Session 1: Global Influences
7th Global Conference
Monday 12th March – Wednesday 14th March 2012
Prague, Czech Republic
Global Citizenship from Below: Migrant Farm Workers’ Campaign Against Shadow Economy and Migration Controls in Southern Italy
Federico Oliveri
Sciences for Peace Interdisciplinary Centre, University of Pisa, Italy
This paper analyses the campaign «Hire me against illicit work!» launched by a group of migrant farm workers in the countryside of Nardò in the summer of 2011. With the support of several NGOs, migrants organised themselves against the shadow economy and their over-exploitation in the harvesting of watermelons.
Social movements like the one in Nardò have already existed for many years in other receiving countries, but they are extremely new in Southern Italy. They are an example of the formation of right-bearing subjects and the forging of a global citizenship from below. They show that material and immaterial borders of communities may be reshaped by the conflictual practices of the excluded: even irregular migrants may become recognised social actors, subverting the stereotype depicting them as criminals or victims. Moreover, the universalistic purpose of these movements stimulates solidarity in the rest of the population: while migrants claim the rights to stay and to have rights, they denounce new slavery and migration controls as two connected and structural features of our «developed economies», which have negative effects on the entire population in terms of social dumping and fiscal elusion.
In the first part of the paper I will outline the legal and social conditions of migrants in Nardò. In the second part I will examine the strategies they developed: the construction of the campaign, the organisation of strikes, the use of blogs and videos, the connections to civil society and institutions. In the conclusion I will assess the impact of the campaign, also in terms of alternatives to the actual global governance of migration.
Are European Democratic States Experiencing a Greater Democratic Deficit in the Last Decade? The Portuguese Case in a Longitudinal and Comparative Perspective.
Jonatas Pires and Conceição Pequito
Technical University of Lisbon, Portugal
Twenty years ago when Samuel Huntington (1991) argued that a third wave of democratization had swept the globe from 1974 to 1990 referring to no more than 30 countries which had made the transiction from authoritarianism to democracy Portugal was included among them. Now, there is no dispute as to whether Portuguese democracy is consolidated or not. In our case, as in many others, what is at stake is not whether democracy exists, but its quality (Shin 2006; Diamond and Morlino 2004; O’ Donnell 2004; Morlino 2002; Diamond 2002). Democracy is also the political regime prefered by the majority of Portuguese citizens, a pattern of attitudes which is confirmed by the peremptory rejection of all other possible alternative political regimes. Nonetheless, Portuguese democracy, as other European democracies, faces today a paradox,: democratic institutions are subject to great and continuous distrust by Portuguese citizens. Data from different sources show that, in spite of the support enjoyed by the democratic regime per se, a large majority of Portuguese people do not trust in different degrees in political parties, parliament, executive branches, courts of law, as well as health, educational, and other public services. Based on the conceptual redefinition, this paper examines the bases and sources of the contradictory conviviality among citizens’s democratic dissatisfaction and distrust in public institutions and their support to democracy in Portugal. Seeking to reconcilie cultural, institutional and performance theories about the importance of trust for democratic regimes, this paper considers systematically, both the determinants and the consequences of trust for regime support in Portugal and for other European democracies.
Download Draft Conference Paper (pdf)
Blasphemy Laws and The Global Citizenry: Toward a Theory of Religious Boundaries, Blasphemy, and Citizenship in a Global Age
Peter Geel
Georgetown University, Washington, DC, USA
In recent years, controversies surrounding blasphemy laws in Muslim-majority countries have taken on global significance. Representing a nexus between trends in globalization, questions of national citizenship, human rights, public religion, and democracy, they have become a significant point of tension both within Islamic societies and between those societies and Euro-American conceptions of human and political rights.
In this paper, I seek to bring some theoretical clarity to the sometimes violent debates about blasphemy laws in Muslim-majority countries and to the role they play in our contemporary globalized context. By applying a theory of “proximate” versus “distant otherness” I demonstrate that far from representing merely related cases, the four groups which suffer most under these laws—1) Muslim dissenters and intellectuals; 2) Non-muslim religious minorities; 3) Baha’is and Ahmadis, and; 4) Apostates and converts from Islam—represent a clear and ascending progression. The more credible their de facto theological “claim” to displace the majority understanding of Islam, the greater the threat they represent. Thus the increasing vigor of the social and legal response.
Further, I argue that these laws cannot be considered apart from the contemporary crisis of confidence in the Muslim world regarding the place of Islam in modern society, a crisis which is broadened and deepened by its transposition from a national to a global context. In effect, blasphemy laws have become a wedge used by a strident minority to separate the local, orthodox majority from emerging global citizens as represented by those four groups above. This while most political elites concern themselves primarily with their own careers and therefore do not challenge these laws. What emerges is a volatile social and political milieu which undercuts one of today’s greatest opportunities for profound inter-cultural dialogue about the scope and nature of human rights in a globalized world.
Entries (RSS)