In the last few years, we have seen an explosion in the scale and scope of AI health, a trend only exacerbated by COVID-19. Due to the uptake of AI applications in health, the global health landscape has seen significant shifts. To help understand this development and how best to achieve the potential of AI health technologies, it is necessary to critically look at the global political economy through which AI health technologies are made possible. There is a need to see this political economy as embedded in the everyday relations through which healthcare functions. The everyday level of how patients and healthcare professionals engage with AI health technology is essential to knowing how these new tools can help tackle forms of discrimination and other obstacles currently preventing universal health coverage.

The term ‘artificial intelligence’ has arguably come to function in political discourse as, what Laclau called, an ‘empty signifier’. This article traces the shifting political discourse on AI within three key institutions of global governance–OHCHR, WHO, and UNESCO–and, in so doing, highlights the role of ‘crisis’ moments in justifying a series of pivotal re-articulations. Most important has been the attachment of AI to the narrative around digital automation in human healthcare. Greatly enabled by the societal context of the pandemic, all three institutions have moved from being critical of the unequal power relations in the economy of AI to, today, reframing themselves primarily as facilitators tasked with helping to ensure the application of AI technologies. The analysis identifies a shift in which human health and healthcare is framed as in a ‘crisis’ to which AI technology is presented as the remedy. The article argues the need to trace these discursive shifts as a means by which to understand, monitor, and where necessary also hold to account these changes in the governance of AI in society.

Despite initial suggestions that the COVID-19 pandemic affected everyone equally, it quickly became clear that some were much worse affected than others. Marginalization—including poverty, substandard accommodation, precarious or no employment, reduced access to healthcare and other key public goods—was clearly correlated with higher rates of both contagion and fatality. For Sweden, COVID-19 inequality could be seen along clear racial and socio-economic lines, with some of the first high death rates seen amongst Somali communities, where individuals had contracted the virus through unsafe employment as taxi drivers transporting wealthier Swedes home from their winter holidays. At the same time, actors on the extra parliamentarian far-right in Sweden were quick to blame the country's relatively high per-capita fatality rate on persons born outside Sweden working in the healthcare and care home sector. Media frames affirming racial stereotypes grounded in cultural racism circulated across the ecosystem of alternative media in the country. In both healthcare and the media, we see growing forms of exclusion disproportionately affecting migrants. Such intertwined exclusions in Sweden, as the article argues, are a sign of a wider disintegration of Swedish society in which individuals lose trust in both the core institutions as well as across different parts of society. Drawing on Davina Cooper's understanding of the relationship between the state and other public institutions with individuals as based on “touch,” the article explores how exclusionary practices impact this relationship. Our key argument is that, whilst ostensibly such practices often most materially hurt minority groups (e.g., migrants), they are indicative of—and accelerate—a broader disintegration of society through undermining a logic of “care” necessary to sustain social bonds.

Migration management policies in many states have marginalized significant numbers of individuals on the basis of their precarious residency status, negatively impacting their health. This article looks at how three European states with high levels of contagion - France, Sweden, and the United Kingdom - adapted their migration management policies to the changed circumstances during the Covid 19 pandemic in which there was new pressure for prioritizing population health over other concerns. The analysis compares globally-recognized 'best practices' for migrant health during the pandemic with policies adopted by France, Sweden, and the UK - selected as prominent migrant-hosting states and that experienced high rates of Covid-19. The article draws on supplementary evidence through interviews with civil society organizations working directly with migrants living on the margins of society - what are termed here 'marginalized migrants' (MMs). As the article concludes, the national policies often fell below international 'best practices' such that migration management was often prioritized over population health despite the crisis. The perspective developed in this paper is important for understanding where migration control policies have been prioritized over public health.

Main Findings:

AI systems are increasingly being used to shift decisions made by humans over to automated systems, potentially limiting the space for democratic participation. The risk that AI erodes democracy is exacerbated where most people are excluded from the ownership and production of AI technologies that will impact them.

AI learns through datasets but, very often, that data excludes key parts of the population. Where marginalized groups are considered, datasets often contain derogatory terms, or exclude explanatory contextual information, that is hard to accurately categorise in a format that AI can process. Resulting biases within AI design raise concerns as to the quality and representativeness of AI-based decisions and their impact on society.

There is very little two-way communication between the developers and users of AI-technologies such that the latter function only as personal data providers. Being largely excluded from the development of AI’s role in human decision-making, everyday individuals may feel more marginalized and disinterested in building a healthy and sustainable society.

