This article examines Sahar Akhtar’s antidiscrimination approach and global social status framework in immigration ethics and identifies possible pressure points in its practical application. Within immigration literature, Akhtar’s account offers a significant intervention by arguing that identity-based selective immigration may not be inherently impermissible, but must be carefully considered according to policy effects on group-based global vulnerability, way-of-life, and self-respect. Through an analysis of Akhtar’s treatment of specific cases (Navajo, Arab, and Jewish cases) the article identifies possible tensions in how relational vulnerability is weighed. It then assesses the framework’s application to the Palestine/Israel case, arguing that while Akhtar offers critical insight on Israel’s Law of Return, the alternatives she gestures toward may not fully resolve the degrading effects with which the framework is concerned. The article does not reject Akhtar’s framework, but argues that its application requires further attention to three pressure points: the difficulty of settling relational vulnerability, the possibility that less harmful immigration policy alternatives may still preserve degrading inequalities, and the role of ethno-national state structures in limiting genuinely non-discriminatory policy options. The article aims to contribute a critical perspective in real-world application of antidiscrimination duties and the global social status framework intervention offered by Akhtar.
This article is a grounded theorizing study exploring pluralistic views of body size based on interviews with Black, big-bodied women living in Khayelitsha, a township in Cape Town, South Africa. The aim is to articulate a system of beliefs that affirms the possibility that all body sizes can be the right size and defies the idea of intentional change in body size. Using a Constructivist Grounded Theory approach, we introduce and explore three analytical categories: bodies as given, bodies as circumstantial, and maintaining bodies as given. The first category refers to viewing body size as predetermined and, to a very limited extent, changeable through intentional action. Changes are partly explained by natural events such as growing up, giving birth, and aging. The second category refers to assumed connections between body size and living conditions or mood, such as happiness or worry. The third category, maintaining bodies as given, complements the idea of bodies as given and provides an understanding of changes in body size that are not covered by the idea of circumstantial bodies. This article shows how these ideas encourage efforts toward maintaining body size rather than changing it.
In March 2018, the Pueblo Sin Fronteras migrant caravan began making their way to the U.S. border, drawing political and media attention from the United States. News coverage of immigrants and migration events have historically been linked to negative topics, such as poverty, disease, crime, drugs, and threats to the American way of life. These negative themes emerged against the backdrop of the Trump administration and their use of inflammatory rhetoric, describing migrants as social, economic, and criminal threats to U.S. border security. To obtain a better understanding of the media’s construction of migrants fleeing to the U.S., we conducted a summative content analysis of online news articles from CNN and Fox News covering the 2018 Pueblo Sin Fronteras migrant caravan. This research found that while two sources can report on the same event, contrasting framing and contextualization can leave readers with extremely different messages. Implications regarding media influence on public understanding of and support for U.S. immigration policies are also discussed.
The Israeli welfare state has linked its welfare policies to its Zionist goals, creating different levels of access to public resources for different social groups. While most research has focused on specific groups, benefits, or periods, this paper provides a more comprehensive look by examining the connection between the Israeli welfare state inequalities and the prolonged Israel-Palestinian conflict. Using an intersectional lens, I evaluate how the conflict interacts with other oppressive forces, such as sexism, ethno-racism, and nationalism, to affect Israeli civil lives in non-military but no less disruptive ways. The paper introduces the concept of the bureaucratic logic, which refers to how the welfare state exercises power over its beneficiaries, reinscribing the most marginalized groups in Israeli society—Mizrahi Jewish mothers, Ethiopian Jewish mothers, and Palestinian-Israeli mothers—into lives of poverty. The bureaucratic logic is shaped by the overarching binary of “Jews versus Arabs,” which works to exclude Palestinians, preserve Jewish supremacy, and bracket Jewish ethno-racial inequalities. The analysis demonstrates that the Israeli welfare state uses its power to define and reproduce the gendered, ethno-racial, and ethnonational boundaries of Israeli society, ensuring the preservation of the existing power structure rather than the welfare of its most marginalized residents.
Palestine solidarity protests, ignited after October 2023 to pressure Canada to end complicity in Israel’s genocide in Gaza, have faced intense police repression amid state and media discourses framing these as hubs of “hate.” This article argues that Canadian policing agencies intuitively align against Palestine solidarity protests due to affective affinities with Israel. We extend the strategic incapacitation literature by demonstrating how police absorb racial ideas of the War on Terror that enshrine Israel as a civilizational ally and construct predominantly Palestinian, Muslim, and Arab protestors as threats. Through an analysis of police communications and recorded protest violence in Toronto and Vancouver, we discuss how protest policing is informed by organizationally structured forms of police knowledge, which reflect the interests of pro-Israel politics. Pigmented by the contours of anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian racism, the Palestine solidarity protests are delegitimized by amplifying antisemitism claims. Police at protests wear patches with the racially laden violent symbology of the “thin blue line”—most recently taken up by the “blue lives matter” movement—infusing pro-Israeli symbolism with vigilante violence. We contribute to critical scholarship on protest policing, police subculture, and race by foregrounding the racial grammar normalized under the War on Terror to explain police violence against Palestine solidarity movements.
