Journal articles by Pier-Luc Dupont
Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology, 2024
Understanding how to promote better social relations between groups in divided societies is vital... more Understanding how to promote better social relations between groups in divided societies is vital for peacebuilding efforts. Building on the substantial body of research on intergroup contact theory and everyday multiculturalism, the present research aimed to examine how youth in the divided society of Belfast, Northern Ireland, experience social interactions in everyday urban spaces. Ten youth aged 16-18 (n = 2 Protestant females, one Protestant male, four Catholic females, two Catholic males, and one mixed religious background male) were recruited to take part in the research. Everyday contact experiences were explored using photovoice, a participatory method. Following engagement with a series of photography workshops and tasks, youth took part in focus group discussions and later, walking interviews (n = 3) to discuss the factors that influence their social interactions. Five main themes explaining youth contact experiences in context were uncovered: geographical and socioeconomic constraints on space use; group-based spatial cognitions, emotions, and behavior; lived experience and social discourses; markers of identity; and intergroup norms. Taken together, findings highlight key individual and structural processes through which public spaces become used or not by young people from different community backgrounds. Implications for research and practice for promoting intergroup contact and peace in socially divided societies are discussed.
The Sociological Review, 2024
Multiculturalism (MC) and interculturalism (IC) as approaches to governing ethnic diversity have ... more Multiculturalism (MC) and interculturalism (IC) as approaches to governing ethnic diversity have developed an often antagonistic relationship, borne out through scholarly as well as political debates. Yet, increasingly, scholars have begun to note that while IC-consistent policies have gained some prominence, they have done so alongside MC policies. This suggests the possibility of complementarity between the two, and prominent scholars on both sides have also begun to stress complementarity. What this might look like, however, has not yet been well researched or developed. Focusing on the UK context, an important site in which debates between MC and IC have played out, this article aims to address this point of complementarity. It does so through an analysis of documents and interviews from civil society organisations who work in areas of integration, diversity and anti-discrimination at national and local levels. The article identifies four models of complementarity and shows the divergent and contested ways in which theoretical aspects of competing normative positions are combined empirically. In this way, it develops an argument for the continued centrality of MC for policy in these areas.
Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power, 2023
This article assesses whether multiculturalism, interculturalism and cosmopolitanism find themsel... more This article assesses whether multiculturalism, interculturalism and cosmopolitanism find themselves in tension or, rather, coexist in UK politics. This is done through the analysis of recent policy and civil society documents, complemented with semi-structured interviews with race equality organizations. Results suggest a complementary relationship between these normative perspectives, with interculturalism and multiculturalism jointly shaping the central government's policy as well as the discourse of civil society organizations. As for cosmopolitanism, it manifests itself primarily in civil society's support for a more humane system for asylum seekers, as well as in the endorsement of EU intervention in the governance of cultural diversity.
Ethnic and Racial Studies, 2022
This article seeks to unpack UK equality politics in the educational sphere and explore how it re... more This article seeks to unpack UK equality politics in the educational sphere and explore how it relates to four ideologies of religious governance: secularism, multiculturalism, interculturalism and intersectionalism. More specifically it examines how these ideologies support principles of reproduction, understood as knowledge transmission, and recognition, understood as respect for difference. Findings suggest that principles of religious reproduction and recognition permeate all educational policy debates and are upheld by all stakeholders. Disagreements hinge on how to reconcile religious diversity with large-scale intergroup contact, advocated by interculturalists, and with the interests of female or LGBTQ students, foregrounded by intersectionalists. Whereas multiculturalists find themselves at the forefront of attempts to achieve equality in the curriculum, intersectionalists have been especially active in debates around accommodation and the funding of religious schools, and interculturalists have vocally opposed these schools’ capacity to select students and teachers in ways that exacerbate religious and ethnic segregation.
Deusto Journal of Human Rights, 2021
After a long period of decline in the Global North, migrant worker policies are making a comeback... more After a long period of decline in the Global North, migrant worker policies are making a comeback on the agenda of the European Union and several of its member states. Inspired by Iris Marion Young and Nancy Fraser’s accounts of structural injustice, this article argues that such policies cannot be reconciled with the principle of equality between migrant and national workers enshrined in international legal instruments such as the Convention on Migrant Workers and the EU Seasonal Workers Directive. To make this point it draws on a selection of UK based empirical literature as well as primary data from a recent study on domestic workers admitted to the UK under temporary visas since 1998. Results suggest that such visas tend to push migrants’ working conditions downwards (exploitation); prevent them from changing employer, enforcing rights in court or mobilising in unions (domination); and ultimately exacerbate racial conflict and stereotyping (stigmatisation).
