The gendered contours of North Korean Migration: sexualized bodies and the violence of phenotypical normalization in South Korea

This article examines the gendered and sexualized contours of North Korean experiences in South Korea at a time when nearly 70% of the North Korean emigrants are women. South Korean television shows – e.g. reality programs – and marriage matchmaking organizations seek to portray North Korean women in a ‘positive’ way to the South Korean public, although, as this article will illustrate, these representations are of a very particular, sexualized kind. These representations are sometimes negative, and there is stigma attached to North Korean women, in which South Koreans assume, for example, that they are victims of human trafficking or that they have had relations with Chinese men during their migration. Furthermore, poor nutrition and other forms of structural violence in North Korea have molded North Korean bodies; there are often physical disparities between North and South Koreans. In South Korean society where short height is viewed as undesirable and where idealized, surgical notions of beauty dominate, the violence of gendered phenotypical normalization mark North Korean bodies as smaller, foreign, and strange. Based on ethnographic research in South Korea, this article argues that these gendered contours of North Korean migration amount to a different sort of structural violence in South Korea.     

Reconfigured Reciprocity: How Aging Taiwanese Immigrants Transform Cultural Logics of Elder Care

Drawing on 55 interviews with older Taiwanese immigrants who relocated to the United States at an earlier life stage, the author argues that changing contextual features involved in the processes of international migration encourage and even demand aging immigrants to reconstruct cultural logics of aging and geriatric care. He develops the concept of reconfigured reciprocity to demonstrate how aging migrant populations transform cultural logics of intergenerational responsibility, obligation, and entitlement to reconcile the tension between ethnic tradition and modernity. First, he reveals how many of the respondents' lack of caregiving for their own parents undermines their sense of entitlement to receive care from younger generations. Furthermore, he highlights how the structural squeeze among work, family, and caregiving with which the younger generation struggles further discourages the respondents from relying on their children. Finally, the author underscores how aging immigrants evoke the concept of Americanization to reconstruct expectations of how they should be taken care of in their twilight years.     

Too sick to move: distant ‘crisis’ care in transnational families

This paper examines the crisis of acute and chronic illness, death, and dying in transnational families. These are the stages in the family life-course when physical co-presence is required to deliver hands-on care and intimate emotional support for the sick family member. It is a time when distant kin feel they need ‘to be there’, including for their own sense of well-being. This period of ‘crisis’ (in the anthropological sense) makes visible all of the impediments to transnational family caregiving that often remain hidden during those periods when ‘routine’ forms of distant care are adequate. Of particular relevance are the macro-level factors generated by national borders and the policies that define them, including those that govern employment, travel, visa, health, and aged care provisions. It is in these family life phases of crisis that nation-state structures can work to constrain individual agency and rights, making compellingly evident the growing need for transnational structures and policy. At issue are the largely invisible (in a policy sense) but increasingly common micro-level responses of family and individuals that characterize ‘crisis distant care’, which are characterized by the urgent need to visit and to intensify use of ICTs. The paper examines the experiences of migrants living in Australia who are trying to care for acutely unwell family members abroad.     

Analysis of the Behavior Logic of Young Migrant Workers＇ Flash Marriage when Returning Hometown during Spring Festival——Based on the Case Study of D Village in Henan

基于田野调查,考察了D村青年农民工春节返乡“闪婚”现象,通过对该婚恋模式程序性仪式的展示,力图全面透视当地青年农民工“闪婚”这一婚恋模式的实践背景和行为逻辑,以及在这种行为逻辑背后所彰显的子辈权利意识兴起与父权衰落的农村家庭代际关系变迁。     

对中国流动人口“梯次流动”的理论思考

针对中国大规模流动人口的流动特点及其流动过程进行理论思考,提出梯次流动概念和流动人口的梯次流动形式、前提条件和原理。将梯次流动定义为在流动迁移的过程中,流动人口凭借自身以及外部的力量不断改善其个人和家庭的福利状况,从而呈现出的一种渐进性的向上流动现象。梯次流动成为一种人口流动中不断优化决策的过程,梯次流动的实现需要一定的社会经济环境,中国近三十年来的改革开放和社会经济发展创造了必要的条件,促成了梯次流动动机的形成和实现的可能。梯次流动的分析视角有助于从微观视角分析个人流动到家庭流动迁移完成的过渡过程,更好地认识中国流动人口现象的特殊性并完善相应的政策与制度。     

