Green Transition of Iron Cities: A Comparative Case Study of Kitakyushu and Pohang

This comparative case study explores why two cities similar in socio-economic factors diverge in their pathways to environmental improvement. Our research looks at the changing local economies and environmental pollution problems facing Kitakyushu in Japan and Pohang in South Korea. Both cities drove their nations’ rapid economic growth as the main heavy industry hubs but have performed radically differently vis-à-vis public demands for environmental improvement despite sharing much in common. Employing the advocacy coalition framework as a main analytical tool, we examine the unfolding of policy efforts to turn a manufacturing-oriented industrial city into a “greener” city responding to environmental objectives and the respective outcomes. The research reveals that variations in regulatory decentralization, external events and coalition opportunity structures largely explain the observed discrepancy in green transition between the two settings. Our findings contribute to expanding scarce case study literature illustrating the mechanisms that can underpin environmental improvements in cities that have served as the location of heavy industries and offer suggestions for advancing them.

The opportunity structure of segregation: School choice and school segregation in Sweden

It is a matter of debate whether free school choice should lead to higher or lower levels of school segregation. We investigate how school choice opportunities affect school segregation utilizing geocoded Swedish population register data with information on 13 cohorts of ninth graders. We find that local school choice opportunities strongly affect the sorting of students across schools based on the parents’ country of birth and level of education. An increase in the number of local schools leads to higher levels of local segregation net of stable area characteristics, and time-varying controls for population structure and local residential segregation. In particular, the local presence of private voucher schools pushes school segregation upwards. The segregating impact of school choice opportunities is notably stronger in ‘native’ areas with high portions of highly educated parents, and in areas with low residential segregation. Our results point to the importance of embedding individual actors in relevant opportunity structures for understanding segregation processes.

Dramaturgical self-efficacy and opportunity structures for white-collar crime

Perceived self-efficacy is often held to be the most focal mechanism of human agency. It has shown strong potential to explain action in multiple areas highly relevant to understanding crime, at least when the concept is formulated in close connection with the conditions that characterize the criminal acts it is supposed to explain. This article introduces the concept in the context of white-collar crime. To advance our understanding of how opportunities for such crime work, self-efficacy is defined with regard to one’s ability to control others’ impression of financially relevant information, or what is called dramaturgical self-efficacy. The presentation of this concept and its various elements is illustrated with contemporary empirical cases of white-collar crime and is preceded by a discussion of how opportunity structures and perceived self-efficacy have been understood in previous research relevant to the field. The article also discusses how the concept can be further developed with regard to the relationship between motivation and opportunity for white-collar crime.

Algorithmic Opportunity Structures and the Dynamics of Online Activism: Far-Right Mobilization on Facebook

This paper introduces the concept of algorithmic opportunity structures to explore how the efficacy of online activism is contingent on the interaction between algorithms, activists, and audiences. In particular, I examine how far-right actors have gamed ranking and recommendation algorithms by producing content designed to generate high engagement rates. This tactic attracts algorithmic amplification, increasing their visibility and reach on social media. I consider the case of Britain First, a far-right, anti-Muslim movement that used Facebook to rapidly build the largest audience of any political organization in the United Kingdom. I use digital trace data, time series analysis, and topic modeling to study Britain First’s activity, recruitment, and support on Facebook. I identify dynamic equilibria indicative of algorithmically-mediated feedback loops, highlighting how variation in these processes is largely a function of user engagement. The content of the group’s posts and exogenous events, including elections and terrorist attacks, are also associated with short-term fluctuations in online mobilization. The results suggest that Britain First’s success is attributable to its exploitation of Facebook’s algorithms, demonstrating how technological assemblages designed and controlled by corporations can structure political competition and moderate opportunities for activism.

A Privilege not a Choice: Transnational Support Networks of Asylum Seekers and Expatriates

The article explores how different factors shape migrants’ transnational social fields and support networks through a comparative study of two different groups of migrants—asylum seekers and expatriates—in Budapest, Hungary. To do so, the study employs a parallel mixed‐methods social network design by combining personal network data with qualitative data based on interviews and ethnographic fieldwork with thirty‐three migrants in the aftermath of the 2015 refugee crisis. The article presents three key findings: First, it finds that asylum seekers’ and expatriates’ networks differ on several key characteristics, as asylum seekers’ close personal networks are less efficient, smaller in size, and show a remarkable lack of friendship and transnational support ties. Second, it also finds that asylum seekers have limited access to social support and, especially so, to financial and emotional support. Lastly, using multi‐level models, the article also demonstrates how migrants’ legal status and the transnationality of their support ties affect their access to financial support, as well as how their gender and legal status shape their access to emotional support. These findings illustrate how migrants’ individual opportunity structures affect their transnational practices alongside their access to social support, while also highlighting the importance of several individual and contextual factors which contribute to the diverse integration processes of migrants.

