Journal articles on the topic 'Housing policy – Belgium'

Collective housing (CH) is undergoing a revival in Belgium. Since 2009, the Flemish Government Architect and his team have been advocating CH, stressing its importance as a task for architects given the demand for affordable housing and the need to reduce the environmental impact of housing. This support for CH has converged with the work of the non-profit citizen organization Samenhuizen<em> </em>(“Living together”) and the ad hoc initiatives taken by individual households and architects. In the Netherlands too, where there is a longer tradition of CH, the phenomenon is once more on the rise because of the housing crisis. As it is a developing topic, the terminology used for CH is also evolving. Drawing on publications on the subject in both Belgium and the Netherlands as well as on interviews with relevant stakeholders, this article sheds light on two widely published cases in both countries (pioneering and current, greenfield and conversion). These cases are compared in regard to thematic areas, based on an extensive literature study on collaborative housing by Lang et al. (2018). In addition to such aspects as the balance between “individuality” and the “collective,” we compare the role played by architects in both countries. Besides similarities, we show that the historical context, and especially the housing policy of each country, has a great influence and that the role of the architect is essential in the development of older and contemporary cohousing projects.

After World War I rent control became a cornerstone of housing policy in many European countries, resulting in quantity constraints on the demand for housing. The theory on complete demand systems provides a framework for analyzing the effects of these policies on consumption. As a test case, a demand model is estimated to calculate virtual rent prices for interwar Belgium. The results are well in line with historical evidence, providing insight into the extent of rationing Simulations with the demand model show that the severe rent restrictions especially favored expenditures on food.

After World War I rent control became a cornerstone of housing policy in many European countries, resulting in quantity constraints on the demand for housing. The theory on complete demand systems provides a framework for analyzing the effects of these policies on consumption. As a test case, a demand model is estimated to calculate virtual rent prices for interwar Belgium. The results are well in line with historical evidence, providing insight into the extent of rationing Simulations with the demand model show that the severe rent restrictions especially favored expenditures on food.

Contemporary evaluations of urban growth management (UGM) strategies often take the shape of quantitative measurements of land values and housing prices. In this paper, we argue that it is of key importance that these evaluations also analyse the policy formulation and implementation phases of growth management strategies. It is in these phases that the institutions and discourses are (trans)formed in which UGM strategies are embedded. This will enable us to better understand the conditions for growth management policies’ success or failure. We illustrate this point empirically with the case of demarcating urban areas in the region of Flanders, Belgium. Using the Policy Arrangement Approach, the institutional dynamics and discursive meanings in this growth instrument’s formulation and implementation phase are unravelled. More specifically, we explain how the Flemish strategic spatial planning vision of restraining sprawl was transformed into one of accommodating growth in the demarcation of the Antwerp Metropolitan Area, epitomised by two different meanings of the phrase “safeguarding the future.” In conclusion, we argue that, in Antwerp, the demarcation never solidified into a stable policy arrangement, rendering it largely ineffective. We end by formulating three recommendations to contribute to future attempts at managing urban growth in Flanders.

Human activities are a key driver of many environmental problems the world is facing today, including climate change, the disruption of biogeochemical cycles, and biodiversity loss. Behavioural changes at the individual and household level are needed to reduce humanity’s environmental impact, but people also need the capacity to behave in a sustainable way. If their well-being is negatively impacted or if behaving sustainably is too time consuming or too expensive, people might be less inclined to change their behaviour. In this article, we look at the determinants of different types of pro-environmental behaviour and how these are associated with their experienced levels of well-being. More specifically, we focus on the determinants of behaviours that influence both the ecological footprint (EF) and satisfaction with life. In our analysis we include socio-demographic characteristics and a number of psychological antecedents of pro-environmental behaviour (PEB). The data we use was collected in Flanders (Belgium) and allows us to calculate the EF of each respondent individually. Our main conclusions are threefold. First, even if individuals are provided with opportunities to behave in a more sustainable way, they do not always do so (e.g., richer people on average have a higher EF). Efforts could be put in place at the collective side (e.g., public infrastructure) to stimulate people to reduce their environmental impact. Second, as we distinguish seven EF components, we are able to show differential effects of each of the determinants. Third, the association between PEB and satisfaction with life is not strong: only the type of housing is significantly associated with satisfaction with life. Related to that, the psychological antecedents of PEB are only associated with the EF, not with satisfaction with life.

Solar Photovoltaics (PV) is an important contributor to a sustainable energy transition and consists of an increasingly affordable and accessible technology. Although solar PV policies in industrialized countries have mainly benefited affluent households, non-homeowner market segments often remain underdeveloped. In this paper, we review barriers and enablers for solar PV investments in non-homeowner market segments and investigate sustainability aspects of its institutional environment. We use focus group data from Flanders (Belgium) to investigate non-homeowner residential markets (including social, rental, and collective housing), public sector markets (including schools, and health and social care facilities), and commercial markets. They have in common that they are mostly governed or mediated by organizations, and that very specific regulatory and institutional conditions apply. Our main finding is that, even in times of high energy prices, the energy savings potential of solar PV is often not a sufficient condition for organizations to engage in solar PV investments. Major barriers include diseconomies of scale, split incentive problems, internal organizational barriers, and legal uncertainty. Important enablers are energy sharing frameworks and framework contracts for group purchasing. We conclude with recommendations on institutional quality, organizational capacity building, market development, mechanism design, and social justice to ensure sustainability.

PurposeSince 2005, Belgian housing prices have strongly increased. As the timing coincides with the implementation of a new fiscal package in order to stimulate homeownership, our study attempts to provide an understanding whether the mortgage interest and capital deduction (MICPD) policy has had the side-effect of increasing housing prices while, at the same time, controlling for key housing price determinants.Design/methodology/approachA fixed-effects regression model is used on a panel dataset of the three Belgian regions over the period 1995–2015.FindingsEstimations are carried out separately for different house types, being useful as our empirical analysis ascertains a significant price-increasing effect for ordinary houses and apartments but a significant price-reducing effect for villas. In addition, we find, among other things, that interest rates' influence has been less substantial than commonly thought.Originality/valueThese results are relevant for all governments willing to stimulate homeownership through fiscal stimuli.

One of the most frequently voiced concerns in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic is ‘not to forget the vulnerable groups in society’. Social workers occupy a privileged position with a view to mapping such vulnerabilities, their complex interrelations, and the processes that increase the risk of falling victim to them. Therefore, in order for policy interventions aimed at mitigating negative impact on vulnerable groups to be effective, it is important to gain an in-depth insight into the first hand experiences and concomitant concerns of social workers. The main aim of this article is to describe and categorize the main concerns social workers had about their clients a few weeks into Belgium’s first wave of the pandemic. The data used derive from a large scale online survey taken among social workers in Flanders and the Brussels region in April/May 2020, closely following the lockdown on 18 March. Thematic coding analysis was used to analyse textual answers with regard to concerns about current clients. Concerns fall into six main categories, the most important one being direct concerns about the safety and wellbeing of clients in the context of various life domains (physical and mental health, family, work, education, social networks, housing, financial and material wealth), apart from concerns about communication issues more in general, about changes in the interactional dynamics between social worker and client, the effects of lockdown related changes to forms of social help, about very specific vulnerable groups, and, lastly, about the resilience of the social work sector. Analysis of the connections between concerns also enables us to reconstruct several chains of events that may result in specific (reinforced) vulnerabilities. If policy interventions aim to be attentive to such vulnerabilities, taking stock of these chains of events is of paramount importance.