Yet, AI’s capacity for seeing patterns in big data provides new ways to reach parts of the population excluded from traditional policymaking. It can serve to identify structural discrimination and include information from those otherwise ignored in important decisions. AI could enhance public participation by both providing decision-makers with better data and helping to communicate complex decisions – and their consequences – to wider parts of the population.

Den här rapporten ger en sammanfattning av de seminarier som organiserades under våren 2021 av PHEDKommissionen för framtiden för hälso- och sjukvården efter covid-19, som bjöd in till vittnesmål från hälso- och sjukvårdspersonal, tjänstemän, tankesmedjor, forskare, civilsamhället och andra intresserade parter baserat på de erfarenheter de fått och lärt sig av under pandemin. De vittnesmål som framfördes kom från många olika geografska platser och många olika nivåer, vilket gjorde dem relevanta både för Sverige och globalt. De fastställer fera centrala rekommendationer för att skydda och förbättra folkhälsan. Dessa rekommendationer både kompletterar och i hög grad utökar de rekommendationer som togs fram i den första rapporten, som var mer fokuserad på Sverige (”Ojämlikhet i samhället gör oss sårbara för pandemier”) och baserad på vittnesmål från hösten 2020, och som kan nås via: https://phed.uni.mau.se/. Den stora mängd erfarenheter som sammanfattas här går långt utöver pandemiperioden och tillhandahåller idéer och praktisk vägledning för att skydda och stärka människors hälsa så att den blir mer motståndskraftig inför framtida kriser. 

This report summarises the Spring 2021 sessions of the PHED Commission on the Future of Healthcare Post Covid-19, which invited testimony from healthcare practitioners, civil servants, thinktanks, researchers, civil society, and other interested parties based on their experiences learnt during the pandemic. The evidence presented came from multiple geographies and levels, making it relevant both to Sweden and globally. It identifes several key recommendations for protecting and improving public health. These recommendations supplement and greatly expand upon those identifed in the report (‘Societal inequity makes us vulnerable to pandemics’) based on testimony from Fall/Autumn 2020, which can be accessed via: https://phed.uni.mau.se/. The wealth of experience summarized here goes well beyond the pandemic period, providing ideas and practical guidance for protecting and strengthening human health to be more resilient in the face of future crises.

This chapter compares health communication towards migrants living at the margins of society – undocumented migrants, asylum seekers, and refugees – within the different Scandinavian countries (Denmark, Norway, and Sweden), to understand the present state of health communication and its role in both strengthening and, where being unequal, segregating societal inclusion within the Nordic region. We know that such migrants often experience health challenges related not only to their migratory journey, but often caused by the precarious situation in which they are placed upon arrival in host countries. Past studies show significant challenges in obtaining care, and difficulties with communication, including cultural awareness. Where health communication fails to meet the needs of a diverse population, we see growing societal segregation that often follows racialized structures with long-term consequences for society.

This article focuses on the conflictual relations at the heart of what we call 'municipal contestation'. This global phenomenon sees cities and other local governments - sometimes together with non-governmental players - contest policies proposed or implemented by higher governmental authorities, which they perceive as threats to their policy positions or local communities. Bridging public policy studies and social movement theory, we develop a new typology identifying conservative, moderate and radical ideal types of municipal contestation. In addition, we explore the dynamics of contestation, with municipalities 'moving away' from the institutional status quo when they shift from conservative to more moderate and radical forms of contestation, or 'moving towards' the status quo when they find it difficult to sustain such action. The article illustrates this typology and contestation dynamics by drawing on case studies involving resistance to central COVID-19 restrictions in England; municipal opposition to carbon capture and storage in the Netherlands; and a European campaign against a proposed European Union-United States trade agreement. We conclude how this general framework can be applied, refined, and adapted for further comparative and longitudinal studies.

International guidance set forth recommendations to protect marginalized migrant populations during Covid-19 given the significant inequalities in terms of social and economic well-being reported in the literature. However, a cross-country study of three European countries with high rates of Covid-19 infections and deaths has shown that migrant well-being has significantly decreased since the outbreak of Covid-19 in Europe from March 2020 and that policy measures to help those marginalized populations have been insufficient. The conclusions on migrant well-being during Covid-19 draw on interviews with prominent civil society organizations in all three countries that work specifically on migrant health and welfare. All interviews were semi-structured and conducted between October and November 2020. The analysis mainly focuses on objective/material measures of well-being related to access to health care, information on prevention of infection, housing and exclusion by host population.

