Search

This research paper presents a queer feminist analysis of gendered discourses in South Africa’s (SA) (2020-2025) National Action Plan (NAP) on Women, Peace, and Security (WPS). It builds on an extensive field of WPS scholarship by using the case study of SA’s NAP to illustrate how policy can be used to harness critical gendered language and create possibilities for radical (re)imaginings of gendered peace. While a considerable knowledge base that explores the gendered discourses of NAPs on WPS already exists, a key gap in the literature —that has only more recently begun to be explored with greater rigor— is the bridging of queer and feminist theories to further push the boundaries of discursive policy analysis. Against this backdrop, feminist critical discourse analysis (CDA) was applied to the NAP case study to surface dominant and counter-discourses on gender and their possible inclusionary/exclusionary effects. Key findings centre the potential value of policy discourses which, in their fragmentation, ruptures, continuities and ambivalences, can facilitate opportunities for queer peace at the instrumental level and beyond.

Feminist frameworks have focused on gender inequality as the fundamental explanatory factor of male violence against women in union. This paper extends the analysis to contributions produced through social research. The approaches studied consider the personal characteristics of victims and aggressors (individual focus), the male-female power relationship within the couple (dyadic focus), and structural and symbolic factors (macro-social focus). An exploration of the respective contributions of these different perspectives shows that they offer only partial, inadequate approaches, given the multidimensional complexity of the problem. The main conclusions recognize that it is necessary to develop multi-level and inter-relational analytical frameworks such as the intersectional paradigm, in order to achieve a better understanding of the connection between gender inequality and male violence against women.

Domestic service comprises multiples dimensions that are related not only to the labour issues of women from popular sectors but also to the situation of social inequality that is at the root of this activity. The analysis that we propose in this text begins with the study of the construction of hierarchies and categorization that takes place in the context of interaction between employees and employers in the city of Buenos Aires. Specifically, this paper analyzes the place that food occupies in the context of the mentioned interactions, as an element through which social hierarchies are built. Our fieldwork was carried out in Buenos Aires, Argentina, between 2010 and 2011, following a qualitative approach.

This paper studies Colombian migration to Sweden. It focuses on its development, processes and official policies. It analyses the socio-economic composition and work background of Colombian migrants in the city of Gothenburg as well as its process of integration to the Sweden society during the last twenty years. The study centers the analysis on family cores, associative strategies of the community, and emphasizes on women and forced exiles. Survey techniques, interviews, and the ethnographic method are thus used in order to describe and interpret available information.