The Politics Of Vulnerable Groups

This book describes and analyzes the conceptual ambiguity of vulnerability, in an effort to understand its particular applications for legal and political protection when relating to groups. Group vulnerability has become a common concept within legal and political scholarship but remains largely undertheorized as a phenomenon itself. At the same time, in academia and within legal circles, vulnerability is primarily understood as a phenomenon affecting individuals, and the attempts to identify vulnerable groups are discredited as essentialist and stereotypical. In contrast, this book demonstrates that a conception of group vulnerability is not only theoretically possible, but also politically and legally necessary. Two conceptions of group vulnerability are discussed: one focuses on systemic violence or oppression directed toward several individuals, while another requires a common positioning of individuals within a given context that conditions their agency, ability to cope with risks and uncertainties, and manage their consequences. By comparing these two definitions of group vulnerability and their implications, Macioce seeks a more precise delineation of the theoretical boundaries of the concept of group vulnerability.

This book describes and analyzes the conceptual ambiguity of vulnerability, in an effort to understand its particular applications for legal and political protection when relating to groups. Group vulnerability has become a common concept within legal and political scholarship but remains largely undertheorized as a phenomenon itself. At the same time, in academia and within legal circles, vulnerability is primarily understood as a phenomenon affecting individuals, and the attempts to identify vulnerable groups are discredited as essentialist and stereotypical. In contrast, this book demonstrates that a conception of group vulnerability is not only theoretically possible, but also politically and legally necessary. Two conceptions of group vulnerability are discussed: one focuses on systemic violence or oppression directed toward several individuals, while another requires a common positioning of individuals within a given context that conditions their agency, ability to cope with risks and uncertainties, and manage their consequences. By comparing these two definitions of group vulnerability and their implications, Macioce seeks a more precise delineation of the theoretical boundaries of the concept of group vulnerability. Fabio Macioce is Professor of Philosophy of Law and Bioethics at LUMSA University, School of Law, Italy.

"Katie Oliviero's "Vulnerability Politics: The Uses and Abuses of Precarity in Political Debate" explores the concept of politically vulnerable and unprotected groups in the 21st century. The book addresses such important issues as women's reproductive rights, immigration and marriage equality" --

A new understanding of vulnerability in contemporary political culture Progressive thinkers have argued that placing the concept of vulnerability at the center of discussions about social justice would lead governments to more equitably distribute resources and create opportunities for precarious groups – especially women, children, people of color, queers, immigrants and the poor. At the same time, conservatives claim that their values and communities are vulnerable to attack–often by these same groups. In turn, they craft antidemocratic representations of vulnerability that significantly influence the political landscape, restricting human and legal rights for many in order to expand them for a historically privileged few. Vulnerability Politics examines how twenty-first century political struggles over immigration, LGBTQ rights, reproductive justice, and police violence have created a sense of vulnerability that has an impact on culture and the law. By researching organizations like the Minutemen (civilians who monitor the US/Mexico border), the Protect Marriage Coalition (a campaign to ban same-sex marriage in California), and the Center for Bio-Ethical Reform (an anti-abortion movement), Katie Oliviero shows how conservative movements use the rhetoric of risk to oppose liberal policies by claiming that the nation, family, and morality are imperiled and in need of government protection. The author argues that this sensationalism has shifted the focus away from the everyday and institutional precarities experienced by marginalized communities and instead reinforces the idea that groups only deserve social justice protections when their beliefs reflect the dominant nationalist, racial, and sexual ideals.

