Suchergebnisse

"Security, Citizenship and Human Rights examines counter-terrorism, immigration, citizenship, human rights, 'equalities' and the shifting discourses of 'shared values' and human rights in contemporary Britain. The book argues that British citizenship and human rights policy is being remade and remoulded around public security and that this process could be detrimental to 'our' sense of citizenship, shared values and commitment to human rights"--Provided by publisher

A Probation Circular published in 2005 announced that accredited one-to-one programmes should be developed for Racially Motivated Offenders (RMOs). This article reviews a number of existing literatures written by both practitioners and academics which have focused on the problems and opportunities that arise during interventions with RMOs. At the same time, in this article, insights derived from the latter literatures are contextualized within poststructuralist and discursive psychological literatures. The outcome of this is an attempt to forge common ground between practitioner-derived insights on racism, racists, identity, locality and shared `communities of prejudice' with poststructuralist approaches to identity and the advancement of specific therapeutic/correctionalist techniques (especially the motivational interviewing technique pioneered by Miller and Rollnick, 1991) for facilitating change processes in RMOs.

This article is an examination of some of the key aspects of the new Commission for Equality and Human rights in Britain proposed in the Fairness for All White Paper in 2003. The article focuses on the role the new Commission will play in the specific areas of revitalizing citizenship, building community cohesion and in conflict resolution in contemporary Britain. It examines the presentation in the White Paper of the 'anticipated future challgenges' (in relation to ethnic and religious minority groups) that allegedly threaten 21st century Britain and the role the Commission is to play in responding to them. It will be suggested that the 'core functions' of the proposed commission are closely related to many of the develoopments associated with radical democratic theory, that is: 1) the promotion of intersectional and de-centred social identities and concomitantly an intersectional perspective on inequality and discrimination; and 2) the development of an overarching project that encourages the construction of chains of equivalence between diverse 'protected groups' with a culture in which human rights are respected as the 'common place' of citizenship. the article concludes that the most significant threat to the Labour government's promotion of a human rights 'culture change' as suggested in the White Paper is the government's increasing disrespect for human rights in the name of the war on terrorism. (Ethnopolitics)

This paper focuses on four inter-related areas of recent public policy in Britain associated with community cohesion, asylum and immigration, the Strength in Diversity consultation strategy and counter-terrorism. This paper comprises of a critical examination of the various reports, speeches and strategies associated with these areas of public policy. The central concern of the paper is to explore the relationship between these areas of public policy through illuminating the extent of the 'policy tropes' common to each, for example, (1) the problematisation of the weakness of 'citizenship' in contemporary Britain and the strategy for revitalizing it, common to all four policy areas; (2) the emphasis on 'the material' over 'the cultural' in the explanations of 'weak integration' in these policy areas; and (3) the ethnic and religious minority focus in all four areas. The relationship exposed between these policy tropes is then used in the paper to suggest that the focus on ethnic and minority communities (especially young Muslims) within this discursive formation, belies a barely repressed risk consciousness that informs the wider rhetoric of building community cohesion in twenty-first century Britain.

Joined-up government, modernizing government, community safety and multi-agency partnerships are explored here in an attempt to understand the contemporary `policing' of hate crime; in this instance, crimes and incidents motivated by homophobia (and transphobia). In the first half of the article, the focus is on the social and political context of the emergence of `participatory' modes of government and multi-agency `community safety' policing in response to the 1998 Crime and Disorder Act and the 1999 Local Government Act. In the second half of the article, the focus will be on the multi-agency response to homo-phobic and transphobic incidents and the policing of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (lgbt) community in Hampshire and the Isle of Wight. In this case study, the main assumptions behind the attempt to create lgbt `active citizens' and `active communities' (active in their own policing) in Southampton, in particular, will be critically evaluated. The main points that will be raised here are: 1) the multi-agency response to homophobic incidents in Southampton prioritizes, first, improving efficiency and raising awareness in the agencies and services that are in contact with the lgbt community, and, second, opening lines of communication and building trust between police and the organizations and agencies `representing' the lgbt community; and 2)empowerment programmes such as these should not be taken at face value, but must be critically examined in relation to some of the following questions: who is and who is not being invited to be the active `lgbt' citizen here? And does the lgbt community's right to fair, sympathetic and equitable policing bring with it hidden and costly responsibilities?