Migration,Reconfigurations of Family Relations and Social (In)Security: an introduction

This introduction reviews the contributions this collection of articles makes to understanding migration, social reproduction and social protection. Migration necessarily involves reconfigurations of family relations and these entail changes in the patterning of social (in)security. Our expansive interpretation of the concepts of social reproduction and social protection situate the reorganisation of gendered family lives as integral to the migration–development nexus. Life-course thinking informs analysis of how migrants ‘do family’ and what this means for gender, identity and (in)security. The collection explores how ‘care deficits’ are managed, both discursively through the negotiation of gendered ideologies about gender identity and the family, and through the everyday practice of social reproduction. The resulting reorganisation of social security involves taking on new risks and vulnerabilities for migrants and their families. For both internal and international migrants the challenges involved in securing social reproduction are powerfully shaped by welfare and migratory regimes and raise important questions about the relationship between social protection and broader social policy and citizenship issues.     

Labour Migration and Health of Left-Behind Children in China

With rapid urbanisation, millions of people from rural areas have migrated to major cities for employment, leaving their young children at home. This labour migration creates substantial mental and physical challenges for these left-behind children. This study establishes two empirical models for comparing the health status of left-behind children with that of children in rural areas without migrant parents and with that of migrant children in urban areas. Our empirical findings reveal that parental migration negatively affects the height and weight indices of left-behind children. The effects are particularly prominent for younger children, when both parents migrate or when parents migrate out of province.     

Short-term Labour Migration from the Republic of Armenia to the Russian Federation

Abstract

We explore the determinants of short-term labour migration from Armenia to Russia based on a unique panel dataset. A dynamic switching regression model with endogenous switching is applied. Our evidence pinpoints migration experience, the expected individual income gap from migration, low job opportunities in Armenia and the possibility of diversifying income risks as the most important determinants. Family ties turn out to be insignificant. The hypothetical income gap is about 280 per cent. Several explanations are provided for the fact that some individuals do not migrate in spite of a large income gap.     

Morality,Corruption and the State: Insights from Jharkhand,Eastern India

Corruption is analysed by addressing the interrelations between the moral and political economy regulating state-based welfare provision in Jharkhand, India. On the one hand, the article focuses on the rural elite to show that ‘corrupt’ practices are not just guided by financial utility but also by non-material interests, underpinned by a multivarious moral economy. On the other hand, the article shows that the poorest in the rural areas (adivasis or Scheduled Tribes) keep away from the state, seeing it as beyond the moral pale, and instead resurrect an alternative sovereign structure. The adivasi perspectives are influenced by a political economy of historical experiences of the state and interrelations with the elites. The paper concludes that a particular political economy is intimately connected with a moral economy, and that transformations in political economy affect the moral economy.     

Degrees of Separation: Informal Social Protection,Relatedness and Migration in Biswanath,Bangladesh

This paper argues for a more precise and context specific understanding of mechanisms of ‘informal social protection’ in Bangladesh. The context is a ‘Londoni’ village in Sylhet which has high levels of internal and overseas migration. The economic boom caused by the latter provides important employment opportunities for people from much poorer areas of Bangladesh, who have moved into the area. Yet, as our findings show, the extent to which the poor can call upon the help and protection of rich overseas migrants depends upon the degree of closeness to, or separation from, them. This is marked both through real and fictive kinship as well as geography: those that come from nearby become ‘our own poor’, whereas those from further away are treated as ‘outsiders', not qualifying for significant ‘help’. As the paper argues, access to hierarchically ordered places is vital for the sustainability of precarious livelihoods. Yet whilst geographical movement is an important survival strategy for the poor, it is only when social relations are established with wealthy patrons that it can be said to contribute to informal social protection.     

论劳动和人与自然的关系——威廉·莫里斯的生态社会主义论析

国外学者大都将生态社会主义的思想追溯到威廉·莫里斯.在莫里斯的思想里,最重要的在于他从分析资本主义条件下的劳动开始,指出劳动乐趣的丧失导致了人与自然关系的扭曲,进而揭示了劳动乐趣丧失的深层原因在于资本主义的竞争性商业贸易和对利润的无止境追求,并在此基础上探讨了解决这一问题的对策.莫里斯在对环境污染根源的分析上,在社会主义与生态可持续性的论述上,在如何走向生态社会主义的道路上,以及在某种程度上与马克思主义相一致的、对某些命题和未来社会的论述上,都比当代生态社会主义者先行了一步,无愧于生态社会主义先驱的称号.     

The People Are Missing: Cramped Space,Social Relations,and the Mediators of Politics

This article investigates the place of social relations in Deleuze and Guattari’s figure of ‘cramped space’, a figure integral to their ‘minor politics’. Against social and political theories that seek the source of political practice in a collective identity, the theory of cramped space contends that politics arises among those who lack and refuse coherent identity, in their encounter with the impasses, limits, or impossibilities of individual and collective subjectivity. Cramped space, as Deleuze puts it, is a condition where ‘the people are missing’. This is not, however, a condition of asocial isolation, but one full of social relations; the loss of identity is a condition comprised only of social relations. The ramifications of this thesis are here explored through Marx’s critique of citizenship, the socio-historical conjuncture of cramped space in relation to the ‘communization’ problematic, and the Palestinian mediator of sumud.     

