scholarly journals Politics of Exception and Unease: Immigration, Asylum and Terrorism in Parliamentary Debates in the UK

2008 ◽  
Vol 56 (4) ◽  
pp. 766-788 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jef Huysmans ◽  
Alessandra Buonfino
Keyword(s):  
Public Debate ◽  
Political Elite ◽  
The Political ◽  
Public Realm ◽  
Parliamentary Debates ◽  
The Public ◽  
Counter Terrorism ◽  
The Uk

This article analyses how the British political elite has securitised migration and asylum since 9/11 by looking at when and how parliamentary debates linked counter-terrorism to immigration and/or asylum. The findings suggest that there is considerable reluctance within the political elite to introduce or especially sustain the connection between migration and terrorism too intensely in public debate. The parliamentary debates also show that for understanding the securitising of migration and asylum one cannot focus exclusively on the main security framing that is found in counter-terrorism debates, which we name ‘the politics of exception’. There is at least one other format, which we call ‘the politics of unease’, that is central to how the British political elite securitises migration and asylum, and contests it, in the public realm.

Political engagement of Latin Americans in the UK

Focaal ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 2008 (51) ◽  
pp. 73-90 ◽  
Author(s):  
Davide Però
Keyword(s):  
Political Engagement ◽  
Public Debate ◽  
Political Agency ◽  
The Political ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
Latin Americans ◽  
The Public ◽  
Alternative Approaches ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Collective Engagement

This article examines the political engagement of Latin Americans in the UK in the context of a mounting neo-assimilationist and anti-multicultural offensive in the public debate on integration. Assuming that migrants should have a say about their own integration in society, the article explores the extent to which the public debate is sensitive to migrants' own collective concerns. It is from this empirically informed perspective that the article criticizes assimilationist and multi-culturalist attitudes for their disregard of the exploitation and lack of social and cultural recognition that afflicts newly arrived migrants. The article helps to rebalance the prevailing trend in policy and academic circles to treat migrants as objects of policies and ignore their political agency and active collective engagement in the improvement of their conditions. It also offers a corrective to emerging alternative approaches that tend to reduce migrants' politics to their role in sustaining long-distance diasporic communities.

scholarly journals Between New Terrains and Old Dichotomies: Peacebuilding and the Gangs’ Truce in El Salvador

2017 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
pp. 499-520 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sílvia Roque
Keyword(s):  
El Salvador ◽  
Potential Application ◽  
Peace Process ◽  
Public Debate ◽  
The Political ◽  
Crucial Importance ◽  
War And Peace ◽  
The Public ◽  
Structural Roots ◽  
Post War

Abstract This article intends to challenge the dominant assumptions that undermine the potential application of peacebuilding frameworks beyond formal post-war contexts. It analyses the gangs’ truce that recently took place in El Salvador as a privileged laboratory to rethink hegemonic understandings and practices of peacebuilding by specifically addressing the importance of overcoming dichotomised categories such ‘war and peace’, ‘criminal and political’, and ‘success and failure’. It is claimed that while the truce fostered a discourse pointing towards an ongoing peace process and enlarged the public debate on the failings of post-war policies and on the structural roots of violence, it was also decisively undermined by the inability to surmount the dichotomy that juxtaposes the criminal and the political domains. It is argued that a peacebuilding framework, inspired by a set of critical perspectives on war and peace and on the nature of ‘the political’, may thus be of crucial importance for the future of policies aimed at curbing violence in El Salvador and elsewhere.

Rethinking Kant as a public intellectual

2016 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 100-108
Author(s):  
Sofie Møller
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Public Intellectual ◽  
Public Debate ◽  
The Political ◽  
Middle Ground ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Past

In Kant’s Politics in Context, Reidar Maliks offers a compelling account of Kant’s political philosophy as part of a public debate on rights, citizenship, and revolution in the wake of the French Revolution. Maliks argues that Kant’s political thought was developed as a moderate middle ground between radical and conservative political interpretations of his moral philosophy. The book’s central thesis is that the key to understanding Kant’s legal and political thought lies in the public debate among Kant’s followers and that in this debate we find the political challenges which Kant’s political philosophy is designed to solve. Kant’s Politics in Context raises crucial questions about how to understand political thinkers of the past and is proof that our understanding of the past will remain fragmented if we limit our studies to the great men of the established canon.

Participatory Design Practices in Mental Health in the UK: Rebutting the Optimism

Design Issues ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 34 (4) ◽  
pp. 25-36 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paola Pierri
Keyword(s):  
Professional Practice ◽  
Participatory Design ◽  
Complex Dynamics ◽  
Community Organizations ◽  
Political Engagement ◽  
Public Realm ◽  
The Public ◽  
Design Practices ◽  
The Uk

In what has been defined as an “era of participation,” design practices have become very central to the process of making publics and in bringing to life the dream of developing new ways of political engagement. By reflecting on my professional practice, I highlight the overly optimistic attitude that—most of the time—over-simplifies the role of design, especially when applied in public and community organizations. I illustrate participation as a paradox in itself, by problematizing the role and meaning of participatory encounters, and revealing some complex dynamics of exclusion and self-exclusion that are at play in the public realm.

