The Relational Contexts of Migration: Mexican Women in New Destination Sites

This article assesses Mexican immigrant women's experiences of isolation and autonomy in three new destination sites in Montana, Ohio, and New Jersey. We highlight six case studies from our cross‐comparative data set of in‐depth interviews and field work with 98 women to illustrate the intersections between contexts of reception and gender relations in shaping women's settlement experiences. We find that women in sites with a concentrated Mexican population and a well‐developed social service infrastructure are relatively autonomous in accomplishing daily activities independent of their relationships with husbands or partners. In contrast, for women living in sites with few social support services, relationships with the men in their lives, what we call their “relational contexts,” matter for women's experiences of isolation or autonomy outside the home. Relational contexts have not been emphasized in previous literature on gender and migration but may be significant in shaping women's experiences across varying contexts of reception.     

Postmigration Living Difficulties,Help-Seeking and Community Resilience in the Initial Stages of Migration: Coproducing Community Practice with Recent Irish Migrants to London

This article describes a community-based participatory action research (CBPAR) project that examined the postmigration living difficulties (PMLD), help-seeking and community resilience of recent Irish migrants to London (n = 176). The majority of respondents were young adults, in managerial or professional occupations and in good or very good health. Mixed methods indicate inadequate planning for relocation and poor social support as the main difficulties in the initial stages of migration. Community factors promoting resilience included employment opportunities, local and transnational supports, and cultural familiarity and acceptance. Community participation in the action orientated phase of this CBPAR is discussed.     

One Family, Two Households: Rural to Urban Migration in Kenya

Many households in sub-Saharan Africa allocate their labor resources between rural and urban areas to diversify risks and maximize income. One such strategy would be for a husband in a rural area to migrate to an urban area while his wife and family remain in the rural area without any chance of joining the migrant husband in the urban area. The family maintains a rural home and an urban home. This article explores possible determinants of this type of migration using data from Kenya. Nontrivial findings suggest that such migratory behavior may be motivated by agglomeration effects of household size in the rural area, an increase in remittance by the migrant husband to his rural family, a relatively low education for the husband, and a high urban cost of living.     

El Miedo y El Hambre: Understanding the Familial,Social, and Educational Realities of Undocumented Latino Families in North Central Indiana

This study explored how different ecological factors, within and outside the family, affected the educational success of the children of undocumented families. The sample consisted of 63 immigrant Latino parents (40 families) who resided in North Central Indiana. This study utilized an ethnographic research design. Findings demonstrated that immigration laws were affecting the educational success of the children of undocumented families. Most parents expressed lack of familiarity of the American educational system and that they had culture and language barriers. Findings also demonstrated that undocumented families were adapting to their realities, as a result of the resiliency in their families and communities. Implications for practice and future research were provided.     

‘Here and There’: Children and Youth’s Perspectives of Borders in Mexico–United States Migration

This article explores children’s perspectives regarding migration and family separation on both sides of the Mexico‐U.S. border. ‘Transnational care constellations’¹ that connect separated siblings allow children to imagine the other side of the border and to explore their thoughts and perspectives through the lenses of inequality, as well as through a sense of belonging and family. This article presents ethnographic data of families that capture the dynamism of families that are both ‘here and there’ as children assemble their ideas and narratives of how transnational lives exist.     

The gendered contours of North Korean Migration: sexualized bodies and the violence of phenotypical normalization in South Korea

This article examines the gendered and sexualized contours of North Korean experiences in South Korea at a time when nearly 70% of the North Korean emigrants are women. South Korean television shows – e.g. reality programs – and marriage matchmaking organizations seek to portray North Korean women in a ‘positive’ way to the South Korean public, although, as this article will illustrate, these representations are of a very particular, sexualized kind. These representations are sometimes negative, and there is stigma attached to North Korean women, in which South Koreans assume, for example, that they are victims of human trafficking or that they have had relations with Chinese men during their migration. Furthermore, poor nutrition and other forms of structural violence in North Korea have molded North Korean bodies; there are often physical disparities between North and South Koreans. In South Korean society where short height is viewed as undesirable and where idealized, surgical notions of beauty dominate, the violence of gendered phenotypical normalization mark North Korean bodies as smaller, foreign, and strange. Based on ethnographic research in South Korea, this article argues that these gendered contours of North Korean migration amount to a different sort of structural violence in South Korea.     

Migration,insecurity and identity: The Nepali dairymen in India's Northeast

The migration of the Nepalis to Northeast India for cattle grazing and dairy farming since the last years of the nineteenth century evolved as a mainstay of later Nepali migrations in the twentieth century. It is significant that this group of migrants enjoyed active colonial patronage, along with the labourers and Gurkha soldiers in the army, but was among the first to face the impact of changing colonial land and taxation policies. Government policies of exclusion and nativist attitudes in post-independence India caused them considerable insecurity about their status in the region. This paper highlights the evolution of the Nepali dairy farmers as an important economic group within the larger group of Nepali migrants in Northeast India, and looks at the issues that led to a redefinition of their relations in the host country and articulations for reassertion/or search for an identity in India.     