Introduction

In Sweden, often seen as one of the most egalitarian countries, the COVID-19 pandemic exposed high levels of health inequality, especially harming people with a refugee background. This is also despite Sweden’s image as a refugee-friendly country. In this context, the aim of this paper is to better understand how Swedish health- and social workers have reacted to the health- and social needs of refugees during the pandemic. The Swedish case is particularly interesting because, as seen in the paper, health- and social workers had the task of communicating health guidance to refugees who were sometimes more reliant on information from abroad where the consensus on COVID-19 restrictions ran contrary to the approach recommended by the Swedish public health authority.

Method

The study utilizes a qualitative content analysis of 13 in-depth interviews with health- and social workers in Sweden, active in the care of refugees within different kinds of health- and social care settings. 

Results

The analysis showed that healthcare services have remained open during the pandemic but with new precautions at reception areas impacting how refugees access healthcare. As discussed in the article, the shift to digital tools has particularly impacted refugees, worsening already existing barriers to healthcare services faced by those with refugee status. Public health recommendations were poorly designed to the needs of refugees whose living conditions often prevented them from self-isolation and social distancing. Furthermore, Sweden’s initially non-restrictive approach to the pandemic instructed health- and social-workers to encourage refugees to take far fewer precautions (e.g. self-isolation, home-schooling, pregnant women to avoid virus hotspots) compared both with European neighbours and the international media typically used by refugees. When Sweden shifted towards a more restrictive approach, health- and social-workers had to revise their guidance in relation to the new recommendations around precautions.

Conclusion

Refugees have faced increased barriers to maintaining their health and well-being during the pandemic that exceed those experienced by the rest of the Swedish population. Refugees have, in general, taken precautions in regard to social distancing and followed recommendations but faced challenges with social distancing due to isolation and crowded living. Public health authorities have often failed to acknowledge that individuals use increasingly diverse sources of knowledge when trying to protect their health, and that not everyone has access to the knowledge needed to access healthcare and social systems. At the same time, there is a need to acknowledge that refugees are sometimes a source of expertise that was ignored by the Swedish health and social system during the pandemic. There is a need for urgent efforts to halt the worsening health conditions for this specific group, but also to counter knock-on societal effects and rising health inequity.

Infectious diseases exacerbated by Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) are of increasing concern in Sweden, with multi-drug resistant strains associated with new resistance mechanisms that are emerging and spreading worldwide. Existing research has identified that sub-optimal living conditions and poor access to healthcare are significant factors in the spread and incubation of AMR strains. The article considers this linkage and the effort to control the spread of AMR in relation to migrants, highlighting deficiencies in public policy where such individuals are often increasingly exposed to those conditions that exacerbate AMR. In many of the richest countries, those conditions are not accidental, but often direct goals of policies designed with the goal of deterring migrants from staying within host countries. Without engaging with the politics around migration control, the article points to urgent need for more holistic assessment of all public policies that may, however unintentionally, undermine AMR control through worsening living conditions for vulnerable groups. The consequences of prioritizing policies meant to deliberately worsen the living conditions of migrants over avoiding those conditions that accelerate AMR spread, are today made ever apparent where new AMR strains have the potential to dwarf the societal effects of the current Covid-19 pandemic.

This chapter will outline what we label ‘collaborative future-making’ (CFM), which can be understood as an interplay between critical imagination and collaborative engagements in future-making processes. Using critical imagination to break out of (imagined) political and scholarly deadlocks is an important theme within collaborative future-making. Imagining should not be confused, however, with an abstract practice. Instead, critical imagination links directly to forms of participation and engagement. Collaborative engagement concerns how we can work together. At the centre is an ethos of democratizing processes of change, that is, to acknowledge people’s skills and rights to influence their everyday environments. This approach should be understood as a shift from engaging with the future through forecasting to a concern with how critical imagination can challenge basic assumptions, norms and structures to widen the perspectives on what constitutes socially, culturally, ecologically and economically sustainable futures, engaging not only professionals and policymakers, but also citizens and civil society. This chapter presents opportunities in what we call ‘collaborative future-making’, as well as highlighting the potential problems and challenges in collaborating. This critical perspective is illustrated through a series of empirical examples that combines critical perspectives with constructive and collaborative aspects.

