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1. Global Remittances: Update on the UK-Somali Corridor

Author:
Mohamed Aden Hassan and Giulia Liberatore
Publication Date:
01-2015
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Bildhaan: An International Journal of Somali Studies
Institution:
Macalester College
Abstract:
In May 2013 Barclays Bank in the UK announced it was shutting down the accounts of four Somali Money Service Businesses (MSBs) includ- ing Dahabshiil, the largest remittance company operating in the Somali regions. Following international uproar, and a Somali diaspora-led grassroots campaign, the UK government took on the task of setting up an Action Group on Cross Border Remittances and a Somali-UK Safer Corridor Pilot Project with the aim of finding a durable solution to the problem. Two years later, however, the Safer Corridor Project has collapsed. Legal remittance flows persist, albeit in a fragile and precarious environment. This paper provides a brief update on the Safer Corridor Initiative, its challenges, and how the money transfer sector has been adapting to the process.
Topic:
International Cooperation, International Trade and Finance, Diaspora, and Legal Theory
Political Geography:
Africa, United Kingdom, Europe, and Somalia

2. The Failed-State Paradigm and Implications for Politics and Practices of International Security

Author:
Mohamed Omar Hashi
Publication Date:
05-2015
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Bildhaan: An International Journal of Somali Studies
Institution:
Macalester College
Abstract:
From the 1940s to the 1970s, the world witnessed considerable and tumultuous change. This change was, on the one hand, based on the independence realized by the territories that European empires had controlled during the colonial era. On the other hand, just as the struggle against colonial rule ended, new conflicts erupted in many of these newly independent nations. In contrast to the colonial era, after the culmination of the Cold War, which reshaped the world order, the number of newly independent states unable to fulfill their obligations to their citizens increased. Such failures became apparent as states failed to provide a certain level of functions that would ensure both the security and the well-being of their respective populations. Although such crises of statehood are often depicted as mainly internal in nature, their roots and ramifications transcend the intrastate and are often ignored in the literature. While there was an increase in violence, some scholars attempted to identify the reasons underlying the failure of such states to perform key functions. In doing so, the debate was joined by a body of literature that offered the common assumption that these conflicts usually come under a state's failure. The “failed state” notion became prominent among people in diplomatic, political, and academic circles, as it gradually became rooted in the literature. While in the beginning it concentrated on states within Africa, the label was embraced as an international concern in the aftermath of the “9/11” terror attacks on Mohamed Omar Hashi 79 the twin towers in New York City. As a result, failed states were seen as a threat to international security since such states could potentially offer a safe haven to terrorist organizations. Although virtually no one disagrees that the majority of supposed failed states suffer many severe political, security, and socioeconomic challenges, the failed-state thesis has come up short in sufficiently elucidating the development of such obstacles. Furthermore, there is a lack of clarity and much disagreement, often governed by subjective interpretations, in the academic and policy discourse over how to define the concept and when and how it should be used. This brief essay acts as a beginning critique of the failed-states discourse and thought. The intention is to highlight the problems associated with the current debates. It is not the aim here to present a new approach. The essay will begin with a quick analysis of the theoretical- cum-policy debates underpinning state failure. Thereafter, observation will be made on the apparent growing international security and political interest in the state-failure thesis, with particular reference to the recently emerging pathology of terrorism and its implications for those countries labelled as failed.
Political Geography:
New York and Europe

3. Table of Contents

Publication Date:
11-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Macalester International
Institution:
Macalester College
Abstract:
No abstract is available.
Topic:
Globalization
Political Geography:
Europe

4. Global Citizenship and the European Milieu: Contested and Considered

Author:
Frank J. Lechner
Publication Date:
11-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Macalester International
Institution:
Macalester College
Abstract:
The Dutch have long thought that they are an exemplary nation, a guide and a beacon to the world, or as they used to put it, a “gidsland” for others to follow. As early as the 1600s, they vaunted their commitment to freedom and tolerance; later, they displayed a special zeal for peace, especially international peace. Since the 1960s, they have claimed a place in the front ranks of progressive nations, building a caring welfare state and expanding the rights of citizens—including the right to shop for things other than coffee at numerous “coffee shops.” Of course, they were not always consistent in acting out these virtues, as the Dutch themselves are well aware, which is one reason why most would now use the term gidsland with a healthy sense of irony, as a way to skewer pretensions to moral superiority. These days, in fact, the Dutch have a relative low opinion of their influence.2 They may be right: the outside world has not necessarily taken much notice of the stellar example set in the low countries—and when outsiders paid attention at all, they did not always like what they saw. To Dutch regret, the City in the Polder was not quite as visible or inspiring as the City on a Hill.
Political Geography:
Europe and Dutch

