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Vesicle-based medicines hold great promise for therapy development but essential knowledge on the bio-distribution and longevity of vesicles after administration is lacking. We generated vesicles from the membranes of human mesenchymal stromal cells (MSC) and we demonstrated earlier that these so-called membrane particles (MP) mediate immunomodulatory and regenerative responses in target cells. In the present study we examined the bio-distribution and longevity of MP after intravenous administration in mice. While most vesicle tracking methods are based on imaging techniques, which require labeling of vesicles and can only detect dense accumulations of vesicles, we used proteomics analysis to detect the presence of MP-derived proteins in multiple organs and tissues. MP proteins were mainly present in plasma and leukocytes at 1 h after injection, indicating that MP - in contrast to whole MSC - do not accumulate in the lungs upon first passage but remain in circulation. After 24 h, MP proteins were still present in plasma but were most abundant in the liver. RNA sequencing of livers demonstrated that MP impact liver function and in particular induce metabolic pathways. These data provide a clear view of the bio-distribution and longevity of MP, which is likely extrapolatable to other types of vesicles, and demonstrate that MP circulate for up to 24 h and may be a tool for targeting the liver.

This thesis unearths an appalling tragedy of the Banyamulenge community in South Kivu, Democratic Republic of Congo, and the network connections that have sustained the violence. The primary motivation for the researcher to start this research is to invalidate a common yet hazardous belief about the fundamental nature of this predicament - that the violence is simply a result of tribal or race tensions. At the same time, the research also aims to advance the current understanding of violent conflicts' dynamics in South Kivu. By delving into the activities of actors in alliances that produce communal violence against the Banyamulenge, the research aims to explore the realms where actors sustain violence that benefit self-serving interests and satisfy private agendas. Hence, the study applies alliance theory as a theoretical framework to explain inter-group and intra-group dynamics that have shaped the region's violent landscapes for the past few years. With primary and secondary evidence gathered through NGO reports, local news, and prior literature, this research seeks to analyze the actual situation and modify the theoretical framework critically. By the end of the study, this investigation reveals that the private agendas of armed actors and allies in South Kivu are essential to constituting the harsh reality in question and clarifying the logic of violence.

The stalled fork protection pathway mediated by breast cancer 1/2 (BRCA1/2) proteins is critical for replication fork stability. However, it is unclear whether additional mechanisms are required to maintain replication fork stability. We describe a hitherto unknown mechanism, by which the SWI/SNF-related matrix-associated actin-dependent regulator of chromatin subfamily-A containing DEAD/H box-1 (SMARCAD1) stabilizes active replication forks, that is essential to maintaining resistance towards replication poisons. We find that SMARCAD1 prevents accumulation of 53BP1-associated nucleosomes to preclude toxic enrichment of 53BP1 at the forks. In the absence of SMARCAD1, 53BP1 mediates untimely dissociation of PCNA via the PCNA-unloader ATAD5, causing frequent fork stalling, inefficient fork restart, and accumulation of single-stranded DNA. Although loss of 53BP1 in SMARCAD1 mutants rescues these defects and restores genome stability, this rescued stabilization also requires BRCA1-mediated fork protection. Notably, fork protection-challenged BRCA1-deficient naïve- or chemoresistant tumors require SMARCAD1-mediated active fork stabilization to maintain unperturbed fork progression and cellular proliferation.

In this thesis I answer the question how collective action frames expressed by Irish republicans who oppose the Good Friday Agreement and thus the current power-holders can help understand the through discourses constructed reality wherein the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) should be rejected. In order to do so I will first answer the question what legitimacy means, how it is cultivated and maintained, and why it is important for the police to be legitimate. I will argue that perceptions of legitimacy rely strongly on discourses that construct a reality that (de)legitimises the police force. In the second chapter I will look more specifically at which obstacles the PSNI faces and how it undermines its power to construct a reality in which they are accepted as legitimate by all layers of society. The issues they face result from ‘policing in a liminal space’, meaning the PSNI has to police both the past and the present. In the last chapter I will adapt the lens of Critical Discourse Analysis to analyse the collective action frames deployed by anti-Good Friday Agreement republicans (AGFARs). In the conclusion I will answer the main question by stating that the collective action frames expressed by AGFARs help understand their discourses as a constructed reality in which the past is continued in the present, and hence the police is still a colonial oppressive power. I argue that more factual evidence is necessary to either address that a minority population unjustifiably gets marginalised, or to build a counter-narrative against violent opposition groups that seem to be growing in support and activity.

