Not Quite Right: Representations of Eastern Europeans in ECJ Discourse

Although the increasing responsiveness of the Court of Justice of the European Union (the ‘ECJ’) jurisprudence to western Member States’ concerns regarding Central and Eastern European (‘CEE’) nationals’ mobility has garnered academic attention, ECJ discourse has not been scrutinised for how it approaches the CEE region or CEE movers. Applying postcolonial theory, this article seeks to fill this gap and to explore whether there are any indications that ECJ discourse is in line with the historical western-centric inferiorisation of the CEE region. A critical discourse analysis of a set of ECJ judgments and corresponding Advocate General opinions pertaining to CEE nationals illustrates not only how the ECJ adopts numerous discursive strategies to maintain its authority, but also how it tends to prioritise values of the western Member States, while overlooking interests of CEE movers. Its one-sided approach is further reinforced by referring to irrelevant facts and negative assumptions to create an image of CEE nationals as socially and economically inferior to westerners, as not belonging to the proper EU polity and as not quite deserving of EU law’s protections. By silencing CEE nationals’ voices, while disregarding the background of east/west socio-economic and political power differentials and precariousness experienced by many CEE workers in the west, such racialising discourse normalises ethnicity- and class-based stereotypes. These findings also help to contextualise both EU and western policies targeting CEE movers and evidence of their unequal outcomes in the west, and are in line with today’s nuanced expressions of racisms. By illustrating the ECJ’s role in addressing values pertinent to mobile CEE individuals, this study facilitates a fuller appreciation of the ECJ’s power in shaping and reflecting western-centric EU identity and policies. Engaging with such issues will not only allow us to better appreciate—and question—the ECJ’s legitimacy, but might also facilitate a better understanding of power dynamics within the EU. This study also makes significant theoretical and methodological contributions. It expands (and complicates) the application of postcolonial theory to contemporary intra-EU processes, while illustrating the usefulness of applying critical discourse analysis to exploring differentiation, exclusion, subordination and power within legal language

Heuristics for the automatic identification of irregularities in spreadsheets

Spreadsheet programs turned out to be the most popular end-user programming environment that has ever been released. Important decisions are based on the results of spreadsheet programs and the list of known errors with large impact is growing daily- although it surely is only the top of an iceberg. One way out of the crisis might be the introduction of software engineering techniques into spreadsheet development. Suggestions for the improvement of spreadsheet development range back as far as into the late eighties, but none has been successful yet. We argue this is either because not enough effort is put into the roll-out of the technique to the users and, mainly, because they neglect the fact that spreadsheet programmers are end-users, not willing or not able to spend any time on learning software engineering methods. We found out that most end users are willing to verify their spreadsheets, but only view have the time and skills to do really systematic testing of spreadsheets. We developed an approach to generate two orthogonal abstract representations of spreadsheet programs that are then displayed to the user by different visualisation techniques to support the auditing process. Usually, irregularities in the visualisation point out hot-spots on the spreadsheet with a high likelihood of erroneous formulas. In this paper we present new heuristics for identifying hot spots that are very efficient for large spreadsheet programs

Experiencing the State and Negotiating Belonging in Zomia: Pa Koh and Bru-Van Kieu Ethnic Minority Youth in a Lao-Vietnamese Borderland

Geopolitical borders physically demarcate the nation-state. They delimit the territoriality of nations, which Anderson (2006) famously described as ‘imagined communities’. It is the work of states to construct and nurture such imagined communities, first and foremost within its national borders. This is done, among other things, through projects of nationalism which are here understood as efforts ‘to make the political unit, the state (or polity) congruent with the cultural unit, the nation’ (Fox and Miller-Idriss, 2008, p. 536). Such social practices or the absence thereof erect borders but also render borders irrelevant, rather than the physical demarcation of state territory as the quote above illustrates.</p

Die Analyse latenter Frames und Narrative durch szenisches Verstehen

Latente Frames und Narrative sind eine spezifische Form des Framing, die nicht manifest im Text erkennbar ist. Diese Frames und Narrative stellen – häufig performativ – einen übergreifenden Deutungszusammenhang her, innerhalb dessen Fakten und Ereignisse ausgewählt, in spezifischer Form dargestellt und verstanden werden. Sie präformieren, meist unbemerkt und unbewusst, unser Wahrnehmen und Denken. Versteckte Diskriminierungen, Stereotype und Zuschreibungen können durch die Analyse solcher Frames sichtbar gemacht werden als Teil eines unbeabsichtigten Doing Gender. Als methodischer Zugang zur Analyse latenter Frames eignet sich das szenische Verstehen, die Hypothesenbildung erfolgt auf der Grundlage des abduktiven Schließens