Conclusion

2020 ◽  
pp. 201-206
Author(s):  
Lucy Atkinson ◽  
Andrew Blick ◽  
Matt Qvortrup
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Natural Extension ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Public ◽  
The People ◽  
Popular Government ◽  
Political Spectrum ◽  
Device Use ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Working Device

The referendum came onto the agenda in the UK in the final quarter of the nineteenth century, and it has never entirely disappeared from it, either as a proposition or a working device. Use of the referendum in the UK was conceived of and presented both as a natural extension of the principle of democracy that was then taking hold, and as a means of offsetting perceived defects with the representative variant of popular government that had developed. In particular, it was seen as a safeguard against the manipulative impact of parties that might lead the parliamentary system to serve the ends of factions within the elite above the people. It might enable the public to vote for a particular party with which they were broadly sympathetic without needing to endorse their entire programme; and would mean that a government could not implement measures of major significance to which a majority objected. It was largely envisaged as likely to have a conservative impact, creating a new and final means by which change might be blocked. Yet its appeal spread across the political spectrum; as did opposition to it....

The ‘spectre of anti-Americanism’ in the British public debate over the 2003 invasion of Iraq

2007 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 201-221 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph Burridge
Keyword(s):  
Public Debate ◽  
The Self ◽  
Press Coverage ◽  
Discursive Psychology ◽  
American Government ◽  
Parliamentary Debates ◽  
The Public ◽  
Inhibiting Effect ◽  
Invasion Of Iraq

This paper draws upon insights from rhetorical and discursive psychology in order to attend to a particular dimension of the public debate in Britain surrounding the invasion of Iraq in March 2003. It is concerned with discourse regarding the relevance of ‘anti-Americanism’, and the difficulty that circulation of such an accusation fostered for critics of the war. It uses examples drawn from British national press coverage, and the content of parliamentary debates, to describe some of the main responses made by critics of the war to the possibility that their arguments could be undermined if described as anti-American. The three techniques identified are the display of ‘pro-American credentials’, the discursive separation of the American government and its people, and the differentiation of the self from more extreme elements who are nevertheless on the same side. By focusing upon such responses, the paper attends to a gap in existing literature concerned with the alleged inhibiting effect that accusations of ‘anti-Americanism’ can have upon dissent, and argues that things are more complex than is often understood by accounts which stress how dissent is decided or regulated.

Research and the realities of the industry

2002 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 101-106
Author(s):  
Colin Stansfield Smith
Keyword(s):  
Academic Staff ◽  
Research Assessment ◽  
Public Realm ◽  
General Sense ◽  
Private Finance Initiative ◽  
The Public ◽  
Private Finance ◽  
Current State ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Large Sections

As a former student of Leslie Martin I well understand that ‘in the UK, architecture's standing as a research-led University discipline remains as low as ever’ (arq 5/4, p291). But then I share my own generation's disbelief about the current state of the Profession and the failure of any architecture school to be awarded the highest rating (5*)in the latest Research Assessment Exercise (RAE). The internecine misunderstandings between practice and schools of architecture are hardly helpful to the cause: the Profession's refusal to understand the current plight of schools with regard to resources and the low esteem and status of academic staff and – in the reverse perspective – academia seems oblivious to the cowed posture of large sections of the Profession in a world driven by the imperatives of the government's Private Finance Initiative (PFI). This more or less symbolizes in a general sense the current client/architect relationship or lack of it in the public realm.

Why Ukraine Is Not Russia

2011 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 813-833 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yitzhak M. Brudny ◽  
Evgeny Finkel
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Political Development ◽  
Political Identity ◽  
Political Elite ◽  
The Political ◽  
Significant Extent ◽  
Considerable Part ◽  
The Public ◽  
Self Interest ◽  
The Impact

The article discusses the impact of national identity on democratization and market reforms in Russia and Ukraine. We develop a concept of hegemonic national identity and demonstrate its role in Russian and Ukrainian post-communist political development. The article argues that Russia’s slide toward authoritarianism was to an important degree an outcome of the notions of national identity adopted by the main political players and society at large. In Ukraine, on the other hand, a hegemonic identity failed to emerge and the public discussion of issues of national identity led to the adoption of much more liberal and democratic notions of identity by a considerable part of the political elite. Adoption of this more liberal identity, in turn, was one of the main reasons for the Orange Revolution. The main theoretical implications of this argument are as follows: (a) choices of national identity profoundly affect the prospects for democracy in the newly democratizing states; (b) institutions do shape identities; (c) elites’ preference for (or opposition to) liberal democracy is not simply a consequence of their understanding of their self-interest in gaining and preserving power but also is dependent to a significant extent on their choices of political identity.

British Public Opinion, Colour Issues, and Enoch Powell: a Longitudinal Analysis

1974 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 371-381 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donley T. Studlar
Keyword(s):  
Capital Punishment ◽  
Longitudinal Analysis ◽  
Political Elite ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
The Public ◽  
Cultural Expectation ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Government ◽  
Enoch Powell

Relationships between the public and the political elite in Britain are generally thought to be explicable in terms of a ‘strong leadership’ hypothesis, according to which the public responds to initiatives put forward by leading political actors. Reflecting the popular will is not thought to be a highly prized activity among British politicians, who supposedly share the general cultural expectation that the public defers to the wisdom of those more knowledgeable than themselves, the public being content with the opportunity to pronounce electorally on the fitness of the Government at least once every five years. Occasionally voices are heard demanding that more attention be paid to the wishes of the general public, as in recent years in regard to the Common Market and capital punishment, but these demands have so far gone unheeded.

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