This paper, tests the bank lending channel of monetary policy transmission mechanism in a series of European countries since the Euro currency circulation. By disaggregating bank loans to households for consumer, housing and other purposes over the period 2003:Q1 to 2012:Q4, we try to shed light to any hidden dynamics by aggregate data. An unrestricted VAR model and impulse response analysis provide empirical evidence of an active bank lending channel working via housing loans for the majority of countries studied (Germany, France, Belgium, Italy, Spain, Sweden and UK). Additionally, there is evidence of a transmission mechanism proceed through consumer credit in Austria, Belgium and Netherlands. Moreover our results reveal that monetary transmission to housing loans proceeds quickly in Germany, Spain, Sweden and UK compared to the others. However in Belgium, Germany and UK, consumer credits reduction also amplifies the initial shock on GDP and on inflation produced by a tightening monetary policy. Finally, banks’ lending behaviour varies significantly according to the purposes of household loans. In Belgium, Sweden and UK, housing loans reductions coexist with increase of loans for consumption and other reasons, implying that the former is driven by supply forces while the latter by demand forces.

Notwithstanding persistent levels of ethnic discrimination on the rental housing market, we have witnessed in many West-European countries a shift from targeted multicultural to colour-blind policies. At the same time, anti-immigration attitudes remained relatively stable. Whether and how these attitudes are translated in support or aversion toward anti-discrimination policies is, however, still unclear. As the first study in Europe we analyse public support for eight policy measures to tackle rental discrimination against ethnic minorities. Based on multilevel analyses among a sample of 899 adults in Belgium, we show that there is large support among the general public for testing, training and campaigning against ethnic discrimination on the housing market. General support for affirmative action measures is, however, much lower. In addition, support for anti-discrimination policies is strongly related to ethnic prejudices. People with more – especially subtle – prejudices are less likely to support policies against rental discrimination. Moreover, prejudices also mediate the effects of interethnic contacts and outgroup size on policy support. Finally, local housing market indicators do not play a significant role in the public support for anti-discrimination policies on the housing market.

Abstract This paper revisits the link between house prices and monetary policy using a data set on house prices provided by the Bank for International Settlements. It is found that a loose monetary policy unambiguously results in a rise in real house prices, and such an increase is statistically significant for 19 of the 20 countries studied here. Empirical results also show that for some countries (Belgium, Canada, Switzerland, Denmark, the Netherlands, Sweden, and South Africa), the interest rate shock can explain a large percentage of real house price movements. The response of house prices to monetary policy shocks varies between countries, and the strength of the relationship between house prices and monetary policy can be associated with financial liberalization. On the other hand, evidence shows that interest rate shock plays an important role in explaining recent house price hikes for Australia, Spain, Ireland, the Netherlands, the US, and South Africa. In particular, during 2002–2006, on average 24% of the house price hikes in the US can be attributed to monetary policy shocks. Finally, we also find evidence that central banks react to the housing market, particularly in those countries adopting a policy of inflation targeting.

Care leavers are more often unemployed, have lower annual earnings and live in inferior housing circumstances than their peers in the general population. International research has extensively studied and discussed these outcomes. However, in Flanders (the Dutch speaking part of Belgium), no previous quantitative studies are known. This study therefore explores and predicts outcomes on employment, income and housing circumstances of care leavers in Flanders and investigates if these outcomes improve in the years after leaving care. Associations with placement factors are explored to support recommendations to the clinical field. The current study involves 175 care-leavers (both family foster care ( n = 105) and residential care ( n = 70)). Data was collected using a self-reporting questionnaire touching multiple domains. The participants of the study (49 male, 126 female) are between 18 and 27 years old. Care leavers are employed at younger ages but are also more often unemployed than their peers from the general population, they earn significantly less than peers and are more often homeless. On all domains, no significant differences were found between foster- and residential care leavers. Placement characteristics are more declaratory than only the type of care. In the current study, most outcomes improve during the years after leaving care, this supports the theory of emerging adulthood. Although we cannot infer causal effects, care leavers who experienced fewer placement changes and received individual therapy during their time in care tend to have better outcomes in the current study. The same applies for care leavers who were prepared for leaving care and supported after leaving care. Policy makers should focus on increased support regarding breakdown prevention and individual mental health support during the time in care. Preparation for placement ending and aftercare should be provided.

Abstract Organisation(s): The Melbourne School of Population and Global Health, Healthy Cities at the University of Adelaide, The Australian Institute of Machine Learning. Key contact person: Doctor Ankur Singh Focus and outcomes for participants The symposium will focus on four emerging methods which, because of the complexity and pervasiveness of the concepts housing and health, are highly relevant to progressing new knowledge in the field: New methods will be presented in the context of past and current international research in the field. Presentations will be interactive; embedded within each presentation will be discussion points to engage participants and extend discussion. Rationale for the symposium, including for its inclusion in the Congress A good housing system has the potential to play a key role in preventing poor health, and maximising good health. Much of the epidemiological research on which evidence for action rests however, describes generalised associations and correlations rather than intervention-oriented causal pathways or context appropriate predictions. Why? Housing and health are both complex concepts to measure and understand and the stark differences in the composition of people in less stable and unaffordable types of housing compared to the people considered to be well-housed makes it difficult to measure, let alone compare, health outcomes. Recent advances in methods and conceptual thinking have enabled us to do better at identifying underlying causal pathways generating a body of research that has utilised longitudinal data, fixed effects and hybrid regression analyses and marginal structural models to examine pathways between housing affordability and tenure (including social housing) and mental health. There is more to do however, with developments in methods rapidly occurring alongside greater data availability increasing the scope for causally focussed or more accurately predictive research on housing and health. The main theme of the congress is ‘Methodological Innovation in Epidemiology’ and a subtheme is ‘Translation from research to policy and practice’. Our symposium addresses both these themes. It will present the application of causal inference, machine learning, natural experiments and use of multistate simulation models to generate policy-relevant research for transforming housing policies. Presentation program Introduction and overview of the field, Peter Phibbs (Not confirmed) Peter Phibbs is a geographer, planner and social economist who been undertaking housing research for more than 25 years. He is Head of Urban Planning and Policy at the University of Sydney and Director of the Henry Halloran Trust. His recent research has been on the development of the affordable housing sector in Australia, the role of planning in affordable housing delivery, tenancy issues in remote Indigenous communities as well as the use of shared ownership models to improve affordability outcomes Natural experiments for housing and health, Rebecca Bentley Professor Rebecca Bentley is a Principal Research Fellow in Social Epidemiology in the Centre for Health Equity, Melbourne School of Population and Global Health. Over the past ten years, Rebecca has developed a research program exploring the role of housing and residential location in shaping health and wellbeing in Australia. Machine learning for prediction & precision, Emma Baker Emma Baker is Professor of Housing Research and an ARC Future Fellow. Her work examines the impact of housing and location in urban and regional environments, producing academic, as well as policy-relevant research. Dr Baker's recent publications include analyses of the housing implications of economic, social, and spatial change in Australia, work quantifying health effects of housing tenure and affordability, research on the effects of precarious and vulnerable housing. Opportunities and challenges in using multistate lifetable models for housing interventions, Ankur Singh Ankur is a Lecturer (Epidemiology) and a Research Fellow in Social Epidemiology at the Melbourne School of Population and Global Health. In his current role, Ankur applies advanced quantitative as well as evidence synthesis methods such as multilevel modelling, causal mediation techniques, simulation modelling based on multistate lifetables, and systematic and scoping reviews. Within the Centre for Health Equity, Ankur works collaboratively with a team of researchers interested in quantitative research on Social and Spatial Epidemiology. Key focus areas of the research group include housing related health inequalities, intergenerational health inequalities and urban environments and health. Maximising the research power of longitudinal data, Zoe Aitken (Not confirmed) Zoe Aitken is a research fellow at the Gender and Women's Health Unit at the Melbourne School of Population and Global Health. She has been working at the University of Melbourne since 2011 to pursue her interest in social epidemiology and was awarded an NHMRC postdoctoral scholarship in April 2015. She has a particular interest in the analysis of longitudinal studies to answer causal questions about the complex interplay between socio-economic disadvantage and health. Flexible modelling and effective visualisation, Koen Simons Dr Koen Simons obtained a Masters degree in Physics form the University of Gent and a Masters degree in Statistics from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, focussing on sparsity and shrinkage estimators. He completed his PhD at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium, performing simulation studies of ensemble methods with applications for short-term health effects of air pollution. He is currently providing biostatistical advise for both clinical trials and epidemiological studies at Western Health and RMIT, and applying causal inference models to problems in health equity. Conclusions and final comments Names of facilitator or chair Rebecca Bentley

