Author Archives: Hannah Atkins

Featured weekly article – Understanding Taliban Resurgence: Ethno-Symbolism and Revolutionary Mobilization

Understanding Taliban Resurgence: Ethno-Symbolism and Revolutionary Mobilization

By Kareem Kamel

Volume 15, Issue 1, pages 66-82

This article argues that the post-2001 Taliban resurgence was due to their capacity to act as resourceful ethnic entrepreneurs through selective usage of dominant Pashtun and Islamic mythomoteurs in the process of symbolic cultivation.Through comparative historical analysis and an ethno-symbolist theoretical framework, it shows that the main identity determinants informing the movement’s behaviour have played a fundamental role in the process of revolutionary mobilization. With Afghanistan as their territorial referent, the ideological lenses of Pashtun nationalism and Islamism, coupled with their situational ‘village’ lens, have been used interchangeably by the Taliban to shed light on specific symbolic resources for successful resistance.

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Call for Papers – Grounding the Nation: The Role of National Anniversaries

What is the role of national commemorations in the endurance of nationalisms worldwide? How do collective memories compete with each other and feed existing group conflicts? Why do ordinary citizens celebrate or mourn their national past? These questions are particularly important in the rapidly changing times in which state-society relations become more unstable. In recent years, elements of ritualism and commemoration have also been used extensively by social movement organizations seeking to counter their regimes’ national narratives in countries and regions like Hong Kong, Cyprus, Thailand and Myanmar, to name a few. Another element adding to the importance of the study of national commemorations is that the COVID-19 has brought about new dynamics to them, sometimes giving way to virtual forms of commemoration, yet at other times being used by governments as a tool to clamp down on dissenting narratives.

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Featured weekly article: Securitization as a Source of Insecurity

Securitization as a Source of Insecurity: A Ground-Level Look at the Functioning of Europe’s External Border in Lampedusa

By Giacomo Orsini

Volume 16, Issue 1, pages 135-147.

Immigration to Europe increasingly emerges as a core security concern. In response to these growing anxieties the external border of Schengen space of free movement of people was established to limit uncontrolled immigration to the European Union. Yet, looking closely at how this border works in Lampedusa and its surrounding seawaters, one realizes the functioning of the European external border works to undermine the legitimacy of institutions on the island, de facto challenging law enforcement both on the island as well as at sea. Based on the data collected during the six-months-long fieldwork that I conducted on the island, this paper disentangles the complex machinery of the border as it structures in Lampedusa, and presents how such complex governing technology works through authorities’ strategic use of local land and seawaters and their simultaneous neglect for the concerns of the population inhabiting them – representing a major source of insecurity for islanders.

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Blog post – Exploring the Victimization of Syrian Refugees: An Ethnographic Approach

refugee camp slovenia
Image credit: Barbara Gornik

Guest Contributor

Arif Akgul, School of Criminology and Security Studies, Indiana State University

As we have passed the 10-year mark of the Syrian conflict, it still remains the largest refugee crisis of our time. The escalation of war and conflict, security concerns, and human rights violations have caused many individuals to leave Syria. Since the beginning of the conflict, according to UN statistics, 12 million people have been displaced and more than six million have left for neighbouring countries. Today, Turkey by far is the top refugee hosting country in the world including 4 million Syrians. In fact, children under the age of 18 make up 47% of the Syrian population living in Turkey. In other words, more than 1.7 million Syrian refugees are children. More importantly, more than one million of these are under the age of 10. Consequently, it would not be misleading to say that women and children continue to pay the heaviest price of this crisis.

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Special virtual issue: Refugee Week 2021

To mark the Refugee Week 2021 Studies in Ethnicity Nationalism have put together a special collection of articles available free to read for 1 month. The collection includes articles published in SEN since 2020 and beyond. They cover various theoretical and empirical aspects of the intersection between migration, human security, ethnicity, race and national identities.

See the full collection here

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