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With a few exceptions, conflict spillover to migrant communities and diasporas is a largely understudied phenomenon. This paper will search for causes of violence and peace in the Western world's migrant communities in an attempt to answer a question, "Why some migrant communities engage in violence in a response to events abroad, yet others do not?" First part of the paper will present a typology and theory of conflict spillover drawing on literatures on migration and security, diasporic communities, ethnic conflict, and social movements. The second part of the paper will introduce the proposed case studies of Muslim-background migrant populations in Dearborn, MI, USA, and London, United Kingdom, and their response to the War on Terror in time period from 2001 to 2008. Field research for the case studies will be carried out during the summer of 2009 (London) and winter of 2009 (Dearborn). ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper tackles the complex and contentious topic of holding members of the current United States government criminally accountable for war crimes. In the last decade, certain recent events suggest that justice and accountability might be gaining on impunity and amnesty. Since the arrest of Chile's former dictator General Augusto Pinochet in London in 1998, the trial of Slobodan Milosevic in The Hague, the establishment of the International Criminal Court, and a plethora of high-profile human rights cases brought before national courts exercising universal jurisdiction or hybrids, scholars have identified the surge of prosecutions of powerful state leaders once thought above the law. Despite its advances, the questions remain as to whether the so-called justice cascade will contribute to human rights and security. Critics have noted that the prosecutions usually happen somewhere (hence potentially weakening the impact for the peoples most affected by the violence) and have (to date) largely been a matter of politically powerful nations agreeing to prosecute third world leaders. The nascent international justice movement has yet to demonstrate its ability to influence powerful nations, such as the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council. This paper examines the measure of impunity and accountability of the Untied States government and armed forces. First, I overview the allegations of crimes committed by the United States, and specifically those that might constitute crimes of international concern, including war crimes such as torture and illegal detention. Secondly, the paper analyzes the judicial responses to such alleged crimes (if any), and explores whether the record to date indicates that the United States government is willing and able to investigate, prosecute and punish crimes of international concern within its national courts. Finally, the paper discusses the geographical and political ramifications of such impunity and/or accountability. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the spatial, temporal and relational locations of political violence and their impact on how political violence is perceived. The paper explores the diversity of perceptions of political violence between policy makers, practitioners and scholars on the one hand, and suspect or target communities, victims and perpetrators on the other, and argues that these diversities are structured inter alia by ‘geometries of violence’ namely spatial, temporal and relational proximities. The paper concludes by considering how policy makers and politicians, as elites in the society operate at some distance from the experience of political violence, and their understanding of political violence is often at variance with multiple meanings and effects of political violence for the wider population. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper starts from the London bombings in July 2005, asking a double question: (a) how do references to terrorist violence bear upon the political contestation of multiculturalism; and (b)what are the political stakes that are negotiated and contested in this process. The paper examines how 'terrorist violence' becomes politically embedded in a wider societal problematique of seggregation versus unity, integration versus fragmentation. The dominant renditions of society in these accounts focus on a tension between shared values and freedom of individual expression. The paper will argue that the stake of the game is not simply difference and identity, problematized through multiculturalism, extremism and migration but the way in which one constructs the societal as a realm of government and politics. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current wave of fundamentalist terror and the anti-terror response it has generated raise a lot of important questions; questions that have been all too readily glossed over in the hasty turn to rhetoric by powerful people who should at least be think ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the anxieties and reactions sparked by events, like the transport system terror attacks of 9.11.0l in the USA, 3.11.2004 in Spain, and 7.7.05 in London. As either collections of soft human targets or cargoes of hard-hitting destructiv ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I investigate the causes of diaspora mobilization within the “host” country, on behalf of the “homeland,” which many diaspora members have never seen and have no plans to return to. These actions are even more puzzling after considering that diasporic mobilization over the “homeland” often results in a negative, often violent, backlash from the “host” population. By understanding the motivations for these actions, I attempt to provide a better understanding of the shift from what could be called an “immigrant mentality” to a “diasporic consciousness,” which requires a stronger attachment to the “homeland” and events happening within, then to day-to-day life in the “host” country. I combine the literatures on diasporas and social movements to argue that diasporic organizations’ framing of events in the homeland, and rhetorical appeals urging members to act on the homeland’s behalf, are essential in mobilizing diaspora members. Specifically, I look at the following cases of mobilization: the Sikh and Hindu populations in London, England, the Chinese population in Vancouver, B.C., and the Mexican population in California, U.S. I also look at one case of non-mobilization: the Italian population in the northeast-United States. I argue that effective frames will emphasize a need to mobilize in language reflecting the host country’s cultural values and ideology. This can be attributed to what has been described as the “dual-natured identities” of diaspora members. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes in Stockwell Station, South London, on 22 July 2005, was described as a 'tragic mistake' by Metropolitan Politce Commissioner Sir Ian Blair. This framing of the killing as a mistake, a one-off lamentable tragedy, has come to dominate responses to '22/7' in the mainstream British media. However, this paper argues that such a framing stymies critical questioning about what happened and colludes in the reproduction of a particular framework of understanding within which sovereign power has retrospectively valorised his death. By contrast I read the shooting as one of multiple responses of the British state to the bombings of the London transport network on 7 July 2005 and seek to locate Menezes' death within the broader context of the global 'War on Terror'. Rather than a 'mistake' I argue that the shooting is symptomatic of systemic features of Western politics and in particular innovations in the ways sovereign power attempts to secure the spatial and temporal borders of sovereign political community. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The political responses to the bombings in London on the 7th of July 2005, the subsequent "failed" bombings on the 21st of July, and the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes by anti-terrorist officers on the 22nd of July, show us that the idea of a community in unity continues to be the overwhelmingly dominant model we have available for how we might organise political communities. This is the idea that a community must be formed around the foundational principle of unity, representing a shared essence that goes beyond people's membership in a society or state. It is the image of community that underpins nationalist discourses, the kind that were circulating at full speed in the aftermath of the London bombings. This paper will explore the idea of a community in unity through the case of political responses to the London bombings. In doing so, it will seek to reveal the tremendous capacity of this idea in steering out ability to conceive of possible alternatives. It will also offer a contribution to studies in international political theory that are specifically interested in exploring what might be involved in the task of forming different ideas of community, and what might be done to avoid reproducing the familiar impasses. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]