Deported before experiencing the good sides of migration: Ethiopians returning from Saudi Arabia

ABSTRACT

In the period November 2013–April 2014 more than 160,000 Ethiopians were deported from Saudi Arabia after a seven months amnesty period for undocumented migrants came to an end. This large-scale regularization campaign of the Saudi government must be seen in light of the ‘Arab Spring’, when popular uprisings in the Middle East were threatening dictatorial regimes. The effect of the Arab Spring was felt globally; the uprisings impacted upon migrants living in countries in the Middle East and on their countries of origin. This paper looks into the experiences of Ethiopian deportees prior, during and after their forced return. We argue that the fact that the migrants were not prepared for their sudden return affected their economic, social network and psychosocial embeddedness back in Ethiopia. In addition, the Ethiopian government has not been able to improve the returnees’ economic embeddedness, which has affected their social and psychological status negatively.     

Moroccan Diaspora in France and the February 20 Movement in Morocco

ABSTRACT

This article analyzes the links between the so-called 20 February 2011 Movement in Morocco and the Moroccan migrant organizations in France. The research examines how the 50-year-long history of these organizations shapes Moroccan migrants' political experiences and their ties to homeland in order to explain why they do not play a significant role in the events unfolding in Morocco in 2011. To this end, concepts such as diaspora and transnationalism are mobilized to grasp how activists are connecting to places and territories and reducing the distance between them, while preserving a certain unity in their collective action.     

Researching Refugee Youth in the Middle East: Reflections on the Importance of Comparative Research

This paper reflects on the value of comparative anthropologicalresearch with refugee youth. It examines a participatory researchprogramme in eight field sites in the Middle East and NorthAfrica. While recognizing the importance of the specific socio-politicaland cultural context of the different field sites, it has beenpossible to uncover similarities among refugee youth that wouldhave been missed were it not for the exercise in comparison.What emerges from these findings, within research contexts whichwere viewed, by some, as unique and thus not comparable, arethematic similarities. Characteristic of many young people livingin situations of prolonged forced migration are issues of multipleand conflicting identities and ambivalence to transgressed places;activism; and engagement in activities independent of existinghumanitarian aid structures. Thus it can be seen that comparativestudies can draw out the features and qualities which transcendborders, local cultures and the humanitarian aid regime to displaythe traits in common among refugee youth.     

Exit from agriculture: a step forward or a step backward for the rural poor?

World Development Report 2008: Agriculture for Development recommends that rural smallholders unable to compete in higher value production should exit agriculture. For the old and new landless, the way forward is wage labour in agriculture, in rural off farm work, or in urban areas. Disjunctively, the Report also proposes ‘farm-financed social welfare’ as a safety net when urban workers are ejected back to countryside at times of ‘urban shock’. My essay contrasts the Report's narrative about felicitous trajectories away from and back to the farm with the historical and contemporary experience of Asia's rural poor.     

Forests lost and found in tropical Latin America: the woodland ‘green revolution’

Forest dynamics in the Latin American tropics now take directions that no one would have predicted a decade ago. Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon has dropped by over 80 percent, a pattern mimicked elsewhere in Amazonia, and is down by more than a third in Central America. Forest resurgence – increasing forest cover in inhabited landscapes or abandoned lands – is also expanding. In Latin America, woodland cover is increasing, at least for now, more than it is being lost. These dramatic shifts suggest quite profound and rapid transformations of agrarian worlds, and imply that previous models of understanding small-farmer dynamics merit significant review centering less on field agriculture and more on emergent forest regimes, and in many ways a new, increasingly globalized economic and policy landscape that emphasizes woodlands.

This paper analyzes changing deforestation drivers and the implications of forest recovery and wooded landscapes emerging through social pressure, social policy, new government agencies, governance, institutions, ideologies, markets, migration and ‘neo-liberalization’ of nature. These changes include an expanded, but still constrained, arena for new social movements and civil society. These point to significant structural changes, changes in tropical natures, and require reframing of the ‘peasant question’ and the functions of rurality in the twenty-first century in light of forest dynamics.     