Labour in Paradise: Gender,Class and Social Mobility in the Informal Tourism Economy of Urban Bali,Indonesia

Bali’s recent socio-economic transformation is mainly a result of rapid growth in mass-tourism, which, as a capitalist labour-intensive industry, represents a new regime of labour that reorganises, dislocates, and multiplies wage labour opportunities. ‘Localising globalisation’ through labour in tourism alters conditions for gaining a living wage; yet, it also produces new contestations of gender, caste and class. This article argues that the labour regime shift has produced a large informal economy that provides new paths for social mobility for low caste Bali-Hindus, whilst at the same time class, gender and caste inequalities interlock in the shaping of different labour trajectories.     

Questioning Women's Solidarity: The Case of Land Rights,Santal Parganas,Jharkhand, India

This paper examines the impact of foreign aid on economic development in the context of a neoclassical growth model. Its conclusion is that foreign aid, whether in the form of capital goods or consumer goods, has a purely transitory effect on an underdeveloped country's per capita consumption (which is used as the welfare criterion) in the context of the usual neoclassical growth model; when, however, alternative assumptions (which may be more appropriate to an underdeveloped country) about the rate of population growth and the propensity to save are grafted into this model, foreign aid, in the form of capital goods or consumer goods, does have a permanent effect on an underdeveloped country's per capita consumption, if the aid exceeds a critical minimum.

Section I develops the properties of a simple neoclassical growth model that are essential to the analysis; section II analyses the impact of foreign aid in this context; in section III, appropriate modifications are made to the simple model and the impact of foreign aid is then re‐analyzed.     

西欧国家是怎样保持社会稳定的

二战后,西欧国家针对早期资本主义发展过程中存在影响社会稳定和经济发展的问题,集中精力,致力于经济社会协调发展,采取了一系列措施.目前,西欧国家的社会矛盾和问题虽依然存在,但总的来说,西欧国家社会稳定,民众生活普遍较为富裕,享有较高水平的社会保障.     

Public Sector Commissioning: Experiences of Voluntary Organizations Delivering Health and Social Services

The perceived benefits to users and beneficiaries of voluntary organizations delivering public sector services have been well documented and include the engagement with parts of society that the state cannot reach, personalized service delivery, and improved services. There is a lack of clarity, however, as to whether these perceived benefits are being realized. This article presents the experiences of voluntary sector organizations involved in public sector commissioning. The research suggests that the public sector is limiting the voluntary sector's engagement in service design and performance monitoring. These findings raise questions about the role of the voluntary sector in public service provision.     

Migration,Livelihoods and Institutions: Contrasting Patterns of Migration in Mali

Migration is a common and essential livelihood strategy in the risk-prone environment of Sahelian West Africa. But migration is not a passive reaction to economic and environmental forces. Patterns of movement are determined by context-specific and complex dynamics, mediated by social networks, gender relations and household structures. IDS-based research on sustainable livelihoods illustrated this in two locations in Mali: in a village in the Sahelian dryland with different and gendered migration patterns of various ethnic groups; and exceptional patterns in the Sudano-Sahelian cotton region with extensive and long-lasting engagement in small cocoa and coffee plantations in Côte d'Ivoire.     

Polish ‘Temporary’ Migration: The Formation and Significance of Social Networks

This article is based on in-depth interviews with migrants in different locations in Poland and the UK and explores Polish migrant decision making in both countries. In particular, we ask how migrants build networks, how this influences their decisions about the duration of their stay abroad, and the implications of network building for community cohesion. Networks exist within the sending country; between the sending and the receiving country; within diasporas; and between diasporas and the receiving community. Our article considers the first three sections of this chain.     

Entangled in Social Safety Nets: Administrative Responses to and Lived Experiences of Internally Displaced Persons in Ukraine

Abstract

This essay explores the citizenship experiences of internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Ukraine. Since 2014, conflict in eastern Ukraine has forced over 1.7 million people to leave their homes. Unlike refugees, who are protected by international law, IDPs rely primarily on state support. Based on ethnographic research and analysis of secondary sources, the essay focuses on IDPs’ interactions with the state to highlight how displacement affects the provision of social guarantees. The discussion questions the distinctions between categories of migrants and citizens by offering insights into new modalities of controlled citizenship that displaced people live through.     

走访印度奥里萨邦和中央邦

近日，我和使馆的同志到奥里萨邦和中央邦考察大选，并借机了解两地经济和社会发展情况。虽然时间短暂，日程紧张，但所见所闻却给人留下了深刻印象。     

社会救助政策的转型与整合——北京经验

20世纪90年代以来的"城市新贫困现象",直接催生了我国以城乡居民最低生活保障为基础的新型社会救助制度.伴随着一系列社会救助政策的出台和覆盖面的不断扩大,社会救助政策的整合与配套问题也日益凸显出来.本文基于北京市的相关情况,研究我国社会救助政策的转型和制度衔接,整体效能发挥的问题,在分析当前社会救助存在的部门分割、制度分割、城乡分割问题的基础上,提出针对性的对策建议.     

Regional Returns to Education,Child Labour and Schooling in India

We offer evidence from India that higher regional returns to primary education not only increase the likelihood that boys and girls attend school but also decrease the likelihood that they work. These relationships hold only for the top three quintiles of the income distribution and mostly for children in the age group 10–14 years. The former result suggests that liquidity constraints may not allow poorer households to respond to the economic benefits of education. Policies that raise the economic benefits of education may increase human capital investments in households that do not rely on their children's incomes for survival. However, low schooling and high child labour will persist among credit constrained families unless these households are provided with the economic ability to respond to these benefits.