Discourses Of Exclusion Research Articles

‘I wouldn't wish her on my worst enemy’: Discursive representation of women managers in a collaborative hypertext dictionary in Turkey

Currently regarded as ‘new publicity’, collaborative hypertext dictionaries owe their popularity to the assumption that truth might have various perspectives rather than a single explanation. Evaluated within the scope of Web 2.0 to refer to participatory culture and social networking, these online dictionaries have a noteworthy role in constructing discourses of inclusion and/or exclusion. Informed by the theory of Discourse and Ideology, this article critically examines discourse representations of women managers in an online collaborative dictionary launched in Turkey, ‘Ekşi Sözlük’. Critical discourse analysis was applied to entries whose title included kadın yönetici (women managers) to identify discursive strategies deployed in the portrayal of women managers. The findings unveil traces of online misogyny that is systematically perpetuated via a pejorative and marginalizing language that overwhelms positive depictions. Emerging themes include the perception of the presence of women managers as a threat and of their inadequacy in management on the basis of traditional gender stereotypes.

Metastatic malignant melanoma of the larynx

Currently regarded as ‘new publicity’, collaborative hypertext dictionaries owe their popularity to the assumption that truth might have various perspectives rather than a single explanation. Evaluated within the scope of Web 2.0 to refer to participatory culture and social networking, these online dictionaries have a noteworthy role in constructing discourses of inclusion and/or exclusion. Informed by the theory of Discourse and Ideology, this article critically examines discourse representations of women managers in an online collaborative dictionary launched in Turkey, ‘Ekşi Sözlük’. Critical discourse analysis was applied to entries whose title included kadın yönetici (women managers) to identify discursive strategies deployed in the portrayal of women managers. The findings unveil traces of online misogyny that is systematically perpetuated via a pejorative and marginalizing language that overwhelms positive depictions. Emerging themes include the perception of the presence of women managers as a threat and of their inadequacy in management on the basis of traditional gender stereotypes.

Gender(ed) violence in neo-authoritarian times

As conservative and neo-authoritarian tendencies in Europe move across political and geo-cultural borders, we bear witness to a renewed attack on gender and sexual rights. This is a challenge to democratic citizenship that demands that we think anew the pervasive and multifaceted violence that structures the social organisation of gendered and sexual lives. How to think about the relationship between the hindering of sexual citizenship and current debates about sexual and gender-based violence in a historical present marked by a growing and revived conservative reaction? How to re-articulate a critical analysis of gender and sexual based violence that also accounts for the violence of gender? How to orient the condemnation of gender and sexual based violence towards a deepening of democracy? Taking Spain as a point of departure, this article examines recent legislative developments and argues for an expansive, albeit differentiated, approach to gender-based violence, in line with citizenship rights. Articulated in intersectional terms, this approach, it is contended, should challenge the intensification of racism and other exclusionary discourses that are gaining traction in Europe, and recognise that violence against those who experience gender and sexuality beyond normative heterosexuality also amounts to gendered forms of violence. It is along these lines that it would be possible to think of a feminist critique of violence in pursuit of a more democratic and just society.

Political Elite Discourses and Majority Members’ Beliefs About the Prevalence of Ethnic Discrimination in Europe

AbstractThis article investigates European majority members’ perceptions of the prevalence of ethnic discrimination. We use individual-level data from the Eurobarometer ‘Discrimination in the EU’ series, covering 26 European countries and six years (2006, 2008, 2009, 2012, 2015, and 2019), enriched with contextual information on political elite discourses from the Comparative Manifesto Project. We shed light on significant and substantive cross-country and cross-temporal variations in these perceptions. Next, we explore how these variations are related to national political elite discourses by employing multilevel models. By disentangling between and within country variations, we find that particularly changes in political elite discourses within countries over time are associated with variations in majority members’ beliefs about the prevalence of ethnic discrimination in their society. Exclusive discourses, which emphasize nationalistic ideas and demarcate strong boundaries between ethnic groups, are associated with majority members thinking that ethnic discrimination is less widespread in their country. The reverse holds for inclusive discourses: when political elites underline the importance of cultural diversity and multiculturalism, majorities perceive more ethnic discrimination. While these discourses are only related to within country variations, our descriptive and multilevel results show that the national context matters for majorities’ perceptions of the prevalence of ethnic discrimination.

