Construindo comunidades: community building with Portuguese migrant workers on the east coast of England

Author(s):  
Robert Gregory

This chapter describes work with Portuguese migrant workers in Great Yarmouth, a typically economically depressed and isolated community — one that is highly representative of many such communities within the UK over the last twenty years. Characteristically, such migrants are the victims of racial hostility, being blamed both for taking away native workers' jobs and for depressing wage levels in the local economy. Traditional forms of community organisation have led to some gains, although the creation of organisations and groups continues to be undermined to some degree by both the transience of some migrants and their focus on economic goals. The key role for the community development worker appears to be to act as a broker between migrants and host community, and particularly to challenge the myths that have been promoted by those on the political Right.

2020 ◽  
pp. 165-186
Author(s):  
Keith Popple

This chapter outlines how British populist politics, and in particular right-wing populist politics, has had significant implications for communities, for the theory and practice of community development, and for those presently involved in the activity in the United Kingdom, where it has suffered substantial financial cutbacks. The outcome of the austerity measures that has led to the contemporary presence of populism in the UK has been a mounting dissatisfaction and a general lack of trust in politics amongst millions in the country. This, together with a hangover from the 'parliamentary expenses scandal' that involved members from both Houses of Parliament, has created a marked degree of scepticism about the workings of the British electoral system. Further, there has been a growing lack of confidence in the system of neoliberal globalised finance capitalism that has left countless communities poorer and economically less secure. People's anger and frustration with these actions have been harnessed by the political right, which during the 2016 Referendum debate focused on the impact of immigration on communities. The chapter then notes the unique elements of community development and reflects on the role it can play in these challenging times. It argues that community development now requires greater funding and recognition while reconceptualising itself in a more radical manner.


Author(s):  
Craig Berry ◽  
Michael Kenny

The question of how intellectuals ought to relate to the ideological traditions of the political cultures of modern societies has been a recurrent theme of European social and political thought over the last two centuries. This chapter explores earlier traditions of European thinking, associated with the work of Karl Mannheim, Julien Benda, and Antonio Gramsci, which established the major lines of debate about the relationship of intellectuals to a sense of nationhood and the political traditions of the polities they inhabited. These ideas form the backdrop to the analysis of the drift towards post-national thinking among important groups of intellectual practitioners in the UK towards the end of the twentieth century. Cosmopolitan thinking, the article suggests, has tended to obscure the ideological character of the main lines of political thinking associated with globalization, and ensured that progressive intellectuals tended to abandon the ‘national-popular’ to their counterparts on the political right, with fateful consequences.


2017 ◽  
Vol 32 (5) ◽  
pp. 811-830 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chris Dawson ◽  
Michail Veliziotis ◽  
Benjamin Hopkins

Over the last decade, the UK has experienced unprecedented increases in migration associated with the 2004 A8 expansion of the European Union. These migrant workers have been praised by managers in the UK, who have frequently stated that they perceive these workers to have a strong ‘work ethic’ when measured on aspects such as absence from work rates. This article examines this perceived migrant ‘work ethic’ by analysing worker absence data from the UK Quarterly Labour Force Survey for the period 2005–2012. Regression analysis reveals that when A8 migrant workers first arrive in the UK, they record substantially lower absence than native workers, but that these migrant absence levels assimilate within two to four years. If employers use this information to make hiring decisions, this may have negative implications for native workers, but, importantly, only in the short run.


Author(s):  
Eva A. Duda-Mikulin

The fourth chapter focuses on Brexit – the UK’s exit from the EU with key point being around disrupted livelihoods of EU migrant workers. First, the context of neopopulism is brought to the fore. Here, I explore the criminalisation of migrants and refer to the writings of Zygmunt Bauman (2016). Second, a brief history of the European Economic Community and the EU is provided. Third, the political complexity behind the decision to hold the referendum is explored. The wider context and political climate worldwide is analysed with particular focus on the rise of distrust, disillusion and identity politics. The context of the new populism as the prevalent ideology is put against the political situation in the UK with David Cameron starting talks on the need for the people to have their say in the run up to General Election 2015. The results of the referendum are analysed and critically discussed taking into account voters and their demographic characteristics correlated with the socio-economic situation in the country. The chapter culminates in a series of case studies with the aim to illustrate pre- and post-Brexit-vote reality for those who exercised their Treaty rights and came to work in the UK.


2011 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 193-203 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sheila Riddell ◽  
Nick Watson

In the UK and many other European countries, there continue to be concerns about a range of social issues including the position of immigrants, the educational attainment of marginalised groups and the persistence of the gender pay gap. Increasingly, governments and NGOs assert that the promotion of equality and human rights policies are central to addressing these issues, with a view to creating societies which are both more equitable and more efficient. Over the past decade and a half, a period of economic growth followed recently by a major recession, the equality and human rights agenda enjoyed a high political profile. However, as we discuss in this review article, the social and economic optimism of the late nineties and early to mid noughties has been followed by economic retrenchment, a commitment to the shrinking of the state and the public sphere across Europe and a general move to the political right. In this article, we first review the political context which led to the rise of the equality and human rights agenda. Subsequently, we examine competing conceptualisations of equality and their operationalisation within British social policy. Finally, we assess the progress which has been made towards achieving a more equal society in the UK over recent years drawing on data gathered and analysed by the National Equality Panel (NEP, 2010).


