scholarly journals Transnational (Im)mobilities and Informality in Europe

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 121-133
Author(s):  
Ignacio Fradejas-García ◽  
Abel Polese ◽  
Fazila Bhimji
Keyword(s):  
Social Mobility ◽  
Multiple Scales ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Political Constraints ◽  
Transnational Mobility ◽  
The Social ◽  
Informal Practices ◽  
Transnational Entrepreneurs ◽  
The Eu ◽  
National Borders

People around the globe rely on informal practices to resist, survive, care and relate to each other beyond the control and coercive presence of institutions and states. In the EU, regimes of mobility at multiple scales affect various people on the move who are pushed into informality in order to acquire social mobility while having to combat border regimes, racialization, inequalities, and state bureaucracies. This text explores how mobilities and informality are entangled with one another when it comes to responding to the social, political, and economic inequalities that are produced by border and mobility regimes. Within this frame, the ethnographic articles in this special issue go beyond national borders to connect the production of mobility and informality at multiple interconnected scales, from refugees adapting to settlement bureaucracies locally to transit migrants coping with the selective external borders of the EU, or from transnational entrepreneurs’ ability to move between formal and informal norms to the multiple ways in which transnational mobility informally confronts economic, social and political constraints. In sum, this volume brings together articles on informality and mobility that take account of the elusive practices that deal with the inequalities of mobility and immobility.

scholarly journals Can European Union (EU) Social NGOs Co-operate to Promote EU Social Policy?

2001 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 477-493 ◽  
Author(s):  
ROBERT GEYER
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Social Policy ◽  
Political Constraints ◽  
The Social ◽  
Operative Strategies ◽  
The Eu

This article examines why, despite similar general interests, institutional positions and political constraints, EU social NGOs find it so difficult to develop co-operative strategies except on the most fundamental issues. To demonstrate these difficulties the article considers the general reasons for and against co-operation between social NGOs and then examines the difficulties and advantages of collective EU social NGO action during the 1998 NGO funding crisis, Red Card protest and civil dialogue. The article argues that there is a fundamental desire for, and are benefits from, close co-operation between the EU social NGOs. However, due to the complex ‘context structure’ within which NGOs must operate, this co-operative impetus is constantly undermined. In conclusion, the article argues that social NGOs will remain weak and insignificant actors until the Commission/Parliament and/or the social NGOs can organise the complex context structure and allow co-operative strategies to emerge.

Narrating Society: Enacting ‘Immigrant’ Characters through Negotiating, Naturalization, and Forgetting

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sanne Boersma
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Work ◽  
Immigrant Integration ◽  
European Countries ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Global Perspectives ◽  
Ethnographic Fieldwork ◽  
Scientific Institutions ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Scientific ◽  
Media And Communication

This article scrutinizes how ‘immigrant’ characters of perpetual arrival are enacted in the social scientific work of immigrant integration monitoring. Immigrant integration research produces narratives in which characters—classified in highly specific, contingent ways as ‘immigrants’—are portrayed as arriving and never as having arrived. On the basis of ethnographic fieldwork at social scientific institutions and networks in four Western European countries, this article analyzes three practices that enact the characters of arrival narratives: negotiating, naturalizing, and forgetting. First, it shows how negotiating constitutes objects of research while at the same time a process of hybridization is observed among negotiating scientific and governmental actors. Second, a naturalization process is analyzed in which slippery categories become fixed and self-evident. Third, the practice of forgetting involves the fading away of contingent and historical circumstances of the research and specifically a dispensation of ‘native’ or ‘autochthonous’ populations. Consequently, the article states how some people are considered rightful occupants of ‘society’ and others are enacted to travel an infinite road toward an occupied societal space. Moreover, it shows how enactments of arriving ‘immigrant’ characters have performative effects in racially differentiating national populations and hence in narrating society. This article is part of the Global Perspectives, Media and Communication special issue on “Media, Migration, and Nationalism,” guest-edited by Koen Leurs and Tomohisa Hirata.

Introduction: The Anthropocene as Context and Concept for the Study of Higher Education

2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-15
Author(s):  
RYAN EVELY GILDERSLEEVE ◽  
KATIE KLEINHESSELINK
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Social Institutions ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Analytic Tool ◽  
The Social ◽  
Geologic Condition

The Anthropocene has emerged in philosophy and social science as a geologic condition with radical consequence for humankind, and thus, for the social institutions that support it, such as higher education. This essay introduces the special issue by outlining some of the possibilities made available for social/philosophical research about higher education when the Anthropocene is taken seriously as an analytic tool. We provide a patchwork of discussions that attempt to sketch out different ways to consider the Anthropocene as both context and concept for the study of higher education. We conclude the essay with brief introductory remarks about the articles collected for this special issue dedicated to “The Anthropocene and Higher Education.”

Social Investment as a Policy Platform

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frank Vandenbroucke
Keyword(s):  
Social World ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Social Investment ◽  
Education Spending ◽  
Overlapping Consensus ◽  
Member States ◽  
Policy Perspective ◽  
The Social ◽  
Broad Consensus ◽  
The Eu

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.

Conclusion

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephanie L. Derrick
Keyword(s):  
Social Mobility ◽  
Social Factors ◽  
Critical Component ◽  
Critical Difference ◽  
Middle Classes ◽  
Print History ◽  
Social Divisions ◽  
Equal Importance ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Subject

The emphasis of this monograph has been on the historical, cultural, religious, and social factors that shaped C. S. Lewis and his reception. Until recently those who have considered the subject have attributed his popularity to virtues of the man himself. The fact that Lewis, in effect, was an image, a mitigated commercial product, a platform, has largely been overlooked. A critical component of Lewis’s reception is the opportunities that education provided the middle classes for social mobility in the twentieth century and the social divisions and anxieties attendant upon those evolutions. Of equal importance is the timing of Lewis’s life and publications with print history and the rise of mass media and entertainment. Lewis’s platform as a contrarian Christian resisting modernity and his reactions to the intellectual, social, and religious changes of his day made the critical difference to his transatlantic receptions.

Between entrepreneurs and workers: Cleavages and compromises in rationales and policy solutions regarding ‘dependent contractors’

2021 ◽  
pp. 0143831X2110303
Author(s):  
Louis Florin ◽  
François Pichault
Keyword(s):  
Social Protection ◽  
Policy Framework ◽  
Policy Documents ◽  
The Social ◽  
Political Narratives ◽  
Social Partners ◽  
Narrative Policy Framework ◽  
Policy Solutions ◽  
The Eu ◽  
Labour Regulation

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.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document