‘Escaping’ managed labour migration: worker exit as precarious migrant agency

ABSTRACT

This article narrows in on the mundane yet extraordinary events surrounding migrant farm workers’ decisions to leave their state-approved employment and to seek a better life in Canada outside of state-managed circulatory labour migration. In so doing, this research contributes to conceptualisations of precarity, and of precarious status in particular, that are beginning to recognise its effects not only on workers’ economic survival, but also the more ordinary daily conditions surrounding workers’ sense belonging and personal autonomy. In their refusal to accept the terms of their contractual circulatory labour migration agreements through what is conceptualised here as an act of ‘escape’, workers claim a space of belonging that contradicts the precarity of their formal citizenship status. In carving out a space in which they may perform autonomy and self-determination in daily life, however, this rejection of contingent citizenship status intensifies the precarious material conditions governing workers’ relationship to the state.     

Child welfare agency climate influence on worker commitment

This research focuses on understanding the relationship of organizational climate to commitment for child welfare workers in private, non-governmental organizations. Commitment is measured as a latent construct of agency investment derived from Landsman's study (2001). Agency investment includes measures of workers' time, cost, and emotional difficulty for changing their line of work. Organizational climate is embedded in Parker et al. (2003) modification of James and colleagues' theory of primary domains of work environment perceptions. Parker's Psychological Climate survey measured organizational climate. Four hundred forty-one workers in three not-for-profit agencies under contract with the public child welfare system were sampled. Autonomy, Challenge and Innovation were significantly associated with agency investment. This indicates that worker perceptions of having job autonomy, the job being challenging, and the organization as innovative predict greater job commitment.     

Objectification as negotiation: reexamining the agency of targets

Why and under what conditions do individuals participate in their own physical objectification? Literature across disciplines acknowledges such conditions exist but has limited capacity to specify when and how a person might participate in her own objectification. This article argues that a target of objectification, under certain conditions, can accept objectification in pursuit of another goal. This conception is counterintuitive given that existing approaches sometimes treat the targets of objectification as lacking agency. However, by obscuring this agency such accounts further the same objectification they highlight as problematic. This article offers a positive model of objectified targets’ agency. This model, called “Negotiated Objectification,” serves as an analytical tool that scholars can leverage in feminist academic debates over objectification. The utility of the model is illustrated using three examples: FEMEN’s topless protests; the politics of the Muslim headscarf; and women’s body writing in support of the Israel Defense Forces. The article concludes by considering the implications of women’s agency in each case for debates over the role of agents under objectification.     

Children's agency and its contradictions in the context of transnational labour migration from Vietnam

In this article, we contribute to the growing and diverse literature on the lived experiences of children and their agency in the context of migration. Drawing on in‐depth interviews with children whose migrant parents have left them behind, as well as with those who care for them in Vietnam, we demonstrate that the various ways in which they affect migration decision‐making and transnational communication shape the children's imaginations of migration. The context‐specific social construction of childhood, or more specifically adult perceptions of children's agency and needs, in turn structures these processes. We emphasize the need for debates on children's agency to take into account both broader socio‐economic processes at the macro level and the concrete and local scale at which children's lives unfold. By outlining how children's experiences of parental migration are constitutive of their attitudes toward this livelihood strategy, we also argue that the ability of those ‘left‐behind’ to exercise agency is closely intertwined with processes of social becoming and navigation in the transnational social fields constructed for them by adults.     

Finish what you start: A study of Design Team change initiatives' impact on agency climate

This study employs a multi-site longitudinal design to examine the effect of a Design Team intervention on organizational climate. Thirteen private, not-for-profit child welfare agencies from one state participated in a Design Team intervention to address workforce needs. A total of 407 workers from those agencies responded pre and post intervention to a survey that measures worker perceptions of the psychological climate of their organization using the Parker Psychological Climate Survey. Workers in organizations that completed the Design Team intervention had statistically significant increases in three of the four dimensions of the Parker scale. On the role dimension, significant change was noted on all three subscales on the interaction between Time 1 and Time 2 (ambiguity: p = 0.012; conflict: p = 0.04; overload: p = 0.05). On the organization dimension, the justice and support subscales had significant differences in the desired direction (justice: p = 0.05; support: p = 0.03). On the supervisor dimension, significant change was observed in the desired direction for both the goal emphasis and work facilitation subscales (goal emphasis: p = 0.02; work facilitation: p = 0.00). Statistically significant improvements in the organizational climates of child welfare agencies suggest the benefit of future research to test the effectiveness of Design Team interventions in other service areas. These findings build on intervention research with organizations by linking the ability of an organization to fully implement a change initiative to their capacity to improve the workplace climate for employees.     

