Corporate Borders: A Provocation

This chapter is concerned with theories and methodologies of critical discourse analysis and their contribution to climate change, environmental and health policy research in the European Union. The purpose of the chapter is to explore how the link between climate change, environment and health, perhaps some of the most urgent and crucial issues of today’s public space, is linguistically and discursively articulated in public policy discourse from a corpus-assisted critical discourse analytical perspective. Indeed, climate and environmental policy-making is “deeply and inevitably political” (Remling 2018: 478). By providing an overview of the nexus between climate change, environment and health in the public space, it will focus on an empirical case study of EU policy and its communication over the last decade. In this we move from the assumption that policy analysis “includes but extends beyond laws and legislation” (Bacchi 2009; 2016), covering not only binding documents (e.g. directives, regulations, recommendations, (also in the form of Green and White Papers) but also the bulk of text and talk that constitute institutional communication, which has acquired increasing importance in reinforcing linkages between institutions and citizens (Bee 2010; Cap and Okulska 2013).

Transnational Health Practices Among Polish Labor Migrants in NorwayThe article discusses the use of health-care services among Polish labor migrants in Norway. We apply theories of patient–physician relationship, trust, and transnationalism to analyze a material of qualitative in-depth interviews with eleven Polish labor migrants about their health practices. The material demonstrates how and why many Polish labor migrants evaluate Norwegian primary health care negatively. Their main reason for doing so is the non-paternalistic doctor–patient relationship. They therefore supplement Norwegian health services with health services available in their home country. However, the labor migrants tend to evaluate the Norwegian health system more favorably as time passes. In total, the Poles establish creative, reflexive, competent, and dynamic health practices that go beyond national state borders and combine elements of two health-care systems. We argue that these practices enable migrants to enhance the total quality of their health care.

City-regionalism as countervailing geopolitical processes: The evolution and dynamics of Yangtze River Delta region, China

Favretto provides a much-needed critical discussion of the scholarship on popular culture and modern collective action, and analyses the conceptual and methodological reasons for the limited attention paid so far to the influence of folk traditions such as Carnival and the charivari on modern and contemporary forms of struggle. She suggests that it would be more productive to analyse protest practices in a wider historical perspective, and to abandon the conventional distinction between pre- and post-industrial forms of collective action. As she argues, some rituals and symbols used in today’s protest action date back to pre-modern times, and their historical origins, meanings and functions need to be better understood. Her introduction also makes a strong case for a transnational approach to the study of protest repertoires within the European space. The rituals and practices discussed in the book’s chapters point to a shared European repertoire of symbols, rituals and practices with origins in a time when national state borders had little relevance, which since then have retained a strong transnational dimension.

Neoliberalism has lost its hegemonic status in the global system but neoliberal ideas and practices persist. Post-Brexit UK offers a useful case study of how these operate in a post-hegemonic context. The UK government's vision of free trading ‘Global Britain' crashed against the reality of an increasingly geoeconomic world. Freeports were an initiative designed to boost trade and to develop poorer regions. This paper adapts Fairclough’s Critical Discourse Analysis to analyse how the different Freeport discourses interact with material power as the policy develops. It divides this into three levels: national political discourse, national policy discourse and local political and policy discourse (with a case study of one Freeport). At the national level, the Brexiteers forged a discourse that combined neoliberalism, Brexit discourse and ‘levelling up’. When translated to policy this was significantly moderated due to legal commitments and geoeconomic pressures. At the local level, the policy was significantly reframed with little emphasis on trade and more on traditional local development concerns. The contradictions of the initial political discourse opened a space for other actors to reshape the policy. More broadly, this story suggests that global geoeconomic pressures may restrict the role of free trade zones in the developed world.

