Timetable and Abstracts

Dr. Jussi Ronkainen (PhD, sociology) is the Head of RDI and the Director of Juvenia – Youth Research and Development Centre at the South-Eastern Finland University of Applied Sciences. Ronkainen has 20 years of research experience especially from the fields of mixed-methods research, interdisciplinary youth research and citizenship studies. He has led, coordinated and planned a commendable variety of regional, national and international research and development projects in the youth field.

*the schedule may change

Dr. Alexis Buettgen is a community-engaged scholar with an interdisciplinary academic background in community psychology and critical disability studies. Alexis has over 15 years of experience in community-based participatory research and evaluation as a senior researcher at several community-based research organisations, academic institutions and activist organisations of people with disabilities. These experiences inform her research program to critically examine issues of poverty, exclusion, and intersectional approaches to promote equity, sovereignty, and social and environmental justice for historically marginalized groups of people. Her current research focuses on disability inclusion in the green economy which aims to bridge the gap between academic knowledge and climate action. Her work connects the local with the global through fieldwork carried out at local, national, regional and international levels and published for academic, government and broader community audiences. She is Co-Editor-In-Chief of a major reference work – Handbook of Disability: Critical Thought and Social Change in a Globalizing World (2022) – and affiliated with McMaster and York University in Canada.

Renata Gomes Alcoforado has worked in the Department of Accounting and Actuarial Sciences at the Federal University of Pernambuco (Brazil), since 2015. Member of the Transitional Government 2022/2023 in Brazil. Member of the Portuguese Actuaries Institute. Member of the Portuguese research centre CEMAPRE. Her research interest focus on setting up benefit age adjustments on public pensions, considering heterogeneity among states and gender. Also in Risk and Ruin Theory, particularly on ruin and dividend measures in the renewal risk model. Her PhD, Summa Cum Laude, is on Applied Mathematics to Economics and Management at ISEG – Universidade de Lisboa (Portugal).

I interrogate the knotting of Empire and disaster in Kashmir, a disputed territory, currently claimed in its entirety by both India and Pakistan. Drawing on ethnographic research, planning reports, and my experiences as a humanitarian in the region, I show how technologies of disaster management prop colonial occupation. Communities in Kashmir remain highly susceptible to environmental catastrophes or are unable to recover from them, not simply because of poor planning or careless humanitarian intervention, as commonly insisted, but because of the ongoing occupation that structures these domains. I argue that disaster resilience can only be achieved if the structures of occupation are dismantled. And that the concepts and categories put forth by disaster studies must be refreshed in line with local calls for self-determination and freedom. Or, how might foregrounding decolonization, rather than disaster management, help re-envision Kashmir’s futurities amidst environmental decline and ruin?

Omer Aijazi, University of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada

Although climate change is ‘the biggest threat that modern humans have ever faced,’ we are not all in it together. If you are among the half of the world’s people that have a very low income you are likely to suffer far more than the rest. Your livelihood, especially if it comes from farming, is likely to be much more precarious and sensitive to climate shocks. Your housing is likely to be less resilient to extreme heat, hurricanes and flooding. Your migration options, thanks to a hostile international border regime, are likely to be hazardous and limited.
​
Despite these challenges, and growing climate justice demands from Black and Indigenous climate movements, economic justice and income security are rarely considered in mainstream climate policy. This session examines why these crucial issues are so often left out and explores the potential of a new big idea – a global carbon cap and dividend – to plug the gap.

Laura Bannister, Campaign Director of World Basic Income, UK

Local Governments in India are playing a prominent role to tackle many of the causes and effects of climate change. Being closer to the people, local governments have the opportunities to catalyse and sustain the behavioural change at individual and community levels necessary for building a more resilient community. Given their proximity to the community local governments have the advantage of responding faster and more effectively to local climate events than institutions and organisations at higher levels of the governance structures. Generally, it is observed that climate change can only be addressed at higher level through national or international policy making and large scale financial investments in implementation and enforcement. While global commitment and co-operation are paramount, sustained local actions initiated and coordinated by local governments are necessary for successfully addressing climate issues.

In India, many of the local governments have come forward with action plans to protect the communities from the threat of climate change. The case of one rural local body needs special mention as it stands ahead in its myriad activities and has become a role model for others to emulate. It is the Meenamgadi Gram Panchayat of Kerala with its focused attention on Carbon Neutral. This rural local government followed an integrated systematic approach considering local risks, vulnerabilities and there by securing maximum benefits for the local community. Of course, Meenamgadi’s success story is replicated all over India where there are three million local governments joining hands to create a resilient community.

As financial support is meagre from the national government, local governments go for no cost to low-cost activities, and they are not in a position to undertake bigger projects which involves financial commitment. At the national level there is dearth of funds. No doubt developing countries require “substantive enhancement” in climate finance beyond the floor commitment of $100 billion a year to meet their ambitious goals and rich countries need to lead the mobilisation of resources, India has trust at the ongoing UN climate submit COP-27 in Egypt.

Rich countries, however, have failed to deliver this finance. Developing countries, including India,are pushing with pace to agree to new global climate finance target; also known as the collective quantified goal on climate finance (NCQG) – which they say should be in trillions of dollars given that the cost of addressing and adapting to climate change have grown substantially. Indeed, India has clearly stated that to meet climate action the national determined contribution (NDC) requires financial, technological and capacity building support from the developed countries.

P.P.Balan, Consultant, Ministry of Panchayt Raj, Government of India, India

After the Kyoto Protocol, forest-centric climate change mitigation strategies have gained momentum in the policy arena and academic discourses. United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) claimed forests could play an inevitable role in achieving Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Paris Agreement goal. The over emphasising of forests as individual entities often undermined the rights and role of marginal forest-dwelling communities. India is one of the top forest-rich countries, with more than 275 million forest-dependent people. Forest-dwelling communities in India have always been the victims of colonial and post-independent policies and Acts. This paper traces the historical injustice from colonial to post-independence with forest-dwelling communities. Also, it critically analyses the politics of forest rights in India.

Forest-dwelling communities have been living in the vicinity of forests since the dawn of civilisation. In ancient times, forests were managed through different customary laws across different parts of the country. After colonisation, the British imperial government enacted many draconian laws to maximise revenue and control over forest resources. After independence, the Government of India continued the colonial legacy. Moreover, due to the enactment of the Wildlife Conservation Act (1972), forest-dependent communities became encroachers on their ancestral land and faced mass eviction. As a result of the nationwide mass movement, Campaign for Survival & Dignity, the Government of India was compelled to enact the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act in 2006, commonly known as the Forest Rights Act (FRA 2006). The objectives of FRA 2006 are to un-do historical injustice and decentralise forest governance. FRA 2006 recognise several rights, including individual, community, and management rights. Although the FRA 2006 in place, still the forest department is subverting the FRA 2006 by slowing down the implementation process to rejecting the claim of forest rights even without citing any reason. In 2019, Supreme Court ordered the eviction of forest dwellers (approximately 10 million) in response to a writ petition on the constitutional validity of FRA 2006 by Wildlife First (NGO). Later, Supreme Court Stayed the eviction order. The space of forest governance becomes the tussling ground of holding power among different stakeholders. The recent climate change centric forest management strategy intervention can further centralise forest governance. There is a high possibility of re doing injustice to forest-dwelling communities. Without doing justice to the forest-dependent marginal communities, it’s unlikely to achieve climate justice broadly social justice or SDGs.

Amir Sohel and Prof. Farhat Naz, Indian Institute of Technology Jodhpur (IITJ), Rajasthan, India

Green Social Work (GSW) has emerged as a theoretical movement within the Social Work discipline to address the ‘environmental question’, by bridging the social and the ecological worlds and recognizing the intersection between ecological and socioeconomic injustices. GSW – otherwise referred to as Eco-social Work as well – denounces the consequences that environmental degradation and the exploitation of nature have on the biopsychosocial wellbeing of individuals and communities, especially those who are socioeconomically disadvantaged. With the acceleration of climate change and the climate emergency, the questions posed by GSW seem to be of utmost importance for the future of the social work profession in a world of growing socio-environmental injustices. However, I would argue that, despite the essentially political character of GSW, it does not go far enough to recognize (and perhaps advocate against) the roots of climate change, which can be traced back to the nature of the global capitalist system itself and its (irrational) logic of economic self-interest, infinite accumulation of resources, and the commodification of the environment. With that said, the main goal of this conceptual research paper is to address the GSW debate through the theoretical and political lenses of ecosocialism, in order to provide a more critical and perhaps more politically engaged stance on socio-environmental questions faced by social work scholars and practitioners.

Erick da Luz Scherf, Department of Social Studies, University of Stavanger, Norway

Development projects and economic development ideas affect the environment. The people get affected at the marginal position (indigenous/ local) in societies and the mainstream. Likewise, in India, development projects affect marginalized communities, their sense of security, and their ability to use welfare services and resources. In times of populist politics, religions can effectively promote (or block) climate change mitigation and adaptation. The solutions to environmental problems are provided through religious sentiments and rhetoric. Populist leaders disseminate environmental values and worldviews to their people, engage in lobbying for corresponding political decisions, and implement mitigation or adaptation projects. Historically, various scholarships have suggested a “greening” of religions and developed a discourse that leads to faith traditions. Faith leaders adopt the discourse and increasingly draw on their potential and address environmental challenges. The common people are provided the religious solution to environmental problems even by the nationalist school of thought, especially in India. The faith leaders and communities became crucial agents in climate change mitigation and adaptation. In many regions of India, the rhetoric of religion, nation, and environment goes hand in hand. Religion is a tool to mobilize the mass and hence, it is assumed to play a central role in people’s worldviews and everyday lifestyles as well as in the public sphere where faith leaders often enjoy high credibility. This paper would be focusing on the empirical research conducted in the state of Madhya Pradesh in India to situate the role of faith leaders in raising the rhetoric of greening religion and an increasing grasp of environmental problems in politics.

Akanksha Indora, Ph.D. Research Scholar at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India

*the schedule may change

Dr Simon Prideaux (retired) was an Associate Professor of Social Welfare, Disability Studies and Crime in the School of Sociology and Social Policy, University of Leeds (England). At present, he is the Co-founder and Co-director of (In)Justice International. To date, he has written, co-authored and edited five books entitled Crimes, Criminality and Injustice: An Interdisciplinary Collection of Revelations (2023), Crimes of States and Powerful Elites: A Collection of Case Studies (2021), State Crime and Immorality: The Corrupting Influence of the Powerful (2016), Understanding Disability Policy (2012), Not So New Labour: A Sociological Critique of New Labour’s Policy and Practice (2005). He has also published in the journals Social Policy & Administration, the Canadian Journal of Sociology, Political Quarterly, Disability & Society and the International Journal of Social Welfare. Talks and/or keynote speeches have been given in Canada (Toronto), the Czech Republic (Olumouc), Finland (Mikkeli), Japan (Osaka and Tokyo), Malta (Saint Julians), Portugal (Braga and Lisbon), Slovakia (Tatranska Lomnica), Taiwan (Chun Cheng, Kaohsiung and Taipei) and the UK (Bath and Lancaster).

