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41. The Importance of Ties between Palestinian Citizens of Israel and Diaspora Jewry: A View from Britain

Author:
Sana Knaneh
Publication Date:
09-2019
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Mitvim: The Israeli Institute for Regional Foreign Policies
Abstract:
Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel, who feel their political representatives cannot achieve significant change for them on domestic issues, find it hard to believe that their voice could be meaningful in Israel’s foreign relations. Indeed, their involvement in Israeli foreign relations, both in the governmental and non-governmental arena, is limited. However, one area in which their involvement and influence have significant untapped potential lies in forging ties with Diaspora Jewry. For instance, in London, there is a clear disconnect between the representative bodies of the Jewish community, such as the Board of Deputies of British Jews and the Jewish Leadership Council, and those representing the Palestinian community, such as The Association of the Palestinian Community in the UK and the Palestinian Forum in Britain which reflect the main currents of Palestinian thinking. While the disconnect is evident on the formal-organizational level, it does not preclude unofficial ties between Palestinians and Jews in London. Nonetheless, links between the two communities are limited, as is the space for joint discussions and exchanges of views, thoughts and narratives.
Topic:
Politics, Sovereignty, Diaspora, Minorities, and Political Activism
Political Geography:
Britain, Middle East, Israel, and Palestine

42. Brexit: Everyone Loses, but Britain Loses the Most

Author:
Maria C. Latorre, Zoryana Olekseyuk, Hidemichi Yonezawa, and Sherman Robinson
Publication Date:
03-2019
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE)
Abstract:
This paper examines 12 economic simulation models that estimate the impact of Brexit (Britain’s exit from the European Union). Most of the studies find adverse effects for the United Kingdom (UK) and the EU-27. The UK’s GDP losses from a hard Brexit (reversion to World Trade Organization rules due to a lack of UK-EU agreement) range from –1.2 to –4.5 percent in most of the models analyzed. A soft Brexit (e.g., Norway arrangement, which seems in line with the nonbinding text of the political declaration of November 14, 2018, on the future EU-UK relationship) has about half the negative impact of a hard Brexit. Only two of the models derive gains for the UK after Brexit because they are based on unrealistic assumptions. The authors analyze more deeply a computable general equilibrium model that includes productivity and firm selection effects within manufacturing sectors and operations of foreign multinationals in services. Based on this latest model, they explain the likely economic impact of Brexit on a wide range of macroeconomic variables, namely GDP, wages, private consumption, capital remuneration, aggregate exports, aggregate imports, and the consumer price index.
Topic:
Economics, World Trade Organization, Brexit, and Multinational Corporations
Political Geography:
Britain, Europe, and European Union

43. The Global Impact of Brexit Uncertainty

Author:
Tarek A. Hassan, Laurence van Lent, Stephan Hollander, and Ahmed Tahoun
Publication Date:
01-2019
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET)
Abstract:
Using tools from computational linguistics, we construct new measures of the impact of Brexit on listed firms in the United States and around the world: the share of discussions in quarterly earnings conference calls on costs, benefits, and risks associated with the UK’s intention to leave the EU. Using this approach, we identify which firms expect to gain or lose from Brexit and which are most affected by Brexit uncertainty. We then estimate the effects of these different kinds of Brexit exposure on firm-level outcomes. We find that concerns about Brexit-related uncertainty extend far beyond British or even European firms. US and international firms most exposed to Brexit uncertainty have lost a substantial fraction of their market value and have reduced hiring and investment. In addition to Brexit uncertainty (the second moment), we find that international firms overwhelmingly expect negative direct effects of Brexit (the first moment), should it come to pass. Most prominently, firms expect difficulties resulting from regulatory divergence, reduced labor mobility, trade access, and the costs of adjusting their operations post-Brexit. Consistent with the predictions of canonical theory, this negative sentiment is recognized and priced in stock markets but has not yet had significant effects on firm actions.
Topic:
Economics, Political Economy, Regional Cooperation, Brexit, Global Political Economy, and Economic Policy
Political Geography:
Britain, United States, United Kingdom, Europe, and European Union

44. Journal of Advanced Military Studies: Economics of Defense

Author:
Patrick Callaway, James Lockhart, Nikolas Gardner, Rebecca Jensen, Ian Brown, J. Craig Stone, Lauren Mackenzie, and Kristin Post
Publication Date:
03-2019
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Advanced Military Studies
Institution:
Marine Corps University Press, National Defense University
Abstract:
During the past two decades, the U.S. government infrastructure has ground to a halt for a variety of reasons, particularly due to deficit reductions, military spending, health care, and overall party-line budget disagreements, but even more recently on border security and immigration. Regardless of party politics and the daily administrative drama in the White House, how does one of the wealthiest countries in the world prepare for the impact of making war and defending peace within these economic and political constraints? Authors for this issue of MCU Journal address the economics of defense and how those costs impact nations. Aside from the economic costs the United States bears for its defense, the articles in the Spring issue of MCU Journal will demonstrate there are other costs and unique limitations faced by America and other nation-states. For example, smaller nations such as Oman must rely on technologically advanced allies for their defense support. Long-term political costs also may apply to these nations, as James Lockhart’s article on the Central Intelligence Agency’s intervention in Chilean politics discusses. There are also other ways to wage “war” that are discussed in this issue; for example, looking to the past, President Thomas Jefferson attempted to wage a trade war against Great Britain and France to maintain U.S. trade neutrality and, looking to the present and future, governments must address the real costs of cyberwar. Finally, we must consider the political and diplomatic costs associated with U.S. servicemembers and their work in foreign states, but also the relationship repair they must rely on to keep the peace.
Topic:
Defense Policy, Counterinsurgency, Culture, Armed Forces, Military Affairs, Authoritarianism, Cybersecurity, Weapons, Economy, Military Spending, History, Coup, Trade, Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and Augusto Pinochet
Political Geography:
Britain, Afghanistan, China, South Asia, Canada, Asia, South America, North America, Chile, Oman, and United States of America

45. Globalization and Its ‘Born Throwaways’: Exploring the Impact of Neo-Liberal Reforms on Irregular Migration in Africa

Author:
Elias Chukwuemeka Ngwu, Anthony Chinedu Ugwu, and Emeka Charles Iloh
Publication Date:
10-2019
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
African Heritage Institution (AfriHeritage)
Abstract:
Policies of free trade and the adoption of neoliberal economic models, which are important aspects of globalization, have caused major disruptions in labor markets around the world. In the less developed regions of the world, relatively unskilled agricultural hands have been rendered redundant in production processes while in the more technologically advanced countries, several long-stable industries closed down while some others were outsourced to less developed countries in a bid to maintain competitiveness. As the flow of material and cultural goods and services accelerated over time under the rubrics of globalization, human beings dislodged from their various productive bases became important components of the exchange. However, whereas the process of globalization appears to be bringing humanity closer together due to advances in transportation and communication technologies, this apparent physical closeness has created social distance between individuals and groups across territorial boundaries. Large numbers of mostly economic migrants from the less developed regions have ossified into an army of social outcasts, born throwaways, in various destination and transit countries. This paper explored the contradictions and tensions arising from globalization-induced migration within and out of Africa. It found that the massive outflow of irregular migrants from Africa has fed into the stream of modern day slavery in transit and destination countries that is unlikely to abate even in the face of apparent repudiation of globalization by its avid promoters, the United States and Great Britain.
Topic:
Development, Globalization, Markets, Migration, Neoliberalism, and Economic Development
Political Geography:
Britain, Africa, and United States

46. Diversity and perceptions of Immigration: How the past Influences the present

Author:
Lauren McLaren, Anja Neundorf, and Ian Paterson
Publication Date:
01-2019
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Nottingham Interdisciplinary Centre for Economic and Political Research (NICEP)
Abstract:
Research on the relationship between immigration-related diversity and public attitudes to immigration generally focuses on contemporary levels of (or recent changes in) diversity. Drawing on the political socialization literature, this paper argues that by ignoring the effect of diversity during early socialization years, existing research fails to fully understand longterm trends in attitudes to immigration. Applying a generational change perspective to the British sample of the European Social Survey (2002-2017), along with two innovative approaches to modeling generational differences - generalized additive models (GAMs) and hierarchical age‒period‒cohort (HAPC) models - we are able to investigate attitudes among groups of birth cohorts socialized between 1935 and 2010. The findings show that younger cohorts are systematically more positive about immigration. These increasingly positive attitudes are related to a macro-context of higher diversity in younger cohorts’ early years. This effect may, however, be diminished by a context of high income inequality during the formative years.
Topic:
Immigration, Diversity, Social Order, and Models
Political Geography:
Britain and Global Focus

