On-Site: The Spatial-Material Significance of Borders at the Intersection of Mobile Practices of Aid and Inhabitation

I analyze the case of humanitarian pro-migrant activists in southern Arizona between 2000 and 2010 to explore how contending groups wield law and legality claims in a dynamic policy environment. Humanitarian activists both evade and engage the law. They appeal to a higher law to elude charges that they are acting illegally, while seeking assurances that their actions are within the law. Law enforcement agents rely on the authority and technical neutrality of the law in redefining humanitarian aid as illegal, while expanding their own claims to carry out humanitarian work. This case study of advocacy on behalf of “illegal” migrants highlights how both activists and those who enforce the law redefine legality in strategic ways.

This study provides a comprehensive investigation of the relationship between Openness and political orientation and activism in Europe. Analyses were conducted on the 4 waves of the European Social Survey, including large representative samples in up to 26 European countries (total N > 175,000). In line with previous studies, a robust, positive relationship between Openness and left-wing political orientation was obtained in Western Europe. However, in Eastern Europe, the relationship between Openness and political orientation was weaker, and reversed in 3 out of 4 waves. Moreover, Openness yielded significant positive relationships with unconventional activism and to a lesser degree with conventional activism. The magnitude of the relationship between Openness and activism was dependent on political orientation and region. Stronger associations between Openness and activism were found for those having a left-wing orientation in Western Europe, whereas in Eastern Europe, Openness was somewhat stronger related to activism for those having a right-wing orientation. In the discussion we elaborate on the role of the geopolitical context in the relationship between Openness and political variables.

Political action has a long history in the health workforce. There are multiple historical examples, from civil disobedience to marches and even sabotage that can be attributed to health workers. Such actions remain a feature of the healthcare community to this day; their status with professional and regulatory bodies is far less clear, however. This has created uncertainty for those undertaking such action, particularly those who are engaged in what could be termed 'contentious' forms of action. This study explored how advocacy and activism were presented in nursing and medical codes of ethics, comparing disciplinary and temporo-spatial differences to understand how such action may be promoted or constrained by codes. The data for this study comes from 217 codes of ethics. Because of the size of the corpus and to facilitate analysis, natural language processing was utilised, which allowed for an automated exploration of the data and for comparisons to be drawn between groups. This was complemented by a manual search and contextualisation of the data. While there were noticeable differences between medical and nursing codes, overall, advocacy, activism and even politics were rarely discussed explicitly in most codes. When such action was spoken about, this was often vague and imprecise with codes speaking of 'political action' and 'advocacy' in general terms. While some codes were far more forthright in what they meant about advocacy or broader political action (i.e., Nursing codes in Denmark, Norway, Canada) more forceful language that spoke in specific terms or in terms of oppositional or specific actions (e.g., civil disobedience or marches) was almost completely avoided. These results are discussed in relation to the broader literature on codes and the normative questions they raise, namely whether such action should be included in codes of ethics at all.