In recent political and policy discourse, a widely circulated claim has asserted that Bangladesh experienced illicit capital outflows averaging approximately USD 16 billion annually between 2009 and 2023, resulting in a cumulative loss of nearly USD 240 billion. This figure, repeatedly cited in media commentary and reinforced by a government-commissioned white paper, has generated substantial public concern, shaped political narratives, and influenced policy debates on governance, corruption, and financial accountability. Given the scale of the alleged outflows relative to Bangladesh’s gross domestic product, foreign exchange reserves, and investment capacity, such claims warrant careful and systematic empirical scrutiny rather than uncritical acceptance. This paper critically evaluates the plausibility of the alleged magnitude of capital flight by situating the claim within Bangladesh’s broader macro-economic trajectory and development outcomes over the same period. Between 2009 and 2023, Bangladesh recorded sustained economic growth, rising per capita income, expanding export earnings, improved social indicators, and increased public investment in infrastructure and human development. These outcomes raise important analytical questions regarding the internal consistency of claims suggesting prolonged, large-scale capital leakage of the magnitude alleged. Employing a mixed-methods approach, the study integrates macroeconomic trend analysis, balance-of-payments indicators, external debt dynamics, reserve accumulation patterns, and comparative assessments using independent global estimates of illicit financial flows. Qualitative analysis further examines how political incentives, methodological opacity, and definitional ambiguities may contribute to the inflation or misinterpretation of capital flight estimates. The findings suggest that while illicit financial flows have undoubtedly occurred, consistent with patterns observed in many developing economies, the scale of such outflows is likely significantly lower than the figures commonly cited in political discourse. The paper argues that conflating legitimate economic leakages, trade mis-invoicing estimates, and politically motivated extrapolations risks distorting public understanding and undermining credible policy formulation. It emphasizes the importance of separating political narratives from evidence-based economic analysis and cautions against framing development challenges solely through sensational aggregate figures. Finally, the study advocates targeted institutional reforms to strengthen financial oversight, trade transparency, and data credibility, while recognizing and preserving Bangladesh’s documented development progress and structural economic gains over the period under review.

Today the historic region of Schleswig is divided between Denmark and Germany. The region illustrates the change from a transitional land-in-between to a border region defined by a nation state border of a later date. In this chapter the national narrative is questioned by the effort to understand these developments from the border and by using a borderland approach. Here borderland resilience becomes a matter of defending particular characteristics, like multiple language, a mixed culture and in-betweenness against the pressure for clear divisions and homogeneity from the outside. The national border divided the region, but borderland resilience understood as a totality of traditions and experiences of living with and adapting to the border is seen as dynamic and able to find new expressions with the changing character of the nation state border.

Political discussion and debate in narrative time: the Florentine Consulte e Pratiche, 1376–1378

This chapter demonstrates that the composition of the labor market in a host country, the labor demands of the economy, and the related official indifference to migration can foster a gendered composition of migrants. Moreover, the gender and labor dynamics in a host country can illegalize immigration even if the legal infrastructure as well as political discourse does not condone such illegality. In this context, there arises an inevitable conflict across the legal framework, political discourse, and social reality as immigrants find work in the gendered and informal labor market despite the restrictive legal procedures regulating migration. In order to determine the validity of our assumption, we debate the immigration regime in Turkey, bearing in mind its politico-legal environment, the prevalent social preconceptions about the role of women in the job market, and the eventual rights and position of women migrants in the Turkish labor market mostly as caretakers of children, the elderly, or the sick. Our argument is that despite the strict legal system that sets harsh rules handling migration and the anti-immigration political discourse and public sentiment, there remain loopholes for clandestine migrants to enter the Turkish labor market through informal channels. Dominant ideas regarding women and employment enhance the pervasiveness of such channels.

This research examines the role of marginal thinkers in shaping European political discourse during the period (1760–1860), through a study of selected intellectual models from France, Britain, and Germany. In the first section, it addresses the most prominent French thinkers, highlighting Germain de Staël and Benjamin Constant, who represent two of the most important pioneers of European liberal thought in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. They sought to create a centrist intellectual current, as their intellectual project was formed within a direct critical context of the French Revolution and its despotic transformations. They called for the defense of individual freedom and constitutional rule and rejected the tyranny of absolute power, whether in the name of the monarchy or in the name of revolutionary will, and they linked culture and politics through salons and political writings. As for the second section, Britain, the research deals with the thought of Mary Wollstonecraft, who was one of the first liberal feminist thinkers, who sought to create a new political thought about women’s rights, education and public participation, along with William Cobbett, who sought to involve the people in political discourse and not limit it to the elites only, using the press as a tool for social criticism and parliamentary reform, and making the concerns of peasants and working classes and serving them the most important goals of the government. Together, they represent a diverse critical current in Europe and link social and political liberalism. Finally, the third section, Germany, sheds light on Arnold Ruge, who was considered one of the most prominent young Hegelians, as he moved philosophy from the field of contemplation to democratic political criticism, and contributed to creating a republican liberal discourse prior to the revolutions of 1848, and on Moses Hess, who combined moral socialism with the unification of Jewish nationalism, and preceded Marxism in focusing on the moral dimension of social justice. He was also one of the first theorists of political Zionism. The two met on the German critical intellectual current, as they took freedom, justice and society as the focus of their interest, with differences between political liberalism and national socialism.