2006 ◽  
pp. 54-75
Author(s):  
Klaus Peter Friedrich

Facing the decisive struggle between Nazism and Soviet communism for dominance in Europe, in 1942/43 Polish communists sojourning in the USSR espoused anti-German concepts of the political right. Their aim was an ethnic Polish ‘national communism’. Meanwhile, the Polish Workers’ Party in the occupied country advocated a maximum intensification of civilian resistance and partisan struggle. In this context, commentaries on the Nazi judeocide were an important element in their endeavors to influence the prevailing mood in the country: The underground communist press often pointed to the fate of the murdered Jews as a warning in order to make it clear to the Polish population where a deficient lack of resistance could lead. However, an agreed, unconditional Polish and Jewish armed resistance did not come about. At the same time, the communist press constantly expanded its demagogic confrontation with Polish “reactionaries” and accused them of shared responsibility for the Nazi murder of the Jews, while the Polish government (in London) was attacked for its failure. This antagonism was intensified in the fierce dispute between the Polish and Soviet governments after the rift which followed revelations about the Katyn massacre. Now the communist propaganda image of the enemy came to the fore in respect to the government and its representatives in occupied Poland. It viewed the government-in-exile as being allied with the “reactionaries,” indifferent to the murder of the Jews, and thus acting ultimately on behalf of Nazi German policy. The communists denounced the real and supposed antisemitism of their adversaries more and more bluntly. In view of their political isolation, they coupled them together, in an undifferentiated manner, extending from the right-wing radical ONR to the social democrats and the other parties represented in the underground parliament loyal to the London based Polish government. Thereby communist propaganda tried to discredit their opponents and to justify the need for a new start in a post-war Poland whose fate should be shaped by the revolutionary left. They were thus paving the way for the ultimate communist takeover


Author(s):  
Daniel A. Dombrowski

In this work two key theses are defended: political liberalism is a processual (rather than a static) view and process thinkers should be political liberals. Three major figures are considered (Rawls, Whitehead, Hartshorne) in the effort to show the superiority of political liberalism to its illiberal alternatives on the political right and left. Further, a politically liberal stance regarding nonhuman animals and the environment is articulated. It is typical for debates in political philosophy to be adrift regarding the concept of method, but from start to finish this book relies on the processual method of reflective equilibrium or dialectic at its best. This is the first extended effort to argue for both political liberalism as a process-oriented view and process philosophy/theology as a politically liberal view. It is also a timely defense of political liberalism against illiberal tendencies on both the right and the left.


2017 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Eko Wahyono ◽  
Rizka Amalia ◽  
Ikma Citra Ranteallo

This research further examines the video entitled “what is the truth about post-factual politics?” about the case in the United States related to Trump and in the UK related to Brexit. The phenomenon of Post truth/post factual also occurs in Indonesia as seen in the political struggle experienced by Ahok in the governor election (DKI Jakarta). Through Michel Foucault's approach to post truth with assertive logic, the mass media is constructed for the interested parties and ignores the real reality. The conclusion of this study indicates that new media was able to spread various discourses ranging from influencing the way of thoughts, behavior of society to the ideology adopted by a society.Keywords: Post factual, post truth, new media


Author(s):  
Tamar Hermann

In Israel, as in many other countries, the impact of public opinion on national policymaking has increased dramatically over the last few decades. In fact, public opinion has practically developed into one of the prime political inputs in Israel. This chapter argues that this increased impact, which could have contributed to improving the Israeli democracy, is in fact often undermined by the increasing overlapping of the main cleavages within Israel: between the political Right and Left, between Jews and Arabs, and between religious and secular Israelis. This extreme overlapping has severely eroded the national consensus and accelerated the emergence of deep disagreements in public opinion over strategic issues, such as the nature of the state (Jewish? Democratic?), the main challenges facing the nation (including the best way of dealing with the protracted Israeli–Palestinian conflict), and the desired collective future.


Laws ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 63
Author(s):  
Elizabeth A. Sharrow

Between 2020 and 2021, one hundred and ten bills in state legislatures across the United States suggested banning the participation of transgender athletes on sports teams for girls and women. As of July 2021, ten such bills have become state law. This paper tracks the political shift towards targeting transgender athletes. Conservative political interests now seek laws that suture biological determinist arguments to civil rights of bodies. Although narrow binary definitions of sex have long operated in the background as a means for policy implementation under Title IX, Republican lawmakers now aim to reframe sex non-discrimination policies as means of gendered exclusion. The content of proposals reveal the centrality of ideas about bodily immutability, and body politics more generally, in shaping the future of American gender politics. My analysis of bills from 2021 argues that legislative proposals advance a logic of “cisgender supremacy” inhering in political claims about normatively gendered bodies. Political institutions are another site for advancing, enshrining, and normalizing cis-supremacist gender orders, explicitly joining cause with medical authorities as arbiters of gender normativity. Characteristics of bodies and their alleged role in evidencing sex itself have fueled the tactics of anti-transgender activists on the political Right. However, the target of their aims is not mere policy change but a state-sanctioned return to a narrowly cis- and heteropatriarchal gender order.


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