The circumstances and nature of humanitarianism have changed in recent years. The traditional ideals of neutrality, impartiality, and independence have become myth. Rather than being at the margins of conflict, humanitarianism is now e mbedded within contemporary conflict. States use humanitarian norms and actors for their own ends, frequently as a response international pressure intervene in conflicts. Such actions, as well as those on the part of international humanitarian organizations and other nonstate actors, have altered the terrain of humanitarian action. KEYWORDS: armed conflict, humanitarianism, international humanitarian organizations, NGOs, norms. ********** On 7 October 2001, about two hours after the United States started bombing Afghanistan, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld stated that one of the six goals of the military operations was to provide humanitarian relief Afghans suffering truly oppressive living conditions under the Taliban regime. (1) Given the fact that the Bush administration had portrayed the conflict with the Taliban and Al-Qaida as a fight for national, and indeed civilizational, survival, why would Rumsfeld feel it necessary, or even desirable, include the seemingly unrelated issue of humanitarian relief as one of the major goals of the war? What I would like suggest is that global humanitarian action, and discourse over such action, has become such an increasingly visible feature of international relations that it has insinuated itself into a variety of political and operational situations. In fact, humanitarian norms have become so important that they force their way into the general discourse of war and peace. Furthermore, humanitarianism has become an extremely valuable public relations tool. Thus, a U.S. secretary of defense finds it useful use humanitarianism justify waging war in a remote corner of the world (from the perspective of the United States) and, in fact, may have felt normative pressure do so. In this article, I argue that because of the changing nature of conflict, and other broad changes in international relations, we are entering an era of what I call neo-humanitarianism, which is characterized by the embeddedness of humanitarianism within, rather than at the margins of, contemporary conflict. It is distinguished by the explicit manipulation of humanitarianism for political or military gain on the ground in a conflict or as a substitute for political and military action. As a result, international humanitarian organizations (IHOs) (2) have found themselves being manipulated by a wide range of actors in the middle of conflict. At the same time, they have participated in this transformation of humanitarianism. The main questions be addressed in this article are: Why is neutral humanitarianism increasingly becoming a fiction? Why do states turn humanitarian actors? What are the implications of state reliance on humanitarian actors? What are the effects on these organizations and on humanitarian action more broadly? How do IHOs affect the conflict environment? What role do humanitarian norms play in conflict today? One of the main humanitarian actors is the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Traditional theory would suggest that such an organization, being part of an intergovernmental body, would simply carry out the wishes of the larger state-based body and, further, that it could have no independent effects itself. However, Michael Barnett and Martha Finnemore, who look at the creation and role of international governmental organizations (IGOs) from sociological bureaucratic and constructivist perspectives point out that bureaucracies frequently do not do exactly what their originators intended them do. We accept this when discussing, for example, domestic foreign policy bureaucracies but still seem have a blind spot when it comes international bureaucratic actors. …

A substantial literature has studied gender differences in political participation in Western industrialized democracies, but little research has compared the gender gap in political participation between Western and Eastern Europe. Using 2008 European Social Survey data, this chapter presents a systematic description of the gender gap in voting and political activism in 27 Eastern and Western European countries. In line with theories on modernization and the re-traditionalization that occurred in Eastern Europe after the velvet revolution, the results reveal a larger gender gap in political activism, with women being substantially less likely to participate compared to men, in Eastern Europe in comparison to Western Europe. By contrast, Eastern European women are substantially more likely to engage in electoral politics compared to their male counterparts whereas no gender gap in political activism is found among Western European citizens. In both Western and Eastern Europe, gender differences are generally smaller among younger generations. Yet, there is a pattern of each generation of women (and men) participating to a lesser extent in electoral politics compared to the previous generation.

Adding to the literature on non-institutional political action and trust, this article argues that the loss of institutional trust is not only a cause but also an outcome of political activism. Studying the Danish refugee solidarity movement in a mixed-methods research design including survey and qualitative interview data, the article shows that three kinds of activism - political activism, humanitarian activity, and civil disobedience - relate differently to the loss of trust in the institutions of the Parliament, the legal system, and the police. Political activism primarily affects a loss of trust in the Parliament due to low external efficacy and a closed political opportunity structure. Civil disobedience affects a loss of trust in the legal system and the police due to a perceived lack of procedural justice. Humanitarian activity does not affect a loss of institutional trust because it does not imply interaction with the institutions to the same extent as the other kinds of activism. The consequence of losing trust in the political institutions is not an abandonment of democratic values, nor political apathy, but rather a change in civic engagement from a mode of democratically legitimizing participation in the institutions to a mode of contending and questioning the legitimacy of the political institutions. This finding indicates that in turn loss of institutional trust may cause an increase in extra-institutional political action which is consistent with the commonly assumed causality in the literature. This leads to a final integrating argument for conceptualizing activism and loss of institutional trust as reinforcing factors in a process where, in line with the main finding of this study, activism may cause a loss of institutional trust which, in turn, may cause additional activism, as argued in the existing literature.

Research on the global climate movement underlines the importance of learning and diffusion processes for adopting similar master frames and movement tactics. At the same time, participation research suggests regionally different patterns of mobilisation and protest behaviour. Due to different historical socialisation processes, Western and Eastern European citizens show differences in political activity despite some signs of convergence. This article examines the sociodemographic characteristics and attitudes of climate activists from Eastern and Western Europe. Using protest surveys of Fridays for Future participants in 15 Western and Eastern European countries, we show significant differences between them. Western European climate activists tend to have stronger leftist attitudes, while in Eastern Europe apolitical stances are more common along with higher confidence in market solutions to solve environmental problems. Such differences are likely to affect the cohesion and success of the global climate movement.

