315 research outputs found

    Exclusion From Rights Through Extra-Territoriality at Home: The Case of Paris Roissy-Charles De Gaulle Airport\u27s Waiting Zone

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    In this dissertation I argue that, since the 1980s, French airports have been designed to exclude people from legal, human and refugee rights. The particular space where this happens has been successively called “international zone”, “transit zone” and “waiting zone” and its scope has been significantly extended overtime. I contend that French authorities have used the concept of extra-territoriality in concert with the material design of the airport to sustain exclusion. While this research focuses on France, findings bear relevance to the global governance of migrants and refugees. The French case epitomizes how states creatively use the law (or absence thereof) and geography to keep undesirable non-citizens, including asylum claimants, away from their territories. In the 1980s and early 1990s, the government established Paris airports’ international zones as non-French, extra-territorial spaces to circumvent domestic and international laws. I use the term “extra-territoriality” with a hyphen to refer to this deliberate excision of territory. When the Law on the Waiting Zone came into existence in 1992, exclusion was reinvented through another form of extra-territoriality, premised on the non-citizen’s legal status at the border. Since then, the term “waiting zone” has assigned both legal and geographical dimensions to this place. This research topic matters as this law established a parallel, less protective legal framework for foreign nationals arriving at the border compared to the one applicable to their counterparts already deemed on French soil - who are either applying for asylum or are to be removed after being caught for staying illegally in the country -. Yet France is a liberal democracy bound by obligations under human rights and refugee conventions at the regional and international levels. Is a less protective system of rights based on the distinction between physical and legal entry necessary? I was drawn to the waiting zone for my research because it is an understudied area; the waiting zone is physically difficult to access, yet important to understand. I chose to focus on Paris Roissy-Charles de Gaulle (CDG) airport’s waiting zone, which detains the greatest number of individuals in France. I sought to answer several research questions. First, how did the Law on the Waiting Zone come to existence? Second, does the Law on the Waiting Zone constitute a break from the initial phase of extra-territoriality? In other words, is the term “extra-territoriality” inappropriate to describe the current situation of non-citizens placed under the waiting zone regime? Third, how do actors working in and on the waiting zone perceive this legal regime and their role therein? Finally, how are foreign nationals being treated in CDG airport’s waiting zone? Do they have access to rights, or do they face barriers? Different research methods were used to answer these questions. I engaged in discourse analysis of a variety of sources and carried out 35 semi-structured expert interviews. Participants were asked to answer questions regarding their perception of the legal framework applying to the border zone, their role and actions therein. Finally, I used the participant observation method at CDG airport

    Ontologies for Legal Relevance and Consumer Complaints. A Case Study in the Air Transport Passenger Domain

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    Applying relevant legal information to settle complaints and disputes is a common challenge for all legal practitioners and laymen. However, the analysis of the concept of relevance itself has thus far attracted only sporadic attention. This thesis bridges this gap by understanding the components of complaints, and by defining relevant legal information, and makes use of computational ontologies and design patterns to represent this relevant knowledge in an explicit and structured way. This work uses as a case-study a real situation of consumer disputes in the Air Transport Passenger domain. Two artifacts were built: the Relevant Legal Information in Consumer Disputes Ontology, and its specialization, the Air Transport Passenger Incidents Ontology, aimed at modelling relevant legal information; and the Complaint Design Pattern proposed to conceptualize complaints. In order to demonstrate the ability of the ontologies to serve as a knowledge base for a computer program providing relevant legal information, a demonstrative application was developed

    Adoption and Resistance of Service Innovations by Travelers in the Sharing Economy

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    abstract: This dissertation examines travelers’ innovation adoption and repurchase behaviors in the sharing economy. The central question is to what extent the tourism industry embraces service innovations in the sharing economy. Predicated upon behavioral reasoning theory, this research makes a contribution to the tourism study and diffusion of innovation literature, by exploring the influence of travelers’ reasonings in the innovation decision process. The dissertation follows a two-study format. The analysis contextualizes reasons for and against adoption, by incorporating appropriate constructs relevant to service innovations in social dining services (Study 1) and ride-sharing services (Study 2). An exploratory mixed methods approach is taken in both studies. The survey data and the semi-structured interviews are used to identify the context-specific reasons for and against adoption. And, a series of statistical analyses are employed to examine how reasonings influence intentions to adopt social dining services (Study 1) and intentions to repurchase ride-sharing services for the next trip (Study 2). The main results suggest that both reasons for and reasons against adoption have countervailing influences in the psychological processing, supporting the validity of the research models. The findings also reveal that different psychological paths in travelers’ adoption and repurchase intentions. In Study 1, the trustworthiness of service providers attenuates the reasons against adoption and enhances the likelihood of adopting social dining services in the pre-adoption stage. In Study 2, attitude strength functions as an additional construct, which mediates travelers’ attitudes and ultimately intentions to repurchase ride-sharing services for the next trip in the post-adoption stage. By developing and testing a framework comprising a set of consumers’ beliefs, reasonings for adoption and resistance, attitudes towards adoption, and behavioral responses to the sharing economy, the insights gleaned from this research allow practical recommendations to be made for service providers, platform providers, and policy makers in the tourism industry.Dissertation/ThesisDoctoral Dissertation Community Resources and Development 201

