Showing papers in "Social Inclusion in 2019"

Humanitarianism as Politics: Civil Support Initiatives for Migrants in Milan’s Hub

Abstract: Humanitarianism is increasingly used to address migration in Europe, from search and rescue operations at sea to reception on land. Scholars often interpret humanitarianism as a means for states to depoliticize migration and prioritize securitization. In this article, I analyze perspectives on humanitarianism among civil society volunteers and workers who, alongside institutions, deliver humanitarian support to migrants. Civil initiatives in this field by independent volunteers, non-governmental organizations and charities have surged, thus shifting tasks traditionally under the responsibility of the state to non-state actors. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in and around the premises of the Hub (a center providing humanitarian assistance to migrants transiting in the Italian city of Milan), I show that engaging in such civil support initiatives raises the levels of political awareness and activism among ordinary citizens. Through insight into the daily actions, motivations and aims of the men and women operating at the Hub, I show that their involvement in humanitarian assistance marks the beginning of a personal journey in which they gradually conceive what they do as far from being in support of depoliticizing state securitization policies and rather as politically loaded.

Solidarity Cities and Cosmopolitanism from Below: Barcelona as a Refugee City

Abstract: The so-called ‘refugee crisis’ provoked a wave of solidarity movements across Europe. These movements contrasted with attitudes of rejection against refugees from almost all EU member states and a lack of coordinated and satisfactory response from the EU as an institution. The growth of the solidarity movement entails backlash of nationalized identities, while the resistance of the member states to accept refugees represents the failure of the cosmopolitan view attached to the EU. In the article, we argue that the European solidarity movement shapes a new kind of cosmopolitanism: cosmopolitanism from below, which fosters an inclusionary universalism, which is both critical and conflictual. The urban scale thus becomes the place to locally articulate inclusive communities where solidarity bonds and coexistence prevail before national borders and cosmopolitan imaginaries about welcoming, human rights, and the universal political community are enhanced. We use the case of Barcelona to provide a concrete example of intersections between civil society and a municipal government. We relate this discussion to ongoing debates about ‘sanctuary cities’ and solidarity cities and discuss how urban solidarities can have a transformative role at the city level. Furthermore, we discuss how practices on the scale of the city are up-scaled and used to forge trans-local solidarities and city networks.

Challenging the nation-state from within: the emergence of transmunicipal solidarity in the course of the EU refugee controversy

Abstract: In the context of the so-called refugee crisis, political disputes about solidarity become a central issue with member states applying competing concepts. At the same time, European cities use transnational networks to implement a new form of solidarity among municipalities via city diplomacy (Acuto, Morissette, & Tsouros, 2017). Analyzing the deadlock between member states and the emerging activities of cities, we scrutinize the limits of existing approaches to political solidarity (e.g., Agustin & Jorgensen, 2019; Knodt, Tews, & Piefer, 2014; Sangiovanni, 2013) to explain this phenomenon. Based on expert interviews and document analysis from a study on transnational municipal networks, we identify an emerging concept of solidarity that challenges the nation states as core providers of solidarity from within: transmunicipal solidarity focuses on joint action of local governments to scale out and scale up.

Syrian Refugee Entrepreneurship in Turkey: Integration and the Use of Immigrant Capital in the Informal Economy

Abstract: This study focuses on small-scale entrepreneurship of Syrian refugees in Turkey. It analyses in a Bourdieusian way how they utilize cultural, social, economic and symbolic capital, and reveals their start-up and sustainability strategies. It is based on 24 in-depth interviews with Syrian small entrepreneurs who started up new businesses after 2011, in Istanbul, Gaziantep, and Hatay. It describes the entrepreneurial opportunity structure and the significance of the informal economy and analyses Syrians’ utilization of various forms of capital in small entrepreneurship and relations to integration. The main finding indicates that the informal economy—as the main site of such entrepreneurship—eases the start-up process but limits on-going business and integration.