Reflecting the region’s increasing prominence, Asia is becoming an important focal point where a myriad of ‘new’ mobilities can be unearthed and analysed. From the revival of the ancient Silk Road for freight (Calder, 2012), to the growing complexity of Asian migrations within and beyond the region (Amrith, 2011; Fielding, 2016; Nyiri and Tan, 2016), Asia has captured the imagination of academics, commentators and policymakers alike as a milieu where the rapid circulation of people, goods and ideas has gained considerable momentum. Yet, despite these transformations, the ‘new’ mobilities turn (Cresswell, 2006; Sheller and Urry, 2006) has been less than responsive to the promise of this contextual shift. Having first found currency in Western Europe (especially Britain and Scandinavia) and North America, much of this work remains rooted in the specific interests, agendas and critiques tethered to the politics and practices of these societies (Lin, 2016). Consequently, this research tends to coalesce around particular issues, like risk, security, infrastructural disruptions, sustainability and community interactions in Western multicultural contexts. This mismatch between scholarly interest and the quickened events taking place in Asia calls for a renewed approach that would take the latter more seriously as a field of research. Indeed, while ubiquitously experienced, mobilities do not assume universal forms, but take on new significances when they meet the road ‘elsewhere’ (Cresswell, 2014). Foregrounding Asia as an empirical focus is not to aver that there is something essentialist or phenomenologically bounded about this region. Neither is it to extend mobilities research by simply adding another collection of narratives to its repertoire. Rather, by turning to a neglected context, emplacing mobilities in Asia augurs an epistemological re-orientation that can expose mobilities research to novel sets of questions, dispositions and connections (Steele and Lin, 2014). An enabler of these alternative insights is the heterogeneity of Asia, which opens up new exchanges and traffics taking place both in and beyond Asian spaces. Further nuancing these moves, Asia is a region that has undergone particular histories and developmental experiences on the world stage, including colonial subjugation and, now, a global neoliberal order (Ong,

Since the beginning of the 1990s, European integration has become an increasingly contested issue among political actors, and the long standing „permissive consensus“ has eroded and given way to a new „constraining dissensus“ (Hooghe and Marks 2006). Recent literature in this field suggests that political conflict about European integration is not only a matter of “how much Europe?”, but also (and even more importantly) about the content and the adequate trajectory of the integration process, about the question of “which Europe?”. Consequently, this paper sets out to disentangle the multi-faceted issue of European integration by not only looking at political actors’ position on European integration in general, but at their positions vis-a-vis the various modes of the integration process: a social vs. a neoliberal Europe, further deepening, and enlargement. The paper assesses several rivaling hypotheses about the structure of these European integration orientations: An ideological model postulating that European integration orientations are structured primarily along the traditional basic lines of (domestic) political conflict; a geopolitical model, which assumes that country-specific cultural and socio-economic context conditions are crucial explanatory factors; and a model suggesting that government-opposition dynamics are decisive. For the empirical analysis, the paper relies on original data from a large-scale quantitative media content analysis of six Western European countries (Germany, France, the UK, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and Austria) for the years 2004-06. Contrary to existing studies, this data allows to study positions and salience in very much detail, and not only those of political parties, but of all relevant actors participating in the public debate.

Reframing autonomy in political geography: A feminist geopolitics of autonomous resistance

This study focuses on finding out how activists working on gender, sexuality and sexual rights that use internet as a mean of expression and activism, experience situations of surveillance, censorship and online harassment. Data gathering and analysis were both quantitative and qualitative. The information was gathered with an online survey and with in-depth interviews. The sample includes activists from Latin America and the Caribbean, South, South East and East Asia, Africa, North America and Western Europe, West Asia and Eastern Europe. Our study centres on the discussion of feminist perspectives that problematize the use of the internet, where we maintain that while the internet allows for enhanced visibility and communication among activists, it is also a space for violence such as censorship, discrimination, surveillance and harassment, primarily in the form of harassment, intimidating comments and the blocking of webpages, or the use of software filtering that prevents users from accessing information. We analyse these topics taking into account how gender identity, sexual orientation, regions and work-related issues in sex rights activism are involved in the aforementioned actions taken against activists. In addition, we explore the different actors that, according to activists, are responsible for the violence they suffer. Keywords : activists, internet, surveillance, censorship, online harassment.

