International Journal of Social Science Research and Review

Deconstructing Dark Romance:

Petra Viktória Kanyó — 2026-06-09

In the 2010s, dark romance has become an increasingly popular and distinctive subgenre of contemporary romance. Unlike regular romance, dark romance promises a focus on more complex, ambiguous, and oftentimes taboo tropes, including stalking, violence, and emotional manipulation. This fact becomes concerning when one considers the genre’s almost limitless accessibility due to the internet and its highly supportive online community. Given the persuasive effect of mainstream media, the lack of critical engagement and discussion risks the popularization and internalization of values that do not promote equality. Therefore, this research intends to evaluate the predominant mode of representing gender and the power dynamics between characters in the dark romance genre. To answer the research questions, this study conducts a discourse analysis of five prominent dark romance novels chosen by purposive sampling. The texts were identified through Goodreads, as it provides a measurable indicator for a text’s cultural reach. The selection criteria prioritized high readership and positive reception to ensure the chosen novels represented the genre’s mainstream appeal, including publication within the last ten years and the exclusion of novels with fantastical elements. A hybrid approach was employed to develop a thematic coding system organized into two main categories corresponding to the research questions: Gender Representation and Power Dynamics. The theoretical framework guiding this process is a postfeminist sensibility established by Rosalind Gill. The findings of this study demonstrate that these novels operate on a concerning framework that is designed to romanticize and eventually justify power imbalances. The narrative begins with the construction of an essentialist view of gender, in which femininity and masculinity are first and foremost established through an overdramatized image of the body to establish the initial power difference. Then, on this foundation, the novels build their central fantasy of eroticizing male control, reframing domination, possessiveness, and narratively justified violence as signs of passion. Finally, in dark romance, the heroine “voluntarily” accepts her subordination through her own act of “agency”. Notably, dark romance is not just a simple rejection of feminist ideals, but rather the use of its language to make a patriarchal fantasy palatable. These novels also provide a revealing look into the contradictory ways of understanding contemporary love by creating a world where dominance is passion and submission is an empowered choice. This study confirms that dark romance is not merely escapist fiction, but rather an expressive contemporary space where ideas about love, consent, freedom, and power are actively redefined and constructed.

Decolonizing International Law?

Fatma Ben Mustapha — 2026-06-09

International law is often represented as a neutral and universal legal system; however, critical scholarship has illustrated the ways in which it is inextricably embedded in colonial histories and sustained by global power hierarchies. Third World Approaches to International Law emerged as a significant critical intervention, highlighting the Eurocentric underpinnings of international law and its unfair impact on the Global South. Although TWAIL has made valuable political and theoretical contributions, this paper argues that its decolonizing project remains limited since decolonization is an epistemic process rather than an exclusively historical or material one. The paper uses post-colonial theory to investigate how TWAIL regularly relies on inherited legal categories such as sovereignty and universality, categories constraining its critique. Through a qualitative analysis of TWAIL scholarship, the paper argues for the necessity of going beyond reformist engagement to epistemic questioning as a condition for the decolonization of international law.

The Pan-Arab Community in Hungary

Tayssir Sammari — 2026-06-09

This paper examines the Pan-Arab community in Hungary as a social space in which individuals from diverse Arab backgrounds engage in ongoing processes of interaction, negotiation, and differentiation. Rather than treating the community as a homogeneous co-ethnic network, the study focuses on the internal dynamics that emerge among its members after migration. Drawing on ten narrative and in-depth interviews with Arab residents in Hungary, the analysis explores how identity, language, and values are reshaped through everyday encounters. The findings show that shared Arabness provides a basis for initial connection, yet it does not eliminate internal boundaries. Linguistic diversity, particularly dialect differences, structures inclusion and hierarchy, while moral expectations and social norms generate both solidarity and tension. The community thus operates as a relational field in which belonging is continuously negotiated rather than given. Methodologically, the study adopts a qualitative narrative approach that prioritizes meaning-making over generalization. By shifting attention from host-society integration to intra-community dynamics, the paper contributes to migration and acculturation research by highlighting how diasporic life is shaped through interactions among migrants themselves.

