Precarious intimacies – Europeanised border regime and migrant sex work

This article examines the meaning of borders – the spaces where immigration policies and restrictions are materially condensed – in the lives of migrant sex workers. I provide a theoretical and conceptual framework to discuss the role of borders in creating living and working conditions for sex workers within the European border regime. This regime both restricts and enables a structural background for migrant sex work. I argue that sex work scholars should pay closer attention to the heterogeneity of non-citizenship and the effects of different immigration statuses on the working conditions and forms of intimacies migrants create. Borders need to be viewed as institutions that produce social relations. I categorise these relations as precarious intimacies to describe the ways in which intimacy, commerce and borders often intertwine in the lives of migrants engaged in commercial sex work. The article draws upon 18-month ethnographic fieldwork among and interviews with migrant sex workers in Finland.     

‘Surrounded with so much uncertainty’: asylum seekers and manufactured precarity in Australia

In Australia, nearly 30,000 asylum seekers have the legal right to work, but their temporary and conditional migration status exposes them to work-related precarity. This article draws on a small qualitative study that examined asylum seekers’ experiences of seeking work and achieving economic security. Over an 18-month period, 29 semi-structured interviews with asylum seekers who had work rights in Australia were conducted. It provides insights into how restrictive immigration policies manufacture precarity through short-term, conditional visas, resulting in employer risk aversion, segmentation into insecure work, and in-work instability and mistreatment. Asylum seekers manage their experiences and feelings of pervasive insecurity through individual coping and survival strategies.     

Diaspora as aesthetic formation: community sports events and the making of a Somali diaspora

This paper uses the concept of aesthetic formation to examine the practices through which diasporic imaginations become tangible and experienced as ‘real’. The authors interpret sport as an embodied aesthetic practice through which diasporas materialise, with important implications for identification and belonging. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork on a transnational community-based sports event, the Amsterdam Futsal Tournament, the paper discusses how articulations of Somali diasporism become tangible and embodied in subjects who participate in this event. The authors conclude that these materialisation practices can simultaneously elicit multiple forms and levels of belonging that also foster a sense of integration and belonging to the nation.     

Im/mobile highly skilled migrants in Qatar*

Most studies on the mobility of highly skilled migrants have been examined with a framework of global talent mobility and under conditions of neoliberal governance and economic globalization. In this study we challenge the notion of the hypermobile knowledge worker. Utilizing mixed methods, we examine the factors that attracted highly skilled migrants to Qatar and the conditions under which they might leave in the future. Rather than finding a group of footloose migrants attracted primarily to high-wage jobs, a lack of taxation or amenities, and with multiple alternative locations of residence, we find that highly skilled migrants exist on a spectrum of immobility. More significantly, this immobility depends on the migrant’s region of origin. For Asian and Western migrants immobility is attributed to the Kafala system or employer sponsorship, which hinders occupational and spatial mobility and ties workers to their sponsors. Arab highly skilled migrants are especially affected by lack of security and stability in their home countries, which makes these workers involuntarily immobile. The former group seem to be willing to accept a reduced level of agency and mobility for high income, whereas for the latter security and stability are more fundamental to their decision to come to Qatar.     

‘Refugees welcome?’ The interplay between perceived threats and general concerns on the acceptance of refugees – a factorial survey approach in Germany

The on-going migration of refugees to Europe has fuelled debates about the indigence of refugees and the perceived legitimacy of individual claims for asylum in different receptive countries. With a substantial body of research that has investigated the antecedents of attitudes towards immigrants, evidence on whether those underlying assumptions hold true for refugees as well remains scarce. The paper applies the framework of Intergroup Threat Theory to arrive at competing hypotheses with regard to the acceptance levels of refugees. We use pooled data from two probabilistic samples drawn in the German city of Dresden and apply a confounded factorial survey design to extend previous research on attitudes towards refugees. We find that natives perceive political persecution and war as justified reasons for seeking asylum in Germany, while socio-demographic characteristics of respondents and refugees are of minor importance. Foremost, the individual level of respondent’s fear of crime represents a crucial moderator of the perception of refugees as threatening.     

民国时期的人口迁移与社会保障立法

民国时期天灾连年,战乱不断,粮食减产,造成了中国近代史上连续不断的人口迁移,引发了土匪猖獗、疾病横行、社会动荡等一系列社会问题,对社会秩序造成了极大冲击。民国时期的社会保障立法有得有失,对当今中国的社会保障立法具有借鉴和启示意义。     

傣泰民族起源与傣泰民族文化圈的形成新探

中国古代不存在一个可成其为民族的越人族体,泰人也不是越人演变而来的,傣泰民族在汉代以前的历史的追溯已无意义。傣泰民族可追溯的源流在汉代云南滇中,并随后向南迁移到今天的云南南部及东南亚一带。由于傣泰民族在长期的历史迁移与发展中保持了水稻种植、“勐-阪”制度与文化的复制模式,使傣泰民族的先民们能在长期的迁移过程中定居并壮大起来,从而在今天形成了一个傣泰民族居住的文化圈。傣泰民族文化圈是一个文化地理概念,基于共同的民族渊源关系,人们互相理解、宽容、合作、开展社会与经济的交流,共同促进民族与文化的发展,是当代理解傣泰民族文化的新思维。     

我国官员财产申报制度及其绩效

财产申报制度作为防治腐败的科学机制之一,为世界大多数国家所借鉴。跟进性制度创新其实就是一种制度移植,基于此,以政策移植理论为研究工具,结合我国官员财产申报制度化面临的一些困境与难题,对官员财产申报制度构建进行前瞻性审视与思考,并提出相关对策以期带来制度绩效的最大化。     

新型公司制企业产权制度的创新

文章从财产权属制度变迁的角度,分析了新型公司制企业改制后财产权属关系,包括股权、法人财产权的性质与特点,以及"股权--法人财产权"结构模式及其相互关系,从而论证了财产产权制度扬弃财产所有权制度的历史必然性,以及固守于大陆法系财产所有权制度观念的局限性.明确指出股权与法人财产权是两组在内涵与外延上完全不同的产权权利束,作为股权--法人财产权这种结构形式,既不是私有权,也不是公有权,而是社会共有权的财产形式,是资本的社会组织形式.     

Large,But Adaptable? A Successful Population Policy and Its Long Term Effects

A restrictive population policy led to almost doubling the number of newborns from one year to another in Romania in the 1960s. Twenty years later, this large generation (of women) enters a marriage market with few eligible older mates, in a society where marriage is a must. In this article, I analyze this social experiment within the broader frame of the marriage squeeze/two sex models. Using various data from censuses and surveys, I argue that the marriage market is flexible even when is confronted with disproportionately large cohorts. If the social pressure toward marriage is strong, the marriage rates do not necessarily fall, but the mating age patterns change.