Guided by Pierre Bourdieu’s theoretical approaches of symbolic capital and symbolic violence, this article examines the everyday mechanisms of ‘otherising’ language practices in schools that reinforce racism against marginalised youths in Sweden. The empirical material is based on focus group discussions and individual in-depth interviews with youths with migrant backgrounds in Sweden. The stories told by the participants in this study indicate how young people with immigrant backgrounds are discursively racialised and otherised as a group that does not belong to Swedish society, through the articulation of negative opinions, attitudes, and ideologies as part of established colonial discourses. It is argued that the marginalisation of migrants in Sweden, which is a consequence of social policy, has even resulted in utilisation of a marginalised language — one that deviates from the majority language in several different ways.

This article is the first scholarly research focusing exclusively on the history of Jews with disabilities in the Kingdom of Poland from the 1860s to 1914. It analyses sources drawn from the Jewish press in Yiddish, Polish, and Hebrew. Areas of investigation include the hierarchy of attitudes towards different categories of individuals with disabilities, spiritual perspectives on disability, and the portrayal of disabilities within Jewish literature. The study places particular emphasis on the Jewish deaf community, given the proliferation of available source material. Drawing on the broad conceptual framework of disability studies, the authors examine the phenomenon of medicalisation, tracing its influence on Jewish public discourse over the latter half of the nineteenth century and the early decades of the twentieth.

The Homelessness Reduction Act 2017 represents the most significant change to the rights of homeless people in England for decades. Through an analysis of the history of homelessness legislation in England, but focusing on the ‘ground-breaking’ 2017 Act, this paper explores how the homeless population is represented and ‘constructed’ in this new legislation and what this tells us about the place of homeless people in our society. In so doing, this paper exposes how the 2017 Act – a state instrument of apparent homelessness prevention – can be read and understood as contributing to rather than obviating the marginalisation and social exclusion of homeless people.

Introducing our Special Issue on marginalisation, this paper considers some of the challenges that this topic poses for legal scholars. The paper identifies that these challenges arise principally from the ambivalence of ‘marginalisation’ itself: at once an idea so broad that it arguably underpins the bulk of legal research (and socio-legal research in particular), but at the same time an idea that in practice too often quickly gives way to various other neighbouring ones: disadvantage, discrimination, disempowerment, exclusion, inequality, silencing, stigmatisation, victimisation and so on. This paper considers this ambivalence and traces etymological roots (and routes) by which we understand the margin, the marginalised and marginalisation.

This paper proposes an integrating interpretation of the term ‘place of safety’ in the International Convention on Maritime Search and Rescue, 1979, grounded in international human rights and refugee law. It argues that the exposure to harm as a consequence of the conditions under which sea migrants endure irregular journeys raises vulnerability concerns and the need to search for mechanisms of redress. It further claims that sea migrants are marginalised by states’ refusal to allow their disembarkation on land. It also argues that a narrow interpretation of the term ‘place of safety’ risks perpetuating, if not exacerbating, situations of vulnerability and marginalisation among sea migrants. Key themes addressed in this contribution are vulnerability and marginalisation of sea migrants, vulnerability reasoning in the interpretation process and the scope for a more integrating reading of the term ‘place of safety’ that is responsive to the specific needs among sea migrants.

In England, sex workers are placed at the edges of the law. How the social and legal status of sex workers impacts on their perception of and interaction with the law in a semi-legal setting has not yet been explored. Drawing on fifty-two qualitative interviews with indoor and outdoor sex workers in England, this study investigates their disposition to the law, legality and the state. The commonalities and discrepancies between the experiences of indoor and outdoor sex workers reveal the influence of the combination of legal framework and social status on sex workers’ legal consciousness. This study finds that, even in a setting of semi-legality, sex workers attempt to avoid contact with state authorities. However, this aversion to the current law does not prevent them from making claims for legal change. Surprisingly, indoor and outdoor sex workers hold opposing views on the appropriate level of regulation and state involvement in the sex industry. Remarkably, although outdoor sex workers have more negative experiences with arbitrators of the law, they desire the law's protection. In contrast, indoor sex workers’ main grievance is for sex work to be a legitimate industry that can operate with only minimal state control. These differences in outdoor and indoor workers’ legal claims are explicable by sharp cleavages in social status, vulnerability and degree of criminalisation. These findings demonstrate that intra-group differences in the legal consciousness of marginalised groups are key to understanding the role of social and legal status in shaping legal claims.

Drawing on postcolonial and feminist writings, this article re-examines securitization theory’s so-called ‘silence-problem’. Securitization theory sets up a definably colonial relationship whereby certain voices cannot be heard, while other voices try to speak for those who are silenced. The article shows that the subaltern cannot securitize, first, because they are structurally excluded from the concept of security through one of three mechanisms: locutionary silencing, illocutionary disablement, or illocutionary frustration. Second, the subaltern cannot securitize because they are always already being securitized and spoken for – as in this case by the well-meaning intellectuals trying to highlight and remediate their predicament. Third, the subaltern cannot securitize because the popular rendering of securitization theory as critical obfuscates and rationalises their marginalisation. This article thus reveals the ‘colonial moment’ in securitization studies, showing how securitization theory is complicit with securitizations ‘for’ that marginalise and silence globally, not just locally outside ‘the West’.

In a context where cultural difference is for many a source of apprehension, often leading to discrimination against minority groups, culture and cultural rights are particularly important for Indigenous peoples. However, compared with the promotion and protection of other human rights, the marginalization of cultural rights is readily apparent. This article explores one of the sources of this marginalization by asking the following question: to what extent does the concept of culture within the field of international law influence the promotion and protection of cultural rights of minority groups? The author claims that ambiguity around the notion of culture and the absence of a binding definition in the international human rights field yield a reductionist conception of culture. By failing to do justice to minority cultural rights, this conception impacts the realization of those rights and exacerbates certain exclusions. A re-conceptualization of the notion of culture, one that accounts for anthropological ideas and concepts, is therefore needed.

The Pacific region is one of the most culturally diverse areas of the world; societies within this region are also culturally diverse. For both these reasons, intercultural relations and acculturation phenomena are at the forefront of psychological interests there. This paper first situates these phenomena in their ecological and cultural contexts, in which human diversity and individual behaviour can be examined and understood as adaptations to these contexts. Then the notion of differentiation in psychological and sociocultural phenomena is discussed, linking them to the concept of social capital. The processes involved in acculturation and intercultural relations are then described, and linked to the concept of differentiation. The argument is presented (with an empirical example from research with immigrant youth) that the more differentiated are a person's psychological life, as well as their social and cultural engagements, then the better adapted they are to living interculturally. Suggestions for policy and programme development and implementation are made: these include advancing the multicultural way of living together, and of accepting the need for mutual accommodation.