'When I Land in Islamabad I Feel Home and When I Land in Heathrow I Feel Home': Gendered Belonging and Diasporic Identities of South Asian British Citizens in London, in Leicester and in North England

According to Deleuze and Guattari (1987) ‘de-territorialization’ is followed by a moment of re-territorialization. This moment, however, has to be regarded as a continuing educational process that becomes a different spatial site of social practices. It is argued in this chapter that regional, local as well as global identification override national and mono-ethno cultural identities, while shaping particular notions of gendered belonging and creating specific diasporic practices. Based on a sample of interviews with professional and academic South Asian British citizens in London, in Leicester, and in a number of Northern English cities gendered and generational patterns in terms of local diasporic identities are explored. Apart from multiple cultural belonging, foremost, territorial bonds and notions of group loyalty collapse at a point where temporary migration and settlement alternate in individual biographies.

Role of early visual cortex in trans-saccadic memory of object features

Early visual cortex (EVC) participates in visual feature memory and the updating of remembered locations across saccades, but its role in the trans-saccadic integration of object features is unknown. We hypothesized that if EVC is involved in updating object features relative to gaze, feature memory should be disrupted when saccades remap an object representation into a simultaneously perturbed EVC site. To test this, we applied transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) over functional magnetic resonance imaging-localized EVC clusters corresponding to the bottom left/right visual quadrants (VQs). During experiments, these VQs were probed psychophysically by briefly presenting a central object (Gabor patch) while subjects fixated gaze to the right or left (and above). After a short memory interval, participants were required to detect the relative change in orientation of a re-presented test object at the same spatial location. Participants either sustained fixation during the memory interval (fixation task) or made a horizontal saccade that either maintained or reversed the VQ of the object (saccade task). Three TMS pulses (coinciding with the pre-, peri-, and postsaccade intervals) were applied to the left or right EVC. This had no effect when (a) fixation was maintained, (b) saccades kept the object in the same VQ, or (c) the EVC quadrant corresponding to the first object was stimulated. However, as predicted, TMS reduced performance when saccades (especially larger saccades) crossed the remembered object location and brought it into the VQ corresponding to the TMS site. This suppression effect was statistically significant for leftward saccades and followed a weaker trend for rightward saccades. These causal results are consistent with the idea that EVC is involved in the gaze-centered updating of object features for trans-saccadic memory and perception.

Reparations for ‘guilty victims’: Navigating Complex Identities of Victim-Perpetrators in Reparation Mechanisms

Reparations are often declared victim-centred, but in transitional societies defining who is a victim and eligible for reparations can be a politically charged and controversial process. Added to this, the messy reality of conflict means that perpetrators and victims do not always fall in two separate categories. Instead in certain circumstances perpetrators can be victimised and victims can be responsible for victimising others. This article explores complex victims, who are responsible for victimising others, but have themselves been unlawfully victimised. Looking in particular at the 1993 Shankill bombing in Northern Ireland, as well as Colombia and Peru, such complex victims are often seen as ‘guilty’ or ‘bad’ victims undeserving of reparations. This article argues that complex victims need to be included in reparation mechanisms to ensure accountability and to prevent their exclusion becoming a source of victimisation and future violence. It considers alternative avenues of human rights courts, development aid, services and community reparations to navigate complex identities of victim-perpetrators. In concluding the author finds that complex identities can be accommodated in transitional societies reparation programmes through nuanced rules of eligibility and forms of reparations.