AbstractThe wicked sustainability problems that we are increasingly facing not only require new ways of knowledge production, but also challenge our traditional educational system. More and more importance is attached to educational practices and experiments focusing on transdisciplinary problem framing, a pluralistic search for solutions and active collaboration with various stakeholders throughout society. The aim of this article is to investigate how an inter- and transdisciplinary setting in which students develop master theses can contribute to learning about a specific urban problem and what challenges this transdisciplinary education entails. Starting from relevant theoretical and analytical frameworks, such as Mode 2 Science (Nowotny et al. 2005) and the three-phase model of Lang et al. (2012), we first outline the philosophy and approach of the general setting: the Stadsacademie, a collective learning platform or ‘collaboratory’ to explore and investigate wicked problems perceived in the city of Ghent (Belgium). To provide more in-depth and refined insights, we focus on an exemplary activity of the Stadsacademie: the Master Thesis Ateliers ‘Diversity in Social Housing’. A Master Thesis Atelier (MTA) is a collaborative trajectory of one academic year in which 4 to 8 master students and their supervisors from different disciplinary backgrounds concentrate on one specific urban problem and collaborate with non-academic actors aiming to explore and to impact upon that issue. We conclude this article with overall reflections and suggestions for transdisciplinary approaches within educational practices to tackle wicked sustainability issues.

Abstract Background Barriers to access healthcare and lack of data undermine Universal Health Coverage (UHC) in Europe, despite the region's clear commitment to the Sustainable Development Goals and UHC. Current indicators measuring unmet healthcare needs in the European Union (EU) often exclude more marginalised groups, further rendering their health needs invisible and the data to inform policy flawed. For effective evaluation of UHC, comprehensive data on the health of these groups is needed. Methods We conducted an evaluation of humanitarian healthcare provision of people attending Médecins du Monde (MdM) programmes in seven countries in Europe (Belgium, France, Germany, Luxembourg, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom). MdM is a humanitarian organisation, providing care to those excluded from mainstream healthcare services. We describe the characteristics of MdM service users, their determinants of health and healthcare access. Results A total of 29,359 people were seen between January 2017 and December 2018. Nearly all were migrants (97.2%, 21,591/22,136), with 66.3% (11,690/17,629) of people reported not having a right or permission to reside in the country they presented in. A majority were living below the poverty line (92.6%, 7,660/8,268), residing in insecure housing (44.3%, 8,895/20,097) or living as street homeless or in emergency shelters (20.4%, 4,107/20,097). Most people reported having no healthcare coverage (81.7%, 14,848/18,164). When asked about barriers to accessing healthcare, 20.8% of responses reported economic barriers (3,960/19,020) and 14.3% reported a lack of knowledge of health system/entitlements (2,718/19,020). Conclusions This humanitarian service evaluation highlights the intersecting vulnerabilities and barriers to access healthcare for people excluded from mainstream healthcare systems across Europe. Our findings provide a unique insight into the extent of unmet healthcare needs of migrants and other marginalised populations. Key messages UHC requires comprehensive data on the population groups who are many times left without access to health services and who are often excluded from national data collection and research. A majority of MdM service users do not have healthcare coverage and experience multiple and intersecting barriers to access healthcare across Europe.

Abstract Background Diarrhea is considered the most common clinical sign of chronic gastrointestinal disease in dogs and affects a considerable portion of working and sporting dogs. We aimed to determine the prevalence of diarrhea in police working dogs and evaluate the relationship between feeding, activity level, and animal characteristics with clinical signs. In an observational, prospective study, information on 188 dogs was collected. For each patient, age, sex, breed, specific mission, number of animals at the same housing location, and activity level was recorded. A body condition (BCS) and canine inflammatory bowel disease activity index (CIBDAI) scores were determined, and feces classified according to the Bristol Stool Form Scale. The Kruskal-Wallis test was used to compare recorded data between breeds, mission, age, and sex. Multiple regression was run to predict BCS score, increased defecation frequency, diarrhea, CIBDAI scores, Bristol stool scores, diarrhea from activity level, number of animals at the same housing location, breed, and mission. A p < 0.05 was set. Results Animals in the sample (male n = 96, female n = 92) had a mean age of 5.2 ± 3.2 years and a bodyweight of 24.1 ± 7.2 kg. Four main dog breeds were represented, 80 Belgian Malinois Shepherd Dogs, 52 German Shepherd Dogs, 25 Labrador Retrievers, and 19 Dutch Shepherd Dog. A prevalence of diarrhea of 10.6% was determined, with 4% of dogs having liquid diarrhea. Dogs classified as “extremely active” were more likely to have a low BCS, and the level of activity contributed to diarrhea and BCS prediction. Conclusion Police working dogs frequently experience diarrhea episodes, which lead to clinical disease and performance loss. Investigation of aetiologies is required.

