Search

This paper is based on an understanding of the global immigration control regime as one of legal violence. It analyses the specialist literature that reveals the existence of an economy of deportability, understood as the unequal distribution of the forms of state power in the lives and freedoms of non-nationals, with gender playing a preponderant role. Taking a gender perspective, a selection of texts from the past two decades are reviewed that analyse the deportation and anti-trafficking apparatus in Europe, the United States and South America. The literature corroborates the existence of a gendered economy of deportability that generates social suffering that, in different ways and to differing degrees, shapes the (im)migrant presence in the national order. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper develops a relational analysis of populism. After placing the rise of contemporary European populism in the post-Cold War context, the static definition of populism as a "thin-centred" and restrictive ideology is exposed. A definition of populism as a process is used, in contrast with the tendency to apply static definitions. The figure of Pablo Iglesias is in this sense presented as an exemplary case that demonstrates the limitations of the use of these static definitions. The EU is also examined as a body that is spearheading the depoliticising processes that provoke the populist reaction - placing the focus on the "New Intergovernmentalism" to interpret the integration dilemmas - and the populist-technocratic and liberal-democratic dichotomies are addressed as historical endosymbioses. Finally, consideration is given to what should be done about the populist impasse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The literature maintains that not all populisms are equal. Some are seen as projects of regeneration or democratisation because they would incorporate an excluded people; others are movements that would weaken democracy by promoting exclusion (xenophobia and racism). The former is "left-wing populism" while the latter is "right-wing populism". This paper shows that what is central to populism is its model of democracy, not whether it is situated on the right or the left. To do this, an evaluation is made of the democratic balance of populisms in three countries in Europe (Austria, France and Hungary) and three in Latin America (Bolivia, Ecuador and Venezuela). As will be shown, those of the right have no more contributed to the destruction of democracy than those on the left may be presented as democratising successes; but all represent a profound challenge to liberal democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Academic reflection on Islam in Europe began at the start of the 1980s as a phenomenon linked to the settlement of migrant populations. Profound transformations in terms both of the articulation of Muslim identities in Europe and the changes underway in the European national contexts of which the members of these groups form part mean new analytical approaches are required. This paper proposes a reading of the collective religious expressions of Muslims in Europe and the reactive scenarios arising in post-migratory terms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, Europe's migration policy reforms have been characterized by their opening towards immigration and mobility. Conversely, The United States of America has decided to create and establish migratory policies that endeavor free mobility reduction and the detention of migrant workers recruitment. Although, the immigration flows increase towards the European continent, as a result of political instability, human rights crisis and a series of humanitarian emergencies that plague the North African region, has led to a tightening in the control, repression and selective immigration policy in the European Union. In United States the severe and notorious legislative initiatives and Anti-Immigrant State Laws, which have been passed or discussed, have created an opposition and support atmosphere towards the pro-immigrant policies. This paper is a preliminary analysis on a change of perspective in the U.S. and Europe towards the migration policies, inspired by social and political events which affect these regions due to the political and humanitarian crisis in Europe and the anti-migrants legislative reforms in the U.S. This paper is based mainly on journalistic information gathering as a second research source and aims to be a starting point towards the current public migratory policies analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article will analyse factors which, since the end of last century, have made interregional relations very important to understand the world geopolitical and economic order. Interregional relations are defined as those which pertain to relations between regions or between a given state and a given region, or within a megaregion. This evolution results from: the growing demand in the emerging economies and the interaction among them, a new framework of interregional economic relations, and the development of new commercial channels. Finally, this paper will introduce the different articled included in this issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social Sciences have often claimed the end of religiosity as an explanatory factor of electoral behaviour in Europe. Nevertheless, left and right parties still insert religious and moral issues in the agenda in order to distance themselves from their opponents. This paper shows a comparative study of 34 European democracies examining the extent to which religious voting has diminished since the eighties. Results point to a sharp decline in the levels of religious vote until the nineties, with a revitalization since then in some of the countries of the sample. The analysis also highlights the important role played by the political elite on the activation of religious vote. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper entails an approach to the situation of the legal recognition of minorities in Europe, taking into account the legal structures that emerged after the Second World War. It reviews the development of this subject in the European system of human rights, focusing in particular on the European Court of Human Rights as well as on the activities of other European organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scientific Internationalism played a determinant role in the beginning of the European contemporary documental movement. In this paper there are studied the theoretical, social and technical elements of the same one that contributed to the emergence of a nascent documentary science. After First World War, scientific in-ternationalism lost his raison d'être, but some of his components continued having a very relevant weight in the evolution of scientific documentation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the last twenty years the educational policy of the European Union has sought two objectives: on the one hand, to make the citizens aware of the common European identity and on the other hand, to enable them to make Europe the most dynamic and competitive knowledge-based economy in the world. Education is seen as the most effective tool to face the current challenges in Europe in the context of globalization and economic crisis. It is therefore essential to raise the proper orientation to the present European Education crossroads. The hypothesis of this paper is that the education policy raised at European level does not respond with rigor and depth to the current challenges in Europe since it is predominantly subject to a target of economic progress and growth and to a professional training. Neither does it propose a comprehensive education within a code of ethics that achieves to alleviate the profound moral failings of the current crisis, their breeding ground consisting of nihilism and moral relativism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper has the goal to develop a comparative approach between the European definition of social rights and the same definition in the case of the United Nations; taking into account the differences and similarities between the way to work on it by the European Union and the Council of Europe. The research done try to show the dear gap between the legal promotion and protection of civil and political rights and the legal promotion and protection of social rights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Media groups' independence and autonomy levels, in particular their journalistic task, are tightly connected with several factors, of which the type of corporate ownership and the freedom or pressure under which corporate governance makes decisions are most relevant. Scholarly research has traditionally considered those factors in relation to the dependencies and links established between corporate media and larger advertisers. However, financialization adds up a new dimension to the study -since it stresses the subordination of professional logics and democratic responsibilities to the financial logics dominating media groups listed in stock exchanges. This paper discusses some data gathered at the beginning of 2009 regarding ownership structure and composition of the boards of directors of the largest European media groups. The aim of this work is to identify the economic agents linked to both, ownership and boards of directors, of the main European commercial news producers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Communication Theories are one of the main pillars of many higher education studies that, placing communication as its core topic, have raised public presence during the last two decades at universities worldwide. However, this ongoing process of consolidation inside the scholar field is not walking together with an objective analysis of the ontological and epistemological positions serving as milestones for Communication Theories' courses. Taking an international online survey as the initial source of information, completed by professors and lectures working at different European and Latin American countries, this paper collects some useful information about the positions and the content of these courses, bringing some light in a confusing fieldwork. If the goal of a common higher education area is real, then deep comparative studies like this must be carried out. Results appeal to a clear dominance of Mass Communications as the main topic inside these courses, although there is a high level of interdisciplinary approaches. Some of the requirements established by the new European Higher Education Area are not implemented in the expected competencies for the students, although they are all present in the courses' objectives. Professors and lecturers are conscious about the new standard set by the Bologna Process, but this consciousness did not arrive to the classrooms yet. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The idea of democracy is probably one of the easiest to get consensus about in contemporary societies, while at the same time there are clear symptoms of political disaffection. The explanations for this political disaffection phenomenon are quite varied. While some argue that the lack of political implication is a consequence of individualism and «civic privatism» that threatens to break the bonds within the political community, others argue that this is a consequence of the crisis of the politics led by elites, which gives way to new forms of political participation driven by the masses. Lying behind these contradictory explanations there is a debate about the normative concept of citizenship or the «good citizen». In this paper I analyze empirically different conceptions of citizenship in Europe, as measured by how much value individuals attach to different civic duties that belong to the definition of citizenship from a normative point of view. In order to do that, I distinguish one dimension of normative commitment and one of community commitment. I then explain the value attached to each dimension at the individual level using multilevel analysis techniques. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper shows the results of an empirical and theoretical analysis intended to determine the current state of religiosity in Europe, that is, the degree to which Europeans give their allegiance to either a religious world view or a secular one. Applying multiple correspondence and cluster K-means analysis to the data gathered from the ISSP European survey «Religion-II», a new typology based on five basic cultural positions has been developed: religious; believers; skeptics; agnostics and atheists. These results show the quantitative extent and the qualitative importance of skepticism. Through an interpretation of the contents of each type, it shows that the skepticism regarding both religious and secular world views represents, at this particular moment in time, an essential key to European culture. We cannot affirm that there is a return to religious matters, but it is clear that the secularisation process has lost some of its original strength. Post-modern Europe is immersed in a cultural crossroads, and will have to decide about its future. The article ends by showing the three possible strategies for settling the doubt: the Kierkegaardian resolution, whereby Europeans will take up either exclusive religious or secular positions; the Borgian solution, whereby religious and secular content and forms will be hybridized; and the Hegelian dissolution, through which Europe may possibly develop a new cultural synthesis built from the remains of the old secular and religious world views. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]