‐only leave‐taking (i.e., father on leave while mother is at work) and joint leave‐taking (i.e., both parents on leave at the same time). Effects are larger for fathers of first‐born children than for fathers of later‐born children.     

Now: prefigurative politics through a north Indian lens

This paper focuses on ‘prefigurative politics’ – embodying in the present one's vision of the future – among young people in north India. In so doing it contributes to wider debates on oppositional politics, temporality, India and youth. Building on recent fieldwork in Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh, we highlight the ubiquity of civic-minded everyday forms of prefigurative politics among a subset of young men and young women. We examine the temporality of this politics, which, like other recent prefigurative action across the world, emphasizes acting in the present. Young people in north India tend to view the future not as a point on the horizon but as the precipitate of their daily activities. By identifying the energetic attempts of young people within and beyond India to engage in social action, we also provide a counterpoint to negative stereotypes of youth circulating in the media and some scholarly circles.     

Abusing Vulnerability? Contemporary Law and Policy Responses to Sex Work in the UK

There has been an exponential rise in use of the term vulnerability across a number of political and policy arenas, including child protection, sexual offences, poverty, development, care for the elderly, patient autonomy, globalisation, war, public health and ecology. Yet despite its increasing deployment, the exact meaning and parameters of this concept remain somewhat elusive. In this article, we explore the interaction of two very different strategies??one in which vulnerability is relied upon by those seeking improved social justice as a mechanism by which to identify, problematise and compel state responses to a universal condition of precarious dependency, and the other in which it is used as a category of neo-liberal governance which legitimates state encroachment whilst constructing ??vulnerable?? individuals as ??risk-managers?? who must behave ??responsibly?? in the face of disadvantage. We suggest that the co-existence of these divergent approaches highlights the fluidity and malleability of the concept of vulnerability. Using sex work as a specific case study, we explore the ways in which vulnerability bears multiple meanings, and has been used in recent times in the furtherance of moralistic and regressive agendas, which collude with, rather than challenge, state power. Without seeking to reject the label or normative import of vulnerability, we call, therefore, for a more circumspect approach to its usage, and a more critical evaluation of recent claims which hail it as a mechanism, preferable to the conventional use of equality paradigms, by which to secure progressive feminist outcomes.