Journal of Muslims in Europe, 2018
Faced with widespread prejudice and discrimination, European Muslims are increasingly resorting t... more Faced with widespread prejudice and discrimination, European Muslims are increasingly resorting to the European Court of Human Rights as a last-ditch strategy to transform state policies toward minority faiths. While the Court has a mandate to protect religious freedom and equality, the conservative and sometimes biased way in which it has interpreted these concepts has enabled the persistence of stark asymmetries in the legal and social statuses of different religions. Using an analysis of relevant cases, this article seeks to highlight the judicial processes that currently sustain Muslim subordination and pinpoint specific reforms that could reverse the trend.
Crossings: Journal of Migration & Culture, 2017
On both sides of the Atlantic, the dissemination of non-Western artistic traditions among the gen... more On both sides of the Atlantic, the dissemination of non-Western artistic traditions among the general public has been hampered by the prevalence of Eurocentric aesthetic standards in cultural institutions and organizations. In recent years, however, some states have taken steps in order to increase the exposure of immigrant-origin artists in a variety of disciplines, including theatre, music, dance, literature, cinema and visual arts. This article offers a systematic comparison of two such initiatives that have been developed at the national level: the Equity Office of the Canada Council for the Arts and Spain’s network of cultural ‘Houses’ (Red de Casas). While the former was assigned a social justice mandate, the latter was created to further foreign policy goals through public diplomacy. These diverging approaches have created distinct funding opportunities, policy instruments and structural outcomes, with important implications for processes of artistic segregation and mainstreaming.
Nordic Journal of Human Rights, 2016
With the development of human rights and anti-discrimination law, courts have increasingly been c... more With the development of human rights and anti-discrimination law, courts have increasingly been called upon to protect ethnicity-related practices from general criminal and civil sanctions. These ‘claims of culture’ have so far been addressed with remarkable inconsistency, leading to popular fears of unlimited normative pluralism and targeted legislative measures. Compounding such controversies, philosophical approaches to multiculturalism have mostly been concerned with policy and offered vague or distorted portrayals of judicial challenges. This article seeks to fill the gap by exploring how the legal standard of substantive equality might structure the courts’ approach to a range of cases involving minority litigants. In particular, I will argue that ethnic practices can be usefully divided into four categories triggering distinct modes of legal reasoning: criminal offences, human rights violations, civil infractions, and symbolic identification. In the first case, cultural differences mainly bear on the analysis of subjective blameworthiness, whereas in the second, they bring out an ongoing shift in the public/private and negative/positive nature of human rights obligations. Civil infractions call for the application of anti-discrimination standards developed in the doctrine of indirect discrimination and reasonable accommodation. As for symbolic identification, it raises the issue of national identities and legal instruments to make them inclusive of the whole citizenry.
Derechos y Libertades, 2015
En el último medio siglo, los Estados democráticos han desarrollado una serie de políticas encami... more En el último medio siglo, los Estados democráticos han desarrollado una serie de políticas encaminadas a combatir la discriminación de categorías sociales definidas en función de rasgos no elegidos como el sexo, la raza, la orientación e identidad sexual, la discapacidad y la edad. Sin embargo, los estudios sociológicos muestran que estas medidas no han acabado con la discriminación. A la luz de la teoría filosófico-política del reconocimiento formulada por Nancy Fraser, este trabajo pretende identificar las limitaciones intrínsecas de las principales estrategias antidiscriminatorias actuales y proponer algunas vías de mejora. En particular, se subraya la necesidad de prestar más atención a los determinantes del prejuicio y se destaca la contribución potencial del multiculturalismo a la eliminación de las formas de discriminación más encubiertas y cotidianas.
Migraciones internacionales, 2013
Pese al asentamiento de un número significativo y creciente de migrantes internacionales en los m... more Pese al asentamiento de un número significativo y creciente de migrantes internacionales en los municipios rurales de los países de rentas altas, existen pocos estudios sobre las políticas de sus autoridades locales en materia de diversidad cultural. Este trabajo pretende abrir el camino examinando algunos motivos teóricos y empíricos para pensar que los ayuntamientos rurales se diferencian de los urbanos en su propensión a acomodar las prácticas culturales de los inmigrantes, así como en sus principales áreas de intervención. Ei análisis comparativo de 12 municipios de las provincias españolas de Alicante y Valencia sugiere que las políticas de integración rurales tienden a ser menos pluralistas y más enfocadas en el área socioeconómica que las urbanas.
