Pathways to child work in Tajikistan: narratives of child workers and their parents

A recent child-work study by the International Labour Organization reports that 27% of children in Tajikistan ages 5–17 worked in 2013. Although children worked in agriculture or performed household chores in Soviet Tajikistan, child work for pay is a relatively new phenomenon in modern Tajikistan. This study examines the pathways to child work and the families’ perceptions of child work experiences. Some of the main findings of this study are the themes connected to normalization and acceptance of child work in Tajikistan. These are explained by expectations placed on children at the social, family and personal levels that are in turn affected by macroeconomic forces that are by-products of the transitional economy. The study also explores differences in expectations by gender, age and area of residence.     

Globalisation and the garment industry in Sri Lanka

The objective of this article is to explain how globalisation, the phase-out of MFA and regionalisation affect the development of the garment industry in Sri Lanka. The article starts with a discussion of the key concepts of globalisation and regionalisation, followed by a presentation of the analytical framework, including a theoretical discussion of winners and losers in commodity networks. It is argued that regionalisation may exacerbate the problems that the Sri Lankan garment industry has already experienced in terms of globalisation. In addition to the limited industrial development effects that are the outcome of the functional division of labour, regionalisation makes it even harder to obtain market access. It is likely that Sri Lanka continues to be tied in, both to the European and American trading blocks for the production of some good quality and reasonably priced standardised garments for the middle market. However, to be tied in as a supplier of standardised products for the middle market is a vulnerable position, especially when the market is flat and lead firms and buyers in the network pass down adjustment costs to the suppliers. When manufacturers earn low levels of profits, the prospects of reinvestment in production and sustained industrial upgrading are negligible.     

Micro-credit and the reduction of poverty in Bangladesh

This article explores the relationship between micro-credit and the reduction of poverty by looking at a unique data set about BRAC, one of the largest micro-credit providers in Bangladesh. The article shows that the majority of population in the data set lived below the poverty line and that poverty was slightly more prevalent among households receiving BRAC credit than among similar non-BRAC households. Moreover, regression results suggest that BRAC's micro-credit program has had an insignificant impact on household consumption. Overall, the analysis in the article leads to the conclusion that micro-credit had minimal impact on the reduction of poverty.     

孟加拉国泰戈尔研究的历史与现实意义

亚洲第一位诺贝尔文学奖得主罗宾德拉纳特?泰戈尔(Rabindranath Tagore,1861～1941年)是世界级文学天才和思想巨匠.一百多年来,泰戈尔的作品在世界各地一再被翻译出版,关于他的研究成果也层出不穷.世界的泰戈尔研究成果中最丰富、最全面、最深入的当属泰戈尔的母语地区——孟加拉语地区的泰戈尔研究.从东孟加拉到东巴基斯坦再到独立后的孟加拉国,泰戈尔的研究也由于政治、文化、宗教等原因经历了很多的跌宕起伏.泰戈尔曾被认为是"印度文化的继承者"而被巴基斯坦禁止.印巴分治十几年间,泰戈尔研究主要都局限在"少数开明的文学家和数量庞大的宗派主义者"之间的"泰戈尔论争"中.1961年围绕泰戈尔的百年诞辰,东巴基斯坦的整个文化阶层和政府对立.泰戈尔也逐渐成为孟加拉文化的旗帜,激励了东巴基斯坦孟加拉人的语言和文化政治运动,成为激励孟加拉国独立的精神源泉.孟加拉国独立后,关于泰戈尔的相关性的争议又起,开始了对泰戈尔重新发现和研究的过程.梳理孟加拉国的泰戈尔接受史对于我国的泰戈尔研究,对于加强中孟、中印文化交流与互鉴,构建"亚洲命运共同体"具有重要的意义.     

Vulnerable Women in a Pandemic: Paid Domestic Workers and COVID-19 in Peru

Paid domestic workers (PDWs) in Peru, who are predominantly women, are one of the most vulnerable labour sectors in the country. We argue that an important factor explaining this is linked to national legislation that grants only partial rights to the sector, thus maintaining inferior labour conditions for such workers. Here we share our analysis of a survey of 314 PDWs, conducted between April and May 2020, confirming that PDWs in Peru are highly unprotected, particularly during the COVID pandemic, in which there has been a lack of comprehensive social protection schemes.     

Jhagrapur: Poor peasants and women in a Bangladesh Village

Abstract

In the opening pages of Jhagrapur: Poor Peasants and Women in a Bangladesh Village, Dutch authors Jenneke Arens and Jos van Beurden comment that it would take “academic acrobats” to understand Bangladesh village life from a distance. The same holds true for the international experts and government bureaucrats who design development strategies for the country. Too often their ideas, incubated far from the villages, gloss over such basic dynamics of village life as conflicts between classes, the struggle over land and the subjugation of women. But ignorance is bliss for those who seek technical solutions to social problems, so it was not surprising that the Catholic volunteer aid agency (Christian Organization for Relief and Rehabilitation) which commissioned Jhagrapur refused to publish it when they read the results. It was simply too controversial.     