Dr. Kari Saari works as a researcher at Juvenia –Youth Research and Development Centre at South-Eastern Finland University of Applied Sciences (XAMK). He holds the title of docent (sociology of law and criminology) at the University of Turku, Finland. His research interests have focused on youth studies, civic activism, social movements, ethnic relations, citizenship and the relations between the police and citizens. Recently Saari has worked as a researcher in two projects funded by the Academy of Finland (‘Citizenship Constellations’/ ‘Citizen Mindscapes’) and EU-funded (FP7) international ‘Memory, Youth, Political Legacy and Civil Engagement (MYPLACE)’ project.  

This presentation evaluates the role of arts in representing the truth in the movement of people. It focuses on art documentaries in response to the second enormous wave of migration that happened in 2014 and 2015 because of the crisis in North Africa and the South-West of Asia, especially Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan. There is no doubt that migration and looking for a new living place are neither a new matter nor can it be bounded to a specific region. This study explores how displacements and the movement of people in different contexts are represented in art documentaries. The main aim of this talk is to re-assess the role of art and consider whether its representations can raise greater awareness of the political and social changes needed to support migrants.

The provided examples and explanations revolve around the social and political concept of migration in relation to the art domain. It examines how and why certain features have been presented in art documentaries about state seeking and analysed the authenticity of representation and different approaches to dealing with reality and the truth of events.

Starting from the grounded theories each case study leads to investigations for broader theories of relevance. The considered cases in this work are, Human Flow by Ai Weiwei, Another News Story by Orban Wallace, Shadow Lives by Jon Lowenstein and are considered through the way in which they share common aspects in their representation of the lives of undocumented migrants. In addition to the existing material, two interviews were conducted with two of the previously mentioned artists, about their opinions, attitudes and approaches to state-seeking subject in their documentaries.

Neda Mohamadi, Art Curator in Southampton, England/Iran

In his statement to the UNHCR Executive Committee meeting, on 10 October 2022, High Commissioner Filippo Grandi highlighted the never-reached before number of 100 million refugees in the world, also underlying that the demand for responses that imply “refugee voices to be heard, and acted upon” has never been greater. In their quest for autonomy and a life in and with dignity, refugees’ rights must be ensured not only in the beginning of their flight from persecution or violence, but also, and most poignantly, along the way through their long journey home, be it in their country of origin or their host country. Protracted conflicts, protracted violence equate to protracted situations of refugees who stay and become long-term residents in the host country. In 2003, the EU approved a new regime of long-term residency of third country nationals who, after having lived in a EU Member State for a minimum of five years, should enjoy equal rights as those of Member States citizens in a wide range of economic and social matters. Interestingly, only in 2011, was this specific regime also applicable to refugees and beneficiaries of international protection. Almost two decades after its entry into force – ten years in the situation of refugees – it was time to analyse the impact of this legal avenue in the lives of long-term migrants, including refugee in protracted situations, living in Portugal.

The analysis conducted systematised how this EU legislation was transposed into the Portuguese migration and asylum legal norms and how it became effective in ensuring migrants well-being in Portugal. Fundamental in the research process was hearing, as underlined by Filippo Grandi, “migrant and refugee voices” and, only then, pointing to the advantages and pitfalls of a long-term residence status in order to ameliorate the first and surpass the latter not losing sight of the end-goal of ensuring refugees’ right to protection and autonomy.

Ana Filipa Neves and Carlos Nolasco, CES, University of Coimbral, Portugal

Despite being in a state of statelessness for fifty years, research on ethnic Bengali population in Pakistan remains scarce. A strong state narrative on national security, and reluctance to critically analyse the 1971 war and creation of Bangladesh (formerly East Pakistan) has made the discussion of social and economic challenges facing the ethnic Bengali community a taboo subject. As a result, there is limited understanding of health challenges facing the community. The global COVID-19 pandemic, and its manifestation in Pakistan in terms of access and equity to testing and treatment, underscores the need to understand healthcare access among the ethnic Bengali population. This is the most recent instance of a national policy where there is restricted healthcare access among those who are not considered citizens. However, it is also important to understand barriers to healthcare faced by the ethnic Bengalis in a broader historical context of the evolution of a national ID and registration system, in particular the ID cards issued by the National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA). This article focuses on the residents of Machar Colony – an informal coastal settlement in Karachi, and a home to nearly three quarters of a million ethnic Bengalis, many of whom have lived in the community for decades. Private hospitals remain prohibitively expensive, and the absence of a NADRA issued computerised national ID card (CNIC) results in exclusion from public hospitals. There is also a palpable sense of anxiety among the community due to police persecution and xenophobia seen at hospitals. We study the argument by the state that those who are denied citizenship, are in fact people who are unable to substantiate their claim of citizenship.
​
In terms of healthcare, we find that the changing landscape has resulted in the ethnic Bengali population relying on informal (and unauthorised) medical practises, utilising personal contacts and organic social networks to access life-saving care, and depending on personal loans from other members of the community to pay for treatment. With international agencies (particularly large international aid organisations) largely absent from the colony, and from the discourse on statelessness in general, both awareness and support for the stateless community remains negligible. Our study also finds that despite multiple domestic and international media outlets highlighting the need for an equitable vaccination campaign in the last year, the state’s narrative, willingness, and approach has not changed. Vaccination was finally made available in February 2021, yet with few centres that would cater to the Bengali population, it remained out of reach for most. Finally, we note that a broader issue of access to healthcare remains entangled with ethnic Bengalis being viewed as outsiders, non-native or worse, as allies of the foe that resulted in the dismemberment of the country in 1971.

Prof. Muhammad Hamid Zaman, Tahera Hasan and Janki Bhatt, Boston Universiy & Imkan Welfare Association, USA/Pakistan

The decentralisation reform, which began to be implemented in Ukraine in 2014 with the adoption of the Concept of Local Self-Government Reform at the legislative level, is one of the forms of democratic governance. After local elections in 2020, as of today, there are 1,469 communities in Ukraine, formed by merging villages, towns, and cities. Indeed, the legally established goal of decentralisation is the optimisation of regional development through quick response to citizens’ requests, solving local problems. This is due to the fact that all necessary services are at the basic level – in the community.
​
With the beginning of the full-scale Russian invasion to Ukraine on February 24, 2022, Ukrainian communities faced new challenges. The research, which was conducted during September-October 2022 among heads of Ukrainian communities, experts (17 people were interviewed) by the semi-structured in-depth interview method, made it possible to outline the following aspects:
​
1) The management structure of the regions has changed. Military administrations were established in the regions as temporary bodies during the martial law period, which coordinate martial law measures on the ground, budget distribution processes, provision of humanitarian aid, restoration of necessary infrastructure, and provision of basic services in territories affected by hostilities.
​
2) The horizontal management line has strengthened. Inter-municipal cooperation between communities became more active, and community associations became more institutionally capable. Communities jointly solve problems of local importance: infrastructure restoration, provision of services to internally displaced persons, provision of materials for the restoration of affected areas, etc.
​
3) International cooperation has strengthened. This concerns the direct cooperation of Ukrainian cities and towns with sister cities. Communication takes place directly between cities without the involvement of central authorities.
​
4) Creation and staffing of resistance forces in communities. This concerns the formation of territorial defence, volunteer battalions. These communities were formed to protect cities, towns, and villages, and in the first days of the invasion of the Russian federation, together with the forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, they prevented the enemy from advancing further through the territory of Ukraine.
​
5) Prompt creation of volunteer headquarters. Volunteers provide all necessary assistance to both civilians and military personnel. They were active in providing territorial defence with everything necessary: ​​food, medical supplies, body armour, etc. In addition, volunteers are involved in the delivery of humanitarian aid with their vehicles to war zones.
​
6) Provision of necessary services to internally displaced persons. According to official data of the Ministry of Reintegration of the Temporarily Occupied Territories of Ukraine, about 7 million people are internally displaced persons. Only in October 2022, about 18,000 Ukrainians were evacuated from dangerous regions, temporarily occupied and de-occupied territories. Evacuation rates are especially high on the eve of winter. Mandatory evacuation continues in some regions, in particular the Donetsk region. In total, about 1.1 million civilians were evacuated from this territory. According to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, more than 4 million Ukrainians are in European countries for temporary protection.
​
The presence of such a large number of people who were forced to leave their homes depends on the lack of normal conditions for life. According to the Kyiv School of Economics, as a result of infrastructure destruction due to the full-scale invasion of the russian federation, Ukraine has already lost more than 127 billion dollars (this is the total amount of direct documented losses to residential and non-residential real estate, other infrastructure of Ukraine as of September 2022). The largest share in the total amount of losses belongs to the housing stock – 39.7%. As of September 2022, since the beginning of Russia’s war against Ukraine, at least 616 administrative buildings, 978 medical facilities, including 24 private health care facilities, 1,270 schools, 786 kindergartens, 775 cultural facilities, 80 religious buildings, 149 tourism facilities, and 153 sports facilities, 2,910 retail outlets, 19 airports and civil airfields, 110 railway stations, 315 bridges and overpasses of state, local or communal importance, 10 thermal power plants are damaged, destroyed or captured.
In this regard, processes of displacement of people affect both host communities and communities from which people leave. For the host communities, the challenge is primarily related to the fact that it is necessary to provide services not only to the residents of the communities, but also to internally displaced persons, which requires additional resources (financial, human, infrastructural) and coordination.
​
Challenges related to the war necessitated a rethinking of regional policy. Measures to change regional policy are carried out both at the national and local levels. The issue of functional typology of territories has been settled at the legislative level. With the amendments to the Law of Ukraine ‘On the Basics of State Regional Policy’, 4 types of territories have been allocated, according to which the restoration of de-occupied territories will take place: areas of recovery, areas with special conditions for development, areas of sustainable development, poles of economic growth. The law separately stipulates the importance of the logical integrity of the entire ‘strategic triad’ – local strategies must be developed taking into account the priorities and goals of the state and relevant regional strategies.
​
Measures are also being taken at the national level to help internally displaced persons. In particular, the legislation on cash payments for internally displaced persons has been amended several times, balancing their needs and the state budget. The introduction of a one-time payment in the amount of 6,500 hryvnias as part of the ‘e-Support’ program for employees took place a week after the start of a full-scale war.
​
At the local level, the necessary measures are also carried out, which relate to the following aspects: provision of housing, humanitarian, psychological assistance, employment. In particular, with the support of international partners, modular towns are being created for temporary living. According to surveys of community representatives, in some communities internally displaced persons are involved in the development of the community, employed in state institutions, at enterprises in order for internally displaced persons to feel subjectivity and inclusion in the life of the community. In addition, psychological services work on the ground. In particular, in the first weeks of the full-scale invasion of Russia into Ukraine, due to the fact that a larger number of people from the eastern and central regions moved to the west – psychologists provided psychological first aid, volunteers provided humanitarian aid.
​
The outlined challenges and problems were solved promptly by all actors – both state authorities and local authorities, residents. It was thanks to the synergy of efforts that it was possible to repulse the enemy in the first days of a full-scale invasion. Today, the issues of return of temporarily occupied territories, restoration of Ukrainian statehood in de-occupied territories, return of Ukrainians who were forcibly left abroad, and ensuring the viability of communities remain relevant for Ukrainian society. The economic component, the influx of investors and external resources, the employment of the population, the availability of the necessary infrastructure, and the functioning of business also depend on this.