Book chapters by Pier-Luc Dupont
In Solanes Corella, A. & Górriz Royo, E., Legal challenges of the XXI century, Tirant lo Blanch, ... more In Solanes Corella, A. & Górriz Royo, E., Legal challenges of the XXI century, Tirant lo Blanch, Valencia, 2017, pp. 153-174.
In Solanes Corella, A. (ed.) Diversidad cultural y conflictos en la Unión Europea: Implicaciones ... more In Solanes Corella, A. (ed.) Diversidad cultural y conflictos en la Unión Europea: Implicaciones jurídico-políticas, Tirant lo Blanch, Valencia, pp. 183-202.
In Solanes Corella, A. & La Spina, E., Políticas migratorias, asilo y derechos humanos: Un cruce ... more In Solanes Corella, A. & La Spina, E., Políticas migratorias, asilo y derechos humanos: Un cruce de perspectivas entre la Unión Europea y España, Tirant lo Blanch, Valencia, pp. 423-455.
Book Reviews by Pier-Luc Dupont
Ethnic and Racial Studies, 2022
Deusto Journal of Human Rights, 2022
Revista internacional de estudios migratorios, 2014
Conference proceedings by Pier-Luc Dupont
Immigration, diversité ethnoculturelle et citoyenneté, 2018
Actas del VIII Congreso sobre migraciones internacionales en España, 2015
Working papers by Pier-Luc Dupont
This Deliverable explores the relation between justice and social assistance, a means-tested stat... more This Deliverable explores the relation between justice and social assistance, a means-tested state benefit that is in principle non-contributory. It is the last of three fieldwork-based Deliverables in ETHOS Work Package 5 on justice as lived experience. The experiences foregrounded in this strand of research are those of frequently excluded or oppressed sections of the population. The aim of D5.5 - as formulated in the DoA - was to examine the tensions between the ideal and practice of justice and fairness in welfare states with particular attention to the perspectives of welfare recipients. The study was to involve mapping changes introduced to welfare benefits since the beginning of the economic crisis in 2008 and gathering available national data on the consequences of these changes for different categories of welfare recipients (disabled people, migrants, family members, young adults) by means of document analysis, interviews and focus groups with social workers/client managers and advocacy organisations on how these changes have been contested and the ways in which claims of (in)justice have been mobilised in support of such contestations. Theories of justice often imply, and in some cases explicitly express, rationales for a welfare state in Europe. D5.5 examines the tensions between the ideal and practice of justice and fairness in welfare states firstly by studying what attention to policy and to stakeholders reveals about the relationship between social assistance and justice. The Deliverable is informed by, and meant to be read alongside, six case studies on changes in social assistance policies since 2008 and its consequences for different categories of welfare recipients in Turkey, Hungary, Austria, the Netherlands, Portugal and United Kingdom. For this purpose, a variety of stakeholders were interviewed on the contestations of these changes and their effects. Prior to analyzing the national case studies, the authors extracted from previous ETHOS Deliverables key theoretical insights to be tested and interrogated through experiences of social assistance, with particular attention to Deliverable 2.1 Report on the European Heritage of Philosophical Theorizing about Justice (Rippon et al, 2018), an introduction to the European heritage of philosophical theorizing about justice, including contemporary debates. The structure of this Deliverable reflects the structure of the previous philosophical Deliverable D2.1 following its headings: 1) What are the grounds of justice? (i.e., how can the existence of claims of justice be explained); 2) What is the shape of justice? (i.e. what are the main concerns of justice, and what kind of principles should regulate these); 3) What is the site of justice? (i.e. is justice a feature of political institutions, personal character and actions, or social relations?); 4) What is the scope of justice? (i.e. who has claims of justice on each other and are there distinctive claims of global and/or domestic justice). The advantage of this approach is that it allows us to engage more directly with the theoretical issues the ETHOS project set out to explore, and thereby facilitates the synthesis of empirical and theoretical findings in WP7. Our analysis is also informed by the synthesis of Capability Theory offered in Deliverable 5.3. Capability Theory is a normative framework that foregrounds the freedom to achieve valued ‘beings and doings’, and several of the beings and doings foregrounded by Capability Theorists are directly relevant to a critical understanding of recognitive, redistributive and representative justice in the welfare state.