5. Spinoza, Locke, and the Limits of Dutch Toleration

Author:
Geoffrey A. Gorham
Publication Date:
11-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Macalester International
Institution:
Macalester College
Abstract:
The Netherlands' reputation as a bastion of religious and political toleration has been tested in the last decade by the rise of indigenous anti-immigrant political movements. These movements are fueled not only by simple xenophobia and racism, amplified in the wake of September 11, but also by the seemingly sincere sentiment that the Netherlands, the most densely populated nation in Europe, cannot sustain historical immigration levels: “Holland is full.” But another important component of anti-immigrant rhetoric is conceptual or ideological rather than practical, and trades on the tolerant self-image of the Dutch: toleration does not extend to the intolerant. Muslim immigrants are the usual target of this argument, who are accused of harboring theocratic, patriarchal, homophobic, and anti-Christian or anti-Jewish convictions and designs. Such rhetoric raises important and complex questions about how social and political ideals like toleration, freedom, and equality—as much as idolatry, infidelity, and heresy—are conditioned by the structures of social and economic power in which they historically emerge. That is to say, does the ideal of “toleration” in practice merely reinforce the boundaries of what is “tolerable” within the dominant culture?
Topic:
Islam
Political Geography:
Europe, Netherlands, and Holland

6. Bioracism, or, Spiritual Evolutionism

Author:
A. Kiarina Kordela
Publication Date:
11-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Macalester International
Institution:
Macalester College
Abstract:
On November 10, 2004, eight days after the murder of the film director Theo van Gogh in Amsterdam, Etienne Balibar was invited to Radboud University in Nijmegen, the oldest city in the Netherlands, to offer that year's Alexander von Humboldt Lecture in Human Geography. The title of his talk, which was subsequently translated and published in several European languages, was “Europe as Borderland,” indicating that far from “being a solution or a prospect,” “the issue of citizenship and cosmopolitanism” in Europe must be based on the fact that “Europe currently exists as a borderland.” By this, Balibar means that “the question of 'borders'…is central when we reflect about citizenship and, more generally, political association”; and the question of borders itself in turn presupposes “address[ing] the issue of political spaces” as a means of representing specifically “European borders” (194).
Topic:
International Security
Political Geography:
Europe and Netherlands

7. Role of International Aid and Open Trade Policies in Rebuilding the Somali State

Author:
Hussein Warsame
Publication Date:
01-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Bildhaan: An International Journal of Somali Studies
Institution:
Macalester College
Abstract:
Since its formation in 1960 from the union of British Somaliland and Italian Somaliland, the Somali Republic was always dependent on foreign aid to balance its operations and development budgets. In each of the three years after independence, the Republic financed 31 percent of its budget with grants from its former colonizers: Britain and Italy.General Mohamed Siad Barre's socialist military regime of 1969–1991 heavily depended on financial and technical support from the U.S.S.R. until disagreement about the 1977–78 war between Somalia and Ethiopia disrupted the relationship. Due to Somalia's strategic location and the Cold War, Siad Barre was able to replace the financial loss caused by the departure of the U.S.S.R. with aid from the United States, Saudi Arabia, and countries in Western Europe.
Topic:
Cold War
Political Geography:
United States, Europe, Saudi Arabia, and Somalia

8. Establishing Regional Integration: The African Union and the European Union

Author:
Sougrynoma Z. Sore
Publication Date:
03-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Macalester International
Institution:
Macalester College
Abstract:
Whether they are world travelers, global citizens, slum dwellers, or farmers in remote villages, people all across the world have, in one way or the other, been exposed to the forces of globalization. Globalization has infiltrated all aspects of life, and as such, is now one of the ―catch‖ terms that has entered the daily jargon. Globalization seems to be everywhere, continuously influencing and affecting the individual. In international relations, these global forces have also shaped state behavior and the way states interact on the international scene. The rise of global capitalism and the emergence of non-state actors as influential borderless entities have distributed power to the most economically advanced of the world. Furthermore, the increasing interconnectedness of the world has progressively undermined borders, making them more and more illusory. Space has become trans-local. We now live in a world where the interests of small and big nations are ever more intertwined. Ulrich Beck describes globalization as ―the process through which sovereign national states are criss-crossed and undermined by transnational actors with varying prospects of power, orientations, identities and networks.‖1 In the history of state and empire formation, such international power dynamics have triggered desires to build coalitions and create strong ties that would grant more leverage in the global arena. This gave rise to regionalism.
Political Geography:
Africa and Europe

9. The Co-Evolution of the Washington Consensus and the Economic Development Discourse

Author:
Ravi Kanbur
Publication Date:
08-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Macalester International
Institution:
Macalester College
Abstract:
The 1980s were a hell of a decade. They began with the reverberations of the second OPEC oil shock and ended with the fall of the Berlin Wall. In between, we had the Reagan-Thatcher-Kohl economic policy era in North America and Europe, the Volcker interest rate shock, the Latin American debt crisis, economic collapse in Africa, the start of rapid growth in China and India, and on and on. Oh, and by the way, in 1989 John Williamson coined the term “Washington Consensus.”
Political Geography:
Africa, China, Europe, Washington, India, Latin America, and North America

10. Israel's Mizrahim: "Other" Victims of Zionism or a Bridge to Regional Reconciliation?

Author:
Franklin Hugh Adler
Publication Date:
05-2009
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Macalester International
Institution:
Macalester College
Abstract:
It may come as a surprise to those unfamiliar with Israeli society, and especially those who have been led to believe it primarily composed of European Jews who settled in the Middle East, that roughly half of Israel's Jewish population is made up of Jews who for millennia were deeply rooted in the region and summarily expelled from Arab states after Israel was founded in 1948. In fact, this Arab Jewish population exceeds in number those Palestinians who were displaced, and it possessed substantially greater property that was confiscated without compensation upon expulsion.
Political Geography:
Europe, Middle East, and Israel