PurposeAustralian construction sites are culturally diverse workplaces. This paper aims to compare operative and manager attitudes towards cultural diversity on Australian construction sites, and to examine the strategies that are used to manage it.Design/methodology/approachA face‐to‐face questionnaire survey was undertaken of 1,155 construction operatives and 180 supervisors on Australian construction sites.FindingsThe vast majority of operatives and managers are comfortable with cultural diversity. However, there is some anxiety about cultural diversity, especially around safety risks, and there is evidence of racism. Those concerns are more keenly perceived by operatives than by managers. Both operatives and managers see some of the negative issues (discrimination, racist joke telling) as inevitable daily outcomes of cultural diversity on sites. The normalisation of these negative forms of cross‐cultural interaction reveals a pessimistic disposition towards cultural diversity. Cultural diversity policy, and programs, are not seen as a priority by managers, and some see such strategies (e.g. affirmative action plans) as discriminatory, and unfair, since they may favour some groups over others.Originality/valueNo research has compared operative and management attitudes towards cultural diversity in the Australian construction sector. This paper provides a first glimpse into the value attributed to cultural diversity programs by managers within construction sites. These insights will be of value to managers and supervisors who have to manage multicultural workforces in the construction industry. Conceptually, the paper reveals how the “politics of sameness” are hegemonic within the construction industry, presenting as an a priori anxiety towards difference, the normalising of poor cross‐cultural relations, the non‐prioritising of policies to better manage cultural diversity or their ad hoc adoption.

Construction sites are among Australia’s most culturally diverse workplaces. A survey of 1155 construction operatives on Australian construction sites investigated, for the first time, the extent of this diversity and how it is experienced by workers. Results show that while cultural diversity presents organizational challenges by segregating the workforce, operatives’ cultural groups also perform positive functions such as maintaining positive bonds among group members and providing group support and safe havens. While there broadly appears to be equality of opportunity for all cultural groups, there is significant evidence of differential treatment for some groups, particularly in relation to accessing higher paying jobs, offensive graffiti and racist joke telling. Language barriers are one of the major challenges affecting work and social relations between different cultural groups and there is evidence that this has a detrimental impact upon safety.Diversity, culture, immigrants, safety, racism, discrimination,

Introduction: The concept of “event” offers a valuable lens to understand the discursive contestations in and around protests. Events create ruptures that disturb the logic of continuity and open up new way of thinking and talking about the past and the future. Drawing on this concept, this article analyzes the 2013 protests in Turkey and Brazil. It investigates how the causes of these protests were framed and debated in each country and how these frames shifted over time by opening up new interpretations of the past and the future. Materials and Methods: Data is generated from four Facebook pages capturing the messages posted during the first 30 days of protests in each country. In the Brazilian case, we collected the posts of: (1) Passe Livre São Paulo (301,787 likes), the group that started the wave of protests; and (2) O Gigante Acordou (155,690 likes), a collective that emerged during the protests, representing nationalist perspectives. In total, 626 posts were collected from both pages. In the Turkish case, we analyzed posts that appeared on the pages of : (1) Taksim Dayanismasi (82,479 likes), an association that played a significant role in organizing and mobilizing Gezi Park protests; and (2) Recep Tayyip Erdogan (6,957,408 likes), a pro-government and inherently anti-protest page. We coded each post inductively focusing particularly on the way they framed the causes of the protests. We then identified the number of times each frame was mentioned during the first 30 days of the protests and explored whether and how frames changed over time. Results: Our analysis reveals a significant shift in the way the causes of the protests were framed over time in both countries, yet with different implications. While in Brazil, we observe a frame transformation undermining the initial rationale of the protests, in Turkey we see a frame extension and the emergence of broader issues as the real causes of protests, such as the authoritarian nature of the regime and the restriction of democratic rights in this country. Discussion: The article offers a way of analysing protests based on a conceptual lens of event. It sheds light on the role of social media as a platform for symbolic struggles over the protests. Furthermore, the article opens up a debate about the developments of democracy in both countries.

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This collection of essays seeks to theorize the politics of the COVID-19 pandemic in international relations (IR). The contributions are driven by questions such as: How can theorizing help us understand these unsettled times? What kind of crisis is this? What shapes its politics? What remains the same and what has been unsettled or unsettling? In addressing such questions, each of the participants considers what we may already know about the pandemic as well as what might be ignored or missed. Collectively, the forum pushes at the interdisciplinary boundaries of IR theorizing itself and, in so doing, the participants hope to engender meaningful understandings of a world in crisis and encourage expansive ways of thinking about the times that lie beyond.

We tend to see border walls as stable concrete fortifications. This article seeks to offer an alternative understanding of walls by suggesting a shift in border studies from network thinking to meshwork thinking. Despite references to multiplicity, concepts of networks and assemblages in border studies continue to provide neat narratives of walls. This article reimagines the border beyond sovereign–disciplinary–biopolitical networks and assemblages. It argues that border walls are constituted by and constitutive of the ever-shifting transformative movements of lines: colonizing lines, crack lines and lines of flight. By tracing the lines of the Separation Wall in the West Bank, this article reveals that, on the border, all these lines coexist, entangle with one another, and in their entanglements, they alter each other to form a fluid meshwork. Meshwork thinking shows the constant mobility of the border and shifts our attention to the power of molecular movements beneath the state in creating, sustaining and disrupting power politics. By presenting a less state-centric, more complex picture of the Separation Wall, this article aims to highlight the movement of the lines that transform the border into a meshwork.

Violent borders are one of the most pressing ethical and political questions of our time. This article seeks to challenge the violent construction of borders through the concept of noise. Drawing on Michel Serres's philosophy of noise and Marie Thompson's emphasis on its affectiveness, the article shows the generative, disruptive, and affective power of noise at the border. I argue that noise creates a disruption in the system and, in doing so, calls for new encounters and relations that operate within and beyond existing power relations. I suggest that the figure of the noisy-subject creates, interrupts, and disturbs the border. The noisy-subject simultaneously prompts disorder and order on the border and transforms it into a third space that is neither simply captured by the sovereign nor fully emancipated from its power. The border as a third space constantly moves with the affective force of its noisy-subjects.

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