Inclusive education in the discourse of hypocrisy

The article presents the problems of assumptions of inclusive education. Some of the assumptions appear hypocritical, where declarations of inclusion are accompanied by an exclusionary discourse. These discourses are analyzed in the light of the development of the theory of special education and in the actions of educational officials and politicians. Particular attention was paid to the Education for All project. The author points out that this project, despite valuable declarations, contains in the executive part a traditional, clinical image of person with disabilities. This image is not conductive to the inclusion of children in joint education.

Refugee Women’s Volunteering as Resistance Practices to Micro‐Aggressions and Social Exclusion in the UK

In an increasingly hostile environment for refugees in the UK and the “everyday bordering” that creates exclusionary effects for refugees and migrants, this article examines how refugee women of diverse backgrounds enact resistance practices through volunteering to challenge everyday microaggressions and social exclusion. We draw on in‐depth qualitative research with members of a support group for refugee women established by a local charity in England. We find that the support group not only allows the refugee women to foster a strong sense of solidarity in the face of everyday microaggressions; it also facilitates the women’s volunteering activities in the local community. Applying the concept of “differentiated embedding,” we argue that such activities enable these women to build wider social connections and skills for future employment and, crucially, develop emotional and linguistic resources to critique dominant exclusionary discourses and policies towards refugees through the idea of “contribution” and “giving back.” In so doing, we contribute to renewed interest in the concept of integration to highlight the agency of refugee women in creating differentiated embedding in a hostile environment.

“Keep them out to save our inside:” discourses on immigration by the Spanish far right

AbstractVox is a far‐right, Spanish political party that has steadily grown to become the third main party in the national congress. Immigration is a major presence in Vox's political agenda. Through Critical Discourse Analysis, we analyze the party's public speeches and Twitter communications on immigration in the last 3 years, from the beginning of the COVID‐19 pandemic in 2020 to the Ukraine‐Russia war in 2022. These contexts have provided a fertile ground for Vox's concerns with the protection of national borders, the criminalization of African and irregular immigrants, and the Spanish Government's ineffectiveness to protect the Spaniards' homes. Vox's main discursive strategies entail constructions of migrants and migration based on dichotomous binaries, culture clash, exclusionary discourses of domopolitics, and fears of imminent social and cultural changes. These constructions are based on the unproblematized belief on essential and unchangeable values that forge the identity of the homeland, which is implicitly threatened by immigrants. Against the migratory invasion, Vox constitutes itself as the ethical protector of the Spanish society and nation, “out of care for the insiders and not out of hatred for outsiders.”

Sonic registers of belonging: British mobile young people in UK higher education

ABSTRACT Drawing on interviews with British passport holders who moved to the United Kingdom to start University, this paper explores slang and accent as sonic spatial identities. The paper analyses the inclusions and exclusions in belonging as articulated by British mobile young people through their sonic spatial identities. In doing so, the paper extends wider conceptual debates on embodied belonging by arguing for a need to further explore the sonic as a register of belonging. It argues that research on sonic spatial identities needs to be more attuned to mobility in order to explore and challenge wider discourses of exclusion. The article concludes by offering suggestions as to how to develop research in belonging and identity on an everyday sonic register.

Visualising Heritage: a critical discourse analysis of place, race, and nationhood along the Erie Canal

ABSTRACT The Erie Canal forever changed the American environment, both materially and ideologically. Since 1825, the iconic New York waterway’s primary use has evolved from transportation to recreation. Today, leisure along the Erie Canal celebrates the “Empire State” throughout a Rust Belt still reeling from the racialised environmental injustices of industrial development and decline. This study collectively examines a wide sample of Erie Canal representations along its historic corridor to see their most recurring pattern: the dominant Erie Canal discourse. Through critical discourse analysis, this research qualitatively examines what is most often included and excluded in Erie Canal communication. The findings reveal a nostalgic, imposed gaze underpinned by the powerful ideologies of place, race, and nationhood that sustain inequality. We argue that in order for Erie Canal heritage spaces to initiate a democratisation process, these reproducing discourses of exclusion must be taken seriously.