Political issues, in general, focus on the content of political actors’ communication and most often describe either the main issue or several issues that are in the focus of a political actor’s statement or any other relevant text (e.g., press release, news article, tweet, etc.). The basic premise of analyzing political issues in the self-presentation of political actors is that one major goal of political actors’ communication is to place specific issues on the political agenda (Strömbäck & Esser, 2017). Political issues are most often coded based on a list of pre-defined issues that refer to different policies and sometimes also to polity or politics. The scope and detail of the individual issues depend on the purpose and the focus of the analysis. Field of application/theoretical foundation: Apart from being a common descriptive and control variable, the coding of issues in political actors’ communication can serve as the basis for more complex variables or concepts such as agenda building or issue ownership. Agenda building, at large, refers to the process of how media content is shaped by societal forces (Lang & Lang, 1981). With regard to analyses of politicians’ self-presentation, most work focuses on the processes of communication by which political actors aim to obtain media coverage for their issues (Norris et al., 1999; Seethaler & Melischek, 2019). Analyses on agenda building usually compare issue agendas between at least two different forms of communication, e.g., between channels where political actors have high control (such as press releases, party manifestos, social media messages) and journalistic outlets where political actors have less control (e.g., Harder et al., 2017; Kiousis et al., 2006; Seethaler & Melischek, 2019). Content analyses on agenda building usually start by, first, identifying relevant issue fields and categories (inductively or deductively). Second, the dominant political issues in political actors’ communication and/or other forms of communication (e.g., news articles) are coded according to predefined lists. Third, the occurrence of specific issues or issue agendas are compared between the different forms of communication, often over time (see, e.g., Seethaler & Melischek, 2019). Issue ownership, in broad terms, means that some parties are considered by the public in general as being more adept to deal with, or more attentive to, certain issues (Lachat, 2014; Petrocik, 1996; Walgrave et al., 2015). Traditionally, issue ownership has been analyzed from a demand-side perspective, based on surveys, as the connection between issues and parties in voters’ minds. Definitions of issue ownership usually comprise at least two dimensions: competence issue ownership (parties’ perceived capacity to competently handle or solve a certain issue) and associative issue ownership (the spontaneous link between some parties and some issues) (Walgrave et al., 2015). Content analyses build on these definitions to investigate to what extent political actors focus on issues that they (respectively their parties) own and what factors may explain the (non-)reliance on owned issues (e.g., Dalmus et al., 2017; Peeters et al., 2019). Other content analyses use issue ownership as an independent variable, for example, to explain user reactions to parties’ social media messages (e.g., Staender et al., 2019). Content analyses on issue ownership usually start by, first, identifying relevant issue fields and categories (inductively or deductively). Second, the dominant political issues in political actors’ communication are coded according to predefined lists. Third, political actors are assigned issue ownership for specific issues based on theoretical considerations, existing literature, and/or survey data. Fourth, an index for owned issues is calculated at the statement or text level based on the coded issues and the predefined ownership for specific issues. References/combination with other methods of data collection: Political issues can be analyzed using both manual and automated content analysis (e.g. topic modeling or dictionary approach). Analyses use both inductive or deductive approaches and/or a combination of both to identify issue categories and extend or amend previous lists of political issues. Example studies: Dalmus et al. (2019), Peeters et al. (2019); Seethaler & Melischek (2019) Table 1: Summary of a selection of studies on agenda building and/or issue ownership Author(s) Sample Unit of Analysis Values Reliability Seethaler & Melischek (2019) Content type: parties’ news releases and tweets, media reports Country: Austria Political actors: all parliamentary parties (ÖVP, SPÖ, FPÖ, Grüne, NEOS, Liste Pilz) Outlets: all party news releases, parties’ and top candidates’ twitter accounts, five legacy media outlets Sampling period: 6 weeks before the national election day in 2017 (4 September 2017–14 October 2017) Sample size: 1,009 news releases, 9,088 tweets, 2,422 news stories Unit of analysis: individual news releases, tweets, and news stories Level of analysis: issue agendas Dominant issue: 13 issue areas based on the Comparative Agendas Project: civil rights, government operations, law and crime, international affairs and defence, European integration, macroeconomics, domestic commerce, transportation and technology, environment and agriculture, education, labour, social welfare and housing, health Cohen’s Kappa between .91 and .95 Harder, Sevenans, & Van Aelst (2017) Content type: newspaper, television, radio, news website, and Twitter items featuring a political topic, a domestic political actor, or an election-specific term Country: Belgium (Political) actors: tweets by 678 professional journalists, 44 accounts affiliated with legacy media organizations, 467 politicians, 19 civil society organizations, 109 “influentials” Outlets: 5 print newspapers, 3 news websites, 2 daily television newscasts, 6 daily radio newscasts, current affairs tv programs, and election-specific tv shows Sampling period: Belgian 2014 election campaign (1 May to 24 May 2014) Sample size: n = 9,935 Unit of analysis: news items and tweets Level of analysis: news items (n = 5,260) / news stories (n = 414) Issues (up to three issues per item): list of 28 broad issues based on the Comparative Agendas Project Categorization of news stories: inductive coding of individual time- and place-specific events based on news items from traditional news outlets. Non-news items and tweets were then assigned to the already-identified news stories Krippendorff’s alpha = .70 Krippendorff’s alpha = .76 (for assigning news story to tweet) Dalmus, Hänggli, Bernhard (2019) Content type: party manifestos, party press releases, and newspaper coverage Countries: CH, DE, FR, UK Political actors: parties Outlets: 1 quality newspaper and 1 tabloid per country, all party press releases and manifestos Sampling period: election campaigns between 2010 and 2013 (8 weeks prior to the respective election days) Sample size: 4,191 Unit of analysis: Actor statements on issues concerning national politics and containing either an explicitly mentioned position or interpretation/ elaboration on the issue Level of analysis: text level Main issue: Economy, Welfare, Budget, Freedom and Rights, Europe/ Globalization, Education, Immigration, Army, Security, Ecology, Institutional Reforms, Infrastructure, Elections and Events (each of these top-issue categories is made up of several more detailed sub-issues leading to a total of 127 issue options) Issue emphasis: percentage of statements devoted to a certain issue Issue ownership: issue fully belongs to one party (1), issue belongs to center-left / center-right parties (0.5), issue is unowned (0) (based on Seeberg, 2016; Tresch et al., 2017, for more details see the paper) Cohen’s Kappa ?.3 for sub-issues; Cohen’s Kappa ?.5 for top-issues Peeters, Van Aelst, & Praet (2019) Content type: politicians’ tweets, online media coverage, and parliamentary documents Country: Belgium (Flemish part) Political actors: 144 MPs from the 6 parties represented in the Flemish and federal parliament Outlets: 13 Flemish news outlets Sampling period: 1 January to 1 September, 2018 Sample size: n = 51,691 tweets, n = 8,857 articles, n = 12,638 parliamentary documents Unit of analysis: text level Level of analysis: issue agendas Index for issue concentration: Herfindahl index (to assess how diverse/ concentrated the individual issue agendas are across platforms) Issues: automated coding of 20 issue topics using the Dutch dictionary based on the Comparative Agendas Project Issue ownership: operationalization based on survey data; relative party ownership scores for each politician were assigned based on the percentage of respondents that linked a certain party with the topic NA (A manual check on 200 randomly selected documents shows that a little over 70% of the automated non-codings were in fact non-classifiable documents. For the other 30%, the dictionary was not able to properly classify the documents.) References Dalmus, C., Hänggli, R., & Bernhard, L. (2017). The charm of salient issues? Parties’ strategic behavior in press releases. In P. van Aelst & S. Walgrave (Eds.), How Political Actors Use the Media: A Functional Analysis of the Media’s Role in Politics (pp. 187–205). Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-60249-3_10 Harder, R. A., Sevenans, J., & van Aelst, P. (2017). Intermedia Agenda Setting in the Social Media Age: How Traditional Players Dominate the News Agenda in Election Times. The International Journal of Press/Politics, 22(3), 275–293. https://doi.org/10.1177/1940161217704969 Kiousis, S., Mitrook, M., Wu, X., & Seltzer, T. (2006). First- and Second-Level Agenda-Building and Agenda-Setting Effects: Exploring the Linkages Among Candidate News Releases, Media Coverage, and Public Opinion During the 2002 Florida Gubernatorial Election. Journal of Public Relations Research, 18(3), 265–285. https://doi.org/10.1207/s1532754xjprr1803_4 Lachat, R. (2014). Issue ownership and the vote: the effects of associative and competence ownership on issue voting. Swiss Political Science Review, 20(4), 727–740. https://doi.org/10.1111/spsr.12121 Lang, G.E., & Lang, K. (1981). Watergate: An exploration of the agenda-building process. In: Wilhoit, G.C., & De Bock, H. (Eds.). Mass Communication Review Yearbook. SAGE, pp. 447–468. Norris, P., Curtice, J., Sanders, D., et al. (1999). On Message: Communicating the Campaign. SAGE. Peeters, J., van Aelst, P., & Praet, S. (2019). Party ownership or individual specialization? A comparison of politicians’ individual issue attention across three different agendas. Party Politics, 55(4), 135406881988163. https://doi.org/10.1177/1354068819881639 Petrocik, J.R. (1996). Issue ownership in presidential elections, with a 1980 case study. American Journal of Political Science, 40(3), 825–850. Seeberg, H. B. (2017). How stable is political parties’ issue ownership? A cross-time, cross-national analysis. Political Studies, 65(2), 475–492. https://doi.org/10.1177/0032321716650224 Seethaler, J., & Melischek, G. (2019). Twitter as a tool for agenda building in election campaigns? The case of Austria. Journalism, 20(8), 1087–1107. https://doi.org/10.1177/1464884919845460 Staender, A., Ernst, N., & Steppat, D. (2019). Was steigert die Facebook-Resonanz? Eine Analyse der Likes, Shares und Comments im Schweizer Wahlkampf 2015. SCM Studies in Communication and Media, 8(2), 236–271. https://doi.org/10.5771/2192-4007-2019-2-236 Strömbäck, J., & Esser, F. (2017). Political Public Relations and Mediatization: The Strategies of News Management. In P. van Aelst & S. Walgrave (Eds.), How Political Actors Use the Media: A Functional Analysis of the Media’s Role in Politics (pp. 63–83). Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-60249-3_4 Tresch, A., Lefevere, J., Walgrave, S. (2018). How parties’ issue emphasis strategies vary across communication channels: The 2009 regional election campaign in Belgium. Acta Politica, 53(1), 25–47. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41269-016-0036-7 Walgrave, S., Tresch, A., & Lefevere, J. (2015). The Conceptualisation and Measurement of Issue Ownership. West European Politics, 38(4), 778–796. https://doi.org/10.1080/01402382.2015.1039381

