The return migration experiences of Ethiopian women trafficked to Bahrain: ‘ … for richer or poorer,let me be on the hands of my people … ’

ABSTRACT

This study draws upon the return experiences of Ethiopian women trafficked to the Middle East. Understanding these experiences is critical to informing the design of effective government policy to mitigate obstacles to return and reintegration. This study was conducted in Addis Ababa with five women who were trafficked to Bahrain and later returned to Ethiopia. Action research was used to establish an inquiry group of women in order to produce a viable vision for successful reintegration. Despite initial high hopes, the returnees did not see migration as producing positive returns. All five participants agreed that their experiences in the destination were devastating and thus they were relieved to have returned to their home country. Nonetheless, reintegration was a difficult process for them. In addition to not accumulating enough savings to enable them to reintegrate economically, they all faced misunderstandings and impractical expectations from their families and community. The women suggested that adequate protection from law enforcement, facilitation of income-generating activities, and improved access to rehabilitation and medical services are important elements of successful return and reintegration. Effective return and reintegration policy is needed to ensure that trafficked returnees can become productive citizens in their home country.     

‘No place like home': experiences of an Ethiopian migrant in the host country and as a returnee to the homeland

ABSTRACT

Using an in-depth interview with an Ethiopian returnee who lived abroad for 17 years, this study examined both integration and reintegration experiences. For this returnee, the experience of migration was psychologically costly. Challenges in the host country included acquiring a resident permit, overcoming language barriers, and contending with oppression and marginalization. Being treated unequally was a major push factor for his return to Ethiopia. Despite his relief upon reentering his home country, he faced challenges which made reintegration difficult, including the inefficiency of government offices, lack of a work ethic, time mismanagement, and the unsystematic processes in a developing country. To facilitate integration and reintegration processes, more effective policy responses of both the host and home countries are needed. Developing countries should not miss the opportunity to capitalize on the potential contributions of returnees who are committed to bringing about positive change in their homeland.     

A political ecology of socio-economic differentiation: debt,inputs and liberalization reforms in southwestern Burkina Faso

This paper builds on work from the agrarian change and political ecology literatures to analyze the process of agrarian change among smallholder cotton farmers in southwestern Burkina Faso. Specifically, we use a rural survey of 72 heads of household in three villages to examine whether and how (1) access to agricultural inputs, (2) debt and (3) liberalization reforms combine to produce rural socio-economic differentiation based on wealth. We find that wealthier farmers use more mineral fertilizer and manure inputs than their poorer counterparts. Wealthier farmers are also better able to remain debt-free as cotton prices drop and input prices rise. Moreover, they are able to take advantage of the neo-liberal restructuring of cotton cooperatives to change polices on debt repayment and input provisioning to their favor. This growing divide has large implications for rural food security, particularly as land becomes scarcer, fallows disappear and the need to intensify production grows. This research addresses two gaps in the agrarian change literature in relating how liberalization reforms and biophysical elements drive rural socio-economic differentiation. This work also shows that merging the concerns of political ecology with the agrarian change literature allows for a deeper examination of rural socio-economic differentiation.     

Social Competence in Late Elementary School: Relationships to Parenting and Neighborhood Context

Despite evidence that neighborhoods confer both risk and resilience for youth development, the existing neighborhood research has a number of methodological limitations including lack of diversity in neighborhoods sampled and neighborhood characteristics assessed. The purpose of this study was to address these methodological limitations of existing research and to examine the relationship of neighborhood structural and social characteristics to family-level social processes and teacher-reported social competence during early adolescence. The study sample of 3,624 fifth graders (51?% girls) was ethnically diverse, including roughly even proportions of non-Hispanic White, non-Hispanic Black, and Hispanic youth. Neighborhood measures included economic disadvantage derived from the U.S. Census, physical and social disorder obtained by direct observation, and social capital from parental reports. Family-level social processes included parent reported family cohesion and youth reported maternal and paternal nurturance. We found that neighborhood factors significantly associated with youth social aggression and social competence but not social withdrawal, after controlling for individual demographic characteristics and parenting factors. There was limited evidence of moderation of family influences by neighborhood characteristics as well as the moderation of neighborhood effects by children’s gender. Neighborhood physical disorder was associated with increased social aggression among boys but with increased social withdrawal among girls. Implications of the study’s findings for research on neighborhoods and adolescent development and the development of preventive interventions are discussed.     

Using the mass-observation archive as a source for women's studies

Playing the violin in Japan was pioneered by women. The first Japanese to study the violin abroad were Kôda Nobu (1870–1946) and Andô Kô (née Kôda, 1878–1963). Both taught at the Tokyo Academy of Music (now Tokyo University of the Arts) after their return. Kôda later opened a piano studio. The article describes their lives and careers and shows how their Western expertise gave them unprecedented opportunities while their gender imposed limitations. It discusses the sisters' role in the transmission of Western music to Japan in the context of Western as well as Japanese preconceptions about appropriate musical roles for women.     

The Emergence of Feminism in Fiji 1

This article traces the etymology of Indo‐Fijian (Fiji Indian) feminisms in Fiji. In the first section, the resistances of female indentured laborers (for example, Sukhrania, Naraini and Kunti) are recovered as reflections of early forms of individualized feminisms in the early 1900s. In the second section, it is proposed that the informal and organic, yet socially significant movement of Indian women laborers in Fiji in the 1920s comprised one of the first collective intersections of gendered, classed and ethnicized relationships in Fiji. The 1930 (post‐indenture) women's movement, with its main emphasis on economic empowerment, is included in the discussion of Indo‐Fijian feminisms in the third section. The conclusion highlights that while each phase of the early feminist movement in Fiji focused on a different set of concerns that impacted on the lives of Indo‐Fijian women, this group of women have played and continue to play a prominent role in furthering the rights of women nationally and regionally.     

Gendering the union: imperial feminism and the ladies’ land league

The Act of Union of 1800, establishing Westminster control over Irish affairs, had important repercussions for the development of feminism within nineteenth-century Ireland, as well as contributing towards adifferentiation of Irish from British feminism. Feminism within Ireland was shaped by class, religion and racial identification: one strand followed theBritish model of Protestant philanthropy, while the other was concerned with asserting women's right to take part in nationalist political struggle. ‘Imperial’ feminists in Britain and Ireland, concerned with establishing their right to take part in the affairs of the ‘nation’, perceived those Irish who rejected British imperial rule as uncivilised, reserving sympathy for those whose economic position was threatened by the activities of those who campaigned against the landlord system. The period of the Land War of 1879–82 illustrates these conflicting discourses. The subsequent decline of imperial power in Ireland can be traced through a gradual change within Irish feminism from an initial support for the Union to a later embrace of nationalism, as young middle-class women, many from Catholic backgrounds, became involved in the movement     

Conflict of laws and the cloud

Cloud technology offers wonderful potential for users in terms of convenience, ease of obtaining updates etc. However, it presents significant legal challenges. Our laws, largely based on notions of territoriality, struggle to respond to technology in which lines on maps are largely irrelevant. In this article, I articulate some of the specific challenges. The law of contract, tort and national regulation might all apply to a claim of breach of privacy in relation to material uploaded to the cloud. Unfortunately, each of the jurisdictions studied would approach the issues in different ways, potentially creating significant confusion. The article proposes a need for international co-operation and agreement on these matters.