Just like the USA? Critical notes on Alba and Foner’s cross-Atlantic research agenda

ABSTRACT

A critical review of Alba and Foner's Strangers No More (2015 Foner, Nancy. 2015. “Is Islam in Western Europe Like Race in the United States?” Sociological Forum 30 (4): 885–899. [Google Scholar]) which focuses on questioning their comparative assimilation of European cases of immigrant integration to the North American, specifically U.S., experience. While this may work in terms of how national immigrant integration has mitigated over time racial discrimination for older, post-colonial migrants, it misrepresents the complex differentiations involved in the super-diversity of recent ‘new’ migrations within and to Europe. In particular, the variety of types and origins of recent migration is lost in their understanding of the U.K. case, with problems linked to their interpretation of data about minorities and foreigners in the country.     

Law and ‘race’ in the citizenship spaces of Myanmar: spatial strategies and the political subjectivity of the Burmese Chinese

As Myanmar undergoes political and societal transition, observers are asking questions about citizenship and ethnic identity. How does one think about citizenship and people's negotiations with law in political-legal regimes that do not subscribe to liberal democratic norms? This paper investigates how law marginalizes the Burmese Chinese minority in Myanmar and the nature of their legal participation. Since law asserts cultural power impacting the way people think and behave, we engage with the concept of legal consciousness to understand how perceptions of legal vulnerability shape political subjectivity ambivalently. The paper highlights the spatial strategies and everyday practices that the Burmese Chinese deploy to navigate oppressive laws, but signals that internal social divisions and geopolitical considerations deter collective action towards rights assertion. It argues that studying the multiple sites and scales through which law is engaged contributes towards recovering citizenship aspirations where engagement with power and authority are articulated differently from Western norms.     

The first collective protest of black African migrants in postcolonial France (1960–1975): a struggle for housing and rights

The study of the political activism of black African diasporas in France after the independence era remains a neglected area of research. This paper fills a gap in the literature by exploring the first notable postcolonial protests in the country by sub-Saharan migrants. The struggle of black African workers against their dire housing conditions opened up a ‘cycle of collective action’ that led to the better-known Sonacotra migrant hostels (foyers) rent strike of 1975–1980. Even before the Sonacotra strike, however, black African workers had been able to call on the authorities from both their origin and residence countries and to mobilize transnational networks in order to support their demands. This article provides the first comprehensive historical study of this decisive period. It highlights how ethnic ties are intertwined with political and social ones, focusing on the solidarities that these migrants developed in political networks and in their neighbourhoods.     

Sociologists,Archbishops, and ‘making a verb of a noun’

ABSTRACT

Contemporary discussion about race has a tendency to set off out without first checking the rear view mirror. In Theories of Race and Ethnicity: Contemporary Debates and Perspectives, in contrast, Murji and Solomos identify what has and has not been covered, and so appeal at the outset for a ‘more sustained’ account of changing research agendas of race and ethnic relations. Taken as a whole, the collection allows the editors to contemplate ‘what factors explain the mobilizing power of ideas about race and ethnicity in the contemporary environment?' and whether indeed ‘it is the “real” rather than race that should be placed in quotation marks’.     

Race and place at the city limits: imaginative geographies of South Central Los Angeles

In the early 1990s, a new cycle of films emerged that depicted complex portrayals of the lives of African-Americans in the neighbourhoods in which they lived. This so-called ‘hood genre was quite radical in its foregrounding of structural racism and police violence. But Hollywood's marketing of these films muted this radical content by directly contradicting explicit signifiers in the films’ story worlds. While many of the ‘hood films take place on the urban fringe and in suburbs, their promotional materials worked to confine the action, to a mythic ‘inner city'.

This essay studies the two most popular films of the genre, Boyz n the Hood and Menace II Society, to illustrate how ‘paratexts' redistricted 'hood films. Through a comparative analysis of the films and their promotional materials, this essay argues Hollywood marketed a racialized ‘imaginative geography' for this important genre of African-American cinema.     

Constructions of race: symbolic ethnic capital and the performance of youth identity in multicultural Australia

The relationship between ethnicity and cultural and social capital has been taken up by several scholars in terms of questions of disadvantage. This paper considers the performance of race and ethnicity as positive capital among a group of Sudanese young people with refugee backgrounds in Brisbane, Australia. Based on ethnographic fieldwork, I demonstrate young people's adaptation of cultural associations in their hybridized and essentialized self-representations. In particular, I explore my informants’ use of hip hop music and style as resources in performance. Much of young people's engagement with capital in performance enables their relatively overt and self-conscious process of clarifying who they are in relationship to one another, often with particular reference to race and ethnicity. Their engagement with globally relevant mediums is indicative of young people's agency in defining their own lives in the context of the political and moral framework of Australian multiculturalism.     

