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Estonia and Latvia both have a sizeable Russian-speaking minority, share a similar Soviet past, and their democratic transitions were characterised by a similar nationalising rhetoric. The two countries, however, have different experiences with minority political representation and minority grassroots mobilisation. This thesis compares Estonia and Latvia to analyse the ways in which minority voices can be included or excluded from the political processes in ethnically divided democracies. The theoretical framework of this study is informed by the literature on minority representation (mostly US-based) and ethnic parties (which has a stronger Central and Eastern European focus). My approach reframes the insights of these debates to address the fundamental question of quality of democracy in ethnically divided societies. The underpinning normative assumption is that the legitimacy of a democratic decision depends on the inclusion in the decision-making process of those most concerned by it. The quality of an ethnically-divided democracy can thus be evaluated not least by the level of inclusion its policymaking process affords the minority. In this thesis I process-trace policymaking with regard to specific, minority-sensitive policies. Five potential channels for minority inclusion in policymaking are analysed and compared: parliamentary representation, recourse to international organisations, incorporation in city governments, institutionalised civil society consultation mechanisms, and minority grassroots mobilisation. The research’s focus on the policymaking process problematises the link between desirable policies and desirable processes. The cases of Estonia and Latvia show that a liberal minority policy can be the result of an exclusionary democratic process, while an inclusionary democratic process does not necessarily return policies that are favourable to the minority. By decoupling policy outcome and the policymaking process, this study offers a new framework to assess the effects of minority political presence and inclusiveness in ethnically divided democracies.

Using the province of KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) in South Africa as a case study, the thesis explores the impact of cultural pluralism on peace-building in divided societies. More specifically, it investigates the relationship between the process of meaning-making and interpretations of peace, and the impact this had on intergroup relations and building a sustainable peace. While the thesis is not focused on transitional justice as such, it recognises the significance that variables such as identity, culture and worldview have on building a sustainable peace. The study is located within the constructivist's research paradigm and was carried out using qualitative research methods. It employed grounded theory as its strategy of inquiry, and includes data from 38 leaders within the age bracket of 30-45 years, who are functioning within either the business, political or the religious sector, and who are representative of the race and ethnic groups within KZN. Adding to the novelty of the research, it incorporates perspectives of new communities into its scope of study. The research contributes to understanding the impact that transitions have on shaping identities and to how identity, culture and worldview is theorised within the field of peace-building and transitional justice. It also raises important considerations for hybrid approaches to peace-building which engage with western and non-western ontological assumptions and systems of meaning-making. When thinking about transitions it is important that consideration is given to the way in which the different groups interpret key concepts such as reconciliation, accountability, and nation-building, and the way values such as loyalty and respect, are prioritised. To build a peace that can be sustained, the thesis argues that societies in transition will have to find ways of accommodating different belief systems or, alternatively, belief systems will need to alter to assimilate the changes in a society.

The subject of this thesis is the relationship between ethnic conflict and political violence. The thesis examines the types of political violence that are most prevalent in liberal-democratic states, using case studies from the conflicts in Northern Ireland since 1968, the Basque country since 1952 and the United States in the post-1945 period. It is argued that it is in what will be described as secessionist conflicts that political violence is likely to be at its worst. It will be argued that a number of factors are present, where campaigns of terrorism have been most intense and have seen the highest level of fatalities. In the cases, where terrorist groups have become enduring in their communities, it is likely that they will provide a range of goods and services to their communities. It will also be argued that participation in the labour market is also an important determinant as to whether or not a community will be prepared to give support to terrorist groups. It will be argued that many ethnic conflicts have been made more intractable because policy-makers have diagnosed the problem in an unsatisfactory fashion. Evidence will be cited to argue that ethnic-specific policies have focused on the symptoms of problems while failing to deal with their root causes. Instead of ethnic-specific policies, it will be argued that labour-market policies are the key to reducing ethnic conflicts. Therefore the strategy of conflict resolution in this thesis is based on a mixture of both micro and macro level policies. At one level, policies will be needed to disrupt the groups involved in carrying out acts of violence, while at the same time policies are also designed by government to make the political and economic environment less hospitable for groups, espousing strategies based on the use of sub-state violence.

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This intersectional study explored how mothers of mixed race children negotiate racialised and classed bordering practice in two neighbourhoods within a provincial city in the UK. The research was influenced by Critical Race Theory. It employed a critical interpretation of Bourdieusian symbolic capital to look at how localised spatial dynamics impact on the social geographies of mothers . of mixed race children. Grounded in ethnographic principles, the study explored spatial practice within the two localities as research participants produced a visual representation of the places they took their children in the neighbourhood. Some families participated in a 'go-along', a type of participant observation, in which they were accompanied on a routine trip with their children. This allowed participants to visualise spatial dynamics in real space and time. The study found that classed habitus affects the neighbourhood geographies of families with mixed race children; with those ascribed as middle class having more spatial mobility and ascribed cosmopolitan habitus, than those assigned as lower class. However, working class parents of mixed race children also shared a cosmopolitan habitus and them, and their children, whilst having much less mobility, had more ethnically diverse friendship groups than middle class participants. The study concluded that families with mixed race children make choices about household residence based on an assessment of the social geographies of different localities. Whilst they remain interested in the level and composition of minority ethnic diversity, they are influenced by the intersection of a range of other social differences such as socio-economic differences, symbolic capital (habitus) and geography. New data emerged about potential working class 'edge areas'. These neighbourhoods where families with mixed race children had settled had average numbers of ethnic minority population and residents ascribed as more 'tolerant' towards those racially different, than in other working class urban areas.