We find that ideas of justice are mobilised, principally to support the ‘taxpayer’ and the citizen working poor who are represented as the losers if the welfare state is too generous. Matters of deservingness permeate the grounds, shape and site of justice in a way that can undermine key ‘beings and doings’: effective participation in the processing of benefit claims, fulfilment of basic material needs such as shelter and food, enjoyment of social status and respect, and internal as well as international mobility. Just as importantly, deservingness ideologies can lead people to accept and adapt to these restrictions, thereby stifling struggles for social justice. Respondents’ ideas about social assistance call on ideas of appropriateness or fittingness of treatment and might be seen to draw on Aristotelian ideas of moral character or virtue as a desert basis for economic distribution. This is particularly evident when considering the pattern of distribution. Using Van Oorschot’s (2000) ‘CARIN’ criteria: Control, Attitude, Reciprocity, Identity and Neediness we explore how reciprocity trumps deservingness and the implications of this for recognition. While the welfare state is often represented, in both political theory and practice, as one of the pinnacles of achievement of European citizenship, to be in receipt of social assistance is neither experienced nor viewed as the imprimatur of citizenship, but rather it raises serious questions of misrecognition. The emphasis on need means that those in receipt of benefit often feel the weight of social judgement on their personal behaviour, choices and values, or that they are the object of pity; the imposition of symbolic reciprocity, which may also be represented as enhancing capabilities, is undermined by the failure to recognise activities as work, and, in some cases, by imposing activities that are considered socially demeaning. Furthermore, we argue that attention to outcomes is not sufficient for justice concerns, and that in many cases the procedures for claiming were themselves experienced as an injustice even if the outcome was not.
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Journal articles by Pier-Luc Dupont
Book chapters by Pier-Luc Dupont
Book Reviews by Pier-Luc Dupont
Conference proceedings by Pier-Luc Dupont
Working papers by Pier-Luc Dupont
We find that ideas of justice are mobilised, principally to support the ‘taxpayer’ and the citizen working poor who are represented as the losers if the welfare state is too generous. Matters of deservingness permeate the grounds, shape and site of justice in a way that can undermine key ‘beings and doings’: effective participation in the processing of benefit claims, fulfilment of basic material needs such as shelter and food, enjoyment of social status and respect, and internal as well as international mobility. Just as importantly, deservingness ideologies can lead people to accept and adapt to these restrictions, thereby stifling struggles for social justice. Respondents’ ideas about social assistance call on ideas of appropriateness or fittingness of treatment and might be seen to draw on Aristotelian ideas of moral character or virtue as a desert basis for economic distribution. This is particularly evident when considering the pattern of distribution. Using Van Oorschot’s (2000) ‘CARIN’ criteria: Control, Attitude, Reciprocity, Identity and Neediness we explore how reciprocity trumps deservingness and the implications of this for recognition. While the welfare state is often represented, in both political theory and practice, as one of the pinnacles of achievement of European citizenship, to be in receipt of social assistance is neither experienced nor viewed as the imprimatur of citizenship, but rather it raises serious questions of misrecognition. The emphasis on need means that those in receipt of benefit often feel the weight of social judgement on their personal behaviour, choices and values, or that they are the object of pity; the imposition of symbolic reciprocity, which may also be represented as enhancing capabilities, is undermined by the failure to recognise activities as work, and, in some cases, by imposing activities that are considered socially demeaning. Furthermore, we argue that attention to outcomes is not sufficient for justice concerns, and that in many cases the procedures for claiming were themselves experienced as an injustice even if the outcome was not.
We find that ideas of justice are mobilised, principally to support the ‘taxpayer’ and the citizen working poor who are represented as the losers if the welfare state is too generous. Matters of deservingness permeate the grounds, shape and site of justice in a way that can undermine key ‘beings and doings’: effective participation in the processing of benefit claims, fulfilment of basic material needs such as shelter and food, enjoyment of social status and respect, and internal as well as international mobility. Just as importantly, deservingness ideologies can lead people to accept and adapt to these restrictions, thereby stifling struggles for social justice. Respondents’ ideas about social assistance call on ideas of appropriateness or fittingness of treatment and might be seen to draw on Aristotelian ideas of moral character or virtue as a desert basis for economic distribution. This is particularly evident when considering the pattern of distribution. Using Van Oorschot’s (2000) ‘CARIN’ criteria: Control, Attitude, Reciprocity, Identity and Neediness we explore how reciprocity trumps deservingness and the implications of this for recognition. While the welfare state is often represented, in both political theory and practice, as one of the pinnacles of achievement of European citizenship, to be in receipt of social assistance is neither experienced nor viewed as the imprimatur of citizenship, but rather it raises serious questions of misrecognition. The emphasis on need means that those in receipt of benefit often feel the weight of social judgement on their personal behaviour, choices and values, or that they are the object of pity; the imposition of symbolic reciprocity, which may also be represented as enhancing capabilities, is undermined by the failure to recognise activities as work, and, in some cases, by imposing activities that are considered socially demeaning. Furthermore, we argue that attention to outcomes is not sufficient for justice concerns, and that in many cases the procedures for claiming were themselves experienced as an injustice even if the outcome was not.
