Transnational migration and the commodification of eldercare in urban Ghana

ABSTRACT

Over the past 20 years, organizations to provide commercial nursing services, mainly to the sick and debilitated elderly, have sprung up in Accra, Ghana. This article assesses the degree to which transnational migration has generated social changes in ageing at the level of everyday practices. It argues that a range of social actors differently involved in transnational migration has created and sustained a market for home nursing agencies in Ghana through diverse processes involving the imagination of care work abroad, complex negotiations between the elderly at home and their anxious children abroad, increased financial resources among the middle class and the evaluations of western eldercare services by return and current migrants. These dynamics illustrate the complexity of the role of transnational migration in generating social change and highlight the significance of the needs of local families and the role of the imagination in shaping social remittances from abroad.     

城市化与中国社会转型

2011年底,广州市第十次党代会提出走有广州特色的新型城市化发展道路的战略,相信这一战略会在今后相当长一段时间成为广州市各项事业的总指引、总目标。事实上,城市化是一个内涵非常丰富的概念,而城市化的历史也与人类的文明历史相伴,在某种意义上可以说人类的文明历史就是城市化的历史。如果说中国自古是一个农业国家,那么城市化也可看做是中国社会转型的具体体现。只有将城市化置于中国社会转型的视角下观察,才可以对中国的城市化运动有准确的把握。     

The contemporary U.S. women's movement: An empirical example of competition theory

We use competition and resource mobilization perspectives to explain the rise of the contemporary U.S. women's movement. Our competition framework proposes that economic and sociodemographic changes since World War II increased competition between women and men in the marketplace. This increased competition provided motivation for the women's movement. We find support for this framework with national quantitative time-series data.     

Youth and social movements on the move: political engagement among young Spanish migrants in London

Since the beginning of the economic crisis in Spain young people have migrated abroad looking for job opportunities. In the meantime, after the 15-M movement in 2011, Spanish society created various social movements hoping to make change happen, as well as the pro-independence movement in Catalonia that gathered strength as a response to the Spanish economic and political crisis. This paper analyses how Spanish young people in London, as transmigrants rooted in two different countries, engage with the politics of their home country through two transnational social movements in London: ANC England and the Maroon Wave London. The article describes both local movements (comparing their goals, structure and activities), showing the reasons that young Spanish migrants get involved and their experiences within them. It also rethinks the nature and modalities of young diasporic identities and political engagement in the global age through the experiences of the young people interviewed.     

Mobilizing in transnational contentious spaces: linking relations,emotions and space in migrant activism

Despite proliferation of political protest by migrants in recent years, analyses from a social movement perspective remain scarce. This lacuna is not coincidental, but theoretically grounded. According to dominant movement theories, migrants are unlikely subjects of mobilization due to legal obstacles, scarce resources and closed political and discursive opportunities. The article therefore explores how marginalized migrants organize transnational political protest against all evident odds. Drawing from extensive fieldwork and bridging transnational migration and social movement studies, it is argued that migrants mobilize within transnational social spaces, which link relations and emotions acquired on the move with the relational qualities at the locality of arrival. The article illustrates how the transnational spaces most migrants inhabit can be politicized and transformed into particular social formations, for which the term ‘transnational contentious spaces’ is suggested.     

论中国城市化进程中的社会管理

城市化是世界发展的潮流。中国城市化是世界城市化的重要组成部分。城市是经济、政治和文化的中心,在社会文明进步中起着主导作用。城市问题也是社会问题,社会问题包含城市问题,城市问题寓于社会问题之中。加强和创新社会管理不能只单独地解决社会问题,必须把解决城市问题结合起来。同样地,解决城市问题也不能只单独地解决城市问题,必须与加强和创新社会管理结合起来。     

Consumer Citizenship and Cross‐Class Activism: The Case of the National Consumers' League, 1899–1918

Political consumerism is often criticized for its failure to cross class lines, a failure linked to the economic resources and cultural capital of affluent consumers. The early history of the National Consumers' League (NCL) illustrates how an alternative model of consumer citizenship can lead privileged shoppers to draw social boundaries in different ways. The NCL included lower‐class women and children as beneficiaries and occasional allies in consumer campaigns, but distanced itself from the organized labor movement. This alternative model of political consumerism is traced to the gender and class cultures of reformist women in the Progressive Era.     

The urban-rural interface: Urbanization and tropical forest cover change

A considerable body of empirical and theoretical literature on the causes of tropical deforestation has emerged over the last twenty years. Recognizing that small-farmers in the Amazon Basin are a key agent in the process of primary forest conversion, a growing genre of studies at the household level have attempted to quantify the influence of various factors on small-farmer land-use decisions. Many of these studies have acknowledged the seeming importance of urban centers as hubs of propulsive activity and information, yet none have comprehensively captured the urbanization factor in rural land use decisions. I argue that this methodological shortcoming in empirical work to-date reflects an inadequate conceptualization of the range of urban-based networks and their inter-relationships. In an effort to overcome this roadblock to further empirical discovery, I review several leading schools of thought that might be pressed into service in developing a framework for interpreting the urban influences on rural landscapes. I call this construct the Urban-Rural Interface. This is not a complete theoretical model or a unique methodology, but rather an initial effort to develop a general framework from which more sophisticated formulations might proceed.     

Land markets and migration trends in Tanzania: A qualitative‐quantitative analysis

While migration has been found to enhance welfare across a range of settings, most of the literature focuses on rural‐to‐urban migrant flows. Using a unique dataset from north‐western Tanzania, this article probes an important, yet overlooked, link between land markets and rural‐to‐rural migration. A mixed‐methods approach is used to discern how these two forces are intertwined in village life. Results indicate that household decisions to migrate are particularly influenced by the ease of market‐based land access in their new communities. This suggests that labour mobility may be facilitated through the development of a well‐functioning land market.     

城镇化视角下农村社会管理创新研究

农村社会是中国社会的基础,加强社会管理的重点应该在农村、在基层。当前我国要实现城乡统筹发展,必须开展农村社会管理创新,提高农村社会管理科学化水平。本文以分析具体案例为重点,以解决实际问题为目标,重点研究我国农村社会管理中存在的问题和矛盾,同时借鉴国内外先进的社区管理理念和管理模式,旨在提出新的适合我国农村社会管理实际的模式,以期对我国加快新农村建设有所启示。     

Urbanization,migration, and Vietnam's spatial structure

In North Vietnam during the war years from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s, cities were evacuated to minimize damage from bombing. As such, the urbanization process was checked. In the South, however, urban areas grew rapidly as people fled the fighting in the villages. Reunification of the country led to an outflow of residents from the largest southern cities back to the North or into new economic zones. From the mid-1970s to the early 1980s, Vietnam's total urban population remained static before beginning to increase slowly during the latter half of the 1980s. The rate of urbanization accelerated in the first half of the 1990s, although that process is not reflected in the available statistics. During 1979-89, the smaller cities grew faster than the larger ones, while most interprovincial migration occurred from North to South. Unemployment is a major problem in Vietnam's growing cities. The country's economic reforms require a more fluid labor market with fewer restrictions upon labor mobility. These needs are gradually undermining the strategy designed to contain urbanization, forcing planners to rethink urban development. The author discusses developing Vietnam's three main urban development corridors.     

主动城市化与被动城市化的比较研究

本文在对我国城市化质量进行分析的基础上,回顾总结现有城市化模式,指出我国的城市化模式有主动城市化与被动城市化之分,接着具体阐述了现行不同城市化模式的概念与内涵,并对比研究被动城市化和主动城市化在形成动力机制、表征以及存在问题等方面的差异。最后,以实现可持续发展城市化为目标,根据不同城市化模式其自身所特有的问题提出深层次城市化的建议和对策。     

Negotiating Sustainability: Climate Change Framing in the Communications,Energy and Paperworkers Union

Environmental problems are often reduced to a catch‐22 that portrays sustainability‐oriented policies as disastrous for resource sector workers. Despite efforts by many industry leaders to frame climate change in “jobs versus environment” terms, the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada (CEP) has supported ambitious greenhouse gas reduction policies. Using interviews with union members and staff, this study examines CEP's climate change framing. It finds that CEP extended the environmental justice master frame to define its response to climate change, neutralize anti‐Kyoto rhetoric, and work with the environmental movement. CEP's framing was accomplished through negotiation processes that continue to unfold as members work out the union's positions relative to their own values, experiences, and interpretations of what is possible. These findings suggest sustainability can be understood as an emergent, localized, and contested social order, and point to “self‐negotiation” in longer‐term social change struggles as a potential area of further study.     

The changing dynamics of land conflict in the Brazilian Amazon: The rural-urban complex and its environmental implications

The Brazilian Amazon is an area of both serious environmental degradation and social instability. Despite billions of dollars spent on economic development and the rapid pace of urbanization, deforestation is extreme and violent land conflict is intense. Although episodes of conflict over land are common in Brazilian history, this paper focuses on agrarian issues that arose with the opening of the Amazon frontier in the 1970s. The paper argues that the nature of land conflict in the eastern Brazilian Amazon is dynamic, and proposes a two-stage model to illustrate how the struggle has evolved from an agrarian phenomenon to an organized resistance that is urban-based. Recognizing the interaction between cities and rural areas in the frontier reaches of the Brazilian Amazon is key to understanding the land struggle in the face of urbanization. The analytical framework deployed considers the transformation of the region from an agrarian frontier to an urbanized frontier, assessing the dynamic nature of the land struggle and examining the implications for land cover change.     

中国推进城市化的犹豫、失误和后果

按照人均GDP为标志的发展阶段比较,中国城市化水平比一般国家低了15个百分点,结构上呈现工业化超前和城市化滞后的状态,也形成GDP结构与就业结构之间的严重扭曲。这是建国以来特别是1960年起开始的反城市化道路和政策所致。但1978年以后,并没有真正从理论上认识城市化对于中国经济和社会发展的重要性,在推进城市化的战略、体制和政策上,是犹豫和半推半阻的。城市化滞后给中国的经济和社会发展带来了一系列的问题。事实证明,城市化水平低是城乡差距大的一个重要因素。因此,建国以来,包括改革开放以来,推进城市化方面的犹豫和缓慢,是导致中国经济社会发展诸多问题的重大的深层次原因。     

Emotions and Emotional Labor at Worker‐Owned Businesses: Deep Acting,Surface Acting,and Genuine Emotions

Members of worker cooperatives—organizations collectively owned and democratically run by their workers—report substantial differences in how they can or must perform various emotions, compared with previous work at conventional, hierarchical organizations. First, some emotions not allowed in conventional workplaces are fully permitted at worker cooperatives, including negative emotions, like anger, but also positive emotions, like enthusiasm. In contrast, other emotions must be displayed, even if insincere. Sometimes, these displays are accomplished through surface acting, like pretending to happily accept the slow pace of committee‐led change. Other times, through deep acting, members internalized new emotional reactions, such as pride, instead of resentment, when helping coworkers even after their own shifts had ended.     

深化改革,推进新型城镇化建设

推进城镇化健康发展须处理好:非农产业与人口集聚的关系;非农产业发展、人口集聚与城市基础设施建设的关系;人口集聚与公共服务提供的关系;城市化与生态环境的关系;城镇建设中规模、结构和质量的关系。实现城镇化的健康发展,关键是要在正确认识城镇化本质、内涵和基本要求的基础上深化改革,构筑有利于新型城镇化发展的体制机制,最主要的是推进4个方面的改革:规划制定、土地制度、户籍制度、城乡统一市场建设。     

OUR Walmart: a case study of connective action

This article analyzes communication practices within networked social movements by exploring the network structure of an organization responsible for numerous labor actions and campaigns targeting the retail giant Walmart. This case study of the Organization United for Respect at Walmart (OUR Walmart) represents an initial attempt to map the network structure of an emergent form of labor organization. To better understand the relationship between communication and collective action, I utilize Bennett and Segerberg's [(2012). The logic of connective action: Digital media and the personalization of contentious politics. Information, Communication & Society, 15(5), 29] model of connective action to examine the organizational structure of OUR Walmart. I conducted semi-structured interviews with a dozen union representatives, OUR Walmart members, and current and former Walmart employees. My intention is to (1) delineate the network structure of a new and significant organizational form of class struggle and (2) consider the utility and validity of the logic of connective action. I conclude with a consideration of the limitations and affordances of the network structure of OUR Walmart for workers engaged in struggles for better working conditions and higher wages. This research finds support for Bennett and Segerberg's model of large-scale action networks. Moreover, this research suggests that organizationally enabled networks are an effective means of coordinating class struggle.     

产业结构、公共支出与省际城镇化差异

利用分省的2005-2011年面板数据,对产业结构、公共财政支出与城镇化关系进行实证研究,发现产业结构、公共财政支出以及城镇建设水平都对城镇化进程具有显著影响,其中产业结构是首位的影响因素,产业结构的优化升级是推进新型城镇化的重要支撑,而公共财政支出和城镇建设水平的提高对城镇的人口承载力同样具有正效应。