Tetiana Lukeria, Research and Policy Analyst ISA & Ivan Franko National University of Lviv, Ukraine

In 2015, the world saw a mass exodus of people fleeing intrastate conflicts in the Middle East and North Africa. This mass displacement placed significant pressure on many advanced economies to respond with swift action to “manage” the crisis, but a clear dichotomy emerged. Some states opened their borders, while others enacted restrictive policies and practices to keep refugees out. Alongside these polarizing state responses came a sharp rise in far-right populism and divisive rhetoric that painted refugees as “swarms,” “invaders,” “criminals,” and “illegals,” which furthered their already precarious status. In a world with a growing divide of “us” versus “them,” it begs the question of how war-affected refugees experience trust—specifically in its generalised and institutional forms?

The former refers to trusting people without any prior connections, and the latter refers to trust in institutions (e.g., government, healthcare). To explore refugees’ relationships with trust in this increasingly distrusting world, I will draw upon various branches of the trust literature as well as interviews I conducted with Syrian refugees in my community of Kitchener, Ontario, Canada. I answer the following question: how does generalised and institutional trust affect Syrian refugees’ journeys and their integration into the Kitchener-Waterloo (KW) community? The focus on my community stems from Canada’s unprecedented response during the 2015 mass exodus when elected Liberal leader Justin Trudeau followed through on his election promise to resettle 25,000 Syrian refugees. Despite the global praise Canada received, there was a key piece missing in the academic work: refugees’ relationships with trust. This paper helps fill this gap as the interviews place refugee stories at the forefront and provide unique insights into how trust influenced the tough decisions throughout the refugees’ journeys, from fleeing Syria to integrating into Canada. My findings also illustrate to the Canadian government, local refugee organisations, and community members the importance of developing reciprocal relationships with refugee communities. Overall, this study shows the importance of placing trust at the forefront of refugee stories and highlighting refugee experiences—especially in a world where external actors dominate the narrative.

Felicia Clement, School of International Affairs, University of Waterloo-Balsillie, Canada

Owing to widely known protracted statelessness in a relic of decolonisation and postcolonial nation-building in the region, Rohingya refugees are often depicted as vulnerable. In this perception of ‘vulnerability’, humanitarian calls for Rohingyas are often justified with their ambivalent care and control and the implications are inadequately scrutinised. This chain of vulnerability is reoriented by this paper, proposing methodological devulnerabilisation. To this end, this paper employs middle-range theory, analysing the voluntary statelessness of Rohingyas projected through the resettlement to the Bashan Char Island in Bangladesh. This paper argues that the protractedness of vulnerability takes its course through institutionalised scapegoating practices of the states that incentivise Rohingyas’ voluntary statelessness; and such state practices responding to vulnerability are often based on the framework of identifying vulnerability with ‘people’ but not with the ‘system’ which makes the people vulnerable. To be specific, the recent resettlement provides the improved living conditions for Rohingyas (i.e., material security arbitrage) but simultaneously reinforces the immobilisation of Rohingyas in terms of both physical mobility (location) and legal mobility (status).

This strategic ‘body management’ targeting Rohingyas seems not effectively address the deep-seated political (e.g., independence in Myanmar) and religious (e.g., Islamophobia) conflicts which are the backdrops of their strip-offed nationality and increased politicoeconomic docility. This is problematic in that the Bangladeshi government rarely recognises the refugee status of Rohingyas and the options given to Rohingyas for their future are usually either to remain in status quo immobilisation or return to Myanmar where many of them had fled from the institutionalised stigmatisation and discrimination through the practice of citizenship. On the one hand, this illustrates the liminality of the legal protection of refugees with the absence of the right to ‘receive’ asylum and the need for re-examining the principle of non-refoulement. On the other hand, this shows that the ‘distorted’ voluntary statelessness of Rohingyas in the façade of the Bashan Char Island tends to serve the politicoeconomic interests of stakeholders rather than Rohingyas. This paper concludes with the reflections of methodological devulnerabilisation of primarily but not limited to Rohingyas in Bangladesh.

Dosol Nissi Lee and Sumaiya Siddiqua Maria, Centre for Advanced Migration Studies (AMIS), University of Copenhagen, Denmark

The reference to migration movements is becoming more interesting, the Host Countries are divided into two big areas which vary concerning the existence of more or less tradition. In order to solve the current conflicts, the acceptance of the other by means of tolerance and non-exclusion, recognising the diversity within the unit, is urgently needed. This means that we should not succumb to the risk of a mere juxtaposition, creating a legal systems conglomerate, nor elude the diversity trying to result in a standardisation process. Thus, legal norms should recognise and approve both the variety and differentiation, assuming and appreciating them in a positive way, with the limit of respect to their inherent human dignity and inviolable rights. To sum up, the most correct thing is that the social integration of the difference is to be carried out by means of its recognition and acceptance as legal-political principle.

But in relation to the implementation of EU Law, there is a certain number of criteria drawn up from standards which have been situated on the level of principles of interpretation; this is what happens with the principles of legality, legitimacy or need, with regard to the democratic spirit. Added to this is the legal porosity which has an impact on interlegality, creating networks. From this point of view, there are alternative flows and reflows of the legal and social regulations considered the two sides of the same coin. This problem looks to interrogate the way that discrimination paradigms about the immigration operate at different levels – and is an argument for a more flexible approach that mirrors the reality of social relations, within a reality in which war is not an isolated event, producing socio-economic, political, cultural and individual conflicts.

M. Isabel Garrido Gómez, University of Alcalá, Spain

*the schedule may change

PhD. Kristiina Korjonen-Kuusipuro holds a Title of Docent in Cultural Anthropology at the University of Jyväskylä and she works as a Project Researcher at Juvenia – Youth Research and Development Centre at the South-Eastern Finland University of Applied Sciences. Her previous research includes themes like transnational belonging of unaccompanied children and youth and experiences of forced displacement and emotional ties to place. Currently, she examines the digital social inequalities among youth in project DEQUAL.

Nigerian Civil War captured global attention both as the first modern bloodiest civil war in sub-Saharan Africa after independence and also as first post-World War II cataclysm. The prodigious death mostly from malnutrition and starvation as reported was about three times higher than that of World War II in Stalingrad and Holland. This colossal disaster left an indelible massive devastation to life, huge destruction of property and unimaginable environmental degradation in the mind of the affected people and the society. This study probed and attested to the reactions of respondents – Igbos’ of the eastern Nigeria – over the effect of the civil war on the war-torn region. The study was anchored on Social Control Theory as essential institution measure against any form of heinous attack on any ethnic group in Nigeria/ Being a quantitative study, the study generates quantitative information from some selected respondents from five (5) Eastern States namely: Abia, Anambra, Eboyi, Enugun and Imo states Nigeria. A total number of 40 – forty- copies of questionnaires were distributed, collected, coded, collated, and, analysed using both SPSS among the randomly selected respondents across the eastern region States. Findings from the study revealed that 70 percent of respondents experienced the war effect as a growing adolescent while 30 percent experienced it as an adult. Indicating that all the respondents were expose to civil war. Their experiences ranged from hunger and starvation (85.0 percent); widespread killings (87.5 percent); human rights abuses (75.0 percent), property destruction (85.0 percent), sexual crimes (80.0 percent) malnutrition (85.0); environmental degradation (90.0percent); ill health (70.0) and pollution (95.0). From the study, the under studied respondents’ human right and health privileges were grossly abused, deprived and hampered by the civil war tragedy. Also, experiences of such heinous tragedy may be preclusive to their emotional wellbeing and safety in the nation called Nigeria.

Oluwafemi Imisioluwa Olatunde, Department of Sociology, Federal University Oye-Ekiti Ekiti State, Nigeria

Amid all the other refugee squats, the fact that a permanent refugee settlement emerged from it, sets Bijoygarh at a distance. Calcutta, as the capital city of Bengal, absorbed the highest number of refugees post-partition, in and around 1947. And, one such earliest refuge squats of Calcutta was Bijoygarh. Being established in 1948, Bijoygarh today situates itself in between two of the busiest roads, namely Raja Subodh Mullik and Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose Road. Within the rubric of this larger argument, my paper provides an overview of whether East Bengali refugees are portrayed as passive victims of rehabilitation, daring protagonists, or simultaneously both. The paper’s chief corpus will focus on the micro-history of Bijoygarh’s refugees and the illumination of their erasures. Therefore, the colony which was once formed with the twelve refugee families traveling ticketless from Sealdah to Jadavpur, is argued in carrying the reminiscences of resistance, politics of representation, and memoirs of silence, till date. Also, the debate that refugees were incessantly preoccupied with their battle against the ‘other’ or the ‘host society’ gets clarified in my paper through the fractures of refugee experience. For this particular research study, data has been collected from secondary sources mostly, including books, research papers, websites and journals. I have tried to keep my literary analysis of the secondary sources as exhaustive as possible regarding the topic and its related concepts. The analysis in this paper is mostly qualitative in nature.

Oishika Ghosh, Department of Sociology, Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India

Refugees and forcibly displaced persons (FDPs) have been subjected to various forms of trauma throughout their lives, which leads to poor physical and mental health. Refugees and asylum seekers are more prone to PTSD than the general population due to their previous and current experiences, such as torture, human rights violation, a lack of essentials, painful loss, and separation from others. Human rights breaches such as forcible movement of refugees from camps, police harassment, arbitrary arrest, and detention without trial are all major issues that refugees confront in low- and middle-income countries. It is challenging to implement psychosocial therapies in LMICs due to limited resources, a lack of mental health specialists, and insufficient research. This systematic review aims to determine which psychosocial interventions effectively treat PTSD among refugees and asylum seekers in low-and middle-income countries (LMIC).

In conclusion, refugees and FDPs who endure a difficult life are susceptible to various mental health concerns, such as PTSD. This study aimed to examine the efficacy of psychosocial interventions in this demographic resettled in LMICs and provide an updated knowledge. Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EMDR) had the greatest effect size among psychosocial therapies for this demographic. However, the number of studies is small, and their methodological rigour is limited, thus future study should concentrate on performing more rigorous trials.

Istiaque Mahmud Dowllah, University of Glasgow, Scotland

*the schedule may change

Dr Mustapha Sheikh is Associate Professor of Islamic Thought and Muslim Societies in the School of Languages, Cultures and Societies at the University of Leeds and Visiting Professor at the University of Punjab, Pakistan. He is Co-Director of the Iqbal Centre for Critical Muslim Studies, a centre with a commitment to decolonising the study of Muslims/Islam and to building links between the university and the wider Muslim community.  Mustapha’s areas of expertise include Ottoman history, Islamic law and legal theory, Critical Muslim Studies, Islamophobia, Muslim intellectual history, refugee status and migration.

Dr Pey-Chun Pan is an Assistant Professor of Department of Social Work, National Pingtung University of Science and Technology (Taiwan). Her research is on accessibility, transport policy of disabled people and the social movement of people with Hansen’s Disease in Taiwan. She has joined several research projects including one on independent living policy, reasonable accommodation on health issues and the development of Taiwan human rights indicators of CRPD. She is a horticultural therapist as well. She has published 4 book chapters on disability and also published in the Community Development Journal Quarterly, the Journal of Disability Research and Taiwan: A Radical Quarterly in Social Studies.

The overrepresentation of Indigenous youth in provincial youth protection systems in Canada, including in Quebec, is well known. Research has revealed the harmful consequences of the undifferentiated application of child welfare systems to Indigenous peoples, including the loss of cultural identity. Even though Quebec’s Youth Protection Act (YPA) has been amended on several occasions so that any intervention takes into consideration the characteristics of Indigenous communities and the preservation of children’s cultural identity, this legislation remains unsuited to Indigenous realities and continues to have discriminatory effects. In Quebec, the recognition of Indigenous cultural and family practices as well as the right of Indigenous peoples to self-determination have for a long time been the subject of significant controversy and resistance by the legislature.

