By Laura Brace
Looking at scholarship on both ‘old’ and ‘new’ slavery, Laura Brace assesses the work of Aristotle, Locke, Hegel, Kant, Wollstonecraft and Mill, and explores the contemporary concerns of human trafficking and the prison industrial complex to consider the limitations of ‘new slavery’ discourse.
Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2018. 257p,
Edited by Janne E. Nijman, Barbara Oomen, Elif Durmuş, Sara Miellet and Lisa Roodenburg
Increasingly, urban actors invoke human rights to address inequalities, combat privatisation, and underline common aspirations, or to protect vested (private) interests. The potential and the pitfalls of these processes are conditioned by the urban, and deeply political. These urban politics of human rights are at the heart of this book. An international line-up of contributors with long-term engagement in this field shed light on these politics in cities on four continents and eight cities, presenting a wealth of empirical detail and disciplinary theoreticalisation perspectives. They analyse the ‘city society’, the urban actors involved, and the mechanisms of human rights mobilisation. In doing so, they show the commonalities in rights engagement in today’s globalised and often deeply unequal cities characterised by urban law, private capital but also communities that rally around concepts as the ‘right to the city’. Most importantly, the chapters highlight the conditions under which this mobilisation truly contributes to social justice, be it concerning the simple right to presence, cultural rights, accessible housing or – in times of COVID – health care. Urban Politics of Human Rights provides indispensable reading for anyone with a practical or theoretical interest in the complex, deeply political, and at times also truly promising interrelationship between human rights and the urban.
New York; London: Routledge, 2023. 249p.
Steven F. Lawson
Running for Freedom, Fourth Edition, updates historian Steven Lawson’s classic volume detailing the history of African-American civil rights and black politics from the beginning of World War II to the present day.
Offers comprehensive coverage of the African-American struggle for civil rights in the U.S. from 1941 to 2014
Integrates events relating to America’s civil rights story at both the local and national levels
Features new material on Obama’s first term in office and the first year of his second term
Includes addition of such timely issues as the Trayvon Martin case, the March on Washington 5oth anniversary, state voter suppression efforts, and Supreme Court ruling on Voting Rights Act
US. McGraw-Hill. 1991. 317p.
By David Goodhart
The Government has steadied the ship in recent weeks after the Liz Truss misadventure. But if there is any chance of winning back some of the 2019 coalition, one condition of being competitive at the next election, the Government will need some visible policy progress in three big areas: NHS performance, levelling up and immigration (including stopping the Channel boats). This paper focuses on that third policy field. Attitudes to immigration have liberalised somewhat since Brexit ended free movement reinforced by the persistent publicity about labour shortages. But anxiety about immigration is likely to rise again sharply following the unprecedented post-Covid surge in legal net migration, with the illegal Channel boats as a backdrop, and the probable revival of the Reform party to highlight Conservative failed pledges on immigration.
The net immigration figure of 504,000 in the year to June, easily the largest ever annual increase, creates another headache for the Government but is mainly due to one-off factors—a post-Covid catch up on student migration (277,000) and a surge in mainly legal refugee inflows (276,000) which are unlikely to be repeated, including the large numbers from Ukraine, Hong Kong and Afghanistan. Only about 150,000 of the net migration figure is people coming on work visas (around 20%) but most of them and almost all the students will only be here temporarily. Notwithstanding this unsustainable surge, Britain’s post-Brexit immigration system is broadly striking the right balance. It is already more open than many comparable countries, with greater restrictions on most low paying jobs than in the EU era but with almost two-thirds of jobs subject to a potential work visa. Outside of some very specific areas, such as seasonal agricultural work, there is no case for more liberalisation, especially in the light of the unprecedented half a million number, but this paper makes some suggestions for further reform under three main headings, and concludes with an analysis of the Channel boats problem.
London: Policy Exchange, 2022. 23p.
By Luke Ritter
"Why have Americans expressed concern about immigration at some times but not at others? In pursuit of an answer, this book examines America’s first nativist movement, which responded to the rapid influx of 4.2 million immigrants between 1840 and 1860 and culminated in the dramatic rise of the National American Party. As previous studies have focused on the coasts, historians have not yet completely explained why westerners joined the ranks of the National American, or “Know Nothing,” Party or why the nation’s bloodiest anti-immigrant riots erupted in western cities—namely Chicago, Cincinnati, Louisville, and St. Louis. In focusing on the antebellum West, Inventing America’s First Immigration Crisis illuminates the cultural, economic, and political issues that originally motivated American nativism and explains how it ultimately shaped the political relationship between church and state. In six detailed chapters, Ritter explains how unprecedented immigration from Europe and rapid westward expansion reignited fears of Catholicism as a corrosive force. He presents new research on the inner sanctums of the secretive Order of Know-Nothings and provides original data on immigration, crime, and poverty in the urban West. Ritter argues that the country’s first bout of political nativism actually renewed Americans’ commitment to church-state separation. Native-born Americans compelled Catholics and immigrants, who might have otherwise shared an affinity for monarchism, to accept American-style democracy. Catholics and immigrants forced Americans to adopt a more inclusive definition of religious freedom. This study offers valuable insight into the history of nativism in U.S. politics and sheds light on present-day concerns about immigration, particularly the role of anti-Islamic appeals in recent elections.