Exploring gender approach to climate change and agroecology: Women farmer's search for agency in India

Employing the frame of gender and political ecology, this paper analyses the synergies of indigenous knowledge, agroecological farming and local conservation as a sustainable mitigation and adaptation strategy for climate change in Tehri Garhwal in the state of Uttarakhand, India. The study is based on field research conducted between 2017 and 2018 exploring how women's roles in regenerative agriculture provide them with agency. the nature of which has not been explored. While there is a need to mainstream such practices to sustain the commons and women's empowerment through structural, institutional and financial support, it is crucial to analyze the scope of this empowerment. This paper highlights the predicament of women farmers as their ability to exercise agency in the agricultural space does not necessarily translate into overall empowerment or a transformation of existing gender- and caste- based hierarchical power relations in society, as the latter will require interventions along multiple fronts.     

Hope as a form of agency in the future thinking of disenfranchised young people

This paper examines future thinking in a group of disenfranchised young Australians. We draw on literature about individualisation and choice biographies to understand participants’ narratives. Participants that managed to narrate a future expressed strong desires to be ‘normal’, articulating futures marked by traditional indicators: a job, home and family. Yet, their narratives of future were specific to the minimal opportunity structures available to them – a prioritising of paid employment with little concern about the type of work done, a home that was secure but not owned and, often, a wish to regain custody of children. Significantly, many participants could not articulate a future beyond their present circumstances. The uncertainties of their lives shaped their future thinking, through their lack of capital but also through deficit views of themselves as possessing few choices. But, while there was no ‘choice-making’, there was agency: they hoped for something better such as to live securely and to be happier. We suggest that sociological thought pursue a closer understanding of how hope operates in young lives and how it shapes future practice and trajectories. We propose that one way forward is to consider hope as a form of agency conceptualised through relational theories of practice.     

应将中型城市作为农民城市化的主要载体

一、转移农民依然是三农问题的重中之重 三农问题是当前中国面临的最棘手问题之一,事情千头万绪,牵涉到农民增收、粮食安全、村民自治、环境治理、精神文明建设、社会保障等一系列问题,然而.在这众多的头绪中,转移农民依然是三农问题的重中之重,这是由中国的国情决定的.根据2005年的资料显示,中国农村人口约占全国总人口的60%,但农业产值只占到全国GDP总值的10%左右,并且根据国际规律,随着一国经济的不断发展,农业产值在整个国民产值中的比例将会呈现出不断下跌的趋势.可以想象,如果不继续大量地转移农民,让占全国人口60%的农民来分配不到国家GDP总值10%的农业产出,无论怎样分配,都必然会导致城乡差距的进一步扩大.     

Geographical and geodemographic connections between different types of small area as the origins and destinations of migrants to Mid-Wales

Exchanges of population between supposedly ‘urban’ and ‘rural’ spaces have occurred throughout history as people migrate between areas with relatively, densely and sparsely settled populations. However, comparatively little is known about whether the same small areas persistently contribute to the flow and what types of locality are involved. Recent counterurbanising migration represents both a re-location of the centres of population growth from urban to rural areas in many developed countries, and a refashioning of the characteristics and lifestyles of residents occupying the countryside. Mid-Wales classically exemplifies the changing demographic fortune of many rural areas having experienced a long period of population decline, followed by a general but locally fluctuating upturn since the 1970s. Using empirical information from recent British censuses on numbers of 1-year migrants and from a national geodemographic classification of small areas, this paper explores the geographical and socio-economic connections between the origins and destinations of those people who moved into Mid-Wales during the closing decades of the 20th century. It concludes that certain places and types of locality have stronger migratory links enduring beyond the period covered by a single census enumeration.     

Diaspora as socio-material assemblage: Political agency in the Kurdish freedom movement's representations of homeland

The proliferation of diasporas has expanded the intricate web of political relations on a global scale. Transnationality has increasingly replaced methodological nationalism, and relationality blurred diaspora's boundaries. This article argues for framing diasporas as socio-material assemblages to capture the political agency of diasporas in action in a transnational space. This highlights diasporas’ ability to forge their transnational political actorness and to expand their power of attractiveness. By tracing ideas and things behind the essential task of representing the homeland, this research explores the connections of the Kurdish freedom movement in Europe, making three main arguments. First, it outlines the existence of transnational infrastructures of solidarity, which highlight a multi-ethnic plurality at work. Second, it illuminates the diasporas’ role in the south–north flow of knowledge and political influence. Third, the article examines the desire which stabilizes the assemblage and makes the circulation of ideas possible and smooth.     

