Reply to Tomlinson and Bisschop

The notion of the devolution of power from central to regional and local levels is gaining popularity across a wide front as a point of departure ‐ a rudimentary strategy ‐ to conceptualise ways in which South African society can be transformed. The South African government has contributed to this exercise by launching a process of establishing Regional Services Councils, new multi‐racial metropolitan and ‘areawide’ bodies outside South African ‘homelands’. This article identifies and analyses the stances of the most important opposition political actors operating legally on the South African stage to the establishment of these new bodies. These actors range from the right‐wing white parties ‐ the CP and the HNP‐to AZAPO and the UDF. Three general stances to this government‐initiated process are identified, and its chances for success are assessed.     

Mobile Livelihoods: The Sociocultural Practices of Circular Migrants between Puerto Rico and the United States1

This article focuses on the bilateral flow of people between Puerto Rico and the United States ‐ what has come to be known as circular, commuter, or revolving‐door migration. It documents the migrants' livelihood practices based on a recent field study of population flows between Puerto Rico and the mainland. Specifically, the basic characteristics of multiple movers, one‐time movers and nonmovers residing in Puerto Rico are compared. More broadly, the article assesses the implications of circular migration for Puerto Rican communities on and off the island. The author's basic argument is that the constant displacement of people ‐ both to and from the island ‐ blurs the territorial, linguistic, and juridical boundaries of the Puerto Rican nation. As people expand their means of subsistence across space, they develop multiple attachments to various localities. In the Puerto Rican situation, such mobile livelihoods are easier to establish than in other places because of the free movement of labor and capital between the island and the mainland. The author hypothesizes that circulation does not entail major losses in human capital for most Puerto Ricans, but rather often constitutes an occupational, educational, and linguistic asset.     

Beyond cheap labour: trade unions and development in the Turkish metal industry

The ability of developing countries to export to more developed parts of the world is often associated with cheap labour. But such very obvious economic advantage is not always the end of the story. A fuller account needs to consider the wider institutional context. In some instances trade unionism can be an important part of this. This paper addresses trade unionism with specific reference to workers employed in large firms in Turkey that are significant exporters of consumer goods to the European market. The union examined is the largest union in the metal industry, an industry that is a driving force in the Turkish economy, and a major centre of trade unionism with over half a million of Turkey's three million trade unionists. The particular ‐ autocratic ‐ character of this union is critically examined and located with reference to wider forces of political economy and the specific constraints and difficulties to which its members are subject. Finally, the significance of this sort of trade unionism for economic ‐ and socio‐political ‐ development is discussed.     

Gender,Work and Organization: A gender–work–organization analysis

This article, celebrating 25 year of Gender, Work and Organization, reflects on some of the events that led to establishing the journal. It proceeds to consider the three central elements that have inspired the journal ‐ gender, work and organization ‐ and how they have become more problematic, perhaps much more problematic, over the lifetime of the journal. Indeed, paradoxically, these shift have occurred at the same time as GWO and the field of which it is part have become more established. Just as the field of gender and organizations has become more legitimate area of study, the concept of ‘gender’ has become more complex, more contested, less certain. This also applies to the notion of ‘organization’, perhaps less so to ‘work’. The latter part of the article considers what happens when one views the GWO itself in terms of gender‐work‐organization analysis, and how such questions may develop in the future.     

Toward an ethnography of lotto

Abstract

Lotto ‐ a state‐sanctioned lottery in New Zealand ‐ is a pervasive socio‐cultural phenomenon. Every week more than one‐third of the adult population purchase lottery tickets and in doing so replicate the promotion of Lotto as a form of benign gambling which is fun and entertaining to play. Within a model of constructive gambling Lotto may be cast as a site of normative or ideal gambling within the New Zealand context. Moreover, Lotto promotions and participation reaffirms the nationalistic ideals of the New Zealand ‘good life’, while simultaneously articulating some of the key narratives of transnational economics.     

Innovations to Make Markets More Inclusive for the Poor

Market failures, government failures and some of the characteristics of both the poor and business actors as well as their environment can act as barriers preventing the poor from participating more actively in markets, both as consumers and as producers. Private actors ‐ including for‐profit and not‐for‐profit entities, often in partnership with the public sector ‐ have been able to mitigate some of these constraints through innovations that have helped to make markets more inclusive for the poor, enabling them not just to gain access, but also to participate in ways that enhance their economic empowerment and human development. This article identifies the strategies and innovations used and devises a possible typology for them.     

State‐Space beyond Territory: Wormholes,Gravitational Fields,and Entanglement

Neo‐Weberian historical sociology and political science establishes that territory is a defining feature of the modern state. Drawing on insights from political geography, I argue that ‘territory’ is not a pre‐existing physical location, but an effect produced by state practices and technologies. The spatial fetish of territory, moreover, distracts analytical attention from the equally important non‐territorial dimensions of the state. To map these new and unfamiliar dimensions, I propose three analogies from the study of physics ‐ wormholes, gravitational fields, and quantum entanglement ‐ as powerful conceptual devices with the potential to reorient social scientists towards a fuller understanding of state‐space.     