Findings reveal an influential media and political discourse holding that insufficient motivation to work and other individual factors are to blame for poverty. Under the rule of Conservative-led Governments, this rhetoric provided a cover of legitimacy to coercive measures purporting to make employment more attractive than claiming benefits and instill work-related behaviour. While the principle of ‘less eligibility’ continues to enjoy broad support, upholding it in a context of increasing in-work poverty has meant plunging families into destitution, riddling them with debt, subjecting their daily lives to close scrutiny and making the conditions and process for claiming benefits increasingly onerous. By effect or by design, these impacts have exacerbated the subordination of disabled persons, foreign nationals and young mothers. Most disabled claimants have faced reduced allowances on the highly contested assumption that they would be able to participate in paid employment. Non-UK jobseekers have been imposed stringent conditions for retaining ‘worker’ and ‘resident’ status, including minimum earnings thresholds, compelling evidence of job prospects, language skills and social connections. Due to the scarcity of affordable childcare, single parents of young children, the vast majority of whom are women, have born the brunt of work-related conditionality. Interviews suggest that some of these impacts are more likely than others to be perceived as flagrant injustices. While migrants have proven willing to accept a degree of less favourable treatment, sometimes by comparing the inadequate support received in their countries of origin, gendered ideals of work and childcare have contributed to stronger opposition toward austerity measures targeting young mothers. Perhaps the most uniformly negative reactions were aroused by the procedural failures of an increasingly complex and automatised system modelled after a vanishing ‘standard’ employment relationship, whose foremost intention is to ensure that claimants do not receive any more than the amount to which they are entitled.
While sowing division and arousing interpersonal frustrations, benefit cutbacks have also sparked transformative forms of mobilisation. Non-discrimination provisions have provided a legal basis on which to challenge austerity, and specialist charities have been joined by statutory bodies in their support for claimants. International human rights bodies have played an active role in legitimating these cases by condemning in unusually strong terms the negative effects of benefit restrictions. Unions and job centre staff have allied with claimants to contest the Government’s insistence on making greater use of sanctions. Driven by an ideal of needs-based social assistance that furthers the interests of precariously employed workers, these alliances may become fertile ground for a renewed politics of social security.
Opinion leaders’ views were collected by means of a fictitious vignette describing the projected renovation of a central statue representing Lord Mountbatten, last Viceroy and first Governor-General of India, who oversaw the violent partition of India and Pakistan and was assassinated by the Irish Republican Army (IRA) in 1979. Eight semi-structured interviews were conducted with Oxford residents between December 2018 and January 2019. All participants exerted influence as political activists, including on social media, or were engaged in the arts or held a position of esteem and respect. Interviews followed a semi-structured format, alternating readings of the vignette with general questions designed to elicit views on the events described. Each interview lasted approximately an hour and was audio recorded and transcribed.
The analysis of discourses reveals that commemoration is simultaneously perceived as a local, national, continental and global issue. However, these territorially defined scales of justice are linked and blurred by frequent allusions to non-territorial communities such as the Black, South Asian or Irish diasporas. In addition to redistribution, recognition and representation, ideals of restoration, reproduction and deliberation play a prominent role in philosophies of commemoration. Discourses evince a consensus on the framing of Mountbatten as a symbol of colonial violence feeding into contemporary racism. This understanding coexists with a much more controversial one that emphasises the preservation or reproduction of White British culture. Restorative, anti-racist and reproductive commemoration is generally discussed as a form of deliberation which should be underpinned by principles of normativity, relevance and publicity. Normatively, it should focus on events from which moral lessons can be drawn due to their positive or negative implications for the parties involved. Relevance should be measured based on an event’s capacity to explain present social structures or its centrality to the collective identities of those involved in remembering it. Publicity refers to the correspondence between the intended effect of commemoration, its audience and its context-specific meaning. Participants offered detailed views on the interaction between substantive, formal, descriptive and symbolic representation in decision-making on commemoration. The formal procedure of public consultation was understood as a necessary but not sufficient condition for substantive representation to take place, especially among racialised, working-class or younger citizens. The notion that personal characteristics tended to generate specific experiences and perspectives was widely accepted, but nearly all participants acknowledged that considerable ideological diversity may exist within a given social category. They also considered that various forms of protest in the vicinity of controversial statues could enrich political debates but disagreed on how disruptive, provocative and respectful of public property they should be.
