Cash cows,backdoor migrants,or activist citizens? International students,citizenship, and rights in Australia

Since the late 1990s, the intersection of education and migration policies in Australia has shifted international students from transient consumers to potential citizens. This article analyses responses to the ‘problem’ of international students as consumers, workers, and migrants, particularly the conceptualization of their rights and protections, and the ways students have been positioned as both passive subjects and activist citizens. The article provides a theoretical review of academic, government, community, and media responses to international students in general and the consequences of the education-migration nexus in particular. It argues that discourses of human rights and consumer rights have become increasingly interconnected in these debates. This analysis adds to the emerging literature on changing conceptions of rights and citizenship in neoliberal contexts, and also illuminates the social and political consequences of the education-migration nexus in Australia. This will have resonance for countries who have implemented a raft of similar policies.     

Nationalism as ideological interpellation: The case of Ulster Loyalism

This article aims to explore nationalism, generally, and Ulster Loyalism, specifically, through the use of discourse theory and the Althusserian concept of ideology as interpellation. It suggests that nationalism is best understood as a particular discursive articulation that constructs subjects as being of a particular nation and thereby having certain characteristics and political needs and interests. This entails a larger definition of nationalism which encompasses some phenomena not generally taken to be nationalistic. The method is illustrated by a study of some aspects of the ideological discourse of Ulster Loyalism showing this, contrary to some accounts, to be a kind of nationalism. In the nationalist articulation of Loyalism, religion, democracy and identity are linked together making a unified ideological discourse based around a sense of specificity and difference to Irish nationalism and Roman Catholicism. Special attention is paid to the role of democracy within Loyalist discourse, in particular, and in nationalist discourse generally. The article suggests that this way of thinking about nationalism can avoid functionalist and teleological analyses, allowing us to focus on the specific ways in which a nationalism operates and to stress the centrality of politics in the process.     

试论微博客时代医方话语权的回归

????? 微博客的崛起促成了话语权向公众的转移,也为缺失的医方话语权回归带来了机遇和挑战。医方微博主体由医疗机构、医疗机构下属部门和医务工作者个人3部分组成,相互之间存在“同心圆”的包涵关系。在传统主流媒体主导力量被削弱的背景下,应立足于“服务”理念,通过微博平台及时传递对患者有帮助的信息;正面信息的发布和负面信息的应对侧重陈述事实而非定性评价;增强医方微博主体之间的呼应、互动,提高医务人员的媒介素养,努力实现医方话语权的回归。

     

Forced migration: morality and politics

Thomas Faist’s contribution lies in wishing to deconstruct political perceptions around forced migration that reduce the protection that refugees can access. One important task we have as academics is exactly to challenge dominant discourses that function to oppress or control, serving the interests of some at the costs of others, and to be aware of our own role in perpetuating such discourses. One important area where Faist’s account fails to deconstruct existing discourse on forced migration is related to the political subjecthood of refugees and the political nature of their experiences. The reasons for flight are highly political, refugees are conscious political subjects, and refugee flows have always been a matter of high politics.     

Public discourses of stem cell science in Singapore (1997–2010)

In most industrialized countries, policy debates around stem cell science manifest in public discourse. Assuming that a functioning public sphere exists where matters of science policy can be discussed, examination of these discourses can help provide an understanding of how science policies evolve. The aim of this paper is to provide a preliminary analysis of how the public discourses around stem cell science have developed in Singapore. Using a theoretical model of “focused discourse,” our analysis indicates that there have been five distinct phases, marked by discernible shifts that reflect important changes in how biomedical science is funded in Singapore. While our results are preliminary, we argue that public discourses around science policies do exist in Singapore but are limited by a lack of diversity that would be expected in a more heterogeneous public sphere.     

