Comprendre les réparations

Cet article présente une analyse préliminaire de la logique morale qui sous-tend les revendications de réparations de groupe pour les violations massives des droits de l’homme telles que l’esclavage, l’apartheid, le colonialisme et le génocide. Je commence par la justification des réparations dans des cas individuels. Typiquement, un « auteur » fait du tort à une victime, puis offre une réparation à cette victime. J’examine un certain nombre de raisonnements qui autorisent cette pratique. La réparation est perçue comme un moyen de rétablir la victime, d’exprimer la reconnaissance d’un tort, de rétablir la relation entre la victime et l’auteur. Je montre que toutes ces théories s’accompagnent de difficultés pour les types de réparations que nous abordons ici. D’abord, tant la victime que l’auteur sont des groupes et certains de ces groupes ne remplissent pas les conditions nécessaires à l’action collective. Ensuite, les victimes sont décédées depuis longtemps. Dans une perspective de regard vers l’avenir, j’avance enfin que plusieurs raisons favorisent les transferts de ressources à grande échelle que les arguments en faveur des réparations cherchent à justifier par des considérations qui privilégient un regard tourné vers le passé.Understanding Reparation. A Preliminary Reflection. – This paper offers a preliminary analysis of the moral logic of claims for group reparation for large-scale historical abuses of human rights such as slavery, apartheid, colonialism, and genocide. I begin with the rationale for reparation in individual cases. In the model case, a perpetrator wrongs a victim, and then offers reparation to that victim. I examine a number of rationales for this practice: as restoring the victim; as expressing acknowledgment of the wrong; as restoring the relationship between victim and perpetrator. I show that there are difficulties on all these theories for the kinds of reparations I am discussing. There are difficulties, first, because the victim and perpetrator are groups and some of the relevant groups do not meet the conditions for collective agency. Then there are difficulties when the victims are long dead. I argue, finally, that there are forward-looking reasons to favor many of the large-scale transfers of resources that reparations arguments seek to justify by backward-looking considerations

Discursive Exit

Some women did not participate in the Women’s March, rejecting its claims of unity and solidarity because white women mobilize only in their self-interest. This is a form of exit with three features: (1) rejecting a political claim; (2) providing reasons to the power-wielder and the broader public; (3) demanding accountability both as sanction and as deliberation, which requires a discussion about the claim – in this case, the meaning of the group and the terms on which it understands itself. This combination of exit, voice, and deliberative accountability might accurately be called ‘discursive exit.’ Discursive exit addresses conceptual and normative limitations of standard accounts of exit, voice, and loyalty, in particular, when exit and voice are imperfect — because exit can be seen as disapproval of an entire cause — and morally problematic — because voice ‘from within’ implies that cause trumps disagreement, leaving people morally complicit in an unwelcome exercise of power

The cultural politics of human rights and neoliberalism

Do human rights offer the potential to challenge neo-liberalism? I argue that rather than understanding human rights as ideology, as obscuring or legitimating neo-liberalism, it is more productive to see both human rights and neo-liberalism as hegemonic projects. In this article I explore convergences and divergences between dominant discourses and practices of human rights and neo-liberalism around key ideas ‘the state’, ‘the individual’ and ‘the nation’, to clear a space for appreciation of the cultural politics of human rights: divergences in constructions of responsibility and hierarchies of value of concrete individuals offer openings for challenging ideas and practices of neo-liberalism through campaigns for human rights

A many-analysts approach to the relation between religiosity and well-being

The relation between religiosity and well-being is one of the most researched topics in the psychology of religion, yet the directionality and robustness of the effect remains debated. Here, we adopted a many-analysts approach to assess the robustness of this relation based on a new cross-cultural dataset (N = 10, 535 participants from 24 countries). We recruited 120 analysis teams to investigate (1) whether religious people self-report higher well-being, and (2) whether the relation between religiosity and self-reported well-being depends on perceived cultural norms of religion (i.e., whether it is considered normal and desirable to be religious in a given country). In a two-stage procedure, the teams first created an analysis plan and then executed their planned analysis on the data. For the first research question, all but 3 teams reported positive effect sizes with credible/confidence intervals excluding zero (median reported beta = 0.120). For the second research question, this was the case for 65% of the teams (median reported beta = 0.039). While most teams applied (multilevel) linear regression models, there was considerable variability in the choice of items used to construct the independent variables, the dependent variable, and the included covariates.</p

Reading ‘Fundamental British Values’ Through Children’s Gothic: Imperialism, History, Pedagogy