The Paulician Heresy: Contradiction of National and Universal

Historical events always become the object of reinterpretation. The history of the Paulician heresy, which was widespread in medieval Armenia and Byzantium, is no exception. In this article, I will address the attempt to reinterpret the history of the Paulicians from a national-conservative position made by Karlen Mirumian. Analyzing his account of events and comparing it with the Soviet interpretation and a more detailed examination of the Paulician doctrine leads to interesting implications for understanding the specificity of the national discourse. The paper will compare the approaches to the interpretation of the role of the Paulicians in history given by Karlen Mirumyan and the Soviet author Hrant Bartikyan. Mirumyan's approach raises quite a few questions regarding methodology, especially his retrospective application of the framework of nationalist ideas to the feudal era. Besides, a more detailed study of the Paulician doctrine, conducted by Nina Garsoïan, shows us that the doctrine described by Mirumyan repeats the anti-Paulician propaganda of Byzantine authors, which has little in common with reality. All this allows us to move on to the peculiarities of Armenian nationalist ideology, which, when confronted with the Paulician phenomenon, reveals a surprising unity with the imperial discourse it is meant to oppose. That's why I turn to the ideas of the contemporary French philosopher Alain Badiou, who proposed the concept of three discourses - the discourse of homogenization, the discourse of exclusion, and the discourse of universalism. My assumption is that the Byzantine imperial discourse corresponds to the first, the nationalist discourse to the second, and the Paulician doctrine to the third, the universal discourse, against which the other two discourses merge.

Towards a critical transformative approach to inclusive intercultural education

ABSTRACT Education has often acted as a social microcosm that reflects the growing levels of religious and cultural diversity in Australia, with educators facing the daily task of responding pedagogically and interculturally to the challenges this evolving context brings. This paper engages critically with intercultural initiatives and policies and their role in fostering inclusivity and cross-cultural understanding in education practice across Australia. It explores the discourses, policies, and curricula developments that attempt to address growing levels of diversity both within and beyond educational settings. The paper argues that policy statements and educational policies alone are not sufficient to ensure broader uptake of an intercultural pedagogic ethos. Rather, such initiatives need to be augmented by broader institutional leadership, adequate resourcing, and context-sensitive enabling strategies. This argument is corroborated by current evidence indicating that principled approaches to introducing intercultural perspectives in education require certain conditions before they can disrupt long-standing racist attitudes and exclusionary discourse. The implementation of systematic and transformative intercultural approaches in schools can create more inclusive pedagogic practices and respectful intercultural relations that transcend the boundaries of the schoolyard and extend into broader society. Targeted, long-term intercultural understanding trainings can also engender more constructive discourse within and beyond schools.

Government Communication as a Device for the Nationalization of the Public: Ecuador 2010: The Speech That Converted a Police Revolt in President Assassination Attempt

During the decade 2007-2017, Ecuador was led by a regime that identified itself as part of 21st Century Socialism. Rafael Correa came to the Presidency with a speech that questioned the traditional party system and the promise of a new Constitution that would recognize the diversity of interests of Ecuadorian society. On September 30, 2010 (30-S), a police revolt led to the retention of President Correa for several hours and ended with an armed confrontation between the police and the military that left several victims. Among them, the reorientation of government communication that distanced itself from the initial inclusive proposal to discourse of exclusion that subordinated the public to the State. This essay proposes a communicational interpretation of this transit based on the evolution of the relationship between the government and social movements and its manifestation in the official discourse about the public.

