Precarity and Political Immobilisation: Migrants from Burma in Chiang Mai,Thailand

An estimated 1.5 million citizens of Burma reside as refugees or migrants in Thailand, where harsh treatment, harassment and social stigmas contribute to a climate of precarity. Although one possible course of action for any community under strain is political mobilisation, for migrants from Burma in the northern city of Chiang Mai, high degrees of exploitation and insecurity have generated an overwhelming disinterest in political issues. The article examines this relationship in five main sections. The first presents the two key concepts that structure the analysis: precarity and political mobilisation. The second examines the context of migration from Burma to Thailand, focusing both on the climate of unrest found in much of Burma and on Thailand's treatment of migrant workers, its non-participation in core international legislation and its sub-standard migrant registration system. The third explains how this study of Burmese migrants in Chiang Mai was undertaken and reviews the ethical considerations required in a study of vulnerable groups. The fourth documents the study's findings and presents migrants' testimony. The fifth seeks to explain the link between precarity and political passivity in this case, and considers the wider implications. The concluding section restates the core finding.     

Immigration,intermarriage and the changing face of Europe in the post war period

In this article we compare the propensity to intermarry of various migrant groups and their children who settled in Germany, France, England, Belgium and the Netherlands in the post-war period, using a wide range of available statistical data. We try to explain different intermarriage patterns within the framework of Alba and Nee's assimilation theory and pay special attention to the role of religion, colour and colonial background. We therefore compare colonial with non colonial migrants and within these categories between groups with ‘European’ (Christian) and non-European (Islam, Hinduism) religions. First of all, religion appears to be an important variable. Migrants whose faith has no tradition in Western Europe intermarry at a much lower rate than those whose religious backgrounds correspond with those that are common in the country of settlement. The rate of ethnic endogamous marriages in Western Europe are highest in Hindu and Muslim communities, often regardless if they came as guest workers or colonial migrants. Whereas differences in religion diminish the propensity to intermarry, colour or ‘racial’ differences on the other hand seem to be less important. This is largely explained by the pre-migration socialisation. Furthermore, the paper argues that the attention to institutions, as rightly advocated by Richard Alba and Victor Nee, needs a more refined and layered elaboration. Institutions, often as barriers to intermarriage, do not only emanate from the receiving society, but also—be it less formalized—within migrant communities. Especially religions and family systems, but also organized nationalist feelings, can have a profound influence on how migrants think about endogamy. Finally, strong pressures to assimilate, often through institutionalized forms of discrimination and stigmatization, not only produce isolation and frustrate assimilation (with resulting low intermarriage rates), but can also stimulate assimilation by 'passing' mechanisms. These factors, together with a more comparative perspective, are not completely ignored in the new assimilation theory, but—as this study of Western European intermarriage patterns stresses—deserve to be included more systematically in historical and social scientist analyses.     

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.     

Constitutional patriotism,migration and the post-national dilemma

This article addresses the challenges of justifying restrictions on migration given a rejection of nationalism as a defensible mode of political integration. Specifically, it focuses on constitutional patriotism, which is proposed as a means of making robust democratic practice possible in diverse contexts. Given that constitutional patriotism represents a commitment to universal principles as a source of attachment rather than the binding sentiment of nationalism, can we continue to rely on nationally defined and controlled migration practices? This article argues that, appropriately understood, constitutional patriotism implies a commitment to much freer movement of individuals across political boundaries than theorists have previously acknowledged. Applying such an approach, however, provokes some challenges to the sustainability of shared rule informed by principles rather than identity. This seeming paradox may mean that constitutional patriotism is more difficult to implement, and highlights practical challenges surrounding the liberalisation of border controls that are pertinent to theorists concerned with post-national citizenship more broadly conceived.     

Fiction and reality of mobility in Africa

This article draws on rich ethnographies and ethnographic fiction depicting mobile Africans and their relationships to the places and people they encounter to argue that mobility is more appropriately studied as an emotional, relational and social phenomenon as reflected in the complexities, contradictions and messiness of the everyday realities of encounters informed by physical and social mobility. The current dominant approach to studying and relating to mobile Africans is problematic. Nationals, citizens and locals in communities targeted by African mobility are instinctively expected to close ranks and fight off the influx of barbarians who do not quite belong and must be ‘exorcised’ so that ‘insiders’ do not lose out to this particular breed of ‘strangers’, ‘outsiders’ or ‘demons’, perceived to bode little but inconvenience and savagery. If and when allowed in, emphasis is on the needs, priorities and convenience of their reluctant hosts, who tend to go for the wealthy, the highly professionally skilled, the culturally bleached and Hottentot Venuses of the academy, even at the risk of accusations of capital flight and brain drain. The article demonstrates how to marry ethnography and fiction to study African mobility not only as a ‘collection of logical bones and flesh’ but also as ‘emotional beings’. It calls for conceptual flexibility and ethnographic empirical substantiation, and challenges social scientists to look beyond academic sources for ethnographies and accounts of how a deep, flexible and nuanced understanding of mobility and interconnections in Africa play out in different communities, states and regions of a world permanently on the move.     

Struggles over the rights of foreign domestic workers in Malaysia: the possibilities and limitations of ‘rights talk’

Abstract

The publication of Max Weber's early lecture notes on economic theory as Volume III/1 of the Max Weber Gesamtausgabe (MWG) reveals for the first time how much his teaching in Freiburg and Heidelberg from 1894 to 1898 was influenced by the ‘modern economics’ of Carl Menger and his students, Friedrich von Wieser and Eugen Böhm-Bawerk. This review essay examines the significance of this volume, and also presents a brief history and assessment of the ongoing Gesamtausgabe project.     

中华民族共有精神家园的现代化与海外移民的推动

中华民族共有精神家园的现代化既是中华民族共有精神家园具有生命力和创造力的重要前提,也是我们建设中华民族共有精神家园义不容辞的责任。中国海外移民作为中华民族成员,他们是推动中华民族共有精神家园现代化的重要力量和宝贵资源。全球化的浪潮与中国特色社会主义实践是海外移民推动中华民族共有精神家园现代化的外部环境,华侨华人文化与中华民族共有精神家园的双向互动是中华民族共有精神家园现代化的内在张力,民族性、时代性与世界性是中华民族共有精神家园现代化遵循的原则,精神家园现实问题的解决和主体自觉性的培养是中华民族共有精神家园现代化的根本路径。     

心理距离对新兴经济体企业OFDI的影响及对策——基于异质性视角

研究国家之间的心理距离对新兴经济体跨国企业OFDI的影响,并基于高管海外背景、企业所有制和海外移民网络这三个维度异质性特征下,进一步探讨心理距离对企业OFDI的影响会产生何种变化。通过理论推导得出以下结论:第一,心理距离与新兴经济体企业OFDI之间并非简单的线性关系而是存在先减后增的"U"型关系;第二,高管海外背景能够缓和心理距离与企业OFDI的"U"型关系;第三,相较于非国有企业,国有企业能够弱化心理距离与企业OFDI决策的"U"型关系;第四,当海外移民网络越丰富时,企业OFDI随心理距离先减后增"U"型趋势也更为平缓。据以上结论,提出企业和政府两方面的政策建议:一方面,跨国企业进行OFDI决策时,结合自身情况以及投资动因,对心理距离带来的风险和收益进行权衡做出合理的投资决策,同时要充分发挥高管海外背景的经验优势,重视海外移民网络的资源优势,从而提升本国企业在全球的战略布局;另一方面,新兴经济体国家应重视心理距离的优势和劣势对跨国企业的影响,鼓励和引导跨国企业进行OFDI,创建公平的营商环境,建立及时有效的海外移民网络对接平台,鼓励和帮助更多企业走出去。     

论甘肃生态环境保护新思路

甘肃生态环境建设的新思路在于全面推进节水型社会的建设;研究国家水战略及南水北调工程中甘肃受益问题;搞好全省自然保护区的提升和自养发展;将生态环境建设与21世纪甘肃反贫困战略有机结合;构建长期支撑甘肃生态环境建设投资的长效机制。     

The faith-based segregation of interments: insights from a Senegalese commune

ABSTRACT

In Senegal’s Thies Region, Joal has separate cemeteries for Muslims and Christians, while the neighbouring community of Fadiouth has one cemetery for the dead of all faiths. This paper uses these cases to shed light on why some communities have separate cemeteries for people of different faiths while others bury people of all faiths in the same cemetery. I argue that the manner in which Christianity and Islam spread in the two communities explains the differences in the spatial organisation of burials. This study of divergent approaches to burying people of different faiths sheds light on histories of migration and the important issues of inter-communal and interfaith relations. The paper is based on ethnographic research and also draws on a participatory cartography exercise.