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Human rights abuses at the hands of the self-proclaimed Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) need no introduction; the mass atrocities carried out by the terrorist organisation have been documented at lengths. With the highly publicised defeat of ISIL in Iraq, the issue of punishing those with affiliation to the group has emerged, though behind closed doors. Western countries such as the United Kingdom (UK) have stripped their citizens accused of joining the group, while others, such as France, that have outlawed capital punishment are tacitly encouraging Iraq to eliminate their jihadi citizens. While many journalists have travelled to north-eastern Syria to document the plight of those detained in Al-Hol camp run by the Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), who have been asking for support in bringing those affiliated with ISIL to justice, the case in Iraq is quite different. Governmental forces, including the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF), are detaining families of ISIL members in prisons, camps and detention centres all over the country, lacking proper vetting systems. Journalists and humanitarian aid workers, even those working for the United Nations (UN) are denied access to these sites, with mounting fears that the Government of Iraq (GoI) and the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) too are engaging in outright human rights abuses. This research therefore aims to look at the ‘repertoires of punishment’ in post-ISIL Iraq where many feel that the ‘enemy’ has been defeated, while seeking to address the question: ‘How is enemy membership defined in the detention and punishment regime of ‘post-ISIL Iraq’? In doing so, this research will also seek to analyse how ‘enemy membership’ is defined, who are the penholders of these definitions, what are immediate repercussions of having been labelled as affiliated with the ‘enemy’, and what repertoires of punishment are exercised on those who fall into this ‘enemy’ category.

During the summer of 2018, on the Aegean island of Lesvos, an alliance of European actors consisting of over seventy security officers employed under the European Border and Coast Guard Agency Frontex, one or two Europol officers, and hundreds of Greek security officers, collaborated under what is referred to as Joint Operation Poseidon 2018. Informed and framed by European responses to the influx of asylum seekers in 2015/2016, most notably: The Hotspot system and the EU-Turkey Statement, these actors executed a highly technical and operationalized mission in the midst of an ongoing humanitarian crisis in refugee camp Moria. This research aims to understand how this European security ensemble has emerged in Lesvos and how it is able to operate regardless of human rights violations in Lesvos. In order to capture and analyse the entire heteronormative set of elements that constitute this security ensemble, I draw on an analytic frame called “practices of assemblage” to formulate the following research question: How has the “European Securitisation of Migration Assemblage” taken shape and how and why is it able to endure, within and regardless of an ongoing humanitarian crisis in Hotspot and refugee camp Moria, on the Greek island of Lesvos, in the summer of 2018? By applying an assemblage analysis to the securitisation of migration practices and discourse, this thesis aims to make a methodological and academic contribution to the field of securitisation theory. Through careful analysis of primary and secondary sources as well as ethnographic fieldwork during the summer of 2018, this thesis aims to illuminate responsibility and accountability lines surrounding the inhumane situation in Lesvos.

While previously known as a mainly American phenomenon, in recent years (and especially months), the influence of children on immigrant rights debate in the Netherlands has been disruptive. In the United States, undocumented youth advocates referred to as the “DREAMers” successfully embark on a broad range of themes regarding immigrant rights, whereas in the Netherlands, undocumented immigrant children like Mauro, Lili, Howick and Nemr cause great upheaval in the political debate. Now I wondered whether there is a relation between these advocating youths, and whether they have learned from each other in the past or might learn from each other in the future. In order to research this comparison, I analyze the performance of “child innocence” in the Dutch documentary ‘Terug Naar Je Eige Land’ and the American documentary “The Dream is Now’. This is done at the hand of the “politics of deservingness” by Nicholls, Maussen & Mesquita, a theoretical framework which describes the cleansing of polluting stigma’s that are attributed to the undocumented status of certain immigrants and make them “deserving” of exceptional considerations regarding their rights. The analysis of the documentaries about immigrant youths turns out to confirm this “politics of deservingness”. In addition, building on Benford and Snow their representation of social realities, the “politics of deservingness” is broadened by a formulation of three problematizing frames that make up the documentaries. Lastly, in this research opens up the possibility for researching the relation between the documentaries (or undocumented immigrant youths that are portrayed within it) according to Charles Tilly his contentious performance framework. The conclusion is straightforward: the children are always deemed innocent and thus deserving of a safe home in their residing country. They are in power of innocence.