Under hösten 2020 organiserade PHED-projektet i ett samarbete mellan Malmö och Lunds universitet en kommission och bjöd in till muntliga och skriftliga vittnesmål om framtiden för hälso- och sjukvården efter covid-19. Efter att initialt ha fokuserat på Region Skåne, utvidgades diskussionerna till att omfatta ett bredare nationellt fokus liksom internationella jämförelser med Frankrike och Storbritannien. Undersökningen omfattade vittnesmål från såväl yrkesverksamma inom hälso- och sjukvård som tjänstemän, civilsamhället och forskare. Överlag framställde vittnesmålen covid-19 som både en tragedi och ett lärotillfälle som skulle kunna stärka samhället. Flera centrala rekommendationer för att skydda och förbättra folkhälsan togs fram.

During Fall/Autumn 2020, the PHED project between Malmö and Lund Universities organised a Commission inviting oral and written testimony on the future of healthcare post Covid-19. Focused initially on the Scania region, the discussions expanded to include a wider Swedish national focus, and international comparison with France and the United Kingdom. The inquiry included testimony from healthcare practitioners, civil servants, civil society, as well as researchers. Overall, the testimony pointed to Covid-19 as both a tragedy and a learning moment by which to strengthen society. It identifies several key recommendations for protecting and improving public health.

Research in diverse areas such as climate change, happiness and wellbeing emphasizes the need for transformative change, stressing the importance of rethinking established values, goals and paradigms prevailing among civil servants, policy- and decision makers. In this paper, we discuss a role that design can play in this, especially how processes of counterfactual world-making can help facilitate reflection on worldviews and the shape of future forms of governance. By exploring different presents, rather than conditions in the future, this approach allows civil servants to consider, create and resist playful alternatives to business-as-usual. In this way, we demonstrate how design can stimulate imagination both as to futures and people’s role in shaping these futures.

Collaborative Future-Making is a research platform at the Faculty of Culture and Society at Malmö University that is concerned with how to envision, elaborate and prototype multiple, inclusive, and sustainable futures. The platform gathers around 20 researchers that share a methodological interest in how critical perspectives from the humanities and social sciences can be combined with the constructive and collaborative aspects of making and prototyping in design research.

The research centers around two major themes:

• Critical imagination​, which focuses on how basic assumptions, norms and structures can be challenged to widen the perspectives on what can constitute socially, culturally, ecologically and economically sustainable and resilient futures.
• Collaborative engagements​, which focuses on how we can set up more inclusive collaborations to prototype and discuss alternative futures, engaging not only professionals and policy makers but also citizens and civil society.

During 2019 the research group set out to make a shared glossary for collaborative future-making. The glossary is multiple in purpose and exists in several versions. Hopefully there will be more to come. At first, the making and articulation of the glossary was used within the research group as an exercise to share concepts that we found central to collaborative future-making, coming from different disciplines. This published version of the glossary was assembled to be used during a workshop called ​Imagining Collaborative Future-Making,​ which gathered a group of international researchers from different disciplines.

The collection of concepts reflects the heterogeneous and diverse character of the research group and a strong belief in that plurality regarding ontologies and epistemologies will be crucial to be able to handle the multiple uncertainties and complex challenges we have to face in the future. Some of the concepts are already well established within different research communities, but gain a specific meaning in relation to the research area. Others are more preliminary attempts to advance our understanding or probe into new potential practices within collaborative future-making. In that sense the concepts in the glossary are well situated and grounded in past and ongoing research within this research group, at the same time as they are meant to suggest, propose and point towards practices and approaches yet to come.

The concepts in this glossary are not only meant to be descriptive but also performative. In that sense, assembling and circulating this glossary is part of collaborative future-making. As pointed out by Michelle Westerlaken in her articulation of “Doing Concepts” (see page 15), “...without proposing, critiquing, or working towards a common or uncommon understanding of certain concepts, it becomes impossible to ‘make futures’ in any deliberate fashion.”

Abstract  The article contributes to our understanding of how trade is politicized and how civil society activists manage the tensions between multiple collective action frames in a complex political context. When viewed alongside the Brexit referendum and Trump’s US Presidency, it is easy to see the 2013–2016 campaign against a European Union–US Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership as a further example of an apparently growing populist ‘nationalism.’ Yet, in the European context—where campaigning was most visible—there was in fact extensive reliance on, and re-iteration of, a transnational ‘European’ frame, with antecedents in the 1999–2006 campaign against General Agreement on Trade in Services negotiations. As the article argues, transnational campaigning operates within a nexus of multiple, and sometimes conflicting, geographic frames. In both campaigns discussed here, activists typically engaged with the wider public via the national context and, sometimes, with allusions to ‘national autonomy.’ However, their activism was dependent upon a frame espousing ‘transnational solidarity.’ Developed over time, this structured their transnational relations with other groups and more full-time activists.