‘From Sanctuary to Welcoming Cities’: Negotiating the Social Inclusion of Undocumented Migrants in Liège, Belgium

Abstract: Cities have become important sites of sanctuary for migrants with a precarious legal status. While many national governments in Europe have adopted restrictive immigration policies, urban governments have undertaken measures to safeguard undocumented residents’ rights. Existing scholarship on sanctuary cities has mostly focused on how cities’ stance against federal immigration policies can be interpreted as urban citizenship. What is largely missing in these debates, however, is a better insight into the role that local civil society actors play in pushing for sanctuary and negotiating the terms of social in- and exclusion. In this article, we rely on a qualitative study of the 2017 Sanctuary City campaign in Liege, Belgium, to argue that power relations between (and among) civil society actors and city officials help to explain why the meaning and inclusiveness of ‘sanctuary’ shifted over time. Initially, radical activists were able to politicize the issue by demanding the social inclusion of the ‘sans-papiers’ through grassroots mobilization. However, the cooptation of the campaign by immigrant rights organizations led to the adoption of a motion wherein the local government depicted the city as a ‘welcoming’ instead of a ‘sanctuary’ city. By showing how immigrant rights professionals sidelined radical activists during the campaign, we highlight the risk of depoliticization when civil society actors decide to cooperate with local governments to extend immigrant rights. We also underline the potential representational gap that emerges when those who are directly implicated, namely undocumented migrants, are not actively involved in campaigns that aim to improve their inclusion.

Making Volunteering with Refugees Governable: The Contested Role of ‘Civil Society’ in the German Welcome Culture

Abstract: This article investigates the manifold attempts of governmental actors to make volunteering with refugees governable in light of the so-called German Welcome Culture in 2015. Driven by the notion of a need to interfere, authorities introduced numerous programmes and efforts seeking to order, coordinate, influence, and enhance volunteering with refugees in order to make it more “effective”. This investigation will suggest reading these interventions as attempts to (re)gain control and power over the conduct of committed citizens, making them complicit in the governance of asylum seekers, while co-opting potentially dissenting behaviour amongst them. Yet, it will also reveal how certain volunteers proved to contest their ascribed roles and responsibilities, demanding space for disagreement. Volunteering with refugees thus also constantly exceeded and defied governmental control and interference—and thereby remained, at least to a certain extent, ungovernable.

Expanding Access to Higher Education and Its (Limited) Consequences for Social Inclusion: The Brazilian Experience

Abstract: This article adopts an historical institutionalism perspective (Pierson, 2011; Pierson & Skocpol, 2002; Thelen, 2014). Its main goal is to understand the lasting dynamics and path dependency processes that constrain the impact of expanding access to higher education (HE) in changing the pattern of social inequalities in a given country. To do this, the article will explore two different aspects of the impact of education on social inclusion: the dynamics associated with production and distribution of portable skills and competences, and the dynamics associated with social stratification. The study follows the experience of Brazilian HE over the last 15 years. In this period, the country experienced a rapid expansion, coming from a total undergraduate enrolment of 2.7 million in 2000 up to nine million in 2016. Nevertheless, the design of this expansion assumed a very conservative pattern. Following a well-ingrained domestic pattern, most of this expansion was absorbed by the country’s huge demand-driven private sector, and into less than half a dozen very traditional types of bachelor programs. Thus, the article argues that by failing to diversify, and by preserving old institutional hierarchies, expanding access to HE in Brazil has rendered less impact than one would expect on the country’s social inequalities.

Taking Care of the Other: Visions of a Caring Integration in Female Refugee Support Work

Abstract: European societies have been significantly challenged recently by intensifying debates around migration and integration. In Germany, the controversy around refugees has put the question of how to negotiate cultural differences back on the agenda. This article argues that female refugee support work volunteers in Germany have developed a compelling approach to handling cultural diversity in emotional, social and cultural practices. Building on interviews with female volunteers, this article demonstrates that research subjects’ interaction with refugees is guided by an ‘ethics of care’. Care ethics is characterised by the recognition of interdependence and relationships, attention to the context and to the particular, blurring of the public and the private and orientation towards the needs of others. The research subjects show that care values, such as responsibility and attentiveness, can serve as an alternative framework to integration and to the negotiation of diversity in everyday encounters. Data from quantitative studies on refugee support work in Germany then reveals that female volunteers politicise their care work to respond to racism and right-wing xenophobia. Ultimately, a political ethics of care has the potential to structurally, politically and emotionally change established understandings of integration and the relations between host societies and immigrants.

