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The concept and policy of 'multiculturalism' are under continuing attack. A broad policy language has replaced 'race' and ethnicity agendas. We demonstrate how 'community cohesion' and 'equalities' became dominant concepts in managing cultural relations in England. Local authority and community perspectives in one northern city reveal good local practice being undermined by national discourses stigmatising British Muslims, creating barriers to integration, resulting in a dual, conflicting process. While community cohesion de-emphasises 'race', ethnic and religious differences are highlighted in security and immigration discourses.

Cohesion is considered one of the main policy goals both at a EU an national level. However, there is currently a lack of a common approach to measure cohesion effects of large-scale transport infrastructure investments. Accessibility indicators have an unexploited potential in transportation assessment methodologies. Accessibility is considered an added value of locations, which represents one of the elements contributing to a region's welfare. Therefore, spatial distribution of accessibility may be used as a proxy to assess regional cohesion. This paper suggests an approach consisting in measuring changes in the spatial distribution of four different accessibility indicators, computed and mapped using a GIS support. Cohesion is subsequently measured calculating a set of inequality indices of the resulting accessibility distribution. It is possible then to assess whether disparities in regional accessibility are increased or reduced after the implementation of a new transport infrastructure. This approach is tested assessing regional cohesion effects of road and rail network developments in Spain in the period 1992-2004. Comparing the results obtained with accessibility indicators and inequality indices allows identifying the main critical factors and sources of bias. The conclusion is that for the rode mode, cohesion has improved, while regional disparities have increased for the rail mode.

This paper analyses the relationship between country and European identity, and how Cohesion Policy can influence it. While the two sentiments are positively correlated, empirical evidence shows that this association significantly decreased in the last two decades, jointly with an increase in the support of nationalisms and Eurosceptic parties. It is therefore interesting to understand what is the role of EU regional policy in mediating citizens' identification. To elements of Cohesion Policy are expected to be associated to the citizens' preference for their country over Europe: the intensity of funding and the perceived outcome of EU regional policy. Results show that regional divergence is mirrored by a divergence also in identity, i.e. citizens identify more and more with their country and less with Europe. On the other hand, the intensity of funding is substantially neutral in this process.

Using a novel database, this study assesses the impact of the perception of the personal benefits of the EU Cohesion Policy on support for the European project. The results show that the gap in support between people who claim to have benefited from the Cohesion Policy and those who feel they have not vanished once differences in individual traits and reverse causality are taken into account. This means that, despite the significant positive effect that the intensity of the Cohesion Policy in the region exerts on the perception of the policy, it does not stimulate support for the EU.

Grants and services provided by the government may crowd out informal arrangements, thus weakening informal caring relations and networks. In this paper, we examine the impact of social security expansion on neighborhood cohesion of elders using China's New Rural Pension Scheme (NRPS), one of the largest existing pension program in the world. Since its launch in 2009, more than 400 million Chinese have enrolled in NRPS. We use two waves of China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS) to examine the effect of pension receipt on two dimensions of neighborhood cohesion among older adults, i.e. participation in collective recreational activities (e.g., socializing and organizational activities) and altruistic activities (e.g., helping those in need in the community), and the frequencies of these activities. Employing an instrumental variable approach, our empirical strategy addresses the endogeneity of pension receipt via exploiting geographic variation in pension program roll-out. We find evidence that receiving pension only slightly reduces collective recreational activities while significantly crowding out altruistic activities in the communities.

Grants and services provided by the government may crowd out informal arrangements, thus weakening informal caring relations and networks. In this paper, we examine the impact of social security expansion on neighborhood cohesion of elders using China's New Rural Pension Scheme (NRPS), one of the largest existing pension program in the world. Since its launch in 2009, more than 400 million Chinese have enrolled in NRPS. We use two waves of China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS) to examine the effect of pension receipt on two dimensions of neighborhood cohesion among older adults, i.e. participation in collective recreational activities (e.g., socializing and organizational activities) and altruistic activities (e.g., helping those in need in the community), and the frequencies of these activities. Employing an instrumental variable approach, our empirical strategy addresses the endogeneity of pension receipt via exploiting geographic variation in pension program roll-out. We find evidence that receiving pension only slightly reduces collective recreational activities while significantly crowding out altruistic activities in the communities.