Refugees are already a vulnerable group in society and are in a stressful situation due to their often uncertain legal status in seeking asylum and integration in the new society after migration. Refugees are, in general, at greater risk of poor health outcomes when contracting Covid-19, exacerbated by poor living conditions and difficulties in accessing healthcare. The longer-term social consequences of the pandemic also disproportionately impact refugees, including social isolation, unemployment and difficulties to obtain correct health information. The aim of this paper is to review the social and health consequences that Covid-19 has brought to the refugees residing in Sweden. This needs to be emphasized in order to mitigate against these likely consequences and improve the overall well-being among such a highly vulnerable group in society. As Covid-19 demonstrates, human health needs to be understood holistically, meaning that the vulnerability of any individuals, or even nations, is a vulnerability for the whole population requiring urgent action. 

Keywords: Covid-19, refugees, social situation, health information

Background: The project “Precision Health and Everyday Democracy” (PHED) is a transdisciplinary partnership that combines a diverse range of perspectives necessary for understanding the increasingly complex societal role played by modern health care and medical research. The term “precision health” is being increasingly used to express the need for greater awareness of environmental and genomic characteristics that may lead to divergent health outcomes between different groups within a population. Enhancing awareness of diversity has parallels with calls for “health democracy” and greater patient-public participation within health care and medical research. Approaching health care in this way goes beyond a narrow focus on the societal determinants of health, since it requires considering health as a deliberative space, which occurs often at the banal or everyday level. As an initial empirical focus, PHED is directed toward the health needs of marginalized migrants (including refugees and asylum seekers, as well as migrants with temporary residency, often involving a legally or economically precarious situation) as vulnerable groups that are often overlooked by health care. Developing new transdisciplinary knowledge on these groups provides the potential to enhance their wellbeing and benefit the wider society through challenging the exclusions of these groups that create pockets of extreme ill-health, which, as we see with COVID-19, should be better understood as “acts of self-harm” for the wider negative impact on humanity.

Objective: We aim to establish and identify precision health strategies, as well as promote equal access to quality health care, drawing upon knowledge gained from studying the health care of marginalized migrants.

Methods: The project is based in Sweden at Malmö and Lund Universities. At the outset, the network activities do not require ethical approval where they will not involve data collection, since the purpose of PHED is to strengthen international research contacts, establish new research within precision strategies, and construct educational research activities for junior colleagues within academia. However, whenever new research is funded and started, ethical approval for that specific data collection will be sought.

Results: The PHED project has been funded from January 1, 2019. Results of the transdisciplinary collaboration will be disseminated via a series of international conferences, workshops, and web-based materials. To ensure the network project advances toward applied research, a major goal of dissemination is to produce tools for applied research, including information to enhance health accessibility for vulnerable communities, such as marginalized migrant populations in Sweden.

Conclusions: There is a need to identify tools to enable the prevention and treatment of a wide spectrum of health-related outcomes and their link to social as well as environmental issues. There is also a need to identify and investigate barriers to precision health based on democratic principles.

The externalisation of European Union migration governance disproportionately impacts states based on the African continent. Much of the analytical focus amongst existing research has been on the agency of the EU and its Member-states, identifying the asymmetric and postcolonial character of these policies, as well as highlighting that the imposition of European interests on African states risks undermining their own political stability. Yet, there is significant effort spent by actors on both sides of the Mediterranean on making African counterparts visible as an equal partner – an endeavour seen not just rhetorically within speeches, but also in the set-up of key institutional fora and their membership. The article approaches the framing processes involved to trace the legitimating basis of EU-Africa relations and the externalisation of EU migration policy to African states, highlighting how African political actors are positioned as participating in what is an EU-led process.

The externalization of the EU’s migration policies has seen a sharp increase in recent years but many aspects of its historical roots, internal dynamics, and broader implications remain insufficiently explored. This special issue analyses recent developments in the EU’s external migration policies including the extra-territorial reach of EU migration policies; the power relationships between the EU and third countries involved in EU migration policies; the overlap with critical development studies and post-colonialism; the replication of many of Australia’s external migration policies; the impact of EU external migration policies on third countries, and civil society contestation of those policies. As the contributions show, the series of policies discussed here go beyond the specific empirical area of migration control to have significance for both the future of the European Union and its role in global affairs. 