Excluded from the Good Life? An Ethical Approach to Conceptions of Active Ageing

Abstract: Contesting previous deficit-oriented models of ageing by focusing on the resources and potential of older people, concepts of ‘successful’, ‘productive’, and ‘active ageing’ permeate social policy discourses and agendas in ageing societies. They not only represent descriptive categories capturing the changing realities of later phases of life, but also involve positive visions and prescriptive claims regarding old age. However, the evaluative and normative content of these visions and claims is hardly ever explicitly acknowledged, let alone theoretically discussed and justified. Therefore, such conceptions of ‘ageing well’ have been criticised for promoting biased policies that privilege or simply impose particular practices and lifestyles. This appears problematic as it can obstruct or even effectively foreclose equal chances of leading a good life at old age. Against this backdrop, our contribution aims to discuss current conceptions of active ageing from an ethical point of view. Starting from an analysis of policy discourses and their critique, we first examine the moral implications of prominent conceptions of active ageing, focusing on evaluative and normative premises. By employing philosophical approaches, we analyse these premises in light of a eudemonistic ethics of good life at old age and detect fixations, shortcomings, and blind spots. Finally, we discuss consequences for ethically informed active ageing research and policies, highlighting the interrelations between one-sided ideals of ageing well and social discrimination and exclusion.

Digital clients: an example of people production in social work

Abstract: Digital work has become part of social workers’ daily routines in countries where digitalisation is on the agenda. As a consequence, documentation practices are expanding—on paper as well as digitally—and include reporting detailed statistics about client interventions, filling in digital forms, and fulfilling local and national performance measurement goals. Standardised formulas with tick-box answers, fed into databases by the social worker, are examples of this digital endeavour. One example is the Addiction Severity Index (ASI), a questionnaire for estimating the client´s life situation and needs, used in addiction care. However, difficulties in making the social workers use the results of the standardised questionnaire in social work investigations, where a storied form is traditionally preferred, have made social workers reluctant to use them. To encourage the use of the ASI, a software program was invented to transform the binary data from the questionnaire into a computerised storyline, imitating the storied form. The aim of this article is to describe the context of the digital storyline production and to analyse the particular type of “digital client” it creates. Possible consequences are discussed, such as the absent (or distorted) client voice. It is proposed that documentation systems, in whatever form, should not be regarded as neutral carriers of information, but must be analysed for how clients are (re)presented and, ultimately, how social work is consctructed.

Solidarity as a Field of Political Contention: Insights from Local Reception Realities

Abstract: Reception realities are marked by contentious moves and a strong degree of politicization. Claims made for the inclusion/exclusion of asylum seekers frame the activities of local solidarity initiatives. Based on a set of data on newly opened accommodation centres since 2015 as well as comparative case studies conducted in small-scale and predominantly rural municipalities in Austria, this research explores the characteristics and manifestations of solidarity in the context of asylum. Results show how claims of solidarity are under pressure as they are deeply rooted in exclusionary frames of deservingness on the one hand and federal disputes about the adequate management of asylum systems on the other.

The European Refugee Controversy: Civil Solidarity, Cultural Imaginaries and Political Change

Abstract: In the summer of 2015, a wave of solidarity washed across the European continent as 1.3 million refugees arrived. While many recent studies have explored how ‘ordinary’ men and women, NGOs and governments momentarily reacted to the arrival of refugees, this issue examines whether the arrival of refugees and the subsequent rise of civil support initiatives has also resulted in more structural cultural and political changes. The contributions assembled in this issue all delve into the enduring implications of Europe’s ‘long summer of migration’. They address four sites of change: the dynamics between civil and state actors involved in refugee protection; the gradual politicisation of individual volunteers and organisations; the reproduction of pre-existing cultural imaginaries; and the potential of cities to foster new forms of solidarity.

Buddy Schemes between Refugees and Volunteers in Germany: Transformative Potential in an Unequal Relationship?

Abstract: Since 2016, many German citizens have participated in so-called ‘buddy schemes’ in which volunteers provide personalised support to refugees to help them build their new lives in Germany. These relationships are characterised by ethnic, gender, and age differences between the two parties. This article looks at buddy schemes from the perspective of both volunteers and refugees and investigates whether their relationships open up spaces for transformative citizenship practices, or rather reinforce exclusionary discourses. Drawing on feminist theories of care, the article describes how volunteers and refugees attach meaning to their activities and roles in the relationship. On the one hand, values attached to caring relationships, such as emotional closeness, trust, and respect, contribute to migrants’ heightened sense of self-esteem and autonomy and foster volunteers’ sense of responsibility for fighting against inequality. On the other hand, both parties enter into particular logics of care that potentially reinforce power hierarchies between them. These ambiguous dynamics influence the possibility of transformative citizenship practices on both sides. While some volunteers and refugees develop and take a critical stance on restrictive migration policies in their relationships with others, others reinforce their exclusionist viewpoints on who deserves to be helped and by whom.