This thesis is concerned with local interpretations of remote warfare as a ‘new way of war’ and the struggle over the meaning of this kind of violence. Taking the US-led international coalition against ISIS in Syria and Iraq as a case study, it explores how the Coalition’s airstrikes are interpreted by Syrians at the receiving end of the violence, who now find themselves as refugees in the Netherlands. Using a Critical Discourse Analytic approach, this thesis analyses the dynamics between discourse and power through the lens of Foucault’s concept ‘regimes of truth’. Therein, it focuses on the notions of ‘sanctioning’ and ‘status’. This research demonstrates that Syrians in the context of the Netherlands are constrained in contributing to truth construction on the Coalition. This is largely explained by the notion of three powerful discourses that underpin the Coalition’s efforts as an example of remote warfare and that sanction contesting interpretations: the precision discourse, the War on Terror and the discourse of humanitarianism. Moreover, it demonstrates that the status of Syrians in the Netherlands is generally expected to be one of the ‘good victim’, in which they should express gratitude for the liberation of ISIS and the protection they enjoy in the Netherlands. Both dynamics show the constraints of Syrians to join in the struggle over the meaning of violence in the context of the Netherlands. Therein, this thesis contributes to our understanding of local interpretations of remote warfare and the power dynamics that decide what is generally understood as ‘true’ vis-à-vis remote violence.

This thesis contributes to bridging the theoretical gap between practices of organised and everyday resistance by analysing the case study of resistance practices among women in the Occupied West Bank village of Budrus. Previous research has failed to systematically link more organised forms of resistance to acts of everyday resistance. Taking an individualist, interpretivist approach with a focus on practices and narratives, this thesis answers the following research question: How are practices of everyday resistance oscillating with organised resistance practices of Palestinian women in the West Bank village of Budrus since the ending of the Second Intifada in 2005? Based on fieldwork observations and in-depth interviews, ten core forms of resistance are identified: the weekly Friday protests, responses to ‘alarm calls’ and Facebook activism (as organised resistance) and Friday morning ‘picnics’, farming the land and the annual olive harvest, checkpoints and the refusal of immobility, motherhood, education and narratives and creating counter safe spaces (as everyday resistance). By systematically analysing these resistance practices through the four dimensions of repertoires, relationships, spatialisation and temporalisation, this research explains how these forms of resistance synthesise in social life. This thesis argues that a distinction between organised and everyday resistance does not, however, sufficiently allow us to understand how women oscillate between different resistance practices. The concepts of ‘veiled bodies of resistance’ and ‘overt bodies of resistance’ are hence introduced. Urgency in the form of a direct threat to the land or another villager are required for women to move between these two roles and to negotiate this role shift with the men in their community. By critically reviewing existing notions of resistance through a gendered lens, this research adds a more feminist perspective on female agency in conflict and resistance.

While previously dismissed as an exclusively American issue, in recent years the unequal policing of ethnic minorities has increasingly been recognised as a European problem too. Indeed, in the Netherlands ethnic profiling has become a matter of serious concern, discussed by television hosts and academics alike. Yet, despite this recognition, collective claim making against the use of ethnic profiling in the Netherlands has been minimal. Responding to Tilly and Tarrow’s call for further research to be undertaken on the ‘oceans of apathy’ found in democratic regimes, this research investigates this contradiction. Based on an ethnographic exploration into the everyday interactions between Moroccan-Dutch boys and the police in Kanaleneiland, this research argues that for the boys in this study, criminalisation has become the norm. This is reasoned as a symptom of the move towards a culture of control. While not resisting this criminalisation through the democratic repertoires outlined in the contentious politics framework, I argue that the boys are not apathetic. Rather, they are angry about the injustices they face, yet lacking faith in their potential to effect political change, they dismiss the repertoires expected to be utilised by citizens living in democratic regimes. Instead, they adopt everyday forms of resistance that bare greater resemblance to resistance found in non-democratic regimes. While this phenomenon may deviate from the contentious politics framework as set out by Tilly and Tarrow, when taking into account the boys’ unequal experiences of the State and, with this, their perceptions of Dutch democracy, it makes perfect sense. I thus argue for the need to reassess and update the contentious politics framework to consider both citizens’ asymmetrical experiences with, and perceptions of, democracy.

In this study we presume the potential role of the UN as a form of global governance in protecting climate refugees. The UN is an intergovernmental organization, in which representatives from Member-states collaborate on global issues. At the moment, it has 193 member-states and has therefore the widest scope in supranational consensus building. This study looks specifically at the role of several sub-organizations within the UN: the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the IPCC, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the UN Environmental Program (UNEP), the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR). The main research question proposed in this thesis is: What role could the United Nations play concerning climate refugee issues?

