Struggle as opportunity: making sense of U.S. migration experiences through Buddhist practice

Recent scholarship demonstrates how immigrants rely on religion for resources and psychological and social support at various stages of migration. Many studies of religion focus on the institutional role of faith-based organisations, with little regard for the social importance of religious experiences in daily life. Using interviews with U.S. immigrants who identify as Buddhists, I examine how migrants use Buddhist philosophies as a lens for finding meaning in the struggles associated with migration, including language acquisition, employment, and legal status. Through their practice, migrants gain a sense of agency amid vulnerable circumstances. I also explore the potentially negative consequences of the practice’s individual focus, including the propensity to mask structural causes of inequality and impede possibilities for collective action.     

Implementing a diversity policy through public incentives: Diversity Plans in companies of the Brussels-Capital Region

ABSTRACT

The development of diversity policies in the private sector is mostly a result of a voluntary engagement of companies. When interested, they decide about the ways and goals of such policies, implications for human resource management and the inclusion of staff with a migration background. This article explores a specific situation in which public authorities offered support and resources to companies in order to develop diversity policies. I present a first analysis of the implementation dynamics of the Brussels Diversity Plan, a policy instrument launched in 2007 by the Government of the city-region of Brussels. Building on the theoretical tools of the political sociology of public policies, I use qualitative material (interviews and administrative documents) to explore implementation processes in three private companies. I show that public authorities can play a decisive role in developing diversity policies in the private sector through incentives rather than constraint. Yet, the room for manoeuver offered to companies leads to important variations regarding how processes unfold and the results achieved.     

Gendering international student migration: an Indian case-study

ABSTRACT

Despite the mainstreaming of gender perspectives into migration research, very few attempts have been made to gender international student migration. This paper poses three questions about Indian students who study abroad. Are there gender differences in their motivations? How do they negotiate their gendered everyday lives when abroad? Is the return to India shaped by gender relations? An online survey of Indian study-abroad students (n?=?157), and in-depth interviews with Indian students in Toronto (n?=?22), returned students in New Delhi (n?=?21), and with parents of students abroad (n?=?22) help to provide answers. Conceptually, the paper draws on a ‘gendered geographies of power’ framework and on student migration as an embodied process subject to ‘matrices of (un)intelligibility’. We find minimal gender-related differences in motivations to study abroad, except that male students are drawn from a wider social background. However, whilst abroad, both male and female Indian students face challenges in performing their gendered identities. The Indian patrifocal family puts greater pressure on males to return; females face greater challenges upon return.     

青岛市人口迁移特征及其对经济增长的影响

改革开放以来青岛市一直保持着人口净迁入的态势,人口净迁移率不但很高,而且一直在快速递增.同时,通过实证分析可知,青岛市的人均产出与人口净迁移之间存在很高的正相关性,净迁移人口对经济增长具有显著的影响.据此可以判定:随着青岛市经济的高速持续增长,同时随着户籍制度改革的不断深化,可以预计在今后较长的一个时期内,青岛还会继续保持较高的人口净迁入,并由此对经济发展产生积极的促进作用.     

回族流迁人口城市适应过程研究的理论探讨

民族迁移者在城市接受城市化和现代化“洗礼”的过程比较一般农民工的适应。由于加入了民族文化、民族侍统与民族意识的变量。显得更复杂、更丰富。成为当前城市面临的焦点问题。由于回族是我国城市化程度最高的少数民族。且其有着极强经商观念、民族意识。独特的民族宗教文化与饮食、婚丧、居住习俗,因此关注回族迁移人口的城市适应无疑具典型性和突出的现实意义。从回族迁移人口的城市适应的重要性出发。通过国内外研究进展的分析和述评,提出新时期城市化背景下回族流迁人口城市适应过程研究的思路：探讨研究的技术路线、研究方法与研究内容,包括提取城市适应的关键阻碍因素分析,进行城市适应的多维层面和时序过程分析。建立评价指标体系,定量评判城市适应的水平。并籍此提出针对性的城市适应调控策略。从而为促进城市民族工作、建立城市和谐民族关系与和谐城市社会提供理论与实践指导。     

重庆区域经济差异分析兼论劳动力大规模转移的经济效应

重庆区域经济呈现以下几个特征：区县差异悬殊、地带性差异显著、直辖以来,绝对差异扩大,但相对差异在波动中缩小。与此同时,重庆劳动力呈现大规模转移,一方面是三峡百万移民;另一方面是农村劳动力的大规模输出．总计规模达千万。劳动力大规模的转移对重庆区域经济产生深远影响,第一,有利于减轻三峡库区生态承栽压力和居民就业压力,提高人均GDP水平;第二,有利于提高库区居民的平均收入水平,缩小重庆区域经济差异;第三,有利于提高农村劳动力整体素质,缩小地区间人力资本差异。     

Cosmopolitanism and the relevance of ‘zombie concepts’: the case of anomic suicide amongst Alevi Kurd youth

Against Beck's claims that conventional sociological concepts and categories are zombie categories, this paper argues that Durkheim's theoretical framework in which suicide is a symptom of an anomic state of society can help us understand the diversity of trajectories that transnational migrants follow and that shape their suicide rates within a cosmopolitan society. Drawing on ethnographic data collected on eight suicides and three attempted suicide cases of second‐generation male Alevi Kurdish migrants living in London, this article explains the impact of segmented assimilation/adaptation trajectories on the incidence of suicide and how their membership of a ‘new rainbow underclass’, as a manifestation of cosmopolitan society, is itself an anomic social position with a lack of integration and regulation.     

Family Relationships,Social Connections,and Depressive Symptoms Among Chinese Older Adults in International Migrant Families

This study explored whether and how family relationships and social connections influence depressive symptoms of older migrants and older adults in transnational families using the data gathered from a cross-sectional survey in Los Angeles, California, United States, and Beijing, China. Regression results showed that the older migrants reported significantly higher levels of depression than the elders in transnational families. The findings highlight the importance of maintaining close family relations and having large friendship networks for older adults in international migrant families.     

‘More like a daughter than an employee’: the kinning process between migrant care workers,elderly care receivers and their extended families

ABSTRACT

This paper explores the intersections of formal and informal care in the relationships that develop between elderly care receivers and their families and migrant domestic care workers and their families. The domestic migrant care literature has tended to focus on two main ‘hidden costs’ of this ‘care-chain’: the ‘care exploitation’ of paid carers by their employers and the ‘care drain’ impact on the family members left behind by the migrant. In this paper, we employ a care circulation framework to examine the process of becoming kin-like – or ‘kinning’, which remains relatively under-explored and warrants further research. An analysis of this process of kinning helps to highlight how the domestic space of care receiver homes are transformed – through the negotiation of relationships with migrant care workers – into transnational social fields that bring the diaspora worlds of the migrants into the everyday worlds of the locals.     

Transnational migration and the commodification of eldercare in urban Ghana

ABSTRACT

Over the past 20 years, organizations to provide commercial nursing services, mainly to the sick and debilitated elderly, have sprung up in Accra, Ghana. This article assesses the degree to which transnational migration has generated social changes in ageing at the level of everyday practices. It argues that a range of social actors differently involved in transnational migration has created and sustained a market for home nursing agencies in Ghana through diverse processes involving the imagination of care work abroad, complex negotiations between the elderly at home and their anxious children abroad, increased financial resources among the middle class and the evaluations of western eldercare services by return and current migrants. These dynamics illustrate the complexity of the role of transnational migration in generating social change and highlight the significance of the needs of local families and the role of the imagination in shaping social remittances from abroad.