Post conflict identities: Affiliations and practices of Somali asylum seeker children

Following the 2005 terrorist attacks on London it emerged that two of the terrorists charged with the failed 21st July bombings had arrived in the UK as child asylum seekers from East Africa. In the ensuing debate the bombers were represented as children that turned to hate. In this discussion paper we draw on empirical work conducted in Sheffield, UK to explore the identities, affiliations and practices of Somali asylum seeker children, aged 11–18.1 ¹This ongoing research is being funded by the ESRC Identities and Social Action Programme (Award No: RES-148-025-0028) View all notes Specifically, we argue that the actions of the two bombers need to be framed within a broader understanding of the complex processes of social identification that take place as young people negotiate what it means to be a child in the context of different ‘age’, gender and racialised expectations and against a backdrop of discrimination and social exclusion in different relational geographical spaces. We begin by outlining the context of UK immigration policy, before reflecting on dominant constructions of both childhood and asylum seekers. We then discuss how these may shape young refugee and asylum seekers' own narratives of the self and the role that their mobility and specific sites of identity formation may play in this process. In doing so, we contribute to children's geographies by addressing a group – refugee and asylum seekers – that has been neglected within the sub-discipline.     

Confronting institutional boundaries to public participation: a case of the Danish energy sector

Although public participation has become an integrated part of planning practice, experience and documents literature still document difficulties in implementing participatory planning processes that provide arenas where citizens can truly influence planning. Based on a combination of institutional theory and action research methodology, this paper focuses on the institutional boundaries to introducing participatory practices by exploring openings and closures to the adoption of participatory planning processes by the Danish energy transmission system operator (TSO). Public participation in the Danish energy sector is characterized by complex institutional arrangements. The study shows how institutional boundaries are perceived by planners and how openings and closures can be identified and developed in an action research approach. The study reveals that citizen involvement has the potential to influence existing power structures but is highly challenged by an instrumentialised and sector-divided planning.     

The Use of Small‐Angle X‐Ray Diffraction Studies for the Analysis of Structural Features in Archaeological Samples

X‐ray diffraction or scattering analysis provides a powerful non‐destructive technique capable of providing important information about the state of archaeological samples in the nanometer length scale. Small‐angle diffraction facilities are usually found at synchrotron sources, although the potential of a laboratory source is also described. Specific examples of analysis using X‐ray diffraction of historic parchment, archaeological bone, a Central Mexico style pictograph and microdiffraction of calcified tissues are used to show the scope and versatility of the technique. Diffraction data is capable of giving fundamental structural information as well as quantifying the remodelling of structures influenced by environmental factors.     

Sebbersund: isotopes and mobility in an 11th−12th c. AD Danish churchyard

The important Viking Age and early Medieval site of Sebbersund in northern Jutland, Denmark, contains a large churchyard from the 11th–12th century AD. Sebbersund was an important trading center in this period and the location of one of the first churches in Denmark, perhaps an entry point for the introduction of Christianity to the country. Excavations have exposed almost 500 graves of an estimated 700 individuals in the cemetery. Here we report on the analysis of strontium isotopes in human tooth enamel from burials in the cemetery as a signal of place of birth. Some 19 samples have been measured and at least three non-local outliers identified. Futhermore, six archaeological fauna samples had been analyzed in order to define the local bioavailable strontium isotope baseline range and these values were compared to the more general bioavailable baseline range values for Denmark. The burials are evaluated in light of the available archaeological, chronological, anthropological, and isotopic information.     

Denmark and the first world war

This article analyses general opinions of Scandinavia held by British policymakers in the post‐war period, before going on to examine a particular instance of Britain's attempts to copy ‘Scandinavian policies’ in the early 1960s. Given the generally positive views held as concerned Scandinavian economic and social policies at the time, and the influence those countries wielded in international economic and social policy networks, such attempts were only to be expected. During the 1959–1964 Parliament, the British Conservative Government attempted to adopt housing policies from Scandinavia, in particular housing co‐operatives subsidized by the state, but organized by owners and tenants. They failed to entrench such new ideas in the British policy system, for four reasons. The first was the very strong institutional position of municipal housing and owner‐occupation; the second was the taxation system, which proved impervious to change; the third was the obviously politically‐motivated attempt to change British behaviour in a very short time‐frame; and the fourth, crucially, was the lack of knowledge as to how Scandinavian housing markets actually worked. This failed experiment demonstrates the allure, but also the superficiality and some of the dangers, of direct policy transfer between nations.