Suchergebnisse

AbstractHow should we discuss trans‐border identities across the Franco‐German‐Swiss border area? Adopting a multidisciplinary approach, this article aims to establish a conceptual framework in order to apprehend and study border regions. Focusing on the Franco‐German‐Swiss border area usually designated as the 'Upper Rhine', the article seeks to show how actors' strategies – mainly those of institutional agents – articulate with, complement, or contradict the habitus (i.e. the practices and materialities of everyday life), giving rise to a diverse set of identity constructions and sketching a more or less precise contour of this region, and of border territories in general.

Abstract:  In 2003, the total fertility rate in Japan was 1.29. According to many predictions, if the current rate continues, the labor shortage will become critical. The Economic and Fiscal Policy White Paper, edited by the Cabinet Office (Naikakuhu, 2003a), stated "If we attempt to fill the lack by accepting immigrants in order to maintain the population of productive workers, we will need to accept 640 000 immigrants every year until 2050. It is necessary to make our country more attractive for foreign workers". However, it is unlikely that more than 30 million immigrants will choose to live in Japan unless efforts are made to abolish xenophobia and to make qualitative changes that will change Japanese society so that it is more open to co‐existence. Moreover, Japan is not the only country that must worry about future declines in the work force and other countries will most likely start to attract foreign workers earlier than Japan (Naikakuhu, 2003b).

This study examines the relationship between labour and nation in nineteenth-century Nicaragua by exploring how the state's institutional efforts to control labour coincided with a prevailing discourse of nation that idealised farmers (agricultores) and wage labourers (jornaleros and operarios) at opposite ends of the spectrum of national citizenship. The article focuses on the towns of the ethnically diverse region of the Prefecture of Granada, an area that included the present-day departments of Granada, Carazo and Masaya, and where coffee production first boomed in Nicaragua. It is argued that labour coercion rested not simply on the building of national, regional and municipal institutions of labour control, but also on defining the political and social role of labourers within the national community. At the same time, subaltern communities, especially indigenous ones, contested these efforts not merely through evasion and subterfuge, but by engaging the discourse of nation-state to claim citizenship as farmers and assert independence from landlords.

AbstractBuilding upon previous studies that divide the governance of digital platforms into three eras (Flew, 2021; Bowers & Zittrain, 2020), this study investigates how one of the most influential digital platforms, Google, has handled removal requests from governments. By sketching the regulatory terrain of Google, the current study seeks a more balanced understanding of content moderation. This study selected an exploratory case study approach using Google's Transparency reports and accompanying public data sets relating to governments' content removal requests filed for all Google products from 2009 to 2021. The findings reveal a growing influence of nation states on moderating online content, delineating the surging point as occurring in 2016. In addition to the sheer increase of take‐down requests raised in various areas, since 2016 the trend of government interventions has outpaced those of courts; during the same period, Google, which had been more compliant with court decisions than with governmental entities' requests, showed similar compliance with government requests. The results also demonstrate how the practices of requesting content removal differed by political system while singling out Russia's distinctive characteristics. This study sheds light on our understanding of the role of nation states in shaping online environments in the era of platformization.

This volume provides a novel institutionalist theoretical approach to the rise of new powers and NGOs in relation to international institutions. It reveals the major conflicts that characterise some key contemporary international institutions, such as the UN Security Council, the World Trade Organization, the G7, and the UN Human Rights Council.