Exporting EU integrated border management beyond EU borders: modernization and institutional transformation in exchange for more mobility?

The external dimension of European Union (EU) border management cooperation has recently been developed, in particular through the promotion of integrated border management (IBM). The European Commission has been keen to foster IBM, an attempt to reach EU standards in the absence of an EU common border service. Integrated border management is regulated under the Treaty of Lisbon, and the Stockholm Programme calls for its further development. This article analyses and compares the policy instruments promoting IBM standards beyond EU borders, namely the European Agency for Operational Cooperation at the External Border of the Member States of the EU (FRONTEX) (with the signature of Working Arrangements with the border services of third countries) and the activity of the EU Border Assistance Mission to the Republic of Moldova and to Ukraine (EUBAM) at the Ukrainian–Moldovan border. Moreover, it provides an empirical account of IBM activity carried out in the Eastern Partnership and Russia, and explains the reasons underlying the lack of IBM promotion in the southern Mediterranean countries.     

The Spanish model of New Journalism in a European context

This work deals with the study of the evolution and the historical experience of Spanish journalism in the context of decades of transition between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. From the selection of the most relevant cases and the examination of tracking, or not, of models and European patterns of the reference press, singularities and analogies of the historical evolution of the Spanish journalism model may be seen – an evolutionary model fully registered within the framework of Western Europe and in one of its most fruitful phases: the origins and first development of the mass media. Therefore, the following trilogy of reference media is selected covering specified time periods: El Imparcial, Madrid, 1867–1933; La Vanguardia, Barcelona, 1881; and ABC, Madrid, 1903.     

‘On the Perimeter of the Lawful’: Enduring Illegality in the Irish Family Planning Movement, 1972–1985

Between 1935 and 1985, Irish law criminalized the sale and importation of condoms. Activists established illegal markets to challenge the law and alleviate its social consequences. They distributed condoms through postal services, shops, stalls, clinics, and machines. Though they largely operated in the open, their activities attracted little direct punishment from the state, and they were able to build a stable network of medical and commercial family planning services. We use 30 interviews conducted with former activists to explore this history. In doing so, we also examine the limits of ‘illegality’ in describing acts of everyday resistance to law, arguing that the boundaries between legal and illegal, in the discourses and practices of those who sought to challenge the state, were shifting and uncertain. In turn, we revisit ‘illegality’, characterizing it as an assemblage of varying selectively‐performed political practices, shaped by complex choreographies of negotiation between state and non‐state actors.     

The legal form of labour conflicts and their time persistence: an empirical analysis with a large firms’ panel

Using a panel of large firms from Spain, we check the relative time persistence of different types of labour conflicts such as strikes, collective conflicts, lockouts and other conflicts with lost working hours but with no specific legal form. The results show that no legal form labour conflicts do not have long-term persistence (only from quarter to quarter), and the other types of conflicts suffer short and long-term persistence of conflicts at the firm level. Strikes have the higher size of both types of persistence. As short and long term persistence of strikes have almost the same size, these results do not support asymmetric information theories of strike.     

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.