Eco‐evolutionary dynamics in a coevolving host–virus system

Eco‐evolutionary dynamics have been shown to be important for understanding population and community stability and their adaptive potential. However, coevolution in the framework of eco‐evolutionary theory has not been addressed directly. Combining experiments with an algal host and its viral parasite, and mathematical model analyses we show eco‐evolutionary dynamics in antagonistic coevolving populations. The interaction between antagonists initially resulted in arms race dynamics (ARD) with selective sweeps, causing oscillating host–virus population dynamics. However, ARD ended and populations stabilised after the evolution of a general resistant host, whereas a trade‐off between host resistance and growth then maintained host diversity over time (trade‐off driven dynamics). Most importantly, our study shows that the interaction between ecology and evolution had important consequences for the predictability of the mode and tempo of adaptive change and for the stability and adaptive potential of populations.     

Phytophthora capsici homologue of the cell cycle regulator SDA1 is required for sporangial morphology,mycelial growth and plant infection

SDA1 encodes a highly conserved protein that is widely distributed in eukaryotic organisms. SDA1 is essential for cell cycle progression and organization of the actin cytoskeleton in yeasts and humans. In this study, we identified a Phytophthora capsici orthologue of yeast SDA1, named PcSDA1. In P. capsici, PcSDA1 is strongly expressed in three asexual developmental states (mycelium, sporangia and germinating cysts), as well as late in infection. Silencing or overexpression of PcSDA1 in P. capsici transformants affected the growth of hyphae and sporangiophores, sporangial development, cyst germination and zoospore release. Phalloidin staining confirmed that PcSDA1 is required for organization of the actin cytoskeleton. Moreover, 4′,6‐diamidino‐2‐phenylindole (DAPI) staining and PcSDA1‐green fluorescent protein (GFP) fusions revealed that PcSDA1 is involved in the regulation of nuclear distribution in hyphae and sporangia. Both silenced and overexpression transformants showed severely diminished virulence. Thus, our results suggest that PcSDA1 plays a similar role in the regulation of the actin cytoskeleton and nuclear division in this filamentous organism as in non‐filamentous yeasts and human cells.     

The Effect of Exposure to Decreasing Relative Humidity on the Viability of Phytophthora ramorum sporangia

Sporangia of three isolates of Phytophthora ramorum representing three different clonal lineages were subjected to relative humidity (RH) levels between 80 and 100% for exposure periods ranging from 1 to 24 h at 20°C in darkness. Plastic containers (21.5 × 14.5 × 5 cm) were used as humidity chambers with 130 ml of glycerine solution added to each container. Glycerine concentrations corresponded to 100, 95, 90, 85 and 80% RH based on refractive index measurements. Sporangia suspensions were pipeted onto nitrile mesh squares (1.5 × 1.5 cm, 15 micron pore size) which were placed in the humidity chambers and incubated at 20°C in darkness. Following exposure periods of 1, 2, 4, 8, 12 and 24 h, mesh squares were inverted onto Petri dishes of selective medium and sporangia germination assessed after 24 and 48 h. At 100% RH, we observed a mean value of 88% germination after 1 h exposure declining to 18% germination following 24 h incubation. At 95% RH, a steeper decline in germination was noted, with means ranging from 79% at 1 h to less than 1% at 24 h exposure. At 90% RH, no germination was noted after 8 or more h exposure, and values were 57%, 22% and 3% germination for the 1, 2 and 4 h exposures, respectively. Germination was only observed at 1 h exposure for both the 85% RH treatment (52% germination) and the 80% RH treatment (38% germination). The three isolates responded similarly over the range of RH values tested. The germination response of P. ramorum sporangia to RH values between 80% and 100% was comparable to that reported for other Phytophthora species. Knowledge of conditions that affect P. ramorum sporangia germination can shed light on pathogenesis and epidemic potential and lead to improved control recommendations.     

Adaptation to Host-Specific Bacterial Pathogens Drives Rapid Evolution of a Human Innate Immune Receptor

1. Download high-res image (261KB)
2. Download full-size image