Suchergebnisse

ABSTRACTContrary to the image conveyed by existing research on irregular migrants as powerless and exploited victims of restrictive immigration policies, irregular migrants in some European countries display a strong potential for collective action. In France, Spain and Switzerland since the mid‐1990s pro‐regularization movements have emerged which have claimed the collective regularization of illegal migrants. At the centre of these new social movements were illegal migrants from sub‐saharan Africa, Latin America and former Yugoslavia who went public and claimed a legal residence status. This article starts form the assumption that despite important differences between the three countries, they share several central characteristics which enabled the emergence of these pro‐regularization movements. In order to identify these pre‐conditions, three country studies, based on an innovative social movement research approach, were carried out. The findings of the country studies show that the findings of the country studies shows that in the three countries the same specific preconditions existed which encouraged the emergence of the pro‐regularization movements.

[Extract] One of the most pervasive myths following the 26 December 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami is that healthy ecosystems, such as coastal forests and coral reefs, reduced the damage to coastal communities. Partly on the basis of this myth, governments throughout the region are enthusiastically embracing the planting of mangrove forests as a natural defence against future tsunamis. Vast sums of money are at stake; for example, IUCN-The World Conservation Union is promoting "Mangroves for the Future", a Euro38-mn (US$48.5-mn) programme that aims to build natural barriers of mangroves in 12 countries in Asia and Africa. If saving lives in future tsunamis is the real purpose of these schemes, then every euro may be wasted. In this article, I briefly review the evidence for the effectiveness of green belts, and conclude that there is, in fact, no good empirical, theoretical or analytical support for the hypothesis that coastal forests provide meaningful protection from tsunamis.

Economic and political developments within Iraq, the Middle East, and sub-Saharan Africa in 2004 are reviewed. Although the formation of the Iraqi Interim Government illustrates the country's commitment to building democratic institutions, it is stressed that violence has not subsided; Russia's role in promoting peaceful negotiations between conflicting political powers in Iraq is noted. The effects of the second Palestinian intifada upon Israeli forces, the Israeli government's construction of partitions in certain neighborhoods, and the death of Palestinian official Yasser Arafat upon the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the prospects of realizing the "Road Map" are then contemplated. Even though many sub-Saharan African nations are plagued by sundry economic, political, and social difficulties, it is stressed that the international community has maintained a sharp interest in the continent. Russia's cultivation of economic and political relations with several sub-Saharan African nations, involvement in reducing interethnic conflict throughout the region, advocacy of reducing particular countries' debts, and commitment to assisting these nations achieve stability and greater global authority are also discussed.

This paper will address issues of user participation in a large centralistic organization. It is based on one year experience of developing a computerized health information system within the Cuban health services. Relevant literature suggests that participative methods may be less feasible in centralistic environments. This paper confirms this by describing how participation in Cuba is restricted by political and organizational constraints. There is however documented that participatory approaches may be very rewording where such constraints are overcome. Experiences from a broad range of health units and organizational levels in the Cuban project show a trend of weakening centralistic control with regard to hierarchical level and geographic distance, and thus more autonomous organizational units and participating individuals at lower level farther from Havana. The research reported is carried out within a framework of a larger network of similar health information projects being carried out in Africa and Asia, and the case of Cuba is being compared with experience from these countries.Full text at ACM

AbstractCommunity Based Conservation (CBC) has become the catch–all solution to the social and ecological problems plaguing traditional top–down, protectionist conservation approaches. CBC has been particularly popular throughout Africa as a way to gain local support for wildlife conservation measures that have previously excluded local people and their development needs. This article shows that, despite the rhetoric of devolution and participation associated with new CBC models, conservation planning in Tanzania remains a top–down endeavour, with communities and their specialized socio–ecological knowledge delegated to the margins. In addition to the difficulties associated with the transfer of power from state to community hands, CBC also poses complex challenges to the culture or institution of conservation. Using the example of the Tarangire–Manyara ecosystem, the author shows how local knowledge and the complexities of ecological processes challenge the conventional zone–based conservation models, and argues that the insights of local Maasai knowledge claims could better reflect the ecological and social goals of the new CBC rhetoric.

Liège has always been a city of passage, of migration, of intercultural encounters. Due to its location at the core of Europe and to its economic and industrial structure, Liège has for decades attracted immigrants. In the nineteenth century, migrants were coming mainly from Flanders, which at the time was an underdeveloped rural area. In the interwar period, many migrants from Poland and other Eastern European countries settled in the region. Right after the Second World War, the mining industry needed an additional labor force. It came from Italy and later from Morocco and other countries. Nowadays, refugees and asylum-seekers from Africa and Asia live in the city and in the region. Liège is a multicultural, multiethnic and multiracial society with a long tradition of integration and toleration. Of course, Liège is no paradise. In this changing city, there are serious social and economic problems that sometimes find an expression in the field of ethnicity. But, contrary to other Belgian cities, racist and fascist political parties do not play a significant role in local politics.

The mid‐twentieth century witnessed the emergence of a remarkable consensus on quantitative estimates of world population growth after 1650. This was the achievement of Walter Willcox, supported and modified by Alexander Carr‐Saunders and John Durand, and was endorsed by United Nations publications. It had its origins in eighteenth‐ and nineteenth‐century work, largely carried out in Germany. Willcox was particularly interested in demonstrating seventeenth‐century population growth as evidence of the global impact of European expansion, and this probably led to a too‐ready acceptance of estimates with little real basis. More recent estimates do little to shake the consensus, but extend the historical series back over two millennia or further. The article examines the strength and influence of a consensus based in the earlier period on surprisingly insecure data. It then turns to the most suspect element in the consensus, the pre‐twentieth‐century estimates for Africa. Finally, little hope is expressed that future researchers will be able to establish reliable estimates, especially for dates earlier than the eighteenth century.

Prior to the Second World War, the French government had been highhanded in its administration of the Levantine Mandates and severe in the treatment of Levantine immigrants in its West African colonies. This imperious behaviour would change abruptly in 1944. As part of their effort to rebuild French power, General Charles de Gaulle and theComité Français de la Liberation Nationak(CFLN) sought to maintain France's longstanding position of diplomatic and cultural influence in the Levant, even after promising Lebanese and Syrian independence. With this in mind, French authorities grew more sensitive to the immigrant connection between Damascus and Dakar. In particular, the CFLN began to understand that complaints by Levantine immigrants inAfrique Occidentale Française(AOF) regarding their treatment by colonial officials had immediate repercussions on the French 'mission' in Syria and Lebanon. As a result, in the last year of the war – and at the direct instigation of the CFLN's representative in the Levant – sweeping policy changes were instituted to mitigate the treatment of Levantine immigrants in West Africa in order to restore France's prestige and position in the Middle East.