Disqualified Bodies: A Sociolegal Analysis of the Organ Trade in Cairo,Egypt

Legislative and policy interventions in response to the organ trade have centered on the introduction of criminal sanctions in an effort to deter organ sales and/or “trafficking.” Yet, such measures fail to take account of the social and political processes that facilitate the exploitation of individuals in organ markets in different contexts. Informed by empirical data, gathered via a series of in‐depth interviews with Sudanese migrants who have sold a kidney, this paper examines the link between increased urbanization, migration patterns, informalization, and the emergence of organ markets in the Egyptian‐Sudanese context. The findings illustrate how processes of legal marginalization and social exclusion leave people vulnerable to exploitation in organ markets. The prevailing law enforcement response does not capture or respond to the empirical reality. Accordingly, this paper shifts the emphasis away from criminalization toward an analysis of the legal barriers and policy decisions that shape the poor bargaining position of organ sellers. In doing so, it opens up discussion of the organ trade onto wider critiques that disrupt boundaries between formality and informality in labor markets and trouble dominant modes of criminalization.     

Mapping Religious Change in Latin America

Using Latinobarometer survey data, we study the evolution of religious identities among the adult populations of 17 Latin American countries between 1996 and 2013. We find several interesting patterns. First, the current religious landscape is highly dynamic and is becoming increasingly pluralist among a majority of countries. Changes derive not only from the growth of Evangelicals, as commonly assumed, but also from the sharp rise in irreligious individuals. Second, religious change cannot be convincingly explained by important theories such as secularization, religious economies, and anomie. However, the predictions derived from anomie theory seem more useful for understanding Evangelical growth. Finally, our cohort analysis indicates that aggregate religious change largely results from individual‐level change across time—religious conversion and apostasy—rather than from generational replacement. Still, there are interesting variations across countries in that respect.     

The Social Construction of Slovakia as a Donor and its Power Effects

This article shows the power effects of Slovak development cooperation discourses. It focuses on how the Slovak population is constructed as ‘willing to help’, and the effects of this construction on the legitimation of the current regime and on the construction of the Slovak identity as developed. The article further shows the unequal relationship between ‘old’ and ‘new’ donors, how transition experience enables this relationship, and the power effects of the discourse of donor effectiveness in Slovakia.     

The development of a new labour framework during the Second Republic in Spain: the Central Service for job placement and defence against unemployment

The Great Depression affected the Spanish economy, sharply increasing the number of unemployed workers, known as the ‘sin trabajo’. In an effort to address problems with the labour market, the Central Office for Job Placement and Defence against Unemployment was established in 1931 for the purpose, in Niceto Alcalá-Zamora’s words, of heading off ‘regrettable passions and misadventures of a social or political nature’. The ‘reformist challenge’ to the traditional social order would commence that same year, when the PSOE’s Largo Caballero became head of the Ministry of Labour. The staff of the Central Office for Job Placement were aware of proposals by Keynes and other economists regarding this issue, so it can be said that in addition to responding to the urgent social pressure of the moment, the employment policies implemented also sought added legitimacy in the context of theoretical trends that enjoyed consensus at that time.     

Technical Efficiency,Allocative Efficiency and Profitability in Hungarian Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises: A Model with Frontier Functions

By applying a simple model of frontier production functions, this article shows that Hungarian small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) produce far below their feasible level, given their input endowment. The SMEs' under-production is rooted in the allocative inefficiency of small and medium-sized firms: they use labour in excess while they lack a sufficient level of capital assets. As a consequence of large inefficiencies, Hungarian SMEs improve profitability by scaling down production rather than by expansion.     

Free Movement of Third Country Nationals in the European Union? Main Features,Deficiencies and Challenges of the new Mobility Rights in the Area of Freedom,Security and Justice

The adoption of European Community (EC) Directives in the field of legal migration has been accompanied by the introduction of intra-community mobility rights. This new kind of right is characterised by specific features with regard to free movement rights enjoyed by European Union (EU) citizens. Besides, existing mobility rights for third country nationals (TCNs) raise some important problems with regard to their legal configuration and to their relationship with other fields of Community law. After having addressed these issues, it will be argued that the current regulation of mobility rights for TCNs does not fulfil the requirements of systematic coherence, and does no meet the need to grant a level of free movement that encompasses the evolution of harmonisation in the field of the Area of Freedom, Security and Justice.     

From corruption to extortion: Conceptualization of post-communist corruption

Moral outrage and lack of comparison distorts the understanding of the natureand politically determined functions of governmental corruption in post-communist transition. As post-communist societies move towards open market systems and corruption is no longer limited to the public sector, politics is transformed into a potent tool for illegal transactions. The political structureitself creates corrupt practices that become a structural feature of transition societies. This article offers first a critical discussion of both moral theories of corruption and the thesis that posits a link between corruption and democracy deficit in post-communist countries. Subsequently, it sketches a neo-functionalist approach that puts corruption in a specific social context.With respect to East/Central Europe, corruption is presented as a betrayal ofpublic trust that serves specific requirements of an emerging ``extortioniststate.' These requirements relate to the expansion of extortion opportunitiesand their institutionalization into a semblance of a Tule of law system.     

Organized crime and ethnic reputation manipulation

Criminologists often use culture andethnicity to explain crime. In thistradition, organized crime is presentedwith an exotic flavor and the list oftransnational criminal organizations readslike an inventory of ethnic minorities andforeign groups. But the relation betweenethnicity and organized crime isproblematic to say the least. In the courseof our research on several groups active inthe Netherlands (Turkish and Kurdish heroindealers, Yugoslav and Russian-speaking mafiosi, Colombian cocaine dealers andNigerian prostitutes), we have learned toreverse the assumed causal relationship.Ethnic reputation manipulation is essentialto committing crime. This article arguesthat criminal groups and individualsexploit and construct ethnicity in variousways as they engage in criminal activities.Either concealing or emphasizing specificethnic reputations, they are able toaddress any number of audiences (insiders,outsiders, the law).