Networks Amongst Syrians: Situated Migrant Positionalities and the Impact on Relational Embedding

This article employs Yuval‐Davis concept of situated intersectionality to explore processes of relational embedding amongst Syrian migrants in the UK. By drawing on in‐depth interview data from 31 men and women living in North East England, we explore how varying social categories—or positionalities—intersect and shape personal networks and feelings of attachment amongst Syrians. We show how wider structural contexts and systems of social relations shape migrants’ sense of belonging and attachment which can serve to enhance or weaken opportunities for social and economic inclusion. The findings reveal how, for Syrian migrants, wider macro level contexts determine immigration and asylum routes which in turn shape place‐specific opportunity structures that impact on micro individual level processes of relational embedding. We develop the term “migrant positionalities” as a social category to capture the multiple experiences of migration and asylum and the power dynamics that determine opportunity structures and processes of embedding. We contribute to the debates in this field by demonstrating how the wider structural context can lead to a multiplicity of immigration and asylum experiences for individuals, resulting in differences in support and rights that go on to shape processes of embedding and personal networks. By employing a situated intersectional lens, we also demonstrate how and why processes of relational embedding differ amongst migrants of the same nationality on the basis of social positionings such as ethnicity, class, and religion, that are situated in context, time, and space.

Constitutionalising the Right to Water in Kenya and Slovenia: Domestic Drivers, Opportunity Structures, and Transnational Norm Entrepreneurs

The international norm development that in 2010 culminated with the UN Resolution on the Human Right to Water and Sanitation changed international law. To what extent did this influence the parallel legal developments evident in many national constitutions across the globe? This article analyses the mobilisation for a constitutional right to water and sanitation in Kenya and Slovenia, identifying the main national and transnational actors involved and assessing their significance for the processes of constitutionalising the right. By analysing two very different cases, tracing their constitutionalisation processes through analysis of archival material, the article provides multifaceted insights into processes of norm diffusion from international norm entrepreneurs to the national level and the agency of domestic actors and their opportunity structures. We find that although the outcomes of the processes in Kenya and Slovenia are similar in that both constitutions contain articles securing the right to water, the framing of the right differs. Furthermore, we conclude that while there is involvement of international actors in both cases, domestic pro-water activists and their normative and political opportunity structures are more important for understanding the successful constitutionalisation of the right to water and differences in the framing of the right.

Comparing Experiences of Constitutional Reforms to Enshrine the Right to Water in Brazil, Colombia, and Peru: Opportunities and Limitations

In this paper we compare recent efforts towards the constitutionalization of the right to water in Brazil, Colombia, and Peru to understand the opportunities and limitations related to the attempts to enhance access to piped water to the highest normative level. Peru passed a constitutional amendment in 2017 while Brazil and Colombia have seen much right-to-water activism but have not succeeded in passing such reforms. We explore the role of the existing domestic legal frameworks on drinkable water provision and water management towards the approval of constitutional amendments. We find that all three countries have specialized laws, water governing institutions, and constitutional jurisprudence connecting access to water with rights, but the legal opportunity structures to enforce socio-economic rights vary; they are stronger in Colombia and Brazil, and weaker in Peru. We argue that legal opportunity structures build legal environments that influence constitutional reform success. Legal opportunity structures act as incentives both for social movements to push for reforms and for actors with legislative power to accept or reject them. Our findings also show that in some contexts political cost is a key element of constitutional reforms that enshrine the right to water; therefore, this is an element that should be considered when analyzing these processes.

Setting Aside Settings: On the Contradictory Dynamics of “Flat Earth,” “Ordinalization,” and “Cold Spot” Education Governing Projects

Place matters, and for schools located in the neighborhoods of towns and cities, place not only holds meaning for individuals, but shapes their experiences of school and education trajectories. This is not simply a question of meaning and identity. Rather, it is that education settings and their opportunity structures shape and are shaped by structural inequalities, in turn reproducing differences. In this paper, I make the case that the state plays an important role in producing inequality by the ways in which it governs, and that contemporary forms of governing on the global level exacerbate these differences whilst erasing the differences that matter. I explore these dynamics by focusing on socio-economic differences between schools in England, UK. I argue that a particular politics of state spatial power is at play, and that the national state and shadow sovereigns manage questions of authority and legitimacy through the use of ideologies (e.g., school effectiveness, social mobility), devices (such as rankings and league tables), and explanations of cause (such as aspiration gaps), with which one can re-express the problem of difference, not as structurally caused, but as a failure of individual effort, expectations, and aspirations.