Suchergebnisse

In the summer of 2015, a wave of solidarity washed across the European continent as 1.3 million refugees arrived. While many recent studies have explored how 'ordinary' men and women, NGOs and governments momentarily reacted to the arrival of refugees, this issue examines whether the arrival of refugees and the subsequent rise of civil support initiatives has also resulted in more structural cultural and political changes. The contributions assembled in this issue all delve into the enduring implications of Europe's 'long summer of migration'. They address four sites of change: the dynamics between civil and state actors involved in refugee protection; the gradual politicisation of individual volunteers and organisations; the reproduction of pre-existing cultural imaginaries; and the potential of cities to foster new forms of solidarity.

In the summer of 2015, a wave of solidarity washed across the European continent as 1.3 million refugees arrived. While many recent studies have explored how "ordinary" men and women, NGOs and governments momentarily reacted to the arrival of refugees, this issue examines whether the arrival of refugees and the subsequent rise of civil support initiatives has also resulted in more structural cultural and political changes. The contributions assembled in this issue all delve into the enduring implications of Europe's "long summer of migration". They address four sites of change: the dynamics between civil and state actors involved in refugee protection; the gradual politicisation of individual volunteers and organisations; the reproduction of pre-existing cultural imaginaries; and the potential of cities to foster new forms of solidarity.

"In the last few years, social policy has been rediscovered as an important tool when addressing poverty and social inequality in development contexts. After decades of structural adjustment policies and cutting back of national social programs, international organizations, such as the World Bank, the ILO and UNDP, increasingly recognize social protection as one of the main contributors to social cohesion and development. In this chapter the authors analyze the interplay between formal and informal social protection institutions. They look at the wide range of social protection mechanisms available in sub-Saharan African countries, namely formal social security arrangements, the provision of basic social goods and informal community-based and family-based mechanisms. In analyzing their strengths and weaknesses, the authors assess how these mechanisms complement each other to contribute to the overall social protection of the population." (author's abstract)

Making human rights intelligible : an introduction to a sociology of human rights /Mikael Rask Madsen and Gert Verschraegen --State building, constitutional rights and the social construction of norms : outline for a sociology of constitutions /Chris Thornhill --Differentiation and inclusion : a neglected sociological approach to fundamental rights /Gert Verschraegen --Beyond prescription : toward a reflexive sociology of human rights /Mikael Rask Madsen --Human rights between brute fact and articulated aspiration /Paul Stenner --International human rights versus democracy promotion : on two different meanings of human rights in US foreign policy /Nicolas Guilhot --Towards a socio-legal analysis of the European Convention on Human Rights /Steven Greer --In defence of societies /Judith Blau and Alberto Moncada --From citizenship to human rights to human rights education /Francisco O. Ramirez and Rennie Moon --(Human) rights and solidarity : restructuring the national welfare space /Frederik Thuesen --Adapting locally to international health and human rights standards : an alternative theoretical framework for progressive realisation /Lesley A. Jacobs --"Legal form" and the purchase of human rights discourse in domestic policy-making : the achievement of same-sex marriage in Canada /Luke McNamara --Activating the law : exploring the legal responses of NGOs to gross rights violations /Loveday Hodson --The complexities of human rights implementation within the Costa Rican police system /Quirine Eijkman.

In this article, we argue that Niklas Luhmann has a lot to offer present-day planning theory. Until now, planning theory has been engaged with Luhmann's work only minimally. Convinced of its potential, we want to show how Luhmann's systems theory offers fresh insight into both limits and possibilities of planning in contemporary society. We argue that Luhmann's understanding of society as functionally differentiated into self-referentially closed subsystems (politics, economy, law, science, etc.) creates space for a complex and subtle analysis of planning practice. In particular, we look at the role of planning within an autopoietic account of society, and its ability to steer other social subsystems. Planning is seen as the form of steering aiming to coordinate processes of spatial organization, therefore an activity dealing with steering problems. We illustrate key concepts of the systems theory in brief analyses of planning situations and interpret these situations using the systems theoretical framework. The analyses center around the questions of planning's steering capacity and the role of the planner, thus creating linkages with mainstream discussions in planning theory.

In this article, we draw on interviews with pupils aged 11–13 years, to analyse children's aspirations, expectations of the future, and reasonings about social inequality in the context of an early tracking education system. We highlight the conflicting yet creative ways in which children make sense of inequality in relation to life chances. Although our child-respondents prefer structural explanations for inequality, they strategically draw on repertoires of individual social mobility to express their faith in personal agency and meritocracy. In doing so, these children use narratives of upwards mobility that have arisen in very different socio-economic and political contexts to make sense of inequality in their own locality.

This article presents an analysis of the process of commensuration in the field of pension policy. It looks at the consequences of reducing disparate and variable characteristics of pension systems to a limited set of standardized policy indicators. Although techniques of scoring complex systems through common indicators are applied today in fields as diverse as scientific research, human resources management and international development, this article is the first to examine the process of commensuration in the field of pensions. The empirical analysis looks at three cases where international institutions use standardized pension indicators to score and rank the performance of national pension systems. The first case examines the use of replacement rates in the international benchmarking of pension systems. We then focus on how rankings diverge considerably depending upon which function of the pension system is under assessment. Finally, we discuss how the public–private mix of a pension system affects the ranking of pension adequacy due to the way in which second and third pillar pensions are measured. The cases illustrate some of the problems associated with scoring and ranking the outcomes of unique and complex pension systems by means of internationally standardized indicators.

This article analyses the effects of the European Social Fund (ESF) on domestic activation policies in the three Belgian regions: Flanders, Wallonia and Brussels. We argue that over the last decade the ESF has had a catalytic impact, first on the innovation of activation instruments, second on the governance of employment policies and third on policy framing. We explain how three different mechanisms (leverage, conditionality and learning) generate these effects and how they can account for a differential influence in different regions. We conclude by summarizing our research findings and framework, suggesting its usefulness for analyzing other domestic settings and European policy instruments.

"This contribution argues that the growing movements for source-, data- and knowledge-sharing (Open Access, Open Source, Open Courseware, etc.) are of crucial importance for 'global civil society'. We claim that these movements are giving new content to the concepts of the public sphere, civil society and the digital divide. By enabling individuals and civil society organizations to become participants in global information-sharing communities, the Open Access and Open Source movements contribute to the emergence of a networked and knowledgebased global civil society. In a first step, the article argues that classical concept of civil society is less and less convincing and not adapted to the features of modern world society. In a second step the article proposes different ways to rethink the notions of 'civil society' and the 'public' to fit the reality of a world society where knowledge is increasingly a resource for creating self-governing associations and networks. We argue that the Open Access and Creative Commons movement have contributed to the proliferation of non-localised, global 'epistemic communities' and have created new definitions of information and ownership. By enabling small and resource-poor organizations and countries to tap into the global knowledge pool and to become part of global networks these movements have also provided a new context to rethink the 'digital divide'." (author's abstract)