Shaping labour migration to Italy: the role of labour market institutions

This article critically examines the existing explanations for the initiation and perpetuation of labour migration to Italy between the 1970s and early 2000s and highlights the role of labour market institutions in shaping demand for migrant labour. It posits that the institutions governing the labour market in Italy have contributed to creating demand for migrant workers first by generating a significant amount of low-standard employment and second by producing massive obstacles and disincentives to the labour market participation of the domestic supply of labour.     

Fieldwork and disabled students: discourses of exclusion and inclusion

Disabled students form a significant but under represented minority in higher education in the UK. Participation appears to be particularly low in disciplines that contain a fieldwork component. Fieldwork has been recognized as a barrier to the participation of disabled students. This paper emphasizes a critical perspective on fieldwork, highlighting the way in which fieldcourses as currently conceived, enacted and experienced, can exclude disabled students. It discusses a survey of the experiences of providing learning support to disabled students undertaking fieldwork in geography, earth and environmental science departments in the UK. It also considers the various ways in which the images, spaces, practices and cultures of fieldwork may exclude or marginalize disabled students and the different ways in which fieldwork may be made more inclusive.     

Fieldwork and disabled students: discourses of exclusion and inclusion

Disabled students from a significant but under represented minority in higher education in the UK. Participation appears to be particularly low in disciplines that contain a fieldwork component. Fieldwork has been recognized as a barrier to the participation of disabled students. This paper emphasizes a critical perspective on fieldwork, highlighting the way in which fieldcourses as currently conceived, enacted and experienced, can exclude disabled students. It discusses a survey of the experiences of providing learning support to disabled students undertaking fieldwork in geography, earth and environmental science departments in the UK. It also considers the various ways in which the images, spaces, practices and cultures of fieldwork may exclude or marginalize disabled students and the different ways in which fieldwork may be made more inclusive.     

From ethnic outbidding to ethnic conflict: the institutional bases for Sri Lanka's separatist war1

Abstract. Beginning in the mid‐1950s Sri Lanka's politicians from the majority Sinhalese community resorted to ethnic outbidding as a means to attain power and in doing so systematically marginalised the country's minority Tamils. This article consequently argues that institutional decay, which was produced by the dialectic between majority rule and ethnic outbidding, was what led to Tamil mobilisation and an ethnic conflict that has killed nearly 70,000 people over the past twenty years. It also analyses the influence informal societal pressures exerted on formal state institutions and how this contributed to institutional decay. Evaluating the relations that ensued between social organisations and the Sri Lankan state shows how institutions can prescribe actions and fashion motives even as it will make clear how the island's varied institutions generated a deadly political dynamic that eventually unleashed the ongoing civil war.     

From adversaries to allies: ethnic gerrymandering and ethnic party behaviour in local elections in Macedonia

Constitutional designers often construct political institutions to provide greater autonomy to ethnic minority groups. One tool available to constitutional designers is ‘ethnic gerrymandering’, where the boundaries of local government units are altered to provide greater representation to minority groups. This paper analyses the effects of changes in the ethnic composition of municipalities, which occur as a result of ethnic gerrymandering, on ethnic party behaviour. I compare ethnic party behaviour in local elections in the Republic of Macedonia from 2000 to 2013. I expand on a theory initially proposed by Sherrill Stroschein linking ethnic demography to ethnic party behaviour. I find that changes in the ethnic composition of municipalities influence whether rival ethnic parties engage in outbidding or whether ethnic communities unite behind a single ethnic party. My findings have important implications for those tasked with designing political institutions in ethnically divided societies.     

Tolerant exclusion: expanding constricted narratives of wartime ethnic and civic nationalism1

ABSTRACT. During war, the demarcation ‘enemy alien’– whether on ethnic or civic grounds – can lead to loss of political, social or economic rights. Yet not all minorities are excluded even though they pose problems for civic and ethnic national categories of belonging. This article explores the experiences of an ethno‐religious minority who posed an intriguing dilemma for ethnic and civic categorisation in North America during World War II. The Mennonite experience enables a close examination of the relationship between a minority ethnic (and religious) group and majority concepts of wartime civic and ethnic nationalism. The article supports arguments that both ethnic and civic nationalism produce markers for the exclusion of minority groups during wartime. It reveals that minority groups can unintentionally become part of majority ‘nationalisms’ as the content of what defines the national ideal shifts over time. The experiences also suggest that a minority group can help mobilise symbolic resources that participate in transforming what defines the national ideal.     

