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

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

Globalización, Modernidad y Democracia. El caso de Turquía

Desde el 11-S el discurso del “choque de civilizaciones” ha jugado un papel importante en la conformación de los asuntos mundiales, y ha llevado a una codificación del islam como negación de la modernidad secular y de la democracia liberal. En este contexto, han sido varias las respuestas a la urgente necesidad de luchar contra el terrorismo: “la exportación de la democracia mediante la guerra y la ocupación”, para unos, y el llamamiento a una “gobernanza democrática global” como base para la coexistencia entre diferentes culturas y civilizaciones, para otros. El presente artículo se orienta hacia esta última opción proponiendo el caso de Turquía como ejemplo paradigmático de una “modernidad alternativa” que ha experimentado, aunque no sin dificultades, la coexistencia del islam con la modernidad y la democracia

Turkey as a "Humanitarian State"

The global power shift that started over a decade ago has taken a most curious turn in recent years with the decadence of great power politics and the rise of new contenders. The multiple crises of globalization are imminent on international system. These multiple crises entail a nearly synchronistic eruption of the following international conundrums: 1) a global economic crisis that consists of a financial crisis, global recession and unemployment; 2) a crisis of hegemony and power that comes about with lack of leadership, multipolarity, a deluge within Western modernity and the emergence of multiple, alternative modernities; 3) the crisis of civilization accompanied by global climate change, energy scarcity, depleting food resources, and eroding global social justice with skyrocketing rates of poverty, uneven and “uncompassionate” development, and inequality

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

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