Border Regimes: Homophobia and LGBT Place Making in Six Ordinary Cities in Europe

European nation states increasingly hail LGBT identities as part of modern values; LGBT recognitions have become a symbol of secular achievements. Discourses around gay rights and sexual diversity are increasingly pitted against presumably homophobic and intolerant ‘others’. An increased intolerant and repressive attitude towards migrants and racialised minorities is justified by their supposed threat to exactly these values. LGBT people are finding themselves positioned as ‘border patrollers’ who can count as part of the modern liberal nation. This paper analyses 92 interviews with LGBT participants who live in six small and medium sized ordinary cities in Europe. It discusses how their fear of homophobia is evaluated according to perceived sexual and gendered norms and attitudes at the neighbourhood level. Neighbourhoods are considered either LGBT friendly or unfriendly according to their socio-demographic characteristics that focus on social class and/or migration and that intersects with race, ethnicity and religion. Based on the findings, neighbourhoods are both a geographical and a cultural terrain that can be understood, organised and contested through a sexuality discourse in the production of border regimes that discipline and produce the confines of the normative, the ‘modern’ and the ‘backward’. Not only are LGBT people positioned as border patrollers but their fear of homophobia is also expressed through bordering. The neighbourhood can then be understood, organised and contested through a sexuality discourse in the production of border regimes.

„ARCHEION” JOURNAL

World War I and the resulting new geopolitical map of Europe fundamentally changed the situation of Poland. Disintegration of multinational European powers: the Russian Empire, Prussia, and the Austro-Hungarian Empire resulted in emergence of new European nation states: Poland, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Finland. Revival of the sovereign state of Poland, after Polish lands had remained under the rule of foreign powers for more than 120 years, has galvanized the community of Polish historians and archivists. The most urgent tasks undertaken by the community after establishment of the sovereign Polish state in 1918 were to secure the archival holdings that had been severely damaged and scattered as a result of warfare, to recover the archival materials that were removed from the Polish territories by the partitioning powers, and to undertake efforts leading to organization of Polish archival service[1]. These most important tasks were reflected in the provisions of the Decree on the Organization of State Archives and Care for Archival Materials, issued by the highest state authorities on February 7, 1919 - the first legislative act in the field of archives in the history of modern Poland[2]. [1] See more: Archiwa w Niepodległej. Stulecie Archiwów Państwowych 1919-2019, red. nauk. E. Rosowska, Warszawa 2019; Motas M., Powstanie polskiej państwowej służby archiwalnej przed odzyskaniem niepodległości, „Archeion” t. 69, 1979, s. 39–56; Motas M. W sześćdziesiątą rocznicę objęcia archiwów i archiwaliów przez władze polskie na jesieni 1918 r. w byłej Kongresówce, „Archeion”, t. 67, 1979, s. 97–107. [2] Mencel T., Dekret o archiwach i opiece nad archiwami z 7 lutego na tle ówczesnego ustawodawstwa archiwalnego w Europie, [in:] Sześćdziesięciolecie polskich archiwów państwowych. Materiały z sesji, Łódź 10 XI 1979 r., red. nauk. A. Tomczak, M. Przeczek, Warszawa 1981.

Evropský národ vs. globalizovaný nacionalismus

The author recommends that any consideration of the issue of nation and nationalism should be preceded by a careful analysis of the terminology used. He points out that the key term ‚nation‘ itself should be used in the knowledge that it refers, on the one hand, to a specific large group of citizens – members of a nation, but also to an abstract value community of culture. He critically rejects the thoughtless use of the term ‚nationalism‘, which forgets that it is derived from the term ‚nation‘. This is a dangerous distortion, especially when applied to non-European realities. A nation is originally a specifically European phenomenon, that is to say, a community that grows out of the old cultural and ideological resources of European countries. If the globalised term nationalism is used retrospectively to analyse the history or present of European nations, there is a danger of distortion and misunderstanding. Just as distorting, however, can be the analysis of non-European ‚nations‘ in the coordinates of the European nation. In conclusion, the author points out that the humanistic and motivational values of the European nation from the time of its formation are largely an empty phrase for contemporary nations. The reason for this, however, lies not only in terminological confusion, but also in the great transformation of value norms as a result of the neoliberal questioning of national values and identities that is being promoted in the context of advancing globalisation.

“Dobra polska mowa”: monoglot ideology, multilingual reality and Polish organisations in the UK

This article examines the tension between multilingual reality of migrant life and monoglot standard ideology in Polish grassroots organisations in the UK. Drawing on linguistic ethnographic fieldwork from 2017 to 2019, we show that while flexible multilingual practices characterise the community’s multilingual reality, a preference for monolingual standard Polish exists in community activities and online profiles. We argue that, through common orientation to the denotational code and national identity, the organisations give preference to language rather than the speech community of the immediate surroundings and attempt to create a representation of a timeless unified Polish community in line with the static framework of the European nation-state that promotes linguistic, cultural and racial purity. While advocating sedentary, permanent and classed images of migration and integration into British society, the organisations marginalise uses of other language varieties and erase observed historical, class and regional differences within the community.

The nadir of vital interests: Hannah Arendt and the Franco-German Armistice 1940

Illusions of common interest and joint purpose falter when states choose to break up, as with the recent changes to the European Union, or according to more dangerous precipitants such as those which shaped the Franco-German Armistice 1940, 80 years ago as a detail of war. The latter bares the sudden end of the Franco-British alliance and holds an invitation from history to re-examine the troubling political, social and legal layers of the concept of the vital interests of states. That category opened to radically different interpretations for political and legal thinkers who witnessed the fall of France yet did not respond directly or immediately. Hannah Arendt’s theory of politics, conceived in the aftermath of war as a corrective to the internal fragmentation of the European nation-state, elucidates the instability of the concept of vital interests which underpinned international legal and political thought in the 1930s and 1940s and frustrates the co-operative relations between states. The problem pairs back, she says, to whether interests signify an associative technique or sword. Her invitation for legal thought is to challenge the expectation of rupture implicit in the juridical category by outlining an alternative that recovers the pacifistic function of law and implicates the international lawyer.

5. Nomads, nation-states, borders

‘Nomads, nation-states, borders’ describes the concepts of nomadism, nation-states, and borders. Nomadic people in the Americas, Australasia, and elsewhere never owned or possessed land in a European sense, so European colonists declared their land empty. Colonial appropriation and confiscation of land can be conceptualized as ‘territorialization’ and ‘deterritorialization’. Ultimately, a consequence of colonial rule was the reorganization of the whole world from empires into nation-states. Historically, colonialism formed an intrinsic part of the creation of European nation-states; today global migration from the newer decolonized states fulfils a similar function. Notwithstanding the claims for the cultural identity of its people, nothing really defines a nation like its borders since all nation-states are heterogeneous.

Is There Any Chance for European Nation in Modern Europe?

The purpose of this article is to consider the possibility of emergence of a European nation in modern Europe, the formation of European identity. The EU consists of the EU member states, where national identity is an entrenched concept. The article considers the correlation of national identity and European identity, as well as the possibility of transformation, addition or replacement of one by another. The EU is a new form of political entity, which has supranational, transnational and interstate characteristics, which can contribute to the development of various forms of identities and belonging. The purpose of this article is to consider the politics of recognition as a starting point for research on European national identity. The politics of identity pursued in Europe does not necessarily lead to the victory of national identity over European one. The citizens of these countries have a set of different identities, and the process of European integration facilitates the process of coexistence of different types of identities, and there may even be a competition between these two identities: national and European. The author analyzes the changes taking place in modern European society and the reasons that influence the development of events. These questions relate to the deep feelings and beliefs of the population of these countries, therefore, consideration of these issues must be given close attention. The author suggests analyzing this issue from within, using the research of the Europeans themselves. For analysis, the material of the ARENA Center for European Studies and the works of its leader John Eric Fossum, a professor at the University of Oslo and other researchers on this issue are used. The author explores the scope of the concept of national identity at the present stage, its characteristics and its change. A comparative analysis helps to determine the characteristics of the European identity and prospects for its formation. The article discusses four scenarios, each of which contains a certain structure of institutions and a method of recognizing identity; all this helps to understand the ongoing processes and prospects for the development of identity policy in the EU. All these scenarios to a certain extent characterize the state of affairs in modern Europe.

The Oxford Handbook of Scottish Politics

Politics in Scotland has changed massively in recent decades. Since 1999, there has been a devolved Parliament and Government. Scotland is of interest, not because of some essential difference from England but as a European nation, with its own history and society, within the larger union of the United Kingdom. Devolution, once a contested issue, is now broadly accepted. Since devolution, the party system and voting patterns have changed. Scotland’s capacity to make its own public policy has grown. The constitutional issue was not resolved in the Independence Referendum of 2014 and has entered a new phase with Brexit.