This work is a historical re-evaluation of the 1988 Outremont dispute that began as a small municipal affair involving two Hasidic congregations, Congregation Amour Pour Israel and Congregation Munchos Elozar-Munkatz. Both groups failed in their attempts to change a zoning bylaw that would allow the former to construct a synagogue at 1035 Saint-Viateur and the latter to retain its synagogue at 1030 Saint-Viateur. By the time it ended, the Canadian Jewish Congress and the Human Rights League of B'nai Brith had become involved in mediating the dispute and responding to the anti-Hasidic stance expressed by some francophone residents of Outremont and a number of journalists. Although several scholars have examined this incident, it has been secondary to other issues. Moreover, a comprehensive review of the scholarly literature written on the controversy shows that scholars' focus on the media fallout necessarily omits key elements of the incident: the historical narrative of the municipal vote, the extent of Jewish organizational involvement, the larger press reaction to the anti-Hasidic stance, and the positions taken by the Hasidim and the municipal officials themselves. This historical approach provides inclusion and analysis of these issues. Finally, a review of the literature written on Hasidim in Canada places this re-evaluation in its proper scholarly context.

Traditional thinking on security fails to explain the security predicament of Third World states. These states, with their existence assured by international recognition, are not primarily concerned with externally generated threats. Their internal characteristics violate the tenants of the realist theory, because they have more than one nation within their borders. The domestic conditions of these states make them internally insecure and weak---the threat of ethnic conflict great. / As such, placing security in the military sphere alone, ignores these contradictions which lead to an insecurity dilemma. Thus, the concept of security needs to be broadened to include, not merely the military but also the political, societal and economic factors. The threat posed to state security from dissenting ethnic groups is both a domestic and foreign policy issue. It is within this discussion, that the thesis examines Turkey's security predicament with regards to her Kurdish minority.

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No description available.

On November 10, 1988, Philipp Jenninger, President of the German Bundestag (FRG), held a speech in commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of Reichskristallnacht, or 'night of broken glass', a pogrom which was orchestrated by the National Socialist government against Germany's Jewish citizens. The speech proved to be extremely controversial and provoked heated reactions in Germany and around the world. / The following is an analysis of the discourse generated by the speech in Germany. The goal of my project is to elucidate the discursive structures that subtended the state of the German discours social in order to show the way in which the 'text' of Der Fall Jenninger was formed and informed by it. / The first part of the thesis shall serve as an introduction to the incident of Der Fall Jenninger. Part two will outline the precepts upon which I will be basing my analysis. Part three will consist of my analysis of Der Fall Jenninger.

Since the commencement of the 4th Republic in Nigeria in May 1999, one relatively permanent characterisation of the country’s political landscape has been belligerent ethno-nationalism or ethnic militancy. The activities of ethnic militias exacerbated insecurity; confronted the status of the state as the sole legitimate monopolist of the instruments of force and violence; exposed the weak loyalty and allegiance of the populace to the Nigerian nation-state project; and threatened its continued existence as a corporate entity. Decades of marginalisation and injustice foisted on the Niger Delta people by the Nigerian state in tandem with major Multinational Oil Corporations (MNOCs), precipitated the nasty experience of frustration and deprivation, which triggered a section of the youth in the region to embark on the formation of militia groups as an extra-constitutional method for negotiation, and redressing the political cum socio-economic dehumanising conditions of the region. Thus, there is a historically established case of grievance instigated by environmental degradation and despoliation, neglect, poverty, political exclusion and intensified military repression of the Delta people by the Nigerian state in collaboration with the MNOCs. However, though there are ethnic militias in other parts of the country, its rampant proliferation and seeming sustainability in the region -- in the face of organised state violence -- is unprecedented and deserves scholarly investigation. This study, therefore, investigates the extent to which the quest for opportunism and predation by the ethnic militias has led to the escalation of armed conflicts in the Niger Delta region during the timeline of this research. It seeks to establish a linkage between economic gains (through hostage taking for huge sums of money and illegal trading in petroleum products) and the intensification of armed conflicts by ethnic militias in the region. Further, the study systematically interrogates the extent to which international commercial collaborators boosted the violent activities of ethnic militias in the Delta geopolitical landscape. Using the qualitative research approach and data from both primary and secondary sources, the study establishes a correlation between economic opportunism, the proliferation of militias and the escalation of armed conflict in the region during the timeline of this research. Several young people also became highly attracted to belligerent ethno-nationalism in the region as a result of the greed to corner resources from illegal oil bunkering, kidnapping, outright patronage from the political elite and the MNOCs. There was rampant multiplicity and mutation of militias and armed gangs whose main purpose appears to be their involvement in the highly lucrative criminal business of hostage-taking for ransom rather than a principled struggle for resource control and socio-economic justice. Clearly, several people and groups have used such injustices as a rationale for justifying what otherwise would be criminal activities: oil theft, armed robbery and hostage taking for ransom. The quest for various forms of gains therefore motivated the ‘democratisation’ of ethnic militancy purportedly fighting for the Delta region; while in reality, criminality was being deployed as a veritable instrument for illegal resource exploitation, political patronage and primitive accumulation. The phenomenal attraction of people to militancy in the region reached alarming proportion in 2006 when kidnapping for ransom became a strategic weapon popularised by the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND). Generally speaking, it has been estimated that militias may not have been more than 20,000 persons in the region during the pre-kidnapping years. But by January 2009, field studies revealed that no fewer than 50,000 people were involved in militant activities -- a figure that represents more than 50 % of the Armed Forces of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. Further, this research also establishes a linkage between the activities of ethnic militias, illegal oil bunkering, foreign opportunistic traders and the sustainability of conflict in the region during the study period. The purchase of stolen crude oil by opportunistic international commercial traders from various countries of the world was the major source of sustainability of militia movements until 2005. It provided the much-needed arms and money for the cycle of violence and conflict and, thus, became a source of attraction to more militias. With the improved performances of security forces in the region and the consequent diversification of the militias into hostage taking, however, the level of conflict sustenance through oil theft and foreign networks reduced drastically between 2006 and 2009 in comparison with the pre-kidnapping years of 1999 to 2005. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2010.

