The key concepts of the book are media, class, poverty, and shaming. The contributors to this book examine how certain social relations and their cultural meanings in the media, namely class and poverty, are transformed into factual or moral attributes of people and situations. Class and poverty are not understood as certain things and actions, or concepts and numbers; both class and poverty are assumed to be, above all, particular social relationships or a set of relations between people, things and symbols. Without denying that contempt for the destitute Other is an affect found throughout history and in various socioeconomic contexts, the chapters in this book – through their concern with the mediated gaze on class – narrate predominantly the challenges brought about by the media’s spectacular take on poverty and low status as they (at least) coincide with the neoliberal era. This volume will be essential reading for the scholars specialising in the study of media and social inequalities form the vantage points of Media Studies, Sociology, Anthropology or European Studies.

The Congressional Record is the official record of the proceedings and debates of the United States Congress. It is published daily when Congress is in session. The Congressional Record began publication in 1873. Debates for sessions prior to 1873 are recorded in The Debates and Proceedings in the Congress of the United States (1789-1824), the Register of Debates in Congress (1824-1837), and the Congressional Globe (1833-1873)

This two-volume open-access book offers a theoretically and empirically-grounded portrayal of the experiences of people claiming international protection in Europe on the basis of their sexual orientation or gender identity (SOGI). It shows how European asylum systems might and should treat asylum claims based on people’s SOGI in a fairer, more humane way. Through a combined comparative, interdisciplinary (socio-legal), human rights, feminist, queer and intersectional approach, this book examines not only the legal experiences of people claiming asylum on grounds of their SOGI, but also their social experiences outside the asylum decision-making framework. The authors analyse how SOGI-related claims are adjudicated in different European frameworks (European Union, Council of Europe, Germany, Italy and UK) and offer detailed recommendations to adequately address the intersectional experiences of individuals seeking asylum. This unique approach ensures that the book is of interest not only to researchers in migration and refugee studies, law and wider academic communities, but also to policy makers and practitioners in the field of SOGI asylum.

The Shame of Poverty invites the reader to question their understanding of poverty by bringing into close relief the day-to-day experiences of low-income families living in societies as diverse as Norway and Uganda, Britain and India, China, South Korea, and Pakistan. The volume explores Nobel laureate Amartya Sen's contention that shame lies at the core of poverty. Drawing on original research and literature from many disciplines, it reveals that the pain of poverty extends beyond material hardship. Rather than being shameless, as is often claimed by the media, people in poverty almost invariably feel ashamed at being unable to fulfil their personal aspirations or to live up to societal expectations due to their lack of income and other resources. Such shame not only hurts, adding to the negative experience of poverty, but undermines confidence and individual agency, can lead to depression and even suicide, and may well contribute to the perpetuation of poverty. Moreover, people in poverty are repeatedly exposed to shaming by the attitudes and behaviour of the people they meet, by the tenor of public debate that either dismisses them or labels them as lazy and in their dealings with public agencies. Public policies would be demonstrably more successful if, instead of stigmatising people for being poor, they treated them with respect and sought actively to promote their dignity. This book, together with the companion volume Poverty and Shame: Global Experiences, presents comparable evidence from the seven countries, challenges the conventional thinking that separates discussion of poverty found in the Global North from that prevalent in the Global South. It demonstrates that the emotional experience of poverty, with its attendant social and psychological costs, is surprisingly similar despite marked differences in material well-being and varied cultural traditions and political systems. In so doing, the volumes provide a foundation for a more satisfactory global conversation about the phenomenon of poverty than that which has hitherto been frustrated by disagreement about whether poverty is best conceptualised in absolute or relative terms. The volume draws on the ground-breaking research of an international team: Grace Bantebya-Kyomuhendo, Elaine Chase, Sohail Choudhry, Erika Gubrium, Ivar Lødemel, JO Yongmie (Nicola), Leemamol Mathew, Amon Mwiine, Sony Pellissery and YAN Ming.

Housing is no longer about having a place to live – but about state pressures to conform, norms and policies regarding citizenship, and practices of surveillance and security. Breaking new ground in the field of urban politics and international relations, Securitization of Property Squatting in Europe examines and critiques legislative initiatives and examines governmental attempts to reframe urban property squatting as a crime and a threat to domestic security. Using examples from France, Netherlands, Denmark, and Great Britain, Mary Manjikian argues that developments within the European Union – including terrorist attacks in London and Madrid, the rise of right wing extremist parties, and the lifting of barriers to immigration and travel within the EU – have had effects on housing policy, which has become the subject of state security policy in Europe’s urban areas. In Denmark, squatting has often had an ideological, anti-state character. In Paris, housing policy can be viewed as a type of identity politics with squatters as transnational actors who pose a transnational security threat. In Great Britain, the role of the press has created a drive to criminalize squatting. Events in the Netherlands present two competing notions of what housing is – a human right, or an economic good produced by the free market.