Despite a great flourishing of studies about Latin America and Central and Eastern Europe, the issue of party system institutionalization has been widely neglected in Western Europe, where the presence of stable and predictable patterns of interactions among political actors has been generally taken for granted for a long time. Nevertheless, party system institutionalization is not something that can be gained once and for all. This article proposes a theoretical reconceptualization and a new empirical operationalization of party system (de-)institutionalization. Furthermore, it tests the presence of patterns of de-institutionalization in Western Europe from 1945 to (March) 2015 (336 elections in 19 countries) by using an original database of electoral volatility and of its internal components (regeneration and alteration). Data analysis shows that Western Europe is facing great electoral instability and party system regeneration and that many countries have experienced sequences of party system de-institutionalization, especially in the last two decades.

I found these two books in the mail after returning from an assessment of the heartbreaking humanitarian situation in the eastern parts of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The...

The tragedies of the past decade have led to an identity crisis among humanitarians. Respecting traditional principles of neutrality and impartiality and operating procedures based on consent has created as many problems as it has solved. A debate is raging between “classicists,” who believe that humanitarian action can be insulated from politics, and various “political humanitarians,” who are attempting to use politics to improve relief and delivery in war zonesThis essay examines the pros and cons of impartial versus political humanitarianism and differing approaches across a spectrum of actors, including the classicists, led by the International Committee of the Red Cross, who believe that humanitarian action can and should be completely insulated from politics; the “minimalists,” who “aim to do no harm” in delivering relief; the “maximalists,” who have a more ambitious agenda of employing humanitarian action as part of a comprehensive strategy to transform conflict; and the “solidarists,” exemplified by Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors without Borders), who choose sides and abandon neutrality and impartiality as well as reject consent as a prerequisite for intervention. The essay argues that there is no longer any need to ask whether politics and humanitarian action intersect. The real question is how this intersection can be managed to ensure more humanized politics and more effective humanitarian action.

The article deals with the environmental ideology evolution and the Green Movement political development – from groups of activists and ecological non-governmental organizations to influential political parties, at both national and international level (mainly in the Western Europe). The overlook covers the period from early 1970s to present. The mass political Green Movement arose in early 1970s in the Western Europe, USA and Australia in response to vivid ecological threats and the inability of national and international authorities to offer effective solutions. From the very beginning, the Greens declared their commitment to the principles of environmental responsibility, global sustainable development, inclusive democracy, consideration for diversity, personal freedom, gender equality and non-violence. In the political field, the Greens meet two main challenges: formation of political agenda with regard to environmental issues; promotion of effective political decisions and economic mechanisms to protect the environment from an anthropogenic impact. Ecological NGOs, especially large international organizations (like Greenpeace) perform public protest actions against the transnational and state corporations’ economic activities violating the environment (f.e. Arctic oil extraction, radioactive waste storage, gene engineering in agriculture etc.). But beyond the active political lobbying and drawing of wide public support to acute environmental issues, NGOs are not able to involve into political process directly. Within 1970s–1980s (and also later on) ecological political parties were formed in most Western European countries, with a target to participate in official parliamentary elections at local, regional, national and supra-national level. Many of them succeeded and became influencing in their countries. Political methods used by the Greens are thoroughly analyzed in the paper. Special attention is paid to political strategy and tactics of the German ecological party Bündnis 90/Die Grünen, as well as to participation of the European Union Green parties in work of the European Parliament. German Greens count for the most successful ecological party not only in Europe, but also worldwide. Using flexible tactics of parliamentary coalitions, they managed to facilitate a general turn of the German policy toward ecologization (renunciation of the atomic energy development in Germany, conservation of energy and renewable energy sources programs, ecological taxes implementation, prohibition on gene engineering in agriculture etc.). Being a part of the governing coalition, the “Bündnis 90/Die Grünen” were also involved in many other sociopolitical and international issues. Since 1984, many European ecological parties are present in the European Parliament. In 2004, the European Green Party was created to consolidate electoral efforts of the Greens at the European level. Almost all EU ecological parties are also members of the international Global Greens organization. Owing to activities of the Green Movement as a whole, state authorities of many countries (primarily in the Western Europe) adopted environment friendly legislation and state programs. Despite short periods of reverse, the general development of Greens is progressive and prospective.