Avoiding the Economic Crisis: Pragmatic Liberalism and Divisions over Economic Policy in Poland

Although liberalism has been the dominant economic ideology in post-communist Poland, liberal parties have tended to struggle to win political majorities. After winning the 2011 parliamentary elections, Citizens' Platform (Platforma Obywatelska) became the first party in Poland's democratic history to win two consecutive elections. Despite its liberal ideological background, Platforma Obywatelska took a more pragmatic and cautious approach to economic policy, avoiding the introduction of strong austerity economic policies. This paper considers the debate within the liberal camp about Platforma Obywatelska's economic policies, with particular reference to the reform of pensions. It also looks at the plans of the government for more strident liberal economic reforms in its second term, at what impact these will have on the popularity of Platforma Obywatelska and at how this reflects a tension between the party's pragmatic concerns of government and commitment to liberal ideology.     

Debt Politics and the Free Trade ‘Package’: the case of the Caribbean

While much has been written on how powerful institutions have used debt crises to foist free trade agreements on poorer states, this paper explores how the foisting of free trade agreements on poorer states has resulted in debt crises. Part one critiques the common-sense understanding of ‘free trade’ as a mere technical or policy issue, arguing that it is an intricate political, economic and ideological ‘package’ rooted in complex social, historical and cultural forces. Part two explores the role of debt in the free trade package by examining the impact of free trade agreements on the Caribbean over the past decade, during which time the region has experienced growing public and personal debt crises, further fuelled by an aid packages that included millions of dollars of concessional loans. It is argued that the contradictions of ‘free trade’ are mitigated through a ‘debt for trade’ paradigm, which Caribbean states are beginning to subvert through new preferential South–South partnerships.     

Introduction—Politicising Debt and Development: activist voices on social justice in the new millennium

In contrast to mainstream development economists’ and policy makers’ insistence that relatively straightforward, technical and apolitical solutions exist to the problems of debt and development, debt is inscribed in powerful, unequal and contested structures and relations. This is vividly depicted in the articles in this special section, written by activists and researchers with years of experience mobilising and supporting grassroots struggles, which reveal the often obscure or unspoken relations of power that underpin the highly unequal dynamics of debt on a global scale, while promoting and offering fresh insights from a diverse array of new initiatives and subversive tactics that confront the dominant debt and development paradigm. They offer sober reflection on what organisations need to do to get things done in continuing and future battles for debt justice.     

From “Queue Jumpers” to “Absolute Scum of the Earth”: Refugee and Organised Criminal Deviance in Australian Asylum Policy

The arrival of asylum seekers by boat in Australia is no longer represented as a threat by the Australian government because of characteristics of asylum seekers themselves, but is instead predominantly represented as threatening because of the involvement of transnational organised crime in the form of people smugglers. This progression, which is demonstrated by comparison of the approach of the Howard coalition government with that of the Rudd and Gillard Labor governments, is best understood by reference to conventional understandings of organised crime and irregular migration, and critical accounts of both phenomena. Understood in this way, organised crime and people‐smuggling discourses serve to externalise the asylum seeker “problem” and maintain punitive policies, inhibiting the development of effective regional responses to the issue.     

Free and unfree labor in Qing China

Though internal migration in China during the Qing era (1644–1911) was mostly unrestricted, the government tightly controlled the movement of peasants who worked state lands in frontier regions and certain other locations. Such peasants accounted for 5–10% of China's population. In the state farms of northeast China, households could move legally only from one place to another within the system. Departure from the system was illegal. In this article, one of the first quantitative studies of migration in late imperial China, we apply discrete-time event-history methods to longitudinal, nominative household register data from six northeast Chinese state farm systems to compare how characteristics of the farm system, village, and household influenced the chances of legal moves and illegal departures. We show that among these state peasants, who were supposedly “unfree,” migration was not uncommon. We also show that the determinants of legal and illegal migration differed substantially. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of these findings for our understanding of migration processes in late imperial China.     

Finding the Right Words

正No phone battery,two kuai,and lost in Chaoyang amidst a sea of words and sounds that slipped one after another through my fingers.How was I going to get home?I graduated with a neuroscience degree in the South Island of New Zealand in 2012,and have been working toward my medical degree ever since.After fi ve years of science,