Breaking the in‐group out‐group: shifting boundaries in transnational partner choice processes of individuals of Moroccan,Tunisian, Algerian,Turkish, Punjabi Sikh,Pakistani and Albanian descent in Belgium

The ongoing popularity in some second and third generation migrants in Western Europe of marrying a partner from the countries of origin of their (grand)parents is considered to be problematic for micro and macro level societal integration of some migrant populations. Partner choice and marriage practices in migrant communities are problematized in public, media and political discourses by discriminating them from marriage practices in the ‘native’ population on the basis of three related dichotomies: (1) agency versus structure, (2) us versus them and (3) romantic versus instrumental marriage intentions dichotomies. By means of in‐depth qualitative research methodologies on the partner choice processes of women and men of Turkish, Moroccan, Algerian, Tunisian, Punjabi Sikh, Pakistani and Albanian descent in Belgium and an intersectional theoretical approach, this article aims to deconstruct popular and simplifying dichotomous representations of partner choice processes in these migrant populations. Our study reveals how religious, gender and social class boundaries are stretched to meet personal/individual desires and preferences. Individuals do experience social restrictions when it concerns social group boundaries and the potential partners that they can look for. At the same time individuals are never fully determined by their social environment, they creatively develop strategies to by‐pass certain restrictions and to some extent are able to meet their personal needs while being sensitive to the desires of their social environment.     

Exploring the Ebbs and Flows of Community Engagement: The Pyramid of Engagement and Water Activism in Two Canadian Communities

In this article, we share results from a comparative study exploring the dynamics of community engagement surrounding local water advocacy organizations in two Canadian communities. Although emergent local issues and the perception of crisis triggered some short-term community engagement, social factors such as collective identity, a sense of community, and sense of efficacy appear to be more important for sustaining and deepening engagement. Drawing on the results, we show how the pyramid of engagement, by depicting activist engagement as a multilevel, developmental process, can serve as a useful tool for community engagement scholars and practitioners alike.     

The Use of Dialogue in Community Organization Practice: Using Theory,Values, and Skills to Guide Group Decision-Making

The ability to engage diverse community participants in group dialogue to resolve differences, establish common ground, identify problems, set goals, and plan actions is an essential part of community organization. However, there are limited resources in the social work literature about how social work skills can best be used to facilitate group dialogue in this context. In this article, the theories and values associated with the use of group dialogue are discussed. The manner in which these skills are applied in community organizing is described. The interpersonal skills needed for facilitating group dialogue in community organization practice are also examined.     

When Public Tragedies Happen: Community Practice Approaches in Grief,Loss, and Recovery

Although an expansive literature exists on individual experiences after a catastrophic event, there is less attention to how the community as a social structure experiences a significant tragedy. These public tragedies create disruptions across multiple domains of community functioning. Using the Community Capacity Model (Hart, 1999) as a framework for assessment, outcomes of a public tragedy are described. Additionally, community practice approaches are identified for the three phases that communities subsequently experience: crisis, processing of the event, and adaptation.     

Making Connections: Community Organizing,Empowerment Planning,and Participatory Research in Participatory Evaluation

This article shows the intersections of participatory research, popular education, empowerment planning, and community organizing with participatory evaluation. It argues that a truly successful participatory evaluation involves participants in guiding and even conducting the research, doing a process of self- and program study, creating plans for change, and organizing themselves for implementing these plans. Next, the chapter shows how these elements played out in a participatory evaluation of a community organizing training and technical assistance project in Toledo, Ohio. The first year of the project was facilitated by participatory evaluation that helped identify early successes and problems so participants could make programmatic changes early in the process. The telling of the story also develops practices of participatory evaluation, including planning the evaluation, doing the research and adapting it to changing conditions, uncovering creative tensions, participatory validity checking, and linking the process to planning and action. The chapter concludes with some lessons for participatory evaluation practice.     

The role of marriage in linguistic contact and variation: Two Hmong dialects in Texas1

The role of marriage in linguistic contact and variation has been under‐represented in sociolinguistic research. In any practice‐based analysis, individual interactions and relationships are crucial. Therefore, marriage relationships – small but intense communities of practice – deserve variationist attention for their role in dialect construction and identity. This investigation of cross‐dialectal marriages explores how dialect practices and choices are negotiated between partners. The results show the importance of viewing this linguistic behavior in terms of community ideology, culture, and individual choice, rather than primarily as a matter of the amount and intensity of contact. Likewise, the study shows how less commonly studied minority communities can bring new insights to the study of dialect acquisition and linguistic contact. Specifically, this investigation focuses on marriages between speakers of two different dialects of Hmong, a Hmong‐Mien language of Southeast Asia. On the basis of home visits to ten Hmong immigrant households in Texas, the study analyzes lexical and phonetic contrasts and ethnographic interviews. Results suggest that macro‐level shifts in Hmong social organization and gender roles are being reflected and constructed by gendered, marriage‐level dialect practices. The linguistic behavior in these marriages is best viewed as a matter of community ideology in tension with individual choice: individual wives are choosing to challenge the traditional Hmong ideology regarding language behavior in cross‐dialect marriages.     

