Ethnic minorities' reactions to newcomers in East London: Symbolic boundaries and convivial labor

In much public discourse on immigrants in Western Europe, perceptions towards newcomers are discussed in relation to what white national majorities think. However, today, new migrants often move into places which are already settled by previous migrants. This article investigates the local experiences, perceptions, and attitudes towards newcomers among long-established ethnic minorities in an area which they have made their home, and where they predominate not just in numbers but also by way of shops, religious sites, school population, and so on. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in East London (UK), it looks at long-established ethnic minority residents’ attitudes towards newcomers from Eastern Europe, and how these are shaped by their own histories of exclusion. By bringing together theories on symbolic boundary making with the concept of “convivial labor,” it shows how experiences of stigmatization impact on perceptions of white newcomers, and how these perceptions are characterized by a combination of empathy and resentment.     

A revised approach to racism in youth multiculture: the significance of schoolyard conversations about sex,dating and desire

Anxieties about social cohesion in multicultural societies have prompted scrutiny of how young people negotiate culturally diverse spaces. A key perspective of the literature at the intersections of youth studies and urban multiculture is that young people shift between racist and convivial modes of relationality to navigate their complex social worlds. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in a culturally diverse high school in Melbourne, Australia, I suggest that this binary framing fails to capture some of the diverse logics and practices within multicultural youth sociality. Reconciling dichotomous conceptual frames that position young people as moving back-and-forth between forms of exclusion and openness, I propose an alternative frame – a perverse form of everyday cosmopolitanism – through which to consider young people’s intercultural relations. To do this, I draw on young people’s conversations about sex, dating and desire as an entry point for new theorising about racism. Race and ethnicity were cornerstones of students’ frequent discussions about sexual ‘tastes’ and activity, discourses that have racist histories and effects. However, students did not understand their social world in such terms. These students’ social practices offer a situated illustration of how racism can function as part of a more inclusive cosmopolitan ethos in young lives, which I term ‘perverse cosmopolitanism’.     

Urban multiculture and everyday encounters in semi‐public,franchised cafe spaces

This paper engages with an emergent literature on multiculture and concepts such as conviviality and negotiation to explore how increasingly ethnically diverse population routinely share and mix in urban places and social spaces. As part of a wider ESRC funded, two‐year qualitative study of changing social life and everyday multiculture in different geographical areas of contemporary England, this paper draws on participant observation data from three branches of franchised leisure and consumption cafe spaces. We pay particular attention to the ways these spaces work as settings of encounter and shared presence between groups often envisaged as separated by ethnic difference. Our findings suggest that corporate spaces which are more often dismissed as commercial, globalized spaces of soulless homogeneity can be locally inflected spaces whose cultural blandness may generate confident familiarity, ethnic mixity, mundane co‐presence and inattentive forms of conviviality.     

The rise of chemsex: queering collective intimacy in neoliberal London

Since 2011, various public health organizations have observed the growth of the sexual practice ‘chemsex’ in the UK, primarily in London. The term chemsex refers to group sexual encounters between gay and bisexual men in which the recreational drugs GHB/GBL, mephedrone and crystallized methamphetamine are consumed. This article uses a conjunctural perspective to make sense of the rise of chemsex within the historical conditions in which it has emerged. Drawing on a document analysis as well as interviews with 15 gay and bisexual men, this article argues that the rise of chemsex can be interpreted as an embodied response to material conditions shaped by neoliberalism: specifically as a desire for an intimate mode of collectivity during a historical moment when collectivity itself is being superseded by competitive individualism as the privileged mode of being in the world (Gilbert, J. [2013]. Common ground: democracy and collectivity in an Age of individualism. London: Pluto Press). In doing so, this article provides a different account to pathologizing media and medical representations of chemsex that appeared in 2015, whilst also contributing to a growing literature that attempts to map the balance of forces of the present conjuncture.     

‘A place for men to come and do their thing’: constructing masculinities in betting shops in London

During fieldwork conducted with workers and customers in betting shops in London research participants consistently conceptualized betting shops as masculine spaces in contrast to the femininity of other places including home and the bingo hall. According to this argument, betting on horses and dogs was ‘men's business’ and betting shops were ‘men's worlds’. Two explanations were offered to account for this situation. The first suggested that betting was traditionally a pastime enjoyed by men rather than women. The second was that betting is intrinsically more appealing to men because it is based on calculation and measurement, and women prefer more intuitive, simpler challenges. I use interviews with older people to describe how the legalisation of betting in cash in 1961 changed the geography of betting. I then draw upon interviews with regular customers in order to show how knowledge about betting is shared within rather than between genders. Finally, I use my experience of training and working as a cashier to describe how the particular hegemonic masculinity found in betting shops in London is maintained through myriad everyday practices which reward certain kinds of gendered performances while at the same time suppressing alternatives. The article shows how particular spaces may become gendered as an unanticipated consequence of legislation and how contingent gendered associations are both naturalized and, at the same time, subjected to intense attention.     

Contact,the feature pool and the speech community: The emergence of Multicultural London English

In the multilingual centres of Northern Europe's major cities, new varieties of the host languages are emerging. While some analyse these ‘multiethnolects’ as youth styles, we take a variationist approach to an emerging ‘Multicultural London English’ (MLE), asking: (1) what features characterise MLE; (2) at what age(s) are they acquired; (3) is MLE vernacularised; and (4) when did MLE emerge, and what factors enabled this? We argue that innovations in the diphthongs and the quotative system are generated from the specific sociolinguistics of inner‐city London, where at least half the population is undergoing group second‐language acquisition and where high linguistic diversity leads to a heterogeneous feature pool to select from. We look for incrementation ( Labov 2001 ) in the acquisition of the features, but find this only for two ‘global’ changes, BE LIKE and goose ‐fronting, for which adolescents show the highest usage. Community‐internal factors explain the age‐related variation in the remaining features.     

Paradoxes of social mobility in London

We analyse social mobility in London and seek to address two paradoxes. Among people living in London, relative mobility, or social fluidity, appears to be remarkably low when compared with other regions of Great Britain. But social fluidity among people who were brought up in London is similar to that of people brought up elsewhere in Britain. This is our first paradox. Furthermore, it is widely held that social fluidity is higher among people with higher levels of education, yet, the proportion of people with a University degree is much higher among people living in London than in any other region: how is this compatible with its relatively low social fluidity? This is our second paradox. We address these puzzles and find that they are largely explained by patterns of migration into and out of London by two groups that have received little attention hitherto in studies of mobility in the capital: International migrants and people who were brought up in London but who no longer live there.     

Poverty,Consent, and Choice in Early Marriage: Ethnographic Perspectives from Urban Tanzania

The assumed inability of adolescents to voluntarily consent to marriage is a key definition of child marriage. Using ethnography, this study approaches consent, self-determination, and fulfillment as dependent on the ability to make choices, not only between actual alternatives but also between perceived alternatives. In contexts of severe poverty, more attention is needed to the lack of viable alternatives open to families, and their motives in this context. In this study, 171 persons were interviewed in two majority-Muslim neighborhoods in Dar es Salaam. Some girls reported wanting to marry early, since poverty forces them to become adults capable of supporting themselves at roughly age 15–16, regardless of the personal wishes of their parents or guardians. Prior research tends to assume that early marriage prevents girls from continuing their education. This study suggests that educational opportunities are often closed off to girls before marriage. Policy recommendations given here are that organizations can more effectively address early marriage by (1) shifting the focus from legislation to urban poverty alleviation, (2) creating more employment opportunities for the poorest women in the city, (3) campaigning for more gender-equal attitudes in the informal employment sector, and (4) reducing financial costs of secondary schooling for adolescents.     

伊斯兰教与韩国的中东外交

韩国伊斯兰教因朝鲜战争中土耳其军队参战之故而正式重新传入,历经50余年的发展历程。韩国伊斯兰教在成立合法组织、修建遍布全国的清真寺、完成朝觐功课、翻译韩文《古兰经》以及成立伊斯兰经学院等方面著有成绩,穆斯林人数也有相当数量的增长。韩国中东外交也自1957年因与土耳其建交而开启,韩国主要在中东开展了经济、国际贡献①以及文化等领域外交,在中东地区已具一定的影响力。韩国伊斯兰教团体对于韩国的中东外交在不同层面多有参与,对于官方的中东外交是一种有力的补充。     

中东剧变与中国中东政策

中东动荡历时一年多,导致该地区多国政权更迭,并迅速扩展到叙利亚,叙危机已成为这场动荡旋涡的中心.伊斯兰势力的崛起成为这些转型国家面临的严峻课题.动荡使中东地区格局面临新的调整,地区大国间矛盾和力量消长,将影响有关国家政局和热点问题走向.美国调整中东政策,深刻影响了地区局势走向.中国坚持“不干涉内政”原则,尊重有关国家人民自主选择的原则立场,得到国际社会理解和肯定.中东形势演变对中国中东外交带来重要机遇和严峻挑战,中国应审时度势,积极应对,谋求中国与中东国家关系的新发展.     

Reframing sociologies of ethnicity and migration in encounters with Chinese London

In this paper I argue that the intersecting sociologies of ethnicity and migration work from a series of interconnected blind spots hindering effective analysis of the current UK situation. Both operate analytically within the limitations of an ‘immigrant problem’ framework; are overinvested in state agendas; privilege a nation state analysis; are narrowly focused on distributions of migrant bodies, and on receiving, at the expense of sending, contexts. Exploring these limitations with data derived from a modest small‐scale qualitative study of young Chinese migrants in London, I argue for a reframing along four dimensions. Firstly, in an era of elite migration, sociology could reach beyond its immigrant problem framework and open up to a broader range of UK migrant ethnicities and circumstances. Secondly, a stronger focus on cities as the scale on which lives are lived, and through which diverse streams of translocal activity are routed, would open new avenues of sociological exploration. Thirdly, including translocal activities connected with distributions of ethnic migrant bodies, such as capital transfers, would broaden its focus, taking migration and ethnicity more centrally into the analysis of globalization as one of its constituting practices. Finally, paying attention to sending, as well as arrival cities, reveals migrants’ thinking and shapes the ways in which they live, as my data shows. The Chinese are both one of the UK's neglected minorities, and one of its fastest growing populations. They are a good example of new UK migrants and they bring globalization's realignment with the rising significance of China to the UK.     

Invisible,undervalued and excluded: Practicing working-class girlhood in affective space

In contemporary culture of Empire and its ‘cult of the self’, to be a young person means to be recognized, and the display of the self is read as a display of value. However, working-class girls who are economically oppressed, marked by a history of racialization, colonization, and stigmatization are assigned no value, thus remaining unrecognized. In this article, I explore the affective economies circulating for female youth who are navigating both marginal social conditions and experiences of long-standing exclusion in urban Canada. This article draws from a two-year long critical and visual ethnography conducted at a drop-in social service center for youth and the adjacent neighborhoods, where I explored the everyday gendered youth culture of a group of Canadian, working-class girls who are marked as ‘a problem’. Here I uncover the role of affect in working-class girls’ attempts to be recognized in various aspects of their everyday life. I also discuss how affective economies operate as the present expression of the girls’ collective histories to reveal the structures in place that produce the abject girl.     

日本的中东研究——以《日本中东学会年报》为例

本文主要以《日本中东学会年报》为例,介绍了日本中东研究的概况。日本对中东的研究相当深入,研究方法呈现多样化,且国际化和多学科的特点值得我们借鉴,但其与现实政治保持距离的做法值得商榷。     

伦敦都市圈及其管理体制的发展演变及特点

中世纪王权与商人的结盟使伦敦城成为伦敦发展的内核,此后伦敦围绕该内核形成了地域范围与人口的不断扩张态势。但直到工业革命后很久,伦敦才逐步形成了双层政府管理体制,并且大都市区政府获得了越来越多的权力。伦敦都市圈在公共产品与服务的提供中还非常重视发挥私人资本的作用。     

中东安全形势回顾与展望

2008年国际形势发生的剧烈变化对中东安全局势造成重大冲击,中东地区紧张状况未发生根本变化。中东地区长期动荡,既有重要的外部背景,也有复杂的内部原因,2009年中东地区安全形势依然十分严峻,奥巴马对中东政策的调整不会改变美国在中东的基本目标,大国在中东的博弈呈现加剧的趋势。中东地区的热点问题将继续存在,宗教冲突可能成为地区动荡和不稳的新因素。中东地区的传统安全和非传统安全均十分突出,严重影响地区的安全与稳定。     

中东形势综述与前瞻

2006年,巴以、黎以、伊拉克和伊朗核问题等中东四大热点问题交替升温,哈马斯、黎巴嫩真主党等伊斯兰激进势力不断壮大,美国、欧盟、俄罗斯等大国在中东地区的影响此消彼长。本文旨在总结中东整体形势,并对未来的中东局势进行展望。     

试论美国反恐与中东局势

美国巧遇恐怖袭击与中东地区关联深厚，而反恐行动更是为本已动荡的巴以局势增添了新的变数。反恐利益主导下的美国中东政策的不稳定性客观上加剧了中东局势的动荡。随着反恐行动的后续发展，伊拉克成为新打击对象，中东的两大热点--巴以争端和伊拉克问题在反恐框架中相互交织，中东局势未来走向与美国反恐息息相关。在可预见的将来，美国中东政策将在确保中东根本利益不受影响的前提下，根据反恐需要做相应调整，而巴以冲突将维持可控制的低烈度状态。     

全球化与中东国际关系

本文在对全球化缘起及国际关系格局变化进行全面论述的基础上,以大量事实说明全球化对中东各领域发展的影响及美、苏在中东地区的争夺.同时,对前苏联解体后,美国独霸世界的新形势下未来中东国际关系的发展趋势进行了阐述.     

国际体系转型与中国的中东外交

国际体系正处于新旧交替的历史时刻，单极秩序在削弱，多极力量在崛起，中国成为新的世界秩序构建过程中的一支重要力量。在越来越深地融入国际体系的过程中，中国的外交理念与实践也发生变革。在大变革的时代背景下，中东地区政治格局也发生了变化。在外部势力影响有所减弱的情况下，多支力量兴起并日趋活跃。欧美等大国之间的关系演变及政策变化将对中东政治格局产生深远影响。中国的中东外交将变得更加积极和富有进取性，同时也更加重视多边合作及与欧美等大国的协调。     

“东突”问题发展演变与中东恐怖主义相关性透视

本文从“东突”问题、“东突厥”、“东突厥斯坦”、“泛突厥主义”等概念为切入点，对“东突”问题的历史演变与发展进行了细致梳理，进而阐述了“东突”恐怖主义的实质与国际因素。研究发现，“东突”问题受国内和国外因素的双重影响，是21世纪全球恐怖主义网络化、跨国化和全球化的一部分。“东突”问题与中东恐怖主义存在内在关联，土耳其、阿富汗、巴基斯坦和部分阿拉伯国家的恐怖主义与“东突”分裂势力之间在人员、资金和技术上存在千丝万缕的联系。中国的反恐工作客观上要求它与南亚、中亚和中东国家合作，建立长效反恐机制。