A national cautionary tale: Russian women newcomers to Israel portrayed*

This article focuses on portrayals of recent women migrants from the (former) Soviet Union in Israel, as these found expression in jokes and in articles in the press. Analysis of these portrayals suggests that the ubiquitous association of the newcomer women with prostitution served to construct them as morally and socially fragmented. Loosened from the moral bounds of familial and, by implication, national ties, the newcomer women were located beyond the boundary of the Israeli Jewish collective. As the mirror image of the ‘loose’ newcomer women, mother-like, Israeli Jewish women were seen as eminently suited to the task of ‘domesticating’ the newcomers – bringing them in from the street into the familial, and national, home. The discussion suggests that the portrayals of the women as prostitutes served as ‘national cautionary tales’, which not only instructed their audience (newcomers and oldtimers alike) in fundamental tenets of Israeli Jewish national identity, but also warned those who might seek to undermine the ethno-national attachments and loyalties that lie at the heart of the Israeli polity.     

English and French national identity: comparisons and contrasts*

ABSTRACT. The English and the French are both former imperial peoples, and to that extent they share certain features of national identity common to peoples who have had empires. That includes a ‘missionary’ sense of themselves, a feeling that they have, or have had, a purpose in the world wider than the concerns of non‐imperial nations. I argue that nevertheless the English and the French have diverged substantially in their self‐conceptions. This I put down to a differing experience of empire, the sense especially among the French that the British were more successful in their imperial ventures. I also argue that contrasting domestic histories – evolutionary in the English case, revolutionary in that of the French – have also significantly coloured national identities in the two countries. These factors taken together, I argue, have produced a more intense sense of nationhood and a stronger national consciousness among the French than among the English.     

Discourse on migration and ethnic identity: interviews with professionals in Hong Kong

"This paper has revealed a complex set of relationships between migration, place and ethnic identity [in Hong Kong]. On the one hand, ethnic identity is shaped by the places where people have lived, particularly the places where they have spent the early years of their life; on the other [hand], places--being the context for socialization--provide the milieux where people learn who and what they are and how to act...." The authors note that "while legislation clearly regulates levels of immigration, international migration is also self-regulated by potential migrants in relation to interpretations of their ethnic identities and their perceptions of 'other' places."     

From sedition to patriotism: performance, place, and the reinterpretation of American ethnic identity

Between the two World Wars, many Americans changed their attitudes toward ethnic minorities and their place within American civic culture. States such as Wisconsin, with its dense concentration of diverse immigrant groups, came under especially harsh fire during the Great War, only to be celebrated 20 years later as microcosms of a pluralist democracy. Although much has been written about this profound transformation of American ethnic identity from the perspective of «official culture», or those governing élites in power, less is known about the role of immigrant communities themselves in this change. Examination of the intertwining of ideology with the social manifestations of cultural performance in one Wisconsin community provides a way to interpret the elusive experience of ordinary people. In the case of two interwar Swiss American cultural performances, a view of ethnic culture emerges that sought to refashion a more inclusive definition of what it meant to be American. In the process of redefining their own identity, third generation Swiss strategically used such performance-based memory work. Their efforts not merely reflected, but shaped a discourse of ethnicity between the wars that became decreasingly antagonistic and gradually more open to ethnic and cultural difference.     

Reading between the lines: national identity and attitudes to the media in Scotland*

ABSTRACT. The relationship between national identity and how people perceive and consume media is a central but largely untested assumption of studies of nationalism. Using a previously developed classification of identity among English migrants to Scotland, this paper explores associations between how people use the media and how they make sense of their national identity. Compared with Scottish nationals, who tend to adopt a more taken‐for‐granted and uncontentious view of the media, except when they feel that the media presented to them challenge their sense of identity, English migrants find that the agendas of the media in Scotland differ from those they are used to south of the border. Specifically, how they view the media tends to vary according to whether they view themselves as ‘English’, ‘British’ or as ‘becoming Scottish’.     

