This project aims to advance knowledge in labour politics by focusing on the 'contentious pol... more This project aims to advance knowledge in labour politics by focusing on the 'contentious politics of unemployment', i.e. the relationship between political-institutional approaches to employment policy and political conflicts mobilized by collective actors over unemployment in the public domain. It is designed to study this topic at national, international comparative, and transnational levels. Key objectives: (a) to generate new data for longitudinal and comparative analyses of ideological and policy positions of actors and their relationships; (b) to study the potential for political participation 'from below' by citizens campaigning for the rights of the unemployed and the conditions under which existing organizational networks and policy dialogues transform in a more open civil policy deliberation; (c) to provide knowledge based on rigorous cross-national and EU-level transnational analyses allowing grounded empirical statements about the Europeanisation of the ...
This chapter examines the strength of “symbolic barriers” between majorities and Muslims of immig... more This chapter examines the strength of “symbolic barriers” between majorities and Muslims of immigrant origin over the accommodation of Islam as a minority religion in their European countries of settlement. The study uses original survey data on public attitudes towards religious rights in schooling in four countries with distinct church-state relations and minority policies: Britain, Germany, France, and the Netherlands. We find highly significant “barriers” over religious rights for Muslims in all countries, notwithstanding the different degrees to which they institutionally accommodate Islam. In addition, the strength of majority opposition towards including Islam, compared to Christianity, is especially striking. Conversely, Muslims tend to favour an extension of rights for both religions to the same degree. Although European societies are broadly secular, we conclude that resistant majority views matter a great deal in creating a large socio-cultural distance between majorities...
Atrocities by terrorists acting in the name of the ‘Islamic State’ are occurring with increasing ... more Atrocities by terrorists acting in the name of the ‘Islamic State’ are occurring with increasing regularity across Western Europe. Often the perpetrators are ‘home grown’, which places the relationship between Muslims and the countries in which they live under intense political and media scrutiny, and raises questions about the success of the integration of Muslims of migrant origin. At the same time, populist politicians try to shift the blame from the few perpetrators to the supposed characteristics of all Muslims as a ‘group’ by depicting Islam as a threat that seeks to undermine liberal democratic values and institutions. The research in this volume attempts to redress the balance by focusing on the views and life experiences of the many ‘ordinary’ Muslims in their European societies of settlement, and the role that cultural and religious factors play in shaping their social relationships with majority populations and public institutions. The book is specifically interested in t...
Inspired by spatial theories of political behavior and by work on the impact of immigration on na... more Inspired by spatial theories of political behavior and by work on the impact of immigration on national identity, in this article we propose an explanation of the extreme right's claim making based on the interplay of three factors: national models of citizenship, the dynamics of political alignments and party competition, and the strategic/organizational repertoires of the extreme right, in particular the electoral strength of extreme-right parties. Confronting a number of hypotheses derived from this theoretical framework with original data on the extreme right's claim making in five European countries (the Netherlands, Britain, France, Germany, and Switzerland), we show how political-institutional and cultural-discursive opportunities account for differences in the extent, forms, and content of xenophobic and extreme-right claim making. Our study shows that national configurations of citizenship affect in significant ways the mobilization of the extreme right, both direct...
