Labour's Record on Inequality and the New Opportunities White Paper

In its first years in office, the Labour Government set out a wide‐ranging and ambitious set of policies aimed at reducing poverty, inequality and social exclusion. A decade on, with the party facing probable catastrophic defeat in the next general election, how far can these ambitions be said to have been met? This article summarises the evidence. It also examines the most recent government White Paper on social mobility, New Opportunities: Fair Chances for the Future, published in January 2009, and asks whether this paper represents a serious last attempt to renew the equal opportunities agenda.     

网络时代我国弱势群体阶层流动困境:表征、根源及对策

网络时代弱势群体获得了一定的阶层流动机会,但并未完全摆脱阶层流动困境,由此产生的社会对立情绪、社会矛盾和风险日益突出。较之传统时代,网络时代弱势群体阶层流动的困境主要表现在机会困境、动力困境和技术保障困境三个方面,其根源在于“自我排斥”与“外部排斥”交织循环作用,其结果表现为弱势群体处于相对于网络主流社会、权力中心的边缘境遇,难以与其他社会成员进行互动,产生空间排斥,丧失认同感。通过双向赋权激发弱势群体阶层流动意愿、建立电子包容提供弱势群体阶层流动技术动力、提供网络媒介援助增加弱势群体阶层流动机会是加快弱势群体阶层流动的现实路径。     

Leaving Europe,Aspiring Access: Racial Capital and Its Spatial Discontents among the Euro-Maghrebi Minority

Abstract

This article explores the emigration of tertiary-educated EU citizens with North African heritage to Dubai. Longitudinal ethnographic data suggests that leaving Europe was a mobility strategy for dealing with a sense of ‘racial stuckedness’ at home, a status concern undergirding their stagnant socio-economic position. By ‘transnationalizing’ Bourdieu’s seminal conceptual tool kit of the ‘forms of capital’, it contrasts the conversion yields of timely achieved educational credentials, marked by racial friction at home but significantly higher returns after transgressing into more favorable status zones overseas. This differently structured outcome suggests the analytical productivity of an altogether distinct value form, ‘racial capital.’     

Re‐imagining Geographic Labour Mobility through ‘Distance Labour’

Geographic labour mobility is necessary for increasing productivity in Australia. Long‐distance commuting has been found to be especially significant. However, important considerations are being excluded from policy discussions within the Productivity Commission on this topic. This commentary covers these important omissions. They are, namely, the problematic conflation of the terminologies of ‘fly‐in, fly‐out’ and ‘long‐distance commuting’ with mining, and a lack of qualitative research investigating the material impacts of these labour practices on people's lives. This commentary puts forward a new terminology, ‘distance labour’, to better include those industries on the margins of distance commuting. By accounting for the social worlds of workers engaged in distance labour, the Productivity Commission could increase the validity of its datasets, and provide more egalitarian policy recommendations.     

“游”的下行与“文”的上升——论东汉士人流动的下行趋势及其文章史意义

东汉士人的流动相对战国、西汉时期的士人流动呈现出"下行"趋势,具体表现为游学群体的"平民化"、游学地点的"民间化"和游学目的的"俗世化"。士人流动、士人流动的"下行"促成了文章写作群体的生成与文章体裁的新变,并带来了东汉文章写作的繁荣。伴随着大量士人的流动与写作群体的生成,非实用类文章也日渐增多,表现为文章抒情功能的提升。后世所言的真正的"文学"这一意识形态,日益脱离史学、经学而走向自觉与独立,最终促成了"文"的上升。     

Picturing theory: Nicole Awai’s black ooze as post-diaspora expression

ABSTRACT

Given contexts of globalization and transnationalism, and calls within the academe for new vocabularies to describe contemporary migrations and encounters, this article looks to the visual arts in its proposal of a lexicon for articulating mobilities and self-fashioning. In its consideration of a post-diaspora theory, the article lays a foundation for its argument by putting the ideas of philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre in dialog with the work of Trinidadian-born, US-based contemporary artist Nicole Awai, specifically the artworks in which she attends to the notion of a black ooze. Rather than dislocation and disjuncture, the article posits the idea of the viscous or the ooze as a symbol of diverse affiliations and nuanced mobilities. Furthermore, the ooze is advanced as a means of understanding post-diaspora in gendered terms. The article asks: what forms of expression are available to reconfigure identities as post-diasporic? It argues that Nicole Awai’s work is one such expression.     