This paper aims to understand the ways in which Jordanian social and political activists aim to win the mindset of Jordan’s youth and engage them for action. It specifically looks at the immense fragmentation in this field, aiming to outline what exactly causes this fragmentation. It will look for the formation of political identification, and the boundary processes activists engage in as they aim to form such political identifications. Empirically, this paper offers a non-exhaustive account of what activism can be in a place where stability is imperative and the political system is largely closed. Conceptually, the aim is to find ways of analyzing and understanding contention in a place where there are little to no groups, yet a range of incoherent efforts to promote change.

This research aims to explore and understand how Palestinian youth activists in Lebanon mobilise for solutions to their marginalised position in Lebanon, vis-à-vis their own leadership’s politics of temporariness, without compromising the right of return. Through fieldwork conducted in Palestinian communities in Lebanon and using a theoretical framework that combines structuration theory with collective action frames, this thesis examines how politics of temporariness have been kept in place for decades, how new initiatives could arise despite the reinforcing character of the existing structure, how activism is articulated in frames, supported by resources and translated into activities, how the youth have impacted the community and how their activism has been challenged by the leadership and competing youth groups. This thesis concludes that the primary way in which the youth mobilise for solutions to their marginalised position is by arguing that better living conditions are required for instead of detrimental to return. This way of framing the situation leaves much room for action on the side of the Palestinians. Finally, this thesis identifies two risks that could hurt the youth activism: 1) becoming too dependent on political actors and 2) falling into clientelistic relationships.

This thesis addresses the response of the United Nations in the Ebola health crisis in West Africa in 2014 and 2015. Over recent years, the notion of international security has broadened and included not only military, but also societal and developmental issues. The involvement of the United Nations system in the response and interventions to Ebola, which can be framed as both a security threat as well as a humanitarian crisis, highlights new narratives and responses to the safeguarding of security. This thesis provides insight in the complex array of discourses, stakes and interests that come together in the United Nations system and form the Ebola complex. Based mainly on the theoretical models of securitization and assemblage, this thesis aims to develop further understanding of the deployment of security labels to legitimize extraordinary measures in the context of a health crisis. It intends to pinpoint what securitization does and in so doing sheds light on the social and political implications of securitization. Overall, this thesis will take a critical stance towards the taken for granted realities of security in the world and defend the need for a comprehensive, cultural sensitive and human-rights centered approach to a health crisis like Ebola.

This thesis addresses the management or risks and crises through a focus on the scenario thinking practice in the Dutch risk and crisis assemblage. In recent years, a renewed risk-thinking mentality has come to be seen as the answer to a more globalized and heterogeneous security landscape of threats, risks and potential undesired future events. The practice of scenario thinking is a technological embodiment of this renewed focus on risks, which inevitably brings about many moral and political considerations posed as a dilemma against the importance of security. Through the scoring of impact, probability, costs and benefits, morally and politically charged decisions are made that deal with the worthy and less worthy lives, or the acceptance of a residual risk. For reasons that should be questioned, some moral and political considerations are filtered out of the scenario thinking practice. Drawing on this insight, this thesis aims to develop an understanding of practices that aid the filtering out of moral and political considerations. With the use of the assemblage analytic, a focus on the heterogeneous and contingent character of the Dutch risk and crisis assemblage helps pointing at the danger of filtering out moral and political consideration. Building on a vocabulary of government, neoliberalism and self-responsibilization, this thesis aims to provide an explanation for the reasons of why moral and political considerations are filtered out and calls for a critical scrutinizing of the practices in the Dutch risk and crisis management.

In a quest to uncover social facts - the underlying invisible laws that govern social life - this thesis focuses on how Zimbabwean human rights defenders (HRDs) give meaning to the highly militarized regime they live under and how they imagine their role in that structure. Specifically, this thesis analyses how the negative potentiality of state harassments and the invisible force of state surveillance carried out by the Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO) are perceived by HRDs in the run-up and aftermath of the contested 2013 elections, using Vigh’s theoretical framework on vigilance in crises as context. However, the normalization of crisis does not lead to indifference to disorder – passionate Zimbabwean HRDs that try to challenge injustice try to anticipate what is coming and attune their action accordingly by making use of ‘intel’ from within the CIO.

Radboud University, 11 december 2015, Promotor : Frerks, G. Co-promotores : Wieviorka, M., Demmers, J., Item does not contain fulltext