A Changing Game: Ethnicity,Gender, and Nation in the US American Soccer Film

Both sport and film play a key role in contemporary US American popular culture. They are widely regarded as legitimate carriers and formative instances of social identities such as ethnicity, gender, or nationality, and they have capitalized upon one another with increasing success. Soccer and soccer films provide a case in point, as both the sport and its treatment in US American feature films are currently undergoing a change from a rather marginal position to a somewhat secure place within the cultural mainstream. This essay analyses five recent American soccer films with a particular focus on how they frame soccer as an ethnic, gendered, and ‘national’ game in a US context.     

Ambivalences of the emotional logics of migration and family reunification: emotions,experiences and aspirations of Bangladeshi husbands and wives in Italy

This article analyses the relational and emotional logics of migration, separation and reunification of Bangladeshi families in Italy. Migrant husbands are separated from their wives, with whom they have had little family life due to their migration, and seek family reunification. Wives’ migration due to family reunification, however, means separating them from their familiar environments and social networks. For this reason, some wives press for onward migration to the UK, where they hope that a larger Bangladeshi community and more social and cultural opportunities may provide a more fulfilling life compared to what they experienced in Italy. However, this means uprooting their husbands once again. The article observes the emotionally divergent dimensions among men and women as an element that can transform and redefine biographical projects and the migration trajectories in Europe of Bangladeshi families in Italy.     

Three Wise Young Men,a Cyber Community and Music — Counselling As Social Action: Storying a Community of Care in the Aftermath of Violence

This article describes counselling practice as social action, reporting on a case of children witnessing community violence and its aftermath. Highlighted is the role of friends who made a stand of solidarity against such violence. Outsider witness practices helped recruit and grow a community of care for the client and his friends. This community of care was significantly enhanced by the involvement of a lawyer/musician/activist who composed a song with the three friends to take a stance against guns and violence in their society. Caring solidarity, generosity and doing hope together formed small but significant alliances against entrenched practices of violence.     

Nigerians in China: Health maintenance,circulation and everyday transnationalism in Guangdong Province

The challenges facing Africans in Chinese cities have been examined from different perspectives, including healthcare-related challenges and barriers. However, how they navigate health problems through circulation and transnational practices has received scant attention. The article explored the importance of circulation and everyday transnationalism in health maintenance using qualitative data from 37 Nigerians in Guangdong Province, China. It revealed that transnational practices involving the flows of people, medicinal commodities and information were crucial in managing their health issues with circulating migrants, family members and healthcare professionals at home playing important roles. Circular migrants import herbal medicines and hard-to-acquire pharmaceutical drugs between Nigeria and China, family members and relatives also send over-the-counter drugs to migrants and health professionals in Nigeria supply medical information through transnational consultation. The article advanced the literature as it responds to the growing call for adopting a transnational lens for interrogating the link between migration and health.     

Affiliative Segregation of Outsiders from a Community: Bonding and Bridging Social Capital in Hachimori-cho, Japan

Abstract: Social capital makes cooperation possible even in situations of social dilemma. People develop bonding social capital when their network is dense. However, bonding social capital tends to make them look inward and to foster strong out-group hostility, which hinders the development of bridging social capital between groups. I investigated the possibility that bonding social capital may help develop bridging social capital from which all group members gain profits. Fieldwork was conducted in Hachimori-cho, Japan, where outsider Saru-Oiage volunteers are segregated from community residents. The volunteers have dense social networks and develop bonding social capital. They gain skills and take pride and responsibility in their actions from the bonding social capital, so that they can pursue the same interests as community residents, namely, expel monkeys from farmlands. Residents accept volunteers eagerly because they work well, and the existence of "good" outsiders contributes to the development of local identity. An affiliative relationship between volunteers and residents is maintained by the enormous efforts of the coordinators. Because the coordinators recently immigrated to Hachimori, they could understand the situations of outsiders as well as those of community residents, and they gain the most benefits from bridging social capital. These conditions were necessary for bridging social capital, or the cooperative relationship, between the two groups in Hachimori-cho.     

Stigma,AIDS, and HIV Prevention in Africa: Reports from Community Organizations Providing Prevention Services

ABSTRACT

The AIDS epidemic in Africa remains a serious health crisis. Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in Africa play a critical role in the delivery of HIV prevention services. An important barrier to their HIV prevention efforts is stigma directed at persons living with HIV/AIDS. In order to understand how stigma affects HIV prevention programming, we conducted in-depth qualitative interviews with NGO directors in 29 African countries. Qualitative analytic approaches were used to identify key themes. Substantial discrimination and stigmatization of HIV-positive persons was reported. HIV-positive women were particularly likely to suffer negative social and economic consequences. The stigma associated with HIV interfered with disclosure of HIV status, risk-reduction behaviors, and HIV testing, creating significant barriers to HIV prevention efforts.

Interventions to reduce AIDS-related stigma in Africa are urgently needed. Reducing the burden of stigma is critical to fighting the epidemic in Africa and could play an important role in global HIV reduction.