Internalised Ageism and Self-Exclusion: Does Feeling Old and Health Pessimism Make Individuals Want to Retire Early?

Abstract: An important current policy goal in many Western countries is for individuals to extend their working lives. Ageism has been identified as a possible threat to achieving this; furthermore, the ways in which ageism may affect this policy goal may have been underestimated. It has been claimed previously that ageism can be seen as discrimination against one’s future self and that a lifetime of internalising age stereotypes makes older people themselves believe the age stereotypes. The current article uses the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing to assess the degree to which internalised ageism is related to one’s preferred retirement age. For internalised ageism, assessments are made about the degree to which individuals consider themselves to be old; they agree that their age prevents them from undertaking activities; they are pessimistic about their own future health and that being old comes with deteriorating health more generally. Results show that health pessimism especially affects one’s preferred retirement age negatively, even when controlling for current health and other factors, and mainly for middle-educated women. Implications are discussed.

Hostile Immigration Policy and the Limits of Sanctuary as Resistance: Counter-Conduct as Constructive Critique

Abstract: This article addresses the tense relationship between national and municipal approaches to the inclusion and exclusion of irregular immigrant ‘non-citizens.’ While national policies in the UK have created hostility for irregular migrants, municipallevel cities of sanctuary offer a ‘warm welcome’ which has been extolled as immanently progressive in the face of hostility. This article assesses the extent to which city-based sanctuary movements in the UK provide effective resistance to the national policies of hostility. Building on critiques of the City of Sanctuary (CoS) movement, effective resistance is redefined using a Foucauldian counter-conduct approach. Through applying a counter-conduct lens to a document analysis of the CoS newsletter archive and online resources, the article shows it is not easy to dismiss sanctuary as ineffective resistance, as some earlier critiques have argued. Rather, CoS is demonstrated as both effective and ineffective counter-conduct due to its uneven approach to the various discourses within the hostile environment.

The Interplay between Education, Skills, and Job Quality

Abstract: Compared to general education, vocational education and training (VET) has been shown to facilitate young people’s integration into the labour market. At the same time, research suggests that VET falls short in teaching basic skills and, in turn, may lead to less adaptability to labour market changes and long-term disadvantages in individual labour market outcomes. To better understand the relationships between education, skills, and labour market outcomes, we examine to what extent job quality differs between individuals with general education and those with VET with respect to different skill levels. Furthermore, we investigate whether the relationship between type of qualification and job quality differs by skills. We broaden past research by considering four indicators of job quality: earnings, job security, job autonomy, and the match between respondents’ abilities and job demands. Using data from the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies for Germany, we demonstrate that individuals with academic education and advanced VET score higher in job quality concerning earnings and job autonomy as compared to individuals with initial VET. Comparing the two higher qualified groups, academic education is more associated with higher earnings than advanced VET, while the level of job autonomy is similar. Regarding the abilities-demands match, both groups score lower than individuals with initial VET. Moreover, higher literacy skills are associated with higher levels of job quality irrespective of the type and level of formal qualification. Finally, we find no empirical evidence that skills compensate for or reinforce disadvantages in job quality derived from professional qualifications.

School Market in Quebec and the Reproduction of Social Inequalities in Higher Education

Abstract: The purpose of this article is to show that the stratification of the Quebec high school market contributes to the reproduction of social inequalities in higher education. The results obtained from a sample (N = 2,677) of a cohort of students born in 1984 and observed up to the age of 22 show that the influence of social origin operates in large part via mediation of the type of institution attended. Students enrolled in private or public institutions offering enriched programs (in mathematics, science or languages) are significantly more likely to access college and university education than their peers who attended a public institution offering only regular programs. Additional analyses reveal that the probability of attending a private or public institution offering enriched programs is strongly correlated with the social origin of the student. The influence of the education market itself operates through differences in performance and educational aspirations that characterize students in three types of establishments.