The thesis analyses how, if at all, accession to international standards makes a difference to national minorities in Russia in the advancement of their cultural rights, focusing on the period 2000-2011. It further analyses the factors that influence particular forms of implementation of international standards. The study uses data from semi-structured interviews, as well as from legislation, legal judgements and Council of Europe documents. It focuses on three minorities as case studies: the Karelians, Mordovians and Tatars. The research is divided into three parts: 1) Practice and Law, investigating how the specific characteristics of the Russian domestic legal environment and of the relevant international standards generate a particular type of dynamics between the two; 2) Homogenisation, examining whether international standards can suspend or reverse Russia’s culturally homogenising tendencies since the 2000s; 3) Exclusion, investigating to what extent, if at all, international standards may modify the dynamics of majority-minority relations by facilitating the introduction of a form of participation that is effective, in the area of decision- and policy-making on minorities’ cultural rights. The thesis concludes that the role of international standards in the area of minorities’ cultural rights is restricted in scope in Russia. Two sets of reasons are identified. First, specific features of Russian politics and society: (i) Russia’s selective implementation of international law; (ii) the alternation of localism and centralism; (iii) Russia’s homogenising centralisation and ‘managed diversity’; (iv) the absence of guarantees for the upholding of minorities’ participatory rights, resulting in fictitious forms of participation. The second set of reasons relate to the complexities and weaknesses of international standards on minority rights themselves.

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This submission - one self-authored book and six refereed journal articles - constitutes a study of new racialised policy and media discourses that have emerged between 1997 and 2008 around the themes of community cohesion, managed migration and Britishness. It is argued that these discourses mark a new era in British 'race relations', breaking with an earlier consensus that had been forged in the late 1960s. As part of this discursive shift, an older notion of 'integration' as social, economic and political inclusion, to be effected by anti-discrimination legislation, multicultural tolerance and political representation, gave way to a new notion of'integration' defined as the adoption of 'British values', to be effected by oaths of allegiance, citizenship tests and various other techniques for reshaping the cultures and values of minority communities, particularly Muslims. Alongside this redefinition of integration was a shift in the central axis of 'race relations' from white-black to western-Muslim, and from a view of minority cultural identity as a stabilising force to one in which it was seen as threatening and needing clear limits placed on it. As well as resulting in new forms of racism against Muslims and asylum seekers, this shift has also gone hand in hand with new apparatuses of policing directed at these groups. Following a theoretical approach drawn from the work of A. Sivanandan, this political and social transition is analysed in the context of linked changes in global political economy and the resulting neoliberal transformation of the state, in particular through the politics of New Labour. Critical discourse analysis, semi-structured interviews and participant observation are the methods used to describe and analyse these new discourses of racism, migration and the state, and their interaction with the experiences of various racialised groups. 3

The Evolution of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community in the UK, 1913-2003 is an empirical study of the establishment and development of the Ahmadi community in the UK over ninety years. So far research on Muslims in the UK has to a great extent been focused on Muslims of South Asian origin and Sunni Islam. This study broadens understanding of Muslims in the UK by considering a largely overlooked Muslim minority, the Ahmadiyya, who are an unorthodox reform movement in Islam, founded by Mirza Ghulam Ahmad as a response to the prevailing political, economic and social position of Muslims in Punjab at the end of the 19th century. The Ahmadiyya, being a missionaryoriented movement, began propagating their beliefs in the UK in 1913 and have since established themselves in 87 locations. This thesis explores the various ways in which the community has become established in the UK: how the acquisition and retaining of members has contributed to consolidating the community internally as a united entity; how the creation of Ahmadiyya physical space has contributed to establishing the community in British society in general as well as in specific localities; and how the maintenance of links to the worldwide Ahmadiyya movement has contributed to establishing the UK community as part of that worldwide phenomenon. It argues that although the establishment of the Ahmadiyya community had broad similarities with the general trends associated with the development of the overall Muslim community, there have been significant differences stemming from it being an extension of the worldwide Ahmadiyya movement situated in the UK context. Their sectarian beliefs, and consequent persecution, their missionary ethos, organisational structure, leadership arrangements, political processes, migratory patterns, the make-up of their membership and their links with the worldwide movement have shaped how the community has acquired members, maintained internal unity and established a permanent and visible physical presence in the country.