A magnificent atmosphere? Romanian immigration in the political debate of Madrid,Spain

Immigration has consistently been one of the most controversial political topics in many European countries over recent years. Much research has consequently focused on highlighting and describing negative views of immigrants which dominate political debate. This has been particularly the case in studies of Spain. Yet such studies rarely examine positive views of immigration or explain the dominance of some views over others. This article offers a distinct contribution by examining the contested framing of Romanian immigration in Madrid's politics. At the same time that Romanian immigration has increased rapidly to form the largest single nationality population in the country and public opinion has registered specific concerns regarding this nationality, political debate has declared a ‘magnificent atmosphere’ of coexistence. The article explores why, highlighting the stability of discursive and institutional structures which emphasise values of democracy, equality and tolerance over potentially discriminatory acts and statements.     

Attitudes towards forest,biomass and certification – A case study approach to integrate public opinion in Japan

The purpose of this study was to contribute to filling the knowledge gap in public opinion and knowledge about forest and its certification in Japan, as well as to identify key elements and the possible role of public opinion within integrated bottom-up policies, bridging the sectors of forest, environment and energy. For the study 1930 questionnaires were disseminated in a small town in early 2007. Results from the statistical analysis indicated that forest was perceived as an ecosystem with a protective function against e.g. soil erosion or flooding, rather than a place that might serve for wood production and providing jobs. Forest certification and bioenergy from forest were identified as key elements for future integrated bottom-up policies that need to concentrate on facilitating the linkage between forestry and renewable energy as well as on promoting environmentally sound management and forest certification.     

Freedom of religion,women's agency and banning the face veil: the role of feminist beliefs in shaping women's opinion

Several countries have imposed bans on the wearing of face veils, a controversial option considered in Bill 94 by the province of Quebec in 2010. This paper examines non-Muslim women's support for the acceptability of the niqab in public spaces. Analysing the 2010 Quebec Women's Political Participation Survey, we find that key feminist arguments – that wearing the niqab is a woman's free choice, a matter of freedom of religion and a visible symbol of women's oppression – are important drivers of opinion. Their role in shaping opinion, however, is complex and mirrors divisions among feminist groups in the province. Additional attitudinal drivers include generation, exposure to the practice and openness to immigration. Equally important, our findings suggest that being a member of a racial minority, feelings of cultural insecurity and religiosity are of little consequence for thinking on the issue.     

Conflicts of interest in e-cigarette research: A public good and public interest perspective

The tobacco industry’s involvement in the electronic cigarette research that informs public health policy is controversial. On the one hand, some are concerned that their involvement presents conflicts of interest that bias research outputs and invalidate the policies that use them. On the other hand, some have argued that the tobacco industry may support valid research and contribute to the goals of public health, for instance, if the interests of the e-cigarette industry could be part of a tobacco smoking cessation policy. We approach this debate from the ethical perspective of the public interest and the public good, considering how legitimate researchers can square their expert opinion with validating tobacco industry-funded research, given the perfidy of the tobacco industry and paucity of robust, conclusive evidence on the public health impacts of liberalizing e-cigarette use.     

Migrant deportability: Israel and Ireland as case studies

This article critiques policies of deportation and deportability – a technology emanating from three seemingly conflicting rationalities: states' obligations under international human rights regimes, capitalism's need to facilitate the movement of labour, and the need to reaffirm state sovereignty. After outlining the concept of deportability, we argue that although justified by state actors as an integral part of asylum and immigration policies, deportability epitomizes the paradox of immigration regimes at a point of crisis. We use Israel and Ireland as case studies to illustrate that migrant deportability circumvents human rights and domestic legislation that hinder the power of the state to deport unwanted migrants. Paradoxically, in both, policies that engender the deportability of asylum seekers are a response to their undeportability. Despite their differences, Israel and Ireland are unusual immigration destinations and quintessential diaspora nations, whose histories of dispersal configure Jewishness and Irishness in ethno-racially rigid yet spatially fluid terms, as illustrated by their citizenship regimes.     