The Drake Music Project Northern Ireland: Providing Access to Music Technology for Individuals with Unique Abilities

Abstract: Across the UK, a growing number of charity organisations, social enterprises, academic researchers and individuals have developed music technology-based music workshops and projects utilising Accessible Music Technology to address the issue of access to music-making for people with disabilities. In this article, I discuss my ethnographic study of The Drake Music Project Northern Ireland (DMNI), a charity which provides music workshop opportunities in inclusive ensembles at the community level. My methodology of participant observation involved undergoing the training necessary to become an access music tutor for DMNI, attending workshops and conducting interviews with people throughout the organisation. Key findings were that consumer music technology devices that were not designed to be accessible to a wide spectrum of users could be made accessible through adapting them with other devices or different sensor interfaces more suitable for people with unique abilities and specific needs. Throughout my study I found that it was not in the design of music technology devices that made them accessible. Rather, meaningful music-making emerged through the interrelations between the access music tutors, workshop participants and the music technology interfaces in the workshop environment. The broader implications of DMNI music-making activities and effects on social inclusion are also discussed.

Open House? Class-Specific Career Opportunities within German Universities

Abstract: This article focuses on the development of class-specific inequalities within German universities. Based on data on the social origin of students, doctoral students, and professors in the long-term cross-section, the article views the empirically observable dynamic of social closure of higher education since the 1950s. The focus of interest is on the level of the professorship. Data show that career conditions for underprivileged groups have deteriorated again. This finding is discussed in the context of social closure theories. The article argues that closure theories consider social closure processes primarily as intentional patterns of action, aimed at a strategic monopolization of participation, and securing social power. Such an analytical approach means that unintended closure processes remain understudied. Our conclusion is that concealed modes of reproduction of social structures ought to be examined and theorized more intensively due to their importance for the elimination of social inequality within universities.

What Are the Structural Barriers to Planning for Later Life? A Scoping Review of the Literature

Abstract: The rollback of the welfare state in countries such as the UK, coupled with population ageing, have contributed to a situation in which responsibility for older people’s wellbeing is placed more heavily on the individual. This is exemplified in the notion in popular and policy circles that individuals should plan for later life, particularly financially, and a corresponding concern that they are not doing so sufficiently. This scoping review aimed to identify the structural factors which inhibit people from engaging in planning for later life. For the purposes of this review, we characterised planning as the range of activities people deliberately pursue with the aim of achieving desired outcomes in later life. This entails a future, as opposed to shorter-term, goal orientation. In study selection, we focused on planning at mid-life (aged 40 to 60). Systematic and snowball searching identified 2,317 studies, of which 36 were included in the final qualitative synthesis. The review found that limited financial resources were a key barrier to planning. Related factors included: living in rented accommodation, informal caring, and working part-time. A lack of support from employers, industry, regulators and landlords was also found to inhibit planning. The findings suggest that certain sections of society are effectively excluded from planning. This is particularly problematic if popular and policy discourse comes to blame individuals for failing to plan. The review also provides a critical perspective on planning, highlighting a tendency in the literature towards individualistic and productivist interpretations of the concept.

Refugee Students’ Access to Three European Universities: An Ethnographic Study

Abstract: The article presents an ethnographic fieldwork carried out at three universities in Switzerland, Germany, and France, and analyses how access to higher education for refugees was addressed in the three cases, how and which institutional change and activities were initiated, and by which actors. The article argues that the topic cannot be addressed in isolation but has to consider four intersecting areas: the personal biography and migratory history of the students, the asylum system, the educational system, and the funding situation. For the refugee students, the challenge is that these areas need to be taken into account simultaneously, but what is more challenging is that they are not well in tune with one another. Solutions need to take this complex—and place-specific—situation into account.

Documenting practices in human service organisations through information systems: when the quest for visibility ends in darkness

Abstract: Over the last decades, transparency about what is happening on the ground has become a hot topic in the field of social work. Despite the importance of transparent social work, the realisation in practice is far from obvious. In order to create this transparency for a diversity of stakeholders, legislative bodies and human services increasingly rely on so-called electronic information systems. However, it remains unclear how frontline managers make use of these systems to create this transparent practice and which obstacles they might experience in doing so. Based on empirical data collected in Flanders (Belgium), we argue that frontline managers as well as practitioners, when confronted with the obligation to use electronic information systems to document their actions and create transparency, find a beneficial element in using such a tool for the purpose of transparency. However, we also argue that the idea of transparency through documenting human service practices by the use of electronic information systems seems to be nuanced, as tension or ambiguity occurs in daily practice. Our data show that many aspects of the service user’s life story become invisible because the documenting system is unable to grasp its complexity, resulting in a lack of transparency.