To counter the over-representation of Indigenous children and to improve their access to justice, federal legislation (An Act respecting First Nations, Inuit and Métis children, youth and families) was introduced in 2020, allowing Indigenous communities and organisations to implement their own child welfare law.

It is in this context of legislative changes that the Atikamekw Nation of Opitciwan adopted their own law. After presenting the new principles of the law, we will see how the establishment of an Atikamekw governance fosters the development of original community approaches that ensure not only the safety and development of Indigenous children, but also the preservation of their identity, the decolonisation of social practices and a better access to justice.

Prof. Lisa Ellington, School of Social Work and Criminology and Stacey Awashish Chachai, Atikamekw Student in Social Work and Research Assistant, Université Laval, Canada

The past decade has brought global efforts by colonial and settler states to provide healing and justice for past and ongoing harms against indigenous communities. These attempts are most commonly embodied through the creation of truth and reconciliation commissions, which seek to establish a reliable historical record of harm; promote reconciliation; and foster healing by providing harmed parties the opportunities to share their stories and—in some cases—to confront their perpetrators. These truth commissions provide indigenous communities with access to justice, albeit not the form of “traditional justice” that most Western societies recognise. Instead, this form of more comprehensive, transitional justice, aims to help indigenous communities heal and move forward from generations of human rights violations.
​
My proposed presentation will examine the use of such truth and reconciliation commissions both within Scandinavia (including in Finland, Sweden, and Norway), and globally (such as in the United States, Canada, and Australia). While the presentation will analyse the benefits such truth commissions make bring to indigenous communities, it will also look at some problematic issues in regard to these commissions. For instance, while indigenous communities have played a large role in bringing these truth and reconciliation commissions to fruition, in many countries such as the United States, such commissions are only created once attention and support is brought to the cause by the majority White populations. For example, while Native Americans have been calling for years for the creation of a truth and reconciliation commission to address the U.S. Government’s past use of boarding schools for Native Americans as a means of forced assimilation, such efforts have stalled in Congress, largely because of a lack of national attention brought to the issue. My presentation will explore these issues and posit potential solutions.
​
This presentation will build on my past research on transitional justice and truth commissions for indigenous communities (as detailed in my attached CV), as well my work as a U.S. Fulbright Scholar at the University of Gothenburg School of Global Studies during the 2022-2023 academic year.

Dr Sara L. Ochs, University of Louisville, USA

This paper examines whether the international protection of ethnic minorities is sufficient to address the Tibetans’ demand for the recognition of their self-determination through the concession of genuine autonomy in the ancestral region. Since 1950, the Tibetans have been fighting against the Chinese invasion of their cultures, traditions, languages, natural resources, and ways of life. After the failed nationalist uprising of 1951, around 80 thousand Tibetans left Tibet and have since been taking refuge in India; they do not have access to their national judicial and legislative security networks and are left to defend themselves. The Chinese government has been urging them to return to Tibet and utilise the existing legislative and judicial measures to their advantage.
​
However, the Tibetans are not convinced. Therefore, they are demanding autonomy to self-determine their political, social, cultural, and cultural futures, but the Chinese government has rejected their demand. The Tibetans have sought international support to their ethnonationalist claims. In response, the United Nations (UN) has stepped in. This global governance organisation has developed human rights treaties and norms that support the people’s self-determination and autonomy. It has also passed resolutions that specifically support the Tibetans’ self-determination, but the Tibetans’ situation has not improved. Against this background, this paper examines the following question: Why has the UN support not become effective in the Tibetans’ autonomy struggles? It assumes that the UN initiatives, in contrast with their intention, are not providing forum to the Tibetans to articulate their concerns but to Chinese government to justify its position on Tibet. The Chinese government has consistently utilised the UN forum to establish that the Tibetans’ grievances are its domestic concerns and accordingly warn the international community not to interfere in the domestic concern. In other words, it is establishing that human rights protection/ violation is its domestic concern, and the foreigners are not to violate the states’ prerogative. The UN has not built a proper response to the Chinese position; therefore, its support has not been effective in resolving the Tibetans’ grievances.

Hari Har Jnawali, Waterloo University, Canada

In an effort to convince the public of its progress against the commercial drug trade in Mexico’s “Maya Riviera,” police departments in the region have increased the frequency with which they post photos of arrested drug dealers and smugglers. Not only do departments share these photos with news outlets, they also post them to social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. The photos evidence the racialised nature of Mexico’s war on drugs and reflect the fact that low level positions in drug organisations are occupied by indigenous men and women hailing from various impoverished Mayan communities across Southern Mexico. While the photos are posted with the intention of shaming those in the drug trade and reaffirming the power of law enforcement, I draw from fieldwork with working-class indigenous residents in the town of Playa del Carmen, MX to highlight the alternative ways these images are read and understood. I specifically focus on how various interlocutors contest the mugshots and view them as evidence of the racialised nature of policing in the context of the drug war. From their perspective, Mexico’s drug war has been a failure, both generating instability in the rural communities they come from, and more provocatively, of undermining a commercial enterprise that has fostered economic growth in Mexico’s coastal tourism hubs. Rather than a world without the drug trade, my interlocutors imagine a world where Mayans might reap the economic benefits of the drug trade rather than be saddled with its burdens.

Dr Brandon Hunter-Pazzara, Anthropology Department, Georgetown University, USA

“We were happy when these buildings came up, and now it is our nightmare; we cannot even breathe properly,” said the elderly man in Katchipattu village, talking about the developments in Sriperumbudur Periurban region. Periurban, the new urban around the globe, and its developments have mainly been in discussions in planning and academia centreing around its material aspect. However, the social aspect of life in Periurban has largely been neglected in mainstream discussions. Periurban Sriperumbudur grew exponentially in two decades, becoming a satellite town nicknamed Detroit of India. Nevertheless, the challenging life of Dalit villages and their concerns about survival is little talked about. The many Periurban developmental issues affecting the local people are far more of a concern when the community is underprivileged and faces social, economic, and livelihood discrimination. The Dalit Periurban community in Sriperumbudur town in Tamil Nadu has been fighting for survival in a different form in the last two decades amidst infrastructural developments. The age-old caste atrocity and discrimination resulting from it are added now with tags such as ‘criminal,’ ‘poramboke’ (outsider), and they are denied decent jobs, yet people in ‘power’ use them for menial jobs and work with illegal nature. Katchipattu, the clustered village, is locked up from every side by infrastructural development, making their mobility and conditions a living hell. No one in authority heeds their fundamental concerns, yet they are used as pawns by the power elites. Thus, they live an everyday life of precarity and risk, making precarity a lifestyle, having fallen prey to a vicious cycle of risk-taking.

Baiju Thankachan, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, India

In September 2022, the majority of the Chilean citizens chose to reject the proposal of a new Constitution. Aiming to replace the one adopted under General Pinochet dictatorship (1973-1989) and still in force, this project of new constitution affirmed the plurinationality of the state and gave extended recognition in various areas to indigenous peoples. The refusal rate was particularly high in the Southern regions, historically home of the Mapuche, the most numerous indigenous people of Chile, including amongst the Mapuche themselves. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in the Arauko province between August and October 22, our communication takes this apparently surprising “rechazo” (refusal) as departure point to analyse the Chilean politics towards indigenous peoples. We propose to mobilise the concept of Necropolitics to make sense of the daily constraints affecting Mapuche communities of the Arauko province. We will show how these politics of systematic repression and state violence are deployed under the narratives of safety and security of the whole population, with the criminalisation of Mapuche demands. Therefore, many Mapuche who are not directly involved into action of land recuperation see themselves caught in a mousetrap, treated as “terrorists” if they dare to present claims, and confronted to enduring and deep-rooted structural racism.

Céline Heini (university of applied sciences Western Switzerland), Anahy Gajardo (university of Neuchatel) and Anne Lavanchy (university of applied sciences Western Switzerland), Switzerland

*the schedule may change

Dr Sílvia Mendes Camões is an Associate Professor with Habilitation at the School of Economics and Management of University of Minho (Portugal) and an integrated Member of the Research Centre in Political Science (CICP) of the same institution. As a researcher and professor, her work intersects within the areas of Public Administration, Public Policy and Political Behaviour. Sílvia teaches about Political Process Theory, Political Evaluation, Administrative Theory and Research Methodology. She has published articles in Public Money and Management, the European Journal on Criminal Policy Research, the British Journal of Political Science and the Policy Studies Journal.  Other pieces have appeared in the Law and Society Review, the International Journal of Public Administration, ​Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology and the Journal of Leisure Research.

By exercising sovereignty through disciplinary, biopolitical and necropolitical power, settler-colonial governance gained total dominance over the invaded territory of what became known as Australia. What followed this invasion is what Mbembe calls a ‘state of siege’ in which there is a method of killing that does not separate the external enemy from the internal enemy. Australia was in a state of siege from the outset of settler-colonial control with Indigenous Australians becoming the internal enemy as seen by the open warfare in the early contact period. This paper argues that Australia is still in a state of siege with Indigenous Australians still viewed as the ‘enemy within’. It does so by demonstrating the ongoing oppression of Indigenous Australians through forms of violence that not only target Indigenous Australians, but that are systemic in nature, hidden, or embedded within policies and practices of the criminal justice system. Further, it highlights how the austerity faced by many Indigenous Australians exacerbates this already volatile situation.

Dr Kirstie Broadfield, Cairns Institute, Australia

Roma constitute the largest ethnic minority in Europe, with a large majority of their members living in marginal conditions and registering very high levels of poverty, deprivation and discrimination. Portugal, according to the Second European Union Minorities and Discrimination Survey Rome (FRA, 2022: 25), displays one of the highest values of poverty and deprivation among ten European countries which represented almost 90 % of the Roma population living in this geographical space (FRA, 2022: 6).

It is not surprising, therefore, that Portugal, in this set of countries, is the country with the lowest number of Roma population aged 20–24 who completed at least upper secondary education (FRA, 2022: 65). There is also the gender gap: among young people aged between 16 and 24, 57% of Ciganas/Roma women were neither in employment, nor education or training (NEET), compared to 35% of Ciganos/Roma men in the same age range (FRA, 2022: 67).
​
In this sense, the EDUCIG action-research project entitled “School performance among Ciganos/Roma: action-research and co-design project” was implemented . The project, financed by the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT), had as one of its main objectives precisely to identify and understand the trajectories of Ciganos students who were integrated into secondary education in the two metropolitan areas of Lisbon and Porto, where around 80% of Ciganos population live. The project aimed as well to find out their intentions to continue their studies in higher education.
​
This communication uses research data from the EDUCIG project, namely those arising from the qualitative methodological strategy, based on 31 in-depth interviews carried out with young Ciganos students studying in Upper Secondary. The results of the investigation allow us to understand how our interviewees, in their triple condition of young people, students and Ciganos, who attend a level of education in which they assume themselves as ethnic pioneers, articulate new subjectivities with current perspectives around the possibilities to improve the social condition of their ethnicity and, in this way, to increase social justice in Portugal.