The Perils and Penalties of Meritocracy: Sanctioning Inequalities and Legitimating Prejudice

This article deploys insights from Michael Young’s 1958 satire The Rise of the Meritocracy to challenge the dominant ideology of meritocracy in contemporary British society. It draws on ethnographic research in schools over a twenty-five year period to illustrate the damage the illusion of meritocracy inflicts on children and young people, but particularly those from working class backgrounds. It argues that the consequences of the pretence of meritocracy are to be found in everyday practices of testing, hyper-competition and setting, and beyond the classroom in the designation of predominantly working class schools as ‘rubbish schools for rubbish learners’. It concludes that, beyond the negative consequences for working class learners, there are wider consequences for British society, exacerbating social divisions and encouraging the growth of distrust, prejudice, envy, resentment, and contempt between different social groups.     

Stuck in Mobility? Interrupted Journeys of Migrants With Precarious Legal Status in Europe

Abstract

Due to lack of access to work and support services migrants with precarious legal status engage in onward mobility within EUrope and thus contest the migration regime that aims to control and limit their mobility. This article highlights the ambiguous nature of mobility from a critical mobilities perspective based on multi-sited ethnographic research and interviews with migrants in Austria, Germany, Italy, and Switzerland. By focusing on their interrupted journeys, the article shows how migrants use mobility to secure basic needs and avoid migration control attempts and how this enhanced mobility aggravates emotional instability.     

“Sitting on a Man: Colonialism and the Lost Political Institutions ot lgbo Women”: A Reply to Judith Van Allen

Présenté par ses promoteurs comme une initiative renouvelant l'approche du Développement en Afrique, le Nouveau Partenariat pour le Développement de l'Afrique (NEPAD) suscite dans la littérature des travaux essentiellement normatifs. Dans cet article, nous cherchons à savoir s'il introduit une innovation ou s'il perpétue des politiques préexistantes. En explorant la genèse, les idées et les stratégies du NEPAD, nous montrons que l'innovation postulée est limitée et mettons en évidence deux phénomènes explicatifs. Elle est limitée d'abord en raison de la dépendance au sentier précédemment balisé notamment par les institutions financières internationales; dépendance qui provient des phénomènes de diffusion des idées et de rigidité des structures et normes politiques institutionnalisées et implique une continuité avec les politiques antérieures. Elle est limitée ensuite en raison des stratégies instrumentales des dirigeants africains qui, répondant à l'appel des partenaires extérieurs, "jouent le jeu" en adoptant les idées, les discours et les stratégies dominantes en vue de recevoir des ressources subordonnées à cette attitude conformiste.     

Authoritarian Co-optation in the Age of Globalisation: Evidence from Hong Kong

The existing literature on authoritarian survival, implicitly or explicitly, assumes that political challenges faced by authoritarian regimes are all domestic. I argue that globalisation exposes authoritarian regimes to new sources of threat. In particular, capital mobility forces authoritarian regimes to deal with not only those who dare to voice out dissatisfaction, but also those who exit. While repression may be the best strategy to silence the vocal, co-optation would be a more effective tool to retain the runaway. It is, however, often impossible to co-opt all the capital owners. As such, authoritarian regimes have to be selective when choosing co-optation targets. I argue that authoritarian regimes would co-opt renowned firms because these firms yield the greatest demonstration effect. Hong Kong provides an interesting case to illustrate my arguments. Beijing strategically co-opted the stakeholders of renowned firms in Hong Kong in order to solve the city's pervasive confidence crisis prior to 1997. I test my arguments with data on firms listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. I find that firms owned by well-known and prestigious elite families were more likely to build political connections with Beijing. To test the causal linkage more rigorously, I use both the genetic matching and instrumental variable approaches. The empirical results provide strong support to my arguments.