“There is nothing more public than privacy.” (Berlant and Warner, Sex) How did it come to this? How did it happen that a one-off, two-hour event at a public swimming pool in a suburb of outer Melbourne ignited international hate mail and generated media-fanned political anguish and debate about the proper use of public spaces? In 2010, women who attend a women’s only swim session on Sunday evenings at the Dandenong Oasis public swimming pool asked the pool management and the local council for permission to celebrate the end of Ramadan at the pool during the time of their regular swim session. The request was supported by the pool managers and the council and promoted by both as an opportunity for family and friends to get together in a spirit of multicultural learning and understanding. Responding to criticisms of the event as an unreasonable claim on public facilities by one group, the Mayor of the City of Greater Dandenong, Jim Memeti, rejected claims that this event discriminates against non-Muslim residents of the suburb. But here’s the rub. The event, to be held after hours at the pool, requires all participants older than ten years of age to follow a dress code of knee-length shorts and T-shirts. This is a suburban moment that is borne of but exceeds the local. It reflects and responds to a contemporary global conundrum of great political and theoretical significance—how to negotiate and govern the relations between multiculturalism, religion, gender, sexual freedom, and democracy. Specifically this event speaks to how multicultural democracy in the public sphere negotiates the public presence and expression of different cultural and religious frameworks related to gender and sexuality. This is demanding political stuff. Situated in the messy political and theoretical terrains of the relation between public space and the public sphere, this local moment called for political judgement about how cultural differences should be allowed to manifest in and through public space, giving consideration to the potential effects of these decisions on an inclusive multicultural democracy. The local authorities in Dandenong engaged in an admirable process of democratic labour as they puzzled over how to make decisions that were responsible and equitable, in the absence of a rulebook or precedents for success. Ultimately however this mode of experimental decision-making, which will become increasingly necessary to manage such predicaments in the future, was foreclosed by unwarranted and unhelpful media outrage. "Foreclosed" here stresses the preemptive nature of the loss; a lost opportunity for trialing approaches to governing cultural diversity that may fail, but might then be modified. It was condemned in advance of either success or failure. The role of the media rather than the discomfort of the local publics has been decisive in this event.This Multicultural SuburbDandenong is approximately 30 kilometres southeast of central Melbourne. Originally home to the Bunorong People of the Kulin nation, it was settled by pastoralists by the 1800s, heavily industrialised during the twentieth century, and now combines cultural diversity with significant social disadvantage. The City of Greater Dandenong is proud of its reputation as the most culturally and linguistically diverse municipality in Australia. Its population of approximately 138,000 comprises residents from 156 different language groups. More than half (56%) of its population was born overseas, with 51% from nations where English is not the main spoken language. These include Vietnam, Cambodia, Sri Lanka, India, China, Italy, Greece, Bosnia and Afghanistan. It is also a place of significant religious diversity with residents identifying as Buddhist (15 per cent) Muslim (8 per cent), Hindu (2 per cent) and Christian (52 per cent) [CGD]. Its city logo, “Great Place, Great People” evokes its twin pride in the placemaking power of its diverse population. It is also a brazen act of civic branding to counter its reputation as a derelict and dangerous suburb. In his recent book The Bogan Delusion, David Nichols cites a "bogan" website that names Dandenong as one of Victoria’s two most bogan areas. The other was Moe. (p72). The Sunday Age newspaper had already depicted Dandenong as one of two excessively dangerous suburbs “where locals fear to tread” (Elder and Pierik). The other suburb of peril was identified as Footscray.Central Dandenong is currently the site of Australia’s largest ever state sponsored Urban Revitalisation program with a budget of more than $290 million to upgrade infrastructure, that aims to attract $1billion in private investment to provide housing and future employment.The Cover UpIn September 2010, the Victorian and Civil and Administrative Appeals Tribunal (VCAT) granted the YMCA an exemption from the Equal Opportunity Act to allow a dress code for the Ramadan event at the Oasis swimming pool that it manages. The "Y" sees the event as “an opportunity for the broader community to learn more about Ramadan and the Muslim faith, and encourages all members of Dandenong’s diverse community to participate” (YMCA Ramadan). While pool management and the municipal council refer to the event as an "opening up" of the closed swimming session, the media offer a different reading of the VCAT decision. The trope of the "the cover up" has framed most reports and commentaries (Murphy; Szego). The major focus of the commentaries has not been the event per se, but the call to dress "appropriately." Dress codes however are a cultural familiar. They exist for workplaces, schools, nightclubs, weddings, racing and sporting clubs and restaurants, to name but a few. While some of these codes or restrictions are normatively imposed rather than legally required, they are not alien to cultural life in Australia. Moreover, there are laws that prohibit people from being meagerly dressed or naked in public, including at beaches, swimming pools and so on. The dress code for this particular swimming pool event was, however, perceived to be unusual and, in a short space of time, "unusual" converted to "social threat."Responses to media polls about the dress code reveal concerns related to the symbolic dimensions of the code. The vast majority of those who opposed the Equal Opportunity exemption saw it as the thin edge of the multicultural wedge, a privatisation of public facilities, or a denial of the public’s right to choose how to dress. Tabloid newspapers reported on growing fears of Islamisation, while the more temperate opposition situated the decision as a crisis of human rights associated with tolerating illiberal cultural practices. Julie Szego reflects this view in an opinion piece in The Age newspaper:the Dandenong pool episode is neither trivial nor insignificant. It is but one example of human rights laws producing outcomes that restrict rights. It raises tough questions about how far public authorities ought to go in accommodating cultural practices that sit uneasily with mainstream Western values. (Szego)Without enquiring into the women’s request and in the absence of the women’s views about what meaning the event held for them, most media commentators and their electronically wired audiences treated the announcement as yet another alarming piece of evidence of multicultural failure and the potential Islamisation of Australia. The event raised specific concerns about the double intrusion of cultural difference and religion. While the Murdoch tabloid Herald Sun focused on the event as “a plan to force families to cover up to avoid offending Muslims at a public event” (Murphy) the liberal Age newspaper took a more circumspect