Social Capital Associated with Quality of Life Mediated by Employment Experiences: Evidence from a Random Sample of Rural-to-Urban Migrants in China

Working-age migrants need to possess adequate social capital in order to secure a stable and satisfactory job so that they can pursue a better quality of life (QOL). The positive relationship between social capital and vocational experiences, including successful employment, has been well established. In this study we focused on testing a multi-step mediation model linking social capital with employment experiences, and further to QOL. Survey data from rural-to-urban migrants randomly selected from Wuhan, China were analyzed. Social capital, including bonding and bridging capital, was measured using the Personal Social Capital Scale; employment experiences were measured using five job-related items; and QOL was measured using the Brief Symptoms Inventory. Structural equation modeling analysis indicated that job security and job satisfaction were positively and significantly associated with QOL, and social capital measures were significantly associated with higher QOL (primarily for males). Furthermore, job security and job satisfaction fully mediated the relationship between social capital and QOL after controlling for covariates. Findings of this study suggest the significance of social capital, job security and satisfaction in improving migrants’ QOL, implying the importance of vocational experiences in mediating the effect from social capital to QOL. If the findings can be confirmed with longitudinal data, these factors should be considered in decision making to improve rural-to-urban migrants’ QOL in China.     

A conceptualization and research strategy for the study of ecological aspects of the quality of life

The centerpiece of this paper is a proposed model identifying the various factors that ought to be brought into a thorough study of ecological aspects of quality of life. The model suggests that in addition to studying the physical, economic and social situation of an individual it also is important to study his beliefs about how the world works, his personal lifestyle, and his values, goals, aspirations and needs if one is to make adequate inferences about what produces the level of quality of life that he experiences. The model also shows that it is important to look at similar variables for a community or a society in order to arrive at inferences about quality of life for that community or society. Personal and societal learning is a dynamic factor in the model. The paper concludes with a discussion of strategies for operationalizing these factors in empirical studies.     

Researching international student migration in Asia: research design and project management issues

In the context of Asia, the changing dynamics of higher education has increased the visibility and significance of the group of intraregional education migrants. There are several methodological issues which need to be addressed in conducting research for this group of migrants. First, how does the particular type of migrant group and Asian context influence the research design? Second, in order to capture the scale and diversity of this migrant group, how should research be conducted across multiple sites? Third, how does a mixed method design allow researchers to learn more about the behaviour, practice and orientations of education migrants? Our paper aims to make contributions to the discussions on the methods of education migration research in Asia through answering these questions. We use research experiences and preliminary data from a multinational project to illustrate the issues involved in the selection of methods, research design and project management.     

The politics of leisure and labor mobilities: discourses of tourism and transnational migration in Central Java,Indonesia

This article presents narratives and tropes of transnational tourism from a less considered perspective: rural migrant-origin villagers of Central Java. Drawing from ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Cilacap and Yogyakarta, I analyze how and why some former temporary labor migrants depict their typically harsh experiences in terms of tourism and leisure. Addressing the tendency in current research to approach labor migration and tourism as mutually exclusive or unrelated class categories and experiences, I consider the ways in which former migrants and non-migrant villagers evaluate or identify labor migration in terms of gender, class, religious, and ethno-national subjectivities associated with ‘tourist’ and/or ‘migrant’ categories. Popular and commercial imaginations of leisure travel and tourism importantly shape the subjectivities and positionalities of precarious labor migrants. Foregrounding the relations between tourism and labor migration reveals the multi-scalar ways in which associated discourses and infrastructures of both mutually shape and constitute global socio-economic inequalities.     

Increasing Migration,Diverging Communities: Changing Character of Migrant Streams in Rural Thailand

This paper studies how increasing migration changes the character of migrant streams in sending communities. Cumulative causation theory posits that past migration patterns determine future flows, as prior migrants provide resources, influence, or normative pressures that make individuals more likely to migrate. The theory implies exponentially increasing migration flows that are decreasingly selective. Recent research identifies heterogeneity in the cumulative patterns and selectivity of migration in communities. We propose that this heterogeneity may be explained by individuals’ differential access to previously accumulated migration experience. Multi-level, longitudinal data from 22 rural Thai communities allow us to measure the distribution of past experience as a proxy for its accessibility to community members. We find that migration becomes a less-selective process as migration experience accumulates, and migrants become increasingly diverse in socio-demographic characteristics. Yet, selectivity within migrant streams persists if migration experience is not uniformly distributed among, and hence not equally accessible to, all community members. The results confirm that the accumulation and distribution of prior migrants’ experiences distinctly shape future migration flows, and may lead to diverging cumulative patterns in communities over time.     

Multiple Migration Flows of Romanians

Abstract

Most studies on international migration examine population movement between a country of origin and a destination. This article aims to show that migrants often change destinations, a less studied pattern of ‘multiple migrations’. This article explores how such migration occurs and analyses the variables accounting for it. Drawing on qualitative fieldwork research amongst Romanian migrants in Portugal, the article concludes that the growth in multiple migrations of Romanian migrants throughout Europe can be explained by a combination of migration policies and social networks, mediated by migrants’ level of education and type of occupation at the destination.     

The Movement Beyond (Lifestyle) Migration: Mobile Practices and the Constitution of a Better Way of Life

Abstract

This article revisits my ethnography of the British in rural France to question how mobility in post‐migration life was deemed intrinsic to the better way of life that they sought through their migration. Through the exploration of the migrants’ everyday lives, I reveal that the migrants’ mobile practices and their expectations of mobility contributed towards the perceived success of their new lives and were thus significant to the ongoing process getting to a better way of life. Beyond this example, the article also demonstrates how the findings of mobilities researchers may be mobilized in traditional anthropological fieldwork.     

贵州农村特困人口移民搬迁及扶贫开发

本文站在我国 2 1世纪扶贫攻坚战略与可持续发展高度 ,对贵州所开展的特殊扶贫方式———移民搬迁扶贫开发在效益、经验和存在问题上进行了总结和研究。认为移民搬迁扶贫开发是解决贵州农村特困人口温饱、走向发展的一条有效途径 ,并结合贵州省情对 2 1世纪初贵州特困人口移迁安置的指导思想、原则、搬迁重点区域、搬迁方式及保障措施等提出了自己的看法     

Experiences of Violence Among Transgender Women in Puerto Rico: An Underestimated Problem

Violence is a public health concern faced on a daily basis by transgender women. Literature has documented how it adversely affects quality of life and health and in some instances leads to homicide. Considering the lack of research documenting the experiences of violence among transgender women, the objective of this article was to explore manifestations of violence among this population in Puerto Rico. The data presented in this article are part of a larger study on transgender/transsexual health in Puerto Rico. For the purpose of this article we focus on the quantitative data analysis. Participants (N = 59 transgender women) were recruited via respondent driven sampling. Implications and specific recommendations are discussed in light of these findings.     

二代流动人口——对新生代流动人口的新划分与新界定

"新生代流动人口"或"新生代农民工"的提法将随着时间的推移越来越不符合现实情况的需要,本文在全面梳理国外二代移民研究成果的基础上,提出"二代流动人口"的概念和划分方式,通过与现有的"新生代流动人口"从理论上进行对比论证了"二代流动人口"群体在未来流动人口研究中的重要意义,最后为人口普查和各项有关流动人口的专项调查提供了数据采集方法上的建议,并提出了未来一些相关的研究议题.     

Migration as hope and depression: existential im/mobilities in and beyond Egypt

ABSTRACT

Recent scholarship has asserted that prolonged periods of ‘waiting’ or ‘stuckedness’ are becoming the condition of modern capitalism for many people. This article complicates this assertion by interrogating the affective life of migration, an act which offers the possibility of overcoming, but also reinforces, existential stuckedness. Using two ethnographies with young aspiring male migrants in Egypt, and older migrant men in the Netherlands, we reveal how migration, both before and after physical movement, is experienced through constant existential oscillation: between ‘‘amal’ (hope) that the good life is arriving, and ‘ikti’āb’ (an Egyptian understanding of depression) when a new blockage is met. Developing existing understandings of migratory experience and governance, the article argues that oscillation emerges out of ‘cruel’ migratory regimes which perpetually offer up the promise of the good life to aspiring migrants, while inhibiting the means of achieving it for the majority.     

Objective quality of life indicators and the external validity of community research findings

We assessed how representative the objective quality of life in our research community was in order to provide a basis for judging the external validity of environmental-behavioral research findings that will emerge from future investigations. We also provided a methodology of evaluation that could be duplicated by other community study groups. The central city and county units of a U.S. Midwestern metropolitan area were categorized into four geographic reference zones with structural attributes that differentiated them along a city-suburban-rural continuum. Within this geographic frame-work, we were able to evaluate how eleven major categories of our community's quality of life compared, and to unambiguously assign the community's quality of life a position along the city-suburban-rural continuum.     

‘Emotional authoritarianism’: state,education and the mobile working-class subjects

ABSTRACT

Examining emotions within the studies of mobilities, recent literature has highlighted that migration is an inherently uncertain process shaped by hopes and dreams, as well as feelings of fear and anxiety. More than an individual pursuit for economic advancement or cultural assimilation, we find that migration is also a political project that incessantly creates valuable working-class subjects; a project that often starts in vocational training school, a site generating multiple forms of mobility between learning and workspaces. In the context of China, this article explores the emotional reproduction of working-class subjects through schooling and internship experiences, students’ sense of belonging to the nation-state, their aspirations and fears for the future. Developing the concept of ‘emotional authoritarianism’, it examines the ways in which working-class students were influenced by state-engineered nationalistic sentiments, and how it became a conflictual process of subject-making. Emotional governance is a peculiar political strategy that shapes the emotions of working-class students who are expected to serve the growth of the national economy and transnational capitalism. We discover that mixed emotions or ‘emotions in conflict’ are fundamental to the class reproduction of migrant agents, torn among different bodies and desires in ‘learning to labour’.     

Measuring Stability and Change: Methodological Issues in Quality of Life studies

The aim of the paper is to show how the variety of approaches to study social change may result in a challenging complexity for the social scientist, starting from the difficulty of defining the concept of “change” itself and managing it through observed data. This is particularly true in presence of complex phenomena, such as those defining and composing the quality of life. What should be pointed out is that quality of life studies not only are focused on the present time but have also long term perspectives. This represents the link between studies on quality of life and forecasting. When applied to the field of quality of life, the typical logical approach to forecasts, based upon inferential statistics, could reveal its limits. Those limits are related to different aspects: e.g., the forms of relationships between different aspects of the phenomenon, which can be linear and non-linear; the dimensionality of phenomenon, which can turn out to be very complex; the causality, which could be direct or indirect; the entity of change, which implies the idea that also small change can have great impact; the perspective of observation, which can be internal or external and local or global. Consequently, the study of change related to quality of life needs, in addition to the traditional statistical tools as well as the tradition of social indicators, a different approach. Although the Futures Studies are not a proper science, nevertheless their approach to social research may ensure the requested accuracy of a scientific forecasting process.     

Absent and Problematic Men: Demographic Accounts of Male Reproductive Roles

Both men and women are important actors in bringing children into life, yet demographic studies on reproduction have tended to focus on women alone. The aims of this article are: 1) to describe why men have attracted limited interest as subjects of such research; 2) to evaluate existing research on men's roles in developing countries; and 3) to suggest directions for future research on male reproductive roles. Men, once neglected, are now included in research on fertility but from a narrow, overly problem‐oriented perspective. A review of the literature, however, raises questions about the adequacy of a problem oriented approach. The authors argue that demography should focus on men not only as women's partners, but also as individuals with distinct reproductive histories. In situations, now increasingly common, where the links between marriage and childbearing erode, the differences in men's and women's reproductive experiences and the costs and benefits of parenting will become more salient for future research.     

"Let the drag race begin": the rewards of becoming a queen

Drawing upon my ethnographic experiences in a drag venue called The Park in Roanoke, Virginia, this article explores the experiences of female impersonators in terms of their early motivations for doing drag, how they create and maintain drag personas and identities, and the obstacles to becoming a queen. Departing from previous researchers that have framed female impersonation as a deviant, stigmatizing, and pathological activity, this research analyzes the significant benefits some drag queens garner by donning women's attire. An experiential understanding of drag reveals that the significant rewards from the activity--contextual power and status, self-affirmation and empowerment--are powerful motivating factors. Instead of being deviant and/or partaking in pathological behavior, female impersonators can be seen as operating on an incentive system where the benefits of doing drag positively enrich the quality of the performer's life in a context where successful queens are held in the highest regard.     