New Yori: Fordham University Press, 2021. 267p.
By Sverre Molland
The book investigates how the United Nations, governments, and aid agencies mobilise and instrumentalise migration policies and programmes through a discourse of safe migration. Since the early 2000s, numerous non-governmental organizations (NGOs), UN agencies, and governments have warmed to the concept of safe migration, often within a context of anti-trafficking interventions. Yet, both the policy-enthusiasm for safety, as well as how safe migration comes into being through policies and programs remain unexplored. Based on seven years of ethnographic fieldwork in the Mekong region, this is the first book that traces the emergence of safe migration, why certain aid actors gravitate towards the concept, as well as how safe migration policies and programmes unfold through aid agencies and government bodies. The book argues that safe migration is best understood as brokered safety. Although safe migration policy interventions attempt to formalize pre-emptive and protective measures to enhance labour migrants’ well-being, the book shows through vivid ethnographic details how formal migration assistance in itself depends on – and produces – informal and mediated practices. The book offers unprecedented insights into what safe migration policies look like in practice. It is an innovate contribution to contemporary theorizing of contemporary forms of migration governance and will be of interest to sociologists, anthropologists, political scientists, and human geographers working within the fields of Migration studies, Development Studies, as well as Southeast Asian and Global Studies.
London; New York: Routledge, 2022. 229p.
By Harald Bauder.
International borders have become deadly barriers of a proportion rivaled only by war or natural disaster. Yet despite the damage created by borders, most people can’t – or don’t want to – imagine a world without them. What alternatives do we have to prevent the deadly results of contemporary borders? In today’s world, national citizenship determines a person’s ability to migrate across borders. Migration Borders Freedom questions that premise. Recognizing the magnitude of deaths occurring at contemporary borders worldwide, the book problematizes the concept of the border and develops arguments for open borders and a world without borders. It explores alternative possibilities, ranging from the practical to the utopian, that link migration with ideas of community, citizenship, and belonging. The author calls into question the conventional political imagination that assumes migration and citizenship to be responsibilities of nation states, rather than cities. While the book draws on the theoretical work of thinkers such as Ernst Bloch, David Harvey, and Henry Lefebvre, it also presents international empirical examples of policies and practices on migration and claims of belonging. In this way, the book equips the reader with the practical and conceptual tools for political action, activist practice, and scholarly engagement to achieve greater justice for people who are on the move.
Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press, 2016. 150p.
Edited by Hannah Jones, Yasmin Gunaratnam, Gargi Bhattacharyya, William Davies, Sukhwant Dhaliwal, Kirsten Forkert, Emma Jackson, and Roiyah Saltus.
In July 2013, the UK government arranged for a van to drive through parts of London carrying the message 'In the UK illegally? GO HOME or face arrest.' This book tells the story of what happened next. The vans were short-lived, but they were part of an ongoing trend in government-sponsored communication designed to demonstrate toughness on immigration. The authors set out to explore the effects of such performances: on policy, on public debate, on pro-migrant and anti-racist activism, and on the everyday lives of people in Britain. This book presents their findings, and provides insights into the practice of conducting research on such a charged and sensitive topic.
Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2017. 204p.
By Joanne van der Leun.
Processes of Incorporation of Illegal Immigrants in the Netherlands. Governmental policies on irregular or illegal immigration are notorious for their ambiguities, as even a superficial glance at public discussions on the issue in the Netherlands can illustrate. Contentions that illegal or undocumented immigrants1 are not entitled to medical care alternate with messages that everybody who needs medical treatment of any kind should receive it. Representatives of municipalities openly back local initiatives to support illegal immigrants, while at the same time the national government emphasises that illegal immigrants are utterly responsible for themselves. Public assertions that there will be no regularisation schemes in the Netherlands are followed by a series of amnesties for semi-integrated ‘white illegals’. These few out of many examples illustrate that societal reactions to illegal immigration, and the presence of unauthorised immigrants are anything but clear-cut. Officially, the political aim is to put an end to the issue by implementing a sound and coherent ‘discouragement policy’ or ontmoedigingsbeleid. Comparable sets of policy measures are introduced all over the European Union, which is frequently depicted as ‘fortress Europe’. Yet in the meantime, the presence of illegal immigrants has become a common feature of many advanced states, including those that did not perceive themselves as countries of immigration for a long time.
Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2003. 231p.