This paper reads the U.K. Government’s “fundamental British values” project alongside two children’s Gothic novels, Coram Boy (2000) by Jamila Gavin and City of Ghosts (2009) by Bali Rai. In 2011 the U.K. Government outlined what it described as “fundamental British values” (FBV), making it a requirement for U.K. schools to promote these values. Many critics have shown that the root of FBV lies in Islamophobia and imperialist nostalgia and suggested that the promotion of “British” values in school will exclude minority groups already under siege from racist elements in contemporary Britain. Other critics argue that the promotion of FBV reduces opportunities to explore issues of belonging, belief, and nationhood in the classroom. This article argues that the Gothic fictions of Jamila Gavin and Bali Rai offer a space in which to critically examine British history (and so, its values) in a way that is acutely relevant to these education contexts. Coram Boy and City of Ghosts use the Gothic to interrogate aspects of British history elided by the FBV project. That is, they point to Britain’s imperial and colonial history and offer a rejoinder to the Government’s insistence that “British Values” equate to democracy, respect for the rule of law and mutual respect and tolerance of those from different faiths and religions. Furthermore, Gavin’s and Rai’s use of the Gothic creates a space in which the ambiguities and contradictions inherent in FBV can be explored. However, their “gothicized” histories of Britain do not render the idea of shared values invalid. The diversity and interconnectedness of the characters offer an alternative version of identity to the patronising and arrogant FBV project, which is aimed at promoting a national identity based on sameness and assimilation. Rai and Gavin look to Britain’s past through the lens of the Gothic not only to refute nationalism and racism, but also to offer a productive alternative that gestures towards a more cosmopolitan vision of identity

Antimicrobial resistance among migrants in Europe: a systematic review and meta-analysis

BACKGROUND: Rates of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) are rising globally and there is concern that increased migration is contributing to the burden of antibiotic resistance in Europe. However, the effect of migration on the burden of AMR in Europe has not yet been comprehensively examined. Therefore, we did a systematic review and meta-analysis to identify and synthesise data for AMR carriage or infection in migrants to Europe to examine differences in patterns of AMR across migrant groups and in different settings. METHODS: For this systematic review and meta-analysis, we searched MEDLINE, Embase, PubMed, and Scopus with no language restrictions from Jan 1, 2000, to Jan 18, 2017, for primary data from observational studies reporting antibacterial resistance in common bacterial pathogens among migrants to 21 European Union-15 and European Economic Area countries. To be eligible for inclusion, studies had to report data on carriage or infection with laboratory-confirmed antibiotic-resistant organisms in migrant populations. We extracted data from eligible studies and assessed quality using piloted, standardised forms. We did not examine drug resistance in tuberculosis and excluded articles solely reporting on this parameter. We also excluded articles in which migrant status was determined by ethnicity, country of birth of participants' parents, or was not defined, and articles in which data were not disaggregated by migrant status. Outcomes were carriage of or infection with antibiotic-resistant organisms. We used random-effects models to calculate the pooled prevalence of each outcome. The study protocol is registered with PROSPERO, number CRD42016043681. FINDINGS: We identified 2274 articles, of which 23 observational studies reporting on antibiotic resistance in 2319 migrants were included. The pooled prevalence of any AMR carriage or AMR infection in migrants was 25·4% (95% CI 19·1-31·8; I2 =98%), including meticillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (7·8%, 4·8-10·7; I2 =92%) and antibiotic-resistant Gram-negative bacteria (27·2%, 17·6-36·8; I2 =94%). The pooled prevalence of any AMR carriage or infection was higher in refugees and asylum seekers (33·0%, 18·3-47·6; I2 =98%) than in other migrant groups (6·6%, 1·8-11·3; I2 =92%). The pooled prevalence of antibiotic-resistant organisms was slightly higher in high-migrant community settings (33·1%, 11·1-55·1; I2 =96%) than in migrants in hospitals (24·3%, 16·1-32·6; I2 =98%). We did not find evidence of high rates of transmission of AMR from migrant to host populations. INTERPRETATION: Migrants are exposed to conditions favouring the emergence of drug resistance during transit and in host countries in Europe. Increased antibiotic resistance among refugees and asylum seekers and in high-migrant community settings (such as refugee camps and detention facilities) highlights the need for improved living conditions, access to health care, and initiatives to facilitate detection of and appropriate high-quality treatment for antibiotic-resistant infections during transit and in host countries. Protocols for the prevention and control of infection and for antibiotic surveillance need to be integrated in all aspects of health care, which should be accessible for all migrant groups, and should target determinants of AMR before, during, and after migration. FUNDING: UK National Institute for Health Research Imperial Biomedical Research Centre, Imperial College Healthcare Charity, the Wellcome Trust, and UK National Institute for Health Research Health Protection Research Unit in Healthcare-associated Infections and Antimictobial Resistance at Imperial College London

“Don’t tell me this isn’t relevant all over again in its brand new same old way”: imagination, agitation, and raging against the machine in Ali Smith’s Spring

This paper explores the third novel in Ali Smith’s seasonal quartet, Spring. Using Achille Mbembe’s Necropolitics as a conceptual frame, I analyze Smith’s rendering of a Britain grappling with Brexit in times of transnational populism. As with Autumn and Winter, Smith’s prose is saturated with intertextual borrowings from pop and “high” culture, also interrogating the links between “nanoracism” and the “immunity and community” knot (Dillet). This paper reads Spring alongside Smith’s contribution to and advocacy of the Refugee Tales project regarding the diverse discourses surrounding migration, xenophobia, and indefinite detention. Smith’s writing traces the darkness of our populist present with its rhetorical and material violence, as well as the possibilities for creative response and resistance. I argue that her seasonal quartet to date and her work with Refugee Tales aesthetically and ethically defend the principle that human dignity, both individual and collective, rests on the ability to tell stories