Dr Pedro Caetano, Researcher, CICS.NOVA, FCSH, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal

In a deepening context of globalisation, extremisms and radicalisation are unconquerable in times of uncertainty and gloom. The emergence of anti-Gypsyism narratives is a regularity. The emergence of more direct populisms in central and Eastern Europe, which is accompanied by the construction of narratives of disqualification of the ‘Other’, essentialisation and demonisation of ‘Ciganos’ perceived as a threat and as a scapegoat. The anti-Gypsyism which is historically rooted in our societies is a specific form of racism, an ideology founded on racial superiority, a form of dehumanisation and institutional racism which is expressed, for example, by violence, hate speech, exploitation and stigmatisation.

Recently, in the case of the Portuguese or the appearance of the Chega party, the focus was on immigrants and/or refugees, but the ‘Ciganos/Roma’ as an exciting issue gained sympathy in territories and among voters who are normally on the left. It is interesting to explore the narrative of this party and others in the European context against the ‘Ciganos’ and reflect on the strategies of resistance and empowerment of the ‘Ciganos’ against these parties and movements that disqualify them and subtract from their humanity.

Dr. Maria Manuela Mendes, Instituto Universitário de Lisboa, Lisbon, Portugal

Indian religions and civilisations are extremely diverse, however this diversity frequently results in chaos where some cultures are oppressed and others are dominant. In multicultural, multi-ethnic, and pluralist nations, ethnicity and cultural identity have emerged as key issues. Today, as we are aware that religious minorities feel insecure, anxious, and threatened due to rapidly growing problems in India based on cultural nationalism, radicalisation of religion, beef-ban, Gua-rakhshak,(Cow Vigilantism) love Jihad, Islamophobia, etc., we see India’s shift from egalitarianism to majoritarian nationalism as particularly dangerous for minorities. The extreme right-wing segment of the Hindu religion has launched a deliberate campaign against all religious minorities, with a particular focus on Muslims. Protests against the so-called love jihad and gharwapsi (homecoming) campaigns that convert Muslims and Christians back to Hinduism are among the key components of this campaign. Over the past eight years, there have been numerous attacks on cow-related issues, but in recent months, Muslim women have also come under attack. Hijab bans and the auctioning of Muslim women activists on social media apps like Bulli deal and Sulli app are outrageous examples that threaten the entire community, particularly when community honour is under attack with the message that Muslim men are powerless to defend their women. The cultural, social, and economic precariousness has sharply increased in recent years. Muslims in India generally experience greater feelings of uncertainty, threat, and terror. Islamophobia of Covid -19 has accelerated the process of othering. Constant communal riots and pogroms have led to geographical segregation, and Muslims have slid into segregation, hence expanding ghettoisation. The supremacy of hate culture has fractured India’s pluralistic culture.

The paper provides an account of the situatedness and day-to-day experiences of Muslims living in India with heightened feelings of insecurity, anxiety, and threat in a dominated culture. The research further attempts to investigate how Muslims negotiate the politics of hatred.

Professor Arvinder A. Ansari, Honorary Director, Centre for Study of Social Exclusion and Inclusive Policy, Department of Sociology, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi, India

The aim of this research is to trace the journey of Muslim refugee women since they arrived in Australia and learn how their ideas about who they are might have changed as a result of their paid employment. This question will be considered in terms of participant’s education, religion, work opportunities, family ties as well as the effect of Islamophobia on their overall experience in Australia. I chose to go through my fieldwork using semi-structured interviews to gain insights in the experience of Muslim refugee women and how they struggled to find work in Australia and what was the impact on their identity? I would like to share my insights about how the pandemic affected my fieldwork and I had to resort to online interviews. Furthermore, I would like to share how difficult it was to find refugee women who were willing to interview due to the stigma of refugee shame. Even though I could build a rapport with them on a personal level due to being a Muslim woman myself, however, their distrust in authorities barred them from sharing their personal experiences. Through these insights, I would like to highlight the practicalities of research during difficult times with a vulnerable group of women who still don’t feel safe despite living in Australia.

Ume Rubab Sheikh, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, The University of Sydney, Australia

In the last decades, the over-representation of Indigenous people incarcerated never ceased to increase to a point where in 2021, over 32% of inmates are Indigenous while representing only 5% of the Canadian adult population. On the one hand, this presentation will begin by examining the discriminatory practices and the lack of security networks which contribute to this over-representation and the increased vulnerability of Indigenous inmates in Canada. On the second hand, as a Gladue writer and a scholar, I propose an analysis on the role of the Gladue reports in influencing injustice dynamics towards Indigenous people in the criminal system. Gladue reports have been implemented following the Gladue case (1999) from the Supreme court of Canada which recognised the discrimination of Indigenous people by the criminal system. The Supreme court of Canada instructed judges to consider systemic, historical and social circumstances when sentencing an Indigenous person and to consider, “all available sanctions other than imprisonment that are reasonable in the circumstance”. These Gladue reports gather the historical and personal story of the Indigenous person accused. Their objective is to educate the court about the impacts of colonialism on the life of the accused person and to propose alternative measures to incarceration. Based on the scientific literature and personal experiences, I will expose my perspectives on the potential benefits and the challenges of Gladue reports in legitimizing both the colonial criminal system and Indigenous justice initiatives.

Philippe Boucher, Master Student in Criminology, University of Montreal, Canada

This presentation focuses upon oppression in relation to the long-lasting subjugation of the Indigenous peoples of Canada which, in itself, is the product of historic and ongoing colonialism. In that context, it explores the following research question: How do different discourses lead to changes in understandings of the world, identity, meaning and practice in Indigenous politics in Canada? This article introduces the poststructuralist theory of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe to Canadian Indigenous studies and demonstrates that it is a unique and effective theory for understanding this question. It finds that in the last few decades, two principal discourses regarding Indigenous peoples and colonialism have circulated in the Canadian body politic—namely, (1) “reconciliation” and (2) “Idle No More.” These discourses shape the identities of both Indigenous peoples and settlers, construct understandings of the world, and determine the meaning of related political struggle, leading to real world practice and politics. The reconciliation discourse has at times been effective at becoming a dominant discourse and has often been able to constitute the meaning of important terms such as ‘decolonisation.’ It serves to pacify Indigenous resistance to colonialism. Counter-hegemonic discourses on reconciliation such as ‘Idle No More’ have been able to challenge that discourse. Academic literature, newspaper articles, YouTube videos, podcasts developed by Indigenous scholars, public letters and speeches delivered by Canadian politicians are analysed to examine the utterances and enunciations of the two discourses.

Matthew Robertson, Métis Nation of Ontario, Toronto, Canada

This research seeks to bring solutions for the effective participation of indigenous and traditional peoples in the legislative process, through Free, Prior and Informed Consultation – FPIC. The 1988 Constitution, as well as important international norms, such as Convention 169 of the International Labor Organization and the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, establish self-determination as a fundamental right and guarantee it with the implementation of the FPIC, whenever administrative measures and legislation affect their lives.

The Brazilian State has not been applying this guarantee, especially in the context of the Legislative Power. Through qualitative research of works, articles, as well as national and international norms and devices, we sought to suggest a tool that would serve as a space for dialogue for the application of the FPIC.

The research relied on a two-month survey at the University of Tromsø to study how the Sami Parliament’s relationship with The Stortinget (Norwegian Parliament) works. Although the Sami people are at the forefront of guarantees for Indigenous peoples. It is interesting to note, that in the case of Norwegian law, the instrument we propose, a special committee in the legislature to guarantee Prior, Free and Informed Consultation in the legislative process, does not exist either. Currently this is done in the context of the Ministry of Interior Affairs to later be, through the national Executive Power, taken to the scrutiny of the Norwegian Parliament. However, other initiatives, such as the attempt to propose a law to the Norwegian Parliament directly, which there is no constitutional provision for this, are being tried by Sami lawyers.

It is concluded that in the context of the legislative process, the creation of a Joint Permanent Commission for Prior, Free and Informed Consultation could contemplate the FPIC, thus guaranteeing self-determination in the National Congress. As a final objective, a draft of the Constitutional Amendment Proposal was elaborated, to foresee the commission in the constitutional plan and a draft creating and regulating it in the regimental plan.

Paulo Stanich Neto, MA Student in the Legislative Programme, Chamber of Deputies, Brazil,

*the schedule may change

Professor Colin Barnes is a disabled person and a special school survivor. He has been involved with the disabled people’s movement and has been member of several local, national and international organisations controlled and run by disabled people throughout his academic career. Crucially, he established the Centre for Disability Studies (CDS) as the British Council of Organisations of Disabled People’s (BCODP’s) Disability Research Unit (DRU) in the School of Sociology and Social Policy, Leeds in 1990 and was its Director until 2008. He also founded the independent publisher, The Disability Press in 1996 and an electronic archive of writings on disability issues, The Disability Archive UK in 1999. Since 1998, he was a member of Adjunct Faculty, Critical Disability Studies Programme, York University Toronto, Canada from 1998 until 2012. In addition, he was the Visiting Professor of Disability Studies in the School of Social and Health Sciences, Halmstad University, Sweden.

Dr. Susan Eriksson works as a Senior Researcher at Youth Research and Development Centre Juvenia in South-Eastern Finland University of Applied Sciences. She is PhD in Social Sciences (University of Tampere, Finland, 2003) and her expertise entails sociological research on working life and profession studies, marginalisation and services of vulnerable groups of young people, and impact of digitalisation on young people and youth services.

She has considerable experience in disability research (2007-) focused on daily lives and living conditions of persons with disabilities, personal budgeting in disability services, and social and health care of young people affected by FASD (foetal alcohol spectrum disorders). Recently Eriksson has studied lives and lifestyles of young people with disabilities. She has conducted two research projects funded by Ministry of Education and Culture in Finland in consortium with University of Eastern Finland (2015-2018) and University of Helsinki (2019-2022) dealing with opportunities of young people with disabilities to participate in physical and youth sports activities (For more details click here). In general, Susan is largely interested in opportunities for participation of young persons with disabilities and the nature of their youth per se.

Our presentation addresses violently inflicted ocular injuries from a transnational perspective, focussing on the contexts of Colombia and Palestine as case studies. In Palestine, eye injuries on a mass scale have first been recorded during the First Intifada (1987-1993); in Colombia, they became a matter of concern during the 2021 National Strike (although records exist as far back as 2007). Far from a novel or unique practice, ocular mutilation has been documented in several countries, including Kashmir, Hong Kong, Spain, France, and Chile, which suggests a potential systematicity in this form of brutality across contexts and regions (Haar et al, 2017). First, we examine ocular mutilation as part of a wider strategy of (settler)state-produced disablement and debilitation, drawing on Jasbir Puar’s concept of “the right to maim,” while also calling attention to the local and regional specificities of this tactic and how they are shaped by ongoing conflicts as well as the circulation of militarised knowledge and artefacts. Second, we contextualise the ocular injury in each case with respect to the disproportionate impacts of conflict on disabled people.

First Intifada injuries are characterised by their far greater morbidity due to delays in treatment caused by frequent curfews and checkpoints; ocular injuries in Colombia often go untreated because of their immediate association with participation in protest, which is highly criminalised, thereby discouraging survivors from seeking medical help. Third, we discuss the weaponisation of disability in the service of ethnic cleansing (Palestine) or the maintenance of a social order (Colombia), examining the ableist prejudices underpinning ocular mutilation as a biopolitical aim. The presentation thus aims to contribute to recent scholarship in critical disability studies concerned with demanding accountability for bodily harm that results in impairments without reiterating ableist notions of bodily capacity and debility (Meekosha, 2011; Sins Invalid, 2019; Soldatic, 2013; Puar, 2017).

