Unmasking Deviance: The Visual Construction of Asylum Seekers and Refugees in English National Newspapers

This paper explores the visual representation of asylum seekers and refugees delineating how English newspaper imagery constructs such groups as deviant and dangerous. A qualitative visual analysis of nine of the major national newspapers demonstrates how mediated images of asylum seekers focus upon three distinct ‘visual scenarios’ in the discovery of deviance, which collectively demonstrate how the social portrayal of the criminal immigrant fuses the otherness of the stranger with the otherness of the deviant. First, the faceless and de-identified stranger enables the construction of a panoply of feared subjects. Second, stigma is implicitly illustrated, deviance obliquely intimated and ‘spoiled identities’ constructed. Third, the mask is removed, the asylum seeker is identified and their deviant status confirmed. Such a process is reinvented, repeated and reworked in news stories, with deviance becoming increasingly engrained and entrenched in the image of the asylum seeker. This paper details how the repetition of specific visual scenarios in newspaper reporting contribute to the construction of ‘noisy’ panics about asylum seekers and asylum seeking. Moreover, it argues that such imagery is key to the construction of asylum as an issue of security, which necessitates a policy approach that is exclusionary in nature.     

The Impact of the Threat of Terrorism on U.S. District Court Decisions During Wartime

Federal courts are key actors in the U.S. government’s fight against terrorism because they adjudicate cases based on the USA PATRIOT Act, and accordingly make national security policy. We examine the extent that the terror threat influences judicial decisions in a dataset of 111 USA PATRIOT Act cases decided in the U.S. District Courts from 2001 through 2013, while controlling for other judicial decision-making variables. The results demonstrate that when a case involves a heightened terror threat, federal judges are more likely to defer to the government. Some key control variables are also significant.     

Examining the Protective Effect of Ethnic Identity on Drug Attitudes and Use Among a Diverse Youth Population

Ethnic identity is an important buffer against drug use among minority youth. However, limited work has examined pathways through which ethnic identity mitigates risk. School-aged youth (N?=?34,708; 52?% female) of diverse backgrounds (i.e., African American (n?=?5333), Asian (n?=?392), Hispanic (n?=?662), Multiracial (n?=?2129), Native American (n?=?474), and White (n?=?25718) in grades 4–12 provided data on ethnic identity, drug attitudes, and drug use. After controlling for gender and grade, higher ethnic identity was associated with lower past month drug use for African American, Hispanic, and Multiracial youth. Conversely, high ethnic identity was associated with increased risk for White youth. An indirect pathway between ethnic identity, drug attitudes, and drug use was also found for African American, Hispanic, and Asian youth. Among White youth the path model was also significant, but in the opposite direction. These findings confirm the importance of ethnic identity for most minority youth. Further research is needed to better understand the association between ethnic identity and drug use for Multiracial and Hispanic youth, best ways to facilitate healthy ethnic identity development for minority youth, and how to moderate the risk of identity development for White youth.     

Judicial Specialization and Ideological Decision Making in the US Courts of Appeals

We investigate the influence of subject matter expertise, opinion specialization, and judicial experience on the role of ideology in decision making in the courts of appeals in a generalized, as opposed to specialized, setting. We find that subject matter experts and opinion specialists are significantly more likely to engage in ideological decision making than their nonspecialist counterparts and that opinion specialization is a particularly potent factor in ideological decision making. Further, increased judicial experience has no effect on the conditional use of ideology. We discuss the potentially wide‐ranging implications of our findings for both theory and policy.     

The secondary transfer of fibres from head hair.

In this study, the effects of fibre type, hair style, time and fibre persistence on the secondary transfer of mask fibres to pillowcases via head hair were studied. Volunteers with a range of hair styles, and masks consisting of different fibre compositions were used in the study. Fibres from the masks were found to transfer from donor subjects to the pillowcases up to 14 nights after the mask had been worn. On average, the number of secondarily transferred fibres found decreased with time; however, this decrease appeared to be more 'linear' in nature, rather than an exponential decay. The greatest degree of secondary transfer occurred with cotton, then acrylic, then wool. In a primary transfer/persistence experiment with a 50% acrylic/50% wool mask, wool was found to persist in the hair more readily than acrylic. The results also showed that the greatest degree of secondary transfer occurred via short straight and long straight hair, with no clear pattern emerging between medium length hair (both straight and curly) and with long curly hair. The implications of these findings for the assessment and interpretation of casework are considered along with data obtained from related studies.     

Economic Development,Foreign Aid and Neoclassical Growth: A Comment

The Democratic Process in a Developing Society. By A. H. Somjee. London: Macmillan, 1979. Pp. vi + 161. £12.

Pastoral Production and Society/Production Pastorale et Société. Edited by Équipe Écologie et Anthropologie des Sociétés Pastorales. Cambridge and Paris: Cambridge University Press/Editions de la Maison des Sciences de l'Homme, 1979. Pp. 493. Hardback £15.50, paperback £5.95.

Rural Women at Work: Strategies for Development in South Asia. By Ruth Dixon. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978. £10.50.

Agricultural Modernisation, Poverty and Inequality: the Distributional Impact of the Green Revolution in Regions of Malaysia and Indonesia. By David S. Gibbons, Rodolphe De Koninck and Ibrahim Hasan. Farnborough, England: Saxon House, 1980. Pp. lx + 225. £12.50.

Agrarian Structures and Agrarian Reform. By S. I. Cohen. Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff, 1979. Pp. xiv + 136. Dfl. 28.50.

The Political Economy of Collectivised Agriculture: A Comparative Study of Communist and Non‐Communist Systems. Edited by Ronald A. Francisco, Betty A. Laird and Roy D. Laird. Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1979. Pp. 251. £13.75.

Agrarian Systems and Rural Development. By Dharam Ghai, Azizur Rahman Khan, Eddy Lee and Samir Radwan. London: Macmillan for the ILO, 1979. Pp. xv + 375. £20.

Food Aid and the Developing World: Four African Case Studies. By Christopher Stevens. London: Croom Helm, 1979. Pp. 224. Hardback £9.95, paperback £4.95.

Population and Economic Development. By Yves Bizien. New York: Praeger, 1979. Pp. vi + 186. £12.25.

Short‐Term Macroeconomic Policy in Latin America. Edited by Jere Behrman and James A. Hanson. Cambridge, Mass.: Ballinger for NBER, 1979.

Inflation and Stabilisation in Latin America. Edited by Rosemary Thorp and Lawrence Whitehead. London: Macmillan, 1979. Pp. xl + 285. £20.     

Preliminary Study on the Effect of Heated Surfaces Upon Bloodstain Pattern Analysis

Bloodstain pattern analysis (BPA) involves the interpretation of distinct blood patterns found at crime scenes following a violent act. In this paper, we explored for the first time the effects of surface temperatures upon blood impacting a horizontal surface (steel) with its implications in BPA explored. Specific surface temperatures were explored over the range 24–250°C which relate to the four major boiling regimes of liquid media; natural convection, nucleate boiling, transition boiling, and film boiling, where a series of blood drops tests were performed at varying impact velocities. Blood was found to separate into its components at temperatures of 50°C+, displayed as temperature induced blood rings, where a single secondary and a series of further inner rings are exhibited. This consequently led to the development of a new constant expressing the decrease in spread factor (D_s/D_o) at the secondary ring.