A new landscape of arts-based buildings and comparative cultural policies on the island of Ireland: the curse of Jocasta's necklace

Much current cultural policy research focuses on activity traditionally viewed as arts practice: visual arts, music, literature and dance. Architecture’s role in the discussion of cultural policy is, however, less certain and thus less frequently interrogated. The study presented here both addresses this dearth of in-depth research while also contributing to the interdisciplinary discussion of cultural policy in wider terms. In seeking to better understand how architectural culture is regulated and administered in a specific case study, it unpacks how the complicated relationships of nominal and explicit policies on both sides of the Irish/Northern Irish border contributed to the significant expansion of arts-based buildings 1995-2008. It contrasts political and cultural motivations behind these projects during a period of significant economic growth, investment and inward immigration. Data has been gathered from both official published policies as well as interviews with elite actors in the decision-making field and architects who produced the buildings of interest in both countries. With the sizeable number of arts-based buildings now completed in both Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, one must wonder if this necklace of buildings is, like Jocasta’s, a thing of both beauty and redolent with a potential future curse. It is the goal of this project to contribute to the larger applied and critical discussion of these issues and to engage with future policy design, administration and, certainly, evaluation.

Resistance or Resilience? Tracking the Pathway of Recent Arrivals to a ‘New’ Rural Destination

Recent patterns of migration indicate that international migrants are not confined to urban gateways. Instead many migrants have settled in new destination areas located in rural and small town areas. While this might appear to be a positive phenomenon for rural areas struggling with decline and stagnation, the reality is that many of these areas are ill-equipped to manage the rate and pace of change that has been witnessed in recent years. Migration to established, typically urban areas has been the subject of extensive research. However, little is known about the way in which migrants navigate their way through social structures as they settle into destinations with little experience of immigration. Using empirical research, this article considers the way in which migrants navigate their way through social structures to establish life in a so-called ‘new’ migration destination. It analyses the way in which government and civil society respond to their needs of recent arrivals, showing how both NGO’s and the statutory sector play an important role in this process. It considers the ramifications for these different sectors and the implications for so-called ‘new’ destinations as they become more established or ‘mature’ areas of immigration.

A new landscape of arts-based buildings and comparative cultural policies on the island of Ireland: the curse of Jocasta's necklace

Much current cultural policy research focuses on activity traditionally viewed as arts practice: visual arts, music, literature and dance. Architecture’s role in the discussion of cultural policy is, however, less certain and thus less frequently interrogated. The study presented here both addresses this dearth of in-depth research while also contributing to the interdisciplinary discussion of cultural policy in wider terms. In seeking to better understand how architectural culture is regulated and administered in a specific case study, it unpacks how the complicated relationships of nominal and explicit policies on both sides of the Irish/Northern Irish border contributed to the significant expansion of arts-based buildings 1995-2008. It contrasts political and cultural motivations behind these projects during a period of significant economic growth, investment and inward immigration. Data has been gathered from both official published policies as well as interviews with elite actors in the decision-making field and architects who produced the buildings of interest in both countries. With the sizeable number of arts-based buildings now completed in both Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, one must wonder if this necklace of buildings is, like Jocasta’s, a thing of both beauty and redolent with a potential future curse. It is the goal of this project to contribute to the larger applied and critical discussion of these issues and to engage with future policy design, administration and, certainly, evaluation.

Understanding Racial Tensions in Northern Ireland: Threat, Paranoia and the Fear of Loss

This paper will explore the development of increased group tensions in Northern Ireland
over the past decade with a special emphasis being placed upon rising racial tensions in cities such
as Belfast and Lisburn. The paper will analyse why Northern Ireland has been described as the new
race-hate capital of Europe and, through a case-study of Loyalism, will argue that if this growth in
racist sentiment is to be prevented, more needs to be done to understand the causes of such feeling,
particularly within loyalist working-class areas. I will argue that society as a whole needs to address
the fears and anxieties of those that perceive themselves to be under threat from the recent increase
in immigration or else we risk creating a new cause célèbre for those that would seek to extend the
lifetime of our paramilitary organisations. Moreover, at a time when loyalist communities feel politically
alienated and lacking representation, there is a real danger of British far-right groups exploiting the
situation and making long-term political capital.