The report moves from theoretical reflections on the relationship between ADR and justice to the description of Acas policy, the mapping of social partners’ perceptions of ADR and the experience of workers who resort to it. Perceptions are assessed through four semi-structured interviews, two of them with union representatives and the other two with employer representatives. The description of worker experiences draws on a large-scale quantitative study conducted with Acas users in 2015 and six in-depth ethnographies with precarious workers who interacted with Acas in the course of an employment dispute. The ethnographies took place between 2011 and 2014 as part of an ERC-funded project examining how the law is mobilised by workers who cannot easily afford to pay for legal advice.
Acas’ main intervention in employment ADR takes place through a conciliation service which intervenes rapidly in ET claims, entails no direct financial cost for parties and seems to be positively evaluated by most of its users as well as (other) employers. However, unions have been more critical of its capacity to deliver fair outcomes, and both legal theory and available data suggest important pitfalls in terms of procedural and substantive justice. When it does not conclude in a settlement, conciliation may lengthen the dispute resolution process in a way that imposes disproportionate burdens on workers. Whatever its outcomes, it also offers employers an opportunity to shape workers’ expectations through the authoritative voice of conciliators, whose impartial position may be confused with that of a judge despite the fact that they have no mandate to interpret legal rights and standards. The ambiguity is compounded by Acas’ multiple roles, including a helpline on employment rights which many employees contact prior to conciliation. High rates of satisfaction with Acas services may thus conceal that conciliation can result in workers accepting unfair settlements in which their legal rights are compromised. Also of concern is the prevalence of confidentiality agreements which can make further claims by other employees difficult to pursue, and which keep employer abuses of rights out of the public domain. The tension between ADR and justice is signalled in Acas’ own Codes of Practice of mediation, which list the types of cases where it may not be suitable. While these cases seem to overlap with those likely to give rise to a Tribunal claim, the conciliation system puts the onus on claimants to decide whether to litigate or not. In this context, it seemingly encourages them to go through a process which leaves them in a weaker position than judicial proceedings. Since worker vulnerability partly reflects the overall inequality of bargaining power created by a long-standing decline in union representation, collective ADR (designed to prevent strikes rather than court cases) may be more likely to deliver fair outcomes than individualised interventions.
experiences of (mis)recognition?
Methodologically, we draw on a critical-theoretical approach that brings into dialogue the ideals and arguments put forward by political philosophers, state practices and the individual views of key informants. For the empirical part, national teams carried out desk research on Roma-related policies and discourses. The University of Bristol, in its capacity as WP5 co-coordinators then elaborated common guidelines for semistructured interviews with stakeholders, which were conducted between November 2017 and March 2018. Each partner conducted between five and ten interviews including individuals identifying as Roma - some (but not all) of them activists -, non-Roma people who are active on their behalf and non-Roma professionals who engage with them. Country reports were brought together, systematically analysed and contrasted with a selection of philosophical writings addressing problems of minority political representation. This allowed us to identify links between different forms of representation and (mis)recognition as well as avenues for conceptual and theoretical development.
We find that in the current European context, Roma is a contested, multidimensional and highly stigmatised identity which simultaneously evokes material poverty, racialised phenotypes, and cultural practices. It is frequently shunned by those to whom it is ascribed. Since the 1990s, EU member states have been encouraged
to reverse this trend in part by improving the political representation of their Roma citizens. The results have been ambiguous. On the one hand, in some national and municipal contexts, those who identify as Roma have the right to elect Roma representatives in local, regional and national governments, and Roma civil society
leaders have had opportunities to influence policymaking through permanent and ad hoc consultative mechanisms. There have also been attempts to symbolically recognise Roma history, including their persecution, in official discourses. On the other hand, these measures do not seem to have translated into substantive
representation, to the extent that Roma interests and perspectives continue to be widely overlooked by public authorities. This may partly be attributable to the scarcity of policymakers identifying as Roma, but the class bias of political institutions also plays a key role in the powerlessness of a materially deprived population. Alienation
from state institutions, coupled with financial support from international and transnational ones, has triggered a proliferation of civil society organisations claiming to represent the Roma on a non-territorial basis. To the extent that they challenge the legitimacy of the powers attributed to territorial states, such claims break with
the Westphalian or nationalist frame in which justice for cultural minorities has been envisaged up to now. In this way, they offer an opportunity to rethink political representation beyond the sedentarist assumptions which reproduce the misrecognition of mobile and racialised populations such as the Roma.
