City of Sanctuary: A State of Deferral

Over the last decade, sanctuary has been evoked as an alternative to the problems associated with an exclusionary statist asylum regime. In Canada, the United States and Europe the ‘cities of sanctuary’ movement, which is articulated through various political vocabularies, has emerged. This movement conceives of sanctuary not simply as a church-based space where asylum seekers may be secured, but offers a host of welcoming practices within and beyond cities. This thesis specifically explores the UK-based City of Sanctuary movement, with a focus on the case of Glasgow, which has widely been read as exemplifying hospitality towards and empowerment of asylum seekers. Whilst a statist discourse of fear, a ‘politics of unease,’ positions migrants as a threat to be policed the City of Sanctuary aims to stimulate a softer approach. Yet this thesis illustrates how the City of Sanctuary is also mobilizing a deeply troubling ‘politics of ease.’ Based on a genealogical-ethnographic investigation, which traces an array of ancient and modem practices, I show how the politics of ease renders intractable the serious problem of protracted waiting that many asylum seekers face. In so doing, I demonstrate how the seemingly hospitable City of Sanctuary in fact contributes to a hostile asylum regime by indefinitely deferring and even extending a temporality of waiting. Although the City of Sanctuary may serve to smooth over and ease away this serious problem, this thesis also explores a myriad of minor practices that I indicate as challenging this waiting state

The “missing” politics of whiteness and rightful presence in the settler colonial city

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Sage publications via the DOI in this record.This paper engages the global nexus of colonization, racialization, and urbanization through the settler colonial city of Kelowna, British Columbia (BC), Canada. Kelowna is known for its recent, rapid urbanization and for its ongoing, disproportionate ‘whiteness,’ understood as a complex political geography that enacts boundaries of inclusion and exclusion. The white urban identity of Kelowna defines Indigenous and migrant communities as ‘missing’ or ‘out-of-place,’ yet these configurations of ‘missing’ are politically contested. This paper examines how differential processes of racialization and urbanization establish the whiteness of this settler-colonial city, drawing attention to ways that ‘missing’ communities remake relations of ‘rightful presence’ in the city, against dominant racialized, colonial, and urban narratives of their absence and processes of their displacement. Finally, this paper considers how a politics of ‘rightful presence’ needs to be reconfigured in the settler-colonial city, which itself has no rightful presence on unceded Indigenous land

Insight into kytococcus schroeteri infection management : A case report and review

Publisher Copyright: Copyright: © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.Background: Kytococcus schroeteri is a member of normal skin microflora, which can cause lethal infections in immunosuppressed hosts. In this review we attempted to draw patterns of its pathogenicity, which seem to vary regarding host immune status and the presence of implantable devices. Evidence suggests this pathogen houses many resistance-forming proteins, which serve to exacerbate the challenge in curing it. Available information on K. schroeteri antibacterial susceptibility is scarce. In this situation, a novel, genome-based antibiotic resistance analysis model, previously suggested by Su et al., could aid clinicians dealing with unknown infections. In this study we merged data from observed antibiotic resistance patterns with resistance data demonstrated by DNA sequences. Methods: We reviewed all available articles and reports on K. schroeteri, from peer-reviewed online databases (ClinicalKey, PMC, Scopus and WebOfScience). Information on patients was then subdivided into patient profiles and tabulated independently. We later performed K. schroeteri genome sequence analysis for resistance proteins to understand the trends K. schroeteri exhibits. Results: K. schroeteri is resistant to beta-lactams, macrolides and clindamycin. It is susceptible to aminoglycosides, tetracyclines and rifampicin. We combined data from the literature review and sequence analysis and found evidence for the existence of PBP, PBP-2A and efflux pumps as likely determinants of K. schroeteri. Conclusions: Reviewing the data permits the speculation that baseline immune status plays a role in the outcome of a Kytococcal infection. Nonetheless, our case report demonstrates that the outcome of a lower baseline immunity could still be favorable, possibly using rifampicin in first-line treatment of infection caused by K. schroeteri.publishersversionPeer reviewe

