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Risk assessments on organized crime are intended to determine which criminalnetworks pose the greatest risk to society and to assess the nature and level of the negativeconsequences or "harms" from organized crime's illicit activities. In this paper, "harm" is definedas the type and level of adverse consequences, intentional or inadvertent, resulting from criminalactivities undertaken by organized crime. This paper explores the concept of harm analysis froma Canadian perspective in light of similar explorations in the United Kingdom and Australia, andalso discusses the practical and theoretical challenges involved in implementing a technique toevaluate and rank the harms from organized crime. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper tracks the development of refugee policy in Canada, Australia and the United States over the past twenty years, arguing that the growth of the asylum seeker phenomenon has led to a conceptual and practical merge between refugee policy and immigration control in all three countries. Historically, nations made strategic choices about how many refugees to accept from which regions. Increasingly however, asylum seekers arrive at borders without U.N. refugee status, and require processing by national level immigration officials to determine their eligibility for protection. For example, whereas in 1990, 6% of people who were given refugee status in the United States were granted that status via a domestic asylum hearing; in 2005 that percentage had jumped to 32%. I explore the implications of that shift through an analysis of the passage and implementation of two recent policies used to control rates of application for asylum, specifically the Safe Third Country Agreement between the United States and Canada that went into effect in 2004, and Australia’s Pacific Solution initiated in 2001. The data are drawn from interviews with key refugee policy makers and advocates in each of the three nations, as well as content analysis of the policy frames used in legislative hearings and newspaper coverage. I find that as asylum seekers come to be viewed as illegal immigrants, often referred to in the media as ‘queue jumpers,’ refugee policy looses its distinct identity as a human rights issue, and thus its insulation from the politics of immigration control. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The shift towards neo-liberalism as the hegemonic economic order since the 1980s has resulted in the endorsement of the free movement of information, capital, goods, and services, but not peoples. The problem of refugees challenges the hegemony of neo-liberal globalisation, which portrays refugees and asylum seekers as burdens on the retreating welfare state and its limited resources. This paper will examine how states struggle to deal with refugee and asylum issues in the context of neo-liberalism, either by reinforcing or contesting its dominance. It does so by comparing the different approaches taken by the governments of Australia and Canada to refugee policy making. The paper argues that Australia’s political leaders have consistently employed the language of immigration control, and have asserted the sovereign right of states to control the types of people who can enter the country. By contrast, successive Canadian governments have emphasised a rights based approach to those seeking refugee status in its territorial boundaries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Globalization and new information and communications technologies are transforming the role of cities. According to Manuel Castells, the information age is ushering in a new urban form, the informational city. (Vol. 1, 398) Local governance, then, matters more than ever. At the same time governance at all levels is said to be accompanied by a democratic deficit and declining legitimacy. One of hope of ICTs is that in a globalizing world they can ameliorate the democratic deficit and close the gap between citizens, their representatives and other policy-makers. In principle local governments are supposed to be closest to their citizens and the most democratically accessible level of government, the space where e-democracy should have the greatest potential. Yet, I argue, in a comparison of the evidence - studies, polls, and an analysis of urban websites - in four countries, Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia that e-democracy is failing. It has become subordinated to the hegemony of neo-liberalism with its emphasis on the service state and the citizen as consumer, not democratic participant. Despite this, I argue, citizens are using ICTs democratically, forming networks, linking the local and the global but not in a manner intended by state authorities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How have certain illegal immigration control policies come to be regarded as essential for national security in some liberal democratic states while in others these policies remain unacceptable? Forced return, mandatory detention, restricted access to courts and temporary protection have been adopted by a number of liberal states, all of which violate the regulative norms of the 1951 Refugee Convention. This paper argues that the constitutive and regulative norms of the international refugee regime are based on a ?humanitarian? construction of refugee and receiving state identity, and that the shift toward a securitised discourse has re-constructed the identity of refugees and refugee producing states. This discursive shift has been a crucial factor in permitting state elites to enact policies that violate these international norms.Drawing on the arrival of unauthorized boat arrivals in Canada and Australia over a twenty-year period, this paper will show that securitising actors within these societies sought to alter the dominant discourse on refugees and asylum seekers. In Australia, these securitising attempts proved successful, shifting the discourse from humanitarian to securitised, thus ultimately paving the way for government elites to enact policies previously deemed unthinkable for a generous, humanitarian state. In Canada, these securitising attempts failed, making the implementation of restrictive measures unbefitting to the perceived Canadian national identity. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the political uses of official apologies in comparative perspective, focusing on Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United States. It explores why minority groups demand such apologies and why governments give them (or do not). It argues that official apologies are tactics used in larger political strategies to alter the terms and meanings of political membership. As tactics, official apologies are employed by groups and states, for shared and competing purposes. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What considerations drive aid allocations from the developed nations, especially to transitional regimes such as the Central Asian republics? I am particularly interested in the extent to which donor states balance security, economic, and human rights concerns. In contrast to the public claims made by aid agencies and donor governments, I argue that the aims of aid are not selfless â€" at least not primarily. In preceding research, I develop this argument by considering the sources of domestic and international costs and benefits to states. I particularly focus on benefits from aid to subgroups within a state, and on conditions under which aiding states with poor human rights records impose costs on a donor. These hypotheses have been are empirically assessed through both quantitative and qualitative case studies of the foreign policies of Britain, Canada, and Australia between 1980 and 2003, as well as quantitative analyses of all Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) donor states during the same period. In the present research project I also include US official development assistance, and extend the temporal terrain up through 2006). I document overall patterns in the relationships between trade, domestic politics, and aid, as well as changes occurring as the era of the Iron Curtain gave way to the increasingly interdependent global economy of the early 21st century. My research suggests that the governments of donor states do apply this kind of cost-benefit analysis of the expected utility of aid, and demonstrates that, accordingly, aid recipients that are attractive trade partners are less likely to be punished for human rights abuses by having aid reduced or ended. Essentially, democratic donor states like the US pay attention to the human rights records of their aid recipients when they can afford to, in economic and electoral terms. Determining how donors make the decision to aid recipients based on weighing both self-interest and human rights is essential for at least three reasons. First, if states with the ability to set the international agenda do so in a manner that does not include a consistent or primary role for ethical considerations, they signal to leaders of other states that abuse of human rights will be tolerated. Second, in donor countries where respect for democratic values is supposed to be the basis of governmental legitimacy, failure to respect and protect these rights internationally represents a contradiction of core principles. Third, as a practical matter, most members of the aid community believe they are fostering human rights through eliminating poverty and fostering good governance. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I examine young women’s use of technology as part of their activist tool kit. I argue that the inequalities within mainstream political and culture have caused young women varying in ages from 14-35 to seek a space of their own to discuss political activism, political participation, and different forms of art. One avenue that has been incredibly rich for these discussions has been the advent of Ladyfests and its predecessor, Riot Grrrl. Ladyfests are politically oriented activist, art, and music festivals. The first Ladyfest was in Olympia, Washington in 2000. Since this first one there have been more than 30 others mostly in the US; however, some have taken place in Canada, Australia, and Malaysia. Another way that these girls and young women, and men have been active is in on-line environments. What makes the Ladyfest an intriguing case study is the steeping of feminist typology and more so Third Wave feminism methodologies that permeate the mission of many of the festivals. The girls and women involved in Ladyfests enthusiastically refer to themselves as feminists and understand feminist politics; however, they infuse their politics with a cultural and communicative spin. With these young activists we have an international movement beset by groups familiar with their political rights and attempting to reclaim their own forms of power to educate and instigate political action among girls and women. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The identification of western liberal states as ‘humanitarian’ states has been used to support a wide range of policies in western liberal states, from the acceptance of refugees to armed intervention in intra-state conflict. In both Canada and Australia, as well as in many western liberal states, the adoption and implementation of the 1951 Refugee Convention was justified as consistent with and evidence of the state’s humanitarian history. However, the issue of international migration demonstrates that the state’s adoption of humanitarianism does not represent an acceptance of a cosmopolitan ethic, rather a state centric vision of humanitarianism where the protection of humanitarianism is regarded as the greater good than the protection of individuals. In this formulation, humanitarianism is dependent on the maintenance of state sovereignty. This is evident in the discourse on refugees and asylum seekers. In some instances, the identification of the receiving state as a humanitarian state has produced results expected of humanitarian states, and has been used to justify offering protection of refugees and asylum seekers. However, in some cases, the humanitarianism of the receiving state has been identified as the object that requires protection, justifying refusing protection to refugees and asylum seekers. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]