Το άρθρο εξετάζει τους τρόπους με τους οποίουςη εκπαίδευση συνδέεται με την κοινωνική συνο-χή, κυρίως στην κοινωνιολογία της εκπαίδευσης.Η έννοια της συνοχής χρησιμοποιείται ευρέως,ιδίως ως ένας ευγενικός σκοπός, που αξίζει ναεπιδιώκεται με σκοπό να διατηρηθούν οι δεσμοίπου συγκρατούν την κοινωνία. Η εκπαίδευση θεωρείται ένας θεσμός σημαντικός που συμβάλλειστη συνοχή με την κοινωνικοποίηση των νέωνμελών της κοινωνίας και την παροχή γνώσεωνκαι δεξιοτήτων που διευκολύνουν την κοινωνικήσυμμετοχή τους. Η διατήρηση όμως της σημερι-νής οργάνωσης της κοινωνίας σημαίνει ότι ανα-παράγονται και οι κοινωνικές ανισότητες. Επομένως, υποστηρίζουμε ότι το ερώτημα της συνοχήςείναι ανάμεσα στα άλλα πολιτικής φύσης. ; This article examines the ways education isrelated to social cohesion, mainly in sociologyof education approaches. The notion ofcohesion is used widely, especially as a nobleaim worth striving at, in order to sustain theties that keep society together. Education isviewed as an important institution that contributesto cohesion by socialising the newmembers of society, providing them withknowledge and skills in order to facilitatetheir social participation. Sustaining howevercurrent societal organisation implies that socialinequality is also reproduced. Thus, weargue that, the question of cohesion is interalia a political one.

The context of this research paper is Cardiff in the UK. Imams from five different mosques were interviewed about integration and whether mosque open days and community activities support community cohesion. The research shows that the imams and their respective mosques are open to others in the local community, and are making efforts to engage with the local population, government agencies, and public services. Clear efforts are being made to encourage community cohesion, with the imams keen to pass on the message of a shared humanity to the wider community. The research provides some unique insights that help to fill the gap in the academic literature on Muslim communities, and may be used to inform policymakers on ways of supporting mosques and local communities in developing intercultural relations and creating an environment that is conducive to community cohesion

The requirements of European Unification, along with broader processes of globalization, including immigration, are reshaping economic and welfare priorities and reconfiguring the relationship between citizens and the state in Italy. The reorganization of the Italian welfare state around the principle of subsidiarity combines neoliberal restructuring with a commitment to social solidarity and cohesion and privileges the family as the social formation best suited to mediate between state, market, and citizens. As the state retreats from some of its former social welfare responsibilities, it simultaneously extends its reach into matters of reproduction and family-making. Biopolitics in the time of subsidiarity encompasses concerns over birth rates, the population, the rights of the unborn, and the proper composition of the family. This dissertation examines the terms of social cohesion in post-welfare Italy and the central role that matters of reproduction and the family play in its reformulation as a moral and cultural problem. I focus on three discursive sites: the politics of life; the assertion of the heteronormative family as an urgent and legitimate site of political intervention; and the parameters for the "appropriate" integration of migrants into Italian society. I draw on ethnographic inquiry with associations and individuals engaged in reproductive and migrant health and politics in Milan. Tracing the policies, practices, and discourses that seek to govern in the name of social cohesion sheds light on new citizenship projects and logics of inclusion/exclusion in the post-welfare moment and underscores the continued salience of gender, sexuality, and reproduction to processes of state building.

How do political administrations sustain whatever kinds of cohesion they do, over their time in office? Although recent research emphasizes institutions, sometimes institutions also weaken cohesion. Informal institutions are more important than formal ones in shaping styles of political judgement in governing administrations. But how can institutional processes explain both weakening and strengthening? This article develops a neo‐Durkheimian theory. It proposes that informal institutions should be understood as operating through very particular kinds of practices, which are enacted in a limited number of basic kinds of ritual interaction order. The article innovates by showing how written ritual in government interacts with face‐to‐face ritual in cultivating styles both of thought and of emotions to sustain positive and negative feedback dynamics. The argument is illustrated by analysing negative rites of blame and accusation and positive rites of self‐assertion during positive feedback in the individualistic interaction order in Harold Wilson's 1960s Cabinet.

The European Territorial Cohesion Policy has been the subject of numerous debates in recent years. Most contributions focus on understanding the term itself and figuring out what is behind it, or arguing for or against a stronger formal competence of the European Union in this field. This article will leave out these aspects and pay attention to (undefined and legally non-binding) conceptual elements of territorial cohesion, focusing on the challenge of linking it within spatial policies and organising the relations. Therefore, the theoretical approach of Cultural Theory and its concept of clumsy solution are applied to overcome the dilemma of typical dichotomies by adding a third and a fourth (but not a fifth) perspective. In doing so, normative contradictions between different rational approaches can be revealed, explained and approached with the concept of 'clumsy solutions'. This contribution aims at discussing how this theoretical approach helps us explain and frame a coalition between the Territorial Cohesion Policy and spatial policies. This approach contributes to finding the best way of linking and organising policies, although the solution might be clumsy according to the different rationalities involved.