Young Adults’ Race,Wealth, and Entrepreneurship

This study explored relationships among young adults’ wealth and entrepreneurial activities with emphasis on how these relationships differed among racial and ethnic groups. Using data from the 1997 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, results indicated that young adults’ (N = 8984) higher accumulated amounts of wealth were associated with pursuing self-employment at higher rates; however, differences emerged when the associations were explored with various types of wealth and within racial and ethnic groups. Black young adults’ greater debt and net worth were associated with their increased likelihoods of self-employment. Among Latino/a young adults, greater liquid assets and net worth were associated with increased likelihoods of self-employment. Wealth was unrelated to white young adults’ self-employment. Wealth appeared to play an outsized role in the self-employment of black and Latino/a young adults compared to that of their white counterparts. In other words, racial and ethnic minority young adults may have a heavier burden for generating their own capital to embark on entrepreneurial activities when mainstream credit markets are unresponsive or inaccessible. Policy implications are discussed.     

Ethnic penalties? The role of human capital and social origins in labour market outcomes of second-generation Moroccans and Turks in the Netherlands

In Western Europe, the children of Moroccan and Turkish migrants were found to be significantly disadvantaged in the labour market. This ethnic gap was found to persist after considering differences in schooling, which was argued to reflect ‘ethnic penalties’ driven by cultural, religious, or racial factors. This study uses data from the 1st Wave of the ‘Netherlands Longitudinal Life-Course Study’ (2009–2010) to revisit the analysis of ‘ethnic penalties’ for second-generation Moroccans and Turks. Unlike in previous research, empirical analyses not only consider differences in schooling, but also skills and social origins. Results show substantial ethnic inequalities in the labour market, with the exception of women from Moroccan origins. For men, these ethnic inequalities do not disappear when human capital factors are considered, but they do when accounting for the unprivileged social origins of ethnic minorities. For women, the disadvantage of second-generation Turks in achieving privileged occupations clearly disappears when human capital and social origins are considered. Yet, the chances of being unemployed among women of Turkish origins persist after controlling for education, skills, and social origins. Overall, this study has global academic and public policy implications to understand the socioeconomic integration of the Moroccan and Turkish second generation in Western Europe.     

From emigrants to free movers: whither European emigration and diaspora policy?

This article examines the level of convergence in the field of emigration and diaspora policies of the European Union Member States. The analysis of policies of 28 states shows that the convergence of emigration and diaspora policies is more pronounced in the area of intra-EU mobility. Moreover, EU states tend to apply territorial limitations to their emigration and diaspora policies. Therefore, it might be expected that future convergence will concern only the EU core. The most developed area of intervention of the individual EU Member States is heritage promotion, but it predates the EU and is a derivative of the historical emigration from Europe. Today, considering the diversity of EU emigrants, traditional heritage promotion is challenging, both on the national and EU level.     

Discrimination and analysis on the Internet, citizen world and Chinese diplomatic relation——Appraisal on the Intemet Nationalism and Chinese Diplomatic Relation

王军博士的《网络民族主义与中国外交》一书,紧紧抓住互联网、民族主义等学术热点,紧跟时代脉搏,立基于学术前沿,开拓性地探索了互联网的发展赋予中国民族主义、市民社会和中国外交事务的意义.探讨的问题具有前沿性,是一项新的研究议程,它给出的也许不是现成的答案,而是一种方向性的探索和思考.该书兼顾了学术性和实证性,所用语言较为通俗易懂,所列举的实证研究案例都是人们日常生活中经常接触到的,无论是对专业研究人员还是对中国外交问题感兴趣的人士而言,该书都值得一读.     

An invisible minority? Return migration and ethnicity in Okinawa*

This paper examines ethnic return migration in Japan by looking at a particular case – that of people of half-Okinawan parentage returning to Okinawa, referred to in this paper as the Nisei. By going beyond conventional theories that entice people to return migrate to their ethnic homelands, I also look at issues regarding nationality and how the category of ‘Japanese’ tends to conflate race and ethnicity, thus creating boundaries as well as ‘invisible minorities’. I also explore how ethnicity and nationality intersect using this particular case and how these intersections are actually created and enabled through processes of migration. In line with this, I also discuss how ‘Japanese’ and ‘half’ are both ascribed and self-ascribed identities, and how each of these two categories delineate ‘boundaries’ and hence engage in ‘boundary-making process/es’.     

Oiling the wheels? Flexible labour markets and the migration industry

ABSTRACT

The growing commercialisation of migration, often through a multiplicity of labour market intermediaries, is an issue of increasing academic interest. We seek to contribute to an emerging research agenda on the migration industries by exploring how one of the key actors that constitutes it, recruitment agencies, sits at the nexus between flexible labour market structures and migrant labour. Interviews with U.K. labour providers and low-wage employers form the evidence base for an analysis of the strategies developed by recruiters to derive commercial gain from connecting the so-called ‘supply’ and ‘demand’ sides of the flexible international labour market. We seek to contribute to understandings of the analytical categories within migration systems by illustrating how the migration industry interacts with other key stakeholders to structure international migration.     