Our analysis draws on relevant academic literature, national and regional policies adopted since the year 2000, a selection of prominent institutional discourses and semi-structured interviews with 11 key informants. The interviews took place between December 2017 and February 2018. Five of them involved Roma migrants of Romanian nationality, including two married couples, and four were conducted with professionals who had served or represented the Roma. One was a Romanian consultant woman, another two were Roma men engaged in civil society organisations dedicated to Roma integration, and the last was a political representative who had participated in a specialised consultative committee. Interviews lasted between 30 minutes and two hours and took place in respondents’ homes or workplaces. With the exception of one encounter where detailed notes were taken, they were audio recorded, transcribed, and thematically coded for
systematic analysis.
Findings suggest that some Roma-specific policies are perceived as opening opportunities for countering negative stereotyping and promoting political participation whereas others raise fears of misrepresentation and misrecognition. Individual Roma generally did not object to being grouped together with Gypsies and Travellers but awareness of the stigma attached to these labels made them ambivalent toward their use in state monitoring and public policies. In terms of portrayal, they did not only reject hostile stereotypes of criminality and fecklessness but also benevolent ones of poverty and educational underachievement as well as some construals of their cultural traditions. Conversely, the discourse of anti-Roma discrimination generated a degree of consensus among respondents. The question of political participation was deemed significant to the extent that it contributed to addressing barriers to social mobility, but service providers and Roma migrants alike signalled dangers of tokenistic or self-interested representation. They also problematised the legitimacy of leaders who claimed to represent the Roma community as a whole without engaging with all its constituents, emphasising the diversity of national origins. In contrast, the political representative perceived the internal coherence of Roma demands, conveyed by a limited number of leaders, as a pre-requisite for effective dialogue. For Roma activists, the most immediate threat to representation was a lack of public funding which undermined civil society organisations’ capacity to mobilise Roma communities and take part in consultative mechanisms.
The report builds on qualitative content analysis and discourse analysis of 46 documents written between 2007 and 2018 as well as four semi-structured interviews. Documents were identified through snowballing from recent academic literature addressing Muslim education, with a view to covering the widest possible range of actors involved in political debates. Interviews lasted approximately an hour and served to delve into recurring themes. They were conducted in person, audio-recorded and fully transcribed. All sources were then imported into NVivo and iteratively coded into three discursive frames (‘social cohesion’, ‘culture’ and ‘values’) and sub-sections (definition of the frame, problems and solutions).
Findings suggest that Muslim education is most frequently interpreted through the lens of recognition. This is particularly evident in the discursive frames of social cohesion, promoting intergroup respect and the fight against prejudice, and values, which insist on the centrality of antidiscrimination in the British ethos. Redistribution and representation play a more significant role in the frame of culture, where student poverty and insufficient school funding are portrayed as important obstacles to the acquisition of knowledge that is necessary to participate in paid work and democratic politics. However, these dimensions are overshadowed by aesthetic considerations that revolve around the subjective aspirations of Muslim families and may be characterised as concerns of sociocultural reproduction. Despite the acknowledgment of a link between Muslim poverty, area-based admissions and school segregation, few stakeholders explicitly link Muslim education to issues of class and economic policy. Across all frames, the perceived scale of social processes generating injustice is blurry and contested. Social cohesion discourses sometimes inadvertently shift from the national to the local, and the value discourse mobilises global principles but characterises them as British. Scale related discrepancies are especially salient in the frame of culture, where the aspiration to provide all students with a ‘broad and balanced curriculum’ nationwide is tempered by the willingness to give Muslim families an education that caters to their specific preferences. Beyond references to international migration, European and global processes are seldom mentioned in UK educational debates. Sex-specific policies and practices frequently constitute a flashpoint of conflict between various dimensions and scales of justice, situating female Muslim students at the centre of an ideological battlefield where the advocates of gender, national and religious recognition/reproduction seek to assert moral and political authority.