The article analyses the discursive function of graffiti on the separation wall in the contested space of Abu Dis on the boundary between Jerusalem and the Occupied Territories. This study explores the role of graffiti as micro-level, political discourse designed to influence national and international actions concerning the Palestinian-Israeli conflict over national borders, self determination and human rights. The data for this study consisted of photographic documentation of the Abu Dis graffiti. This data was analysed for its linguistic and informational characteristic, its political functions, and discursive construction. The results of the study reveal that the separation wall is constructed in five different ways that directly interact with the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. The graffiti on the wall at Abu Dis is a microcosm of the broader conflict and offers an insight into the different chains of political discourse in action in the discussion of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

Recent years have been marked by the rise of populist anti-immigrant movements throughout the world. Poland has become one of the most notorious anti-immigration states in the European Union, with its current government continuously calling for stricter border controls and systematically embracing a hard-line nationalist discourse. The concept of 'Polishness', or Polish national identity, is frequently used to legitimise political decision-making and belief in protection of a socio-cultural homogeneity fuels discussions for securitisation of the national borders. This article analyses the evolution of the meaning of Polishness and its instrumentalisation in the political discussions about border protection in the Third Republic of Poland. Deploying critical discourse analysis in examination of the Polish Sejm parliamentary debates on border-related laws 1989-2018, this paper links the political discussions about the physical national borders with the broader political discourse of Polishness and national belonging.

John Dewey Was an Atheist who argued that no one could reasonably accept the existence of supernatural powers. Religious naturalists may claim him as one of their own if Dewey’s peculiar meaning to “religious” as almost synonymous with “ethical” is kept in mind. Although Dewey encouraged a lessening of influence of organized religions over society, he also prioritized full democratic participation for every citizen. His political philosophy never endorses the idea that political discourse should restrict or exclude appeal to religious values or religious faith. Dewey’s political liberalism explicitly invites faith, religious experience, and religious values into public discourse and deliberation. The point of democracy is to discuss all values held within a society.

Jeremy Waldron's latest book, Law and Disagreement, shows, once again, that he is one of those theorists of rights who can wear several hats at the same time, those of a moral, political, and legal philosopher. Yet, Waldron's contribution to legal and political philosophy, as evidenced by this book, sets him apart from distinguished figures such as Joseph Raz and Ronald Dworkin. For although he agrees that rights are a fundamental ideal in political and legal discourse and has, indeed, spent most of his academic career analysing them with relentless intensity, he is very wary of any fetishistic attempt to constitutionalize them and thereby to remove them from the political fray. Law and Disagreement's central, and original, claim is that the existence, and persistence, of moral disagreements should constitute the starting point of any jurisprudential inquiry into the nature of law and of its authority. In the face of such disagreements, fundamental moral issues, and in particular issues concerning rights, should not be dealt with by judges; they should be addressed by legislators according to democratic pro cedures, for only laws thus enacted have authority. Thus, Waldron is concerned not with what he calls the first task of political philosophy, to wit, the task of delineating a conception of rights and justice, but with the second task, to wit, the task of defending the best principles for choosing between competing such conceptions. All of the book's 13 chapters, bar the introductory one, first appeared as articles in various publications; they have been substantially rewritten for the purpose of this volume which, as a result, looks like a book rather than a collection of essays. They are organized into three parts. The first deals with the 'jurisprudence of legislation', and sheds light on the importance of institutional facts about legislatures for legislative practice and the authority of laws. The second part analyses the idea of disagreement in politics, via a study of John Rawls' Political Liberalism and Ronald Dworkin's Lawv Empire, and a chapter on moral objectivity. The last part, for which the first two

During the last two decades leading Albanian political actors have developed political activity based on two parallel indicator: western formal models and marketing electoral programs, as well as eastern oriental model in the way they have designed and developed policy, elections, internal democracy and public discourse. Being correct to western formal models came as foreign imposition, as needed impersonation in terms of lack of experience and practical knowledge, as well as the response of major civic expectations. The conclusion of this material is that we are dealing with continuous coexistence between Western model in programs and eastern model in practical implementation of these programs. Practical application of a parallel political system, in values, methods and political discourse was due to domestic consumption needs, fragility in the formation of political culture, local recognition of the dominant methods in politics and the pursuit of short-term political goals. This thesis paper aims to analyze the formal western presentation of the two main political parties and their leaders during the transition, and to make this analysis in comparative relation to feeds and real features in daily political activity. Part of the study are the programs and the most important political positions, international relations associated with the level of democracy and the role of political parties in shaping a democratic, professional studies in the field of political behavior and political discourse.