From the government to the university: Efforts to write national history in the early Republic

ABSTRACT

From the controversies surrounding the National History Bureau in the early Republic to the short-lived National Historiography Office at Peking University, the traditional undertaking of writing dynastic history experienced many crises during the transformative Republican era. The National History Bureau was merged with Peking University as part of Cai Yuanpei’s efforts to separate the field of national historiography from the government and shift it toward universities, as well as his efforts to further reform the university system. In comparing the staff members and aims of the National History Bureau and the National Historiography Office of Peking University, the latter clearly represented an update in terms of concepts and methods. The purpose of the History Bureau’s shift from “dynastic” to “popular” history, which apparently intentionally imitated the German academic system, was to render national historiography and other related research independent of the government, cast off the traditional moral burden of “condemning evildoers and praising the virtuous,” and gradually move forward on the path of specialization for national historiography within the university system. The National Historiography Office’s various editing plans amply demonstrate this tendency. The many winding detours that the “national history” efforts took between dynastic and popular history both expressed the entanglement of new and old ideas within academic circles, and revealed the contemporary struggle between the government and universities.     

Smart muddling through: rethinking UK national strategy beyond Afghanistan*

One of the first steps taken by the newly elected Conservative–Liberal Democrat coalition government was to initiate a review of the national strategy of the United Kingdom. The review culminated in October 2010 in the publication of a revised National Security Strategy as well as a new Strategic Defence and Security Review. With the benefit of over twelve months of hindsight, this article is concerned with the formulation, the implementation and the longer‐term implications of the 2010 strategy review. The first part of the article assesses the review as a national strategic plan. What were the strategic challenges addressed by the review, what decisions, judgements and misjudgements were made, and what was overlooked? In part two the authors turn to operational matters: how far was the UK's post‐review strategic experience (i.e. in Afghanistan and Libya) consistent with the decisions and promises made in 2010? Part three discusses the review as a public statement of national policy, gauging the impression it has made on the national strategic narrative since 2010: how was the review received, what reputation has it acquired and what was/is the quality of the debate surrounding it? Finally, in part four the article asks what the 2010 review and its aftermath reveal of the formulation and implementation of national strategy in the United Kingdom. Was the 2010 review simply the latest in a long series of attempts by government to find a convincing and durable compromise between security challenges and national resources? Or was the review the beginning of something different altogether? Could UK national strategy henceforth be more of an adaptive, iterative process than a compressed period of analysis and reflection followed by the publication of a policy statement with an inevitably brief shelf‐life?     

Raising the dead: war,memory and American national identity*

Abstract. The dead, particularly the war dead, play a central role in the development of nationalism, nowhere more so than in America. America's mid‐nineteenth century Civil War produced a recognisable and influential ‘cult of the dead’, comparable in its construction with similar developments in Europe following World War I. Focused on the figure of the fallen soldier, especially the volunteer soldier, this cult found physical expression in the development of national cemeteries devoted not just to the burial of those who fell in the war but to the idea of America as a nation, in the development of monuments to the dead that, again, reinforced the new national symbolism of the war era, and in the beginnings of Memorial Day, an American sacred ceremony with clear parallels with the later Armistice Day ceremonies in Europe. In all these developments, America preceded the European nations by several decades, making America a valuable case study for the role that the cult of the fallen soldier plays in national development more generally.     

Public and private: national identities in a Scottish Borders community*

Abstract. This paper is an exploration of national identities among sports people in a community in the Scottish Borders. This group experiences a split in their identities. Publicly, they are ascribed an ambiguous national identity by the surrounding national communities. Privately, and among fellow community members, they unambiguously assert national identity. This paper examines the way this split is managed, arguing that the performance of public ambiguity is expected, but is supported by the private performance of nationality. National identity is analysed specifically as a performance, and sport is the context in which this performance takes place.     

Boundary mechanisms and symbolic resources: towards a process‐oriented approach to national identity*

This article argues that the classical distinction between civic and ethnic forms of national identity has proved too schematic to come to terms with the dynamic nature of social and political processes. This has caused difficulties particularly for those historians and social scientists studying particular national movements rather than concentrating on a handful of thinkers and intellectuals or taking a broadly comparative approach. As an alternative to the classical model, I propose to distinguish between, on the one hand, the mechanisms which social actors use as they reconstruct the boundaries of national identity at a particular point in time; and, on the other, the symbolic resources upon which they draw when they reconstruct these boundaries.