Who Deserves to be Refugee? : The Instrumentalization of Art and Culture in the Solidarity Discourse of Ukrainian Refugees in Social Media

This article explores the online display of artistic ability and cultural practice to express support for the resistance in Ukraine and Ukrainian refugees while blaming the Russian attack on the country starting in 2022. Social media engagement is essential in constructing discursive traits of belonging through bottom-up articulations of ‘us’ and ‘them’ dichotomies. Here, I question the distinguished characteristics of representation related to art, artistic practices, and abilities under solidarity social media posts in the case of Ukrainians fleeing their homes. Social media users who include art and culture concerning solidarity use a discourse of inclusion and exclusion to depict refugees as parts of civilization and hence not reducible them to the bare life position. This study is guided by critical multimodal discourse analysis. I contend that these social media posts that convey specific art and culture-related representations serve to distinguish characteristics of war-torn Ukraine, people displacement, and Ukrainian refugees from the generic tendencies of otherization reflected on the ‘Southern’ refugee figure deprived of capability or motivation for logos.

Racial Capitalism and the Dialectics of Development: Exposing the Limits and Lies of International Economic Law

International economic law is peculiar. It claims universal character, yet eschews engagement with many, if not all, the racialised features of the global political economy. Its scholars mostly ignore imperialism, colonialism, and capitalism; they exclude slavery, predation, and racism altogether. In the following article, we draw upon Walter Rodney’s dialectics of development to offer a racial capitalist critique of international economic law. The disciplinary boundaries and operative logic normalised by its denizens corral us in a white, Eurocentric episteme. Ahistoricism, decontextualisation, and externalisation are three epistemic devices at the forefront of the exclusionary discourse of IEL. In this space, the histories and epistemologies of Black peoples are ghettoised, treated as alien to the framework. After identifying this bias, we use the Black Radical Tradition to evaluate IEL’s amenability to the racial capitalism critique.

Conservatism and the Re-Communitarianization of Citizenship in Canada

While the values and practices usually subsumed under the notion of “good citizenship” are said to have changed dramatically over the past 25 years or so, scholars are still struggling to characterize the concrete nature of these changes. Proposing a novel interdisciplinary approach that marries normative theory with empirically driven political sociology, in this paper we examine the explanations and justifications that flanked a plethora of new citizenship policies implemented under the former Stephen Harper-led Conservative government (2006–2015) in Canada. Critically employing Amitai Etzioni’s comparative typology of citizenship philosophies, we examine three types of Conservative policy discourses pertaining to citizenship, namely speeches given by the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, speeches given by members of the Conservative Party in the House of Commons, and government press releases. In contrast to Etzioni’s optimistic presentation of neo-communitarianism in political and philosophical terms, our study reveals that the exclusionary discourses and practices that accompany this approach in practice demand greater attention. In the case of the Harper Conservatives, we argue that their approach is best understood as a re-communitarianization of citizenship in neoliberal times that creatively, but only sparingly, invokes libertarian and liberal ideals in comparison to its use of what we identify to be (1) patriotic and (2) insecure communitarian discourses. Our findings point to both the exclusionary potentials and realities of neo-communitarian citizenship. They contribute to scholarship that argues the that the destruction of social ties, solidarity and “community” through neoliberal and neoconservative politics is often camouflaged and/or advanced by aggressive neo-communitarian discourses that harken back to or reinvent past ethnic or monocultural nationalisms, while only selectively including “deserving” Others at the margins.

‘Go home to the second wave!’: Discourses of trans inclusion and exclusion in a queer women’s online community

As the visibility of trans movements has increased in recent years, so too has the antagonism between trans rights supporters and some sections of the feminist and lesbian communities (Phipps, 2016; Hines, 2017, Pearce et al., 2020). This antagonism is especially pronounced in digital spaces, where online discussions have fuelled an increasing polarisation of the debate (Hines, 2017). This paper examines the representation of trans identities on Autostraddle: a popular entertainment, news and lifestyle website for lesbian and bisexual women. It focuses on the longest and most controversial comment thread in the 2-million-word Queer Women’s Advice Corpus. The thread is a response to a guide to dating trans women for cis women. Using a combination of critical discourse analysis, sociocultural linguistics and corpus linguistics, I unpack the argumentation strategies (Fairclough and Fairclough, 2012) that commenters use to construct stances on the inclusion of trans women in the queer women’s online space. The major strategies include persuasive definitions of lesbian, imaginaries about trans women’s hypothetical bodies and the illegitimation of trans-exclusionary commenters as bad feminists and community outsiders. I find that that trans inclusion is successfully negotiated on a community level, but that trans women are still problematised on an intimate level due to their (imagined) genitalia. Trans women are ‘hyperembodied’ in the data, with the presence or absence of a penis acting as the focal point for inclusion and desirability.

‘No room for hate in our country’: Constructing the LGBTI-friendly nation in news discourses after the murder of a gay man in Belgium

This article analyses othering discourses in the news media coverage of an alleged homophobic murder in Belgium. The case study is based on a critical discourse analysis of news articles published in Dutch-speaking Belgian news media. Using the framework of homonationalism, this analysis finds that Belgium's LGBTI-friendly status is deeply anchored in the national identity. Discourses in mainstream news media following the murder appeal to a unified imagined community of Belgians based on the assumed shared value of tolerance. This LGBTI-friendly status spills over in the exclusionary discourse in right-wing alternative media towards groups that are represented as a homophobic threat outside the nation (Central and Eastern Europe) and within it (Muslims and migrants).

Homonationalism across borders. Exploring cross-border exchange and strategic homonationalism in the construction of progressive nationalism

While scholars have shown the significance of transnational exchanges for shaping feminist and LGBTI+ connectivities across borders to challenge national exclusions and global divides, less attention has been directed at exploring the complex and ambiguous ways in which transnational collaborations and cross-border exchanges also may facilitate and support national agendas. That is what this article sets out to explore. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork with LGBTI+ actors in a Scandinavian context, this article uses the notion of strategic homonationalism to examine the ambiguous ways in which transnational, diasporic, and refugee LGBTI+ politics and locations in the Scandinavian region strategically engage with regulatory notions of liberal-mindedness and with exclusionary discourses of genuine LGBTI+ subjectivity in this context. Rather than being restricted to national contexts, I show, forms of progressive nationalism may be facilitated by cross-border exchange of various kind. Influenced by scholars who argue for the need to bring back a focus on racialization and national belonging in analyses of the making of sexualized and/or gendered difference, the article attends to the complex politics involved in inhabiting the impossible position of not being able to “not want rights.” To this end, this article reworks homonationalism, from a concept that emerges or is rooted in a US context, to a concept that travels and is differently shaped and picked up in various located sites, showing that homonationalism in a Scandinavian context takes shape through a moralistically superior position.

Online Football-Related Antisemitism in the Context of the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Multi-Method Analysis of the Dutch Twittersphere

This paper examines online expressions of rivalry and hate speech in relation to antisemitic discourses in Dutch professional men’s football (soccer), with specific attention devoted to how this has developed within the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. This study analyses football-related antisemitic discourses in the Dutch-speaking Twittersphere between 2018 and 2021. Assuming that during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic fan activity has moved increasingly toward the online domain, we specifically examine whether and how the past pandemic years have influenced football-related antisemitic discourses on Twitter. Tweets were scraped using the Twitter application programming interface and 4CAT (a capture and analysis Toolkit), producing a dataset of 7,917 unique posts. The authors performed thematic analysis of the Tweets and a selection of the Tweets was analyzed in depth using narrative digital discourse analysis. The findings show how these Tweets, while seemingly targeted exclusively at football opponents, contribute to wider exclusionary discourse in football and society that may have become more aggravated during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Expressing rivalry online: antisemitic rhetoric among Dutch football supporters on Twitter

ABSTRACT The aim of this study is to analyse online expressions of rivalry and hate speech in relation to antisemitic and philosemitic discourse(s) in Dutch professional men’s football (soccer). We collected data from Twitter using the Twitter API and scraped Tweets relating to a match between the supposedly ‘Jewish’ club Ajax and its rival Feyenoord on 17 January 2021. A selection of the collected Tweets was analysed more in depth using narrative digital discourse analysis to interpret the Tweets. The research shows that antisemitic chants and slurs find their way towards the online domain, sometimes explicit and other times implicit. The analysis elaborates how these Tweets, while seemingly targeted towards the football rival, contribute to an exclusionary discourse in which being a ‘Jew’ is not wanted and contribute to the normalization and reproduction of antisemitism in football.