Choosing to be political: some reflections on youth activism in the US

This article explores youth activism in the US, not through the lens of collective action, but as the product of personal choices. By drawing on existentialism, and particularly on the work of Jean-Paul Sartre, this article proposes to shift the focus of the debate from youths’ collective action to the self – a conscious self that observes, perceives and makes sense of the surrounding world through personal experience. It is this conscious self that decides how, and whether, to intervene against the ‘wrong’ that the self experiences. In this perspective, it is not only the acts (of citizenship) that matter, but the conscious process through which the self chooses to become political. Such an understanding will ultimately help uncover not only how the undocumented act and how to conceptualise their acts but also how they perceive and experience their current status and who they want to become.     

Single,straight, wants kids: media framing of single,heterosexual fatherhood via assisted reproduction

The new reproductive technologies have made possible various postmodern family forms. I highlight an emerging form that has received little attention: single fathers by choice (SFCs), created by single men using egg donation and surrogacy. I focus on heterosexual SFCs, which have been largely ignored in the scholarly literature even as gay and lesbian parenthood have increasingly become topics of feminist inquiry. This type of fatherhood raises several important questions for gender and family scholars about the ‘traditional’ family, the relationship between masculinity and fatherhood, and men’s own desires for parenthood without a female partner. I analyze US media framing to explore cultural sense-making of SFCs. While media framing cannot tell us about men’s lived experiences as intentional single fathers, it does point to larger discourses that potentially impact these men as they engage in non-normative fathering. I identify three core themes within the media frames: (1) viewing men and women as similar, but ultimately different, (2) addressing the tension between bachelorhood and fatherhood, and (3) representing the gender of paternal desire in multiple, conflicting ways. Overall, I argue that further investigations of SFCs can illuminate issues about men’s desires for children and agency in becoming fathers.     

产业转型中内部劳动力市场的优化对新生代农民工人力资本提升的影响研究

在经济发展新常态背景下,我国产业转型升级和经济增长质量都要求劳动力具备转型所需的创造性、技能性等特征。新生代农民工作为农村劳动力转移的主体,同时也是承担产业转型的直接参与者,这部分劳动力的质量对我国产业转型升级以及广大中小企业的可持续发展有重要的影响作用。但目前,新生代农民工较低的人力资本水平已经明显成为阻碍产业转型、技术创新、企业发展的主要障碍。因此,在分析产业转型过程中新生代农民工人力资本提升效应的基础上,着重从企业内部劳动力市场的机理进行分析,构建内部劳动力市场效率模型,并基于调查数据的实证分析,以探究内部劳动力市场优化对新生代农民工人力资本提升的影响路径。     

‘Ringleaders and Troublemakers’: Malawian (Nyasa) migrants and transnational labor movements in Southern Africa,c.1910–1960

The article examines the transnational role of Malawian (Nyasa) migrant laborers in the emergence and development of African labor and proto-nationalist movements in Southern Africa. Using both archival and secondary evidence mainly from Southern Rhodesia and South Africa, it argues that the history of Southern Africa’s labor consciousness from the early to mid-twentieth century can be enriched by exploring the place of Nyasa migrants in shaping anti-colonial processes across the region. Nyasa migrants, a product of the colonial labor migration system (chibaro/mthandizi), laid the foundations for, and influenced trade unionism in the region, especially between 1910 and 1960. The colonial wage economy created ambiguities of dependence for Africans forcing many into a migrant and capitalist world laden with dilemmas, tightropes, and frustrations that fueled social movements. Malawian migrants who were at the core of such movements within a regional colonial economic system, gained a reputation for being ‘ringleaders and troublemakers’ to the colonial governments. Existing literature has not fully historicized the centrality of Nyasas in molding this critical episode of Southern African history. The historiography has dealt with these dynamics in an ad hoc manner, approaching this Nyasa ‘annoyance’ on a national basis, without drawing on the underlying regional connections.     