The study of migration has transformed and expanded massively, especially over the last 30 years,... more The study of migration has transformed and expanded massively, especially over the last 30 years, as issues of migration have moved from the relative margins to the core of politics and global societal change. This is not to say that migration and ethnic relations are more important today than before, but issues about movement, mobility, and the increasing cultural, ethnic and religious diversity this brings, are seen as important challenges to states, legal systems, international relations, and how people live with one another. Migration as a topic has become an important interpretive lens through which societies and people understand the core changes that we experience as a consequence of the increasing globalization processes that shape the contemporary world. This can be ‘for good’, for example, in public mobilizations to support refugees and people displaced from their homes by international conflicts, or ‘for bad’ in the reactionary populist politics that attempts to justify anti-immigration policies by stigmatizing groups on religious, ethnic or racial grounds, such as ‘Muslim bans’ and ‘Building walls’. Here is not the place to unpack these complex developments nor explain the role of migration as a driver and outcome of globalization processes. None the less, it is important to flag up the moving target that our research is trying to understand, because this informs our approaches to teaching migration, and shapes the range of perspectives and topics that we select and group together under the label ‘migration studies’ at a particular historical moment. It is important to ask where migration should rightly sit within teaching programmes today. How can we adapt to keep pace with advancing understanding of the world developments that drive, and are driven by, migration, on one side, and the institutional changes within the university sector that delivers teaching and learning, on the other?to understand, because this informs our approaches to teaching migration, and shapes the range of perspectives and topics that we select and group together under the label ‘migration studies’ at a particular historical moment. It is important to ask where migration should rightly sit within teaching programmes today. How can we adapt to keep pace with advancing understanding of the world developments that drive, and are driven by, migration, on one side, and the institutional changes within the university sector that delivers teaching and learning, on the other?
The Contentious Politics of Unemployment in Europe, 2010
Other chapters look at national public debates and the multiorganizational field (Curtis and Zurc... more Other chapters look at national public debates and the multiorganizational field (Curtis and Zurcher 1973) over issues relating to unemployment and the unemployed, within a cross-national comparative framework, and between the national and supranational level of decision making. An important general focus of the overall study is the degree of inclusiveness of public debates and multiorganizational fields toward different actor types, with a special focus on the potential for the constituency of the unemployed, and those interest groups and NGOs who make demands on their behalf in the public domain. In this chapter, the focus turns on Europeanization trends within public policy debates over unemployment and their consequences, on the one side, and the nature of the multiorganizational field that has emerged at the supranational level on the other. In this way we aim to contribute to the study of the accessibility of decision making to non-state actors under conditions of Europeanization, through an examination of the public policy field over unemployment and the unemployed. Our study of the European level is twofold: first, we examine public debates over unemployment and, second, we examine the networks of actor relationships that occur over policies relating to unemployment at the supranational European level.
The European Union (EU) is the world’s most advanced case of institutional cooperation across bor... more The European Union (EU) is the world’s most advanced case of institutional cooperation across borders and political levels, and has resulted in a close regional interpenetration of societies, markets, and governments. Its multilevel political architecture is historically unprecedented, and over time its power has grown beyond recognition. Neil Fligstein (2008) documents how the expansion of markets and economic growth has produced Europe-wide economic, social, and political fields. This has led to an increasing density of social interaction across Europe’s national borders and an increasing willingness of people to sometimes identify themselves as Europeans. Fligstein claims that these transnational developments have advanced sufficiently to declare that: ‘it is possible to say that there now exists a European society’ (2008, 244). Yet while it is clear that increasing trans-European social interaction has made Europe a shared location of interests and power, at least for a small minority of the population (including business people, EU officials, and Brussels lobbyists), the extent to which Europe is visible, salient, and meaningful to the general public is much less evident. The advancement of European integration over the past 50 years has been driven by political elites and, at least for the period of the so-called ‘permissive consensus,’ has remained largely out of the public eye. Even Fligstein (2008, 2) concedes that a gap remains between structural change and public perceptions: ‘what has struck me most about the creation of a European society is the degree to which people in Europe are unaware of it.’