Rainforest conservation as a strategy of climate policy

Tropical forest conservation in developing countries has repeatedly been highlighted as a new element in international climate policy. However, no clear ideas yet exist as to what shape such a conservation strategy might take. In the present paper, we would like to make some observations to this end. It is shown how projects in order to reduce CO₂-emissions resulting from deforestation and degradation (REDD) can be integrated into a system of tradable emission rights in an industrialised country and which requirements ought to be fulfilled. Instruments are emission credits and emission allowances. Driving actors interested in emission rights through forest projects may be private investors or the rainforest state itself. The efficiency of the system depends on a great extent on a binding reference path for the tolerable emissions from deforestation, which has been agreed upon and adhered to by the rainforest country by means of a forest law aimed at limiting deforestation. Our considerations lead us to conclude that the national baseline approach with an appropriate contribution by the rainforest country coupled with a decentralised system with private investors seems the most viable option. Since additional burdens are imposed on the rainforest country to some extent, a compromise could consist of agreeing on a moderate deforestation path, which is harmonised with the benefits from the forest projects. Combining both programmes (offset credits and emission allowances) is particularly attractive because all participants, and especially the industrialised country, benefit from it. The industrialised country can expand its climate conservation programme without any additional costs to a certain degree.     

Change agency as performance and embeddedness: Exploring the possibilities and limits of Butler and Bourdieu

In this paper, we explore the dual role of human agency in maintaining the status quo and generating change. Judith Butler and Pierre Bourdieu offer differing conceptions of change agency in relation to organization and transformation of gender relations. Focusing on how those approaches would work, we analyse an empirical case study on a particular change process: getting women the right to vote in the Swiss cantons of Appenzell. We contribute to the current use of Butler's and Bourdieu's theories in organization studies in three main ways. First, we explore stability and change from the lenses of these two scholars. Second, we illustrate how change agency looks from these two distinct perspectives. Finally, we offer an empirical analysis that identifies the main elements of change agency in the two frameworks and discuss the possibilities and limitations of bringing these two approaches together to better understand change agency.     

Recognising the agency of people with dementia

People with dementia have been assumed to possess weak or even no agency, so this paper provides a novel contribution to academic debate by examining their actual potential for agency. The author draws on findings from a qualitative study of everyday decision-making by people with dementia that aimed to identify the role of social factors (such as gender) in influencing their involvement in decisions. Whilst decision-making constitutes a form of deliberative agency, the research also identified when agency was alternatively habituated, embodied or emotional. The Economic and Social Research Council-funded research was undertaken in the North of England. Existing theoretical perspectives on agency are critiqued, particularly in relation to rationality, language and individualised agency. The study highlighted that people with dementia who lack deliberative capacity can nonetheless demonstrate creative capacity for agency. A more expansive concept of agency is needed in social science theory that is informed by the experiences of cognitively disabled people.     

Personal agency in the stress process

Stress researchers have typically controlled for the role of personal agency, or self-selection, in the stress process, rather than examining it. People in better mental health (those with high levels of coping resources and low levels of distress or disorder) should be more likely to exercise agency. Such individuals should, through problem-solving efforts and purposeful acts, experience fewer negative controllable events and more positive controllable events in their lives and be able to transform or compensate for stressors that they cannot avoid or eliminate. These agentic processes may account for the stress-buffering effects of coping resources; and, because coping resources are unequally distributed by social status, these processes should further help to explain how status differences in mental health are maintained and amplified over time.     

Integrating world cities into production networks: the case of port cities

In this article we analyse the location patterns of firms that provide specialized advanced producer services (APS) to international commodity chains that move through seaports. Such activities can take place in world cities or in port cities. The analysis of APS location patterns in port cities provides a good opportunity to integrate the study of world cities into the framework of Global Production Networks. Based upon our empirical findings, we conclude that while port-related APS activities predominantly follow the world city hierarchy, a number of port cities stand out because they act as nodes in global commodity flows and as centres of advanced services related to shipping and port activities. Based on these empirical findings we address future avenues of research.     

Policy diffusion as empowerment: domestic agency and the institutional dynamics of monetary policy diffusion in China

ABSTRACT

The policy diffusion literature has often focused on external pressures on domestic policy. However, by analysing the evolution of China’s monetary policy regime, we demonstrate a pattern of highly selective diffusion that is largely shaped by domestic political and institutional dynamics. We use an historical institutionalist approach to probe how the most relevant institutionally embedded agents, in this case, those within the Chinese central bank, have strategically engaged with this process. We show how selective diffusion has been shaped by epistemic policy learning through international engagement by China’s central bankers, and, in particular, how they have strategically used imported policy ideas as an institutional empowerment strategy, furthering the interests and agenda of the People’s Bank of China.     

从国际创意城市的特征看中国创意城市的发展

随着经济全球化和文化多元化进程的深化,世界经济结构呈现出从"工业型经济"向"服务型经济"转化的趋势.在此转变过程中,融合传统文化与现代数字技术、生产性与消费性服务业的创意经济应运而生,创意(创新)成为经济发展的重要资源,创意经济已在国际上逐渐兴起,正成为现代经济的增长点.据统计,目前全世界创意经济每天创造的产值高达220亿美元,并以5%的速度递增.创意经济又叫创意产业,是源自个人创意、技巧及才华,通过知识产权的开发与利用,具有创造财富和就业潜力的活动,它包括广告、建筑、艺术、古董、手工艺、设计、时尚、电影、软件等诸多部门.