approach, reporting on its small vox pop at the Dandenong pool. Some people here referred to the need to respect religions and seemed unfazed by the exemption and the event. Those who disagreed thought it was important not to enforce these (dress) practices on other people (Carey).It is, I believe, significant that several employees of the local council informed me that most of the opposition has come from the media, people outside of Dandenong and international groups who oppose the incursion of Islam into non-Islamic settings. Opposition to the event did not appear to derive from local concern or opposition.The overwhelming majority of Herald Sun comments expressed emphatic opposition to the dress code, citing it variously as unAustralian, segregationist, arrogant, intolerant and sexist. The Herald Sun polled readers (in a self-selecting and of course highly unrepresentative on-line poll) asking them to vote on whether or not they agreed with the VCAT exemption. While 5.52 per cent (512 voters) agreed with the ruling, 94.48 per cent (8,760) recorded disagreement. In addition, the local council has, for the first time in memory, received a stream of hate-mail from international anti-Islam groups. Muslim women’s groups, feminists, the Equal Opportunity Commissioner and academics have also weighed in. According to local reports, Professor of Islamic Studies at the University of Melbourne, Shahram Akbarzadeh, considered the exemption was “nonsense” and would “backfire and the people who will pay for it will be the Muslim community themselves” (Haberfield). He repudiated it as an example of inclusion and tolerance, labeling it “an effort of imposing a value system (sic)” (Haberfield). He went so far as to suggest that, “If Tony Abbott wanted to participate in his swimwear he wouldn’t be allowed in. That’s wrong.” Tasneem Chopra, chairwoman of the Islamic Women’s Welfare Council and Sherene Hassan from the Islamic Council of Victoria, both expressed sensitivity to the group’s attempt to establish an inclusive event but would have preferred the dress code to be a matter of choice rather coercion (Haberfield, "Mayor Defends Dandenong Pool Cover Up Order"). Helen Szoke, the Commissioner of the Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission, defended the pool’s exemption from the Law that she oversees. “Matters such as this are not easy to resolve and require a balance to be achieved between competing rights and obligations. Dress codes are not uncommon: e.g., singlets, jeans, thongs etc in pubs/hotels” (in Murphy). The civil liberties organisation, Liberty Victoria, supported the ban because the event was to be held after hours (Murphy). With astonishing speed this single event not only transformed the suburban swimming pool to a theatre of extra-local disputes about who and what is entitled to make claims on public space and publically funded facilities, but also fed into charged debates about the future of multiculturalism and the vulnerability of the nation to the corrosive effects of cultural and religious difference. In this sense suburbs like Dandenong are presented as sites that not only generate fear about physical safety but whose suburban sensitivities to its culturally diverse population represent a threat to the safety of the nation. Thus the event both reflects and produces an antipathy to cultural difference and to the place where difference resides. This aversion is triggered by and mediated in this case through the figure, rather than the (corpo)reality, of the Muslim woman. In this imagining, the figure of the Muslim woman is assigned the curious symbolic role of "cultural creep." The debates around the pool event is not about the wellbeing or interests of the Muslim women themselves, nor are broader debates about the perceived, culturally-derived restrictions imposed on Muslim women living in Australia or other western countries. The figure of the Muslim woman is, I would argue, simply the ground on which the debates are held. The first debate relates to social and public space, access to which is considered fundamental to freedom and participatory democracy, and in current times is addressed in terms of promoting inclusion, preventing exclusion and finding opportunities for cross cultural encounters. The second relates not to public space per se, but to the public sphere or the “sphere of private people coming together as a public” for political deliberation (Habermas 21). The literature and discussions dealing with these two terrains have remained relatively disconnected (Low and Smith) with public space referring largely to activities and opportunities in the socio-cultural domain and the public sphere addressing issues of politics, rights and democracy. This moment in Dandenong offers some modest leeway for situating "the suburb" as an ideal site for coalescing these disparate discussions. In this regard I consider Iveson’s provocative and productive question about whether some forms of exclusions from suburban public space may actually deepen the democratic ideals of the public sphere. Exclusions may in such cases be “consistent with visions of a democratically inclusive city” (216). He makes his case in relation to a dispute about the exclusion of men exclusion from a women’s only swimming pool in the Sydney suburb of Coogee. The Dandenong case is similarly exclusive with an added sense of exclusion generated by an "inclusion with restrictions."Diversity, Difference, Public Space and the Public SphereAs a prelude to this discussion of exclusion as democracy, I return to the question that opened this article: how did it come to this? How is it that Australia has moved from its renowned celebration and pride in its multiculturalism so much in evidence at the suburban level through what Ghassan Hage calls an “unproblematic” multiculturalism (233) and what others have termed “everyday multiculturalism” (Wise and Velayutham). Local cosmopolitanisms are often evinced through the daily rituals of people enjoying the ethnic cuisines of their co-residents’ pasts, and via moments of intercultural encounter. People uneventfully rub up against and greet each other or engage in everyday acts of kindness that typify life in multicultural suburbs, generating "reservoirs of hope" for democratic and cosmopolitan cities (Thrift 147). In today’s suburbs, however, the “Imperilled Muslim women” who need protection from “dangerous Muslim men” (Razack 129) have a higher discursive profile than ethnic cuisine as the exemplar of multiculturalism. Have we moved from pleasure to hostility or was the suburban pleasure in racial difference always about a kind of “eating the other” (bell hooks 378). That is to ask whether our capacity to experience diversity positively has been based on consumption, consuming the other for our own enrichment, whereas living with difference entails a commitment not to consumption but to democracy. This democratic multicultural commitment is a form of labour rather than pleasure, and its outcome is not enrichment but transformation (although this labour can be pleasurable and transformation might be enriching). Dandenong’s prized cultural precincts, "Little India" and the "Afghan bazaar" are showcases of food, artefacts and the diversity of the suburb. They are centres of pleasurable and exotic consumption. The pool session, however, requires one to confront difference. In simple terms we can think about ethnic food, festivals and handicrafts as cultural diversity, and the Muslim woman as cultural difference.This distinction between diversity and difference is useful for thinking through the relation between multiculturalism in public space and multicultural