Folgt man der gegenwartig in der politischen Philosophie und der Soziologie vorherrschenden Auffa... more Folgt man der gegenwartig in der politischen Philosophie und der Soziologie vorherrschenden Auffassung, so ware der liberale Nationalstaat, wie wir ihn kennen, in zunehmendem Mase gefahrdet. Er sei zwar noch nicht untergegangen, aber zumindest im Niedergang begriffen oder ernsthaft in Frage gestellt. Zwei allgemeine Prozesse trieben diese Entwicklung voran (Habermas 1996). Zum einen werde die Stellung des Nationalstaats als vorherrschende Einheit sozialer Organisation durch die Krafte der Globalisierung und die damit zusammenhangende Verlagerung von Entscheidungskompetenzen von der nationalen auf supra- und transnationale Ebenen von ausen untergraben. Zum anderen wurden die Legitimitat, Autoritat und die integrativen Fahigkeiten des Nationalstaats durch die zunehmende Pluralisierung moderner Gesellschaften von innen her geschwacht. Durch die Einforderung von Gruppenrechten (oder der Befreiung von Pflichten) seitens einer Vielzahl von kollektiven Akteuren, die ihre kulturelle Unterschiedlichkeit im Vergleich zur ubrigen Gesellschaft betonen, wurden zudem die liberalen, universalistischen Werte, auf denen die Konzeption des Nationalstaats westlicher Pragung beruht, in Frage gestellt. Obwohl die normativen Beurteilungen dieser — tatsachlichen oder angenommenen — Tendenzen weit auseinander gehen, wird Einwanderung ausnahmslos als eine der Hauptantriebskrafte sowohl der Untergrabung der Souveranitat von ausen als auch der internen kulturellen Differenzierung moderner Nationalstaaten gesehen. Fur westeuropaische Gesellschaften ist die zunehmende Prasenz von Migranten unterschiedlicher „rassischer“ und kultureller Herkunft das vielleicht konkreteste, greifbarste und fur einige provozierendste Kennzeichen dafur, in welcher Weise Globalisierung und Pluralisierung zu herausragenden Merkmalen des modernen Lebens geworden sind.
Many scholars have recently argued that nation-state—centered approaches in comparative sociology... more Many scholars have recently argued that nation-state—centered approaches in comparative sociology and political science are obsolete. In this view, we have entered, or are about to enter, a new “postnational” or “transnational” era characterized by complex and qualitatively new patterns of multilevel governance, in which the nation-state still plays a role, though a drastically reduced one.1 This decline of the nation-state’s sovereignty is said to be accompanied by a growing importance of supranational and transnational actors, institutions, legal norms, and discourses, on the one hand, and increased local autonomy from national constraints, on the other. Given the inherently transnational nature of migration, it is not surprising that this critique of national approaches has been particularly prominent in this field of study.
This project aims to advance knowledge in labour politics by focusing on the 'contentious pol... more This project aims to advance knowledge in labour politics by focusing on the 'contentious politics of unemployment', i.e. the relationship between political-institutional approaches to employment policy and political conflicts mobilized by collective actors over unemployment in the public domain. It is designed to study this topic at national, international comparative, and transnational levels. Key objectives: (a) to generate new data for longitudinal and comparative analyses of ideological and policy positions of actors and their relationships; (b) to study the potential for political participation 'from below' by citizens campaigning for the rights of the unemployed and the conditions under which existing organizational networks and policy dialogues transform in a more open civil policy deliberation; (c) to provide knowledge based on rigorous cross-national and EU-level transnational analyses allowing grounded empirical statements about the Europeanisation of the ...
This chapter examines the strength of “symbolic barriers” between majorities and Muslims of immig... more This chapter examines the strength of “symbolic barriers” between majorities and Muslims of immigrant origin over the accommodation of Islam as a minority religion in their European countries of settlement. The study uses original survey data on public attitudes towards religious rights in schooling in four countries with distinct church-state relations and minority policies: Britain, Germany, France, and the Netherlands. We find highly significant “barriers” over religious rights for Muslims in all countries, notwithstanding the different degrees to which they institutionally accommodate Islam. In addition, the strength of majority opposition towards including Islam, compared to Christianity, is especially striking. Conversely, Muslims tend to favour an extension of rights for both religions to the same degree. Although European societies are broadly secular, we conclude that resistant majority views matter a great deal in creating a large socio-cultural distance between majorities...
Atrocities by terrorists acting in the name of the ‘Islamic State’ are occurring with increasing ... more Atrocities by terrorists acting in the name of the ‘Islamic State’ are occurring with increasing regularity across Western Europe. Often the perpetrators are ‘home grown’, which places the relationship between Muslims and the countries in which they live under intense political and media scrutiny, and raises questions about the success of the integration of Muslims of migrant origin. At the same time, populist politicians try to shift the blame from the few perpetrators to the supposed characteristics of all Muslims as a ‘group’ by depicting Islam as a threat that seeks to undermine liberal democratic values and institutions. The research in this volume attempts to redress the balance by focusing on the views and life experiences of the many ‘ordinary’ Muslims in their European societies of settlement, and the role that cultural and religious factors play in shaping their social relationships with majority populations and public institutions. The book is specifically interested in t...
