An Empty Promise? Digital Democracy in the Smart City

The digital transformation affects every part of our societies and everyday lives, including the processes and structures of our democracies. On the one hand, information and communication technologies have the potential to lower the threshold for political communication and participation. On the other hand, they can be used for large-scale data collection and surveillance, posing a risk to the public sphere. This thesis investigates the impact of digitization on the legitimacy of democracy. It first develops a novel framework based on the theories of participatory and deliberative democracy, drawing on recent work on deliberative systems. On this basis, digital democracy is examined as a system, consisting of different engagement spaces and actors within the smart city. The smart city is a particularly fruitful testbed for digital democracy as it is based on the promise of applying a high density of digital technologies to facilitate civic participation as well as better service delivery and governance. Through an in-depth case study of the smart city of Amsterdam, this thesis not only reveals the legitimacy dilemmas of digital democracy in the smart city, but also illustrates the limits of applying participatorydeliberative systems theory on a digital democracy ecosystem. The analysis demonstrates design conflicts between different online engagement platforms within the digital democracy system, as well as conflicting objectives among the actors behind them. The findings do not support the claim that digitization negatively impacts democracy’s legitimacy in the smart city of Amsterdam through marketization, large-scale data collection, and surveillance, as some authors warn. However, a significant positive impact of digitization on democratic legitimacy, through higher levels of inclusiveness, empowerment, or civic influence, is also not confirmed. The findings show that digital technologies’ promise of facilitating large-scale citizen participation and deliberation in the smart city does not live up to the normative ideal. The results from Amsterdam are exposed to smart city and digital democracy experts across the globe to test their generalizability, demonstrating that, despite its shortcomings, Amsterdam’s extensive digital democracy system is far advanced in international comparison. What may appear a contradiction in fact illustrates that we are still in the early stages of development, with potential to enhance the legitimacy of digital democracy, both in the smart city of Amsterdam and beyond

Efficacy and Patient-Reported Outcomes of a New Mometasone Cream Treating Atopic Eczema

This double-blind controlled phase II study was conducted to compare a newly developed formulation of mometasone furoate with a water content of 33% (Monovo (R) Cream) and with a smooth consistency versus the commercially available fatty cream of mometasone furoate (Ecural (R) Fettcreme) in terms of efficacy, cosmetic properties, and patients' acceptance. In 20 patients with mild to moderate atopic eczema, the preparations were tested intraindividually in a randomized mode and in two comparable lesion areas. Both preparations were equally effective and well tolerated. Due to improved cosmetic properties, the new formulation was preferred by the patients when asked for preferential use. Quality of life could be improved by treating with both preparations. Copyright (C) 2012 S. Karger AG, Base

Bulk Scheduling with the DIANA Scheduler

Results from the research and development of a Data Intensive and Network Aware (DIANA) scheduling engine, to be used primarily for data intensive sciences such as physics analysis, are described. In Grid analyses, tasks can involve thousands of computing, data handling, and network resources. The central problem in the scheduling of these resources is the coordinated management of computation and data at multiple locations and not just data replication or movement. However, this can prove to be a rather costly operation and efficient sing can be a challenge if compute and data resources are mapped without considering network costs. We have implemented an adaptive algorithm within the so-called DIANA Scheduler which takes into account data location and size, network performance and computation capability in order to enable efficient global scheduling. DIANA is a performance-aware and economy-guided Meta Scheduler. It iteratively allocates each job to the site that is most likely to produce the best performance as well as optimizing the global queue for any remaining jobs. Therefore it is equally suitable whether a single job is being submitted or bulk scheduling is being performed. Results indicate that considerable performance improvements can be gained by adopting the DIANA scheduling approach.Comment: 12 pages, 11 figures. To be published in the IEEE Transactions in Nuclear Science, IEEE Press. 200

Negotiating Survival: Central American Refugee Women in Mexico and the Politics of Deservingness

This article aims to analyse the difficulties Central American refugee women face when applying for refugee protection in Mexico and how they negotiate survival during this process. Claiming refugee protection is an important legal mechanism to ensure survival, but managing this process successfully is difficult, not only because of the bureaucratic complexities but also because of structural and political constraints. Research has addressed the difficulties migrant women face while in transit and in the United States, but there is less analysis on the limitations in accessing refugee protection in transit countries such as Mexico. Therefore, this article examines the main barriers women face by considering the social and spatial specifics of two different reception sites, the southern Mexican city of Tapachula and Mexico City, in the centre of the country. Drawing on ethnographic field research and interviews with refugees and practitioners, this research seeks to understand women’s agency in dealing with adversity in reception contexts. Analysis showed that women need to engage in micro‐level negotiations with gatekeepers in host communities to gain access to humanitarian assistance and social rights. In addition, it has showed that access to scarce resources depends on personal performance in terms of vulnerability and “deservingness.” This demonstrates the complexities refugee women encounter in the local context, but also the role of institutional constraints to humanitarian attention in contrast to an integral understanding of rights. Furthermore, the obstacles faced by refugees and the generation of uncertainty and waiting must be analysed as a political strategy to prevent effective access to asylum in Mexico

Methods for extracting data from the Internet

The advent of the Internet has yielded exciting new opportunities for the collection of large amounts of structured and unstructured social scientific data. This thesis describes two such methods for harvesting data from websites and web services: web-scraping and connecting to an application programming interface (API). I describe the development and implementation of tools for each of these methods. In my review of the two related, yet distinct data collection methods, I provide concrete examples of each. To illustrate the first method, ‘scraping’ data from publicly available data repositories (specifically the Google Books Ngram Corpus), I developed a tool and made it available to the public on a web site. The Google Books Ngram Corpus contains groups of words used in millions of books that were digitized and catalogued. The corpus has been made available for public use, but in current form, accessing the data is tedious, time consuming and error prone. For the second method, utilizing an API from a web service (specifically the Twitter Streaming API), I used a code library and the R programming language to develop a program that connects to the Twitter API to collect public posts known as tweets. I review prior studies that have used these data, after which, I report results from a case study involving references to countries. The relative prestige of nations are compared based on the frequency of mentions in English literature and mentions in tweets

