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This article examines the development of affirmative action and equality policies targeted at the two main ethno-national communities in Northern Ireland, as an example of 'contextualised equality'. The argument places particular weight on a politics of legal mobilisation. The article suggests that the ability to connect post-1998 reforms, in practical and symbolic ways, to overriding inter-communal narratives was often a determining factor in identifying those elements of the Good Friday Agreement which advanced, or were constructed as achievable. The argument has implications for understanding how equality debates will progress, and explaining why certain agendas appear to 'succeed' and others 'fail'.

This article examines the law and politics of asylum in Europe. The aim is to explore both the construction of 'Fortress Europe' and the resistance within Europe to the dominant policy response. Human rights law now plays an important part in the struggle to secure decent treatment for asylum seekers in Europe. Its use has exposed serious problems with existing refugee law and policy. In examining the law and politics of human rights this article suggests that dialogic models of law are useful. In particular they bring back into the picture those individuals and groups which make change happen in practice. This allows us to 'ground' the discourses of human rights and refugee law much more securely within concrete political struggles over the terms of asylum policy. At a time when human rights lawyers are becoming part of the international 'mainstream', this article suggests that we must be alive to the importance of dissident voices that remain on the margins.

The past two decades witnessed a global proliferation of national human rights and equality bodies. Yet the research literature remains critical of their performance, positing a series of explanations for the gap between the expectations of civil society and the contribution they make. Through a comparative analysis of six statutory human rights and equality bodies in the United Kingdom and Ireland, this article explores the range of factors that shape their performance.