    Development of a synergy audit model for sustainability of horizontal airline alliances

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    Thesis (PhD)--Stellenbosch University, 2003.ENGLISH ABSTRACT: For more than a decade there has been an economic need to mitigate the negative effects of the air transport industry's innate sensitivity to cyclical developments as well as the effects of its inherent lack of substantial profits. The past 20 years were additionally marked by a change in policy that prompted various countries to liberalise and privatise their civil passenger air transportation industry. At the same time, airlines' business ambitions became more global, tapping into markets beyond countries' or continents' main gateways. All three aspects started to change the pattern of airline competition and required new business models. Key features of airlines' novel business models are geographic expansion and thus market development. Global expansion strategies and market development activities in passenger air transportation are, however, not easily and fluidly executable. The airline industry is, to some extent, still nationally regulated, thus impeding passenger airlines from fully participating in the global market-scene and from freely entering promising geographies. Concomitantly, the competitive landscape in which scheduled passenger airlines operate changed drastically, with travel value chains occasionally undergoing revolutionary transformations on both the supply and the demand side. Finally, the air transport service reveals several peculiarities that impact its production, distribution and consummation. These characteristics have inspired the execution of novel forms of competitive strategies that are described and critically discussed in this dissertation. Within this context, a main root cause for passenger airline partnerships appears to be its continued regulation and the circumvention thereof through the horizontal joining of forces, thus emulating concentration tendencies that have long been a fixture in other globalising industries. Consequently, horizontal interairline partnerships were induced and identified as a key competitive device with which to weather the challenges of the new air transport rivalry structures, the increasingly deregulated environment, and the impediments of sustained market regulation. All major airlines are now involved in some type of horizontal collaboration. The spectrum of these linkages is wide and ranges from loose, unattached, operative agreements to long-term, far-reaching, strategic ones, the most salient forms and instruments of which are thoroughly scrutinised in this dissertation. This dissertation additionally presents the general core inducing economic drivers of carrier interrelationship, which are cost reduction, revenue generation and corporate power considerations. While these aspects offer a multitude of possible partnership forms and instruments, the bulk of airline linkages, however, is presently constituted of joint revenue generation and, consequently, jointly pursued marketing and market expansion goals. In view of these causes, the present dissertation engages in a profound discussion of the rationales behind interairline partnerships, their likely evolution and effects on management practice. Essentially, the key importance of airline partnerships in meeting basic economic imperatives on the one hand, while circumventing persistent regulation on the other, questions the sustainability of incumbent carriers' current business models. There are clear indications that a structured sequence of events in establishing interairline linkages is a key success factor for horizontal airline partnerships. However, the empirical examination of contemporary partnerships' governance structures and managerial practice strongly points to a lack of ample tools with which to establish airline partnerships, select the appropriate match between alliance goals and intensity, and govern alliances during their entire life-cycles. This drawback seems particularly unacceptable in view of the urgent requirement for more appropriate managerial practice in today's discontinuous air transport business environment, and speaks loudly of the need for a framework with which to enhance airline partnership output. Most ideally, a coherent, structured sequence of events should be followed in partnership formation, organisational set-up and management in order to bring an alliance to fruition. On this basis, the establishment of a collaboration governance organisation, adequately mirroring the specific partnership type and meeting the specific demands of all partners involved, is equally identified and described as a fundamental success driver in this dissertation. Further structural, organisational and functional issues thereafter need to be considered in order to transform the joint business venture of two horizontally allied carriers into a venture for mutual success. The most essential of these are introduced in this dissertation. Synergy plays a central role in this context. Synergy, as the overreaching intention and result of working together towards a common goal, must be anchored as a prime objective of all forms of partnership activities. Synergy through interfirm linkages can be derived from various collaborative areas and is greatly influenced by both internal and external factors. One gauge for synergy, in particular for the transformation of synergy potentials into synergy effects, is partnership intensity. The measurement of partnership intensity can be used to perpetually monitor the benefits of partnership activities. At the same time, inconsistent or uneven partnership intensity can indicate the existence of dissynergies or frailties in the alliance. The underlying theories of collaborative synergy generation, its main drivers and impediments, with particular reference to horizontal partnerships of scheduled passenger airlines, are explored in this dissertation. In recognition of the theoretical and practical background of airline partnerships and the acknowledged problems associated with their establishment and operation, the present dissertation proposes a novel model dynamically supporting the quest for synergy in airline interrelationships. Incorporating the goals of synergy generation and its continual measurement in interairline partnerships, the synergy audit is designed as a dynamic managerial tool. The synergy audit functions as a recurring device for unleashing all the positive partnership benefits of collaborative scope and width. It aids airline alliance management in transforming the desired benefits of partnership activities - synergy potentials - into real, tangible synergy effects during the entire partnership life cycle. The tool A.PIE (Airline Partnership Intensity Evaluator) supports the synergy audit and, which idiosyncratic to the airline industry, multidimensionally applies the deduced relationship of partnership intensity and synergy to the most salient partnership areas and functions. The present dissertation shapes understanding of the true drivers and complexities of today's airline partnerships. It proposes a circular, multidimensional and dynamic model, thus attempting to enhance the set-up, performance and output of horizontal airline collaboration. From this point of view it endeavours to fill the gap identified in contemporary airline partnership management and practice.AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Sien asb volteks vir opsommin