Welfare State Supporter and Civil Society Activist: Church of Sweden in the “Refugee Crisis” 2015

Abstract: 2015 was a year of an unprecedented migration from the Middle East to Europe. Sweden received almost 163,000 asylum applications. The civil society, including the former state church, took a notable responsibility. In a situation where the welfare systems are increasingly strained, and both the welfare state and the majority church are re-regulated, we ask: how does this play out in local contexts? This article reports from a theological action research project within a local parish in the Church of Sweden. The Lutheran church has from year 2000 changed its role to an independent faith denomination. The study describes the situation when the local authority and the parish together run temporary accommodation for young asylum seekers. For the local authority the choice of the church as a collaborator was a strategic choice. For the local parish this occasion verified the mission of the church. Confirming its former role as carrier of societal beliefs and values the Church of Sweden supports the welfare state. At the same time, the church explores a new role as a faith denomination and part of the civil society.

The Imagination of the Other in a (Post-) Sectarian Society: Asylum Seekers and Refugees in the Divided City of Belfast

Abstract: This article explores the ways a salient sectarian community division in Northern Ireland frames the imagination of newcomers and the experiences of asylum seekers and refugees. We examine the dominant ethno-national Christian communities and how their actions define the social-spatial landscape and challenges of manoeuvring everyday life in Northern Ireland as an ‘Other’. We argue all newcomers are impacted to some degree by sectarianism in Northern Ireland, adding a further complexified layer to the everyday and institutional racism so prevalent in different parts of the UK and elsewhere. First, we discuss the triangle of nation, gender and ethnicity in the context of Northern Ireland. We do so in order to problematise that in a society where two adversarial communities exist the ‘Other’ is positioned differently to other more cohesive national societies. This complication impacts how the Other is imagined as the persistence of binary communities shapes the way local civil society engages vulnerable newcomers, e.g. in the instance of our research, asylum seekers and refugees. This is followed by an examination of the situation of asylum seekers and refugees in Northern Ireland. We do so by contextualising the historical situation of newcomers and the socio-spatial landscape of the city of Belfast. In tandem with this, we discuss the role of NGO’s and civil support organisations in Belfast and contrast these views with the experiences of asylum seekers and refugees. This article is based on original empirical material from a study conducted in 2016 on the experiences of asylum seekers and refugees with living in Northern Ireland.

Social Exclusion and Mental Wellbeing in Older Romanians

Abstract: In Romania, inequalities in health and wellbeing between younger and older Romanians are substantial, and an important reason for inequalities may be the higher risk of social exclusion among older adults. After the fall of Communism in 1989, the many transformations in economic structures and welfare regimes contributed to enhanced levels of social exclusion, in particular among the older generations. Social exclusion is a multidimensional problem with substantial effects on the mental wellbeing of people. The present study examines age differences in mental wellbeing and evaluates to what extent differences can be explained by age and social exclusion, while controlling for a number of potential confounders. Data are from the fourth wave (2016) of the European Quality of Life Survey. Data for Romania include 1004 people aged between 18 and 85 years old, of which 726 are included in the analyses (only complete cases). In the study sample, 259 were 55 years or older. Mental wellbeing was measured with The World Health Organization Wellbeing Index (WHO-5 scale), and social exclusion was measured in four domains: social relations, material resources, services and the neighbourhood. The results show that older Romanians have a statistically significant lower mental wellbeing than younger generations in Romania. All domains of social exclusion were associated with lower levels of mental wellbeing. These effects remained statistically significant after controlling for partner status, chronic diseases, having children, and level of education. Improving mental wellbeing of older Romanians would greatly benefit from increasing social inclusion by means of social transfers provided by the government, improving the neighbourhood and access to services, and providing facilities to enhance the social network.

Eroding Rights, Crafting Solidarity?: Shifting Dynamics in the State–Civil Society Nexus in Flanders and Brussels

Abstract: In 2015, hundreds of new civil initiatives emerged to provide stopgap help to refugees arriving in Belgium. This article zooms out from this moment of solidarity and explores the broader socio-political conditions that allowed these initiatives to emerge and, in some cases, solidify into professional service-providers or powerful political actors. The article focuses on two case studies, one in Flanders and one in Brussels. In Flanders, the Hospitable Network brings together local civil initiatives which have drawn upon the networks and skills of senior citizens with considerable experience in civic associations, NGOs and social movements. While these initiatives have partly filled the gaps that were created by a series of neoliberal reforms in Flanders’ citizenship regime, the same neoliberal outlook has prevented these initiatives from being institutionalised. In Brussels, the Citizen Platform for the Support of Refugees has mobilised largely among the city’s super-diverse population. The Platform’s development has been shaped by Brussels’ continuing attractiveness to immigrants, as well as by the city’s complex governance structure, which has provided it with both material support and increasing opposition. As a result, the Platform has become a highly visible political actor offering partly professionalised support to refugees.