Gothic fascism

This article explores the place of fear in fascism ‐ the fear experienced by fascism, as found throughout Hitler’s writings and speeches, and the fear fascism fabricates in order to sustain itself. The article suggests that this fear overlaps and intersects with a shift in the culture of the Gothic in the late‐nineteenth century, such that fascism’s enemy comes to be interpellated as a truly monstrous figure. An exploration of the shifting place of the vampire in late‐nineteenth century Gothic culture creates the possibility of exploring the Gothic opening through which fascism came to both articulate its own fear and to generate a more widespread political fear and social insecurity.     

Transnational Twist: Pecuniary Remittances and the Socioeconomic Integration of Authorized and Unauthorized Mexican Immigrants in Los Angeles County1

Annual U.S.‐Mexico pecuniary remittances are estimated to have more than doubled recently to at least $10 billion ‐ augmenting interest among policymakers, financial institutions, and transnational migrant communities concerning how relatively poor expatriate Mexicans sustain such large transfers and the impact on immigrant integration in the United States. We employ the 2001 Los Angeles County Mexican Immigrant Residency Status Survey (LAC‐MIRSS) to investigate how individual characteristics and social capital traditionally associated with integration, neighborhood context, and various investments in the United States influenced remitting in 2000. Remitting is estimated to have been inversely related to conventional integration metrics and influenced by community context in both sending and receiving areas. Contrary to straight‐line assimilation theories and more consistent with a transnational or nonlinear perspective, however, remittances are also estimated to have been positively related to immigrant homeownership in Los Angeles County and negatively associated with having had public health insurance such as Medicaid.     

Commercialisation of Non‐timber Forest Products: A Reality Check

This article challenges the pervasive view that commercialisation of non‐timber forest products can (easily) achieve ecosystem and species conservation as well as improving livelihoods. Following a brief review of who and what is involved, it focuses on the main ecological and livelihood risks of unconsidered promotion of NTFP commercialisation, drawing on a wide range of case studies from around the world. It concludes with some recommendations, emphasising the lack of ‘magic‐bullet’ products, and the importance ‐ among other things ‐ of not ignoring national policy, taking an integrated view of the value chain, considering the implications of different production options, and improving both quality and quantity.     

Does Selective Migration Matter? Explaining Ethnic Disparities in Educational Attainment among Immigrants’Children1

Understanding why some national‐origin groups excel in school while others do not is an enduring sociological puzzle. This paper examines whether the degree of immigrants’educational selectivity ‐ that is, how immigrants differ educationally from non‐migrants in the home country ‐ influences educational outcomes among groups of immigrants’children. This study uses published international data and U. S. Census and Current Population Survey data on 32 immigrant groups to show that as immigrants’educational selectivity increases, the college attainment of the second generation also increases. Moreover, the more positive selection of Asian immigrants helps explain their second generations’higher college attendance rates as compared to Europeans, Afro‐Caribbeans, and Latinos. Thus, the findings suggest that inequalities in relative pre‐migration educational attainments among immigrants are often reproduced among the next generation in the United States.     

Horns and dilemmas: Jewish evacuees in Britain during the second world war

Although only a short‐lived experience, evacuation during the Second World War has left a profound impact on millions of people in Britain. In some ways British Jewry shared the common problems of evacuation created by class differences and a fundamental clash between town and country. Nevertheless, Jews, because of their particular religious needs and a strong tradition of anti‐Semitism in Britain, had unique experiences as evacuees during the war. Indeed evacuation had a profound importance for the shaping of post‐war British Jewry ‐ scarring those who suffered anti‐Semitic hostility but also assimilating many at the cost of their religious and cultural identity.     

Rethinking Caribbean transnational connections: conceptual itineraries

Abstract In academic debates across the social sciences, transnationalism has increasingly come to denote the cross‐border networks developed by migrants and the ways in which these link geographically distinct places into a single social field. At the same time, the intense focus on linkages between origin and destination groups frequently ends up privileging this binary ‐ home/away ‐ as the only way to map enduring cross‐border linkages. Drawing on two examples of Caribbean practices connecting Toronto and New York, in this article I suggest the traversing of a different spatial terrain and consider the implications of expanding our conceptual itineraries to include these other journeys that so far have tended to fly under the radar in discussions of transnational migration.     

Legal Marriage,Unequal Recognition,and Mental Health Among Same‐Sex Couples

The authors examined whether the perception of unequal relationship recognition ‐ a novel couple‐level minority stressor ‐ has negative consequences for mental health among same‐sex couples. Data were analyzed from a dyadic study of 100 same‐sex couples (200 individuals) in the United States. Being in a legal marriage was associated with lower perceived unequal recognition and better mental health; being in a registered domestic partnership or civil union—but not also legally married—was associated with greater perceived unequal recognition and worse mental health. Actor partner interdependence models tested associations between legal relationship status, unequal relationship recognition, and mental health (nonspecific psychological distress, depressive symptomatology, and problematic drinking), net controls (age, gender, race and ethnicity, education, and income). Unequal recognition was consistently associated with worse mental health, independent of legal relationship status. Legal changes affecting relationship recognition should not be seen as simple remedies for addressing the mental health effects of institutionalized discrimination.     