The Rise and Fall of Paid Maternity Leave Policy in the Years of the Keating Government

In 2010, Australia finally introduced maternity leave, making it one of the last OECD nations to do so. Yet this policy had been announced by the Keating Government some sixteen years earlier, only to be watered down and then ultimately scuppered by subsequent governments. How, then, do we make sense of the rise and fall of this policy in the 1990s? This paper examines this question, arguing that while effective mobilisation by women in the labour movement was crucial to placing this issue on the Keating Government's policy agenda, the continued dominance of a male breadwinner model ultimately served to provide powerful impediments to policy implementation. The paper draws on interviews with key actors and analysis of policy debate to make this case, employing the concepts of policy windows and path dependency to make sense of the opportunities and impediments to policy change respectively. While an important and neglected story of maternity leave policy in Australia, this analysis has important implications for understanding policy‐making, policy trajectory and even gender roles in Australian politics and society.     

Neoliberal economic reforms,the rich and the poor in Bangladesh

Bangladesh has been implementing neoliberal structural adjustment policies since the early 1980s. This article analyzes the economic and social outcomes the reform policies have created in the past two decades. It argues that the reform policies, instead of distributing benefits among different societal groups, have brought an economic windfall mainly for the business and industrial class in Bangladesh. Compared to the 24 families of erstwhile United Pakistan, there is now a small group of 40 to 50 families who effectively control the total industrial and financial assets of this poor nation. The vast majority of other societal groups and classes- the industrial and agricultural labor, small businesses, marginal and small farmers, and urban and rural poor — are left out by the reform agenda. The lack of policies of distributional justice has resulted in widening disparities in income and wealth between the low and high strata of the society and deterioration in the overall poverty situation of the country.     

Patriarchal Investments: Marriage,Dowry and the Political Economy of Development in Bangladesh

This article explores why dowry inflation persists in Bangladesh, despite the country being widely heralded as a development success, especially with regard to gender. The article asks three questions. Does rural Bangladesh show changing patterns of marriage similar to those reported elsewhere in South Asia and more broadly? What might explain the persistent spread and inflation of dowry payments? How might changes in marriage and the inflation of dowry be related to the broader political economy of development in Bangladesh? Analysis of primary data from rural Bangladesh affirms shifts in norms of marriage arrangement and conjugal relationships, but also emphasises considerable continuity. The political economy of development in Bangladesh is briefly described. Dowry is argued to function not as compensation for perceived weakness in women’s economic contribution, but to bolster men’s. In mobilising “additional” resources, dowries help sustain the economic system and indicate ongoing commitment to cultural idioms of masculine provision and protection, against a background of widespread corruption and political and gender violence.     

Genocidal Violence,Nation-Building,and the Bloody Birth of Bangladesh

Why did the Pakistani military carry out genocidal violence against East Pakistani Hindus during the 1971 civil war when the Hindus did not constitute a security threat? This question carries not only theoretical but also important policy and security implications in present-day Bangladesh. A uniquely in-depth analysis of the little-known genocide in East Pakistan in 1971 shows that genocidal violence may be used as an instrument of nation-building. It was designed to mobilize both the Pakistani troops and the Bengali Muslim population against a convenient, well-defined enemy. The logic of othering – and then exterminating – a religious minority was meant to integrate a defiant, and previously marginalized, group into a reimagined community.     

Unwelcomed? The Effects of Statelessness on Involuntary Refugee Repatriation in Bangladesh and Myanmar

ABSTRACT

Refugees are among the most vulnerable populations, often denied rights of residency, treated as hostile intruders, even forced into unsafe camps. This has been particularly true of the Rohingya, a Muslim ethnic minority group which has fled Myanmar by the hundreds of thousands since 2012. Having found little refuge in Bangladesh, the group faces growing fears of involuntary repatriation. This is not the first time that the group has faced forced repatriation. What explains the shortcomings of past repatriations and why does the cycle persist? This paper contends that statelessness is a contributing factor in the continual failure of repatriation processes. An examination of the 1992–1997 repatriation of Rohingya refugees reveals that the condition of statelessness can undermine safeguards often granted to refugees, decrease incentives for refugees to return, and impair opportunities for long-term solutions, while exacerbating state and human security issues. An illustrative case of successful refugee repatriation in Angola suggests that the absence of statelessness can improve prospects for successful repatriation.     

Contested Resource Extraction,Anti-Corporate Protests and the Politics of Movement Alliance in Bangladesh

Why do activist groups form alliances and why do some alliances later fall apart? This article asks these questions in the context of a popular mobilisation against resource extraction in Bangladesh. It focuses on the dynamics of a strategic alliance between a locally organised community mobilisation against a British mining company and an urban radical activist group, known for its anti-capitalist activism, to explore the subsequent collapse of the alliance and the demobilisation of one group. Based on the qualitative analysis of in-depth interviews with activists and organisational documents, the article probes the underlying causes of rupture. Although several individual and organisational factors are identified, it is argued that Bangladesh’s confrontational political culture and its authoritarian party system played a critical role, with local activists vulnerable to co-optation or being silenced by powerful political actors. The article contributes to social movement scholarship by emphasising that specific political cultures can undermine efforts to build strategic alliances between diverse social movement organisations.