The chapter deals with civic participation as an important dimension of integration of migrant women. A broad understanding of civic participation is adopted that includes any form of activism or involvement in political and/or community work, be it formal or informal. Such a conceptualization requires two layers of equally relevant analysis: the formal forms of participation, usually termed political participation and relating to migrants’ political rights, and the issue of informal participation, i.e. the emergence of political discourses and practices that problematise the harsh living and working conditions of migrants. The chapter discusses how enabling are national legislations for migrants’ political involvement by looking at a) legal requirements for attainment of citizenship, b) the migrants’ right to vote and be elected, and c) the right to free assembly, including the regulations that enable the formation of migrant organisations. This cross-country comparative analysis of relevant laws and procedures is complemented by a discussion on informal migrant women’s experiences with civic participation, such as participation in various networks, migrants’ self-organisation, and their coping strategies. Civic participation is theorised as a form of “active citizenship” which allows the authors to bring in the actual experiences of civic participation of migrant women in all their multifarious practices of belonging.
COBISS.SI-ID: 31851357
This article seeks to identify who in Slovenia remains digitally offline and how such a status relates to socio-demographic factors (e.g. gender, age and education), class and cultural capital. The author assumes that the absence of new technology should be addressed in relation to existing patterns of cultural consumption and media preferences, and she attempts to understand the problem of digital exclusion within the context of other types of structural inequalities. Since digital technology is understood not just as a technical tool but as a social phenomenon directly related to everyday practices, the individuals class position and cultural capital, digital exclusion is not viewed simply as a narrow problem of access. Instead of looking at the binary gap between technology haves and have-nots, the author takes the multilevel structure of digital access into account. The findings of a quantitative survey involving a representative sample of 820 residents in the two biggest Slovenian cities Ljubljana and Maribor show that, first, three types of digital exclusion exist: digitally unmotivated with high cultural capital; overall excluded with weak cultural capital; and digitally self-excluded with moderate cultural capital. Second, the study suggests that all three digital exclusion groups are, more than by class, divided by cultural engagement and media taste, which provides important possibilities for future research.
COBISS.SI-ID: 32482653