Parental Expectations and Educational Outcomes for Young African American Adults: Do Household Assets Matter?

African American children are more likely to be poor and live in households that are “asset poor,” with no or very little net worth. Using the Panel Study of Income Dynamics and its Child Development Supplement, this article explores whether living in a household with net worth above the sample median seems to promote educational success and the development of human capital over time, irrespective of income. Controlling for parental income and education, as well as gender, household wealth in the form of net worth was the best predictor of parental expectations, high school completion, and college enrollment for young African American adults. A brief discussion of possible asset-building policy options follows.     

Selfishness of the affluent? stateless nationalist and regionalist parties and immigration

ABSTRACT

This paper examines stateless nationalist and regionalist party (SNRP) discourses on immigration through an exploration of the economic dimensions of the centre-periphery cleavage. Using qualitative document analysis, the Republican Left in Catalonia (ERC) and the Scottish National Party (SNP) in Scotland are studied in order to see whether and how the relative economic position of a region shapes SNRP discourses on immigration. The period of analysis encompasses the last three terms of office for both parties, during which immigration and decentralisation have been very salient issues in Catalonia and Scotland. Results suggest that the relative economic situations and the economic crisis do not seem to affect general stances, which are positive in both regions. However, the economic contexts have an influence on how each party selects its main issues for debate, and the ways in which these are managed.     

Speed,timing and duration: contested temporalities,techno-political controversies and the emergence of the EU’s smart border

ABSTRACT

Practices of border control increasingly rely on digital biometrics in order to sort and filter cross-border movements. But while its effects are well examined in migration and border studies, less is known about the intricate ways in which biometric bordering is politically negotiated and socio-technically put into practice. Therefore, in this paper, I trace the contested emergence of one particular scheme of biometric border control currently in the making: the EU’s Smart Borders Package. Proposed by the European Commission in 2013, it aims at digitally registering all third-country nationals’ entries to and exits from the Schengen area, while simultaneously accelerating the border crossing of certain travellers. I argue that, unlike other forms of biometric bordering, the Smart Borders Package problematises border control primarily on the level of its temporalities and constitutes the speed of border crossings, the timing of control as well as third-country nationals’ duration of stay as distinct objects of governing. Meanwhile, the project’s political negotiations have sparked techno-political controversies that repeatedly brought it to the brink of failure. Yet, these controversies have significantly enhanced the intelligibility and practicability of biometric bordering, contributing to the emergence of what I call the self-service border.     

Mysticism,Migration and Clerical Networks: Ahmad al-Ahsaʾi and the Shaykhis of al-Ahsa,Kuwait and Basra

Ahmad al-Ahsa?i (1753–1826), the spiritual father of the mystical strand of Twelver Shiism, known as the Shaykhiyya, became an important religious figure in Iraq and Iran. But the Shaykhiyya also spread in his birthplace in Eastern Arabia and among migrants from al-Ahsa in Kuwait and Basra. The quietist and apolitical teachings of al-Ahsa?i suited the Shia in Eastern Arabia, who periodically suffered from political insecurity and religious persecution. Several scholars from al-Ahsa studied with al-Ahsa?i and with his successor as leader of the Shaykhiyya, Kazim al-Rashti. Thereafter, they returned to al-Ahsa or moved to Kuwait and Basra and set up hawzas to spread Shaykhi teachings. In the early twentieth century, the Shaykhis of al-Ahsa developed closer ties with the al-Usku?i, a family of maraji? of the Tabrizi School of the Shaykhiyya. The al-Usku?i also resided in al-Ahsa and Kuwait throughout the twentieth century. The Shaykhis of Basra, on the other hand, became followers of the rival Kermani School. In both Basra and Kuwait, migrants from al-Ahsa retained strong group identities because their common geographical origin was coupled with the Shaykhiyya.     

Asylum and refugee support in the UK: civil society filling the gaps?

The vast majority of asylum seekers in the UK are not permitted to enter the labour market. In the absence of the right to work asylum seekers receive welfare support, which amounts to less than a third of the weekly spend of the poorest 10% of British citizens. This article presents new research on the third sector response to the poverty created by this policy regime. Through a four-pronged methodological design we map the scale of this response, and in doing so offer an alternative critical perspective on the inadequacies of government policy, inadequacies which lead to the human rights of some who are within, or who have been through the system, being breached.     

Identification,the exercise of democracy and the fear of the Other – the June EU referendum in the UK

ABSTRACT

The focus is the oscillation among leave voters in the EU referendum from the exercise of rights - an act of dis-identification – towards the assertion of identity as members of a British community. This was mediated by voters acting in an association of citizens calling on the equalising agency of the British people whilst claiming membership of a locally circumscribed community, perceived as injured, through entanglement with the Other prominent among them Europeans. Hence the recovery of the injured community as the object of the denunciators’ desire for identity coupled with the fear of the Other. Predicated on this was the resumption of class, gender and ethnic roles reflected in division among voters. The denunciation of togetherness with Europeans served leave voters to substitute the exercise of rights with a longing for identity. Instrumental in this was the lack of deliberation in the plebiscite to articulate the will of individual voters through a general will. The ‘direct power’ exercised enabled many to cast away their role as citizen in an attempt to claim their privileges as members of a racially and culturally demarcated British community. Paradoxically, the voters’ unashamed disavowal of their agency as citizens by seeking to restore a divided social world as the source of their identity was represented as an exercise in democracy. To some playing on words was supplemented by the use of force removing the gap between the discursive exclusion of the Other and the continued physical presence of bearers of different races and culture.     

In the shadow of fortress Europe? Impacts of European migration governance on Slovenia,Croatia and Macedonia

ABSTRACT

This article analyses European integration's effects on migration and border security governance in Slovenia, Croatia and Macedonia in the context of ‘governed interdependence’. We show how transgovernmental networks comprising national and EU actors, plus a range of other participants, blur the distinction between the domestic and international to enable interactions between domestic and international policy elites that transmit EU priorities into national policy. Governments are shown to be ‘willing pupils’ and ‘policy takers’, adapting to EU policy as a pre-condition for membership. This strengthened rather than weakened central state actors, particularly interior ministries. Thus, in a quintessentially ‘national’ policy area, there has been a re-scaling and re-constitution of migration and border security policy. To support this analysis, social network analysis is used to outline the composition of governance networks and analyse interactions and power relations therein.     

‘To what world am I being released to?’*: Canadian national news discourse and the anticipated repatriation of Omar Khadr

Between January 2010 and September 2012, Canadians anticipated the possible return of a citizen incarcerated in Guantánamo for approximately a decade. This temporal moment incited narratives about Canadian citizenship and belonging. Narratives, I argue, that are discursively mediated through (and anchored in) the figure of the White Canadian. Khadr’s potential return to Canada is expressed as a perilous racial encounter between white nationals and a foreign racial body. To bring to life this encounter, I draw on three expressions of fear in Canadian national news media. I first trace how narratives of descent, evident in discussions of Khadr’s family and its history, reinforce distinctions between authentic and inauthentic Canadians. Second, I consider how Khadr’s failure to incarnate Canadian values re-produces whiteness and rationality as qualifiers of national membership and belonging. Lastly, I demonstrate how the putatively contagious nature of the Muslim terrorist psyche valorizes racial distinctions between Canadians and Muslims. My work aims to make visible the ideological labor of national news discourse. I think through these representations within the racial politics which structure citizenship and negotiations about what it means to be Canadian.     

Disobedient subjects – constructing the subject,the state and religion in the European Court of Human Rights

In this article, I analyse how the law participates in the (re)production process of the subject, the state and religion, and how the law's indefiniteness allows various constructions of them all. In the first part of the article I discuss the Islamic headscarf cases of the European Court of Human Rights as examples of how the discursive constructions of the state and the subject can be challenged by means of disobedience. Here the focus is particularly on Turkey and on France, where the principle of secularism is largely regarded as the basis of the republic and of the national identity. The law provides an arena where the disobedient subject and the state can challenge and re-establish the prevailing conceptualizations of the subject. In the second part of the article I address the Court's alleged Islamophobia. I explore how the constructions of the state and the subject contribute to the way religion is framed in the Court's argumentation in relation to the freedom of religion guaranteed under Article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The analysis shows that religion can be framed as a personal belief system, a cultural tradition, or politics which, in turn, affects the course of legal argumentation. I conclude that the Court can plausibly be accused of Christian bias, but that this conclusion is often based on insufficient analysis of the Court's case law. This article contributes to the interdisciplinary discussion on the headscarf bans from the socio-legal perspective. The aim is to explore what, besides providing legal solutions, the law does.     

The golden handcuffs? Choice,compliance and relocation amongst transnational professionals and executives

People who routinely cross borders for their jobs are often cast as beneficiaries of globalisation. But in a world of economic downturns, un- or underemployment as well as political unrest access to an increasingly global market becomes the personal and organisational solution to a host of unwanted happenings. In these circumstances, it therefore becomes less clear whether the heightened mobility of transnational workers is a benefit or indeed a choice. This article examines the onus placed on employees to be geographically mobile for their jobs. Relocation enables organisations to operate in expanding transnational markets and fields; it is therefore a prerequisite of jobs in an increasing number of sectors. Through systematic comparison of the attitudes to mobility of highly skilled employees in a ‘market’ (corporate) and a ‘moral’ (UN) case-study organisation, this article makes a contribution to our understanding of work orientations in transnational institutions. It interrogates the myth of choice of highly skilled movers and identifies the aspirations, contradictions and dilemmas that are associated with relocating for their jobs. Analysis of biographical interviews in tandem with online survey data elucidates the complex ways that the competing repertoires of choice and compliance are woven into transnational narratives.