The construction of ethnic categories: Discourses of ethnicity in The Netherlands

This article is concerned with the way ethnic and racial categories are achieved and sustained in daily talk. We argue against the notion of social categories as immanent cognitive structures whose existence and significance can be taken for granted. It is emphasized that categories are constructed in discourse. The construction and representation of ethnic categories are studied by analysing discussions held by some ethnically Dutch inhabitants of an inner‐city quarter in Rotterdam. There were two discussion groups (six and five participants respectively) and each group met one evening a week in a row in the local community centre for four weeks. All eight sessions were taped and transcribed and each session lasted approximately two and a half hours. Our goal is to describe in detail some of the discourses that are being used to achieve and sustain specific categorical representations. First, the nature of the different categorical constructs used is analysed. It is shown that people use different criteria for constructing ‘us‐them’ distinctions and that this multiplicity is rhetorically useful. Second, the ways in which categorical constructions are represented and vary in discourse are identified and outlined. Subsequently, the means by which these representations are achieved and sustained is examined. Attention is focued on comparisons that are being made, on the use of metaphors, and on the process of concretiz‐ation. Third, some of the cultural values drawn upon in legitimizing the representations are explored. It is shown how the taken‐for‐granted notions of freedom, merit, equality and tolerance are used to construct and legitimize ethnic representations. Finally, it is argued that a discourse approach can provide important additional insights into issues concerning ethnic relations and racism. For one thing it can help to develop strategies for reconstructing the predominant distinction between ‘us’ and ‘them’.     

Both black and symbolically white: The ‘Bajan-Brit’ return migrant as post-colonial hybrid

The research presented in this article centres on an under-researched demographic group of young return migrants, namely, second-generation Barbadians, or ‘Bajan-Brits’, who have decided to ‘return’ to the birthplace of their parents. Based on 51 in-depth interviews, the essay examines the experiences of second-generation return migrants from an interpretative perspective framed within post-colonial discourse. The article first considers the Bajan-Brits and issues of race in the UK before their decision to migrate. It is then demonstrated that on ‘return’, in certain respects, these young, black English migrants occupy a liminal position of cultural, racial and economic privilege, based on their ‘symbolic’ or ‘token’ whiteness within the post-colonial context of Barbados. But this very hybridity and inbetweeness means that they also face difficulties and associated feelings of social alienation and discrimination. The ambivalent status of this transnational group of migrants serves to challenge traditional notions of Barbadian racial identity.     

Introduction: the language of inclusion and exclusion in the context of immigration and integration

Abstract

When migrant status and citizenship are defined by means of state categories, the language of inclusion and exclusion is key to an understanding of their contemporary shape and historical transformation. This introductory article provides an overview of some of the most relevant concepts in the discourse analysis of in- and exclusion, specifically with a view to the functioning of nation-state categories. It discusses forms of discursive problematization, such as defining, claiming, legitimizing, expanding, sensationalization and suggestion, and it connects these to the discursive drawing of boundaries discussed by the authors contributing to this issue. They focus on discursive constructions of ‘illegality’, race, class, gender, immigrant integration and transnationalism. We argue that, as state categorizations continuously differ, both the historical analysis of their genesis, functioning and transformation and the contemporary analysis of their effectuation in practices are crucial to an understanding of in- and exclusion.     

Antihaitianismo: an embodied discourse

ABSTRACT

In this article, I argue that contemporary manifestations of social, political and economic discrimination – antihaitianismo – in the Dominican Republic towards their Haitian neighbours have become embodied responses which are reproduced through everyday actions. Using ethnographic fieldwork and phenomenology, I explore a variety of contexts in which antihaitianismo has become part of a Dominican existential background that is provoked to surface in situations of heightened tension, stress or discomfort. I also show how this embodied discourse has affected and affects a race-centred, essentialist form of governance. This article is supplemented by a short film which can be found at the following link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GlIH4fpwUlU     

White doctors and nurses on racial inequality in health care in the USA: whiteness and colour-blind racial ideology

In this paper we report on an interdisciplinary project interviewing doctors and nurses about racial inequality in health care in the USA. We analysed data from interviews with twenty-two white doctors and nurses in which they were asked to offer explanations for racial inequality in health care. Results provide insight into how whiteness operates to provide white patients more often with appropriate health care and how colour-blind ideology can be adapted to accommodate naming white advantage and potential racial discrimination. However, even when naming mechanisms of white advantage in accessing resources, the white respondents avoided acknowledging how they are implicated in racial inequality in health care. We discuss the implications for understanding whiteness and colour-blind ideology.