Creating Space in the Archive for an Anti-oppressive Community Project: Recording Border Control and Subversion

Archives exist to record and preserve documents on historical and contemporary events, official and unpublished reports, collective memories, political narratives, and personal and unofficial documents including letters and other materials that embrace memories that could be otherwise lost. Archives also have the power to present a narrative “determined by the evidence that has survived, and “to empower a certain representation through the use of language” (Dudman and Hashem, 2015). Most archives preserve documents, but not many archives could make available the recorded documents to their users. Refugee Council Archives are one of those that made available documents when needed.2 However, the dilemma is, as notes the archivist Paul Dudman, that only some of us could access the archives. Most archives in the UK had failed the displaced in terms of representation when recording documents on immigration legislation, border control, resilience and subversion within the nation-state (Dudman, 2014). 3 How can the displaced be “re-installed on the historical record"? Casba Szilagyi correctly notes when writing about the experiences of refugees globally and the role of archivists in the sector that the Refugee Archives have particularly important roles in recording, creating, disseminating, “managing, preserving, authenticating and making available records documenting historical and contemporary” experiences of the displaced people and those on the move (2020:150). According to the Archives Hub database, there are several other archives in addition to the Refugee Council Archives for documenting lives of the displaced which co-exists in London and beyond. But who accesses these archives? Are refugee archives well-represented as regards to the preservation of lived experience of refugees and migrants? If not, why is this? Who get excluded from refugee-archives, and in what ways? How could we improve access to refugee research archives? Could archives be a creative space for undertaking anti-oppressive, accessible and representative research projects for and with the people in displacement? The above are some questions that we explored at the Refugee Council Archives through the collaboration of and working on a community project with refugees and irregular migrants prior to Brexit, in 2015. The project entitled, “Democratic Access or Privileged Exclusion? Civic Engagement through the Preservation of and Access to Refugee Archives,” was supported by the Library, Archives and Learning Services of the University of East London (UEL).4 In this article, I discuss how the project helped us to establish a successful collaboration with migrant communities in London, enabled the creation of an anti-oppressive space for documenting narratives of resilience and subversion, and made possible the development of a Living Refugee Archive which help preserve the narratives and make accessible the archives to all, including the displaced people globally. I also show how the project ensured representation of people in displacement within the archive

Econometric Analysis of Structural Systems with Permanent and Transitory Shocks

This paper considers the implications of the permanent/transitory decomposition of shocks for identification of structural models in the general case where the model might contain more than one permanent structural shock. It provides a simple and intuitive generalization of the influential work of Blanchard and Quah (1989), and shows that structural equations with known permanent shocks can not contain error correction terms, thereby freeing up the latter to be used as instruments in estimating their parameters. The approach is illustrated by a re-examination of the identification schemes used by Wickens and Motto (2001), Shapiro and Watson (1988), King, Plosser, Stock, Watson (1991), Gali (1992, 1999) and Fisher (2006).Permanent shocks; structural identification; error correction models; IS-LM models

Traffic Accidents in Jordan

In Jordan, traffic accidents constitute a major health problem. They are considered the second leading cause of death. This paper investigated the characteristics of traffic accidents in Jordan and evaluated the safety impact of policy measures undertaken in 2008, including intensification of police enforcement and implementation of traffic law with stiff penalty levels. To accomplish these objectives, accidents’ data of 1998 through 2007 were obtained from Jordan Traffic Institute and other related sources. Results of analysis revealed that Jordan has experienced huge human and economic losses as well as social and emotional negative impacts. Children, young and elderly have been exposed to an elevated pedestrian accident risk. Young drivers of ages less than 25 years and elderly of ages over 60 years are over-involved in accidents. Carelessness and aggressive driving behavior were the major causes of traffic accidents. The results of analysis also indicated that motorization level can be used to explain variations in traffic accidents and fatalities. Furthermore, intensifying of traffic enforcement and implementing traffic law with stiff penalty levels were found to have a strong positive safety impact on accidents and fatalities. Finally, it is recommended to restructure and empower the Higher Council for Traffic Safety to be able to draw a comprehensive strategy with clear vision and rational safety policies to tackle the traffic accidents’ problem

Narratives of Violence and Gendered Experience: Notes on Methodology

This paper draws on the methodology of my doctoral research that looked into the gendered aspects of the conflict in southeast Bangladesh and explored the gender specific implications of violence as well as examining the gendered embodiments of the Jumma nationalist project. In this paper, I endeavour to introduce my analytical approach that challenges the idea of objectivity, stresses the need for the researcher’s engagement with the research topic and participants, and asserts that the researcher’s subjective position has facilitated the research process, allowing me to access data on gendered violence in the conflict zone. I argue further that for an understanding of gendered aspects of armed conflict and indigenous women’s subjectivity in gendered violence in the Chittagong Hill Tracts, we need to employ knowledge of both radical and deconstructive feminism. In doing so, I stress on the one hand the need for a continuous redrawing and redesigning of methodological approaches in the social sciences; and on the other I emphasise the need for a social science research ‘with a heart and emotions as well as a mind’ (Stanley, 2003:4)

Decision making in NICE single technological appraisals (STAs): How does NICE incorporate patient perspectives?

The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) provides guidance and recommendations on the use of new and existing medicines and treatments within the NHS, basing its decisions on a review of clinical and economic evidence principally, at least for STAs, provided by the drug manufacturer. The advice provided by NICE is aimed at overcoming the previously ad hoc, discretionary decisions in order to standardise access to healthcare technologies across England based on evidence. A Single Technological Appraisal (STA) is one element of NICE’s decision-making processes in which evidence about a selected technology (often medicines) is evaluated in 3 distinct phases (scoping, assessment and appraisal). In the last phase of this process an independent Appraisal Committee evaluates evidence in a meeting, partly held in public with the latter half taking place in a ‘closed’ session. During the meeting, the Appraisal Committee considers evidence based on clinical and cost-effectiveness, as well as from statements expressed by patients, commissioning experts and clinical specialists. The Institute encourages experts attending the meeting to provide both written and oral commentary about their personal view in the current management of the condition and the expected role and use of the technology – in particular how it might provide benefit to patients. Yet, NICE and its committees find themselves in a potentially incongruous position: how to take on board the experiential evidence from individual experts along with the evidence on cost-effectiveness when reaching a decision, about whether or not to recommend a treatment on cost-effectiveness grounds. This paper considers how NICE committees incorporate the views of patient perspectives in making rationing decisions about STAs. The findings from the study will discuss where points of tension / conflict arise during meetings and how Committee members navigate experiential accounts with scientific data, which types of patient perspectives are regarded favourably and which perspectives are treated with greater caution (tension between representing patients views vs tokenism), and will highlight how Committee members in fact reflect upon their own personal experience and background in the appraisal process, and thereby are at odds with retaining an element of neutrality in decision-making, as they contend with combining their own subjective views alongside considerations of rationing in the STA process. The analysis is drawn from an ESRC funded study which used an ethnographic approach to understand the decision making process within STAs involving three contrasting pharmaceutical products. Data collection methods included analysis of documentary evidence released by NICE, non-participant unstructured observations of nine STA meetings, and qualitative interviews with key informants (n=41) involved in each of the three case studies