Mapping Police Services in the Democratic Republic of Congo

This article examines the roles, responsibilities and interactions between the various formal and informal institutions and stakeholders involved in the management of police services in the DRC. It identifies informal networks that influence decision?making processes and policy implementation. It also identifies gaps and contradictions in the existing legal framework and uses a multidimensional governance approach to understand the complexity of the security sector, the overlap and the interconnectedness between the relevant actors. The study also provides an analysis of interactions between the Congolese population and national and international actors, and the recent efforts to secure police reform. It concludes that the poor coordination between the various actors and institutions involved in the management of security services in the DRC creates a dysfunctional structure characterised by a culture of impunity, with no regard for senior civil servants in charge of coordination

Britain: racial violence and the politics of hate

Drawing on empirical research into racist attacks in three cities in England, this article reveals a changing geography of racial violence (in terms of new areas and targets), and sets this in the context of the socially destructive impact of neoliberalism as well as government policies to manage the UK’s changing demographic make-up. With racial violence officially defined as a form of ‘hate crime’, it is divorced from any wider political context or racialised climate and reduced to a matter of individual pathology. The changing parameters of racism and the state’s responses present a challenge which the Left and anti-racists have been slow to meet

Accommodating 'others'?: housing dispersed, forced migrants in the UK

Utilising insights from a qualitative study in the city of Leeds (UK), this paper considers issues related to the housing of dispersed forced migrants. The term 'dispersed forced migrants' is used here as a general label to include four groups of international migrants (i.e. refugees, asylum seekers, those with humanitarian protection status and failed asylum seekers) who have previously been dispersed, on a no choice basis, to a variety of locations across the UK under the requirements of the Immigration and Asylum Act (1999). The tiering of housing entitlement that exists within the generic population of dispersed forced migrants (a consequence of the particular socio-legal status assigned to individuals), and its role in rendering migrants susceptible to homelessness is outlined. The adequacy/standard of accommodation made available to forced migrants is also discussed. It is concluded that current arrangements fail to meet the basic housing needs of many forced migrants. Any future improvement in this situation will require a significant shift in government policy

A moral panic? The problematization of forced marriage in British newspapers

This paper examines the British media’s construction of forced marriage as an urgent social problem in a context where other forms of violence against women are not similarly problematised. A detailed analysis of four British newspapers over a ten-year period demonstrates that media reporting of forced marriage constitutes a moral panic in that it is constructed as a cultural problem that threatens Britain’s social order rather than as a specific form of violence against women. Thus, the current problematisation of forced marriage restricts discursive spaces for policy debates and hinders attempts to respond to this problem as part of broader efforts to tackle violence against women