Belonging in Translation

Khomotso Shibe Marutla — 2026-06-09

This paper explores how migration, race, and belonging intersect in the lived experiences of interracial couples within contemporary Hungary. Drawing on qualitative interviews with international students and their partners, the paper offers a small glimpse into how everyday acts of love and intimacy become sites of negotiation, resistance, and translation in a context marked by migration anxieties, populist nationalism, and the lingering legacies of Europe’s colonial imagination. Through these intimate encounters, the paper traces how individuals navigate and reconfigure the emotional and political boundaries of belonging in a society that continues to define itself through ideas of cultural purity and ethnic homogeneity. Guided by postcolonial and decolonial frameworks, the paper interrogates how racial identity, social identity, national identity, and cultural belonging are redefined through interracial intimacy. Drawing on scholars such as Avtar Brah, Homi Bhabha, and Sara Ahmed, it conceptualises intimacy as both a political and affective terrain. It is a site where identity, power, and difference are constantly negotiated. Interracial relationships in Hungary serve as microcosms of broader transnational tensions because they expose how European whiteness is maintained and contested, how migration becomes embodied through love, and how the politics of belonging unfolds within private contexts of society. The research reveals that interracial couples often find themselves inhabiting contradictory positions as both symbols of cosmopolitan openness and as subjects of social scrutiny. They challenge dominant narratives of racial and cultural exclusivity, yet simultaneously encounter subtle and overt forms of exclusion in bureaucratic systems, social interactions, and media representations. Acts such as exploring the Hungarian language, engaging in local cultural practices, or navigating immigration policies become both practical and emotional strategies for negotiating legitimacy and home. The paper situates intimate relationships within broader conversations about migration, citizenship, and postcolonial recognition. It demonstrates how the private sphere is deeply entangled with public discourses of nationhood and race, revealing how belonging is experienced not only through legal status but through affect, care, and everyday negotiation. The analysis contributes to interdisciplinary debates on the politics of recognition and racialisation in Central and Eastern Europe. It also encourages the decolonial reimagining of identity in transnational contexts. Ultimately, the paper argues that interracial couples in Hungary inhabit ‘in-between spaces’. Their experiences illuminate the tensions between love and exclusion, belonging and otherness, and stability and displacement. In foregrounding these lived realities, the study reconsiders how intimacy itself can become a decolonial practice.

Welfare Regimes in Crisis

Aysenur Polater — 2026-06-09

This paper examines the contrasting policy responses of Sweden and Norway to the Ukrainian refugee crisis, revealing how two seemingly similar Nordic welfare states have adopted distinct approaches to refugee reception and integration. Although both countries share humanitarian traditions and welfare-oriented governance models, Sweden has pursued a more restrictive and bureaucratic policy, limiting access to long-term residence, welfare benefits, and integration programs. In contrast, Norway has implemented more flexible and inclusive measures, enabling broader access to employment, housing, and language training. Methodologically, the research adopts a qualitative comparative approach based on secondary data analysis. It draws on governmental policy documents, official reports, academic articles, and media sources to trace differences in institutional design, implementation practices, and discursive framing of the Ukrainian refugee response. This multi-source strategy enables an in-depth understanding of how each state operates on humanitarian protection within its welfare and migration systems. The paper argues that these policy divergences reflect broader political discourses and welfare governance orientations: Sweden’s turn toward securitization and administrative control contrasts with Norway’s pragmatic, community-based approach. By comparing these two cases, the study contributes to debates on the resilience and transformation of Nordic welfare regimes under crisis-driven migration pressures.

Bureaucratic Rationality Revisited

Sumit Kumar — 2026-06-09

For Weber, bureaucracy was an ideal type construct, which he used to understand the nature of transformation in social organisations through the development of human history. His view was that all organised efforts that humans make or have made in the past will eventually lead to a more legal-rational type of organisation which was the bureau. According to him it was the most rational type organisation that could ever exist and clearly it was a pure-type which could not be found in real world. It is the structure of the organisation which determines the flow of communication within organised channels (communicative rationality), it is the structure that determines the motivation and morale of the workforce (social capital), it is the structure of the organisation which determines the choices people make within and without the organisation (whether it is influenced by self-interest or public interest), and it is the structure of the organisation which determines amongst almost every other thing the organised decision-making within the organisation (bounded rationality). This paper tries to critically examine the existing literature on bureaucracy, co-relate it with the most current ideas of organisational re-engineering and attempts to explain and define Structured Rationality (pure-type) which may be a more realisable ideal for bureaucracy. It tries to take forward the evolution or transformation of human social organisation which Weber, Hegel and other theorists had predicted.