Gendered Spaces and Wounded Bodies: Yamina Benguigui's 'Inch'Allah Dimanche'

Yamina Benguigui is a pioneer in the representation of Maghrebi immigration to France, and has produced a number of works of documentary and fictional film on the subject. This article discusses her fictional film Inch'Allah dimanche (2001). The film portrays the trajectory of a young woman, Zouina, who takes her children and mother-in-law to join her husband in France. The film is unique for its close focus on the space of the home, and the negotiation of gendered spaces within the strict confines set by Zouina's husband. In this article, I consider Zouina's tentative steps towards emancipation from these confines, focusing on preconceived notions of gendered spaces across different cultures. I consider possible interpretations of the final moment of wounding in the film, in which Zouina breaks through a window with her bare hands, destroying the barrier between the interior, private space of the home and the exterior, public space of the street.

Relative role of deterministic and stochastic determinants of soil animal community: a spatially explicit analysis of oribatid mites

1. Ecologists are debating the relative role of deterministic and stochastic determinants of community structure. Although the high diversity and strong spatial structure of soil animal assemblages could provide ecologists with an ideal ecological scenario, surprisingly little information is available on these assemblages.
2. We studied species-rich soil oribatid mite assemblages from a Mediterranean beech forest and a grassland. We applied multivariate regression approaches and analysed spatial autocorrelation at multiple spatial scales using Moran's eigenvectors. Results were used to partition community variance in terms of the amount of variation uniquely accounted for by environmental correlates (e.g. organic matter) and geographical position. Estimated neutral diversity and immigration parameters were also applied to a soil animal group for the first time to simulate patterns of community dissimilarity expected under neutrality, thereby testing neutral predictions.
3. After accounting for spatial autocorrelation, the correlation between community structure and key environmental parameters disappeared: about 40% of community variation consisted of spatial patterns independent of measured environmental variables such as organic matter. Environmentally independent spatial patterns encompassed the entire range of scales accounted for by the sampling design (from tens of cm to 100 m). This spatial variation could be due to either unmeasured but spatially structured variables or stochastic drift mediated by dispersal. Observed levels of community dissimilarity were significantly different from those predicted by neutral models.
4. Oribatid mite assemblages are dominated by processes involving both deterministic and stochastic components and operating at multiple scales. Spatial patterns independent of the measured environmental variables are a prominent feature of the targeted assemblages, but patterns of community dissimilarity do not match neutral predictions. This suggests that either niche-mediated competition or environmental filtering or both are contributing to the core structure of the community. This study indicates new lines of investigation for understanding the mechanisms that determine the signature of the deterministic component of animal community assembly.

Intergenerational Solidarity and Justice in Ireland: towards a new national dialogue

Gross domestic product plummets. Unemployment soars. Large-scale emigration reemerges after a decade of labor-market driven immigration. The International Monetary Fund and European Union are called to bail out the economy. Indebtedness haunts households in the aftermath of a spectacular housing market crash. The Celtic Tiger is firmly consigned to history books as Ireland’s economic fortunes have waned with unprecedented rapidity. The trials of the economy and policy are highly visible in the media and political debates. However, we know little about how these public travails are reflected in the private sphere where the recession is translated into mass emigration of young workers, defaults on mortgages, former twoearner households turning into no-earner families, and cutbacks in health and social care services that leave many younger and older citizens without the supports on which they could rely.