Fertility Politics as "Social Viagra": Reproducing Boundaries, Social Cohesion, and Modernity in Italy

In this article, we investigate the delicacy of adopting pronatalism as a public position in Italy. Mounting scientific and political knowledge about the demographic "problem" exposes a new hegemonic formation that low fertility is dangerous. Drawing on ethnographic contexts, political debates, media publications, and policy documents, we trace the "demographic emergency" and compare two policies: a monetary baby bonus and a law restricting assisted reproduction. The coexistence of incentives to counter superlow fertility with prohibitions on high-tech baby making reflect the contested governance of "social cohesion." We conclude that scholarly and popular discourses serve as a sort of "social Viagra." Ultimately, both policies sought to rejuvenate family norms. Both aimed to fortify the political terrain of a nation-state struggling to achieve and maintain modernity against a backdrop of immigration and aging. Modernity became a weapon of the state to exert control over Italian fertility practices and of its critics to deploy orientalizing representations of backwardness.     

What counts as racist immigration policy?

Culling the Masses is a rich, methodologically ambitious book, which sheds much needed light on the factors that influence the adoption and repeal of racist immigration policies across the Americas. Contrary to previous accounts that suggest that the end of racial selection in immigration policy began as a domestic issue in the United States and Australia and then spread elsewhere, FitzGerald and Cook-Martín “find that geopolitical factors were the main drivers of the demise of racial selection.” The sustained attention to the international forces that shape domestic immigration policy—and the means through which they do so—is an invaluable contribution of this excellent book. Culling the Masses also demonstrates that democracy and racist immigration laws not only co-existed comfortably with each other, they have also been causally connected. Somewhat less convincing, however, is the assertion that liberal democracies essentially abandoned racist immigration laws at the end of the 1960s.     

On opinion,freedom of speech and its responsibilities

Plato and Aristotle place opinion intermediate between knowledge and ignorance with all opinions under the suspicion of error. Kant summarized that opinion is a consciously insufficient judgement, subjectively and objectively. Belief is subjectively sufficient, but is recognized as being objectively insufficient. Only knowledge is subjectively and objectively sufficient. Despite this philosophically doubtful value of opinions, thinkers such as Milton, Locke, Montesquieu and Mill maintain that the freedom of opinion and speech are the basis of open societies but find limits when it represents a definite risk of damage, either to an individual or to the public. Also the UN Covenant on Civil and Political Rights proclaims the right to hold opinions without interference provided that it respects the rights or reputations of others and does not interfere with the protection of public health. Hate speech and propaganda for war are expressively prohibited. Postwar US politicians formulated the position that every man has a right to his own opinion, but no man has a right to be wrong in his facts. The impact of this discussion on opinions about control measures of the COVID-19 pandemic is explored in this editorial.     

Human mobility and population health. New approaches in a globalizing world

The globalization of economies in the last 25 years has greatly increased both the number of people on the move and the rapidity of their movement, and has brought attention to global disparities in health determinants and to the health of migrant populations themselves. Differences in epidemiological disease risk (prevalence gaps) may have negative, neutral, or positive health consequences for the migrant or receiving population. Population mobility represents a growing challenge to the development of public health programs and legislative policies to prevent the importation of disease, and to promote and protect the health of migrants and the local, receiving population. The inability to detect and contain imported disease threats at national borders requires a shift in immigration, quarantine, and public health approaches to health and mobile populations. A new paradigm is needed to facilitate the development of policies and programs to address the health consequences of population mobility.     

Family ideation,immigration, and the racial state: explaining divergent family reunification policies in Britain and the US

Why do family reunification policies differ across liberal democracies? Established literature explains differentiation through reference to the logics of distinct “national models” of immigration policy-making. Drawing on critical race and feminist scholarship, this paper finds consistent racial logics in the political histories of family reunification policies in Britain and the US during the mid-twentieth century. In a context where the geopolitical power of each country was conditioned by an assertive antiracist internationalism, “family” provided a colourblind, ideational platform to rearticulate the state-based racial project of white supremacy. Despite an original convergence, family reunification diverged because of the context-specific racialization of the immigrant family in each case. In rooting divergent reunification policies in the logics of the racial state, this paper contributes to efforts to incorporate race into the sociology of immigration. The paper also develops recent feminist scholarship on the role of “family ideation” in building liberal-democratic immigration systems.     

