Interpreting Home in the Transnational Discourse

ABSTRACT

The aim of this article is to present a selection of primary findings culled from empirical data collected in Dublin with post-European Union enlargement Polish migrants as the cohort in study. One aspect of the project was to investigate how that group interpreted home since they have left Poland. Based on the outcomes of interviews with thirty-one informants, the narratives reveal a group of individuals who continuously contest social constraints and push the boundaries of previously held notions of migration, identity, and home. This article situates their aspirations, preferences, and practices within discourses of transnationalism, thereby connecting their migration experiences with a consciousness of feeling at home in the world. This article breaks up “home” as interpreted by the informants into three categories—centered home, sentimental home, and transportable home. The wide range of perspectives held by informants and the inability to clearly define their position with regard to the notion of “home” reinforces the hypothesis of this article that, for a transnational cohort, the meaning of home is contested. In relation to the wider international literature regarding concepts of home, this article makes a contribution to the deepening scope of migration research in Ireland.     

北疆草原生态安全与民族团结进步

内蒙古自治区位于祖国北部边陲,东西长2400多公里,南北宽1700多公里,总面积118.3万平方公里,是祖国北疆生态系统的前沿阵地。内蒙古草原总面积8666.7万公顷,其中有效天然牧场6818万公顷,占全国草场面积的27%。内蒙古自治区一直以其临近京津、横跨＂三北＂的重要地理位置和脆弱的生态环境条件,在我国的生态安全大局中占据格外突出地位。因此,保护、修复内蒙古草原生态功能区;构筑祖国北疆生态安全屏障;建立、健全因生态环境引发的社会矛盾化解机制,不仅关系到内蒙古民族地区、边疆地区的社会和谐与稳定问题,而且关系到祖国北疆生态安全问题。     

Exploring parent–child communication in the context of threat: immigrant families facing detention and deportation in post-9/11 USA

This paper explores whether and how documented and undocumented migrant parents communicate with their children about the threats posed by the intensified enforcement of 1996 and 2001 US immigration reforms; whether parents facing potential detention and deportation plan for the care of their children; and whether their children learn from other sources about detention and deportation. The focus of this paper emerged in the context of a multiyear participatory and action research (PAR) process as one effort to understand the multiple meanings and divergent perspectives on parental–child communication that arose among and between participants and coresearchers. The aim is to better understand, in parents' own voices, their embrace of and resistance to direct communication with their children about the threat of deportation. Data are triangulated from in-depth interviews with 18 Central American immigrant coresearchers (Study 1), responses of 132 Latino/a immigrant parents to a survey with open-ended questions (Study 2), and conversations in a series of community meetings and workshops. Findings confirm the importance for advocates, service providers, and researchers to understand migrant parents' decisions about communication within the context of family and community values; gender expectations; lived and psychological experiences of being criminalized; and strategies to manage daily challenges of living without documents while parenting US-citizen children.     

Muslims of northern Mozambique and the liberation movements

Despite the fact that the liberation war occurred in northern Mozambique, where a considerable number of Muslims lived, their contribution to the independence struggle has been little studied. This paper focusses on their participation in two nationalist liberation movements, Mozambican African National Union (MANU) and Frente de Libertação de Moçambique (FRELIMO), and demonstrates that the prevailing idea in scholarship about Muslims’ aloofness from the liberation struggle is unjustified. It argues that Muslim support and participation in the liberation movements stemmed primarily from grassroots African nationalism. Like most Africans, Muslims wished to end colonialism and recover their land from the Portuguese. African Muslims of northern Mozambique were well suited to support these movements, because Islam and chieftainship were linked to each other. Chiefs were believed to be the ‘owners’ and ‘stewards’ of the land, and a majority of Muslim leaders, whether traditional chiefs (régulos, in Portuguese) or Sufi leaders (tariqa khulafa’, in Arabic), were from the chiefly clans. Most importantly, Muslims of northern Mozambique had close historical and cultural ties to Tanganyika and Zanzibar, especially through Islamic and kinship networks. The involvement of Muslims in the liberation movements of those regions, in particular in Tanganyika African National Union (TANU), inspired and encouraged the Muslims of northern Mozambique to support MANU and FRELIMO, especially since these two movements were launched in Tanganyika and Zanzibar with TANU backing and the participation of Muslim immigrants from northern Mozambique.     

The social dynamics of the “Nigerian Taliban”: fresh insights from the social identity theory

Although the ongoing terrorism of the “Nigerian Taliban”, widely known as “Boko Haram”, in northeastern Nigeria has elicited numerous works, there is yet to be an analysis that adequately accounts for the social dynamics of the group’s identity and belonging in the Nigerian polity. This paper is the first systematic attempt to draw on the social identity theory to develop a conceptual discourse that explains the relationship between religion in Nigeria as a force of mobilisation as well as an identity marker, and to show how its politics, practice and perception are implicated in the resilient insurgency of Boko Haram. Along the way, the paper considers the social dynamics of poverty and relative deprivation in northern, especially northeastern, Nigeria, and their contributions to the escalating terrorism of Boko Haram.     

Mobility Regimes in Practice: Later-life Westerners and Visa Runs in South-East Asia

Abstract

Studies of Western migrants in South-East Asia emphasise the importance of privilege, work and location within national boundaries in the construction of contemporary subjectivities. This article examines the role and relevance of cross-border mobility through the eyes of older, Western ‘visa runners’ with limited financial resources. Drawing on migrant experience of dwelling in and moving through Penang, Malaysia, I address the ways in which the mobility regimes of immigration frameworks and visa regulations become a formative aspect or otherwise of social practice and belonging. In focusing on the personal and social experience of visa running, this article transcends a methodological nationalist focus on identities and subjectivities within national spaces and highlights the variable role of people, places and life history in the forming of multi-layered attachments across national spaces in South-East Asia.     

社会和谐与农民工社会保障问题

为农民工提供可靠的社会保障,才能不断促进农村剩余劳动力向城市转移,才能带来我国生产力的持续发展和社会的稳定和谐;隐藏在农民工社会保障问题背后的根源,有六大矛盾;建议采取建立农村劳务输出公司等措施,来解决这些矛盾。     

Migrant remittances in Thailand: Economic necessity or social norm?

The remittances of internal migrants contribute in various ways to the well-being of their households of origin. This study examines the significance of selected socio-economic and demographic factors associated with remittance behaviour in Thailand as characterized by the propensity to remit and amount remitted. The extent to which remittances affect the living standard of house-holds left behind is also appraised. The analyses suggest that in Thailand sending remittances is a practice rooted in altruism which enables out-migrants to retain personal contact with their households of origin for an extended time. Thus, it is widely exercised regardless of the economic needs of the household. At the same time, out-migration is an effective means for low-income households to quickly overcome shortages of income. The sustenance of poor households might have been difficult without remittances. From a macro-perspective, remittances contribute to the equalization of the income distribution among households having out-migrants.     

建立移民社会保障制度的可行性研究

针对非自愿移民而设计的社会保障制度是保障移民生活、保证移民目标实现的重要机制。笔者以湖南省华容县为个案 ,深入分析建立移民社会保障制度的必要性和运行机制 ,并提出了一些制度构建和运行的看法。     

先秦时期陕北地区的人文生态变迁

先秦时期,陕北地区居民名称复杂,祖源莫辨,是各个民族的交汇融合之地,其社会经济形态属于复合经济,既有农业经济的因素,又大量存在着畜牧与狩猎,是农耕文明与游牧文明的缓冲地带。