Books on the topic 'Regional youth policy'

This timely book provides a thorough analysis of contemporary youth employment entry route schemes in the U.K.Drawing on a Post-Foucauldian approach, the book providesa critical interrogation of the policy contexts governing a range of youth employment training schemes in four diverse regional economies within England and Scotland, including employability training, enterprise training, internships and volunteering. Supplemented with new ethnographic case study research conducted by the authors, the book’s chaptersexplore each training scheme in turn through the eyes of regional policy makers, trainers, work experience providers and young people. The authors demonstrate how neoliberal beliefs and practices, such as individualisation, responsibilisation, flexibility and resilience to risk are thoroughly implicated in youth employment policy and training practice. The book also makes obvious how the constraints faced by, and opportunities permitted to, different young people are shaped by the broad and complex interplay of national and regional historical events, economic processes and social structures.These function not only to reproduce but often to further retrench social inequalities, positions of liminality and vulnerability to risk for young people trying to get in and get on in good quality work across the different regional economies of the U.K.

Setting macroeconomic policy is especially difficult in fragile states. Political legitimacy concerns are heightened, raising issues such as who the policymakers are, what incentives move them, and how the process of policymaking is likely to work under limited legitimacy and high uncertainty both about the macroeconomic environment and about policy effectiveness. In addition, fragility expands the range of policy objectives in ways that may constrain the attainment of standard macroeconomic objectives. Specifically, in the context of fragility policymakers also need to focus on measures to mitigate fragility itself—namely, they need to address issues such as regional and ethnic economic disparities, youth unemployment, and food price inflation. Socio-political developments around the world have thus pushed policymakers to broaden their toolkit to improve the effectiveness of macroeconomic management in the face of these constraints. The chapters in this book address these issues, both by giving an analytical context from which policymakers can build to answer the questions they face in fragile situations as well as by providing lessons drawn from empirical analyses and case studies. The first section of the volume discusses the interactions between political economy considerations and macroeconomic policymaking. The second section covers the private sector environment in fragile states. The third section focuses on macroeconomic policy, especially fiscal policy, monetary policy, exchange rate policy, external flows, and aid effectiveness. The last section explains the role of the IMF in fragile states and concludes by presenting case studies from the Middle East and from Sub-Saharan Africa. The contributors to the volume are economists and political scientists from academia as well as policymakers from international organizations and from countries affected by fragility.

Youth taking centre stage in research and policymaking is key to unearthing innovative solutions to contemporary crises. The Youth as Researchers (YAR) initiative is part of the UNESCO response to stimulate youth-led research and solutions. As youth were disproportionately affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, the Youth as Researchers on COVID-19 was designed to ensure, support, and advance youth voices on issues that had been exacerbated due to the crisis. The initiative was operationalised through a global coalition led by a Youth Steering Committee and bringing together international institutions, academia and civil society stakeholders at global, regional and country level. Through online training and mentoring for social research, 270 young researchers from more than 70 countries, with the support of 10,000 young people globally, gathered evidence from youth experiences across the world, providing a comprehensive portrait of youth challenges and ideas for solutions to inform policy decisions, programme design and future research. This publication is the result of that initiative. It features 10 studies at global, regional, and national level led by youth on issues closest to their daily concerns during and after the pandemic, such as physical and mental health, well-being, education and technology, access to information and social network use, and youth leaders’ responses. The studies are based on youth-led research on these areas and feature recommendations to prompt policymakers, public officials and practitioners to action. UNESCO Catno: 0000390521 UNESDOC landing page: https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000390521

After the multiple murders that took place on 3 and 4 May 2023, the Government of Serbia adopted a series of measures to improve gun control and increase safety in schools and among youth. The aim of this study is to evaluate the implementation and effectiveness of these measures. The research was based on different sources of data: the state authorities’ official reports, expert literature, media reports, interviews conducted with police officers, the Armed Violence Monitoring Platform (AVMP) database, and a survey of the citizens’ satisfaction with measures, their perception of security and trust in institutions. Most of the measures that have been adopted are related to firearms, while a smaller part refers to the safety of young people and education. Also, measures related to firearms have been implemented more than others, and some are still in effect (gun control, moratorium on the issuance of gun permits). The public call for handing over arms produced results in terms of a large number of collected weapons (significantly larger than before), but there is a question of why previous such actions were not accompanied by appropriate media campaigns, which would have produced similar results. Another question is why there are no current campaigns that would educate citizens about the dangers of firearms, their misuse and the way they are to be kept and handled, as these things are very important for the prevention of armed violence. Also, the collection of firearms showed problems regarding their transport, accommodation and disposal after handing over. Measures for the safety of young people were mostly of declarative (tougher penal policy) and formal nature (establishment of councils and working groups). The only measure that was