“It’s That Kind of Place Here”: Solidarity, Place-Making and Civil Society Response to the 2015 Refugee Crisis in Wales, UK

Abstract: This article examines the different ways in which local civil society has responded to refugees and asylum seekers in different parts of Wales in the wake of the recent “refugee crisis”. While the events of summer 2015 have generated a considerable amount of scholarly attention, including empirical accounts that look into local community responses to refugees and asylum seekers, the current research has tended to overlook the significance of place and the varied impact of “refugee crisis” across localities; this article aims to fill this gap in the existing research. It draws on findings from qualitative research carried out between 2017 and 2018 with refugee-supporting organisations based in three different locations in Wales. Taking a comparative look at these organisations, the article sheds light on the intensity and variation of civil society response in each of these localities, showing how this is informed by and closely interweaved with processes of place-making and place-framing, contributing to the reshaping of civil society networks and population profiles in these local areas. In conclusion, the article argues that humanitarian responses to “refugee crisis” can be understood not only as instances of hospitality and solidarity but also as practices of locality production.

Responding to the Dutch asylum crisis: Implications for collaborative work between civil society and governmental organizations

Abstract: Between 2015 and 2016, the Netherlands experienced an asylum crisis, one that directly affected organizations working with refugee reception and integration. Besides civil society and governmental organizations (CSOs and GOs), the period also saw individuals coming together to form emergent CSOs (ECSOs). We look at these organizations to determine whether their work brought a shift in Dutch practice and policy with regarding refugee reception. We also examine literature concerning crisis governance, participatory spaces, and refugee reception governance. Finally, we investigate the views and experiences of individuals from selected organizations that played an active role during the crisis. This explorative research is based upon a qualitative and interpretative study involving panel discussions, document analysis, and interviews, conducted between 2017 and 2018 by the Refugee Academy at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. We show circumstantial and interorganizational elements that enhanced and hampered interactions between ECSOs, CSOs, and GOs. We argue that shared activities during the crisis may have created possibilities for durable forms of collaboration and for the inclusion of civil society groups in a debate mostly dominated by GOs.

The Achievement of University Access: Conversion Factors, Capabilities and Choices

Abstract: In the light both of persistent inequality of education opportunities for low income families and a wide equality gap in South Africa, this article explores students’ university access by applying Amartya Sen’s capability approach to a South African case study. The article demonstrates empirically that access is more than an individual project, shaped both by objective conditions and subjective biographies, that is by general conversion factors and a person’s social and personal options. Key conversion factors are material (income) and social (family, community, school, information), which produce an interlocking system of opportunity. Access thus requires more than formal opportunity to enable social mobility for all. The case study comprises qualitative interviews with diverse students in their first year at one university; illustrative narratives are selected to show different pathways, conversion factors and choices. Agency and self-efficacy emerge as especially important for making choices but also for constructing a higher education pathway where none exists for that person and her family. The article suggests that higher education has the potential to advance social mobility provided that it moves in the direction of expanding the capabilities of all students to have the choice of higher education.

Putting Tasks to the Test: The Case of Germany

Abstract: The demand for skills has changed throughout recent decades, favouring high-skilled workers that perform abstract, problem-solving tasks. At the same time, research shows that occupation-specific skills are beneficial for labour market success. This article explores (1) how education, workplace characteristics and occupations shape job task requirements, (2) how within-occupation job task content relates to wages, and (3) whether these relationships vary across types of tasks due to their presumably varying degrees of occupational specificity. Using worker-level data from Germany from 2011–2012 the article shows that a large part of task content is determined by occupations, but that task requirements also differ systematically within occupations with workers’ educational levels and workplace characteristics. Moreover, differences in task usage within occupations are robust predictors of wage differences between workers. Finally, the results suggest that non-routine manual tasks have a higher occupational specificity than abstract and routine tasks, and that manually skilled workers can generate positive returns on their skills in their specific fields of activity.