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 Commentary: PNA’s future – being dismantled or collapsing
29 March 2012
The Palestinian National Authority (PNA) is facing serious political and economic crises, according to Fafo-researcher Akram Atallah. His commentary "PNA’s future – being dismantled or collapsing" is published at Maan News Agency.
 The commentary is written in Arabic: PNA’s future – being dismantled or collapsing
Abstract in English: PNA’s future – being dismantled or collapsing |
 New article: Retirement – Not Necessarily a Farewell to Work Life
21 March 2012
Fafo-researcher Anne Inga Hilsen and AFI-researcher Robert Salomon have published the article "Retirement – Not Necessarily a Farewell to Work Life" in the Italian journal Sociologia del lavoro 125 / 2012. Special issue: Ageing Workforce. The State of the Debate in Europe. Based on earlier studies, the article illustrate the identification of a three overlapping phases of good managerial practices and worker responses affecting the employment of older workers by developing an analytical model ("a three phase perspective on senior policies") of organisational orientations towards older workers. The authors focus on a possible fourth phase at the end of the working career as well as the transition from work to retirement. The fourth phase consists of both an economic and a social link between employer and employee.
Read more about the article at Sociologia del lavoro |
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16 March 2012
The Fafo-researchers Mona Christophersen, Jacob Høigilt and Åge A. Tiltnes have written the report Palestinian youth and the Arab Spring, published at Noref. The authors investigate young Palestinians' views of their economic and political situation and their interest and level of engagement in politics with reference to two momentous political events in 2011: the Arab Spring and the Palestinian bid for statehood at the United Nations (UN) General Assembly. A main question is whether the Occupied Palestinian Territories are experiencing a reinvigoration of youth activism.
Download the report Palestinian youth and the Arab Spring |
  New article: The ARV roll out and the disability grant: a South African dilemma?
March 2012
The Fafo-researchers Marina M. de Paoli and Arne Backer Grønningsæter have together with Elizabeth A. Mills at the Institute of Development Studies in Brighton written the article " The ARV roll out and the disability grant: a South African dilemma?" The article is published in Journal of the International AIDS Society, 15, 6. The authors conclude that it is crucial to provide sustainable economic support in conjunction with ARVs in order to make "positive living" a reality for people living with HIV (PLHIV). A chronic illness grant, a basic income grant or an unemployment grant could provide viable alternatives when the PLHIV are no longer eligible for a disability grant.
Read the article |
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6 March 2012
Seven months after the forced departure of elected president Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 2004, the ghettos in Port-au-Prince erupted in a violent uprising costing thousands of lives. The tension simmered for seven months until the use of force against demonstrators by the interim government caused it to blow up. The sudden outburst of massive organized violence came as a surprise to the interim government, as well as to the UN peacekeepers.
Could what happened in 2004 happen again today? By analyzing the social structures facilitating the rapid mobilization of armed resistance in the Port-au-Prince ghettos, together with the incentives for local youth to join armed groups and participate in the fighting, Fafo-researcher Henriette Lunde points to important parallels between post-Aristide and post-earthquake Haiti. Examining these factors raises questions such as how best to address both the security challenge and the living conditions for marginalized urban youth in present-day Haiti.
Download the paper: The violent lifeworlds
of young Haitians |
 New article: Post-accession migration in construction and trade union responses in Denmark, Norway and the UK
March 2012
Fafo-researcher Line Eldring has together with Ian Fitzgerald at the Northumbria University and Jens Arnholtz at FAOS, Copenhagen University, written the article «Post-accession migration in construction and trade union responses in Denmark, Norway and the UK». The article is published in European Journal of Industrial Relations, 18, 1. The authors compare trade union responses in Denmark, Norway and the UK to the arrival of construction workers from the new EU member states. Organizing has been seen as a crucial means to avoid low-wage competition and social dumping. They analyse how the unions developed strategies for recruiting migrants, the novelty of their approaches and the results in terms of membership.
 Read more about and download the article: Post-accession migration in construction and trade union responses in Denmark, Norway and the UK |
New book chapter: Community watershed management in Semiarid India
February 2012
Fafo-researcher
Tewodros Aragie Kebede has written the chapter "Community watershed management in Semiarid India: The state of collective action and its effects on natural resources and rural livelihoods" in the book Collective action and property rights for poverty reduction. Insight from Africa and Asia. The book is edited by E. Mwangi, H. Markelova and R. Meinzen-Dick and published by IFPRI Book, University of Pennsylvania Press.