Symbolic boundaries,incorporation policies,and anti-immigrant attitudes: what drives exclusionary policy preferences?

This research empirically approaches symbolic boundary making in the form of individual assent to selective immigration policy. Distinguishing two such types of boundaries, restriction based on immigrant skills and race/religion, we approach the antecedents of such preferences. Do economic or rather cultural concerns about immigration drive boundary making? We furthermore assess whether social boundaries in the form of integration and multicultural policies are of importance. The results obtained from the European Social Survey show that on the individual level, both forms of boundary making are mainly driven by cultural concerns. On the country level, net of several measures of diversity, integration policies dampen skill-related boundaries, while multicultural policies weaken the strength of cultural boundary making along race and religion. These findings expose the political embeddedness of processes of symbolic boundary making into the very policies that approach the respective type of boundary.     

BIOETHICS AND DEMOCRACY: COMPETING ROLES OF NATIONAL BIOETHICS ORGANISATIONS

In establishing National Bioethics Organisations (NBOs), liberal democracies seek to acknowledge the diversity of strongly held ethical positions and the imperative to engage in public debate about important bioethical decisions. NBOs are typically given a range of responsibilities, including contributing to and stimulating public debate; providing expert opinion on relevant issues for policy deliberations; and developing public policy. The state is now found to have an interest in areas previously thought to be a matter of individual choice. NBOs can provide one way of opening up public debate to allow the diversity of views to be heard in a manner that is well‐informed, articulate and responsive to both expert and ‘lay’ public views. We draw on debates in political theory about democratic decision‐making and on the policy making roles of some key NBOs. We are particularly interested in examining the capacity of NBOs to meet the democratic ideal of effective participation by the public, or citizenry, especially by those who are directly affected by the policies, in the development of effective public policy. We provide a basic framework for policy development involving NBOs that can begin to meet this ideal, a process of ‘contested deliberation’.     

Opposing the veil in the name of liberalism: popular attitudes to liberalism and Muslim veiling in the Netherlands

Is popular antagonism towards Muslim veils in Europe rooted in an exclusionary ‘enlightenment liberalism’? By examining different conceptions of liberalism and readings of veiling in a Dutch survey from 2014, we present the first study that investigates this question empirically. We thus bring together two hitherto largely unconnected literatures. The first is the work on immigration and ethnicity, which has shown the centrality of enlightenment liberalism in anti-Muslim media and policy discourses. The second is the literature on anti-Muslim attitudes in public opinion, which explains support for veil bans as the result of perceiving veils as threatening the respondent's own, supposedly liberal, values – but has failed to distinguish between different conceptions of liberalism and thus reached inconclusive results. This, we show, can be remedied by distinguishing between ‘enlightenment liberals’, who hold negative attitudes, and ‘reformation liberals’, who hold positive attitudes towards Muslim veils.     

Senegalese immigrant families’ ‘regroupement’ in France and the im/possibility of reconstituting family across multiple temporalities and spatialities

This paper interrogates the structural conditions, macropolitics and governmentality of family ‘regroupement’ in France in an era of shifting immigration policies in Europe and the imaginative possibilities that Senegalese immigrants exercise to maintain family and kinship ties with those left behind. It argues that while the need to maintain ties from diasporic locations is mediated by policies, material and emotive transnational practices, the materiality of displacement as well as the state's politics of immigration render more elusive possibilities of maintaining family in situ. What tensions and creative strategies emerge? How is ‘home’, the primordial site of family structure, reimagined and reconstituted? Taking into account state's politics and immigrants’ entrapment within multiple spheres of power and their active agency as determinants, this paper uncovers how displacement gives rise to multiple ruptures while simultaneously motivating a search for active agency to reconstruct and reimagine kinship, family and conjugality across multiple temporalities and spatialities.     