Ethno-racial identity (politics) by law: “Fraud” and “choice”

Following an introduction to the changes in how ethno-racial identity is conceptualized in the social sciences and humanities by the destabilization of categorical frameworks, the author looks at how law reacts to these discussions and paradigm shifts, and argues that legal and administrative approaches face severe linguistic and conceptual limitations by operating within a “choice” and “fraud” binary. The article then questions if the free choice of identity exists as a principle of international minority protection law, a legal field that arguably represents a global political and ethical consensus. The author makes two claims. First, according to the basic tenet of legal logic, a proper right to free choice of identity allowing people to opt out of racial, ethnic, or national (minority) communities would necessitate the freedom to opt in to the majority or to any chosen group. The second claim, however, is that international law would not actually construct an approach to opting in. Thus, the right to free choice of identity is not an autonomous, sui generis right under international law.     

Addressing Information Needs in Employment Services Provision in Italy: The Role of Codesign Networks

This article examines how coproduction can contribute to information quality in support of labor-market decision-making. Data was gathered on different types of Labor Market Intelligence (LMI) as decision-support systems for stakeholders, and subsequently by analyzing a specific program, with a focus on the role of information within its coproduction process. Results confirm the importance of information systems to support employment services design, but highlight the limitations of existing channels, and outline the types of information needed for policy effectiveness: those that are gathered through continuous relations with employers and jobseekers, and that often derive from participation in policy networks.     

Birth Registration and Protection for Children of Transnational Labor Migrants in Indonesia

ABSTRACT

Policies on transnational labor migration do not consider workers' needs as parents or the rights and welfare of their children, including a child's right to an official identity through birth registration. A study of birth-registration decision making by migrant parents in Lombok, Indonesia underscored the need for targeted responses to uniquely challenging circumstances and priorities of migrant parents. Free birth registration through birthing and health centers and village-level leaders can overcome problems of decentralized implementation of national strategies and an exploitive registration brokerage industry, mitigating risks of de facto statelessness for children and a multigenerational pattern of undocumented and unsafe migration.     

“三种精神”引领职工文化自信

职工文化自信是文化自信的具体体现,打造健康文明、昂扬向上的职工文化,离不开工人阶级和广大劳动群众的伟大品格,离不开工匠精神、劳模精神和劳动精神。这三种精神,是新时代职工文化建设的旗帜,是新时代职工文化自信的引领。     

马克思劳动关系理论与全球劳动关系的演变

马克思的劳动关系理论对于20世纪80年代以来全球劳动关系的演变过程具有很强的解释力,劳动关系内部权力结构及处理机制所发生的变化使劳动关系出现了极其严重的权力与利益分化,当代劳动关系的复杂性远远高于马克思所描述的19世纪的资本主义劳动关系。在马克思提出的劳动关系的理想模型中,不存在由劳权缺失所引发的矛盾、冲突与分化。在这种理想的劳动关系尚未实现的情况下,劳权保护机制是不能缺失的。在劳动关系内部,保护雇佣劳动者劳权的唯一途径依然是减弱资本优先权和管理优先权对劳动关系的过度控制。在劳动关系外部,完善的公共保障体系则能够同时保护雇佣劳动者和非雇佣劳动者的劳权。随着非雇佣劳动者数量的增长,劳权保护将对公共保障体系形成更多的依赖。     

Living and working as a domestic worker in the Middle East: the experience of migrant returnees in Girana town,North Wollo,Ethiopia

ABSTRACT

This article explores the migration experiences of Ethiopian migrant returnees from domestic work in the Gulf countries and Lebanon. The returnees reside in the town of Girana located in Habru sub-district, North Wollo zone of Amhara region. There is much female work migration to the Arab Middle East from the town, particularly to Saudi Arabia through Muslim pilgrimage. Employing a qualitative method, the study examines how the returnee women perceived and experienced labour migration and analyzes the impacts of labour migration on childcare, family survival back home, and debt payment. The returnees made voluntary regular and irregular labour migration to the region and engaged in domestic work, which is not preferred by the host society. However, domestic work is unregulated by the labour policy of the destination countries. This made the returnees’ employment situation rather exploitative, exacerbating their vulnerability to abuses, ethnic denigration, and undermining of cultural identity.