Read more about the book: Collective action and property rights for poverty reduction |
 Fafo breakfast seminar 7 March: Hot Topic - Cold Comfort.
Climate Change and Attitude Change
In his new book Hot Topic - Cold Comfort. Climate Change and Attitude Change Professor Gudmund Hernes argues that the last half century has seen a dramatic change in public opinion on the environment and climate, indeed on the whole Earth’s condition and course. This shift in the way the world and its inhabitants are viewed is an “Ecological revolution” on par with the Copernican revolution, and like it influenced by new concepts and tenets from the international community of scholars. The report was commissioned by The Top-level Research Initiative in Climate, Energy and the Environment of Nordforsk to advance interdisciplinary research perspectives cutting across the natural and the social sciences as well as the humanities. Director at Nordforsk, Gunnel Gustafsson, gives an introduction before Hernes gives a further presentation of his book.
Programme and registration |
 Fafo-seminar 6 March: Peacekeeping as state building – Current challenges for the Horn of Africa
At this seminar Fafo will present a new book by Leenco Lata, Peacekeeping as state building – Current challenges for the Horn of Africa. The book is published by Red Sea Press. In his book Lata examines the complexity of peacekeeping and state building within the Horn of Africa and explores the need to focus on fitting society and state together rather than fitting society into a predetermined mould.
Lata, once a member of the Oromo Liberation Front, is currently associated with Fafo Institute for Applied International Studies.
Programme and registration |
Commentary: Gaza Strip: the core of a future Palestine or the periphery of present-day Egypt
22 February 2012
In this commentary at Maan News Agency (also published at Al-Watan Voice) Fafo-researcher Akram Atallah discusses the consequences of Arial Sharon’s “disengagement plan” from Gaza.
The commentary is written in Arabic: Gaza Strip: the core of a future Palestine or the periphery of present-day Egypt
Abstract in English: Gaza Strip: the core of a future Palestine or the periphery of present-day Egypt |
  Somalia Conference in London: New Fafo-paper about Somalia
23 February 2012
Today
representatives from the international community and from Somalia meet for the London Somalia Conference. However, as much as The Fafo researchers Morten Bøås and Mohamed Husein Gaas would have wished that this conference would be the watershed, they fear that it will be just one more in a long line of failed international attempts at rebuilding Somalia. On the contrary to this, the two authors of a new Fafo-paper argues for an approach that instead of focusing on everything that is wrong with Somalia we should ask what is working in Somalia. As the Somalis survive, Somalia must to some degree work, and indeed features a range of institutional responses that has resulted in the creation of new hybrid political orders.
Download Fafo-paper What to do with Somalia? |
 New book chapter on Norway's anti-trafficking efforts
February 2012
Fafo-director May-Len Skilbrei has written the chapter «Moving Beyond Assumptions? The Framing of Anti-trafficking Efforts in Norway», in Ragnhild Sollund (ed.), Transnational Migration, Gender and Rights. The book is published by Emerald Group Publishing Limited. Skilbrei looks at how suitable policies are described in the governments plans against trafficking, and also how they include gender, victimhood and migration. She focuses on the relationship between trafficking as crime and the organisation of migration.
Read more: Moving Beyond Assumptions? The Framing of Anti-trafficking Efforts in Norway |
 New article: Trust and Informal Practice among Elites in East-Central and South East Europe
February 2012
Fafo-researcher Åse Berit Grødeland has together with Aadne Aasland at NIBR and Heiko Pleines at the Centre for East European Studies in Bremen written the article «Trust and Informal Practice among Elites in East-Central and South East Europe». The article is published in Europe-Asia Studies, 64, 1, 2012, and it examines patterns of generalised and institutional trust among elites in East Central Europe, South East Europe and the West Balkans. It enquires into the extent to which such trust can predict elite perceptions and behaviour concerning informal practice. The article builds on surveys of elite representatives in seven post-socialist states.