democracy of the public sphere. According to the anthropologist Thomas Hylland Eriksen, while a neoliberal sensibility supports cultural diversity in the public space, cultural difference is seen as a major cause of social problems associated with immigrants, and has a diminishing effect on the public sphere (14). According to Eriksen, diversity is understood as aesthetic, or politically and morally neutral expressions of culture that are enriching (Hage 118) or digestible. Difference, however, refers to morally objectionable cultural practices. In short, diversity is enriching. Difference is corrosive. Eriksen argues that differences that emerge from distinct cultural ideas and practices are deemed to create conflicts with majority cultures, weaken social solidarity and lead to unacceptable violations of human rights in minority groups. The suburban swimming pool exists here at the boundary of diversity and difference, where the "presence" of diverse bodies may enrich, but their different practices deplete and damage existing culture. The imperilled Muslim woman of the suburbs carries a heavy symbolic load. She stands for major global contests at the border of difference and diversity in three significant domains, multiculturalism, religion and feminism. These three areas are positioned simultaneously in public space and of the public sphere and she embodies a specific version of each in this suburban setting. First, there a global retreat from multiculturalism evidenced in contemporary narratives that describe multiculturalism (both as official policy and unofficial sensibility) as failed and increasingly ineffective at accommodating or otherwise dealing with religious, cultural and ethnic differences (Cantle; Goodhart; Joppke; Poynting and Mason). In the UK, Europe, the US and Australia, popular media sources and political discourses speak of "parallel lives,"immigrant enclaves, ghettoes, a lack of integration, the clash of values, and illiberal cultural practices. The covered body of the Muslim woman, and more particularly the Muslim veil, are now read as visual signs of this clash of values and of the refusal to integrate. Second, religion has re-emerged in the public domain, with religious groups and individuals making particular claims on public space both on the basis of their religious identity and in accord with secular society’s respect for religious freedom. This is most evident in controversies in France, Belgium and Netherlands associated with banning niqab in public and other religious symbols in schools, and in Australia in court. In this sense the covered Muslim woman raises concerns and indignation about the rightful place of religion in the public sphere and in social space. Third, feminism is increasingly invoked as the ground from which claims about the imperilled Muslim woman are made, particularly those about protecting women from their dangerous men. The infiltration of the Muslim presence into public space is seen as a threat to the hard won gains of women’s freedom enjoyed by the majority population. This newfound feminism of the public sphere, posited by those who might otherwise disavow feminism, requires some serious consideration. This public discourse rarely addresses the discrimination, violation and lack of freedom experienced systematically on an everyday basis by women of majority cultural backgrounds in western societies (such as Australia). However, the sexism of racially and religiously different men is readily identified and decried. This represents a significant shift to a dubious feminist register of the public sphere such that: “[w]omen of foreign origin, ...more specifically Muslim women…have replaced the traditional housewife as the symbol of female subservience” (Tissot 41–42).The three issues—multiculturalism, religion and feminism—are, in the Dandenong pool context, contests about human rights, democracy and the proper use of public space. Szego’s opinion piece sees the Dandenong pool "cover up" as an example of the conundrum of how human rights for some may curtail the human rights of others and lead us into a problematic entanglement of universal "rights," with claims of difference. In her view the combination of human rights and multiculturalism in the case of the Dandenong Pool accommodates illiberal practices that put the rights of "the general public" at risk, or as she puts it, on a “slippery slope” that results in a “watering down of our human rights.” Ideas that entail women making a claim for private time in public space are ultimately not good for "us."Such ideas run counter to the West's more than 500-year struggle for individual freedom—including both freedom of religion and freedom from religion—and for gender equality. Our public authorities ought to be pushing back hardest when these values are under threat. Yet this is precisely where they've been buckling under pressure (Szego)But a different reading of the relation between public and private space, human rights, democracy and gender freedom is readily identifiable in the Dandenong event—if one looks for it. Living with difference, I have already suggested, is a problem of democracy and the public sphere and does not so easily correspond to consuming diversity, as it demands engagement with cultural difference. In what remains, I explore how multicultural democracy in the public sphere and women’s rights in public and private realms relate, firstly, to the burgeoning promise of democracy and civility that might emerge in public space through encounter and exchange. I also point out how this moment in Dandenong might be read as a singular contribution to dealing with this global problematic of living with difference; of democracy in the public sphere. Public urban space has become a focus for speculation among geographers and sociologists in particular, about the prospects for an enhanced civic appreciation of living with difference through encountering strangers. Random and repetitious encounters with people from all cultures typify contemporary urban life. It remains an open question however as to whether these encounters open up or close down possibilities for conviviality and understanding, and whether they undo or harden peoples’ fears and prejudices. There is, however, at least in some academic and urban planning circles, some hope that the "throwntogetherness" (Massey) and the "doing" of togetherness (Laurier and Philo) found in the multicultural city may generate some lessons and opportunities for developing a civic culture and political commitment to living with difference. Alongside the optimism of those who celebrate the city, the suburb, and public spaces as forging new ways of living with difference, there are those such as Gill Valentine who wonder how this might be achieved in practice (324). Ash Amin similarly notes that city or suburban public spaces are not necessarily “the natural servants of multicultural engagement” (Ethnicity 967). Amin and Valentine point to the limited or fleeting opportunities for real engagement in these spaces. Moreover Valentine‘s research in the UK revealed that the spatial proximity found in multicultural spaces did not so much give rise to greater mutual respect and engagement, but to a frustrated “white self-segregation in the suburbs.” She suggests therefore that civility and polite exchange should not be mistaken for respect (324). Amin contends that it is the “micro-publics” of social encounters found in workplaces, schools, gardens, sports clubs [and perhaps swimming pools] rather than the fleeting encounters of the street or park, that offer better opportunities for meaningful intercultural exchange. The