Transnational Migration: Bringing Gender In

This article aims to bring gender into an even tighter transnational migration focus by broadening and deepening our original framework of “gendered geographies of power,” linking it more directly to existing and emerging scholarship. We examine and highlight previously neglected areas such as the role of the state and the social imaginary in gendering transnational processes and experiences. We identify topics that remain under‐appreciated, under‐researched, and/or under‐theorized. Finally, we initiate a discussion of how a gendered analysis of transnational migration can help bridge this particular research to other gendered transnational processes under study that do not privilege migration.     

Critical Perspectives in Antiracism: An Introduction*

Ce numéro spécial de la RCSA est consacré aux nouvelles façons d'aborder la lutte antiraciste dans des contextes multiraciaux. Les auteurs examinent les pratiques antiracistes selon des points de vue différents qui parfois se chevauchent, et tracent les grandes lignes de la pratique antiraciste, tout particullièrement en ce qui concerne la pédagogie et les ateliers antiracistes. Ils apportent leur contribution à létude de l'antiracisme critique et à son application dans le discours pédagogique. Il est question également dévolution sociale et pédagogique, et ils montrent comment le discours et la pratique anti-racistes peuvent l'accélérer. Même si les fondements théoriques et méthodologiques de l'antiracisme ne sont pas entièrement définis, les auteurs s'efforcent de reformuler l'antiracisme à partir de ses origines propres. Le présent article amorce la discussion en fixant les limites du discours et en précisant l'impact de l'antiracisme sur lévolution pédagogique et sociale. Il examine comment une culture antiraciste peut sépanouir, surtout dans un contexte eurocanadien et euroaméricain. Les répercussions de la mondialisation sur léducation et lévolution sociale sont examinées, tout comme le sont les motifs de ceux qui préconisent une mise en pratique de la pensée antiraciste. This special issue of the CRSA aims to explore new ways of thinking about antiracism praxis in multiracial contexts. The papers in this issue examine antiracism praxis from varying and intersecting backgrounds and positions. They present a broad view of antiracism extending from teacher education to antiracism workshop training. They build on existing scholarship in critical antiracism as a pedagogical discourse and a communicative and political practice. A key question is: How we can ensure that antiracism discourse and practice connect to achieve educational and transformative social change? While the theoretical and methodological underpinnings of antiracism are still in the formative stage, the essays will add to ongoing attempts to (re)conceptualize antiracism from its original formulations. This article begins the dialogue by specifying an antiracism discursive framework and the implications of anti-racism's basic tenets for transformative learning and social change. It explores some of the ways that antiracism knowledge can be constructed, produced and disseminated, particularly (but not exclusively) in Euro-Canadian/American contexts, and highlights some of the challenges that current globalization processes provide for education and social change, and the rationale for engaging in antiracism praxis.     

Introduction: Transnational Lesbian Cultures

This special issue examines the transnational shape and shaping of lesbian lives and cultures in and across China, India, the United Kingdom, and the United States. It uses the expression “transnational lesbian cultures” to suggest that despite sometimes radically different sociopolitical and cultural contexts, the lived experiences of same-sex desire and their emotional attachments create particular affinities between women who love women, affinities that reach across the distinct cultural and social contexts that shape them. The articles brought together explore lesbian subcultures, film, graphic novels, music, and online intimacies. They show that as a cultural and political signifier and as an analytical tool, lesbian troubles and complicates contemporary sexual politics, not least by revealing some of the gendered structures that shape debates about sexuality in a range of critical, cultural and political contexts. While the individual pieces cover a wide range of issues and concerns—which are often highly specific to the historical, cultural, and political contexts they discuss—together they tell a story about contemporary transnational lesbian culture: one that is marked by intricate links between norms and their effects and shaped by the efforts to resist denial, discrimination, and sometimes even active persecution.     

Trust Networks in Transnational Migration

The sheer volume of migrant remittances to relatively poor countries, including those of Latin America and the Caribbean, nicely dramatizes the genuinely transnational social ties created by long-distance migration. The evidence underlines that migration flows are serious business, not only for the individuals and families involved, but also for whole national economies. Thinking about remittances also allows us to identify some crucial social processes of which most migrants and first-hand students of migration are well aware, but for which we have neither well-established theories, carefully crafted concepts, nor extensive evidence. I mean the creation, use, and transformation of interpersonal trust networks within migration streams.     

IM Special Section Introduction: Rethinking International Migration in China and India

China and India have the world’s two largest populations and have long been major sources of migrants to other countries. In recent years, movements of Chinese and Indians for study and work overseas have been affected by developments in policies at their chosen destinations as well as at home. The flows of Chinese and Indian students and skilled migrants in the second decade of the 21st century are occurring within quite different political and economic contexts from those that prevailed even as recently as a decade ago. In the first part of this brief editorial introduction, we introduce some features of contemporary Chinese and Indian migration. The four substantive papers in the special section are then introduced, the first two with reference to the changing Asian migration patterns, and the remaining two addressing the changing dynamics of migration.     

Uncertainty and International Migration: An Option Cum Portfolio Model

Real option theory suggests that individual migration may be delayed beyond the Marshallian trigger since the option value to waiting may be sufficiently positive in the face of uncertainty. In this paper we present a model where a multi-member family is the decision- making unit. Therefore, migration may now be partly driven by the desire to diversify the location of family members in order to reduce income risk. Our two-period model incorporates both the option and the portfolio motive as the triggers determining family’s optimum timing of migration. The optimum delay before migration is shown to depend on the uncertainty parameters of the model including risk aversion and income volatility. We use aggregate Canadian data on immigrant visa issuance and landing to capture average waiting period for migrants from Hong Kong.

Social Class,Migration Policy and Migrant Strategies: An Introduction

The introduction to this special issue traces class at the interface between migration policy and migrant strategies. Scholarship on the politics of migration and citizenship has thus far largely neglected class. In contrast, we contend that discourses on migration, integration and citizenship are inevitably classed. Assessed through seemingly heterogeneous criteria of “merit” and “performance”, class serves as an analytical connector between economic and identity rationales which intersect in all migration policies, including those regulating family and humanitarian admission. Class‐selective policy frames can function as constraints maintaining some aspiring migrants into immobility or channeling different groups of migrants into separate and unequal incorporation routes. Yet, policy frames can also serve as resources to strategize with as migrants navigate and perform gendered and classed expectations embedded into receiving‐country migration regimes. We conclude that connecting policy with migrant strategies is key to reintroducing class without naturalizing classed strategies of mobility.     

International Newsletter on Migration

The International Newsletter on Migration is a publication of the Research Committee on Migration (RC: No. 31) of the International Sociological Association. Address all correspondence to the Secretary‐Treasurer, Lydio F. Tomasi, Editor of IMR, E‐mail: < cmslft@aol.com >.     

International Newsletter on Migration

The International Newsletter on Migration is a publication of the Research Committee on Migration (RC: No. 31) of the International Sociological Association. Address all correspondence to the Editor of the Newsletter, Catherine Wihtol de Wenden (50, Avenue Duquesne, 75007 Paris, France, Tel. 47‐34‐77‐85) or to Lydio F. Tomasi, Editor of IMR, E‐mail: < cmslft@aol.com >.     

International Newsletter on Migration

The International Newsletter on Migration is a publication of the Research Committee on Migration (RC: No. 31) of the International Sociological Association. Address all correspondence to the Secretary‐Treasurer, Lydio F. Tomasi, E‐mail: < cmslft@aol.com >.