Download the article: Trust and Informal Practice among Elites in East-Central and South East Europe |
New book: Hot Topic – Cold Comfort
6 February 2012
Fafo-researcher and professor Gumdund Hernes has written the report Hot Topic – Cold Comfort. Climate Change and Attitude Change for the Top-level Research Initiative, published at Nordforsk. Hernes presents seven pivotal events that together have prompted the majority of us to see the world as small and vulnerable. Among these are the bombing of Hiroshima, the first photograph of the whole of the planet Earth by astronauts on board the Apollo 8, and global climate change. – Some of these events happened suddenly, while others take place gradually over time. What they have in common is that they have been perceived as so dramatic that we have been willing to abandon our old ways of thinking as a result of them. And that is not something that happens easily! It is not until we are confronted with something that comes as a shock that we are prepared to change our opinions – and even then not until our friends and those around us have also done so, Hernes points out.
Read more and download: Hot Topic – Cold Comfort |
 New book chapter: CSDP: The Strategic Perspective
February 2012
Fafo-researcher Per M. Norheim-Martinsen has together with Professor Sven Biscop, Director of the Europe in the World Programme at the Egmont Royal Institute of International Relations, written a chapter in the book Explaining the EU’s Common Security and Defence Policy: Theory in Action. The book is edited by Xymena Kurowska and Fabian Breuer and published in the Palgrave Studies in European Union Politics. In their chapter “CSDP: The Strategic Perspective”, the authors assess three core elements of a strategic perspective: official strategy, strategic actorness, and strategic culture. They show that current EU strategy falls short of a fully-fledged strategy, because it lacks a clear indication of common objectives. Nevertheless, the EU has been very active through its Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP), witness the 23 operations carried out so far. Looking at strategic culture helps appreciate how this sense of strategic actorness has been achieved, as acting European has become a source of strategic identity for the EU and an objective in itself.
Read more about and order the book from Palgrave Macmillan |
New article: Older workers: a suitable case for circles
25 January 2012
Fafo-researcher Anne Inga Hilsen has together with Richard Ennals written the article "Older workers: a suitable case for circles" in AI & Society, vol. 24, nr. 1 2012. The article considers relations between the generations, with particular attention given to older workers, who also face the pressures of responsibilities to both parents and children. The situations in Norway and the UK are compared. The case is made for support structures, such as senior quality circles, at the threshold between employment and retirement.
Read more and download the article: Older workers: a suitable case for circles |
Commentary: West Bank and Gaza Strip - Going for reconciliation or drifting apart?
15 January 2012
In this commentary at Maan News Agency Fafo-researcher Akram Atallah discusses the political system which Hamas and Fatah are building in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and how reconciliation between the two main political parties has become very complicated due to the geographic divide and the lacking peace negotiations with Israel. Until now, the reconciliation talks have touched issues on which it is possible to reach an understanding such as the future of the PLO and the holding of elections. However, the parties have shunned more complicated topics such as the location of the Palestinian government, the police and security forces and how to bring peace to the various Fatah and Hamas bodies on the ground.
The commentary is written in Arabic: West Bank and Gaza Strip - Going for reconciliation or drifting apart? |
  New researchers at Fafo
January 2012
Yiting Xue, David Gairdner and Per Martin Norheim-Martinsen are new researchers at Fafo Institute for Applied International Studies.
Yiting is a PhD candidate at the University of Oslo, where she obtained her master degree in Environmental and Development Economics in 2007. She graduated in 2004 from Fudan University in Shanghai, China, with BA major in economics and a minor in law.
David is specialised with evaluations in conflict and post-conflict situations and in fragile states and he has also done programme-focused political economy analysis and assessment and worked with multi-donor trust funds and global funds. He was until recently a Senior Partner in Scanteam, an independent consulting firm.
Per Martin has a PhD in International Relations from Cambridge University. Until recently he was a researcher at Norwegian Defence Research Establishment (FFI), and among his main topics are the European Union, peace operations and civil-military relations. |
New article: Is There a Nordic Prostitution Regime?
5 January 2012
Managing Director at Fafo May-Len Skilbrei and Charlotta Holmström at Malmö University have written the article "Is There a Nordic Prostitution Regime?" in Crime and Justice, Volume 40: Crime and Justice in Scandinavia. The authors describe the changes in the prostitution policies in the Nordic countries in the past 15 years. Sweden, Norway, and Iceland have criminalized the purchase of sexual acts or services, while Finland has criminalized buying sex from victims of trafficking or persons involved in pimp organized prostitution. That several countries have implemented similar regimes does not mean that the Nordic countries take a consistent approach. National policies have emerged from different ideological and empirical contexts and have been combined in diverse ways with different models for social work and other interventions. |
New Fafo/Noref-report: 
New Fafo-paper: