Advocacy networks are pushing for more active participation in civic and political life for immigrants which is stretching the boundaries of current liberal democratic citizenship

Recent decades have seen an increasingly hostile and negative environment towards immigrants in the U.S., especially in the attitudes of law enforcement towards undocumented immigrants. In new research, Helga Leitner looks at the ways in which the groups and networks that advocate on immigrants’ behalf are challenging this discursive environment and are creating new political spaces. She writes that these groups seek to frame undocumented migrants as worthy of inclusion in society based on their humanity rather than their potential contribution to economy and society, and that they also aid in the creation of welcoming policies at different scales such as ‘sanctuary cities’, day laborer centres and immigrant serving organizations

For food space: theorizing alternative food networks beyond alterity

In response to calls by scholars to deepen theoretical engagement in research on Alternative Food Networks (AFNs), in this article we critically discuss and assess major theoretical approaches deployed in the study of AFNs. After highlighting the strengths and limitations of each theoretical approach, we provide an alternative framework – which we refer to as the Geographical Political Ecology of Food Systems – that integrates the contributions that have emerged in the study of the alternative geographies of food with an understanding of capitalist processes in the food system. We do this by bringing together literature on the political ecology of food systems and multiple spatialities, including Doreen Massey\u27s understanding of space as a heterogeneous multiplicity and Eric Sheppard\u27s conceptualization of sociospatial positionality. We utilize research on agrarian change and AFNs in Eastern Europe to elaborate this approach. We argue that this new perspective helps navigate tensions in AFN scholarship, and provides new avenues for research and action. We focus particularly on the ability of AFNs to provide a sustainable livelihood for participating farmers, thus far a neglected topic in AFN research in Europe

Das Operationelle Programm "Beschäftigung Österreich 2014 bis 2020" des Europäischen Sozialfonds. Endbericht der begleitenden Evaluierung

Die begleitende Evaluierung des Europäischen Sozialfonds (ESF) in Österreich umfasst alle thematischen Prioritäten des Programmes mit Ausnahme der neuen Prioritätsachse REACT-EU: Beschäftigung, Armutsreduktion und Bildung. Eigenes Augenmerk gilt der Übergangsregion Burgenland. Untersucht werden auch die bereichsübergreifenden Ziele Gender Mainstreaming und Gleichstellung sowie Disability Mainstreaming und Barrierefreiheit. Der vorliegende Bericht enthält die aktualisierten Analysen und Einschätzungen zu Konzeption und Umsetzung des Programmes. Der Hauptfokus wird jedoch auf Wirkungsaspekte gelegt, wobei das Untersuchungsspektrum von qualitativen Ansätzen bis zu kontrafaktischen Wirkungsanalysen reicht. Insgesamt zeigen die Befunde auf vielfältige Weise die positiven Wirkungen des ESF auf, etwa die Effekte auf die Bildungsbeteiligung oder Beschäftigungsintegration der Geförderten oder die Entwicklung und Implementierung innovativer Ansätze. Gleichzeitig werden auch Hinweise auf Herausforderungen und Verbesserungspotential gegeben, um die Leistungskraft des ESF in Zukunft noch weiter zu stärken

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

"I'm not proud, I'm just gay": lesbian and gay youths' discursive negotiation of otherness

This article outlines the shared identity construction of five gay and lesbian members of an LGBT youth group, situated in a conservative, working-class, Northern English town. It is shown that the young people’s identity work emerges in response to the homophobia and ‘othering’ they have experienced from those in their local community. Through ethnography and discourse analysis, and using theoretical frameworks from interactional sociolinguistics, the strategies that the young people employ to negotiate this othering are explored; they reject certain stereotypes of queer culture (such as Gay Pride or being ‘camp’), and aim to minimise the relevance of their sexuality to their social identity. It is argued this reflects both the influence of neoliberal, ‘homonormative’ ideology, which casts sexuality in the private rather than public domain, and the stigma their sexuality holds in their local community. These findings point to the need to understand identity construction intersectionally

Regulatory regionalism and anti-money-laundering governance in Asia

With the intensification of the Financial Action Task Force's (FATF's) worldwide campaign to promote anti-money-laundering regulation since the late 1990s, all Asian states except North Korea have signed up to its rules and have established a regional institution—the Asia/Pacific Group on Money Laundering—to promote and oversee the implementation of FATF's 40 Recommendations in the region. This article analyses the FATF regime, making two key claims. First, anti-money-laundering governance in Asia reflects a broader shift to regulatory regionalism, particularly in economic matters, in that its implementation and functioning depend upon the rescaling of ostensibly domestic agencies to function within a regional governance regime. Second, although this form of regulatory regionalism is established in order to bypass the perceived constraints of national sovereignty and political will, it nevertheless inevitably becomes entangled within the socio-political conflicts that shape the exercise of state power more broadly. Consequently, understanding the outcomes of regulatory regionalism involves identifying how these conflicts shape how far and in what manner global regulations are adopted and implemented within specific territories. This argument is demonstrated by a case study of Myanmar

Informal work on the streets of Vienna : the foreign newspaper vendors

Although most foreign workers in Western Europe are wage labourers there are also other forms of work organisation present. In Vienna there exists an intermediate category of the self-employed who are at the same time under contract to a major employer - in this case newspaper firms. Most of the street newspaper vendors are Egyptian, with high levels of educational qualifications. Stays in Vienna are short, with immigration still being possible because of the workers' self-employed status. Migrants live in groups without family. Their position is very tenuous and they are amongst the most exploited groups in the labour market.L'économie informelle dans les rues de Vienne : les vendeurs de journaux étrangers. Bien que la plupart des travailleurs immigrés en Europe soient des salariés, d'autres formes de travail apparaissent. À Vienne, les grands quotidiens engagent sous contrat des indépendants pour la vente des journaux. La plupart des vendeurs qui opèrent dans les rues de Vienne sont des Egyptiens, souvent d'un niveau d'enseignement élevé. Leur séjour à Vienne est court et leur immigration est toujours possible grâce à leur statut officieusement reconnu de travailleur indépendant. Ces immigrés vivent en groupe, mais sans rassemblement familial. Leur position sociale est très précaire et ils sont parmi les groupes les plus exploités sur le marché du travail.Leitner Helga. Informal work on the streets of Vienna : the foreign newspaper vendors . In: Espace, populations, sociétés, 1990-2. Les communautés étrangères en Europe - Foreign Communities in Europe. pp. 221-229

Speculating on land, property and peri/urban futures: A conjunctural approach to intra-metropolitan comparison

This article explores a conjunctural approach to comparison as a means to capture the complexity of the processes shaping metropolitan land transformations in a city of the global South, comparing the co-implicated actions of developers and local residents across central and peri-urban Jabodetabek. A conjunctural approach shares with some other forms of comparison the ambition to build new theories and challenge existing knowledge. Rather than controlling for the characteristics of units of analysis as in conventional comparison, a conjunctural approach attends to the broader spatio-temporal conjuncture. It involves highlighting unexpected or overlooked starting points for comparison, attending to inter-place, inter-scalar and inter-temporal relationalities in order to identify shared general tendencies as well as particularities and to chart their mutual constitution. Grounding this comparison iteratively puts local knowledge and observations in conversation with already existing theories. Deploying these principles in a socio-spatial intra-metropolitan comparison, we show that economic speculation on land and property is complexly entangled with actors’ socio-cultural speculations, as they seek also to realise aspirations for distinct peri/urban futures. Economic speculation deepens already existing inequalities in wealth and power differentials between and among developers and kampung residents. The erasure of informal settlements and displacement of their residents is supplemented by the ability of other kampungs and select residents to take advantage of spillover opportunities from the formal developments built on former kampung land. Distinct central city and peri-urban landscapes are emerging, shaped by differences in the social ecology of land and local governance and planning regimes