Changing mobility regimes and care: Central American women confronting processes of entrapment in southern Mexico

The humanitarian crisis of Central American minor migrants in 2014 and the massive migration enforcement in Mexico during its aftermath altered the mobility of people fleeing violence in Central America. Anti-immigration measures particularly affect women with children. Due to violence along migration routes and the lack of financial resources to migrate north, many of them must settle in southern Mexico. In this situation, accessing formal rights through refugee protection status in Mexico becomes an important survival strategy. However, this process of legalizing their immigration status requires time, knowledge, and the provision of care by other family members. This paper focuses on the experiences of refugee claimants in the southern Mexican town of Tapachula. Based on fieldwork conducted there in 2018 and drawing on earlier research from 2013 and 2014, this paper aims to analyse women's experiences and strategies and the role of care provision during this process. Findings highlight processes of re-victimization due to segmented labour markets and other aspects of structural and gender-based violence that impact women’s agency during this process.Die humanitäre Krise geflohener zentralamerikanischer Minderjähriger im Sommer 2014 und die darauf folgende massive Verschärfung der Migrationspolitiken im Transitland Mexiko, hatten enormen Auswirkungen auf die Mobilität von zentralamerikanischen Geflüchteten in den letzten Jahren, insbesondere auf Frauen mit Kindern. Als Konsequenz aus der allgegenwärtigen Gewalt gegen Migrantinnen, der Migrationskontrollen entlang der Transitrouten sowie von fehlenden finanziellen Mitteln, müssen viele Frauen vorübergehend im Transitland Mexiko siedeln. Vor diesem Hintergrund ist die Suche nach einem Zugang zu formalen Rechten im Kontext von einer Anerkennung als Geflüchtete eine wichtige Überlebensstrategie. Doch dieser Prozess verlangt neben Zeit und Erfahrung auch Verhandlungsgeschick und Hilfestellungen wie Fürsorgepraktiken von Familienmitgliedern und NGOs. Die vorliegende Forschung analysiert die Erfahrungen von asylsuchenden Frauen in der südmexikanischen Stadt Tapachula. Sie beruht auf Feldforschungen in den Jahren 2013, 2014 und 2018 und stellt die Erfahrungen von Frauen, ihre Überlebensstrategien sowie die besondere Rolle von Fürsorgepraktiken während dieses Prozesses in den Mittelpunkt. Dabei zeigt die Analyse auch Reviktimiserungsprozesse durch verschiedene Aspekte struktureller und geschlechterbasierter Gewalt auf, welche die Handlungsoptionen der geflüchteten Frauen negativ beeinflussen

“They don't care about people; they only care about the money”: the effects of border enforcement, commodification and migration industries on the mobility of migrants in transit through Mexico

How does border enforcement affect the mobility of migrants and refugees in countries of transit? What impact does it have on migrants' bodily experiences of mobility and their reliance on actors of the migration industry? While the externalization of borders affects undocumented people by increasing their vulnerability to violence during transit, the impact of the migration regime on the social construction of inequalities in every-day interactions and its relationship to the capacity for mobility has not been studied in depth. This article intends to bridge this gap: based on ethnographic fieldwork I conducted between 2013 and 2019, this article analyzes the relation between immigration enforcement and the mobility strategies of migrants and refugees, particularly women. It focuses on the intertwining of border enforcement and violence and their impact on people's bodily mobility experiences in transit through Mexico along intersecting lines of inequality such as race, class, gender and nationality. First, I analyze how border enforcement contributes to internal bordering, thereby increasing the vulnerability and dependence of migrants on brokers for mobility; second, it looks at the bodily experiences of women in transit and the ways in which internal bordering shapes gendered power hierarchies among actors in the field of mobility. The analysis shows how women negotiate mobility and bodily integrity in social interactions with different actors and how they face constraints resulting from the gendered hierarchies to mobility on routes of transit. Furthermore, it demonstrates how women's bodies have become a privileged site for the construction of a 'body politic' exploitable by others, since border enforcement has contributed to weakening the possibilities of negotiating mobility and bodily integrity in transit

Negotiating survival: Central American Refugee women in Mexico and the politics of deservingness

This article aims to analyse the difficulties Central American refugee women face when applying for refugee protection in Mexico and how they negotiate survival during this process. Claiming refugee protection is an important legal mechanism to ensure survival, but managing this process successfully is difficult, not only because of the bureaucratic complexities but also because of structural and political constraints. Research has addressed the difficulties migrant women face while in transit and in the United States, but there is less analysis on the limitations in accessing refugee protection in transit countries such as Mexico. Therefore, this article examines the main barriers women face by considering the social and spatial specifics of two different reception sites, the southern Mexican city of Tapachula and Mexico City, in the centre of the country. Drawing on ethnographic field research and interviews with refugees and practitioners, this research seeks to understand women’s agency in dealing with adversity in reception contexts. Analysis showed that women need to engage in micro‐level negotiations with gatekeepers in host communities to gain access to humanitarian assistance and social rights. In addition, it has showed that access to scarce resources depends on personal performance in terms of vulnerability and “deservingness.” This demonstrates the complexities refugee women encounter in the local context, but also the role of institutional constraints to humanitarian attention in contrast to an integral understanding of rights. Furthermore, the obstacles faced by refugees and the generation of uncertainty and waiting must be analysed as a political strategy to prevent effective access to asylum in Mexico