Suchergebnisse

This project aims to advance knowledge in labour politics by focusing on the 'contentious politics of unemployment', i.e. the relationship between political-institutional approaches to employment policy and political conflicts mobilized by collective actors over unemployment in the public domain. It is designed to study this topic at national, international comparative, and transnational levels. Key objectives: (a) to generate new data for longitudinal and comparative analyses of ideological and policy positions of actors and their relationships; (b) to study the potential for political participation 'from below' by citizens campaigning for the rights of the unemployed and the conditions under which existing organizational networks and policy dialogues transform in a more open civil policy deliberation; (c) to provide knowledge based on rigorous cross-national and EU-level transnational analyses allowing grounded empirical statements about the Europeanisation of the field.

As the contested and negotiated character of the employment policy field expresses itself both in the public domain and in the institutional arenas for interest mediation, we look both at political claim-making in the public space and policy deliberation within the polity. The overall design of the research has three main components: (a) mapping the field of political contention, i.e. structures of ideological cleavages and actor relationships, both longitudinally and cross-nationally; (b) examining the nature of the multi-organizational field extending from the core policy domain to the public domain, i.e. networks and channels of political influence between core policy actors and intermediary organizations, on one side, and civil society organizations and social movements representing the unemployed (including the unemployed themselves), on the other; (c) studying the nature of the interaction between EU-level and national policy-making by determining the channels of political influence that exist between European institutions and national policy domains in the field (the multi-level governance of employment policy), and examining to what extent there are new political opportunities for the bottom-up empowerment of citizens' organizations as a consequence of the emergence of the EU as an actor in the field. The body of data generated allows for longitudinal (1990-2002) and comparative (F, D, I, S, CH, UK) analyses of ideological and policy positions of actors and their relationships in the unemployment issue-field. It is backed up by interviews conducted with key actors in the organizational field (policy actors, employers associations, trade unions, parties, NGOs and social movements) both at the national and transnational levels. Innovative attempts are made to establish networks and links between the involved actors as part of our dissemination strategy, which is key to the overall success of the project.

Objectives: This project aims to advance knowledge in labour politics by focusing on the 'contentious politics of unemployment', i.e. the relationship between political institutional approaches to employment policy and political conflicts mobilized by collective actors over unemployment in the public domain. It is designed to study this topic at national, international comparative, and transnational levels. Key objectives: (a) to generate new data for longitudinal and comparative analyses of ideological and policy positions of actors and their relationships; (b) to study the potential for political participation 'from below' by citizens campaigning for the rights of the unemployed and the conditions under which existing organizational networks and policy dialogues transform in a more open civil policy deliberation; (c) to provide knowledge based on rigorous cross-national and EU-level transnational analyses allowing grounded empirical statements about the Europeanisation of the field. Description: As the contested and negotiated character of the employment policy field expresses itself both in the public domain and in the institutional arenas for interest mediation, we look both at political claim-making in the public space and policy deliberation within the polity. The overall design of the research has three main components: (a) mapping the field of political contention, i.e. structures of ideological cleavages and actor relationships, both longitudinally and cross-nationally; (b) examining the nature of the multi-organizational field extending from the core policy domain to the public domain, i.e. networks and channels of political influence between core policy actors and intermediary organizations, on one side, and civil society organizations and social movements representing the unemployed (including the unemployed themselves), on the other; (c) studying the nature of the interaction between EU-level and national policy-making by determining the channels of political influence that exist between European institutions and national policy domains in the field (the multi-level governance of employment policy), and examining to what extent there are new political opportunities for the bottom-up empowerment of citizens' organizations as a consequence of the emergence of the EU as an actor in the field. A new body of data will be generated which will allow for longitudinal (1990-2002) and comparative (F, D, I, S, CH, UK) analyses of ideological and policy positions of actors and their relationships in the unemployment issue-field. This will be backed up by interviews conducted with key actors in the organizational field (policy actors, employers associations, trade unions, parties, NGOs and social movements) both at the national and transnational levels. Innovative attempts will be made to establish networks and links between the involved actors as part of our dissemination strategy, which is key to the overall success of the project. Expected results: The success of this project is underwritten by the European dimension. It will provide the first systematic cross-national comparison of the contentious politics of unemployment based on original data. It has a high potential for being a path-breaking academic study in labour politics, social movements and Europe. The findings will feedback understanding to the actors in the field, facilitated through our dissemination strategy which aims to contribute toward a constructive social dialogue.

This article engages with the systematic analysis of two main dimensions of political opportunities—namely institutional opportunities and discursive opportunities—so as to appraise their impact upon claim-making in the field of Islam. We account for cross- national variations of claim-making in terms of (1) visibility of Muslims, (2) use of collective action, and (3) salience of cultural issues in five main European countries of Muslim settlement, that is Britain, France, Germany, the Netherlands, and Switzerland. In addition, we propose a conceptual framework that tackles a crucial conundrum that one finds in the scholarly literature, namely the variable (dis)alignment that may exist between the restrictive/expansionist stance of institutions and policy actors on the one hand and the restrictive/expansionist discursive position that prevails in the public domain on the other hand. Emphasis is also placed on a number of unexpected findings, such as the divergence between Britain and the Netherlands, the not so universalistic approach of French republicanism, and the small steps that Germany has walked towards multiculturalism.

This article engages with the systematic analysis of two main dimensions of political opportunities-namely institutional opportunities and discursive opportunities-so as to appraise their impact upon claim-making in the field of Islam. We account for cross-national variations of claim-making in terms of (1) visibility of Muslims, (2) use of collective action, and (3) salience of cultural issues in five main European countries of Muslim settlement, that is Britain, France, Germany, the Netherlands, and Switzerland. In addition, we propose a conceptual framework that tackles a crucial conundrum that one finds in the scholarly literature, namely the variable (dis)alignment that may exist between the restrictive/expansionist stance of institutions and policy actors on the one hand and the restrictive/expansionist discursive position that prevails in the public domain on the other hand. Emphasis is also placed on a number of unexpected findings, such as the divergence between Britain and the Netherlands, the not so universalistic approach of French republicanism, and the small steps that Germany has walked towards multiculturalism.

Uses a collective action perspective on political contention to examine forms of collective claims making, including forms of protest (demonstrations/political violence), & intervention (public statements/political decisions). The theoretical approaches of political opportunity & framing are applied to an analysis of contention over migration/ethnic relations by delineating crossnational differences in national identity/citizenship & migrant inclusion. Data on the key characteristics of claims making related to migration/ethnic relations in GB & Germany are presented as background for a detailed analysis of claims making in the subfield of antiracism/antidiscrimination. On the surface, this subfield appeared equally important in GB & Germany; however, it was shown that demands that focused on structural forms of racism & discrimination were dominant in GB, but almost totally absent in Germany, where most immigrants are noncitizens subjected to various types of legally sanctioned unequal treatment. In contrast, the British multicultural mode of incorporation supports many forms of claims making & provides resources for the mobilization of minority groups. 6 Tables, 47 References. J. Lindroth

Uses a collective action perspective on political contention to examine forms of collective claims making, including forms of protest (demonstrations/political violence), & intervention (public statements/political decisions). The theoretical approaches of political opportunity & framing are applied to an analysis of contention over migration/ethnic relations by delineating crossnational differences in national identity/citizenship & migrant inclusion. Data on the key characteristics of claims making related to migration/ethnic relations in GB & Germany are presented as background for a detailed analysis of claims making in the subfield of antiracism/antidiscrimination. On the surface, this subfield appeared equally important in GB & Germany; however, it was shown that demands that focused on structural forms of racism & discrimination were dominant in GB, but almost totally absent in Germany, where most immigrants are noncitizens subjected to various types of legally sanctioned unequal treatment. In contrast, the British multicultural mode of incorporation supports many forms of claims making & provides resources for the mobilization of minority groups. 6 Tables, 47 References. J. Lindroth

AbstractEpigenetics has generated excitement over its potential to inform health disparities research by capturing the molecular signatures of social experiences. This paper highlights the concerns implied by these expectations of epigenetics research and discusses the possible ramifications of 'molecularizing' the forms of social suffering currently examined in epigenetics studies. Researchers working with oppressed populations—particularly racially marginalized groups—should further anticipate how their results might be interpreted to avoid fueling prejudiced claims of biological essentialism. Introducing the concept of 'epigenetic citizenship,' this paper considers the ways environmentally responsive methylation cues may be used in direct-to-consumer testing, healthcare, and biopolitical interactions. The conclusion addresses the future of social epigenetics research and the utility of an epigenetic citizenship framework.

How, and as what are immigrant minorities incorporated into the political process? A set of prominent approaches focus on the political opportunity structure immigrants encounter. Though promising in many aspects, political opportunity approaches fail to consider the internal heterogeneity of both immigrant populations and opportunity structures. This is partly a result of taking ethnic groups rather than political entrepreneurs as the unit of analysis and of not disaggregating the political context properly. This paper shows how Russian-Jewish immigrant political entrepreneurs in New York City used very di�fferent strategies of ethnic mobilization, each emphasizing a di�fferent ethnic cleavage: one was making claims in the name of Russians, the other downplaying the Russianness and highlighting the Jewish identity dimension. Both strategies had good chances at success thus illustrating that political opportunity structures may encourage di�fferent claims making strategies at the same time. Ethno-political entrepreneurs navigate complex and di�fferentiated political landscapes that are ex-ante only partially transparent.

In The Politics of the Internet: Political Claims-making in Cyberspace and Its Effect on Modern Political Activism, R.J. Maratea explores the practices of political claims-making and activism in online environments in order to better understand whether Internet technology is presently a democratizing force that changes the balance of social power in the public sphere and empowers average citizens to be more active participants in mass media

This very exploratory paper looks at the impact of dominant conceptions of citizenship on the mobilization by the extreme right. Previous work has focused on the role of structural cleavages and institutional opportunities such as party alignments and competition. While we acknowledge the importance of such factors, here we focus on citizenship rights as the relevant political opportunity structure for the mobilization of the contemporary the extreme right in Western Europe. We start from the idea that one of the main characteristics of the contemporary extreme right is its framing of the notion of national identity in ethnocultural terms (as opposed to a framing in civic-territorial terms) and examine a number of hypotheses regarding four aspects of the mobilization by the extreme right: (1) its presence in the public space, (2) its organizational forms, (3) its forms of actions, and (4) the content of its claims. We illustrate our hypotheses through a comparison of public claim-making by extreme right actors in France and Switzerland, two countries that differ substantially in the models of citizenship.

PurposeIn this article focused upon the UK context, the authors sought to better understand how political elites shaped public debate to reinforce rather than challenge the hostile policy environment for those seeking asylum.Design/methodology/approachThe authors undertook a political claims analysis (Koopmans and Statham, 1999) focussing on a venue that has been pivotal in shaping the discourse around asylum issues in the UK, namely the print media. This work adopts a theoretical frame informed by the work of Stuart Hall to uncover the extent to which debates on asylum during the key period of the refugee emergency in Europe were shaped by political elites.FindingsThe study's findings reveal the extent to which political elites acted as "primary definers" of the "crisis" and utilised that position to cast those arriving in Europe as a threat to be managed.Originality/valueThis research offers a contemporary worked example of political claims analysis in a topical subject area that colleagues across disciplines and contexts may find informative for their own research agendas.

Starting from a critique of protest event & political discourse analysis, an extended methodological approach is proposed that has the quantitative rigor of event analysis but also retrieves the qualitative discursive elements of claims. This political claims approach extends the sample of contentious actions beyond protest event analysis by coding institutional & civil society actors. This redefines the research object to acts of political claims making in a multiorganizational field. Examples from a research project on mobilization about migration & ethnic relations in GB & Germany demonstrate the analytic gains that are possible with this approach. By situating protest & social movements, not just theoretically, but also methodologically, in a wider context of political claims making, protest can be placed within multiorganizational fields & linked to political opportunities & outcomes. Such an integrated approach is also sensitive to discursive messages. 5 Tables, 33 References. Adapted from the source document.