Lucia Guerrero Rivierre and Lena Obermaier, PhD candidates at the University of Exeter, England

Traditionally, social support for disabled people in Portugal has been limited to three options: 1) support in a residential context on an inpatient basis, 2) support in an institutional context on an outpatient basis and 3) support in a family context. These three types of support are not watertight, on the contrary, they assume different types of combinations with interpenetration zones that vary over time according to individual needs and family availability. Regardless of the type of support or combination found, the consequences of these conventional forms of support in curtailing the freedom, autonomy and ability to choose of disabled people and in the deterioration and erosion of family and intimate relationships are undeniable.

Independent Living for disabled people, enshrined in Article 19 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, marks a political and philosophical shift in the support available to disabled people. Understood as the idea that disabled people should have total control over their own lives, Independent Living encompasses the right to live in contexts where they are not subjugated by the logic of dependence on family care or the solutions offered in institutional environments that, without attending to their specificities, put them in a situation of vulnerability, preventing them from making decisions regarding their own lives.

The development and implementation of the Independent Living Support Model (MAVI) in Portugal signals the beginning of this turning point. It is now important, as the first results of the evaluations of the implementation of the MAVI appear at national level, to analyse the adequacy of this policy measure, in its design and implementation, to the principles and original philosophy emanating from the national and international disabled peoples’ movements, since its distortion could lead to compromising its positive potential.

Dr Fernando Fontes, University of Coimbra, Portugal

With the growing concerns on socioeconomic inequalities and poverty deepening in capitalism, we are now facing challenging times: The Covid-19 pandemic, an economic crisis. To tackle such inequalities, major adaptations are necessary. The fundamental challenge must be institutional: existing institutions are improper, and a greater period of experimentation is necessary. This is why we must look at the basics of institutional economics, particularly in radical traditions such as Karl Polanyi in the context of basic income, outside of the ruling neoliberal consensus. Although the Polanyian literature seems not to be a stranger in the context of basic income; however, it has weakly connected to the issue unaddressed hitherto, whether a basic income can truly act as a ‘trigger’ for the self-organising a new resilient systems of health justice. This question in turn leads to sub-questions: (1) how capitalist system of health gets to organisation and structuration in real world (objectivity); (2) what its origin of disorder is; (3) in the crisis ‘Covid-19,’ how basic incomes acts as a trigger for the self-organising; (4) whether or not the basic income truly acts as a trigger for the self-organising a new resilient system in terms of both (a) philosophical value ‘health justice’ against inequalities in health and (b) history; (5) if untruly as there are still crucial points in locking-in the ‘trigger’ both in value and history, what the normative solution is, addressing in political literature the duality of reformism vs. radicalism looking beyond it by reclaiming an ‘evolution,’ i.e. a ‘self-organising change for survival.’
​
This paper, which defines self-organisation as an ‘institutional process of recovery’ through reorganising and reconstituting order out of disorder (i.e. order as structure), aims to revisit and answer such foundational question, together with the institutional matrix of self-organisation full of institutional variants structurated by market versus non-market; on the other, pro-capital versus anti-capital, through a deeper understanding of Karl Polanyi, and applies it to an empirical case study (with quantitative data analysis method) on the health system in Republic of Korea during the last decade (to the current Covid- 19 Pandemic). By doing so, this paper concludes: beyond superficial issues of post- pandemic recovery programs as ‘return to pre-pandemic normality’ based on the dichomistic logics of standard upon health systems such as private versus public, market versus state, Keynesianism versus neoliberalism, institutional economics in Polanyian literature addresses the deeper and ‘real-world’ issue of structuration in capitalistic systems of health in Korea which act as the roots, substances of long-term crisis in health justice. In the crisis, the basic income in turn can act as a trigger for self-organisation in a short-term, but only valid when it is truly connected to the Polanyian long-term ‘radical’ vision, which in turn can help us to look for a transition towards a new resilient system of health justice, beyond such a capitalistic system.

Mu-Jeong Kho, University College London, England

In light of rapid and continuous technical and digital transformations, and of the challenges rising from globalisation and climate change, in the last twenty years the main international institutions (OECD, UNESCO, World Economic Forum, World Bank, European Union, etc.) have been promoting the acquisition of the 21st century’s competences and the achievement of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), in order to have citizens who have the flexibility to fit the demands of the market and be active protagonists in their own community. School, in this scenario, has a crucial role in driving development, but a holistic rethink is necessary so that no one is left behind: the objective of the 4 th SDG aims to ensure good quality education, both inclusive and equal, and promote opportunities for lifelong learning for all. Education is a fundamental right and is the basis on which other rights are built, as well as peace, tolerance and sustainable development. Inclusion and equity are at the centre of numerous programmes and, as already stated above, school has a key role in realising them but evidently it cannot achieve this in isolation, or without rethinking its structure, learning spaces, and didactics. It is necessary to open the doors of the school to the community, and include non-formal learning opportunities, in order to guarantee expression and recognition of competences and their value, for example to those that for various reasons (disability, social disadvantage, economic problems etc.) struggle to get good results.
​
Within an integrated educational system, youth work can represent a bridge between school and extra-school, and contribute to enriching learning opportunities by recognising and valorising the interests, passions, and experiences of students. It is necessary to create a dialogue between inside and outside the school and, in order to guarantee to everyone equal opportunities to access and to success (according with their own possibilities) without consideration/regardless their own condition/situation, it is necessary to reshape the formative system towards an inclusive direction, avoiding to leave anyone behind or to create marginalised or exploitation situations, bringing back the learner at the centre of educative process, with his needs, interests, his specific rhythms, time and learning styles. Activating at the same time positive synergies with the third sector and the world of non-formal education.

The aim of my research is to record the perceptions of headteachers, teachers and students of whether innovative schools (general upper secondary schools/vocational schools) are also inclusive (in terms of disability, social/economical disadvantages, immigration, etc). In particular, I am going to record if, according to their perceptions, the presence of innovative learning spaces, the use of active didactics, and the connection of the school with the local community (the integration of formal and non-formal education) can facilitate the wellbeing and the inclusion of the students. The research is within the framework of Special Pedagogy (disability and marginality). In this piece of qualitative research, I used qualitative and quantitative tools to understand the complexity of the observed phenomena through the collection of the perceptions and the meanings of the person involved, according with to their personal school experience, about the inclusion and well-being of the students, especially disabled students. I carried out my research in Italy and Finland. I used qualitative and quantitative tools in order to answer to my research questions, more specifically, observations in the classrooms, semi-structured interviews with headteachers, teachers, focus groups with teachers and special needs teachers, and questionnaires for teachers and students.

At the moment I am still analysing the data. Even though it will not be possible to generalise the results, the research will have exploratory meaning and value and the outputs could shed a light on some specific aspects of school inclusion, stimulate some critical considerations about the state of the art of inclusion in the selected schools, and inspire further research.

Matteo Di Pietrantonio, PhD Student, Department of Educational Sciences, University of Bologna, Italy

The Marrakesh Treaty attempts to increase the number and availability of accessible materials for people who are blind, visually impaired, or print disabled. It seeks to balance copyright protection with equality of access. The treaty’s preamble emphasises the importance of ensuring access for people in developing countries; a key provision of the treaty is easier cross-border exchanges of material. Yet the accessibility promises housed within the Marrakesh Treaty remain largely an ideological fantasy. Although 89 countries have signed the treaty since 2013 and it came into force in 2016, it is unlikely that there has been a substantial change to the World Blind Union’s estimate that less than 10% of printed material is accessible to people who are blind or visually impaired.

Six years after the Marrakesh Treaty came into force, there are no data to evaluate its success and whether more print-disabled people around the world, regardless of their country’s level of development, are accessing more materials in 2022 than they were in 2016. The treaty contains no requirement for reporting, tracking, or monitoring. This is a significant absence, reflecting society’s uneasy relationship with both human rights accountability and disability. Without data, the question is, what do participating institutions say about their involvement with the Marrakesh Treaty, and what do these statements (or lack thereof) indicate about the strength of the treaty and the state of accessibility? This paper addresses the effectiveness of the Marrakesh Treaty by examining the statements about it that have been issued by major institutions in some of the English-speaking signatory countries. The degree to which these organisations demonstrate their engagement with the treaty is contextualised within larger conversations about human rights, disability, accessibility, and copyright law.

Tabitha Kenlon, Independent Researcher, United States

There are currently 1.5 million children in England who are recorded as being disabled or having special education needs – 16% of the total number of pupils. Despite decades of legislation changes, going back to the Education Act of 1981, we know that there are still so many children who are slipping through the net, not due to their disability, but due to an environment and a society that still disables them. For The Disability Policy Centre’s research, through surveys, roundtables and one- to-one interviews, we spoke to past and present disabled students of a range of ages, as well as parents, carers and guardians, and teachers. We also conducted a Freedom of Information Request to every Local Authority in England and Wales.

Through our research, we found that 46% of the disabled people we spoke to had their disability undiagnosed throughout school. 65% of parents, carers and guardians ‘had to fight’ for their child’s EHCP (Education, Health and Care Plan), and in some Local Authorities, up to 100% of the pupils in the Pupil Referral Units were registered as being disabled or having special educational needs. In this paper, we have laid out a series of recommendations that we believe will lay the groundwork for how we build a truly accessible education system for all. Our research shows that our disabled pupils are still facing the same barriers that they were forty years ago. They require bold thinking and collaborative action now more than ever.

Chloe Schendel-Wilson, Co-Founder and Director, Disability Policy Centre, England

This presentation will explore the huge omission of the representation of young people with learning disabilities within the UK workplace and broader society. In terms of inclusion, it will argue that there is a lack of real and meaningful engagement with young disabled people and there is as a result limited access to the employment field which seriously undermines the ability of people to gain a sense of personal value and a sense of community. Whilst the UK has equality legislation making it illegal to discriminate against disabled people, there clearly remains negative perceptions about the positive involvement disabled individuals can contribute to a truly inclusive workforce.

By contrast, recognising organisations such as the National Development Team for Inclusion (NDTI) would play some role in challenging these misconceptions, the presentation will focus largely on a local project. The ‘Into Employment Scheme’ in Bradford, UK is a project is supported by a consortium of Bradford Local Authority and a range of Voluntary and independent providers of social care.

With direct contributions from the people within the project the presentation will highlight how providing inroads into employment can make a very real difference to lives of young people. It will be recognised that this is only one initiative within the city of Bradford and for employment to be a real and tangible aspiration for young people with learning difficulties, there needs to be sizeable shift in the perceptions of how wider society views people.

Mr. Michael Grant, Mr. Brian Mitchell and Dr Trevor Rogers, University of Bradford, England

Brazil is the 5th largest country in the world, despite having a “High Human Development”, it is the 9th most unequal country. The existing Brazilian micro pension programme is one of the safety nets for poor people. To become eligible for this beneft, each individual must have an income that is less than a quarter of the Brazilian minimum wage and be either over 65 or considered disabled. That minimum income corresponds to approximately US  $2 per day. This manuscript analyses quantitatively some aspects of this programme in the Public Pension System of Brazil. We look for the impact of some particular economic variables on the number of people receiving the beneft, and seek if that impact signifcantly difers among the 27 Brazilian Federal Units (UF). We search for heterogeneity. We perform a regression and spatial cluster analysis for detection of geographical grouping. We use a database that includes the entire population receiving the beneft. Afterwards, we calculate the amount that the system spends with the benefciaries, estimate values per capita and the weight of each UF, searching for heterogeneity refected on the amount spent per capita. In this latter calculation we use a more comprehensive database, by individual, that includes all people that started receiving a beneft under the programme between January and April 2018. We compute the expected discounted beneft and confrm a high heterogeneity among UF’s as well as by gender. We propose looking for a more equitable system by introducing “age adjusting factors” to change the beneft age.