From North Africa to France:Family Migration in Text and Film

Over the past four decades immigration to France from the Francophone countries of North Africa has changed in character. For much of the twentieth century, migrants who crossed the Mediterranean to France were men seeking work, who frequently undertook manual labour, working long hours in difficult conditions. Recent decades have seen an increase in family reunification - the arrival of women and children from North Africa, either accompanying their husbands or joining them in France. Contemporary creative representations of migration are shaped by this shift in gender and generation from a solitary, mostly male experience to one that included women and children. Just as the shift made new demands of the 'host' society, it made new demands of authors and filmmakers as they seek to represent migration. This study reveals how text and film present new ways of thinking about migration, moving away from the configuration of the migrant as man and worker, to take women, children and the ties between them into account.

The Map of Watchful Architecture 2.0:Defensive forms along Ireland's border

For The Map of Watchful Architecture I only concerned myself with defensive architecture along the Border. As the map followed a border it came out as a wavy line of points. This was largely artificial, I only charted architecture within the Border corridor, but was not entirely artificial. That linear landscape has long been staked-out by the regularity of certain kinds of architecture. The 1st/2nd century Black Pig’s Dyke and Dorsey correspond with today’s Border. The concentration of souterrains in north Louth indicate that it may have been a volatile interface zone in later centuries. In 1618 Londonderry and its walls were built. Further north and two centuries later, Martello Towers were constructed to watch over Lough Foyle. During the Second World War pillboxes and observation posts were manned along the Border, close to what was now an international frontier. Then came the Operation Banner installations built during The Troubles. All this adds up to be one of the longest unbroken traditions of defensive architecture anywhere in Western Europe, a tradition some thought finally broken as the last of the Operation Banner towers were de-installed in 2007. But, take a bus south across the Border and you will often be pulled over by the Garda Síochána. They ID check the passengers in an attempt to stop illegal immigration via the UK. What about illegal immigrants who walk through the fields or along quiet lanes? They will have understood the Border is not really how it seems on most maps. It is not a solid line, it is a row of points.

Right-Wing Violence in Germany: Assessing the Objectives, Personalities and Terror Trail of the National Socialist Underground and the State's Response to It

In the last five years the forces of organised right-wing extremism have made electoral advances across many states in contemporary Europe. Germany has not been immune and the extreme right party, the National Democratic Party of Germany won its first seat in the European Parliament since 1989. The recent successes of the extreme right pose issues for European society about tolerance and immigration policy, but this scene has also been associated with an upsurge in racially motivated political violence and acts of right-wing terrorism. Much of this violence is perpetrated by small neo-Nazi styled groups. This paper looks at the most notorious and recent of such groups to emerge in Germany, the National Socialist Underground. The paper explores the origins and personalities behind this terror cell, provides derails of its criminal activities and murder spree, and questions why it took so long for the authorities to identify the NSU.

An anthropometric history of the World, 1810-1980: did migration and globalization influence country trends?

We find that regional height levels around the world were fairly uniform throughout most of the 19th century, with two exceptions: above-average levels in Anglo-Saxon settlement regions and below-average levels in Southeast Asia. After 1880, substantial diver- gences began to differentiate other regions -- making the world population taller, but more unequal. During the late 19th century and 20th century, heights between world regions devi- ated significantly, when incomes also became very unequal. Interestingly, during the “breaking point period” between the two regimes, heights declined significantly in the cattle-rich New World countries, whereas they started to increase in Old Europe. We discuss in this study whether immigration was a core factor to influence the height decline in the “Anthropometric Decline of the Cowboy and Gaucho Empires”.

Career choices on graduation--a study of recent graduates from University College Cork

INTRODUCTION: Irish dental graduates are eligible to enter general dental practice immediately after qualification. Unlike their United Kingdom counterparts, there is no requirement to undertake vocational training (VT) or any pre-registration training. VT is a mandatory 12-month period for all UK dental graduates who wish to work within the National Health Service. It provides structured, supervised experience in training practices and through organised study days.

AIMS: This study aimed to profile the career choices made by recent dental graduates from UCC. It aimed to record the uptake of VT and associate posts, and where the graduates gained employment.

METHODOLOGY: A self-completion questionnaire was developed and circulated electronically to recent graduates from UCC. An existing database of email addresses was used and responses were returned by post or by email. A copy of the questionnaire used is included as Appendix 1.