Apart from their coincidence in time, with the fire taking place only a week after the elections, these two events present a number of parallels that make them particularly well suited for a study on political justice. In both cases, a recurrent theme of public discourses is the criticism of out-of-touch elites, which echoes the populist turn currently observable across Western Europe. However, the characteristics and interests of these elites are depicted very differently. In the context of the general elections, they are often represented as a pro-European and globalist middle class willing to sacrifice the economic interests and security of the British nation(s) on the altar of free movement and anti-racism. In Grenfell-related debates, the elites are portrayed as mainly upper-class whites who seek to entrench their economic privileges by capturing political institutions.
The discourses analysed also diverge in terms of the ‘ordinary people’ or the ‘community’ who are seen as misrepresented by political elites. In the general election, the ‘left behind’ are (hard)working parents whose sex, race, abilities, sexual orientations and religions generally remain unstated but who are regularly juxtaposed to the female, non-white, disabled and homosexual beneficiaries of ‘targeted’ policies, as well as to the ‘Islamic extremist’ perpetrators of terrorist attacks. The working class plays a similarly prominent role in the claims of Grenfell fire activists, but unlike in the general election, it is a racialized working class that is also subjected to stigma and discrimination. This symbolic disadvantage is perceived as manifesting itself in the neglectful and sometimes contemptuous treatment received by local authorities.
A final instructive parallel between these events is the ubiquity of migrants as objects of political discourses and their contrasting oversight as subjects of political participation. During the general election, migrants are regularly depicted as a threat for public services and social cohesion, although those in work (especially in strategic sectors, such as healthcare) are also recognised as contributing to the British economy. Nevertheless, their exclusion from the national vote is largely taken for granted, despite the participation of some in local elections. In the aftermath of Grenfell, the declaration of an amnesty for undocumented survivors brings their victimhood under the spotlight, but the laws and policies that underpin their irregular status remain unproblematised, thereby tainting the whole Tower with the stigma of undeservingness.
The first part of the report, which focuses on law in the books, offers an overview of the creation and enforcement of labour rights through consultative bodies, Employment Tribunals and administrative agencies falling within the remit of a newly appointed Director of Labour Market Enforcement. It also describes the content of key UK labour rights in the light of minimal standards set out in EU directives, tracing their evolution since the 1990s. The second part problematises these provisions by looking at their implementation and impact from the perspective of workers themselves. We explore five structural sources of rights violations: 1) the subordination of subsistence to paid work created by welfare conditionality; 2) the subordination of legal residency to paid work; 3) the difficulty of claiming employment rights in court due to the casualisation of employment relations and rising judicial costs; 4) the underenforcement of worker-protective standards by administrative agencies; and 5) the decline of union membership. Subsequently, we address the formulation of justice claims around economic relations, international migration and childcare. Starting from interviewees’ recollections and interpretations of concrete injustices, we outline their underlying ideals of justice, mobilisation strategies, mutual perceptions and expectations for a post-Brexit future.
Results suggest that the evolution of economic conditions during the last decade has exacerbated and exposed deep tensions between economic justice and the ideal of the worker citizen, the person who proves their citizenship through labour. While all interviewees adhered to a version of this ideal, notably by expressing reservations toward universal basic income, they also criticised its contribution to current material and symbolic exclusions. For an increasing proportion of workers on non-standard contracts, the worker citizen’s promise of decent pay and positive identity has been replaced by low wages, short termism and unpredictability of hours. This has made it difficult for them to plan their personal and family life, enforce their rights in court and participate in political struggles. Official exhortations to take up paid employment under threat of benefit sanctions have reminded young mothers that family-provided childcare was not considered worthy of legal protection and financial compensation, but also that most jobs did not pay enough to turn its commodification into a plausible alternative. Migrant domestic workers lost their right to renew their visas and therefore the capacity to effectively enforce all employment-related rights. Trades unions have adapted their structure and tactics to deal with these challenges, but economic struggles have also been waged in other sites such as informal grassroots organisations, political parties and think tanks. The remedies advanced to tackle economic injustice have included minimum wage enforcement, stronger legal underpinnings for trade unions activities, state-funded vocational training, public awareness campaigns, guaranteed means of subsistence for carers and long-term residence rights. For most respondents, Brexit raised the prospect of further deregulation and tighter migration control.