Dr. Renata Gomes Alcoforado, Brazil

*the schedule may change

Doctor Karen Soldatic is a Professor of Social Welfare, Disability Studies and Sociology in the School of Social Sciences, Western Sydney University (Australia). She has written, co-authored and edited ten books with her most recent including: Social Suffering in the Neoliberal Age: State Power, Logistics and Resistance (2022, see our ‘News and Themes’ page), Women with Disabilities as Agents of Peace, Change and Rights: Experiences from Sri Lanka (2021), whilst  prominent articles have included one on (Re)Claiming Health: The Human Rights of Young LGBTIQ+ Indigenous People in Australia (2022). 

Professor Soldatic also co-authored an article entitled Mobility Tactics: Young LGBTIQ+ Indigenous Australians’ Belonging and Connectedness (2022).  Earlier in her career, Karen was awarded a Fogarty Foundation Excellence in Education Fellowship for 2006–2009, a British Academy International Fellowship in 2012, a fellowship at The Centre for Human Rights Education, Curtin University (2011–2012) and an Australian Research Council DECRA Fellowship (2016–2019) examining the lived implications of poverty and inequality for Indigenous persons living with disability with the intensification of neoliberal welfare retraction. Her research on global welfare regimes builds on her 20 years of experience as an international (Cambodia, Sri Lanka, Indonesia), national and state-based senior policy analyst, researcher and practitioner. She obtained her PhD (Distinction) in 2010 from the University of Western Australia.

Jaana Poikolainen (PhD, Educ.) works as Research Manager at Juvenia – Youth Research and Development Centre Juvenia at the South-Eastern Finland University of Applied Sciences. Her current research interests focus on young people`s well-being from different perspectives: e.g. youth participation, equal opportunities and institutional trust in different contexts such as service systems and residential areas. She is also interested in research methodology as well as research ethical issues. For over 20 years, she has planned and led several development and research projects.

Across the globe, the accelerated exploitation of natural resources on indigenous lands has given rise to growing resistance from indigenous communities, for example through the mobilisation of international law (Eide 2009, 245). Disputes over land and natural resources in Fennoscandia are often characterised by ‘extractive violence’ – ‘a form of direct violence against nature, and/or people and animals, caused by extractivism, which predominantly affects peoples closely connected to land’ (Sehlin MacNeil 2017, 39). Based on an analysis of a controversial iron ore mine project in Gállok in northern Sweden (SBS News 2022), I assume extractive violence is inseparable from ‘legal violence’ – the legal aspect of colonial structural violence (Murdocca 2010) – contained in Swedish law on land use and mining activities. Although both extractive (Preston 2017) and legal violence (Ward et. al. 2021) have been described as having racial components, it seems fruitful to appraise their combined impact on discrimination related to indigenous land issues in Sápmi. Building on Fraser (2009, 15) and Altman and Markham (2015, 140), I also explore claims for indigenous land justice as a non-violent reaction to colonial practices (Cormier 2017, 48), which are extractive and legal here. Concretely, I assess the extent to which recent legal actions taken by the Jåhkågaska tjiellde Sami village and the Swedish Society for Nature Conservation address each of the three dimensions of land justice: (1) economic redistribution through land ownership rights, (2) cultural recognition of an identity linked to land and (3) political representation in formal land management processes. By doing so, I aim to demonstrate that indigenous land justice is not only a response to extractive violence (Nachet, Beckett, and Sehlin MacNeil 2021), but also to legal violence.

Camille Parguel, Doctoral Student in Peace and Development Research, School of Global Studies, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Gothenburg, Sweden

The scope of this study focuses on the social security coverage and social assistance to indigenous and traditional peoples of the Amazon region, whether in the condition of workers and special insured (rural and urban). In a comparative study of two Amazonian regions, the problematic exposed herein hints at the need to point out the differences in the impact and the importance of the public social security assistance made available in the form of boat to the riverside communities of the affluent rivers of the Amazon basin, in view of the capillarity of water access and the unavailability of access by land routes to the residents of that region. If social security has in its corollaries the equal treatment for urban and rural workers, one must consider that rural workers have more difficulties regarding formalisation, realisation and proof of their activities. With the indigenous community, mainly the urban indigenous, the difficulties may be greater as to the recognition of the social security right. Therefore, this study is necessary in order to measure the impact of assistance to indigenous communities for these populations, considering that Prevbarco is Social Welfare for those workers who are not able to go to a unit in the city. From an ethnographic analysis, this exploratory study aims to identify the differences of the realities studied (Rio Guaporé/Mamoré and Rio Madeira Regions), pointing out the possible benefits of this public policy in the light of Amartya Sen’s theory of the development of human capabilities.

Saulo Macedo, Master student of Administration, Fundação Getúlio, Vargas, Brazil

Considering the inclusion of indigenous and tribal persons, the ILO Convention 169 states that governments must consult the citizens and their representative institutions, concerned with respect to the formulation, application, and evaluation of national and regional development plans and programs that are likely to affect them directly are in the making. However, the sparse existing literature tells us that this does not occur in Brazil. In this paper, we seek to perform a quasi-experimental study with the replication of a consultation in a deliberative intervention, in discussion groups and the participation of citizens and public servants (Fraga and Mendes 2020) with respect to indigenous peoples and ethnic minorities in the Amazon. These may be at the margins of effective social security inclusion, marginalised, outcasts without means of support, and socioeconomic conditions to avoid marginalisation. In this sense, New Public Governance (NPG), in a Digital Age Governance (DEG) approach, associated with the theoretical support of the Ethics of the CordialReason provide a new meaning to the issues related to stakeholders in the strategic decision-making process.

Research evidence indicates that compliance costs, learning costs, and psychological costs associated with administrative burden end up generating a lower demand for benefits, either because of the digital gap, the absence of knowledge of their rights, the prospect of not knowing how to deal with new requirements, and the possibility of embarrassing face-to-face interviews, among other costs.

Vanessa Fraga, National Institute of Social Security, Brazil and Silvia M. Mendes University of Minho, Portugal

This century started with the goal of providing equal opportunities to all despite their gender, caste, or community. On the contrary, developing countries are encountering challenges in ensuring equal rights for their citizens. Still, in a country like India, several communities are victimised by systemic discrimination as they are stigmatised as denotified communities. Historically, 200 of them were marked as criminals by the British Colonial Government under the Criminal Tribes Act imposed in 1871, which labelled them as hereditary criminals. Their present situation is no different from the past, and still, their acceptability in society is far-fetched due to social stigma. In this direction, this study aims to explore the historical understanding of colonial intervention against such communities and their recent experiences. To this end, the empirical data related to these communities is collected from colonial archives and the present governmental outlook. Notably, we have focused on three communities, including Bedia, Banchhada, and Kanjar, from the Sagar, Bhopal, and Ratlam districts of Madhya Pradesh state in central India, respectively. In total, 36 in-depth unstructured interviews are conducted, including 3 case studies, to examine the current status of these communities.

The results reveal that they are completely or partially socially excluded from the mainstream of development. They are labelled by socially constructed identities, due to which their new generations are also struggling with the hurdles such as no good education and no job opportunities. Continuous ignorance and non-acceptance by the government and society have created structural vulnerability, which creates hindrances in the process of change.

Dr Usha Rana, Department of Sociology and Social Work and Dr Harisingh Gour Vishwavidyalaya, A Central University, Sagar, India

This paper examines the situations of women during Maoist insurgency as represented in the Nepalese Cinema. During Maoist movement, the insurgent groups were fighting for access and control over the state structures. They claimed that they were fighting for the people. However, many innocent people were killed and terrified. Women, children, differently abled, and elderly people were victimised during this war time; women became one of the major sufferers. In the patriarchal social structure of Nepal, women were always subordinate, and whether the war has contributed to their subordination becomes a major concern. In this background, this paper examines the following research questions: How had war left women insecure in this period? How has Nepalese cinema captured the situation of women in that war period? It assumes that women were victimised in two ways: 1) they had to run the household and family as the head of the family went to war, and 2) Women were sexually abused and were targeted to take revenge for enemies. The cinema could not take any agentive role for women as they maintained the same pattern of patriarchal subordination. They were indifference toward women’s plight. I will use movie analysis as a method to examine the research question.

Sushila Sharma, McMaster University, Canada

Serious crimes are currently committed in several forms by using diversified modus operandi. The perpetrators are looking for finding more efficient illegal means and ways of enhancing their proceeds of crimes. Usually, trafficking in human beings, having young people as victims, in purpose to be exploited sexually or through forced labour is commonly committed. In this context, the victims need a special protection from the law enforcement agencies; in some cases, they suffer because of the revictimisation. For this reason, the legislator must take into account their vulnerable status during the criminal proceedings in order to prevent any form of revictimisation. The current article presents the situation existed in both legal and judicial system on the young victims of serious crimes associated with the phenomenon of revictimisation. The research is also aiming at finding appropriate legal measures and instruments of fighting serious crimes including trafficking in children and young women, as vulnerable victims, and enhancing the stateʼs policy of reducing revictimization. In purpose to achieve the proposed aims, the article is designed through a qualitative research methodology, particular attention being paid on the serious risk factors to generate the revictimisation, which exist in practice.

Dr. Delia Magherescu, Gorji Bar Association, Romania

Despite the official end of Colombia’s lengthy armed conflict, Indigenous women in Cauca, Colombia suffer ongoing violations of their individual and collective human rights, experiencing injuries not only to their persons, but also to their relationships with their land. In response, these women have developed nonviolent practices of territorial safeguarding such as those engaged in by the Indigenous Guard to preserve norms and practices of buen vivir (good living), while thereby defending their human rights, territorial relationships, and political autonomy against the impacts of both armed conflict and post-conflict violence by fulfilling responsibilities of territorial control.
​
Working respectfully in engagement with Indigenous communities, my ethnographic research will analyse the alternative forms of security created and developed by women who undertake these duties in the face of family and community experiences of death, abuse, and displacement during the armed conflict and so-called post-conflict era. Drawing on scholarship on feminist geopolitics and research into grassroots practices of grounded protections, (or alter geopolitics), I explore how Indigenous women from the Association of Indigenous Cabildos del Norte del Cauca (AICNC) meet, seek, generate, and implement non-violent collective resistance to address everyday violence while weaving cross-national solidarity with similar organisations to shape spaces of safety. My research brings Gender Based Analysis (GBA+) to understand buen vivir practices and examine how violence delves into spaces and practices that traverse public/ private domains. This study speaks to SSHRC research priorities by 1) describing new types of violence that Indigenous women suffer in terms of how they relate to their territories, and 2) understanding how women establish nonviolent practices for reasserting these territorial relationships amidst and in the wake of armed conflict.

