Migrant life stories and the Web: the experience of having your life story made public

The life stories of migrants are increasingly being told, as part of the work of cultural organizations, and websites are well suited to making such life story projects accessible to the public. However, by using the lives of real people as raw material in a public forum, Web projects raise important questions about the terms on which participants are given a voice. This article focuses on a Danish website which depicts the life stories of migrant men through written texts, audio clips, and photographs. It presents a detailed analysis of the life story of one young man from a Muslim background who has openly declared himself an atheist. The article examines his experience of having this somewhat sensitive story made public. The religious aspect inevitably positioned his story in relation to broader political debates about Muslims in Denmark. Since migrants' stories often touch on highly politicized issues, it is crucial that their stories are not co-opted by societal discourses which they do not themselves support.     

Kurdish migrant mothers in London enacting citizenship

The article explores the mothering work of a group of Kurdish women in London as enactments of citizenship. Rather than focusing on their integration, it foregrounds the migrant mothers' ability to disrupt hegemonic citizenship narratives and bring into being new political subjects. They co-construct diasporic citizenship, through their mothering work, producing their children's cultural identifications as both British and Kurdish. These identifications are contingent, involving intra-ethnic contestations of legitimate Kurdish culture. Kurdish migrant mothers' cultural work is not simply about making nation state citizens. By giving meaning to cultural continuity and change, the mothers reference multiple levels of belonging (local, national and diasporic) which challenge state boundaries. The article shows that although mothers play a key role in constructing their children's cultural identities and their articulation in ethnic and national terms, they also contest the meaning of ethnic minority cultural practices and group boundaries, potentially disrupting hegemonic narratives of good citizenship as ethno-national.     

One (Slender) Tree,Many (Social) Roots: Revisiting Immigrant Associations Through a Case Study on Ecuadorians in Italy

Abstract

Immigrant associations are often assumed to be social phenomena already ‘out there’, while their developmental trajectories and social roots are relatively understudied. Much literature has explored their contribution to the socio-political integration of newcomers, lumping together all of their non-political activities as ‘co-ethnic sociability’. However, their micro-social roots deserve more attention, and the identity and symbolic dimensions of their initiatives are worth investigating further. Based on a literature review and an ethnography of a group of Ecuadorians living in Northern Italy, we revisit the factors affecting the development of immigrant associations as well as their primary fields of activity. While these associations are expressive of immigrants’ cultural backgrounds and basically deal with informal sociability, they also have an implicitly political dimension, as they mirror immigrants’ struggle for public visibility and recognition. A better appreciation of the political significance of immigrant associations (despite their shortcomings and political marginality), and of their evolving roots, is necessary to understand why, and how, newcomers such as the Ecuadorians in our case study may (or may not) join them.     

The third wave: mixed migration from Zimbabwe to South Africa

Migration from Zimbabwe has recently been described as an archetypal form of “mixed migration” in which refugees and migrants are indistinguishable from one another. This paper argues that such a state-centred understanding of mixed migration oversimplifies a far more complex reality and fails to adequately account for the changing nature of Zimbabwean out-migration. Based on data from three separate Southern African Migration Programme (SAMP) surveys undertaken in 1997, 2005 and 2010 at key moments of transition, the paper shows how the form and character of mixed migration from the country has changed over time. The country’s emigration experience since 1990 is divided into three periods or “waves”. The third wave (roughly from 2005 onwards) has seen a major shift away from circular, temporary migration of individual working-age adults towards greater permanence and more family and child migration to South Africa. Zimbabwean migrants no longer see South Africa as a place of temporary economic opportunity for survival but rather as a place to stay and build a future for themselves and their families.     

Fulani on the Move: Seasonal Economic Migration in the Sahel as a Social Process

Most research on short-term rural to urban migration and its impacts takes an economic approach and often emphasises negative aspects of migration, linking it synergistically with rural poverty in sending areas. Data from Fulani migrants in Northern Burkina Faso challenge this pessimistic view of short-term labour migration. Rather than a response to destitution, migration seems to be a useful way in which reasonably prosperous households can further enhance livelihood security. Moreover, factors not easily incorporated into a standard economic analysis, identity and village networks, emerge as being essential to the understanding of migration in this population. Finally, migration emerges as a highly dynamic process, which an ahistorical, static framework of analysis fails to capture.     

Migration,Livelihoods and Institutions: Contrasting Patterns of Migration in Mali

Migration is a common and essential livelihood strategy in the risk-prone environment of Sahelian West Africa. But migration is not a passive reaction to economic and environmental forces. Patterns of movement are determined by context-specific and complex dynamics, mediated by social networks, gender relations and household structures. IDS-based research on sustainable livelihoods illustrated this in two locations in Mali: in a village in the Sahelian dryland with different and gendered migration patterns of various ethnic groups; and exceptional patterns in the Sudano-Sahelian cotton region with extensive and long-lasting engagement in small cocoa and coffee plantations in Côte d'Ivoire.     

Remitting Behaviour of Nepalese Rural-to-Urban Migrants: Implications for Theory and Policy

This article uses data for Nepal to test contemporary hypotheses about the remitting behaviour and associated motives of rural-to-urban migrants and to consider the likely impact of such remittances on rural development. Possibilities for inheritance, degree of family attachment, likelihood of eventual return to place of origin and family investment in the education of the migrants are found to be significant influences on levels of remittances by Nepalese migrants. However, in Nepal, remittances do not seem to result in long-term capital investment in rural areas and so may not promote long-term development of these areas.     

Understanding European asylum cooperation under the Schengen/Dublin system: a public goods framework

Abstract

Recent developments in European Union (EU) asylum cooperation raise important questions about the nature of cooperation and the potential problems facing collective action in the realm of EU internal security. The emergence and the subsequent stability of the Schengen/Dublin system is especially puzzling, given the highly inequitable distribution of costs and benefits that this system entails among the participating states and begs the question as to why those states that are likely to face a disproportionate ‘burden’ under the system would have agreed to it. This article seeks to provide an alternative approach to answering this question by drawing on a public goods framework. We argue that a simple focus on free-riding and exploitation dynamics, as emphasized in the traditional collective action literature, falls short as an explanation and instead demonstrates how more recent theoretical contributions to the public goods literature can offer new insights into the origin and evolution in cooperation in this sensitive policy area.     

我国区域警务合作机制构建

现在我国的区域警务合作机制不论是在实施的效率、增加合作机会和层次以及警务资源的共享等方面还存在着很多的问题,这就要求我们要从建立新型的合作模式、更新现有的合作手段、转变原有的合作观念等方面努力完善我国的区域警务合作机制,只有这样才能进一步提高我国区域警务合作的工作效率、放大其实际效果,从而实现区域警务合作有效促进系统内部交流合作,控制社会面的目标。     

Preventive Care for Patients with Coronary Heart Disease

Preventive care and patients' health behaviors cah have dramatic impacts on the course of coronary heart disease (CHD). Although the importance of preventive care is accepted by most health care providers, studies consistently indicate that the delivery of these services is frequently inadequate. This article reviews the literature on the development of strategies to provide preventive care. Its aim is to shed light on potential methods for improving preventive service delivery to patients with CHD. The thesis is that through greater attention to the role of information technology and creative strategies for improving patient outreach, barriers that have been encountered in the provision of preventive care may be surmountable. In particular, recent advances involving computer systems to remind clinicians to perform preventive procedures and more aggressive telephone contact with patients between ambulatory care visits may improve the care of patients with CHD. Future work is needed to refine these strategies and to identify the types of CHD patients who are most likely to benefit from receiving them.