Introduction: New directions in agrarian political economy

For four decades, The Journal of Peasant Studies (JPS) has served as a principal arena for the formation and dissemination of cutting-edge research and theory. It is globally renowned as a key site for documenting and analyzing variegated trajectories of agrarian change across space and time. Over the years, authors have taken new angles as they reinvigorated classic questions and debates about agrarian transition, resource access and rural livelihoods. This introductory essay highlights the four classic themes represented in Volume 1 of the JPS anniversary collection: land and resource dispossession, the financialization of food and agriculture, vulnerability and marginalization, and the blurring of the rural-urban relations through hybrid livelihoods. Contributors show both how new iterations of long-evident processes continue to catch peasants and smallholders in the crosshairs of crises and how many manage to face these challenges, developing new sources and sites of livelihood production.     

African immigrant women’s experience in western host societies: a scoping review

There is a dearth of literature on new African immigrant populations in Canada, especially women from Sub-Saharan Africa. Much of the sparse literature focuses on men’s experiences. We analyzed the sparse literature on African immigrant women in western host countries with a focus on previous and emerging trends in the discourse, gaps in literature, important areas for consideration in future research as well as potentially viable theoretically and methodological directions that scholars could follow. We also briefly shared the results of a set of focus group discussions with African women in Canada that followed our scoping review. The findings of our scoping review of literature, largely reinforced in the focus group discussions, underscore the need for more studies on Sub-Saharan African immigrant women’s experiences within and outside the family. Active community engagement as well as the mobilization of women's agency and cultural knowledge, resonate as crucial factors that enhance the transition and integration of Africans into Western host societies.     

Between idealism and reality: the unknown chapter of the Thessalonikian dockworkers in their struggle in the port of Haifa, 1933–1935

In the struggle of Jewish labor in the port of Haifa during the British Mandate, the Thessalonikian dockers played a major role. Until recently the story of their absorption was analyzed ‘from above’ with a functionalist-nationalist explanation. The Thessalonikians arrived equipped with professional skills, enthusiasm, and Zionist solidarity, which ostensibly was to be sufficient for their successful occupational integration at the waterfront. This article looks again on (1) the push–pull factors of migration, and (2) the professional and economic absorption in the waterfront of Haifa, but according to social history approach and ‘from below’, from which emerges a much more complex story. We note failures and successes to gain a foothold in the maritime labor market, the persistence involved, and the partial withdrawal from the struggle. The deepening chasm between national idealism and social reality brought an ongoing polemic between the Thessalonikian dockers and the Zionist elites of the interwar Yishuv, with both sides failing to bridge the gaps.     

The Salience of Race

While the salience of race is rising in public discourse, the dominant knowledge structure in international studies has deflected this issue. A look at curriculum and research programs suggests that the transnational dimensions of race are sidelined. The core concept of state sovereignty rarely opens to questions of race. Yet there is a longstanding tradition in transnational race relations, including substantial literature and university initiatives. These have had a tangible impact on the activities of international organizations. To restart such efforts in ways appropriate for our times, it is suggested that six sets of interaction between globalization and race could form the core of a curriculum and research program. This foundation provides the basis for explaining how the politics of "we" and "they," friends and enemies, operates in racializing questions of identity, especially after 9/11, when inclusion and exclusion are increasingly securitized.     

Bringing the Emigration State Back In

The decades between 1948 and 1980 are often remembered as a time of mass immigration, yet almost 2 million more people left Britain than arrived in those years. Mass emigration has been an enduring part of Britain's modern history and this article explores its effects on British politics. The two world wars, the turn to tariffs, joining the EEC and leaving the EU: at these critical junctures, Britain's overseas diaspora was mobilised to reshape domestic politics and to transform the UK's global political economy. Charting the rise, fall and afterlife of Britain's ‘emigration state’ can contribute to our understanding of these events and help researchers analyse the effects of racism and empire on modern British politics.