Inspired by spatial theories of political behavior and by work on the impact of immigration on na... more Inspired by spatial theories of political behavior and by work on the impact of immigration on national identity, in this article we propose an explanation of the extreme right's claim making based on the interplay of three factors: national models of citizenship, the dynamics of political alignments and party competition, and the strategic/organizational repertoires of the extreme right, in particular the electoral strength of extreme-right parties. Confronting a number of hypotheses derived from this theoretical framework with original data on the extreme right's claim making in five European countries (the Netherlands, Britain, France, Germany, and Switzerland), we show how political-institutional and cultural-discursive opportunities account for differences in the extent, forms, and content of xenophobic and extreme-right claim making. Our study shows that national configurations of citizenship affect in significant ways the mobilization of the extreme right, both direct...
The study of migration has transformed and expanded massively, especially over the last 30 years,... more The study of migration has transformed and expanded massively, especially over the last 30 years, as issues of migration have moved from the relative margins to the core of politics and global societal change. This is not to say that migration and ethnic relations are more important today than before, but issues about movement, mobility, and the increasing cultural, ethnic and religious diversity this brings, are seen as important challenges to states, legal systems, international relations, and how people live with one another. Migration as a topic has become an important interpretive lens through which societies and people understand the core changes that we experience as a consequence of the increasing globalization processes that shape the contemporary world. This can be ‘for good’, for example, in public mobilizations to support refugees and people displaced from their homes by international conflicts, or ‘for bad’ in the reactionary populist politics that attempts to justify anti-immigration policies by stigmatizing groups on religious, ethnic or racial grounds, such as ‘Muslim bans’ and ‘Building walls’. Here is not the place to unpack these complex developments nor explain the role of migration as a driver and outcome of globalization processes. None the less, it is important to flag up the moving target that our research is trying to understand, because this informs our approaches to teaching migration, and shapes the range of perspectives and topics that we select and group together under the label ‘migration studies’ at a particular historical moment. It is important to ask where migration should rightly sit within teaching programmes today. How can we adapt to keep pace with advancing understanding of the world developments that drive, and are driven by, migration, on one side, and the institutional changes within the university sector that delivers teaching and learning, on the other?to understand, because this informs our approaches to teaching migration, and shapes the range of perspectives and topics that we select and group together under the label ‘migration studies’ at a particular historical moment. It is important to ask where migration should rightly sit within teaching programmes today. How can we adapt to keep pace with advancing understanding of the world developments that drive, and are driven by, migration, on one side, and the institutional changes within the university sector that delivers teaching and learning, on the other?
The Contentious Politics of Unemployment in Europe, 2010
Other chapters look at national public debates and the multiorganizational field (Curtis and Zurc... more Other chapters look at national public debates and the multiorganizational field (Curtis and Zurcher 1973) over issues relating to unemployment and the unemployed, within a cross-national comparative framework, and between the national and supranational level of decision making. An important general focus of the overall study is the degree of inclusiveness of public debates and multiorganizational fields toward different actor types, with a special focus on the potential for the constituency of the unemployed, and those interest groups and NGOs who make demands on their behalf in the public domain. In this chapter, the focus turns on Europeanization trends within public policy debates over unemployment and their consequences, on the one side, and the nature of the multiorganizational field that has emerged at the supranational level on the other. In this way we aim to contribute to the study of the accessibility of decision making to non-state actors under conditions of Europeanization, through an examination of the public policy field over unemployment and the unemployed. Our study of the European level is twofold: first, we examine public debates over unemployment and, second, we examine the networks of actor relationships that occur over policies relating to unemployment at the supranational European level.
The European Union (EU) is the world’s most advanced case of institutional cooperation across bor... more The European Union (EU) is the world’s most advanced case of institutional cooperation across borders and political levels, and has resulted in a close regional interpenetration of societies, markets, and governments. Its multilevel political architecture is historically unprecedented, and over time its power has grown beyond recognition. Neil Fligstein (2008) documents how the expansion of markets and economic growth has produced Europe-wide economic, social, and political fields. This has led to an increasing density of social interaction across Europe’s national borders and an increasing willingness of people to sometimes identify themselves as Europeans. Fligstein claims that these transnational developments have advanced sufficiently to declare that: ‘it is possible to say that there now exists a European society’ (2008, 244). Yet while it is clear that increasing trans-European social interaction has made Europe a shared location of interests and power, at least for a small minority of the population (including business people, EU officials, and Brussels lobbyists), the extent to which Europe is visible, salient, and meaningful to the general public is much less evident. The advancement of European integration over the past 50 years has been driven by political elites and, at least for the period of the so-called ‘permissive consensus,’ has remained largely out of the public eye. Even Fligstein (2008, 2) concedes that a gap remains between structural change and public perceptions: ‘what has struck me most about the creation of a European society is the degree to which people in Europe are unaware of it.’
Folgt man der gegenwartig in der politischen Philosophie und der Soziologie vorherrschenden Auffa... more Folgt man der gegenwartig in der politischen Philosophie und der Soziologie vorherrschenden Auffassung, so ware der liberale Nationalstaat, wie wir ihn kennen, in zunehmendem Mase gefahrdet. Er sei zwar noch nicht untergegangen, aber zumindest im Niedergang begriffen oder ernsthaft in Frage gestellt. Zwei allgemeine Prozesse trieben diese Entwicklung voran (Habermas 1996). Zum einen werde die Stellung des Nationalstaats als vorherrschende Einheit sozialer Organisation durch die Krafte der Globalisierung und die damit zusammenhangende Verlagerung von Entscheidungskompetenzen von der nationalen auf supra- und transnationale Ebenen von ausen untergraben. Zum anderen wurden die Legitimitat, Autoritat und die integrativen Fahigkeiten des Nationalstaats durch die zunehmende Pluralisierung moderner Gesellschaften von innen her geschwacht. Durch die Einforderung von Gruppenrechten (oder der Befreiung von Pflichten) seitens einer Vielzahl von kollektiven Akteuren, die ihre kulturelle Unterschiedlichkeit im Vergleich zur ubrigen Gesellschaft betonen, wurden zudem die liberalen, universalistischen Werte, auf denen die Konzeption des Nationalstaats westlicher Pragung beruht, in Frage gestellt. Obwohl die normativen Beurteilungen dieser — tatsachlichen oder angenommenen — Tendenzen weit auseinander gehen, wird Einwanderung ausnahmslos als eine der Hauptantriebskrafte sowohl der Untergrabung der Souveranitat von ausen als auch der internen kulturellen Differenzierung moderner Nationalstaaten gesehen. Fur westeuropaische Gesellschaften ist die zunehmende Prasenz von Migranten unterschiedlicher „rassischer“ und kultureller Herkunft das vielleicht konkreteste, greifbarste und fur einige provozierendste Kennzeichen dafur, in welcher Weise Globalisierung und Pluralisierung zu herausragenden Merkmalen des modernen Lebens geworden sind.
Many scholars have recently argued that nation-state—centered approaches in comparative sociology... more Many scholars have recently argued that nation-state—centered approaches in comparative sociology and political science are obsolete. In this view, we have entered, or are about to enter, a new “postnational” or “transnational” era characterized by complex and qualitatively new patterns of multilevel governance, in which the nation-state still plays a role, though a drastically reduced one.1 This decline of the nation-state’s sovereignty is said to be accompanied by a growing importance of supranational and transnational actors, institutions, legal norms, and discourses, on the one hand, and increased local autonomy from national constraints, on the other. Given the inherently transnational nature of migration, it is not surprising that this critique of national approaches has been particularly prominent in this field of study.
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