47. How can the NHS recruit and retain migrant nurses after Brexit?

Author:
Georgia Spiliopoulos and Stephen Timmons
Publication Date:
06-2019
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Asia Research Institute, University of Nottingham
Abstract:
Non-British nurses working for the National Health Service (NHS) face a number of challenges, which must be addressed in the context of ongoing Brexit negotiations. Since the 2016 Referendum result to leave the European Union (EU), the number of EU nurses registering with the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) plummeted in 2017 by 96% – from 1,304 EU nurses registering with the NMC in July 2016 to just 46 in April 2017 (Siddique, 2017). This drop in numbers is also linked with the number of EU nurses leaving the UK (Matthews-King, 2017). A recent NMC report (2019) published a 1% increase, for the first time in three years, in the number of new nurse registrants, for the period between April 2018 and March 2019. This increase translates into 6,000 nurses from the UK, EU and overseas. These numbers, while encouraging, reflect the changes in international recruitment from EU and non-EU countries, and importantly the impact of Brexit on the retention of both EU and non-EU nurses. This paper recommends measures to support the retention of these nurses.
Topic:
Health, Health Care Policy, Brexit, and Public Health
Political Geography:
Britain, United Kingdom, and Asia

48. How can the NHS recruit and retain migrant nurses after Brexit?: Background Report

Author:
Georgia Spiliopoulos and Stephen Timmons
Publication Date:
06-2019
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Asia Research Institute, University of Nottingham
Abstract:
The UK Referendum decision to leave the European Union in June 2016 exacerbated some of the long-standing challenges the National Health Service (NHS) has been facing in recruiting and retaining nursing staff. In 2018, it was estimated that one in eight posts was vacant, which translates into 36,000 nursing vacancies (King’s Fund, 2018). Arguably, these challenges have been present since the founding of the NHS in 1948. Pre-established initiatives recruiting overseas nurses to deal with acute staffing shortages during the war effort, mainly from the Commonwealth, were also adopted by the NHS. Hence, the Nurses’ Act of 1949 relaxed the criteria for the registration of overseas nurses set up by the General Nursing Council (Solano and Rafferty, 2007). Therefore, we can trace historical developments in recruiting non-UK nurses, which reflect changing state regulations over time, connected to particular political and financial factors, xenophobic rhetoric and also problems in retaining British nursing staff (Bach, 2007; Ball, 2004; Cangiano et al, 2009; Simpkin and Mossialos, 2017; Solano and Rafferty, 2007). In the 1950s, for example, significant numbers of overseas nurses entered the UK as trainees, while an even higher number of British nurses emigrated abroad, fuelling concerns over training of overseas nurses but also bringing to the forefront anxieties over race (Solano and Rafferty, 2007). An illustrative example of political will influencing recruitment of overseas nurses was seen in New Labour’s push for a ‘modernization agenda’ in the late 1990s and subsequently, a push for international recruitment (Deeming, 2004). However, aggressive recruitment initiatives targeting nursing staff from developing countries such as Zimbabwe, Kenya and Zambia, led to the introduction of the NHS ‘Code of Practice’ on ethical recruitment in 2001 (Deeming, 2004), with calls for overseas recruitment to focus mainly on pre-existing agreements with countries such as the Philippines and India (Buchan, 2006).
Topic:
Health, Health Care Policy, Brexit, and Public Policy
Political Geography:
Britain, United Kingdom, and Asia

49. Prospects for a closer relationship with Indonesia after Brexit

Author:
Jacqueline Hicks
Publication Date:
06-2019
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Asia Research Institute, University of Nottingham
Abstract:
As the United Kingdom considers post-Brexit trade opportunities outside the European Union, this briefing looks at the potential for greater cooperation with Indonesia. It finds that there are some sectoral and trade and investment opportunities between the two countries. Developing a long-term strategy that signals commitment is key to participation in Indonesia’s promising growth trajectory. The UK can mitigate its reduced bargaining power outside the EU by providing targeted, practical trade facilitation measures in exchange for increased investment opportunities. Becoming an agile and dynamic economic partner in comparison with the EU’s bureaucratic approach chimes well with the small business background of Indonesia’s President Widodo.
Topic:
International Cooperation, European Union, Economic Growth, Trade, and Trade Policy
Political Geography:
Britain, United Kingdom, Indonesia, and Asia

50. The risk to biodiversity along China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)

Author:
Alex Lechner, Hoong Chen Teo, and Ahimsa Campos-Arceiz
Publication Date:
06-2019
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Asia Research Institute, University of Nottingham
Abstract:
The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) poses a great risk to biodiversity, particularly as many of the infrastructure projects are due to take place in regions that are home to threatened and endangered species found nowhere else in the world. This policy brief makes recommendations for the UK government to develop a BRI Biodiversity Strategy.
Topic:
Environment, Brexit, Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), and Ecology
Political Geography:
Britain and China