Ramadan celebration at the pool, with its dress code and all, might be seen more fruitfully as a purposeful event engaging a micro-public in which people are able to “break out of fixed relations and fixed notions” and “learn to become different” (Amin, Ethnicity 970) without that generating discord and resentment.Micropublics, Subaltern Publics and a Democracy of (Temporary) ExclusionsIs this as an opportunity to bring the global and local together in an experiment of forging new democratic spaces for gender, sexuality, culture and for living with difference? More provocatively, can we see exclusion and an invitation to share in this exclusion as a precursor to and measure of, actually existing democracy? Painter and Philo have argued that democratic citizenship is questionable if “people cannot be present in public spaces (streets, squares, parks, cinemas, churches, town halls) without feeling uncomfortable, victimized and basically ‘out of place’…" (Iveson 216). Feminists have long argued that distinctions between public and private space are neither straightforward nor gender neutral. For Nancy Fraser the terms are “cultural classifications and rhetorical labels” that are powerful because they are “frequently deployed to delegitimate some interests, views and topics and to valorize others” (73). In relation to women and other subordinated minorities, the "rhetoric of privacy" has been historically used to restrict the domain of legitimate public contestation. In fact the notion of what is public and particularly notions of the "public interest" and the "public good" solidify forms of subordination. Fraser suggests the concept of "subaltern counterpublics" as an alternative to notions of "the public." These are discursive spaces where groups articulate their needs, and demands are circulated formulating their own public sphere. This challenges the very meaning and foundational premises of ‘the public’ rather than simply positing strategies of inclusion or exclusion. The twinning of Amin’s notion of "micro-publics" and Fraser’s "counterpublics" is, I suggest, a fruitful approach to interpreting the Dandenong pool issue. It invites a reading of this singular suburban moment as an experiment, a trial of sorts, in newly imaginable ways of living democratically with difference. It enables us to imagine moments when a limited democratic right to exclude might create the sorts of cultural exchanges that give rise to a more authentic and workable recognition of cultural difference. I am drawn to think that this is precisely the kind of democratic experimentation that the YMCA and Dandenong Council embarked upon when they applied for the Equal Opportunity exemption. I suggest that by trialing, rather than fixing forever a "critically exclusive" access to the suburban swimming pool for two hours per year, they were in fact working on the practical problem of how to contribute in small but meaningful ways to a more profoundly free democracy and a reworked public sphere. In relation to the similar but distinct example of the McIver pool for women and children in Coogee, New South Wales, Kurt Iveson makes the point that such spaces of exclusion or withdrawal, “do not necessarily serve simply as spaces where people ‘can be themselves’, or as sites through which reified identities are recognised—in existing conditions of inequality, they can also serve as protected spaces where people can take the risk of exploring who they might become with relative safety from attack and abuse” (226). These are necessary risks to take if we are to avoid entrenching fear of difference in a world where difference is itself deeply, and permanently, entrenched.ReferencesAmin, Ash. “Ethnicity and the Multicultural City: Living with Diversity.” Environment and Planning A 34 (2002): 959–80.———. “The Good City.” Urban Studies 43 (2006): 1009–23.Berlant, Lauren, and Michael Warner. “Sex in Public.” Critical Inquiry 24 (1998): 547–66.Cantle, Ted. Community Cohesion: A Report of the Independent Review Team. London, UK Home Office, 2001.Carey, Adam. “Backing for Pool Cover Up Directive.” The Age 17 Sep. 2010. ‹http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/backing-for-pool-coverup-directive-20100916-15enz.html›.Elder, John, and Jon Pierick. “The Mean Streets: Where the Locals Fear to Tread.” The Sunday Age 10 Jan. 2010. ‹http://www.theage.com.au/national/the-mean-streets-where-the-locals-fear-to-tread-20100109-m00l.html?skin=text-only›.Eriksen, Thomas Hyland. “Diversity versus Difference: Neoliberalism in the Minority Debate." The Making and Unmaking of Difference. Ed. Richard Rottenburg, Burkhard Schnepel, and Shingo Shimada. Bielefeld: Transaction, 2006. 13–36.Fraser, Nancy. “Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy.” Social Text 25/26 (1990): 56–80.Goodhart, David. “Too Diverse.” Prospect 95 (2004): 30-37.Haberfield, Georgie, and Gilbert Gardner. “Mayor Defends Pool Cover-up Order.” Dandenong Leader 16 Sep. 2010 ‹http://dandenong-leader.whereilive.com.au/news/story/dandenong-oasis-tells-swimmers-to-cover-up/›.Habermas, Jürgen. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society. Cambridge, MA: MIT P, 2001.Hage, Ghassan. White Nation: Fantasies of White Supremacy in a Multicultural Society. Sydney: Pluto, 1998.hooks, bell. "Eating the Other: Desire and Resistance." Media and Cultural Studies Keyworks. Eds. Meenakshi Gigi and Douglas Kellner. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2001. 366-380.Iveson, Kurt. "Justifying Exclusion: The Politics of Public Space and the Dispute over Access to McIvers Ladies' Baths, Sydney.” Gender, Place and Culture 10.3 (2003): 215–28.Joppke, Christian. “The Retreat of Multiculturalism in the Liberal State: Theory and Policy.” The British Journal of Sociology 55.2 (2004): 237–57.Laurier, Chris, and Eric Philo. “Cold Shoulders and Napkins Handed: Gestures of Responsibility.” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 31 (2006): 193–207.Low, Setha, and Neil Smith, eds. The Politics of Public Space. London: Routledge, 2006.Massey, Doreen. For Space. London: Sage, 2005.Murphy, Padraic. "Cover Up for Pool Even at Next Year's Ramadan.” Herald Sun 23 Sep. 2010. ‹http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/victoria/cover-up-for-pool-event-during-next-years-ramadan/story-e6frf7kx-1225924291675›.Nichols, David. The Bogan Delusion. Melbourne: Affirm Press, 2011.Poynting, Scott, and Victoria Mason. "The New Integrationism, the State and Islamophobia: Retreat from Multiculturalism in Australia." International Journal of Law, Crime and Justice 36 (2008): 230–46.Razack, Sherene H. “Imperilled Muslim Women, Dangerous Muslim Men and Civilised Europeans: Legal and Social Responses to Forced Marriages.” Feminist Legal Studies 12.2 (2004): 129–74.Szego, Julie. “Under the Cover Up." The Age 9 Oct. 2010. < http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/under-the-coverup-20101008-16c1v.html >.Thrift, Nigel. “But Malice Afterthought: Cities and the Natural History of Hatred.” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 30 (2005): 133–50.Tissot, Sylvie. “Excluding Muslim Women: From Hijab to Niqab, from School to Public Space." Public Culture 23.1 (2011): 39–46.Valentine, Gill. “Living with Difference: Reflections on Geographies of Encounter.” Progress in Human Geography 32.3 (2008): 323–37.Wise, Amanda, and Selveraj Velayutham, eds. Everyday Multiculturalism. Houndsmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.YMCA. “VCAT Ruling on Swim Sessions at Dandenong Oasis to Open Up to Community During Ramadan Next Year.” 16 Sep. 2010. ‹http://www.victoria.ymca.org.au/cpa/htm/htm_news_detail.asp?page_id=13&news_id=360›.