The limits of modernisation: religious and gender inequality in Northern Ireland

This work focuses on the role of state policy and multinational capital in the reproduction of social divisions in Northern Ireland. It concentrates on the period since 1972, when Direct Rule from Westminster replaced the Stormont regime. While the Unionist state has been abolished, sectarianism continues to dominate economic, political and social life. Although some reforms have been introduced, British policy has been unable to attack the roots of sectarianism. Multinational companies play no straight forward 'modernising' role in relation to sectarian (or gender) divisions. The evidence presented suggests that foreign capital has both undermined and reproduced existing social divisions. Sectarian practices have changed in response to political pressure, rather than any inherent tendency in capital itself. The political importance of the sectarian divide has overshadowed interest in gender inequalities. The two issues have remained separate in academic literature and in policy. This thesis has brought the two together, both theoretically and in the empirical work. It is argued that gender has been a crucial element in the construction of sectarian divisions, while sectarianism helps sustain patriarchal structures. Sectarianism has compounded gender disadvantage for Catholic women. The early chapters concern the theoretical framework, and the historical background to the period of Direct Rule. These are based largely on published sources, integrating material on both sectarian and gender inequalities. The later chapters review the evidence of the impact of British state policy on these inequalities. These are based mainly on official data; on published and unpublished material from the Fair Employment Commission's monitoring returns of individual companies and public authorities, and on a small number of interviews. These sources are supplemented with a small-scale study of employment at the Royal Victoria Hospital, based largely on interviews with staff and management

Measuring integration? Exploring socio-economic indicators of integration of third country nationals. MITI: United Kingdom national report

This document is the UK report of a European project which explored the measurement of migrants’ integration. The project, Migrants’ Integration Territorial Index (MITI) was funded by the European Union as part of its INTI programme on the integration of Third Country nationals. The project aimed to gather available statistical data on themes relevant to integration and to explore the possibility of developing an index of integration which could compare progress towards integration in the different regions of an individual state

Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbon in the Central Region of the Seyfert 2 Galaxy NGC1808

We present mid infrared (MIR) spectra of the Seyfert 2 (Sy 2) galaxy NGC 1808, obtained with the Gemini's Thermal-Region Camera Spectrograph (T-ReCS) at a spatial resolution of 26 pc. The high spatial resolution allowed us to detect bright polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) emissions at 8.6micron and 11.3micron in the galaxy centre (26 pc) up to a radius of 70 pc from the nucleus. The spectra also present [Ne ii]12.8micron ionic lines, and H2 S(2)12.27micron molecular gas line. We found that the PAHs profiles are similar to Peeters's A class, with the line peak shifted towards the blue. The differences in the PAH line profiles also suggests that the molecules in the region located 26 pc NE of the nucleus are more in the neutral than in the ionised state, while at 26 pc SW of the nucleus, the molecules are mainly in ionised state. After removal of the underlying galaxy contribution, the nuclear spectrum can be represented by a Nenkova's clumpy torus model, indicating that the nucleus of NGC 1808 hosts a dusty toroidal structure with an angular cloud distribution of sigma = 70degree, observer's view angle i = 90degree, and an outer radius of R0 = 0.55 pc. The derived column density along the line of sight is NH = 1.5 x 10^24 cm-2, which is sufficient to block the hard radiation from the active nucleus, and would explain the presence of PAH molecules near to the NGC 1808's active nucleus.Comment: Accepted by MNRAS 2012 December

Relativistic free-particle quantization on the light-front: New aspects

We use the light-front machinery to study the behavior of a relativistic free particle and obtain the quantum commutation relations from the classical Poisson brackets. We argue that the usual projection onto the light-front coordinates for these from the covariant commutation ralations does not reproduce the expected results.Comment: To appear in the proceedings "IX Hadron Physics and VII Relativistic Aspects of Nuclear Physics: A Joint Meeting on QCD and QGP, Hadron Physics-RANP,2004,Angra dos Reis, Rio de Janeiro,Brazi

Surprises in the relativistic free-particle quantization on the light-front

We use the light front ``machinery'' to study the behavior of a relativistic free particle and obtain the quantum commutation relations from the classical Poisson brackets. We argue that their usual projection onto the light-front coordinates from the covariant commutation relations show that there is an inconsistency in the expected correlation between canonically conjugate variables ``time'' and ``energy''. Moreover we show that this incompatibility originates from the very definition of the Poisson brackets that is employed and present a simple remedy to this problem and envisages a profound physical implication on the whole process of quantization.Comment: 13 page