scholarly journals Tokenizing and Articulating Protection of Women in Migration Law: Strategies of Exclusion in Contemporary Europe and the Nineteenth-Century USA

2021 ◽  
pp. 096466392110238
Author(s):  
Nicole Stybnarova

This article investigates continuities in migration law-making that claims to aim at protecting women but in effect is a tokenist strategy excluding non-Western female migrants. It shows that despite developments in the legal recognition of women’s equality, present restrictions on family reunification in Western Europe, illustrated through the EU and Danish migration laws, echo law-making in the late 19th-century US, exemplified in the process of adopting the Page Act, which also introduced stricter rules for female migrants under the stated objective of protecting women. Using the social theory of articulation, the article demonstrates how legislators continuously articulate and rearticulate the wellbeing of migrant women to legitimize discriminatory migration rules regardless of how highly women’s rights are respected in law and society. The article contributes to previous feminist scholarship in migration law by showing the continuity and intentionality of the articulative practices in law-making directed at migrant women.

2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 317-328
Author(s):  
Linda Hyökki

This article analyses the Finnish political response to the refugee influx connected with the Syrian war and violent conflicts in its neighbouring states. In July 2016, a law amendment on the Finnish Aliens Act about a secured income prerequisite for family reunification applications came into force. Using argumentation schemes as outlined by Fairclough & Fairclough (2012), this article analyses the discursive framing of the law amendment in Parliament. The paper benefits from the social ontology of John Searle (1995; 2010) and utilises his concept of institutional facts. The analysis shows that, as normative sources for action, the institutional context of the EU, as well as the Human Rights, possess different degrees of deontic modality which in turn shapes the representation of social reality in the context of the refugee crisis and its global and local impact.


2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 205-224
Author(s):  
Goranka Lalić Novak ◽  
Teo Giljević ◽  
Romea Manojlović Toman

The aim of the paper is to analyse the extent to which the recent Croatian regulation on migration (legislation and policy documents) is grounded on evidence and builds on empirical data drawn from the processes and draft legislation, public consultations, impact assessment, parliamentary discussions, parliamentary questions of members of Parliament, and evaluation reports. In this way, the paper also provides a deeper insight into the development of migration regulation, from agenda-setting to the adoption of regulation. Research has enabled the authors to discuss the possibilities to improve migration law-making by means of evidence-based law-making techniques and other better regulation instruments. Several conclusions have been made: that evidence-based law-making is useful in complex issues such as migration; that evidence should be primarily used in the legislative process at the EU level in the areas that fall under the EU competences; that evidence is most beneficial in the early, preparatory phases of law-making; that it is necessary to connect the assessment of the relevance and adequacy of empirical data used and their linkage to the effectiveness of migration legislation. The use of better regulation instruments in developing migration regulation might contribute to more transparency and accountability, as well as to the reduction of arbitrary use of power by public authorities, and thus foster the standards and principles of the rule of law.


2013 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 91-100 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francesca Alice Vianello

This article examines different forms of Ukrainian migrant women’s social remittances, articulating some results of two ethnographic studies: one focused on the migration of Ukrainian women to Italy, and the other on the social impact of emigration in Ukraine. First, the paper illustrates the patterns of monetary remittance management, which will be defined as a specific form of social remittance, since they are practices shaped by systems of norms challenged by migration. In the second part, the article moves on to discuss other types of social remittances transferred by migrant women to their families left behind: the right of self-care and self-realisation; the recognition of alternative and more women-friendly life-course patterns; consumption styles and ideas on economic education. Therefore, I will explore the contents of social remittances, but also the gender and intergenerational conflicts that characterise these flows of cultural resources. 


Author(s):  
Frank Vandenbroucke

This contribution argues for a truly reciprocal social investment pact for Europe: member states should be committed to policies that respond to the need for social investment; simultaneously, member states’ efforts in this direction—notably efforts by those in a difficult budgetary context—should be supported in a tangible way. Social investment is a policy perspective that should be based on a broad consensus between people who may entertain certain disagreements regarding the level of their empirical and/or normative understanding of the social world. For that reason, the expression of an ‘overlapping consensus’ is used for delineating social investment advocacy. Data on education spending show that we are far removed from a social investment perspective at the European Union (EU) level. This underscores the fact that social investment advocates need to clearly consider the role the EU has to play in social investment progress.


2021 ◽  
pp. 0143831X2110303
Author(s):  
Louis Florin ◽  
François Pichault

The emergence of dependent contractors challenges the existing institutions regarding social protection and labour regulation. This article aims at identifying the political narratives that explain the emergence of New Forms of Employment (NFE) and dependent contracting along with the policy solutions proposed by the social partners at the EU and international level. By analysing policy documents from the social partners through the lens of a qualitative version of the Narrative Policy Framework (NPF), the authors indentify two distinct narratives – ‘devaluation of work’ and ‘entrepreneurship and flexibility’. The authors show how these rationales lead to various policy solutions and identify oppositions and possible compromise.


2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 83-100
Author(s):  
Andraž Teršek

Abstract The central objective of the post-socialist European countries which are also Member States of the EU and Council of Europe, as proclaimed and enshrined in their constitutions before their official independence, is the establishment of a democracy based on the rule of law and effective legal protection of fundamental human rights and freedoms. In this article the author explains what, in his opinion, is the main problem and why these goals are still not sufficiently achieved: the ruthless simplification of the understanding of the social function and functioning of constitutional courts, which is narrow, rigid and holistically focused primarily or exclusively on the question of whether the judges of these courts are “left or right” in purely daily-political sense, and consequently, whether constitutional court decisions are taken (described, understood) as either “left or right” in purely and shallow daily-party-political sense/manner. With nothing else between and no other foundation. The author describes such rhetoric, this kind of superficial labeling/marking, such an approach towards constitutional law-making as a matter of unbearable and unthinking simplicity, and introduces the term A Populist Monster. The reasons that have led to the problem of this kind of populism and its devastating effects on the quality and development of constitutional democracy and the rule of law are analyzed clearly and critically.


2020 ◽  
Vol 34 (4) ◽  
pp. 535-545
Author(s):  
Mark Beeson

AbstractOne of the more striking, surprising, and optimism-inducing features of the contemporary international system has been the decline of interstate war. The key question for students of international relations and comparative politics is how this happy state of affairs came about. In short, was this a universal phenomenon or did some regions play a more important and pioneering role in bringing about peaceful change? As part of the roundtable “International Institutions and Peaceful Change,” this essay suggests that Western Europe generally and the European Union in particular played pivotal roles in transforming the international system and the behavior of policymakers. This helped to create the material and ideational conditions in which other parts of the world could replicate this experience, making war less likely and peaceful change more feasible. This argument is developed by comparing the experiences of the EU and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and their respective institutional offshoots. The essay uses this comparative historical analysis to assess both regions’ capacity to cope with new security challenges, particularly the declining confidence in institutionalized cooperation.


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