http://hdl.handle.net/1842/1680 2013-05-21T04:02:46Z 2013-05-21T04:02:46Z Cavaghan, Rosalind http://hdl.handle.net/1842/6595 2013-03-28T15:23:06Z 2012-01-01T00:00:00Z

Title: Gender Mainstreaming as a Knowledge Process: towards an understanding of perpetuation and change in gender blindness and gender bias Authors: Cavaghan, Rosalind Abstract: This thesis locates itself in wider developments in gender theory and examinations of the state’s production of gender inequality. It responds to two research problems in existing literature. Firstly, scholars have developed increasingly complex theorisations of the social construction of gender and the state’s role in it. This body of research has shown how gender blindness and gender bias in state policies produce inequality and how gender structures priorities, hierarchies and roles within state organisations. Fully operationalising these insights has, however, thus far proved difficult. Secondly, whilst existing research provides a nuanced picture of these multiple dynamics involved in the state’s reproduction of gender inequality, we cannot yet fully account for the processes through which these dynamics are maintained. As a result, our explanations of how change could be achieved are also under-developed. This thesis uses gender mainstreaming (GM) implementation as a model to explore these research problems, examining the processes underlying the ‘disappointing’ policy outcomes which existing analyses of GM implementation have documented (Bretherton 2001, Daly 2005, Mazey 2000). Whilst these existing studies provide an essential starting point, this thesis argues that many have applied an implicitly rigid or rationalistic approach to policy analysis, highlighting the disparity between the intended and actual outcomes of GM. This kind of approach fails to operationalise our understanding of the construction of gender as a process and a constantly renegotiated phenomenon. It also fails to exploit the research opportunities which GM implementation provides. To enable such an analysis, this thesis draws together literatures from policy studies, particularly interpretative policy analysis (Colebatch 2009, Pressman and Wildavsky 1984, Yanow 1993) and science and technology studies/the sociology of knowledge (STS/SK) (Latour and Callon 1981, Law 1986) to apply an understanding of policy implementation as a process of negotiation, where we analyse how policy is interpreted, understood and enacted, on the ground. This perspective emphasises how local responses to strategic policy demands emerge through collective processes of interpretation, which are heavily affected by pre-existing policy assumptions, activities and practices (Wagenaar 2004, Wagenaar et al 2003). These concepts are used to operationalise the concept of gender knowledge (Andresen and Doelling 2002, Caglar 2010, Cavaghan 2010, 2012, Doelling 2005) to investigate how shared (non)perceptions of gender inequality are institutionalised and perpetuated, whilst competing notions are marginalised. Thus developed, the gender knowledge concept enables us to grasp and analyse (non)perceptions of the gender inequality issue; the evidence or ways of thinking which underpin them; and the processes, materials and persons involved in institutionalising them to the exclusion of competing perceptions. This approach therefore operationalises the notion that gender and gendering is a process and connects the ‘genderedness of organisations’ (Benschop and Verloo 2006, Rees 2002) to gendered policy outputs. Examining ‘what is happening’ when GM is implemented in this manner provides an opportunity to identify mechanisms of resistance, i.e. the processes through which the production of gender inequality is maintained. By corollary, examining ‘successful’ incidences of GM implementation provides empirical examples of how change has occurred. The project thus aims to produce theoretical insights which can be extrapolated to a wider understanding of the perpetuation of the state production of gender inequality.

2012-01-01T00:00:00Z Dorman, W.J. http://hdl.handle.net/1842/6566 2013-02-27T12:34:01Z 2013-02-25T00:00:00Z

Title: Exclusion and Informality: The Praetorian Politics of Land Management in Cairo, Egypt Authors: Dorman, W.J. Abstract: Since the late 1970s, Western aid agencies, including the US Agency for International Development (AID) and the World Bank, sought to assist the Egyptian government in planning its capital, Cairo. The aim was to foster an administratively competent Egyptian state able to respond, for example, to informal urbanization of the city's agricultural periphery by channelling the city's growth into planned and serviced desert sites. However, these initiatives were almost entirely unsuccessful. Egyptian officials rejected engagement with the informal urbanization process. The projects became enmeshed in bureaucratic struggles over control of valuable state desert land. This article examines these failed planning exercises, first, in order to assess what they indicate about Egypt's authoritarian dispensation of power, in place since 1952 but challenged in the February 2011 overthrow of President Husni Mubarak. It concludes that project failure is diagnostic of the regime's exclusionary nature and the presence of autonomous centres of power such as the Egyptian military. Secondly, the article looks at how this political order shaped Cairo's largely uncontrolled growth by constraining the Egyptian state's capacity to manage it. Thus, urban planning in Cairo reveals how authoritarian power relations have been inscribed upon Egyptian social space.

2013-02-25T00:00:00Z Hunter, Alistair Pursell http://hdl.handle.net/1842/6463 2012-09-26T15:02:50Z 2012-06-29T00:00:00Z

Title: Retirement home? France’s migrant worker hostels and the dilemma of late-in-life return. Authors: Hunter, Alistair Pursell Abstract: Unlike many of their North African and West African compatriots who reunified with family and settled in France in the 1970s and 80s, the decision of migrant worker hostel residents not to return definitively to places of origin at retirement is puzzling. Firstly, it calls into question the assumptions of the ‘myth of return’ literature, which explains non-return on the basis of family localisation. In the case of ‘geographically-single’ hostel residents, however, the grounds for non-return cannot be family localisation, since the men’s families remain in places of origin. Secondly, older hostel residents also remain unmoved by the financial incentives of a return homewards, where their French state pensions would have far greater purchasing power. Instead of definitive return, the overwhelming preference of hostel residents is for back-and-forth migration, between the hostel in France and communities of origin. The aim of this dissertation is to resolve this puzzle, by asking: What explains the hostel residents’ preference for back-and-forth mobility over definitive return at retirement? In order to make sense of these mobility decisions, several theories of migration are presented and evaluated against qualitative data from a multi-sited research design incorporating ethnography, life story and semi-structured interviews, and archive material. This fieldwork was carried out across France, Morocco and Senegal. Although no one theory adequately accounts for all the phenomena observed, the added value of each theory becomes most apparent when levels of analysis are kept distinct: at the household level as regards remittances; at the kinship/village level as regards re-integration in the home context; at the meso-level of ethnic communities in terms of migrants’ transnational ties; and at the macro-level of social systems concerning inclusion in healthcare and administrative organisations. Widening the focus beyond the puzzle/dilemma of late-in-life mobility, the thesis concludes by questioning what ‘home’ can mean for the retired hostel residents. An innovative way of theorising home – building on conventional conceptions of home based on territory and community – is outlined, arguing that to be ‘at home’ can also mean to be ‘included’ in different ‘social systems’. With this argument the thesis aims to contribute to broader debates on what it means for immigrants to belong and achieve inclusion in society.

2012-06-29T00:00:00Z Kuosmanen, Jaakko Niilo http://hdl.handle.net/1842/6454 2012-09-26T14:46:45Z 2012-06-29T00:00:00Z

Title: Right to asylum and its protection Authors: Kuosmanen, Jaakko Niilo Abstract: The topic of this thesis is justice and asylum. The central argument in the thesis is that citizens of all states have a moral right that entitles them to asylum in certain circumstances of deprivation. The right to asylum can be understood as a general derivative right, and it is grounded in the more fundamental entitlement to basic needs. More specifically, I argue that all persons whose basic needs are insufficiently protected in their home states have the right to asylum when they cannot be assisted with other remedial instruments by the international community within a reasonable timeframe. By using the right to asylum as a normative evaluative standard, I also argue that the existing refugee protective institutions are morally unsatisfactory, and that a 'moral refugee regime' should be established to replace the current protective institutions. Then the questions becomes, what specific form these institutions should take. In the thesis I focus primarily on one institutional proposal, 'the tradable quota scheme', and its ethical dimensions. I defend the tradable quota scheme against several lines of criticism, and suggest that the scheme constitutes a normatively viable alternative for the existing institutional framework. Finally, I examine obligations in the protection of the right to asylum in circumstances of partial compliance. I conclude that the citizens of complying states have the obligation to 'pick up the slack' and assist those bearers of the right to asylum who are unjustly denied assistance by the non-complying states.

2012-06-29T00:00:00Z