In the beginning of the 1990's Swedish immigration policy, which bad been considered liberal and generous, became increasingly restrictive. A number of domestic as well as international factors led to new restrictions that particularly affected Bosnians with Croatian passports who applied for asylum. They were the first refugee group subject to new policy regulations and practices called 'temporary protection' (TUT). They also became the object of experimentation with diverse ideas concerning the development of a new immigration policy that emphasized the notion of 'repatriation' as opposed to 'integration'. This study consists of five articles that analyse these complex social processes from different methodological angles, trying to connect micro issues with macro ones, global issues with national issues, and local phenomena with practices affecting the individual. The introductory article deals with the experience of leaving one's country though the narrative of a single woman. During her period of immigration, she had been exposed to different national interests, discriminatory legislation and a variety of refugee experiences. These experiences included persecution, flight and emigration that were related to conditions of immigration, refuge and exclusion. The second article shows how the refugees coped with the labyrinth of temporality caused by the new Swedish refugee and immigration policy. This policy had been developed against the backdrop of EU harmonisation and insisted on temporary protection and repatriation. The third article is a comparative analysis of immigration processes in two different munici­palities: Malmö and Karlskrona. This article shows that such different institutional contexts create different coping strategies among refugees. For example, Malmö as a large munici­pality with a long history of immigration is different from Karlskrona, which is a smaller town without such experiences with foreigners. Also, in Malmö there was no specific refugee camp whereas there was one in Karlskrona. The fourth article deals with the impact of the Swedish welfare state's austerity policy on the reception of local refugees. As a consequence of these changes, special relationships among refugees developed. These included both friendship and animosity as well as conflict and solidarity. Such relationships challenge the conventional wisdom that assumes that differences in ethnicity will only lead to conflicts among different groups. The fifth article examines the limits of this conventional wisdom. For example, while conflicts among different ethnic groups from the former Yugoslavia persist, solidarity among these groups has also developed as they respond to the difficulties of immigration and social exclusion. In order to analyse the complexity of a process that includes the global, local and individual levels, I developed a multifaceted theoretical approach. This thesis addresses four aspects of a refugee's status: essentialization, thera- peutization, 'problem' that refugees cause for international state system and exclusion. In this connection, my main conclusion is that the social position of being a refugee in particular, as well as processes of social inclusion in general, can only be understood if we move beyond essential and biological explanations and beyond culturalization and therapeutization. Instead, we must focus on social and structural explanations. / digitalisering@umu

The government of Quebec has officially opposed federal multicultural policy since 1971. Although the provincial response to multiculturalism, now widely known as interculturalisme, began to take shape as of the early 1980s, ethnic minorities in the province continue to be served by distinct federal and provincial bureaucracies. Despite this, federal-provincial relations over ethnic policy in Quebec remain little studied. Provincial rhetoric and many theoretical writings on intergovernmental relations in Canada together give rise to expectations of competition or conflict. However, some specialists in the field warn against overlooking collaboration. In fact, original research undertaken to explore federal-provincial relations in this sensitive policy area produced evidence of collaboration between federal and provincial officials despite divergences of opinion both political and theoretical. In addition, a certain degree of complementarity was noted in federal and provincial funding of ethnocultural and community groups.

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Since the early sixties, social and political change in Quebec has fundamentally altered the relationships between the majority French and minority English-speaking populations. As francophones have laid claim to the decision-making spheres of power, anglophones have experienced losses to their community through out-migration and the loss of social power. This study reveals various responses within the church, incorporating concepts of community and 'place' as symbols in identity formation and cultural affirmation. Levels of financial commitment for individual parishes and mission outreach, numbers of Easter communicants and response to liturgical change all show distinctive patterns. The research also points to important implications for the church in relation to its aging population, the role of women, and the significance of family histories.