This paper explores the latent power of Maltese trade unions
in the private sector by reviewing the presence of collective agreements
in force in 2008. The study adopts a similar methodology to one
published in Bank of Valletta Review in 1996, based on 1995 data. Over
this 13-year pe...

A European Union initiative is seeking ways of determining the development
potential of Europe’s lagging regions, which include various islands. On the basis of the
policy review, methodology and data collected by the ongoing EUROISLANDS project, this
paper present Kökar (population: ...

Islands are the challenging targets of a global pursuit in the closing of gaps, their distinct geography so far having seemingly eluded and mocked both human ingenuity and terra firma. This article seeks to deconstruct the concept of the bridge as more than just a value-free symbol of inexorable tec...

Islands are sites of innovative conceptualizations, whether of nature or human enterprise,
whether virtual or real. The study of islands on their own terms today enjoys a growing
and wide-ranging recognition. This paper celebrates the launch of Island Studies Journal
in the conte...

Not sun, sea, sand but ice, isolation, indigenous people: the critical exploration of extreme tourism in cold water locations has barely started. Cold water island locations tend to have harsh, pristine and fragile natural environments, characterized by wide open spaces. They become contexts for an ...

Most subnational (and mainly island) jurisdictions around the world today are actively conspiring in the dogged pursuit of protracted and extended colonial relationships—what is referred to as “upside down decolonization”—rather than aspiring to full independence. Various metropolitan powers...

The ‘in betweenity’ of islands is an ongoing problematic in contemporary politics. Given their geographic definition and boundedness, islands tend to be unitary jurisdictions - that means that they are unlikely to be shared by more than one power. In fact, there are just 11 islands in t...

The pursuit of nissology, or island studies, calls for a re-centering of focus from mainland to island, away from the discourse of conquest of mainlanders, giving voice and platform for the expression of island narratives. Yet, studying islands ‘on their own terms’, in spite of its pred...

Studying mobile actor networks of moving people, objects, images, and
discourses, in conjunction with changing time-spaces, offers a unique opportunity to
understand important, and yet relatively neglected, “relational material” dynamics of
mobility. A key example of this phenomenon ...

How well do the brands and branding exercises of specific 'island products' connect with the brand of 'the Island' on which they are based? This paper adopts a sweeping 'island studies' global perspective in addressing this question. Given that they are already heavily themed places, we should n...

The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) contained a specific section for “Archipelagic States” (Part IV) which are given many rights under the archipelagic regime including, if desired, to designate archipelagic sea lanes (ASLs) through their archipelagic waters. While desig...