Risk and protective factors of delinquency that are sensitive to migration and culture

ABSTRACT

Present evidence regarding widely used risk assessment tools suggests that such tools may have inferior predictive validity for offenders with a migration background (MB), especially from Turkey and Arab countries. Based on a thorough literature review, we investigated additional risk and protective factors via a postdictive correlational study design. We assumed that delinquency is induced by discrimination, a conflict of values, norms of honour, a disapproval of sexual self-determination, and antisemitism. In contrast, we expected social support to diminish the risk of criminal behaviour. The sampling took place inside and outside prison, where adult men with an Arab or Turkish MB (n?=?140) filled out a questionnaire. Individual norms of honour (r?=?.27?.41), antisemitism (r?=?.31?.37), and a disapproval of sexual self-determination (r?=?.23?.26) were positively correlated with delinquency. The best predictor was the individual’s perception of friends’ norms of honour (r?=?.34?.56). However, only a few significant correlations were found for a perception of individual discrimination (r?=?.08?.14) and an internal conflict of values (r?=?.11?.15), whereas global discrimination (r?=?.20?.29) clearly emerged as a risk factor for delinquency. Social support by nondelinquent peers could be confirmed as having a protective influence against delinquency (r=?.25?.27). Theoretical and practical implications for risk assessment are discussed.     

Religion in the Workplace: Eweida and Others v United Kingdom

The European Court of Human Rights judgment in Eweida and Others v United Kingdom dealt with the increasingly controversial questions of religious symbols at work and the clash between free conscience and anti‐discrimination norms. In a change of approach, it held that the right to resign could no longer be seen as adequate protection for religious freedom and that workplace norms that restrict religious liberty must satisfy a proportionality test. However, it accorded a wide margin of appreciation to States in reconciling freedom of conscience and freedom from discrimination, ruling that the importance of non‐discrimination could justify a failure to exempt a religious individual from complying with a policy forbidding discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation.     

Looking at Muslims: the visibility of Islam in contemporary French cinema

ABSTRACT

Tarr analyses the representation of Islam in five feature films made since 2006 that centre on the changing identities of Muslims in contemporary France. She locates the films within the context of the rise in Islamophobia in France following 9/11 and anxieties about immigration and terrorism, but also in relation to France's troubled postcolonial history and French republican ideology. In particular, the French notion of laïcité (secularism) has given rise to active hostility to any public expression of religious or cultural difference, particularly on the part of Muslims. Cinematic representations of Muslims, and particularly of the children of migrants from the Maghreb, have, therefore, since the mid-1980s, been treated with caution in order not to alienate mainstream Franco-French audiences and to facilitate the second generation's integration into French society. However, the five feature films addressed here—two mainstream popular comedies, Mauvaise foi/Bad Faith (2006) and L'Italien/The Italian (2010), and three independent, low budget, auteur-led, realist films, Dans la vie/Two Ladies (2008), Dernier maquis (2008) and La Désintégration/Disintegration (2012)—offer new narratives that challenge fears of Islam by foregrounding the protagonists' negotiation of their Muslim identities in a French context and, by implication, argue for the integration of Islam as a legitimate referent of French identity. However, their construction of Islam does not extend to positive representations of young veiled women, and they thus still risk confirming the oppressive majority view that certain practices associated with Islam, such as the wearing of the veil, are incompatible with the secularism of the French Republic.