The Embodiment of Tolerance in Discourses and Practices Addressing Cultural Diversity in Schools: The case of Cyprus

Work Package 3: Country Reports on Tolerance and Cultural Diversity DiscoursesThe ACCEPT PLURALISM project (2010-2013) is funded by the European Commission under the Seventh Framework Programme, Socio-economic Sciences and Humanities. (Call FP7-SSH-2009-A, Grant Agreement no: 243837). Coordinator: Prof. Anna Triandafyllidou, Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, European University Institute

Syrian Refugees and the Digital Passage to Europe: Smartphone Infrastructures and Affordances

This research examines the role of smartphones in refugees’ journeys. It traces the risks and possibilities afforded by smartphones for facilitating information, communication, and migration flows in the digital passage to Europe. For the Syrian and Iraqi refugee respondents in this France-based qualitative study, smartphones are lifelines, as important as water and food. They afford the planning, navigation, and documentation of journeys, enabling regular contact with family, friends, smugglers, and those who help them. However, refugees are simultaneously exposed to new forms of exploitation and surveillance with smartphones as migrations are financialised by smugglers and criminalized by European policies, and the digital passage is dependent on a contingent range of sociotechnical and material assemblages. Through an infrastructural lens, we capture the dialectical dynamics of opportunity and vulnerability, and the forms of resilience and solidarity, that arise as forced migration and digital connectivity coincide

Mobile citizenship, states of exception and (non)border regimes in the pandemic and post-Covid19 Cyprus

This study examined the impact of the emergency measures on community relations, fundamental rights, and mobility rights during the Covid19 pandemic in de facto divided Cyprus. It explored states of exception, as well as solidarity aiming to counter those restrictions. Internal and external borders were mobilised to separate ‘us’ from ‘them’, shaped by the pandemic policies and media discourses via a hygiene emergency with suspension of rights, hitting severely the most vulnerable, often migrants and asylum-seekers. The hostile and securitised climate was generated by the political elites and the media and was built on the ‘Cypriot states of exception’ and colonial laws by extending old and generating new bordering processes. An illiberal policy frame towards migrants and asylum-seekers was manifested in form of a state exception of immobility, which affects the relations between the two communities, the division of Cyprus, peace-keeping and peace-making. Contra this hostile environment and given the welfare state crisis, acts for citizenship have generated praxis-based solidarity. Via digital networking, we observed processes of reorganisation of activism. This is prefiguring a potential for reassembling socialities, paving ways for social imaginaries of a mobile citizenship transcending old and new divisions of Cyprus and the world

Winning Peace Frames: Intra-Ethnic Outbidding in Northern Ireland and Cyprus

Ethnic outbidding in divided societies can have dire political consequences, ranging from the derailment of peace processes to inter-ethnic warfare. This article investigates the conditions contributing to successful outbidding within the framework of protracted peace negotiations by using the contrasting cases of Northern Ireland and Cyprus. Evidence demonstrates that successful outbidders are able to exploit the fears of their communities with respect to inter-ethnic compromise while identifying appropriate strategies and opportunities for redressing these grievances. The article demonstrates that the degree of outbidding success over the long term derives from combining diagnostic and prognostic frames linked to credible political and constitutional strategies

Informality and the context of reception in South Africa's new immigrant destinations

This study examines the context of reception for Zimbabwean migrants who are engaged in South Africa's informal economy. It seeks to contribute to two areas of migration scholarship: (a) the emergence of new immigrant destinations in the global South and (b) the role of the informal economy in shaping the context of reception for migrants in new gateway cities. Through surveys of Zimbabwean day labourers in Tshwane (formerly Pretoria), we document the poverty and the food and housing insecurity these migrants and their dependents endure resulting from underemployment in the informal economy. The analysis presented here suggests that although it has received little attention from migration scholars, the informal economy can play a significant role in shaping the context of reception for immigrants in the new gateway cities of the global South. In many destination countries, the informal economy absorbs large numbers of migrants, making it an important, if flawed, source of employment, earnings, and remittances. With increasing levels of migration to major cities, the informal economy has become a key arena of migrant incorporation, with far‐reaching implications for lives and livelihoods.IBSS & Scopu

The Interaction between Racist Discourse and the Rise in Racial Violence in Cyprus

Work Package 4: National Case Studies of Challenges to Tolerance in Political LifeThe ACCEPT PLURALISM project (2010-2013) is funded by the European Commission under the Seventh Framework Programme, Socio-economic Sciences and Humanities. (Call FP7-SSH-2009-A, Grant Agreement no: 243837). Coordinator: Prof. Anna Triandafyllidou, Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, European University Institute

Tolerance and Cultural Diversity Discourses in Cyprus

Work Package 1: Overview of National Discourses on Tolerance and Cultural diversity (Literature and Realities)The ACCEPT PLURALISM project (2010-2013) is funded by the European Commission under the Seventh Framework Programme, Socio-economic Sciences and Humanities. (Call FP7-SSH-2009-A, Grant Agreement no: 243837). Coordinator: Prof. Anna Triandafyllidou, Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, European University Institute