Nearly two decades have passed since the events of the WTO’s Seattle Ministerial marked civil society as relevant to global trade politics. Despite this, and as the chapter explains, there remains significant ambiguity as to what is meant by the term ‘civil society’. That civil society matters in global trade governance needs to be understood in terms of two inter-related questions: how the WTO Secretariat, and other institutional actors, give recognition to certain groups and individuals; and, why it is that the actors described as ‘civil society’ seek to contest a governance domain often seemingly closed to their demands.

Future trade negotiations to which the UK is party are unlikely to be possible without significantly impacting politically sensitive issues such that, without innovative solutions, the government will find it increasingly difficult to be active in negotiations necessary to maintaining current UK access to foreign markets post-Brexit. There is a widening gap between the broadening scope of what is covered by ‘trade policy’ and the necessary knowledge base within not just UK society but also amongst key policy-makers. The UK needs to adopt a multi-level strategy for ensuring there is an ongoing national conversation on trade policy that is well-informed, that includes politicians at all levels of government, as well as civil society, but also new initiatives that allow the public to become sufficiently informed so as to ensure a nuanced debate on trade that curtails the risk of knee-jerk protectionism through being sensitive to societal concerns.

The International Trade Committee have launched a new inquiry to investigate the appropriate level of transparency and scrutiny of trade strategy and negotiations as the UK begins establishing a post-Brexit trade regime. The Committee will draw on the approaches taken by similar nations and trading blocs to inform its conclusions.

The politics of migration has become increasingly prominent as a site of struggle. However, the active subjecthood of people on the move in precarious situations is often overlooked. Irregular migration struggles raise questions about how to understand the agency of people who are marginalised. What does it mean to engage people produced as ‘irregular’ as active subjects of trans-border politics? And what new research strategies can we employ to this end? The articles presented in this Special Issue of Politics each differently explore how actions by or on behalf of irregular/ised migrants involve processes of subjectivity formation that imply a form of agency. Collectively we explore how irregular migration struggles feature as a site marked by active subjects of trans-border politics. We propose a research agenda based on tracing those processes – both regulatory, activist, and everyday – that negotiate and contest how an individual is positioned as an ‘irregular migrant’. The ethos behind such research is to explore how the most marginalised individuals reclaim or reconfigure subjecthood in ambiguous terms.

The present article elaborates on struggles over the inclusion and exclusion of undocumented children and young people in the Swedish school system. Through conducting an in-depth case study on the issue of access to school in the city of Malmö in Sweden, our analysis demonstrates how the right to education for undocumented migrant children is subject to a process of struggle between divergent discourses on children’s human rights. Internal debates at the city level of governance are identified around, for example, whether the police could be denied access to schools or if contradictory messages from various authorities might lead to a legitimacy problem. Other questions are the registration of grades when the children concerned are reluctant to be put into a register due to the risks involved; and if fictitious names could be used on class lists that police officers can request. As the article shows, these local struggles are an expression of tensions between different levels of governance that are also affected by the migration control regime, as regards rights for children who are residing irregularly. In that respect, there is a struggle over the appropriate legalistic discourse – as in, to which level should it make reference. However, actors contesting a restrictive interpretation of the right to education also make substantial use of, what we call here, an ‘experiential’ discourse – that is, drawing upon the everyday experiences and feelings of those whose rights are in question. Struggles at the local governance level also have relevance for exploring substantial parts of the broader political context in which the human rights of undocumented migrants are (de)contested.

In the build-up to the Sochi Olympics, there was substantial anticipation that its legacy would be dominated by dissent and political controversies rather than gold-winning performances. Yet, when the torch was lit, far fewer of those expected controversies ignited. In turning to International Relations theory (IR), the article argues the Sochi Olympics evidenced a tension between, on one hand, a tight process of political management by Russian state representatives, the organizing committee and the International Olympic Committee, whilst on the other hand utilizing certain key norms to help ensure consent. Utilizing a Social Constructivist emphasis on norms as key tools for conducting global politics, the analysis shows how that tension incorporated well-recognized ideas from both the IR schools of Realism and Liberalism to silence protesters. In evidencing the value-added of drawing upon other schools of thought outside conventional sports analysis, the article illustrates a new way for conducting research in Olympic studies.