A critical evaluation of the commodification thesis

A recurring theme across the social sciences is that non‐capitalist production is disappearing albeit slowly and unevenly, and is being replaced by a commodified economy in which goods and services are produced by capitalist firms for a profit under conditions of market exchange. In this paper, however, I evaluate critically this commodification thesis. Even in the heartland of commoditisation ‐ the advanced economies. Large economic spaces are identified where alternative economic relations and motives prevail. Rather than view them as leftovers of pre‐capitalist formations, this paper argues that they are the result of both the contradictions inherent in the structural shifts associated with the pursuit of commodification as well as the existence of‘cultures of resistance’, As such, they are viewed as 'spaces of hope’which highlight the demonstrable construction and practice of alternative social relations and logic's of work outside profit‐motivated market‐oriented exchange.     

Marriage Migration Policy in South Korea: Social Investment beyond the Nation State

This article seeks to contribute to understandings of South Korea's approach to marriage migration. Situating our analysis of marriage migration policy specifically within the recent emergence of a social investment approach to welfare, we bring together two bodies of literature that due to the methodological nationalism of much welfare state scholarship are usually treated separately. Through an examination of the policy framework governing marriage migration ‐ so‐called ‘multicultural family policies’ ‐ we find that successive Korean governments have actively sought female marriage migrants to perform various social reproductive roles as a means to secure the reproductive capacity of the nation, just as feminist scholars have argued the care work of citizen‐mothers can be understood. Our analysis also suggests that marriage migration policy in Korea constitutes a distinctly transnational dimension to its overall social investment approach, which is strongly motivated by concerns to reproduce the next generation of human capital.     

Citizenship Rights and Repatriation of Refugees

This article examines the relationship between access to or lack of access to citizenship rights in countries of asylum and the propensity of refugees to return. It hypothesizes that in situations where refugees enjoy civil, social and economic citizenship rights in the context of favorable structural factors ‐ relatively secure employment, self‐employment, social services such as housing, schools, health care and social security ‐ the importance of repatriation may diminish as a viable option. In North America, Western Europe, Australia and New Zealand, where refugees are able to enjoy rights of citizenship with definite prospects for becoming citizens (through naturalization) or denizens through acquisition of permanent status, and where favorable structural factors provide for the enjoyment of a decent standard of living, they tend to remain regardless of whether the conditions that prompted displacement are eliminated. The policy environments and the structural factors for refugees sheltering in Less Developed Countries (LDCs) are the antithesis of those refugees in Developed Countries (DCs). As a result, millions of refugees in the South have been ‘voting with their feet’ homewards to recoup citizenship rights which they lost in connection with displacement and which they have been unable to achieve in exile.     

Migration and other Modes of Transnationalism: Towards Conceptual Cross‐Fertilization

Sociological notions such as social network, social capital and embeddedness have proven valuable when adopted into a wide variety of social scientific fields. This has certainly been the case in the sociology of migration. Similarly, certain concepts drawn from studies on different modes of transnationalism ‐ for instance, research and theory concerning the global activities of social movements and business networks ‐ might serve as useful tools for understanding transnational social forms and practices among migrant groups.     

One’s Enough for Now: Children,Disability, and the Subsequent Childbearing of Mothers

This mixed‐methods study explores the subsequent childbearing of mothers whose firstborn children have disabilities. I make use of matched data from the 1993 NHIS ‐ 1995 NSFG (N = 4,468) to determine the effects of child disability on the hazard of a second birth and draw on a series of 24 in‐depth interviews that explore the lived experience of raising children with disabilities. My findings suggest that mothers whose firstborn children are disabled have a lower hazard of a second birth. This reduction stems from mothers’ recognition that children with disabilities have extensive needs and that, in order to meet those needs and maximize their potential, they need to make strategic choices such as delaying subsequent childbearing.     

European Youth Gang Policy in Comparative Context

The past decade has seen increased reports of street gangs across a range of contexts. In Europe, anxieties over street‐based youth has led to the development of gang‐specific policies across a range of jurisdictions, most notably the UK. Following a similar pattern of policy mobility in criminal justice, many of these policies have origins in the US system. In this review of international gang policy developments, we critically examine a number of these policies in a comparative context ‐ including gang policing units and intelligence databases ‐ and interrogate their efficacy. Drawing on cogent examples from the UK, we argue for caution in adopting US gang intervention tactics due to the lack of empirical evidence relating to their applicability or efficacy, and the corresponding potential for discrimination toward the most marginalised and socially excluded children and young people in society.