This chapter asserts that the emasculation thesis is flawed, risking flattening out the incongruities and ambiguities of civilian working class male experience in the Second World War. The impact of the war on the identities of male workers was, instead, complex and sometimes contradictory.

The chapter examines the consensus among historians that civilian men were compared unfavourably to the disciplined soldier, were emasculated by women’s new wartime roles and were rendered invisible in wartime representations. Having established the high status enjoyed by the ‘soldier hero’ in wartime discourse and by contrast, the fragile position of the male civilian, with reference to Connell’s concept of ‘hegemonic masculinity’, the chapter asserts that the construction of masculinity in fact remained open to contestation. Sources where the reserved man are depicted in a positive way are analysed. The chapter examines the rich array of source material that historians can, but have so far failed to, draw upon, including archival documents, visual sources and our newly conducted oral history interviews.

This chapter brings the book to a close by making the case that enfranchisement is one element, albeit an important one, within wider spheres of prisoners rights and opportunities for participative citizenship. It outlines the challenges for prisoners in embracing the franchise and makes some suggestions about how to re-engage a section of the population disconnected from society and disillusioned with political and civic institutions. If the goal of enfranchisement is inclusion and allowing prisoners to participate as citizens, more needs to be done to achieve this, both within and without the prison. Encouraging prisoners to participate as citizens, with opportunities and meaningful spaces in their community on a daily basis rather than just on election day offers the potential for lived citizenship. However, this necessitates reframing penal policy, reimagining the role of imprisonment and re-conceptualising enfranchisement, regarding it as not merely enabling prisoners to vote, but rather as part of a process of engaging and empowering citizens.

The author of this book concluded his ethnographic fieldwork in December 2009. Since then the Danish employment effort has seen its share of evaluations and newspaper articles that report the dysfunctionalities of the system. The author addresses the following questions: How is that bureaucracy continues to beget bureaucracy despite repeated attempts to downsize and deregulate? How does implementation actually happen, and what are the principles by which carefully planned policies come to have unpredictable results? That policy does not easily translate into the prescribed practice is one of the fundamental problems addressed by scholars of policy implementation and public administration. He argues that the Danish labor market effort is experientially absurd. The purpose of the book is to unravel this experience of absurdity in order to show the multiplicity of logics at work in implementation of law and policy.

The third chapter reflects on new youth activism within the wider context of what has been termed ‘the new social movements’. It addresses the broader transnational influence of movements abroad, and shows how new areas for political expression opened up around peace, anti-militarism, environmentalism/nuclear disarmament and sexuality. Late socialist Yugoslav society witnessed the proliferation of a youth arena of civil initiatives and activist citizenship, albeit fragmented and often discordant, which found shelter and support within parts of the existing youth institutional framework. Although the federal Youth League did not explicitly endorse all of the initiatives stemming from the new social movements, it did provide spaces for some of them and increased the visibility of their demands in the public space.

Chapter three examines reactions to reserved status. For many (particularly) young men who remained in civilian occupations the slight to their masculinities was keenly felt, even after the passage of several decades. Indeed, half of our interviewees sought to evade their reserved status and tried, sometimes in increasingly desperate ways, to enlist in the military and be in uniform. When this was denied many poignantly expressed their understandings of their wartime lives as ‘ordinary’ and ‘dead’, with one interviewee even describing himself as a ‘nobody’, thereby seemingly confirming the emasculation theory. However, half of our interviewees made no attempt to enlist, suggesting they were comfortable with their reserved status and contesting the perception that civilian masculinities were challenged.

Chapter six explores reserved men’s lives outside of work, examining how war impacted on their social, domestic and romantic lives. While the war was a time of upheaval and uncertainty, for many of our interviewees their lives remained remarkably constant in many ways. Sport, both spectating and playing, as well as cinema featured prominently in interviewees’ accounts. Moreover, the war brought adventure for some in the form of bombing raids and civil defence duties. Interviewees were, however, reluctant to admit to having leisure time in their narratives which instead emphasised hard graft. This appears to confirm the emasculation thesis in that they felt compelled to downplay their leisure activities lest that be seen as an admittance of ‘shirking’, a term that had been in circulation during the First World War and was resurrected in the Second. Yet unbidden revelations showed that, for the majority, they were able to enjoy their wartime youth, engaging in activities, such as sports, pub-going and courting, that underscored their manliness.

The cases for and against voting rights for prisoners have been widely examined in academic literature and political discourse. It is widely accepted that even in the most advanced liberal democracies there are limitations on the right to vote, depending on citizenship, age, mental competency and residency. What should these limitations be and who should decide on them? In the case of prisoners, should the withdrawal of the franchise be determined by a judge, decided on by the executive with legislative approval or settled by the people? Should the denial of the vote be a collateral consequence of imprisonment or part of the penalty for breaking the law? Should prisoners be denied the right to vote at all? The arguments for and against the enfranchisement of prisoners yield a number of insights into the objectives of imprisonment, the desire for penal reform, the complexities of citizenship and what restrictions, if any, there should be on participation in a democratic polity.

Prisoner enfranchisement remains one of the few contested electoral issues in twenty first century democracies. This chapter examines the politics of, and international jurisprudence on, prisoner enfranchisement. It considers jurisdictions where it has become a matter of legal quarrel and political debate. The debate on prisoner enfranchisement is at the intersection of punishment and representative government, encompassing issues such as the purpose of imprisonment, the nature of the social contract and the meaning of citizenship. In the political debates, the language used and the arguments put forward in favour of, or against enfranchisement, go beyond whether or not prisoners should have the right to vote. It gives an indication of the proponent’s perspective on the aims of imprisonment. The first part of this chapter sets out international policy and practice on prisoners and enfranchisement. It then examines countries which have generally come down in favour of allowing some or all prisoners to vote and concludes by looking at jurisdictions that have attracted most attention - the United States and the United Kingdom - in political and judicial attempts to prevent prisoners’ access to the ballot box.