This book investigates how ideas of and discourses about Europe have been affected by images of the Mediterranean Sea and its many worlds from the nineteenth century onwards. Surprisingly, modern scholars have often neglected such an influence and, in fact, in most histories of the idea of Europe the Mediterranean is conspicuously absent. This might partly be explained by the fact that historians have often identified Europe with modernity (and the Atlantic world) and, therefore, in opposition to the classical world (centred around the Mediterranean). This book will challenge such views, showing that a plethora of thinkers, from the early nineteenth century to the present, have refused to relegate the Mediterranean to the past. Importance is given to the idea of a distinct ‘meridian thought’, a notion first set forth by Albert Camus and now reworked by French and Italian thinkers. As most chapters argue, this might represent an important tool for rethinking the Mediterranean and, in turn, it might help us challenge received notions about European identity and rethink Europe as the locus of ‘modernity’. Mediterranean Europe(s): Rethinking Europe from its Southern Shores will appeal to researchers and students alike interested in European studies and Mediterranean history.

This ground-breaking collection of research-based chapters addresses the themes of shame, blame and culpability in their historical perspective in the broad area of crime, violence and the modern state, drawing on less familiar territories such as Russia and Greece, not just on material from familiar locations in western Europe. Ranging from the early modern to the late twentieth century, the collection has implications for how we understand punishments imposed by states or the community today. Shame, blame and culpability is divided into three sections, with a crucial case study part complementing two theoretical parts on shame, and on blame and culpability; exploring the continuance of shaming strategies and examining their interaction with and challenge to 'modern' state-sponsored blaming mechanisms, including allocations of culpability. The collection includes chapters on the deviant body, capital punishment and, of particular interest, Russian case studies, which demonstrate the extent to which the Russian, like the Greek, experience need to be seen as part of a wider European whole when examining ideas and themes. The volume challenges ideas that shame strategies were largely eradicated in post-Enlightenment western states and societies; showing their survival into the twentieth century as a challenge to state dominance over identification of what constituted 'crime' and also over punishment practices. Shame, blame and culpability will be a key text for students and academics in the fields of criminology and crime, gender or European history.

With a particular emphasis on definitions, continuities, and change, this edited volume examines the historical role and function of haya' – or feelings of shame, modesty, and honor – in Islamic theology and law, and explores contemporary Muslims' engagements with the concept. The book explores various conceptions of haya' and the practices associated with the concept in both Muslim majority and minority contexts. The empirically rich contributions reveal how haya' is socially constructed in varying social and cultural environments across the globe. From medieval Islam to the modern day, this book demonstrates the importance of haya' and its temporal and spatial transformations.

According to international statistics, the world is currently undergoing one of the largest refugee catastrophes in modern history. This humanitarian crisis has stimulated the mobilization of countless private and public rescue and relief efforts. Yet, deep-seated concerns over potential breaches of national security and wide-spread fears over uncontrolled mass immigration have prompted many policy-makers to caution against the unregulated entry of foreigners with little or no identity documentation. In an effort to strike a balance between addressing the needs of these two competing sets of concerns, an increasing number of governments have instituted policies and procedures for identity verification. In this multi-authored work, the focus is placed upon the widespread governmental use of language analyses to investigate displaced persons’ registered origins. This dynamic collection of writings provides readers with a thought-provoking, politically-stimulating, intellectually challenging examination of the pitfalls and promise of these practices across differing sociopolitical, legal, linguistic, and geographical contexts. This contextual diversity reflects the unique strength of this reference work. Unlike so many other publications on the market that focus rigidly upon a single vantage point, this work offers a dynamic exploration of the theory and practice of language analysis for governmentally-mandated identification procedures. From the linguistic scholar to the human rights activist, the agency worker to the asylum-seeking applicant, this collection offers a complex and rich cross-section of professional and personal experiences. The multiplicity of perspectives is powerfully complemented by the heterogeneity of disciplines represented in this work. From sociology, psychology, demography, and language policy to linguistics, ethics, international affairs, government and politics, this work will satisfy a wide variety of readers’ scholarly interests and commensurately serves as an excellent reference work for researchers and practitioners as well as a valuable teaching resource for graduate and undergraduate courses.