Longitudinal Pathways Between Political Violence and Child Adjustment: The Role of Emotional Security about the Community in Northern Ireland

Links between political violence and children's adjustment problems are well-documented. However, the mechanisms by which political tension and sectarian violence relate to children's well-being and development are little understood. This study longitudinally examined children's emotional security about community violence as a possible regulatory process in relations between community discord and children's adjustment problems. Families were selected from 18 working class neighborhoods in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Participants (695 mothers and children, M=12.17, SD=1.82) were interviewed in their homes over three consecutive years. Findings supported the notion that politically-motivated community violence has distinctive effects on children's externalizing and internalizing problems through the mechanism of increasing children's emotional insecurity about community. Implications are considered for understanding relations between political violence and child adjustment from a social ecological perspective.

Youth in Contexts of Political Violence: A Developmental Approach to the Study of Youth Identity and Emotional Security in Their Communities

Going beyond the association between youth exposure to political violence and psychopathology, the current article examines within-person change in youth strength of identity with their ethno-political group and youth reports of the insecurity in their communities. Conceptually related but growing out of different paradigms, both group identity and emotional insecurity have been examined as key variables impacting youth responses to threats from other group members. The goal of the current study is to review previous studies examining these two key variables and to contribute new analyses, modeling within-person change in both variables and examining covariation in their growth. The current article uses data from 823 Belfast adolescents over 4 years. The results suggest youth are changing linearly over age in both constructs and that there are ethno-political group differences in how youth are changing. The results also indicate that change in insecurity is related to strength of identity at age 18, and strength of identity and emotional insecurity are related at age 18. Implications and directions for future work in the area of youth and political violence are discussed. © 2014 American Psychological Association.

The Political and Judicial Life of Metadata: Digital Rights Ireland and the Trail of the Data Retention Directive. CEPS Paper in Liberty and Security No. 65, May 2014

This paper examines the challenges facing the EU regarding data retention, particularly in the aftermath of the judgment Digital Rights Ireland by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) of April 2014, which found the Data Retention Directive 2002/58 to be invalid. It first offers a brief historical account of the Data Retention Directive and then moves to a detailed assessment of what the judgment means for determining the lawfulness of data retention from the perspective of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights: what is wrong with the Data Retention Directive and how would it need to be changed to comply with the right to respect for privacy? The paper also looks at the responses to the judgment from the European institutions and elsewhere, and presents a set of policy suggestions to the European institutions on the way forward. It is argued here that one of the main issues underlying the Digital Rights Ireland judgment has been the role of fundamental rights in the EU legal order, and in particular the extent to which the retention of metadata for law enforcement purposes is consistent with EU citizens’ right to respect for privacy and to data protection. The paper offers three main recommendations to EU policy-makers: first, to give priority to a full and independent evaluation of the value of the data retention directive; second, to assess the judgment’s implications for other large EU information systems and proposals that provide for the mass collection of metadata from innocent persons, in the EU; and third, to adopt without delay the proposal for Directive COM(2012)10 dealing with data protection in the fields of police and judicial cooperation in criminal matters.