Female Genital Mutilation: A Religio-Cultural Sensitive Issue Determining Maternal Health Care Choices among Somali Women in Dadaab Refugee Camp, Kenya

The paper addresses Kenya’s development challenges in maternal health care with a specific focus on the impact of traditional birth attendants (TBAs) and female genital mutilation (FGM) among the refugees. It purposes to achieve four objectives: to discuss the persistence of FGM among Somali women in Ifo Refugee Camp, to establish the hospital process of providing maternal health care to mothers who have gone through FGM; find out the level of preparedness of the midwives to handle mothers with religio- cultural concerns such as prayer, non-involvement of male nurses and how the practice of FGM contributes to the preference of TBA by mothers. The study assumes that midwives’ training may not have effectively addressed FGM, a social-cultural sensitive issue affecting childbirth and care. Secondly, the specific support of midwives in refugee camps contexts remains limited. A qualitative research approach was used in the study, involving Snowballing sampling method, in-depth interviews, and focus group discussions (FGDs). These methods brought out pertinent issues that make TBAs the preferential option for some mothers in spite of the presence of level 4 category hospitals in the refugee camps. In case of birth complications, the mother’s choice for TBA delays the family’s decision to take her to the hospital and for health care workers to save mother and child. The shortage of midwives and the presence of male midwives in hospitals make some Somali mothers seek assistance from TBAs. There is a need to contextualize midwifery training by enhancing the curriculum with evidence-based /mother-centered skills

Female Genital Mutilation: A Religio-Cultural Sensitive Issue Determining Maternal Health Care Choices among Somali Women in Dadaab Refugee Camp, Kenya

The paper addresses Kenya’s development challenges in maternal health care with a specific focus on the impact of traditional birth attendants (TBAs) and female genital mutilation (FGM) among the refugees. It purposes to achieve four objectives: to discuss the persistence of FGM among Somali women in Ifo Refugee Camp, to establish the hospital process of providing maternal health care to mothers who have gone through FGM; find out the level of preparedness of the midwives to handle mothers with religio- cultural concerns such as prayer, non-involvement of male nurses and how the practice of FGM contributes to the preference of TBA by mothers. The study assumes that midwives’ training may not have effectively addressed FGM, a social-cultural sensitive issue affecting childbirth and care. Secondly, the specific support of midwives in refugee camps contexts remains limited. A qualitative research approach was used in the study, involving Snowballing sampling method, in-depth interviews, and focus group discussions (FGDs). These methods brought out pertinent issues that make TBAs the preferential option for some mothers in spite of the presence of level 4 category hospitals in the refugee camps. In case of birth complications, the mother’s choice for TBA delays the family’s decision to take her to the hospital and for health care workers to save mother and child. The shortage of midwives and the presence of male midwives in hospitals make some Somali mothers seek assistance from TBAs. There is a need to contextualize midwifery training by enhancing the curriculum with evidence-based /mother-centered skills

Keeping tradition alive: just war and historical imagination

The just war tradition is one of the key constituencies of international political theory, and its vocabulary plays a prominent role in how political and military leaders frame contemporary conflicts. Yet, it stands in danger of turning in on itself and becoming irrelevant. This article argues that scholars who wish to preserve the vitality of this tradition must think in a more open-textured fashion about its historiography. One way to achieve this is to problematize the boundaries of the tradition. This article pursues this objective by treating one figure that stands in a liminal relation to the just war tradition. Despite having a lot to say about the ethics of war, Xenophon is seldom acknowledged as a bona fide just war thinker. The analysis presented here suggests, however, that his writings have much to tell us, not only about how he and his contemporaries thought about the ethics of war, but about how just war thinking is understood (and delimited) today and how it might be revived as a pluralistic critical enterprise