RESULTS: Questionnaires were distributed over an eight-week period and 142 were returned, giving a response rate of 68.90%. Responses were gathered from those who graduated between 2001 and 2007; however, the majority came from more recent classes. Overall, the majority of graduates took up associate positions after qualification (71.8%) with smaller numbers undertaking VT (28.2%). Increasing numbers have entered VT in recent years, including 54.3% from the class of 2007. Overall, the majority of graduates initially took up positions in England (43%); however, in recent times more have been employed in Scotland. Subsequent work profiles of the graduates illustrate that the majority are now working as associates in general practice (51.4%) and in Ireland (54.2%).

CONCLUSIONS: There has been an increase in the proportion of UCC graduates undertaking VT. Graduates tended to move away from Ireland initially to gain employment. There has been a shift away from employment in England towards Scotland where the majority of new UCC graduates are now initially employed. The majority of graduates returned to Ireland for employment after the initial move away.

Religion, anti-slavery, and identity: Irish Presbyterians, the United States, and transatlantic evangelicalism, c. 1820-1914

Scholars have devoted much attention to the causes and consequences of Presbyterian emigration from Ulster to the thirteen colonies before 1776. This article moves beyond the eighteenth century to examine the continued religious links between Presbyterians in Ireland and the United States in the nineteenth century. It begins with an examination of the influence of evangelicalism on both sides of the Atlantic and how this promoted unity in denominational identity, missionary activity to convert Catholics, and revivalist religion during the first half of the century. Though Irish Presbyterians had great affection for their American co-religionists, they were not uncritical, and significant tensions did develop over slavery. The article then examines the religious character of Scotch-Irish or Ulster-Scots identity in the late nineteenth century, which was articulated in response to the alleged demoralising influence of large-scale Irish immigration during and after the Famine of the 1840s, the so-called Romanisation of Catholicism, and the threat of Home Rule in Ireland. The importance of identity politics should not obscure religious developments, and the article ends with a consideration of the origins and character of fundamentalism, perhaps one of the most important cultural connections between Protestants in Northern Ireland and the United States in the twentieth century.

Activism and Restraint within the UK Supreme Court

This article provides evidence for the extent to which the UK Supreme Court as a body - and Supreme Court Justices as individuals - have displayed an activist or restrained attitude to their decision-making role. Taking October 2009 as the starting point (when the UKSC came into existence) the article surveys the degree to which the Court and individual Justices have (1) departed from precedents, (2) interpreted legislation in unanticipated ways, (3) rejected the government's position on matters of social, economic or foreign policy, and (4) developed the common law. The article concludes that, while the Supreme Court as a whole remains as conservative as the Appellate Committee of the House of Lords which preceded it (with the possible exception of its approach to immigration law), there are notable differences between the attitudes of individual Justices, one or two of whom appear to be straining at the leash.

Risk and the Politics of Public Health:A Critical Review

Twentieth century public health initiatives have been crucially informed by perceptions and constructions of risk. Notions of risk identification, assessment and mitigation have guided political and institutional actions even before these concepts became an explicit part of the language of public administration and policy making. Past analyses investigating the link between risk perceptions and public health are relatively rare, and where researchers have investigated this nexus, it has typically been assumed that the collective identification of health risks has led to progressive improvements in public health activities.
Risk and the Politics of Public Health addresses this gap by presenting a detailed critical historical analysis of the evolution of risk thinking within medical and health related discourses. Grouped around the four core themes of 'immigration', 'race', 'armed conflict' and 'detention and prevention' this book highlights the innovative capacity of risk related concepts as well as their vulnerability to the dysfunctional effects of dominant social ideologies. Risk and the Politics of Public Health is an essential reference for those who seek to understand the interplay of concepts of risk and public health throughout history as well as those who wish to gain a critical understanding of the social dynamics which have underpinned, and continue to underpin, this complex interaction.