immediately implemented and visible to citizens was the placement of police officers in schools. It is possible that some students, school staff or parents did feel safer because of this, but there is no evidence that the presence of police managed to reduce violence. This measure, as well as the measures related to gun control, significantly increased the scope of work of the general jurisdiction police, creating a situation in which other forms of crime may flourish. Most of the measures were not implemented even though more than six months have passed since their adoption. Some of them, like tougher penalties for firearms-related offences or lowering the threshold for criminal liability, require legislative changes. In addition, the research and experience of other countries do not support the idea that tougher penal policies would decrease criminality. The conclusions show that the measures were motivated by political interests to satisfy the public and that they were not adopted by professionals from the fields of public security, justice or education, which is why some have turned out to be impossible to implement (restricting access to the Dark Net, reducing the threshold for criminal responsibility, gun control in the short term) or are unsustainable for the system (police presence in schools, testing students for the presence of psychoactive substances). Analysis of data from the regional Armed Violence Monitoring Platform, which records media-covered incidents involving firearms, indicates that the number of such incidents did not change much after 3 and 4 May. Also, other data sources show that levels of violence and incidents involving firearms are not decreasing and that implemented measures have not changed anything in this sense. The results of the public opinion survey show that the number of citizens who are not satisfied with the measures is slightly higher than the number of those who are. Satisfaction with safety measures in schools (47% of the respondents) is a bit higher than satisfaction with measures related to gun control (54% of the respondents). Six months after the adoption of these measures, the satisfaction of citizens is visibly decreasing - 44% of them are satisfied with the measures, while 56% are not. Comparing the results of public opinion polls in 2023 with those from 2022, it is evident that citizens’ trust in institutions has dropped significantly: 63% trust the police (76% in 2022), 49% trust the courts (57%), and 50% trust the prosecutor’s office (56%). Also, the perception of citizens’ safety considering the environment has decreased at all levels: in their homes, neighbourhoods and in Serbia in general. Finally, the survey also showed that more citizens now feel threatened by phenomena such as murder (56%) and illegal possession of firearms (61%) than was the case in 2022 (murder 49%, illegal possession of firearms 54%). It should be noted here that we are talking about two different public opinion surveys here, and their comparison should be viewed with some reservation. Although both were conducted using a national, representative sample, the 2023 survey was conducted online and was not conducted on a random sample, while the 2022 survey was conducted face-to-face on a random sample.

В коллективной монографии представлены результаты совместной работы российских и белорусских ученых по проекту «Имидж и образ России и Беларуси в ХХІ в. в восприятии молодежи двух стран». Основная часть работы выполнена на основе материалов социологических исследований, проводившихся по единой методике в университетах Москвы и Минска. Авторы монографии исследовали представления молодежи о межгосударственных отношениях России и Беларуси, политические ориентации молодежи, ее отношение к различным историческим периодам совместной истории. Были проанализированы влияние СМИ на формирование образа страны, процесс разработки региональных и территориальных брендов России и Беларуси, молодежная политика двух стран, а также молодежный активизм и особенности ментальности молодого поколения The collective monograph presents the results of joint work of Russian and Belarusian scientists on the project "Image and image of Russia and Belarus in the XXI century in the perception of the youth of the two countries". The main part of the work is based on the materials of sociological research conducted using the same methodology at the universities of Moscow and Minsk. The authors of the monograph studied the youth's ideas about interstate relations between Russia and Belarus, political orientations of young people, and their attitude to various historical periods of joint history. The influence of the media on the formation of the country's image, the process of developing regional and territorial brands in Russia and Belarus, the youth policy of the two countries, as well as youth activism and the mentality of the younger generation were analyzed. The book is intended for specialists in the field of ethnosociology, youth and image political science, as well as for a wide range of readers

Iran is poised to re-emerge as the powerhouse of the Middle East in the 21st century. Already taking on massive export and energy diversification projects and working to acquire a nuclear weapons arsenal, Iran is likely to attain the stature of regional power in the coming years, thanks in no small measure to the vacuum created by the chaos in Iraq, which for many years served as a counterweight to Iran in the region. Gonzalez illuminates the path toward a new approach to engagement with Iran. Only then can the United States reap the benefits of a new Middle East. But is a nuclear-armed Iran a direct strategic threat to the United States? While post-revolutionary politics have harnessed anti-Americanism as a matter of policy, Gonzalez argues that this is only a sign of a larger enterprise of democratization; a trajectory of independence, as the author calls it. This trajectory has led Iran to release itself from the shackles of foreign power intervention and has put it closer to home-grown democracy than any other nation in the Muslim Middle East. This promise of democracy, set in the wider scope of Iranian Shi'i jurisprudence and practice, is set to elevate the largest segment of Iranian society—its educated and pro-American youth—to the forefront of Iranian politics. The Middle East is in crisis, and within every crisis lies opportunity. America must not repeat the myopic mistakes of the past. A far-sighted and grand-strategic approach to engagement with Iran promises to open doors to regional stability and political development. Only then can America, as the global superpower, reap the benefits of a new Middle East, with the Islamic Republic of Iran at the helm.

The collection of materials contains abstracts of reports submitted to the International Scientific Conference "Scientific Horizons of the XXI Century: Multidisciplinary Research" which took place on May 16-17, 2024, at the State Higher Educational Institution "Uzhhorod National University" in a hybrid format. The materials were discussed during the work of 16 sections. As part of the conference, a roundtable "Prospects for Youth and Open Science in Ukraine" was also held. The organizers of the conference were: the State Higher Educational Institution "Uzhhorod National University," the Council of Young Scientists of UzhNU, the University of Public Service (Budapest, Hungary), the University of Bialystok, Faculty of Education (Białystok, Poland), the Polish Association of Doctoral Students, the State Scientific Institution "Ukrainian Institute of Scientific and Technical Expertise and Information," the National Aviation University, the Odessa State Agrarian University, the Institute of Family Medicine of UzhNU, the Council of Young Scientists under the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine, the Council of Young Scientists of the Odessa Regional State Administration, the Council of Young Scientists of the Kremenets Regional Humanities-Pedagogical Academy named after T.H. Shevchenko, the All-Ukrainian Public Organization "Ukrainian Association of Family Medicine," the NGO "Association of Family Doctors of the Zakarpattia Region," the NGO "Carpathian Horizons," the Center for Information-Analytical and Technical Support of Monitoring of Atomic Energy Objects of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, and the Institute for the Digitalization of Education of the National Academy of Educational Sciences of Ukraine.

This book to interested in gaining an insight into the issues pertaining to the prospect for employment generation in Jammu and Kashmir in present times. The book is original in content. We get here a fresh perspective that boldly shifts the focus from the past demographic and developmental dimensions to the present dynamics of the state, or, rather, the Union Territories. In spelling this out the author, Dr. Bilal Khan, explains in great detail the varied and diversified geographic, agro-climatic and topographic features of the region that pose peculiar and unique problems of development. The author dwells on how the state has been subverted from time to time. The work draws attention to the trends and issues concerning the work force. The policy implications of this work are immense. The book is focused on finding innovative methods to enable the young youth to exercise as well as realize their full potential. The author shows with corroborating evidence that the Central Government not only deployed security forces in large numbers but also spent huge sums of money on building infrastructure and providing economic assistance to Jammu and Kashmir. Instead of addressing the problems of the peasantry and the common people and expanding the employment of the restive youth, this led to the creation of neo-rich strata within the state. Dr. Bilal presents the much neglected dimensions of the economy of Kashmir by showing how the widening gulf over decades has generated mass discontent against the Indian government and created the social basis of separatism and militancy in the 1990s. He points out with much evidence that a radical shift in its policies, especially in the education sector, is an absolute prerequisite for the birth of a capable workforce. The remedy lies in revamping the education sector by crafting appropriate policies for suitable skills in line with the socio-economic requirements of the society. Underdevelopment and unemployment in Jammu and Kashmir is the manifestation of a mismatch between physical and human resources, technically known as structural unemployment. This exists when a large segment of the working age population does not possess the appropriate skills and knowledge to be gainfully employed. Kashmir faced a serious unemployment problem, made me realize that there was an immediate need of a book on Jammu & Kashmir: Levels, Issues, & Prospects of Employment Generation which could educate the young youth about the various aspects and challenges in a simple and lucid manner. The book presents a comprehensive treatment of unemployment and economic problems. It takes care of recent data of workforce wherever it is required. Kashmir being a conflict ridden zone has far less opportunities for employment than rest of the other states. With an underdeveloped industrial sector and the inability of government to create enough jobs, there seems to be no immediate solution. Lack of avenues to engage youth in meaningful ways drives youth towards the miscreants in this society. Young populations across the world are generally seen as drivers of socio-economic growth, but in Kashmir, the youth bulge is a problem. Unemployed youths are betrayed by the anti-social elements and for destabilizing economy by using them as tools for creating mayhem. Underdevelopment and unemployment in Jammu and Kashmir is the manifestation of a mismatch between physical and human resources. This exists when a large segment of the working age population does not possess the appropriate skills and knowledge to be gainfully employed. In addition, lackadascial and imprudent policies pursued by subsequent governments are the major challenge. The book is with much evidence that a radical shift in its policies, especially in the education sector, is an absolute prerequisite for the birth of a capable workforce. The remedy lies in revamping the education sector by crafting appropriate policies for suitable skills in line with the socio-economic requirements of the society. The government adroitly must think about a long-term plan for unemployed youth and devise a policy to channelize youth bulge constructively.

Employment and job creation are key components in achieving economic growth and sustainable development, particularly in low-income countries. The growing size of the working-age population in many developing regions underscores the need to further strengthen labour market structures in the world’s poorest countries. Despite the importance of studying emerging labour markets, and investigating which policies are more successful, the evidence is rather limited. Against this backdrop, the joint IZA/FCDO Growth and Labour Markets in Low Income Countries (GLM|LIC) programme was established and has taken important steps to close this gap. Covering topics such as poverty, informality and rural labour, skills training and behaviour, gender inequality, youth and child labour, and migration, this volume presents key takeaways from most recent research in the field. Which development policies will work, which strategies will fail? The authors provide an in-depth discussion of current development programmes, based on the results of new evaluation studies, and derive important policy lessons.

This book provides an intellectual biography of Robert Triffin. Triffin (1911–1993) played a key role in the international monetary debates in the postwar period. He became famous with trenchant analyses of the vulnerabilities of the international monetary system that was dependent on a national currency for its international liquidity (the Triffin dilemma), predicting the end of the Bretton Woods system. Triffin was a child of the interwar period, marked by the Great Depression and the rise of fascism. He became not only an eminent academic but also an influential policy adviser. In the mid-1940s he worked at the Federal Reserve, participating in several monetary reform missions in Latin America. Thereafter, Triffin played an important role in the creation of the European Payments Union. In his later academic life, Triffin put forward proposals for reforming the international monetary system. But because he doubted that they would come to fruition, he also developed plans for regional monetary integration, particularly in Europe, where he became the monetary adviser of Jean Monnet. With proposals for a European Reserve Fund and a European currency unit, he became one of the intellectual fathers of Europe’s monetary union. Throughout his life Triffin remained faithful to the ideals of his youth. The young Triffin was indignant about the Versailles Treaty, while the old Triffin fulminated against the Vietnam War. For him, economics was a way to contribute to a better world. He was strongly attached to his independence and the pursuit of a better and more peaceful world. He was a monk in economist’s clothing.

Growing up in Diverse Societies provides a comprehensive analysis of the integration of the children of immigrants in England, Germany, the Netherlands, and Sweden, based on the ‘Children of immigrants longitudinal survey in four European countries’ (CILS4EU), including harmonised interviews with almost 19,000 14- to 15-year-olds. The book studies the life situation, social relations, and attitudes of adolescents in different ethnic minority groups, and compares these systematically to majority youth in the four countries. The chapters cover a wide range of aspects of integration, all addressing comparisons between origin groups, generations, and destination countries, and elucidating processes accounting for differences. The results challenge much current thinking and simplified views on the state of integration. In some aspects, such as own economic means, delinquency, and mental health, children of immigrants are surprisingly similar to majority youth, while in other aspects there are large dissimilarities. There are also substantial differences between ethnic minority groups, with the economic and cultural distance of the origin regions to the destination country being a key factor. For some outcomes, such as language proficiency or host country identification, dissimilarities seem to narrow over generations, but this does not hold for other outcomes, such as religiosity and attitudes. Remaining differences partly depend on ethnic segregation, some on socioeconomic inequality, and others on parental influences. Most interestingly, the book finds that the four destination countries, though different in their immigration histories, policy approaches, and contextual conditions, are on the whole similar in the general patterns of integration and in the underlying processes.

Nationalism: Past as Prologue began as a single volume being compiled by Ad Akande, a scholar from South Africa, who proposed it to me as co-author about two years ago. The original idea was to examine how the damaging roots of nationalism have been corroding political systems around the world, and creating dangerous obstacles for necessary international cooperation. Since I (Bruce E. Johansen) has written profusely about climate change (global warming, a.k.a. infrared forcing), I suggested a concerted effort in that direction. This is a worldwide existential threat that affects every living thing on Earth. It often compounds upon itself, so delays in reducing emissions of fossil fuels are shortening the amount of time remaining to eliminate the use of fossil fuels to preserve a livable planet. Nationalism often impedes solutions to this problem (among many others), as nations place their singular needs above the common good. Our initial proposal got around, and abstracts on many subjects arrived. Within a few weeks, we had enough good material for a 100,000-word book. The book then fattened to two moderate volumes and then to four two very hefty tomes. We tried several different titles as good submissions swelled. We also discovered that our best contributors were experts in their fields, which ranged the world. We settled on three stand-alone books:” 1/ nationalism and racial justice. Our first volume grew as the growth of Black Lives Matter following the brutal killing of George Floyd ignited protests over police brutality and other issues during 2020, following the police assassination of Floyd in Minneapolis. It is estimated that more people took part in protests of police brutality during the summer of 2020 than any other series of marches in United States history. This includes upheavals during the 1960s over racial issues and against the war in Southeast Asia (notably Vietnam). We choose a volume on racism because it is one of nationalism’s main motive forces. This volume provides a worldwide array of work on nationalism’s growth in various countries, usually by authors residing in them, or in the United States with ethnic ties to the nation being examined, often recent immigrants to the United States from them. Our roster of contributors comprises a small United Nations of insightful, well-written research and commentary from Indonesia, New Zealand, Australia, China, India, South Africa, France, Portugal, Estonia, Hungary, Russia, Poland, Kazakhstan, Georgia, and the United States. Volume 2 (this one) describes and analyzes nationalism, by country, around the world, except for the United States; and 3/material directly related to President Donald Trump, and the United States. The first volume is under consideration at the Texas A & M University Press. The other two are under contract to Nova Science Publishers (which includes social sciences). These three volumes may be used individually or as a set. Environmental material is taken up in appropriate places in each of the three books. * * * * * What became the United States of America has been strongly nationalist since the English of present-day Massachusetts and Jamestown first hit North America’s eastern shores. The country propelled itself across North America with the self-serving ideology of “manifest destiny” for four centuries before Donald Trump came along. Anyone who believes that a Trumpian affection for deportation of “illegals” is a new thing ought to take a look at immigration and deportation statistics in Adam Goodman’s The Deportation Machine: America’s Long History of Deporting Immigrants (Princeton University Press, 2020). Between 1920 and 2018, the United States deported 56.3 million people, compared with 51.7 million who were granted legal immigration status during the same dates. Nearly nine of ten deportees were Mexican (Nolan, 2020, 83). This kind of nationalism, has become an assassin of democracy as well as an impediment to solving global problems. Paul Krugman wrote in the New York Times (2019:A-25): that “In their 2018 book, How Democracies Die, the political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt documented how this process has played out in many countries, from Vladimir Putin’s Russia, to Recep Erdogan’s Turkey, to Viktor Orban’s Hungary. Add to these India’s Narendra Modi, China’s Xi Jinping, and the United States’ Donald Trump, among others. Bit by bit, the guardrails of democracy have been torn down, as institutions meant to serve the public became tools of ruling parties and self-serving ideologies, weaponized to punish and intimidate opposition parties’ opponents. On paper, these countries are still democracies; in practice, they have become one-party regimes….And it’s happening here [the United States] as we speak. If you are not worried about the future of American democracy, you aren’t paying attention” (Krugmam, 2019, A-25). We are reminded continuously that the late Carl Sagan, one of our most insightful scientific public intellectuals, had an interesting theory about highly developed civilizations. Given the number of stars and planets that must exist in the vast reaches of the universe, he said, there must be other highly developed and organized forms of life. Distance may keep us from making physical contact, but Sagan said that another reason we may never be on speaking terms with another intelligent race is (judging from our own example) could be their penchant for destroying themselves in relatively short order after reaching technological complexity. This book’s chapters, introduction, and conclusion examine the worldwide rise of partisan nationalism and the damage it has wrought on the worldwide pursuit of solutions for issues requiring worldwide scope, such scientific co-operation public health and others, mixing analysis of both. We use both historical description and analysis. This analysis concludes with a description of why we must avoid the isolating nature of nationalism that isolates people and encourages separation if we are to deal with issues of world-wide concern, and to maintain a sustainable, survivable Earth, placing the dominant political movement of our time against the Earth’s existential crises. Our contributors, all experts in their fields, each have assumed responsibility for a country, or two if they are related. This work entwines themes of worldwide concern with the political growth of nationalism because leaders with such a worldview are disinclined to co-operate internationally at a time when nations must find ways to solve common problems, such as the climate crisis. Inability to cooperate at this stage may doom everyone, eventually, to an overheated, stormy future plagued by droughts and deluges portending shortages of food and other essential commodities, meanwhile destroying large coastal urban areas because of rising sea levels. Future historians may look back at our time and wonder why as well as how our world succumbed to isolating nationalism at a time when time was so short for cooperative intervention which is crucial for survival of a sustainable earth. Pride in language and culture is salubrious to individuals’ sense of history and identity. Excess nationalism that prevents international co-operation on harmful worldwide maladies is quite another. As Pope Francis has pointed out: For all of our connectivity due to expansion of social media, ability to communicate can breed contempt as well as mutual trust. “For all our hyper-connectivity,” said Francis, “We witnessed a fragmentation that made it more difficult to resolve problems that affect us all” (Horowitz, 2020, A-12). The pope’s encyclical, titled “Brothers All,” also said: “The forces of myopic, extremist, resentful, and aggressive nationalism are on the rise.” The pope’s document also advocates support for migrants, as well as resistance to nationalist and tribal populism. Francis broadened his critique to the role of market capitalism, as well as nationalism has failed the peoples of the world when they need co-operation and solidarity in the face of the world-wide corona virus pandemic. Humankind needs to unite into “a new sense of the human family [Fratelli Tutti, “Brothers All”], that rejects war at all costs” (Pope, 2020, 6-A). Our journey takes us first to Russia, with the able eye and honed expertise of Richard D. Anderson, Jr. who teaches as UCLA and publishes on the subject of his chapter: “Putin, Russian identity, and Russia’s conduct at home and abroad.” Readers should find Dr. Anderson’s analysis fascinating because Vladimir Putin, the singular leader of Russian foreign and domestic policy these days (and perhaps for the rest of his life, given how malleable Russia’s Constitution has become) may be a short man physically, but has high ambitions. One of these involves restoring the old Russian (and Soviet) empire, which would involve re-subjugating a number of nations that broke off as the old order dissolved about 30 years ago. President (shall we say czar?) Putin also has international ambitions, notably by destabilizing the United States, where election meddling has become a specialty. The sight of Putin and U.S. president Donald Trump, two very rich men (Putin $70-$200 billion; Trump $2.5 billion), nuzzling in friendship would probably set Thomas Jefferson and Vladimir Lenin spinning in their graves. The road of history can take some unanticipated twists and turns. Consider Poland, from which we have an expert native analysis in chapter 2, Bartosz Hlebowicz, who is a Polish anthropologist and journalist. His piece is titled “Lawless and Unjust: How to Quickly Make Your Own Country a Puppet State Run by a Group of Hoodlums – the Hopeless Case of Poland (2015–2020).” When I visited Poland to teach and lecture twice between 2006 and 2008, most people seemed to be walking on air induced by freedom to conduct their own affairs to an unusual degree for a state usually squeezed between nationalists in Germany and Russia. What did the Poles then do in a couple of decades? Read Hlebowicz’ chapter and decide. It certainly isn’t soft-bellied liberalism. In Chapter 3, with Bruce E. Johansen, we visit China’s western provinces, the lands of Tibet as well as the Uighurs and other Muslims in the Xinjiang region, who would most assuredly resent being characterized as being possessed by the Chinese of the Han to the east. As a student of Native American history, I had never before thought of the Tibetans and Uighurs as Native peoples struggling against the Independence-minded peoples of a land that is called an adjunct of China on most of our maps. The random act of sitting next to a young woman on an Air India flight out of Hyderabad, bound for New Delhi taught me that the Tibetans had something to share with the Lakota, the Iroquois, and hundreds of other Native American states and nations in North America. Active resistance to Chinese rule lasted into the mid-nineteenth century, and continues today in a subversive manner, even in song, as I learned in 2018 when I acted as a foreign adjudicator on a Ph.D. dissertation by a Tibetan student at the University of Madras (in what is now in a city called Chennai), in southwestern India on resistance in song during Tibet’s recent history. Tibet is one of very few places on Earth where a young dissident can get shot to death for singing a song that troubles China’s Quest for Lebensraum. The situation in Xinjiang region, where close to a million Muslims have been interned in “reeducation” camps surrounded with brick walls and barbed wire. They sing, too. Come with us and hear the music. Back to Europe now, in Chapter 4, to Portugal and Spain, we find a break in the general pattern of nationalism. Portugal has been more progressive governmentally than most. Spain varies from a liberal majority to military coups, a pattern which has been exported to Latin America. A situation such as this can make use of the term “populism” problematic, because general usage in our time usually ties the word into a right-wing connotative straightjacket. “Populism” can be used to describe progressive (left-wing) insurgencies as well. José Pinto, who is native to Portugal and also researches and writes in Spanish as well as English, in “Populism in Portugal and Spain: a Real Neighbourhood?” provides insight into these historical paradoxes. Hungary shares some historical inclinations with Poland (above). Both emerged from Soviet dominance in an air of developing freedom and multicultural diversity after the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union collapsed. Then, gradually at first, right wing-forces began to tighten up, stripping structures supporting popular freedom, from the courts, mass media, and other institutions. In Chapter 5, Bernard Tamas, in “From Youth Movement to Right-Liberal Wing Authoritarianism: The Rise of Fidesz and the Decline of Hungarian Democracy” puts the renewed growth of political and social repression into a context of worldwide nationalism. Tamas, an associate professor of political science at Valdosta State University, has been a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University and a Fulbright scholar at the Central European University in Budapest, Hungary. His books include From Dissident to Party Politics: The Struggle for Democracy in Post-Communist Hungary (2007). Bear in mind that not everyone shares Orbán’s vision of what will make this nation great, again. On graffiti-covered walls in Budapest, Runes (traditional Hungarian script) has been found that read “Orbán is a motherfucker” (Mikanowski, 2019, 58). Also in Europe, in Chapter 6, Professor Ronan Le Coadic, of the University of Rennes, Rennes, France, in “Is There a Revival of French Nationalism?” Stating this title in the form of a question is quite appropriate because France’s nationalistic shift has built and ebbed several times during the last few decades. For a time after 2000, it came close to assuming the role of a substantial minority, only to ebb after that. In 2017, the candidate of the National Front reached the second round of the French presidential election. This was the second time this nationalist party reached the second round of the presidential election in the history of the Fifth Republic. In 2002, however, Jean-Marie Le Pen had only obtained 17.79% of the votes, while fifteen years later his daughter, Marine Le Pen, almost doubled her father's record, reaching 33.90% of the votes cast. Moreover, in the 2019 European elections, re-named Rassemblement National obtained the largest number of votes of all French political formations and can therefore boast of being "the leading party in France.” The brutality of oppressive nationalism may be expressed in personal relationships, such as child abuse. While Indonesia and Aotearoa [the Maoris’ name for New Zealand] hold very different ranks in the United Nations Human Development Programme assessments, where Indonesia is classified as a medium development country and Aotearoa New Zealand as a very high development country. In Chapter 7, “Domestic Violence Against Women in Indonesia and Aotearoa New Zealand: Making Sense of Differences and Similarities” co-authors, in Chapter 8, Mandy Morgan and Dr. Elli N. Hayati, from New Zealand and Indonesia respectively, found that despite their socio-economic differences, one in three women in each country experience physical or sexual intimate partner violence over their lifetime. In this chapter ther authors aim to deepen understandings of domestic violence through discussion of the socio-economic and demographic characteristics of theit countries to address domestic violence alongside studies of women’s attitudes to gender norms and experiences of intimate partner violence. One of the most surprising and upsetting scholarly journeys that a North American student may take involves Adolf Hitler’s comments on oppression of American Indians and Blacks as he imagined the construction of the Nazi state, a genesis of nationalism that is all but unknown in the United States of America, traced in this volume (Chapter 8) by co-editor Johansen. Beginning in Mein Kampf, during the 1920s, Hitler explicitly used the westward expansion of the United States across North America as a model and justification for Nazi conquest and anticipated colonization by Germans of what the Nazis called the “wild East” – the Slavic nations of Poland, the Baltic states, Ukraine, and Russia, most of which were under control of the Soviet Union. The Volga River (in Russia) was styled by Hitler as the Germans’ Mississippi, and covered wagons were readied for the German “manifest destiny” of imprisoning, eradicating, and replacing peoples the Nazis deemed inferior, all with direct references to events in North America during the previous century. At the same time, with no sense of contradiction, the Nazis partook of a long-standing German romanticism of Native Americans. One of Goebbels’ less propitious schemes was to confer honorary Aryan status on Native American tribes, in the hope that they would rise up against their oppressors. U.S. racial attitudes were “evidence [to the Nazis] that America was evolving in the right direction, despite its specious rhetoric about equality.” Ming Xie, originally from Beijing, in the People’s Republic of China, in Chapter 9, “News Coverage and Public Perceptions of the Social Credit System in China,” writes that The State Council of China in 2014 announced “that a nationwide social credit system would be established” in China. “Under this system, individuals, private companies, social organizations, and governmental agencies are assigned a score which will be calculated based on their trustworthiness and daily actions such as transaction history, professional conduct, obedience to law, corruption, tax evasion, and academic plagiarism.” The “nationalism” in this case is that of the state over the individual. China has 1.4 billion people; this system takes their measure for the purpose of state control. Once fully operational, control will be more subtle. People who are subject to it, through modern technology (most often smart phones) will prompt many people to self-censor. Orwell, modernized, might write: “Your smart phone is watching you.” Ming Xie holds two Ph.Ds, one in Public Administration from University of Nebraska at Omaha and another in Cultural Anthropology from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing, where she also worked for more than 10 years at a national think tank in the same institution. While there she summarized news from non-Chinese sources for senior members of the Chinese Communist Party. Ming is presently an assistant professor at the Department of Political Science and Criminal Justice, West Texas A&M University. In Chapter 10, analyzing native peoples and nationhood, Barbara Alice Mann, Professor of Honours at the University of Toledo, in “Divide, et Impera: The Self-Genocide Game” details ways in which European-American invaders deprive the conquered of their sense of nationhood as part of a subjugation system that amounts to genocide, rubbing out their languages and cultures -- and ultimately forcing the native peoples to assimilate on their own, for survival in a culture that is foreign to them. Mann is one of Native American Studies’ most acute critics of conquests’ contradictions, and an author who retrieves Native history with a powerful sense of voice and purpose, having authored roughly a dozen books and numerous book chapters, among many other works, who has traveled around the world lecturing and publishing on many subjects. Nalanda Roy and S. Mae Pedron in Chapter 11, “Understanding the Face of Humanity: The Rohingya Genocide.” describe one of the largest forced migrations in the history of the human race, the removal of 700,000 to 800,000 Muslims from Buddhist Myanmar to Bangladesh, which itself is already one of the most crowded and impoverished nations on Earth. With about 150 million people packed into an area the size of Nebraska and Iowa (population less than a tenth that of Bangladesh, a country that is losing land steadily to rising sea levels and erosion of the Ganges river delta. The Rohingyas’ refugee camp has been squeezed onto a gigantic, eroding, muddy slope that contains nearly no vegetation. However, Bangladesh is majority Muslim, so while the Rohingya may starve, they won’t be shot to death by marauding armies. Both authors of this exquisite (and excruciating) account teach at Georgia Southern University in Savannah, Georgia, Roy as an associate professor of International Studies and Asian politics, and Pedron as a graduate student; Roy originally hails from very eastern India, close to both Myanmar and Bangladesh, so he has special insight into the context of one of the most brutal genocides of our time, or any other. This is our case describing the problems that nationalism has and will pose for the sustainability of the Earth as our little blue-and-green orb becomes more crowded over time. The old ways, in which national arguments often end in devastating wars, are obsolete, given that the Earth and all the people, plants, and other animals that it sustains are faced with the existential threat of a climate crisis that within two centuries, more or less, will flood large parts of coastal cities, and endanger many species of plants and animals. To survive, we must listen to the Earth, and observe her travails, because they are increasingly our own.