This article analyses sanctuary initiatives intended to change the situation of ‘irregularised residents’. Through fieldwork, three main activities are identified: assistance for welfare services, alternatives to inaccessible services, and inventing new ways of organising togetherness in the city. The role of activists in the initiatives links to discussions within Critical Human Rights literature, which emphasise the anti-institutionalist origins of rights. Yet, a complex interplay also plays out through co-current resistance against the state’s migration policing and collaboration with city-level state agencies. Understanding this complex process is important to improving knowledge of both the politics of sanctuary and human rights.

The World Trade Organization’s Dispute Settlement Body provides the teeth of the global trade regime – empowering it with substantial means to adjudicate in disagreements between Member-states over the implementation of WTO law. The WTO’s teeth have, however, also helped make the organisation controversial. The Dispute Settlement Body has frequently found itself at the centre of a much wider societal critique of the broader WTO – as well as contemporary global trade governance – in which its legitimacy to operate has been fiercely questioned. The political sensitivity of its work has been made most apparent in those cases where the principles of WTO law appear to run counter to environmental or consumer safety concerns, taking the system into the mass media and making it the subject of street protests. Yet, where rulings have given new access to non-state actors campaigning for these concerns (e.g. amicus curiae provisions), there has been further controversy amongst Member-states over whether the Dispute Settlement Body has acted outside its delegated authority by effectively rewriting ‘who’ or ‘what’ is an actor in the system. The changing character of this specific institutional arrangement is approached in the article as part of a wider struggle over the terms of what is ‘legitimate’ in global governance. Where WTO Dispute Settlement has been re-politicised, both inside and outside the formal institution, a contradiction becomes visible – between its legal-technocratic identity and a world that is fundamentally political. The legal normalisation of new actor identities needs to be understood in this context, as an attempt to manage that tension and reinforce the claim that WTO Dispute Settlement is legitimate. How the institution has changed and new identities emerged since its birth in 1995 is enhanced if understood in the context of a struggle in which the terms of what is legitimate in global governance are ultimately unfixed.

This chapter surveys how researchers have studied the relationship between the EU and the people identified as its citizens. The passports held by the citizens of EU member-states carry the statement that they are ‘EU citizens’. This is a legal statement and has material consequences for the individual possessing such a document. Yet, does EU citizenship mean that there is a ‘people’ of the EU in the sense that we speak of the ‘French people’ or ‘German people’, with all the historical and cultural baggage those labels incur?

The European Union (EU) plays multiple roles within global trade governance as a unitary actor with particular interests to promote, a tool for dominance by powerful interests, and a site of contestation facilitating civil society mobilization. Identifying these roles is key to analyzing the role of the EU particularly in times of crisis in global trade governance where new forms of politics are most likely to emerge. This is investigated through considering two cases of politically sensitive trade negotiation in which the EU played, and continues to play, an active role: the GATS 2000 negotiations and the EU-US TTIP.

The World Trade Organization’s dispute settlement body provides the teeth of the global trade regime – empowering it with substantial means to adjudicate in disagreements between Member-states over the implementation of WTO law. The WTO’s teeth have, however, also helped make the organisation controversial as part of a general critique from civil society groups concerned that global trade governance has become unaccountable to the societies it affects. Could the growing presence of NGOs and other non-state actors in WTO dispute settlement – empirically identified within a growing body of literature – solve this apparent accountability deficit? Drawing upon existing findings and new research, the article argues that non-state actors have significant consequences for the accountability of WTO dispute settlement, but to whom the system is accountable and whether these consequences are good or bad is not pre-determined. Rather, as the burgeoning literature on accountability shows, the term itself is multi-faceted. Only by engaging with specific cases, as is done here in the case of WTO dispute settlement, can research properly draw out the shape of accountability in global governance.

This article considers the relationship between education and hospitality, illustrated in a case that sparked a highly politicised debate on the topic. In 2012, several schools in Malmö, Sweden’s third largest city, excluded students from the regular process governing access to school as well as special support otherwise normally provided based on the students’ unauthorised legal status. The controversy sparked a debate in the local media, academia, and among refugee rights organisations over the right to education as well as the everyday risks faced by persons attending school in Malmö while present in Sweden without legal authorisation.

