Muhacir Bulgarian Workers in Turkey: Their Relation to Management and Fellow Workers in the Formal Employment Sector

This article is concerned with Muhacir Bulgarians in Turkey - Turkish term for immigrants from the Balkans, particularly from Bulgaria. It considers them as a distinct sociological presence in the formal manufacturing sector of the Turkish labour force and examines their employment, means of material support, their position in the labour market, and their relation to management, trade unions and other workers. Possible future developments are considered. The article focuses mainly on those employed in the Bursa textile industry, but reference is also made to other workers employed in the Izmit triangle and its environs who work in the metal goods sector. Where possible, comparison is made with Turks of non-Bulgarian origin.     

论1929-1933年经济危机对苏美关系的影响

1929-1933年爆发的经济危机迅速由美国影响到整个资本主义世界,使美国及世界经济遭受重创.这对世界局势产生了重要的影响,并且也改变了美国的国内和国际环境.而苏联经济却在此期间取得较快的发展,在世界经济中的地位也得到了提升.苏美两国面对经济危机的局势以及世界政治局势的变化,开始在摩擦中寻求改善两国关系的途径以应对变化了的国内外形势,最终两国在隔绝了16年之后确立了正常的国家关系.     

Precarious Elderly Workers in Post-Industrial South Korea

This article examines how the combination of immature welfare state and expansion of the service economy, in particular, contributes to the precariousness of the elderly labour market in South Korea where nearly half of the elderly live below the poverty line. It completes an empirical analysis of how elderly workers in Korea are participating in the labour market and examines their situation using a conceptualisation of “precariousness.” It is explained how the elderly in an immature welfare state are pushed into bad jobs resulting in a large number of precarious “elderly workers” in an economically advanced country. Results of the statistical analysis suggest that, due to severe precariousness, the Korean elderly are unable to escape from poverty even though they work. Also, gender segregation of precariousness in the service industry has been exacerbated in the elderly labour market. Structural change such as the rapid transition to a service-oriented economy has a greater impact on elderly women than middle aged or elderly men because elderly women tend to have lower skill levels and shorter careers, mainly entering service occupations where the bad jobs are concentrated.     

Work and Family Life among Migrant Factory Workers in China and Vietnam

ABSTRACT

Through on-site interviewing, a comparative study has been carried out about migrant factory workers in industrialised parts of China’s Guangdong province and in Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh City. Even though China and Vietnam possess similar legacies of socialist transformation and have household registration regulations that restrict rural migrants’ access to urban social services and impede their settlement in cities, there exist marked differences in Guangdong and Ho Chi Minh City in migration patterns, factory work conditions and migrant worker family livelihoods. In particular, migrant families in Ho Chi Minh City largely stay intact and tend to settle there permanently, while married migrant workers in Guangdong normally need to split up their families and remain trapped in circular rural–urban migration. As shall be seen, the national and local governments play important roles in determining the inclusion or exclusion of migrants from urban life, the wages they are paid and their standard of living and, most important of all, their children’s access to education. Each of the two countries’ differences in implementing policies is examined and comparatively analysed.     

The Political Construction of Foreign Workers in Japan

Japan organizes its labor markets for foreign workers hierarchically according to “race’ or “nationality.” Zainichi foreigners and nikkeijin are at the high end of the racial hierarchy with better jobs, higher pay, and better working conditions than other foreign workers. At the bottom end are South Asians with casual jobs, poor pay, and dangerous working environments. This racialized hierarchy, which produces differentiated wages and other privileges across different groups of foreign workers, is a political construction of Japanese government officials, who form policies that both establish the legal superiority of certain races over others and constrain the operation of each tier of foreign workers. Japanese employers perpetuate this labor market arrangement by cooperating with government bureaus and yakuza in maintaining labor disciplines tailored to each racial group. These actions create and sustain a racialized economy in Japan that is characterized by inferior jobs, little security, and few benefits for certain sectors of the labor market.     

THE ASSYRIANS IN WORLD WAR ONE AND THE 1933 MASSACRE: NEW DISCOVERIES IN THE RSAA ARCHIVES

The recent discovery of a bundle of documents in the archives of the Royal Society for Asian Affairs has shed more light on the history of the Assyrian Christians of Iraq from the time of the First World War up to the Simele massacre in 1933. The documents are accounts and correspondence written primarily by a number of leading British players including Major-General Dunsterville, Sir Henry Dobbs, Colonel J.J. McCarthy, and also the Assyrian Patriarch Mar Shimun. They also shed further light on the role played by Leo Amery, Secretary of State for the Colonies. The documents appear to have been compiled by Sir Percy Sykes, the then Secretary of the Royal Central Asian Society (as the Royal Society for Asian Affairs then was) as part of an investigation into the situation of the Assyrians. This article introduces the newly-discovered collection of documents and discusses how they advance our understanding of this period.     

Garment Ateliers and Women Workers in Istanbul: Wives,Daughters and Azerbaijani Immigrants

Not only multinational corporations but also small-scale firms are recognized as part and parcel of global commodity production. Most of this production is destined for western economies but not all commodities of industrial production end up in these countries. There is a high volume of trade taking place between developing regions. This article aims to highlight industrial production for the shuttle trade in the Laleli market of Istanbul and the central role that women's and immigrants' labour plays in this production. Garment ateliers producing for the Laleli market are usually operated as family establishments in which tapping into cheap female and immigrant labour through kin networks has been a main form of survival for the ateliers and has generated a successful internationally trading industry.