Luisa Isidro Herrero, York University, Canada

20 years after the implementation of Resolution 1325 by the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) – which introduced the institution’s Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda – it is important to address certain points surrounding women and war. The above mentioned Resolution promotes the protection of women during conflict and post-conflict times, while also encouraging women to join the UN’s peacekeeping forces, as a measure to provide gender balance within the institution. However, a critical feminist approach is needed in order to analyse the obstacles and consequences of including women in militarised environments, especially regarding the gender hierarchies within the military and its lack of space for femininities, considering masculinities and war could be co-dependent.
​
Therefore, this research intends on exposing the gendered structures of militarisation, as well as its reverberations on combatant women, specifically peacekeepers. In order to develop that study, and considering this research is conducted under a critical feminist point of view, the methodology is based on analysing discourses, gestures and practices either macro or embodied on the everyday of combatant women. As a result, exposing women’s obstacles within the military while considering gender hierarchies could provide insight on the reproduction of military masculinities and its relation to war, the possible adoption and bending of women peacekeepers to military and hegemonic masculinities and, finally, questioning whether women’s needs are fully addressed – or at least considered – within UN’s military peacekeeping forces.

Fernanda de Abreu Appolinário, Postgraduate student, Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro’s (UERJ), Brazil

*the schedule may change

Sofia Laine holds a PhD in Development Studies and holds a title of docent in Youth Studies (Tampere University). Her multidisciplinary research has focused on young people, and political and cultural engagements in multiple national, European, Mediterranean, and global settings. More recently she has also studied young refugees, volunteer work, and art education. Most recently she worked in the Academy of Finland funded research project:  ‘What works? Youth transitions from education to employment in the Middle East and North Africa’ (2019–2023’, University of Tampere). Now, she also leads a project in the Finnish Youth Research Network that analyses young people’s leisure-time activities in public and semi-public places during the Covid-19 pandemic. Before her appointment to Research Professor position, she worked as a Research Manager (2021-2022) at Juvenia – the Youth Research and Development Centre in the South-Eastern Finland University of Applied Sciences.

Dr Sari Tuuva-Hongisto, South-Eastern Finland University of Applied Sciences (XAMK, Finland) works as a research manager in Juvenia – youth research and development centre. She is a scholar of cultural studies and has wide expertise on ethnographic research and youth studies. Currently, Sari is working as PI at Dequal: Capturing Digital Social Inequality – Young Digi-natives’ Asymmetrical Agencies Within Socio-technical Imperatives and Imaginaries, funded by Academy of Finland.  At Juvenia, she has carried out several research reports and policy briefs (on rural youth, marginalisation of youth and regional segregation, digital youth work).

This presentation deals with how the perceptions of security among young people are handled in international research literature published in two recent decades. Investigation is based on desk study implemented in Finland during 2022-2023 by the Finnish Youth Research Society and Juvenia. The aim of the desk study is to recognise the gaps in domestic (Finnish) research concerning young people and security, the importance of which as a research topic has been acknowledged during the recent times of global crises causing security threats at multiple societal and individual levels.
​
In the light of the desk study, the research dealing with young peoples’ perceptions or sense of security is scarce both domestically and internationally, as most research topics consider security issues only indirectly. However, the studies provide a considerable amount of knowledge on the security threats that face young people particularly. The basic threats are domestic violence and malaise in families often caused by poor socio-economic conditions and substance use, school bullying and other forms of discrimination, unsafe environments, and finally the risks that these severe social problems pose to health and wellbeing of a young person.

It has been striking to see, that many of these threats are being faced by those young people particularly, who identify themselves to belong in a minority according to their ethnic background, sexual orientation, or disability, and those having poor living conditions. The result shows, that the sense of security, being a crucial part of wellbeing of young people, is deficient among those who encounter discrimination and injustice at close spheres of their lives. As that, it can have serious consequences on the individual.

Dr Susan Eriksson, Senior Researcher in Juvenia Centre of Youth Research and Development at South Eastern Finland University of Applied Sciences (Xamk)

Between 2015 and 2019, through my program of research Aging Activisms, I hosted seven research workshops in Michi Saagiig Anishinaabe territory, in a place known for millennia as Nogojiwanong, which now contains the city of Peterborough, Canada. Each gathering featured cross-cultural, multi-age groups of activists, artists, and organisers taking time to immerse in the slowness of sharing, listening, eating, and creating together – collectively storying activist histories and co-creating community stories, media, and art that intervenes in dominant understandings of ageing futures. This project explores why and how activists of different backgrounds, genders, abilities, and generations work for change throughout their lives, how they connect across time and space, and how they narrate, circulate, and archive their own stories of resistance. In this paper, I specifically explore the parallel themes of climate and ageing anxiety, both premised on fear of finality, which emerged most explicitly from my 2019 arts-based workshop, Imagining Our Futures.
​
I will also screen a short, personal film, called Dream Beautiful Futures, which I created in 2022 in response to what I am learning in this research. The film (5 min) is about my own process of ageing while parenting a child experiencing intense climate anxiety and eco-grief. I draw on decolonial teachings to explore what it could mean to shift from cultural imaginaries of immanent apocalypse to re-worlding visions of liveable futures.
​
As media coverage of recent climate mobilisations throws into sharp relief, oversimplified and ageist narratives of culpable or ambivalent elders and hope-giving, future-burdened youngers permeate popular representations of global activism. At the same time, people of all ages are continuously working together for social change in many movements, as well as through quieter everyday work, arts, ceremony, and cultural resurgence. Against a backdrop of upheaval, from climate apocalypse to global pandemic, Ageing Activisms’ work of critically making together across ages invites a collective process of radical imagination in constricted times. It records emergent, co-created stories that tell of, or make possible, futures apart from apocalyptic narratives, fear, and disregard for life; otherworlds rooted in sovereignty, collectivity, connection and intergenerational continuance.

Dr May Chazan, Department of Gender and Social Justice, Trent University, Canada

Young people who are not in education, employment or training (labelled as NEETs) are subject to various interventions aiming to promote their participation in education and working life. To study these interventions, there is a need to combine policy analysis and detailed investigation of day-to-day activities. This case study examines participatory methods of an educational support project for 15–to–24-year-old young people. The project offers a group-based, daily learning environment for young people who have dropped out of education: Open Vocational College where they can study credited modules in vocational studies.

The analysis is based on participant observations and qualitative interviews with 35 students and 5 project workers. Following a sociological interventionist approach, we evaluate the programme theory of the project – the ways it constructs the problems it intends to solve – and the practical activities of the project. We identify three main levels of activities – individual, communal and structural – and analyse what kinds of participation forms these activities open or limit for these NEET young people. Through our analysis we focus on measures that are used to ensure young people’s committed participation in education and labour markets.

Dr Mirja Määttä, Dr Sanna Toiviainen and Dr Sanna Aaltonen, Juvenia, South Eastern Finland University of Applied Sciences (Xamk), Finland

My paper studies the process of radicalisation of Lebanese youth as a process of engagement in violence to respond to a global crisis of leadership in the face of insecurity. Nevertheless, all radicalisation does not take the form of a commitment but sometimes of a rupture. To develop this hypothesis, my paper will be divided into three parts. First, I will examine some of the factors that are fundamental to understanding this phenomenon, such as inequality, racism, discrimination, unemployment and spatial segregation. These aspects coupled with a sense of injustice have widened the gap between the state and the citizens. Next, I will analyse the role of state institutions as a driver of violent extremism and youth engagement in armed groups.

Dr Marie Kortam, Senior Research Fellow, Fondation Maison des Sciences de l’homme, Paris, France

This research focuses on youths’ law experience during the pandemic time (Ewick Silbey 1998). Young people have been an invisible category, without any visible and public forms of agency and stigmatised as potential responsible for the spread of the infections.

The research focuses on how the rules were daily implemented, in terms of acceptance, interpretation, negotiation and rejection of them, or of some of their aspects, with a specific gaze on social relations. Discursive interviews, with photo elicitations, are carried out with 70 young people between 18 and 25, students and workers, Italian and with migratory experience, living in different Italian regions.

The attention to the experiences and ‘good reasons’ – by which young people give meaning and ‘justify’ their actions- raises deeper and more latent dispositions towards law, but also on scientific knowledge and on the spheres of ethics. The ways of confrontation with the law, as developed and put into practice by the interviewees, can be summarised as different forms of legal consciousness: deference, moderation, translation and claiming. Young people are confronted with the different regulatory orders involved in managing the containment of infections; they have done choices and negotiations in everyday situations that, in various ways, contributed to reproducing, supporting and challenging the hegemonic form of law.

The results can contribute to the reflection on the forms of participation of young people in the reproduction of the social order and on the ways in which law and social policies include or exclude this social category. considering their perspective and their specific needs.

Isabella Quadrelli, Università degli Studi di Urbino and Anna Uboldi, Università degli Studi di Torino, Italy

The COVID-19 Pandemic has had a far-reaching and disproportionate effect on the lives of youth globally. From education to employment, to mental health, young people have had a uniquely challenging experience throughout the Pandemic. The European Union (EU)’s ability to respond to and manage crises is a significant determinant of public support and credibility amongst citizens. However, an overlooked aspect of study on EU crisis response and management that deserves greater attention is its potential to transform national and supranational identities. While the EU had pre-Pandemic policies targeting youth, this study seeks to understand how these policies changed during the Pandemic.

Applying institutional legitimacy theories and literature on identity formation, this paper addresses the following question: did the EU alter existing, and implement new youth-focused policies during the Pandemic to transform how young people identify with Europe? This study performs a content analysis of EU legislation, directives, budgets, and communiques that deal with institutional-level crisis response and management tools geared towards young people during the Pandemic. These documents will be contrasted to Eurobarometer Surveys from before the Pandemic, and 2021 – 2022 focusing on youth opinions of the EU’s institutional Pandemic response, and Europe as a whole. I argue that a significant aspect of the EU’s Pandemic response works toward fostering the development of a European identity among young people through the increased funding and expansion of projects such as Erasmus +, The European Solidary Corps, and the EU Youth Strategy. These programs provide a support network for young people during the pandemic with an express focus on pan-European solidarity, imagery, and symbolism. This research will fill a clear gap in the literature on not only how crisis response affects youth, but also on the intersection of crisis and policy on identity development.

Eric B Hubberstey, Balsillie School of International Affairs, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Canada

The eradication of inequality is an important factor in achieving equity and inclusion, which can be achieved through the implementation of inclusive education. To stay safe, schools were closed during the COVID-19 pandemic across the world. The initial lockdown was for a short period, but disruption to educational activities extended for around an hour and a half in India, and it posed a significant obstacle to the inclusive education agenda. On the one hand, COVID-19 harms marginalised people socioeconomically, and on the other, it creates learning gaps for children from marginalised groups, thereby altering the mental and physical environments of children. This paper shed light on the influence of the COVID-19 pandemic on the education of marginalised children. How the digital divide, lack of internet access, and lack of electricity further hindered their studies. It further investigates how it impacted the physical and mental health of students. This study examines how the learning gap that has been created as a result of the school being closed for so long can be filled. In addition, the further discussion describes the challenges of inclusive education, which are barriers for marginalised students during primary school closures and reopening. In addition it also describes the gendered impact on pandemic on student. This study is based on 45 government schools in India. Paper adopts an online survey and interviews for the data collection. This study will be able to help policy makers to make policies which promote inclusive education during the times of crisis.

Surbhi Dayal, Assistant Professor, IIM Indore, India