基于logistic模型的外来人口婚姻迁移的影响因素分析——以珠三角某地区为例

婚姻迁移是人口迁移的一个方面,且增多趋势愈见明显。动机研究是人口迁移相对集中的关注问题。但是关于以迁入地为基点对婚姻迁移的影响因素分析相对较少。本文试图以某地区为例,研究其外来人口中婚姻迁移行为发生的影响因素,主要包括个人、户籍、经济、就业和城市适应五大因素,并引入logistic模型对测量变量进行统计分析。结果表明,个人因素对婚姻迁移的贡献最大,除了就业因素外,其他因素的贡献相似。尤其指出的是随着外来人口的城市适应程度提高,婚姻迁移的可能性将会增加。由此说明,外来人口城市生活的再社会化程度将为他们的社会融合奠定基础。     

劳动力外出务工对农户农业商品化率的影响——基于江西省四个县农户调研的实证分析

农村劳动力向非农产业和城镇转移是提高农业商品化水平的必然要求。本文使用近期的农户调研数据考察了家庭成员外出务工对农户农业商品化率的影响。计量分析表明,从整体上看,务工户与非务工户之间的农业商品率不存在显著差异。我们将农业生产按要素密集程度进行划分后,才发现成员外出务工所带来的潜在影响,务工户粮食生产的商品化率有了提高,而其它农业生产的商品化率则显著下降了。此外,我们还发现,农地市场及农村信贷市场发育对农户农业商品化发展具有重要作用。     

Towards the elsewhere: discourses on migration and mobility practices between Morocco and Italy

The objective of this article is to analyse the preparation process of young Moroccan migrants intended to migrate to Italy. My focus is on the personal and collective formulation of their desire to leave and on concomitant action taken to bring about these aspirations; highlighting the complexity of the imagination, which migration – and expected return – entails. A second point of interest is the agency exerted by such youth, as they prepare for departure; even when they have not yet physically left the country. In addition, my observation is focussed on networks emerging as a result of having to deal with state-imposed, migration restrictions, as well as with the politics of humanitarian agencies and NGOs. I argue that these aspiring migrants project themselves into the future and act in accordance with what they long to become. They shape themselves as mobile subjects through a process of self-making to overcome the above-mentioned constraints.     

‘There it will be better … ’: Southern Sudanese in Khartoum imagining a new ‘home’ away from ‘home’

At the time of the research, Khartoum was a multi-ethnic and multinational metropolis of 8 million people. A considerable part of the population consists of Southern Sudanese migrants and displaced persons that came during the 20 years plus of civil war in South Sudan to the capital. These people were categorised after the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), as displaced people regardless as to whether they come to the capital as labour migrants, students or because of the war to the capital. The notion of displacement assumes that they are people who are ‘out of place’: thereby assuming a former situation of being in place, a place that can be called ‘home’. After the CPA from 2005, this frequently only imagined home became a real place for the IDP’s to which they are supposed to go back. Yet, many migrants and displaced people are reluctant to move to Southern Sudan. Their decision about going to the South or staying in Khartoum depends not only on the opportunities and perspectives in their respective ‘home’ areas but also on the perceptions of belonging and identity. The imaginations and aspirations about the future life in South Sudan, which I analyse in this article, reflect this ambivalent positioning.     

Imagining a future in ‘bush’: migration aspirations at times of crisis in Anglophone Cameroon

This article addresses the migration aspirations of young, lower middle-class Cameroonians living in Anglophone Cameroon. Deportations and prevention campaigns portray the negatives of migration, yet often have little impact because they assume that migrants’ aspirations are grounded in the prior success of other migrants. This research takes its lead from the question: Why aren’t aspiring migrants in Cameroon discouraged by migration failure? It is based on an ethnographic fieldwork conducted between September 2007 and January 2009 in Buea (South West Cameroon). Since the late 1990s, the desire for a future ‘away from home’ has come to be expressed in Anglophone Cameroon by aspirations of going to ‘bush’. Taking seriously people’s conceptions of success and failure in places of departure, the article argues that locally voiced claims of ‘global belonging’ exert an important influence on migration aspirations. An understanding of deeply rooted migration desires must include an analysis of identity politics.