    ICS Materials. Towards a re-Interpretation of material qualities through interactive, connected, and smart materials.

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    The domain of materials for design is changing under the influence of an increased technological advancement, miniaturization and democratization. Materials are becoming connected, augmented, computational, interactive, active, responsive, and dynamic. These are ICS Materials, an acronym that stands for Interactive, Connected and Smart. While labs around the world are experimenting with these new materials, there is the need to reflect on their potentials and impact on design. This paper is a first step in this direction: to interpret and describe the qualities of ICS materials, considering their experiential pattern, their expressive sensorial dimension, and their aesthetic of interaction. Through case studies, we analyse and classify these emerging ICS Materials and identified common characteristics, and challenges, e.g. the ability to change over time or their programmability by the designers and users. On that basis, we argue there is the need to reframe and redesign existing models to describe ICS materials, making their qualities emerge

    Mapeando a experiĂȘncia turĂ­stica em trens atravĂ©s do design centrado no ser humano: descobrindo necessidades e desejos para uma futura aplicação mĂłvel

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    Mestrado em Comunicação MultimĂ©diaThe presented research elicits the behaviour, needs and desires, in addition to future needs, of tourists during the tourist experience through the use of trains in Belgium, with a focus on the future creation of a mobile application that supports not only the collection and use of information during the train trip, but also some factors related to the anticipation and on-site experience. Three different qualitative user research methodologies were planned and carried out: observations, focus group interviews and board games as generative tool. In addition, Personas and context scenarios were developed in order to start bridging the research-design gap. This study was developed during a mobility program between University of Aveiro and Katholieke Universiteit Leuven. It is written in English, which represented a challenge to the researcher, who is Brazilian and has Portuguese as the mother tongue.O trabalho de investigação aqui apresentado expĂ”e as necessidades, desejos e necessidades futuras de turistas durante a experiĂȘncia turĂ­stica atravĂ©s do uso de trens na BĂ©lgica, com foco na futura criação de uma aplicação mĂłvel que suporte nĂŁo somente a obtenção e uso da informação durante a viagem fĂ©rrea, mas tambĂ©m alguns fatores relacionados com as fases de antecipação e experiĂȘncia no destino. Para isso, foram planejadas e executadas trĂȘs metodologias qualitativas de pesquisa do usuĂĄrio distintas: observaçÔes, entrevistas de grupo focal e jogos de mesa como ferramenta geradora de ideias. AlĂ©m disso, foram desenvolvidos Personas e cenĂĄrios de contexto com o objetivo de iniciar a transição entre o processo de pesquisa e design. Este trabalho foi desenvolvido em um programa de mobilidade entre a Universidade de Aveiro e Katholieke Universiteit Leuven. EstĂĄ redigido em InglĂȘs, o que representou um desafio para o pesquisador, que Ă© brasileiro e tem portuguĂȘs como idioma oficial

    Academic Flying and the Means of Communication

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    This open access book shines a light on how and why academic work became entwined with air travel, and what can be done to change academia’s flying habit. The starting point of the book is that flying is only one means of scholarly communication among many, and that the state of the planet now obliges us to shift to other means. How can the academic-as-globetrotter become a thing of the past? The chapters in this book respond to this call in three steps. It documents the consequences of academic flying, it investigates the issue of why academics fly, and it begins an effort to think through what can replace flying, and how. Finally, it confronts scholars and scientists, students, activists, research funders, university administrators, and others, with a call to translate this research into action
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