The Madras Presidency’s Prisons and the British Empire, 1820s–1850s

This paper is based on the observation that projects to reform prisons in British India in the first half of the 19th century were remarkably parallel to those in Britain and other colonies of the British Empire. Therefore, it will be asked to what extent local discussions about imprisonment in India were connected to developments in the metropole, in other parts of the empire, and elsewhere in the colony and how such imperial connections influenced local practices. Recent studies on colonial India’s prisons have focused on the British possessions in north India, whereas the Madras Presidency’s penal history is as of yet mostly unstudied. The paper will look on two initiatives of prison reform undertaken by the Madras Government; firstly, an inquiry made in the 1820s to combat the high mortality in the jails, and secondly, attempts throughout the 1840s and 1850s to construct a penitentiary along the lines of penal systems in other parts of India and the British Empire. The two case studies promise insights into the body of knowledge about punishment that was accumulated in British India, its entanglement with debates in other parts of the empire, and the emergence of ‘imperial standards’ of imprisonment in the course of the 19th century.

European mobility and local political incorporation: The case of British and Romanian residents in Spain

This paper analyses the impact of European mobility in the field of the political nomination of intra-EU migrants in local elections. The study contributes to the debates in the literature related to immigrant nomination and representation by showing how group resources and political opportunities in the country of residence interact with the political opportunities of the European citizenship regime. It argues that the symbolic and legal status of European identity, representation in the European Parliament and strong links between political institutions in the countries of destination and origin play a positive role in boosting immigrant political entrepreneurs’ visibility vis-à-vis host country political actors. In order to illustrate these findings, the paper provides a qualitative comparison of British and Romanian residents in Spain.

The Political Candidacy of EU Migrants in their European Countries of Residence. The Case of British and Romanians Standing in Spanish Local Elections

What explains the variation in how European citizens of diverse origins are politically incorporated in the member states of residence? This paper argues that immigrant groups’ status in the host society plays an important role in political party responses to immigrants’ political participation. Drawing on the case of Romanian and British candidacies in the Spanish local elections from 2011, the paper finds that the level of competition between parties is the key mechanism for incorporating candidates from a positively/neutrally perceived group. Instead, a greater level of ethnic diversity encourages the incorporation of candidates from the negatively perceived group. To demonstrate this, the paper uses an original data-set with the Romanian and British candidates in a large number of Spanish localities.