Writing Global Trade Governance operationalises a key post-structuralist methodology in order to expand understanding on the institution at the heart of the global political economy. Despite the WTO’s centrality and the growing popularity of methods utilizing discourse theory, no other text has yet demonstrated how these two fields of learning can be productively combined. The book seeks to move beyond existing literatures that assume the WTO to be a structure, institution or normative framework, in order to enquire into the discursive processes of identity formation that make the WTO both possible and contested. The book criticises conventional approaches that treat critical civil society as distinct to the WTO, arguing instead that it is only through including such social practices within the field of relations making the WTO that we can properly understand what makes the WTO work. The book presents an empirical analysis of the discursive character of the present-day WTO (including its formation and operation) and then moves on to evaluate how it is subject to change within a broader social context. The final stage of the book seeks to discuss the impact of the findings on future research, both on the WTO and other institutions. This work is a significant intervention in the literature on the World Trade Organization and the politics of global trade and social movements, and will be of great interest to students and scholars of global governance, discourse theory and international organizations.

What does it mean when activist networks describe themselves as ‘European’ or ‘Global’? Existing studies into the geographic character of such networks have focused on the interplay between multiple ‘levels’. However, there is a need for greater research on the discursive function played by geographic descriptors within the formation of activist networks. This article examines the use of multiple geographic descriptors to articulate a particular activist network – the ‘Seattle to Brussels’ (S2B) network – consisting of European-based groups contesting the form of multilateral trade governance embodied in the WTO. To map out how groups forged relations with one another under a ‘European’ identity, the article applies a discourse theoretical analysis to extensive empirical data including interviews with activists and participant observation at key events. The article has relevance to understanding both how transnational protest networks are formed and the role of multiple geographic signifiers in global politics.

The article focuses on a frequently used but under-researched protest medium through which transnational movement networks express their collective demands – what are termed here ‘global group petitions’ (GGPs), and activists themselves call ‘sign-on statements’ or ‘joint statements’. GGPs are online petitions typically framed as ‘global’ and linking sometimes hundreds of advocacy groups behind a common set of critical statements contesting global politics. Despite a burgeoning literature examining the use of digital media by movement networks, the article shows that GGPs are a distinct form of activism which to date has been overlooked by social science. Studying GGPs helps explore a series of issues central to understanding the role of advocacy groups in global politics, including their internal power relations (i.e. between North and South). Presenting empirical analysis and interviews with activists relating to five GGPs used in the course of a single transnational movement network – against negotiations to expand the World Trade Organization’s General Agreement on Trade-in-Services – the article concludes that whilst GGPs are not as ‘global’ or representative of a movement network as they may claim, their value is in facilitating momentum and a process of dialogue between potential advocacy partners.

Global governance is neither democratic nor entirely undemocratic. For example, within the World Trade Organization (WTO) formally all member-states have equal power over decision making. The WTO’s dispute settlement body (DSB) acts to enforce the rule of law over so-called power politics. The WTO’s secretariat organizes regular meetings with civil society groups, and resources are spent on facilitating transparency, including putting a vast amount of official documentation online. However, there is large power asymmetry between WTO member-states. This article sidesteps the classic response to such dilemmas, in which debate hinges on how much or how little the institution is able to ameliorate realpolitik, and considers the role the vestiges of “democracy” play in the WTO. Drawing on the work of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, among others, the author argues that the discourse of democracy embodied in the WTO expresses the wider process through which the institution is legitimated as the body of global trade politics. This has implications for understanding not only how global governance is discursively formed but also whether civil society groups critiquing the WTO threaten the WTO or, by accepting the premise of its predominance in global trade politics, effectively strengthen it.

Welcome to the Shift Lectures at Malmö University – a series of lectures on changes in time. The lectures are always open for all and free of entrance. On September 20th, Tariq Ali discusses the presidency of Barack Obama with Michael Strange from Malmö University.Expectations were huge when Barack Obama was elected president in November 2008. With less than a year in office and still not having delivered on many of all the things he had promised to change, Barack Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize – a surprising title for a man involved in several wars around the globe. Soon, with three years gone by with Obama as president, the British-Pakistani writer, journalist and film maker Tariq Ali takes a critical look at Obama’s presidency in the book The Obama Syndrome. The book has recently been translated into Swedish (Obamasyndromet) with an added chapter about the killing of Osama Bin Laden on May 2nd 2011 and what that incident might mean for the future. Tariq Ali will give a lecture on these issues and discuss with Michael Strange, a tenured assistant professor in the Department of Global Political Studies, Malmö university. He has worked previously at both the Universities of Roskilde and Essex. The conversation is led by radio journalist Lars Mogensen. The producer for the Shift Lectures is Evelina Mildner Lindén.