Quality of Life and Perceptions of Crime in Saskatoon, Canada

This article investigates the relationship between crime and quality of life in Saskatoon, Canada. The city has one of the highest crime rates in the country and has been referred to as the ‘Crime Capital of Canada’, a label that comes as a surprise to many residents and causes considerable concern among others. The aim of this research is to penetrate beyond sensational news headlines and bald crime statistics. The paper evaluates how perceptions of crime and safety affect the quality of life of residents living in neighbourhoods of different socio-economic status and geographic location. Both quantitative and qualitative time series data is analyzed in a sample of neighbourhoods over the period 2001–2004–2007. The findings of the data analysis are interpreted with respect to issues relating to the fear of crime, avoidance behaviour, risk minimization, social cohesion and community building.     

基于农民工特征的工业化与城镇化协调发展研究

新时期农民工流动的过程中伴生了工业化和城镇化的六个特点:低价工业化、半城镇化、高价城式化、市民化进程二元化特征、无序人口流动、城市融合进程多样化和复杂化。基于这种特征分析,提出了坚持外造环境与内强素质、分步实施与分类指导、鼓励农民工回归和推进市民化、促进劳动力市场一体化和待遇平等化、发展大都市圈和发展县城为中心的农村城镇化“五个并重”,正确调节进城农民的流向和流速,最终促进工业化和城镇化的协调发展。     

The Consequences of Migration to the United States for Short-Term Changes in the Health of Mexican Immigrants

Although many studies have attempted to examine the consequences of Mexico-U.S. migration for Mexican immigrants’ health, few have had adequate data to generate the appropriate comparisons. In this article, we use data from two waves of the Mexican Family Life Survey (MxFLS) to compare the health of current migrants from Mexico with those of earlier migrants and nonmigrants. Because the longitudinal data permit us to examine short-term changes in health status subsequent to the baseline survey for current migrants and for Mexican residents, as well as to control for the potential health selectivity of migrants, the results provide a clearer picture of the consequences of immigration for Mexican migrant health than have previous studies. Our findings demonstrate that current migrants are more likely to experience recent changes in health status—both improvements and declines—than either earlier migrants or nonmigrants. The net effect, however, is a decline in health for current migrants: compared with never migrants, the health of current migrants is much more likely to have declined in the year or two since migration and not significantly more likely to have improved. Thus, it appears that the migration process itself and/or the experiences of the immediate post-migration period detrimentally affect Mexican immigrants’ health.     

A Meta-Analysis of the Relationship Between Spirituality and Quality of Life

The relationship between spirituality and various dimensions of health and quality of life has been extensively examined during the past decade. Though several literature reviews have been conducted in an attempt to synthesize research findings pertaining to the relationship between spirituality and health, a meta-analysis of studies examining spirituality in relation to quality of life has not been identified. The present study was designed to: (a) determine whether there is empirical support for a relationship between spirituality and quality of life, (b) provide an estimate of the strength of this relationship, and (c) examine potential moderating variables affecting this relationship. The research design followed accepted methods for quantitative meta-synthesis. Potential moderating effects of several methodological differences and sample characteristics were examined using meta-analytic approaches with multivariate linear regression and analysis of variance. An extensive multidisciplinary literature search resulted in 3,040 published reports that were manually screened according to pre-established selection criteria. Subsequent to the selection process, 62 primary effect sizes from 51 studies were included in the final analysis. A random effects model of the bivariate correlation between spirituality and quality of life resulted in a moderate effect size (r = 0.34, 95% CI: 0.28–0.40), thereby providing support for the theoretical framework underlying the study wherein spirituality was depicted as a unique concept that stands in relationship to quality of life. Subsequent regression analyses indicated that differences among operational definitions of spirituality and quality of life were associated with the variability in estimates of the magnitude of the relationship (R² = 0.27). Other potential moderators, such as age, gender, ethnicity, religious affiliation and sampling method were examined but the findings pertaining to these variables were inconclusive because of limitations associated with the sample of primary studies. The implications of this study are mostly theoretical in nature and raise questions about the commonly assumed multidimensional conceptualization of quality of life.