The protection of vulnerable groups varies under international human rights law. Depending on the group at stake, protection may be more or less advanced. In some cases, the international community has deemed it necessary to adopt conventions providing for the rights of certain vulnerable groups and establishing mechanisms to verify State compliance. Other groups have not been the focus of States’ standard-setting endeavours, but their protection still falls within the scope of human rights treaties of general application and the mandate of their respective monitoring bodies. This book takes an innovative approach to the investigation of the international legal protection of vulnerable groups. Rather than examining the situation of a number of vulnerable groups and applicable international or regional conventions, this book reviews the overall scope of the protection of vulnerable groups under International Human Rights Law. This book conceptualizes the protection of vulnerable groups as an underlying and essential component of International Human Rights Law through a systematic and comprehensive analysis of international human rights law instruments and relevant practice of international and regional human rights monitoring bodies. The book illuminates how human rights monitoring bodies foster protection of vulnerable groups and their members at the domestic level, and underscores and assesses vulnerability paradigms these bodies have elaborated. The book also puts forward a legal definition of vulnerable groups. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of international human rights law.

Drawing on varied expertise from specialisms across the sub-disciplines of social and cultural geography, this book seeks to interrogate what it is to do research with people widely considered to be vulnerable. Written from an emancipatory standpoint, this book addresses the ethical and practical challenges that face researchers working with marginalised people. With chapters exploring the authors’ own experiences of working with a wide range of participants including homeless people, indigenous peoples, drug addicts, learning disabled children, and prisoners, the book draws on research undertaken by academics across the globe. Geographical Research with ‘Vulnerable Groups’ unpicks and interrogates each part of the research process, from obtaining ethics permission from review bodies, to recruitment and gatekeepers, through to dissemination of research findings. Throughout the discussion, authors foreground the relational identities of the actors in the research process, highlighting the ways in which institutional attempts to protect marginalised people from risk, perpetuate a perceived, and even material, vulnerability. This honest and empirically driven text will provide an illuminating insight for researchers embarking on research with marginalised people. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Social & Cultural Geography.

Vulnerability and resistance have often been seen as opposites, with the assumption that vulnerability requires protection and the strengthening of paternalistic power at the expense of collective resistance. Focusing on political movements and cultural practices in different global locations, including Turkey, Palestine, France, and the former Yugoslavia, the contributors to Vulnerability in Resistance articulate an understanding of the role of vulnerability in practices of resistance. They consider how vulnerability is constructed, invoked, and mobilized within neoliberal discourse, the politics of war, resistance to authoritarian and securitarian power, in LGBTQI struggles, and in the resistance to occupation and colonial violence. The essays offer a feminist account of political agency by exploring occupy movements and street politics, informal groups at checkpoints and barricades, practices of self-defense, hunger strikes, transgressive enactments of solidarity and mourning, infrastructural mobilizations, and aesthetic and erotic interventions into public space that mobilize memory and expose forms of power. Pointing to possible strategies for a feminist politics of transversal engagements and suggesting a politics of bodily resistance that does not disavow forms of vulnerability, the contributors develop a new conception of embodiment and sociality within fields of contemporary power. Contributors. Meltem Ahiska, Athena Athanasiou, Sarah Bracke, Judith Butler, Elsa Dorlin, Başak Ertür, Zeynep Gambetti, Rema Hammami, Marianne Hirsch, Elena Loizidou, Leticia Sabsay, Nükhet Sirman, Elena Tzelepis

′The book makes it easy to dip into a topic and also gives good overviews of theories and applications. This will definitely help students′ Lesley Groom, University of Bolton Carefully-researched and highly readable this textbook looks at the experiences and health and social needs of key ′vulnerable groups′. It presents an engaging social science perspective relevant to everyone exploring how we, and society, care for the vulnerable. Each chapter defines and explores a vulnerable social group, bringing together theoretical, policy and practice perspectives. The chapters explore contemporary debates and offer a number of differing and thought provoking viewpoints. The lively and engaging style enables the reader to engage with the client group and to reflect upon their own learning and practice in a more meaningful way. Groups covered include: - Disabled People - Children - Older People - Those Living with Mental Illness - Ethnic Minorities - The Homeless. Suggestions about further study, chapter activities and a glossary of key concepts support students′ learning and develop understanding across the social sciences. The book will be invaluable for all those taking courses across health and social care. It will also be a great reference book for practitioners.