Search

This paper considers the experience of asylum seekers and refugees in Northern Ireland against the background of different periods of non-governance, arguing that consociationalism is hindering the implementation of an integration strategy. Northern Ireland is one of the only regions in the UK without a dedicated refugee integration strategy, in spite of one existing in draft form. As a devolved region, it sits outside the UK policy of asylum dispersal, but has to adhere to UK immigration legal policy. Northern Ireland has, however, the power to create and embed refugee integration policies and strategies as a devolved region. We seek to problematize the notion of refugee 'integration' within the context of a divided society, thereby questioning what it is asylum seekers and refugees are being asked to do within this discourse of integration. In a context where sectarianism continues to shape the spatial and social infrastructures, this is even more complex an aspiration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses various reports within the issue on topics including racist populism, populist far-right politics and ethno-nationalism in the Netherlands.

The paper approaches the rise of far right populism in Europe with a feminist lens and on the background of the discursively constructed sexist and racist features of the current moral panic. It is argued that we can follow up a continuum of normalised culturalist gendered discourses in Europe, and for some time, in the Netherlands in particular. The paper is organised by looking, first, at the place of gender in far right discourses and the role of women in far right-wing populist parties. Second, a feminist critique of processes of normalisation is presented, helping to clarify the term ‘culturalism’. To illustrate the dynamics of gendered culturalism and the way it impacts the everyday life of Muslim women in the Netherlands, some interview sequences of an empirical study with female Dutch-Moroccan citizens are discussed. The experiences of the women illustrate how far right populist perspectives and prejudices entered their daily lives, and which counter strategies, the women used to resist intimidation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article presents information on European urban spaces in crisis. Topics discussed include financial crisis in Europe post-2008, rise in extreme right-wing and neo-fascist parties, and anti Roma racism. Also being discussed are the relationship between public-private accountabilities, resources needed for the sustenance of local life, and Europeanization.

Public discourses on citizenship, identity and nationality, which link geographical borders and the political boundaries of a community, are infused with tensions and contradictions. This paper illustrates how these tensions are interwoven with multilayered notions of home, belonging, migration, citizenship and individual's ‘longing just to be’, focusing on the Dutch and the British context. The narratives of a number of Dutch and British women, who either immigrated to the respective countries or were born to immigrants, illustrate how the growing rigid integration and assimilative discourses in Europe contradict an individual anchoring in national and local communities. The narratives of women participating in these studies show multilayered angles of belonging presenting an alternative to the increasing strong argument for a fixed notion of positioning and national belonging. The female ‘new’ citizens in our study tell stories of individual choices, social mobility and a sense of multiple belonging in and across different communities. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A preface is presented for this issue of "Patterns of Prejudice."

The paper is meant as a timely intervention into current debates on the impact of the global pandemic on the rise of global far-right populism and contributes to scholarly thinking about the normalisation of the global far-right. While approaching the tension between national political elites and (far-right) populist narratives of representing "the people", the paper focuses on the populist effects of the "new normal" in spatial national governance. Though some aspects of public normality of our 21st century urban, cosmopolitan and consumer lifestyle have been disrupted with the pandemic curfew, the underlying gendered, racialised and classed structural inequalities and violence have been kept in place: they are not contested by the so-called "hygienic demonstrations". A digital pandemic populism during lockdown might have pushed further the mobilisation of the far right, also on the streets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]