International Sociology

Radicalization of youth leading to violent extremism in the form of terrorism is an urgent problem considering the rise of young people joining extremist groups of different ideologies. Previous research on the impact of counter-terrorism polices has highlighted negative outcomes such as stigmatizing minority groups. Drawing on qualitative research conducted under the PROTON project (2016–2019) by CREA-UB on the social and ethical impact of counter-terrorism policies in six EU countries, the present article presents and discusses the ways in which actions characterized by creating spaces for dialogue at the grassroots level are contributing to prevent youth violent radicalization. The results highlight four core elements underlying these spaces for dialogue: providing guidance to be safe in the exploration of extremist messages and violent radicalization; the rejection of violence; that dialogue is egalitarian; and that relationships are built on trust so that adolescents and young adults feel confident to raise their doubts. If taken into account, these elements can serve to elaborate dialogic evidence-based policies. The policies which include a dialogue between the scientific evidence and the people affected by them once implemented, achieve positive social impact.

Europe has seen an increase of women joining or sympathizing with the terrorist organization ISIS. These women are often considered victims and passive agents, but their threat should not be underestimated. Effective counter-measures are essential, especially now the so-called caliphate is in decline and many females want to return home. Exit programmes to deradicalize, disengage, reintegrate or rehabilitate are often part of a broader programme to prevent and counter violent extremism (CVE). Little is known about the effectiveness of such exit programmes, in particular in relation to female violent extremism. Drawing on municipal exit programmes in the Netherlands as a case study, the article researches how realistic evaluation can be used to measure the effectiveness of exit programmes. It also shows that the realistic evaluation method is beneficial for further theory development on the phenomenon of female violent extremism.

Spike Lee’s latest film, Chi-Raq, draws upon a portmanteau coined by local rappers to describe the violence and chaos of Chicago’s South Side, home of some of the most violent neighborhoods in America. City leaders condemned the title as inflammatory and hyperbolic, but this article argues the comparison is not as far afield as they suggest. Drawing from the literatures on state legitimacy, American gang formation, and the emerging scholarship surrounding the Islamic State, it is argued the two locations and their organized violent nonstate actors exhibit a host of important similarities. In both situations, the absence of services and protection delivered through the legitimate government has left a vacuum of both material goods and legitimacy, which fuels the genesis, growth, and stability of these extralegal organizations.

This article employs a Foucauldian perspective to examine how Palestinian refugee children are governed through dominance and control strategies in social spaces, such as school and family. Each of these institutions is dedicated to the control and regulation of the development of both the body and mind of Palestinian refugee children through regimes of discipline, learning, development, maturation and skill. Such institutions exert symbolic violence, domination and manipulation on their users, to the point that even physical violence – school teachers hitting students – is embodied by the staff of these institutions.

This article examines the American radical right’s fascination with apocalyptic millenarianism through the apocalyptic literature the movement has either generated or, as with The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, adopted as its own. These works are not all of a kind however; there are distinct categories into which they fall. These are: (1) Literature of the Crossroads in which the apocalypse can be averted if the nation follows a prescribed path; and (2) post-apocalyptic literature which sees no alternative to the End, and therefore embraces the inevitable cataclysm in the faith that the millennial future will bring at long last perfect peace and terrestrial perfection. Moreover, there are two distinct courses of action which this body of literature prescribes: (1) revolution now; or (2) a quietist withdrawal to an enclave where the White Race can safely sit out the apocalypse to come.

The article analyses how the norm against mercenarism shapes the legitimate parameters of exchange in the market for military outsourcing. The dominant interpretation of this dynamic is that neoliberal states and private military companies (PMCs) have come to restrict their transactions to non-combat functions in order to circumvent contemporary articulations of this norm. The article, by contrast, contends that even within these narrowed parameters of exchange, neoliberal states and PMCs have been required to work through the norm against mercenarism. Using the ‘global security assemblages’ approach, and drawing upon new data relating to the UK case, it explores how the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and PMCs have sought to appropriate symbolic capital from a domestic private security licensing regime so as to distance their non-combat transactions from the norm against mercenarism. In so doing, it facilitates a reappraisal of the regulatory potential of this norm within today’s pluralised military landscape.