Issue 14: Welcoming Diversity: The Role of Local and Civil Society Initiatives in Integrating Newcomers

In a global context marked by growing international forced displacement and migration, societies are becoming increasingly more diverse. The question of how to live together with newcomers has become a policy issue of utmost concern. While populist governments in Europe and in the US are failing to offer citizens andnewcomers alternative models for living together that encourage greater ethnic, cultural and religious plurality, in this report we highlight the contributions and lessons drawn from local and civil-society initiatives that have been successful in bringing hosts and newcomers together. We explore three such cases: Riace, a small Italian village where the leadership of a mayor and his policies allowed the presence of refugees to revitalize the community; a cultural center in Gaziantep, Turkey, where Syrian refugees are able to experience normalcy as artists, writers and community organizers; and a kitchen project in Berlin, Germany, which started in 2013 by bringing refugees and Berliners together to cook, share a meal, and to socialize. We highlight the importance of a three-pronged approached to integration that combines governmental leadership, solid integration policies, and civil-society and locally-based initiatives that allow for personal interchanges between newcomers and hosts. These interchanges contribute to changing notions of who does and does not belong and are invaluable in showing where the key to co-existence lies

The proof of Birman's conjecture on singular braid monoids

Let B_n be the Artin braid group on n strings with standard generators sigma_1, ..., sigma_{n-1}, and let SB_n be the singular braid monoid with generators sigma_1^{+-1}, ..., sigma_{n-1}^{+-1}, tau_1, ..., tau_{n-1}. The desingularization map is the multiplicative homomorphism eta: SB_n --> Z[B_n] defined by eta(sigma_i^{+-1}) =_i^{+-1} and eta(tau_i) = sigma_i - sigma_i^{-1}, for 1 <= i <= n-1. The purpose of the present paper is to prove Birman's conjecture, namely, that the desingularization map eta is injective.Comment: Published by Geometry and Topology at http://www.maths.warwick.ac.uk/gt/GTVol8/paper35.abs.htm

EU-Turkey relations and the stagnation of Turkish democracy

The current stagnation of Turkish democracy goes hand in hand with the current impasse in EU-Turkey relations. A combination of domestic factors with a loss of credibility of EU conditionality led to a situation in which political reform is substantially stalled and in cases where it is realised, it is mostly conducted to serve the interests of the ruling political elite and with no real reference to the EU. The virtuous cycle of reform that characterised the 1999-2005 period has been replaced by a vicious cycle in which lack of effective conditionality feeds into political stagnation which in turn moves Turkey and the EU further away from one another

Classifying links under fused isotopy

All knots have been shown to be isotopic to the unknot using a process known as virtualization. We extend and adapt this process to show that, up to fused isotopy, classical links are classified by their linking numbers. We provide an algebraic proof, utilizing Alexander’s Theorem and some simple results about the pure braid group. </jats:p

Europe, Turkey and the Mediterranean. Fostering Cooperation and Strengthening Relations. Europe in Dialogue 2012/03

Europeans can be proud as they look back on fifty years of peaceful integration. Nowadays many people worldwide see the European Union as a model of how states and their citizens can work together in peace and freedom. However, this achievement does not automatically mean that the EU has the ability to deal with the problems of the future in a rapidly changing world. The European Union must continue developing its unity in diversity dynamically, be it with regard to energy issues, the euro, climate change or new types of conflict. Indeed, self-assertion and solidarity are key to the debates shaping our future. “Europe in Dialogue“ wishes to make a contribution to these open debates. The analyses in this series subject political concepts, processes and institutions to critical scrutiny and suggest ways of reforming internal and external European policymaking so that it is fit for the future. However, “Europe in Dialogue“ is not merely trying to encourage an intra-European debate and makes a point of including authors from non-EU states. Looking at an issue from different angle or from afar creates a shift in perspective which, in turn, renders Europe‘s development more meaningful as it engages in critical dialogue with other societies

Inside The Lines: Essays on the Performance of Whole Organizational Networks

University of Minnesota Ph.D. dissertation. May 2019. Major: Business Administration. Advisors: Akbar Zaheer, Russell Funk. 1 computer file (PDF); xv, 155 pages.This dissertation is focused on the study of heterogeneous network performance. For decades, most strategy and organizational research has focused on understanding how networks influence a single “node,” typically an organization or individual. In contrast, I shift my perspective to view a whole network as the unit of analysis. This approach is designed to deepen scholarly understanding of strategic outcomes and collective performance that only exist at the higher level – the whole network level. The motivation for this dissertation is the realization many of society’s most complex problems and Grand Challenges require the concerted efforts of organizations towards shared goals, which may not always coincide with local (organization level) incentives. As such, I use the context of healthcare reform in the United States to examine how analyzing the complex patterns of interorganizational patient care may help us better understand the determinants of emergent outcomes at the whole network level. Specifically, the Affordable Care Act of 2010 led to the formation of hundreds of new interorganizational networks, called Accountable Care Organizations, within the Medicare system. Using patient treatment networks based on claims data, I examine two research questions. First, what are the relationships among various network level properties and collective performance? Second, how did the formation of Accountable Care Organizations alter existing patient care patterns and outcomes, if at all? In sum, this dissertation makes theoretical contributions to the study of organizational networks, particularly with regards to network level outcomes. Moreover, this research offers insights into how network studies may inform policy and practice in healthcare

Articulating difference: The problem of the other in international political economy

This paper demonstrates that advancing our understanding of international political economy (IPE) entails posing the question of otherness and difference as an object of theoretical and historical inquiry. It suggests that the discourses of postmodernism, feminism, and postcolonial criticism directly contribute to IPE by locating the problematic of identity/difference at the center of the dialectic of social change. By pinpointing the strength and the problematic nature of each of these discourses, it argues that the reconstruction of IPE based on the recognition of difference requires ‘an empathetic cooperation’ among these discourses as a precondition for the creation of a dialogical interaction between theoretical discourse and subject-positions to whom it is addressed. © 1995 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC