bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Coloniality of Belonging
Authors: Varriale Simone
Published: January 2024

Chapter 4 explores how participants’ investment in meritocratic imaginaries coexist with racialized and classed aspirations, reproducing distinctions between good and bad Europeans, good and bad migrants, and Europeans and non-Europeans. The chapter opens by focusing on participants’ positive experiences of ethnicization in the UK, showing how they benefit from hierarchies of European whiteness, their investment in such hierarchies, and the exclusionary character of Italianness for Black Italians and, to some extent, working-class Italians. The chapter continues revealing strong class divisions in aspirations of belonging. Middle-class participants invoke credentialized belonging, using high-status jobs and degrees as meritocratic badges. Working-class participants emphasize hard work (without middle-class credentials) or present good work as an ‘Italian’ quality (individualized and ethnicized belonging). The chapter concludes by exploring the epistemic limits of these narratives. Credentialized belonging stigmatizes working-class migrations while obscuring other inequalities among high-skilled migrants, including their limited access to ‘British’ social and cultural capital. Individualized and ethnicized belonging obscure the additional vulnerabilities that older, Black and female working-class participants experience in low-status and insecure jobs.
The Coloniality of Brexit
Authors: Varriale Simone
Published: January 2024

Chapter 5 explores how participants invoke meritocratic notions of individual (economic) contribution vis-à-vis the uncertainties opened up by Brexit, reproducing racialized and classed understandings of citizenship, national community and solidarity. Expanding the literature on Brexit and EU migration, the chapter pays more attention to unequal experiences of the referendum, problematizing academic narratives that associate middle-class critiques of the referendum with cosmopolitanism and working-class support with nationalism. I find that lower-middle and working-class Italians more frequently express some support for Brexit, but that this coexists with imaginaries of multicultural and inclusive Britain. These imaginaries, however, are premised on racialized histories of citizenship and nation-building. Graduates and professionals criticize the referendum’s anti-immigration rhetoric more explicitly, but also invoke class markers of merit (like degrees and high-status jobs) as sources of deservingness and as a legitimate means of immigration control, even when they experience inequalities of gender, race and economic capital. I conclude by focusing on the more coded ways in which high-skilled migrants talk about ‘race’ and participate to processes of racialized exclusion.
Conclusion
Authors: Varriale Simone
Published: January 2024

The Conclusion extrapolates from the book’s findings to broader theoretical generalizations about the links between meritocracy and coloniality, the lived experience of meritocracy, and the study of unequal migrations, suggesting possibilities for future research on these issues, particularly beyond the European context and beyond the association between meritocracy and neoliberalism.
Introduction
Authors: Cintra Natalia , Owen David , Riggirozzi Pía
Published: January 2024

Since 2015 a new corridor of forced migration has been opened up by the mass displacement of Venezuelans to neighbouring countries fleeing hunger, poverty, violence and the collapse of the welfare state. In 2016, 200,000 Venezuelans left the country, double the average rate per year since 1999. By 2023, the number of displaced Venezuelans grew to 7 million, fleeing the spiralling economic collapse that left basic food and medicine out of reach for most of the Venezuelan population. The current exodus of Venezuelans has generated the largest migration crisis of its kind in recent Latin American history. Crises of this sort exacerbate a wide range of social injustices that have specific gendered characteristics. This introductory chapter sets out our analytical and normative frameworks for addressing gendered inequalities in relation to displacement and in systems of protection. We focus on Venezuelan women and girls who have fled to Brazil and Colombia for whom gendered drivers of displacement have been significant, and yet protection of their general rights, particularly in relation to their sexual and reproductive health and rights, remains problematic. We provide a dignity-based approach to the nexus of forced migration, gender, and health that combines taking the voices of displaced women and girls seriously with a proposal for gender-responsive systems of protection.
The Gendered Character of Forced Migration
Authors: Cintra Natalia , Owen David , Riggirozzi Pía
Published: January 2024

This chapter addresses the forced migration, gender, and health nexus in a South-South context. We focus on the case of Venezuela and the flight of around 20 per cent of its population, approximately 50 per cent of which are women and girls, primarily to neighbouring states with Colombia and Brazil being two primary destinations. In this chapter, we provide the contexts for our enquiry by addressing the nexus between forced migration and gender before introducing the issue of health and the right to health. We then sketch out the theorization of displacement as a social determinant of health, before concluding by contextualizing the Venezuelan situation.
Latin American Normative Frameworks of Migration and Asylum
Authors: Cintra Natalia , Owen David , Riggirozzi Pía
Published: January 2024

Experts have praised Latin America for advancing sustained and ‘generous’ asylum and refugee policies since the ratification of the 1951 Convention and its 1967 Protocol on the rights of refugees. In effect, the region has formally adopted an expanded definition of refugee going beyond the international refugee regime through the regional framework underpinned by the 1984 Cartagena Declaration. While this suggests that Latin America – and particularly South America – is well-placed to respond to events such as the Venezuela exodus, this chapter analyses gaps in implementation of normative frameworks that could derail principled rights-based approaches to international protection. We identify ambiguities and ad hoc policies predicated on the use of discretionary executive powers. Rather than a rule-based framework that guides and coordinates local, national, regional and international responses, the practical actuality of the experience of Venezuelan necessary fleers more closely resembles a limited and restricted ‘care and maintenance’ system. The chapter therefore shows the vast gap between the promise of the legal framework represented in claims of de facto protection to all forced migrants and the practical reality confronted by Venezuela necessary fleers.
Responsibility and the Ethics of Forced Displacement in South America
Authors: Cintra Natalia , Owen David , Riggirozzi Pía
Published: January 2024

Our empirically grounded socio-legal analysis of the predicaments of displaced Venezuelan women and girls in relation to protection and secure access to sexual and reproductive health rights highlights a range of obstacles to the enjoyment of these rights and more generally of recognition of their dignity. In this chapter, we address the requirements of protection and the enjoyment of SRH rights, and analyse the distribution of responsibility for securing such conditions. The chapter returns to the challenges confronted by female necessary fleers in transit, in places of immediate refuge and in settlement, before turning to situate these in the ‘necessary fleer’ framework and the core principles of protection that it establishes. This is followed by some more abstract and general reflections on responsibility, contextualized in relation to the Venezuelan displacement. We distinguish the different roles and responsibilities of a range of actors that encompass governmental and non-governmental agents as well as the displaced women and girls themselves. Finally, we locate this account of protection and responsibility within a wider justice and development framework that addresses the conditions that generate necessary flight.
Introducing the Problem Statement
Authors: Papadopoulos Ioannis
Published: January 2024

This chapter introduces the reader to the study’s theoretical background and proceeds to elaborating upon the set research aims. Hence, this project will first look into the procedural steps that succeeded the irregular entry of unaccompanied children into Greece between the years 2016 and 2020 and examine the processes that they were subjected to. The analysis will then move on to assessing how this study will bring to the surface the reality from within detention facilities for unaccompanied children and focus on whether detention processes place them in the context of crimmigration. Emphasis is gradually added on the study’s aim to explore whether the right to be heard is applied correctly in the minors’ favour during detention. Thus, the applied methodology and core characteristics of Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis are discussed. The second part of the chapter is a summary of the book’s structure, coupled with details concerning each chapter’s respective context.
Children’s Rights and Methodologies
Authors: Papadopoulos Ioannis
Published: January 2024

This chapter’s starting point is the issue of safeguarding the rights of children on an international level. Initially, the forming process of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child is presented, coupled with information concerning its legal scope and core provisions. To this end, the ‘best interests of the child’ principle is elaborated upon and focus is placed on the right of children to be heard in all judicial and administrative proceedings that affect them, with special emphasis added to the case of detained unaccompanied children. Following the latter, the study’s research approach is discussed. By presenting the main principles and aims of phenomenology, a demonstration occurs concerning the different theoretical schools of phenomenological research, thus concluding how Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis was preferred over other qualitative methods as the ideal approach for conducting interviews with unaccompanied children and practitioners in the migration context and addressing the research aims.
Emergent Discussion Themes
Authors: Papadopoulos Ioannis
Published: January 2024

This chapter is structured in four consecutive parts, according to the formed superordinate discussion topics that emerged during the analysis of the interview results. More specifically, after completing the interviewing process, the participants’ responses to the research questions were organised into groups based on similarities among them, according to the guidelines of Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis. This allowed for specific discussion topics to be identified, which were then clustered into higher-order and sub-themes. In detail, the superordinate discussion topics include issues on hygiene matters; the overall context of detention; the complete lack of services in favour of detained unaccompanied children; and the abusive treatment that minors endured in detention. Each theme is presented and discussed thoroughly, followed by concise quotes made by the participants. As a result, the study’s key findings are illustrated in a comprehensive and analytical style, coupled with the author’s input with respect to each individual theme respectively.
Reaching a Conclusion
Authors: Papadopoulos Ioannis
Published: January 2024

This chapter addresses the project’s research conclusions. Hence, the positionality of detained unaccompanied children in Greece within the context of crimmigration is initially assessed. Moreover, a conclusion is reached on whether the national framework views detention for unaccompanied children as an administrative process and consequently if the right to be heard was applied correctly in the minors’ favour at the time. The author’s final remarks regarding the research findings follow, with emphasis placed on safeguarding the vulnerable status of unaccompanied children throughout reception proceedings. Conclusively, a concise presentation of the recent advancements in the Greek law regarding migration-related issues succeeds with added focus on whether the context of detention for unaccompanied children was in any way improved. The latter is followed by the author’s concluding comments about this project’s contribution to knowledge, coupled with recommendations on how this study’s findings and methodology can be used as the basis for future research.
Introduction
Authors: Bonifacio Glenda Tibe , Epe Roxanna Balbido
Published: January 2024

This introductory chapter sets the background, framework, concepts, and context of the sociology of disasters in the Philippines, mainly from pre- and post-typhoon Haiyan. As an overview, this chapter presents the sociocultural dimensions of disasters in the Philippines by conceptualizing a disaster archipelago; framing cultures and disasters; the interface of the local and global; environmental policies, humanitarian, and development assistance. It also presents the organization of the book into two parts and a description of the 15 chapters related to gender, women, children, nutrition, community resilience, religion, information communication technology, economy, disaster impact analysis, applied theater, disability, and disaster risk reduction.
State of ICT-Use within the Local Climate E-Governance in Metro Manila, Philippines
Authors: Asuncion Xavier Venn A.
Published: January 2024

This chapter is based on a study on climate e-governance, which looks into how information and communications technologies (ICTs) are being deployed by local government units (LGUs) in Metro Manila, Philippines, for monitoring of climate change and impacts, disaster management, and climate change adaptation. Among the identified underlying challenges with respect to ICT adoption of LGUs is the seeming gap between the ICT capacities of LGUs and their climate action responsibilities. Advanced ICTs are operated at the national level but major climate action responsibilities are actually devolved to LGUs. This makes LGUs dependent on forecasts and data from national government agencies for their climate information needs. As such, this suggests the need to improve the integration between the use of ICTs and the overall climate action framework of the government to make the dynamics of national and local government units for climate action more efficient.
No One Left Behind? A Case for Disability-Inclusive Disaster Risk Reduction in the Philippines
Authors: Alburo-Cañete Kaira Zoe , Clarin Corazon , Codiñera Marivic , Velmonte Katherine
Published: January 2024

Given the imperative to ‘leave no one behind,’ enshrined in both the Sustainable Development Goals and the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, the clamor for developing disability-inclusive DRR approaches has grown in recent years. But while the need for disability inclusion is acknowledged, there is a need to understand how it can be practiced on the ground. To address this need, the chapter presents the case of the Cebu Disability-Inclusive Disaster Risk Reduction Network (CDiDRRN), a multi-stakeholder advocacy coalition participated actively by various organizations of persons with disability, civil society organizations, and government agencies. The CDiDRRN has been hailed as one of the pioneering initiatives for disability-inclusive DRR in the country and continues to gain wider attention both locally and internationally. By highlighting the experiences, accomplishments, and challenges in establishing CDiDRRN—captured through process documentation, key informant interviews, and participant observation—the chapter demonstrates how a rights-based disability-inclusive DRR can be promoted. The chapter then offers practical strategies and lessons learned from the experience of CDiDRRN which can serve as guideposts for future work on disability-inclusive DiDRR in the Philippines and beyond.
Increasing Resilience in Communities Affected by Typhoon Haiyan: World Renew’s Response in the Philippines
Authors: Wiebe Grace
Published: January 2024

World Renew (WR) has responded to various natural disasters in the Philippines since 1964, mostly typhoons and earthquakes in Negros and Bohol, Mayan Volcanos, and flooding from excessive rain. The largest response to date has been to typhoon Haiyan which spanned the period from November 8, 2013 to June 30, 2019. The response reached over 110,000 individuals with projects totaling Can$11,428,000. This chapter describes the various stages of response and the challenges overcome throughout humanitarian and development responses to achieve community resilience. This chapter highlights key lessons learned during the transition of its initial disaster response in Leyte, Samar, and Panay to a subsequent development phase, which incorporated livelihoods components as well as savings groups and longer-term disaster risk reduction. WR will describe how community vulnerabilities to the effects of climate change were reduced as well as how the interventions that it undertook with local Philippine organizations align with the Philippines’ current National Development Plan.
Religion in the Public Sphere in the Aftermath of Typhoon Haiyan
Authors: Medina Maria Cecilia T.
Published: January 2024

This chapter examines the changing role of religion (faith actors and organizations) in the public sphere in the aftermath of a major natural hazard in 2013: super typhoon Yolanda (Haiyan) in the province of Leyte in the Philippines. Religious and lay leaders have gone beyond their traditional roles facilitating service delivery and rehabilitation efforts. As part of civil society, they were also involved in re/building the community; advocacy and protection of citizens’ welfare and monitoring accountability in the use of state resources and interventions for disaster response and management.
Class and Social Background Discrimination: An Introduction
Authors: Capuano Angelo
Published: January 2024

This chapter provides the foundation knowledge needed to understand discrimination based on class and social background, and subsequent chapters of this book. It provides readers with: an overview of leading class theories, including those of Marx, Weber, Bourdieu, and Durkheim; a discussion of social psychology and discrimination; an analysis of class in Australia, South Africa and Canada; and an explanation of discrimination law concepts, including intersectionality.
Unravelling the Meaning of ‘Social Origin’ Discrimination in Conventions of the International Labour Organization (ILO) and its Applications in the Digital Age
Authors: Capuano Angelo
Published: January 2024

This chapter unravels the concept of ‘social origin’ discrimination in conventions of the International Labour Organization (ILO). It analyses the reports of ILO supervisory bodies and preparatory works (travaux préparatoires) to aid the interpretation of convention text. It also analyses rules of statutory interpretation in Australia and South Africa to explain the relevance of ILO jurisprudence to interpreting ‘social origin’ in domestic legislation.
Automated Candidate Screening, Algorithms and Artificial Intelligence in Recruitment
Authors: Capuano Angelo
Published: January 2024

This chapter exposes how an employer’s use of automated job candidate screening technologies (algorithms and artificial intelligence) creates risks of discrimination based on class and social background. This includes risks of ‘social origin’ discrimination in Australian and South African law. The chapter examines three recruitment tools: (1) contextual recruitment systems (CRS); (2) Hiretech such as Asynchronous Video Interviewing (AVI); and (3) gamification.
Asymmetric Policing at a Distance? Frontiers, Law and Disorder in the Weaponized South
Authors: Squires Peter
Published: January 2024

This chapter addresses two related aspects of the imperial legacy in the global South: the weaponization of frontiers and territories and the imposition of ‘asymmetric’, alien and oppressive policing systems upon these same regions. The question as to whether all policing systems are asymmetric and ‘force reliant’ remains implicit. A particular focus, following Neocleous (2014), will centre upon perhaps the most egregious example of this form of empire policing, the ‘air policing’ strategy adopted in the ‘Middle East’, especially the 1920s doctrine of ‘police bombing’ thought to combine efficiency and humanity across wide tracts of ‘ungovernable space’, while anticipating the forceful public order maintenance and ‘pacification’ practices deployed towards the ‘end of empire’ and yet more recent tactics of drone governance. Excavating these often overlooked features of ‘police’ development, the chapter hopes to throw some (Southern) light upon a number of global dimensions of police force and its evolution.
Exploring the Moving Lines of the ‘Global South’: Citizenship and Political Participation in a Rio de Janeiro Favela
Authors: Albernaz Elizabete Ribeiro
Published: January 2024

This chapter outlines the trajectory of Robson, a ‘community leader’ and wannabe ‘politician’ from Niterói, a municipality located in the Metropolitan Area of Rio de Janeiro. The chapter describes Robson’s efforts to become a legitimate representative of Palácio, enabled to ‘speak on behalf of the community’, intermediating with public and private agencies to improve the lives of their inhabitants. Robson’s efforts to become a favela politician, moving from being a community leader, illustrate the complex social processes implicated in the construction of Palácio as a ‘place’ (Bourdieu, 1997). In developing this analysis we explore relationships between violence, mobility and inequality, offering insights into the concept of ‘global South’ as a moving border, where the ambivalent coexistence between connection and separation produces zones of intense exchange and conflict promoting the ‘subaltern integration’ of Palácio in the cultural, political and economic life of the city of Niterói.
Women, Peace, Security and Justice: A Postcolonial Feminist Critical Review
Authors: Zucatto Giovana Esther
Published: January 2024

This chapter critically reviews the relationship between women, peace, security and justice from a postcolonial feminist perspective. Currently, this relationship is marked out, internationally, by the Women, Peace and Security Agenda of the United Nations (UN), which carries a strongly normative discourse, associating greater gender equality with the possibility of guaranteeing peace in a lasting way. This takes the form of positive conceptions of peace that prioritize gender equality, considerations about the victims of violence and social justice in the postwar period. The ideals of classical liberalism and the conception of democratic peace that have permeated the UN’s ideology since its creation are updated to include gender. Yet this idea can be problematized in several ways, and the chapter concludes by developing a synthesis of ideas for the construction of peace and social justice which takes into account the experiences and specificities of women in the global South.
Distant Conflicts, Southern Deaths: The Trials of Neoliberal Internationalism in ‘Southern Nowhere’
Authors: Squires Peter
Published: January 2024

This chapter considers the violent legacies of empire, for imperialism (in its colonial and postcolonial forms) has been central to the political construction of ‘Southern-ness’. Military domination of Southern lands is frequently associated with a brutal violence exercised against Indigenous peoples, while in more recent times the task of domestic pacification has increasingly fallen to police agencies and their paramilitary partners. In this chapter a line is drawn between the history of imperial massacres, the police killings at Marikana mine, South Africa, and the war crimes and human rights abuses perpetrated by coalition troops during military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan as the coalition forces pursued goals of regime change, peace-building and the reconstruction of domestic political order. Unfortunately, but perhaps predictably, the goals of neoliberal internationalism have been found seriously wanting as practised by military liberal interventionism, raising once again the myth and paradox of ‘liberal empire’.
Practice Spotlight: Gender and Sex in Research Communications
Authors: Frentz Sophia
Published: January 2024

Medical research largely fails to consider or even acknowledge the existence of transgender and intersex people. This results in a lower likelihood of people, firstly, receiving appropriate medical care as the information to provide that care may not exist and, secondly, accessing medical care because they fear harm resulting from inappropriate medical treatments. This spotlight reviews how poorly recent medical research papers concerning gender have engaged with the realities, experiences, and needs of trans, intersex, and gender diverse people. The spotlight highlights the importance of using trans, intersex, and non-binary people’s expertise to improve this.
Practice Spotlight: Queer by Nature: The LGBTQ+ Natural History Tour
Authors: Davis Josh
Published: January 2024

This spotlight reflects on the first LGBTQ+ Natural History Tour held at the National History Museum in London, UK in 2019. The tour explored queer animal behaviours and species’ diverse models of sex. A key part of developing the tour was a co-collaborative approach involving external members of the LGBTQIA+ community to work with the museum to review and critique the proposed content and help in deciding which subjects would be included and how they would be talked about. The outcome allowed for an inclusive and comprehensive tour, the content of which has now been used across many different platforms. The spotlight talks through the motivations and planning for the event as well as the fun queer natural history topics included and some encouraging audience responses.
The Possibilities of Queer in Science Communication Teaching and Pedagogies
Authors: Lock Simon J. , Armstrong Eleanor S.
Published: January 2024

Pedagogy in science communication can be wide ranging, spanning formal education, informal education, everyday science learning, and professional development contexts. This chapter considers how we might apply the concept of queer pedagogy to these multiple processes and settings. The chapter explores what queer theory could bring to science communication when taught as a subject in tertiary education and outside of that context. It considers the possibilities of teaching science communication queerly.
Queering Science Communication Theory Beyond Deficit and Dialogue Binaries
Authors: Orthia Lindy A. , Kauwe V de
Published: January 2024

What might queer perspectives offer science communication theory? Inspired by queer theory’s metaphorical potential, this chapter offers parallel serious and playful takes on what queer perspectives offer science communication. It challenges the science/public binary that underlies most of the science communication models at the centre of science communication theory. This chapter argues that queering science communication models offers liberatory possibilities for science communication by undermining the hegemonic authority of Western institutionalized science and by granting epistemic legitimacy to marginalized people, including LGBTIQA+ people.
Conclusions
Authors: Roberson Tara , Orthia Lindy A.
Published: January 2024

Queering science communication should give LGBTIQA+ people power and the chance to play. This conclusion summarizes the various contributions to this book and draws out some unresolved issues that deserve attention in future research and practical science communication endeavours. Queering science communication must entail something more than recognizing LGBTIQA+ people are present in our discipline. The field must review underlying structures and values in our culture and together work out how to improve. Science communicators must expand the way we understand and discuss the diversity of humanity and then embrace these ways of being within our research and applied practices.
Mental Capacity Regimes Approach to Values and Participation in Proceedings Involving Individuals with Impaired Decision-Making Capacity in Scotland
Authors: Stavert Jill
Published: January 2024

The Adults with Incapacity (Scotland) Act 2000 (AWIA) and Mental Health (Care and Treatment) (Scotland) Act 2003 (MHA) authorise and regulate the use of the non-consensual interventions relating to persons with mental disabilities. The principles that underpin the operation of both Acts reinforce the need to respect individual autonomy and restrict this only where absolutely necessary for the benefit of the person concerned. However, the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, together with perceptions of persons with lived experience of mental disability and their families that the legislation is not always meeting their needs, have called into question the continuing efficacy of the values that underpin the AWIA and MHA. This chapter will therefore consider the extent to which the AWIA and MHA currently allow persons with mental disabilities to participate in decisions about their health, welfare and property in such a way that reflects their values.
US Laws Relating to Decision-Making on Behalf of P
Authors: Latham Stephen
Published: January 2024

Guardianship and conservatorship are matters for state law in the US, so there are multiple legal approaches to the problem of establishing and instantiating the values of P in proceedings regarding P’s healthcare and the disposition of P’s property. Many states suffer confusion as between best-interest and substituted judgement standards in making decisions on behalf of persons who have lost capacity, and almost none actually require consultation with P about P’s values after a guardian or conservator has been appointed. Even in states that are clear on the legal standards to be applied in probate proceedings, there is little judicial review or oversight, and widespread neglect and fraud. Several reform movements have improved the situation in recent years; and private accrediting bodies for guardians/​conservators have established more clear standards in the field. Importantly, there has also been a recent movement among a number of states to use ‘supported decision-making’ techniques to help ensure that the values of persons who have partially lost capacity are explored and applied to important decisions about their healthcare and the disposition of their property.
Asian Values and Confucianism: How P’s Ability to Participate in Court Proceedings in Singapore Is Influenced by P’s Cultural Milieu
Authors: Chong Yue-En
Published: January 2024

This chapter explores how the operation of the Mental Capacity Act 2008 is influenced by the sociocultural environment in Singapore, and subsequently how the prevailing attitudes and cultural milieu of the local populace have shaped the interactions between P, P’s caregivers and the legal system – specifically the extent of P’s participation in proceedings. The author attempts to explore methodically by first setting out the relevant legal provisions followed by the analysis of case judgments and a discussion on current legal barriers to P’s participation in proceedings. The impact of culture milieu, through the influence of Asian values and religious views, is further explored under the theme of surrogate decision-making for P in Singapore. This chapter concludes by considering ways to further advance and support P in the decision-making process in light of the finding of a culture of surrogate decision-making in Singapore.
The Place of Values and P’s Participation in Mental Capacity Law: Themes, Synergies and Tensions
Authors: Kong Camillia , Coggon John , Cooper Penny , Dunn Michael , Keene Alex Ruck
Published: January 2024

This chapter concludes the book Capacity, Participation and Values in Comparative Legal Perspective. We draw together key themes and observations from across the book’s chapters, which focus on mental capacity – or guardianship – laws across different jurisdictions, seeking to learn whether and how a person for whom a decision is being made under such laws is empowered to participate in the decision making, and to understand how that person’s values are identified and brought into decisions. The book invites reflections on similarities and distinctions in uses of technical language, and shared or overlapping legal framings and approaches. However, it also provides the basis of deeper-seated observations. These include points of clashing principle within the aims of laws: for example where tensions arise between empowerment, equality, dignity, welfare and respect for a person’s wishes and values (to name just a few). In light of such principled challenges, we examine two salient themes that we perceive in the book: first, how laws and their application belie the myth of liberal neutrality, notwithstanding efforts to achieve a detachment from moral judgement within mental capacity laws; second, how legacies of oppression and/or colonialism bear on the interrelationships between individuals, communities and the state under mental capacity laws.
Contending With the Limits of Our Natural World
Authors: Gerhardt Hannes
Published: January 2024

Chapter 6 delves into the foundational basis of any economy, that is, the renewable and non-renewable resource sectors and the underlying natural planetary systems to which they are bound. This chapter, therefore, deals with the overarching challenge of establishing a more resilient and environmentally sustainable economy within a broader commons-based governance regime. The DG-ML model is here shown to be particularly suited for the needed shift to a truly circular economy. The chapter also focuses on agriculture as a quintessential case of renewable resource management, and a design global, farm local (DG-FL) model is proposed and explored as part of the broader aim of achieving a compeerist approach to feeding the world. The limits to localization are, nonetheless, also addressed as well as the problematic issue of engaging in fair, long distance trade, especially with regions defined by postcolonialism.
Evacuation Lost: Activism and Scholarship in a Time of Geopolitical Crisis
Authors: Fluri Jennifer
Published: January 2024

This chapter provides an overview of activist scholarship in the context of Afghanistan over the course of 20 years. It begins with an overview of Afghanistan’s geopolitical history, followed by the author’s research and engagement with research associates in the country. The chapter’s main focus rests with the failures of international intervention, and the challenges that occurred when the author, her collaborators, and volunteers attempted to help Afghan colleagues and friends to evacuate from the country after the resurgence of the Taliban and withdrawal of US military, aid, and development in August 2021. This includes the bureaucratic barriers, and massive financial and legal hurdles, many of which were impossible to surmount. The author further questions the effective role of research and researchers when they are unable to provide direct assistance due to geopolitical obstructions.
Critical Geography Collective of Ecuador as Feminist Geography Collective Praxis
Authors: Zaragocín Sofia , Velasco Soledad Álvarez , Falanga Guglielmina , Yépez Amanda , Ruales Gabriela
Published: January 2024

In Latin America, feminist geography collectives are part of larger critical geography praxis. As the Critical Geography Collective of Ecuador, in this chapter we explore the potentials of collective feminist geographic praxis that has organized around geographical critiques of extractivist industry, patriarchy, and the connections between the two. Members of the Critical Geography Collectives of Ecuador, accompany social movements in the defense of their territories against extractive industry, militarization, migrant criminalization, and patriarchal formations of space. This work is implemented from critical geography methods and developing geospatial analysis based on the needs of the communities with whom we work. In this chapter we explore our work within feminist geography praxis and activism more broadly; then we underscore two key examples that are demonstrative of our feminist geographical activist praxis; and, last, we reflect on the link between Latin American feminist geographical activist process and cuerpo-territorio (body-territories) on the move.
Giving Birth in a ‘Hostile Environment’
Authors: Fannin Maria
Published: January 2024

In 2012, the UK government’s Home Office, under the leadership of then Home Office Secretary Theresa May, outlined a series of policies aimed, in May’s words, at creating a ‘really hostile environment for illegal migration’. Formalized in subsequent pieces of legislation on immigration in 2014 and 2016, these policies sought restrict migrants’ ability to access education, rental accommodation, driving licenses, bank accounts, and healthcare. Although healthcare during pregnancy is defined by the UK government as ‘immediately necessary’ and therefore should never be withheld, fear of being asked for payment upfront has meant women without legal right to remain may delay or avoid accessing needed healthcare. This chapter explores activist responses to hostile environment policies related to maternal care in the UK. It focuses on local projects aimed at resisting the Hostile Environment policy and the vulnerability faced by pregnant and birthing women navigating ‘hostile healthcare’ during their pregnancies and births. Linking the disciplining of pregnant bodies to broader anxieties over migration and citizenship, this chapter considers how the practices of accompaniment through the healthcare system by midwives, doulas, birth companions, and activists bring together the radical ethos of reproductive justice movements and the embodied politics of birth activism.
The Life of a Number
Authors: Lawson B.T.
Published: January 2024

The emergence of COVID-19 in early 2020 led to a flood of numbers in public discourse, from the ever-updating count of daily cases of coronavirus to the fabled R-value. But this vast sea of statistics, data, league tables, indexes, metrics and indicators often led to more confusion than clarity. Therefore, we need to find better ways to think through these number-rich contexts – especially as we enter into the ‘post-pandemic’ era. To do so, this book puts forward the Life of a Number methodological approach. Seven particularly important numbers from the pandemic were analysed through a five-stage process that paid attention to demand, production, communication, public meaning and backgrounding. The narrative that emerges holds significance for COVID-19 but, more broadly, it forms the theoretical framework of data bounds. This concept helps scholars think through how the quantitative becomes a meaningful way to engage with, think about, discuss and change certain phenomena. Each chapter provides a distinct perspective on data bounds, with the conclusion putting forward a four-point toolkit to help scholars put data bounds into practice. It calls for academics to pay attention to media and communication, interrogate and appreciate quantitative realism, examine how data bounds can maintain or challenge power, and determine why some data bounds dominate. The methodological, empirical and theoretical contribution of this book is one that bridges the gap between Critical Data Studies and Media and Communication, providing a starting point for scholars looking to think through the ever-expanding net of data in the ‘post-pandemic’ world.
Data Bounds Are Emotive
Authors: Lawson B.T.
Published: January 2024

When a book focuses on the quantitative, it can often emphasize the way people use numbers to understand, rationalize or compute. But the quantitative is emotive too. This chapter focuses on the now iconic data visualization from the pandemic: the peak and troughed graph of daily cases, hospitalizations and deaths. Specifically, it examines the way the graph was presented by a Sky News journalist – and how this performance flouted the convention of presenting these types of graphs about death. Using genre studies analysis, it argues that the data visualization was imbued with the emotional experience of those living through Trade-Off. One that can be defined by both uncertainty – the rising and falling of cases – but also of large-scale tragedy – the thousands of people who died per day. The journalists’ animated performance lacked the sobriety that the presentation of such a culturally important graph needed. In doing so, it pointed to the emotion with which we often imbue data visualizations.
Introduction
Authors: Furnari Ellen
Published: January 2024

The introduction provides a brief overview of the history and places of UCP/accompaniment, touching on issues of basic principles and practices, challenges to protecting civilians including a discussion of the comparative strengths of UCP vs militarized peacekeeping and civilian protection, connections to other fields such as critical security and human security studies, and critiques of the practice. It concludes with some thoughts about new directions in potential research/theorizing questions.
UCP and Conflict Transformation
Authors: Schweitzer Christine
Published: January 2024

Based on the learnings of the Nonviolent Peaceforce’s ‘Good Practices in UCP’ process and existing literature on UCP, this chapter reflects on the role of UCP in nonviolent conflict transformation. Johan Galtung has distinguished three ‘grand strategies’ – peacemaking, peacekeeping, peacebuilding. UCP has originally been sorted into the category of peacekeeping but it has turned out that, to be effective, UCP needs to incorporate elements of the other two strategies. And, at the same time, UCP is also being used as a tool to strengthen one side in a conflict by opening space for activists seeking to protect human rights, overcome injustice or fighting against occupations or for self-determination, which are also important factors in conflict transformation. The chapter proposes an understanding of UCP that puts it into the overall framework of conflict transformation, which allows to still distinguish it from other approaches.
The Temporal and Embodied Construction of Space and UCP
Authors: Ridden Louise
Published: January 2024

Unarmed civilian protection (UCP) is a deeply contextual practice, and one that is shaped by the spaces in which it is practised. While the ‘spatial turn’ in peace and conflict studies is a welcome addition to the literature, however, it is the beginning of a deeper understanding of the constructive power of UCP rather than its conclusion. This chapter firstly outlines the contribution of spatial analysis to UCP literature through a review of works on spatial approaches to civilian protection, before exploring the possibility of contextualizing nonviolent space within time through the case study of South Sudan. Finally, it locates this temporal space within bodies, by unpacking the methods of UCP and the ways in which the practice instrumentalizes nonviolent bodies in the protection of civilians.
Unarmed Civilian Protection: Security or Humanitarian Aid?
Authors: Reuwer John
Published: January 2024

This chapter explores the role of unarmed civilian protection (UCP) in ending, or vastly decreasing reliance on, war and armed policing for the protection of civilians and human rights. While UCP organizations have made great strides supporting civilians in conflict and helping people make their communities safer though nonviolent strategies, the original vision of some of the founders, to replace violence with nonviolent strategies, remains a dream. Why is this the case? How did UCP come to occupy the humanitarian space in most of its manifestations? Is there a place for UCP in the much larger security sector, such as militarized policing, peacekeeping and peace enforcement? Given that the human body is no match for a bullet or bomb, what would have to happen to demonstrate that nonviolent power can match violent power for helping people feel safe when threatened with violence? How could UCP be brought to scale with resources to match those routinely given to actors using armed methods of protection.
Relational Strategies: Contested Approaches to Relationships in UCP
Authors: Gray Felicity
Published: January 2024

Unarmed civilian protection (UCP) hinges on relationships: building them, sustaining them, and using them to generate protective outcomes with and for at-risk civilian populations. Despite a common focus on the power of relationships among UCP organizations and methodologies, different UCP actors take very different approaches to these relationships, particularly who they seek to build them with. For some UCP actors, building connections with all parties to a conflict is a central goal. Others are much more selective and deliberately eschew close relationship with parties, such as the police or armed groups.
This chapter outlines these differentiated strategic approaches and explores why different UCP actors gravitate toward these different relational strategies. These approaches are explained using three key factors: variances in how the principle of nonpartisanship is understood, the positionality of the organization vis-à-vis the civilian community they work in, and the broader political context in which a UCP actor operates. Understanding how and why these strategic relational choices are made provides new and important insights into the emergent UCP sector and its relevance to different conflict contexts.
Unarmed Civilian Protection: Exploring the Challenge for Political Science
Authors: Dubernet Cécile
Published: January 2024

Unarmed civilian peacekeeping/protection (UCP) challenges Political Science, and thus politics, for several reasons. First, because it is transdisciplinary and practice-oriented whereas Political Science is an academic discipline, researched, debated and taught mostly at university or within intellectual and journalist circles. More deeply however, UCP questions a number of assumptions at the core of the discipline. It questions the postulate that violence (or the threat thereof) dominates collective life. It challenges as well approaches that assume the effectiveness and efficiency of the use or threat of violence as a method of conflict resolution. It does so, not by showing how ineffective and inefficient violent approaches are, but by offering nonviolent yet effective alternatives, in particularly for inter-communal tensions. Last, but not least, UCP challenges the Political Science dichotomy between persons and institutions when it comes to providing protection. It shows that civilians, especially locals, are key to effective protection policies. Alongside other concepts such as ‘Human Security’ or the ‘Do no harm’ principles, UCP can contribute to renewing our understanding of Political Science.
The contribution will defend the idea that it is important to grasp these issues so as to engage in a healthy debate with mainstream political scientists.
Unarmed Civilian Protection and Nonviolence with Attention to Sub-Saharan Africa
Authors: John Moses Monday
Published: January 2024

Although there is a growing body of literature on nonviolence, there are fewer writings on the relationship between unarmed civilian protection (UCP) and nonviolence and how the two concepts work together in practice. This chapter will bridge this gap; the author argues that nonviolence is not only UCP’s principal but is its overall guiding concept. The chapter will discuss how different scholars and practitioners define nonviolence, its principles and methods, including: protests, non-cooperation and nonviolent direct intervention, where UCP originated from and what their relationship is. The chapter will further emphasize UCP not only as a peacekeeping intervention but as a tactical civilian-based nonviolent approach to sustained conflict management and peacebuilding in sub-Saharan Africa.