A modest proposal for restoration ecology

Restoration ecology struggles to mitigate human‐caused ecological damage. Non‐native species are a particular challenge. This article describes two restoration attempts following introduced species in California and then makes a radical culling proposal. Environmental regulations, legal protections, and restoration projects are necessary to preserve ecosystem services, but such policies are often unpopular. Restorers often struggle when public opinion opposes evidence‐based practice, and this occurs particularly when the interventions involve killing mammals. Therefore, restoration efforts may benefit from more attention to how individuals perceive the acceptability of environmental policies and how to communicate policy options effectively for individuals to make informed decisions. Restoration ecology can follow the recent shift of medicine away from imperatives and toward informed patient choice. Restoration projects may benefit from recent advances in psychology and communication that help individuals make policy decisions that align with their personal values.     

全媒体时代医院舆情管理危机的应对措施

随着科学技术的快速发展,各类新媒体的出现让部分医疗事件有了更高的关注度。近年来医疗纠纷日益严重,在全媒体时代的背景下,医院舆情危机频繁发生,对医院声誉和医患关系产生较大的不良影响。如何正确的引导网络舆情、降低医院舆情危机带来的不利影响成为急需解决的问题。本研究就全媒体时代医院舆情管理危机展开探讨,从医院舆情管理现状、医院舆情管理所存在的问题及相关的应对措施这三个方面入手,旨在为医院管理者在全媒体背景下控制医院舆情、化解医院突发事件、改善医患关系提供参考。     

New directions for migration policy in Europe

There is a growing debate about the future direction of migration policy in Europe. After nearly 30 years of pursuing restrictive immigration and asylum policies, many European Union (EU) governments are beginning to re-assess their migration policies and to call for a new approach. For the first time in many years, several EU governments have begun to talk again about the benefits of labour migration and, even more significantly, have even begun to take action to recruit more migrants, especially skilled workers. This paper looks at the background to current calls for a new approach to migration in Europe and public reaction to these new initiatives. It first describes recent trends in migration in Europe and then briefly considers the demographic case for more migration. This is followed by a brief outline of some of the measures being considered by European governments to promote selective labour migration. The remainder of the paper is devoted to a discussion of some of the implications of this change in policy, focusing on two main issues: the likely consequences for sending countries, and the implications for the fight against the smuggling and trafficking of people.     

Some observations about racial boundaries and the experiences of American Indians

The number of inter‐racial marriages has increased sharply in the last two decades. There are a number of factors that might account for this development ‐ for example, immigration, changing norms, and marriage market composition ‐ but one indisputable outcome has been a rise in the number of persons with multiracial backgrounds. This article argues that multiracial persons have a number of options about how they might identify their ancestry, and this is causing fluidity and instability in racial divisions that were once considered fixed and immutable. While this might be seen as a recent development, American Indians historically have had high rates of intermarriage with other racial groups. The experience of American Indians with regard to the dilemmas posed by shifting racial identities are discussed for the purpose of anticipating the experiences of other groups. In particular, these issues pose a number of challenges to public policies based on increasingly obsolete conceptions of race.     

Sub-state nationalism in Spain: primers and triggers of identity politics in Catalonia and the Basque Country

This article builds on recent attempts to explain divergent uses of sub-state nationalism to push for policies of assimilation or multiculturalism and drive popular support for independence. It analyses the dynamics of discourses and policies in Spain before, during and after peak times of identity politics to provide a more nuanced understanding of the conditions leading to the activation of identity-driven policies. Substantive ethnographic evidence is presented to explain recent alterations to national discourses of identity, surprising reversals of immigration policies, and the modulation of Catalan and Basque independence movements. The main finding is that both identity discourses and resulting policies depend on the affinity for identity politics at the sub-state level, and this affinity is in large part primed by the popular perception of how secure sub-state national identity is against the ‘official’ state narrative.