Dropping Out or Signing Up? The Professionalisation of Youth Travel

Leaving school and dropping out of employment or further education was once an act of rebellion by cohorts of young people expressing anti‐establishment sentiments. Now it has become a neoliberal market place in the UK. Over the last five years the "gap year" has changed from a radical activity, dominated by charities and inspired by the travel of the hippie generation, to an institutionally accepted commercial gap year industry which helps form new citizens for a global age. This transformation has seen the dramatic growth in commercial gap year companies and in the numbers of young people in the UK taking gap years. Such growth, taking place under an increasingly engaged public gaze, has led to the professionalisation of the sector and to profound changes in its underlying values. Drawing on a range of empirical sources, I examine how the transformation of the gap year through the neoliberal market place has involved the application of corporate values and rhetoric to youth travel. Becoming "professional" has entailed a shift from collective idealism to the infinitely more saleable values of individual career development. While professional values give legitimacy to the gap year industry, its professional gaze is also proving to be relatively myopic—it has yet to be turned on the volunteer development projects through which many companies in the industry make their names, and money.     

Peripheral Visions? A Cross-cultural Study of Rural Youths' Views on Migration

This study sets out to investigate anticipatory views concerning out-migration amongst rural youth. Utilising three age-group samples from rural Norway, Scotland and Sweden, young people were classified as prospective 'stayers', 'leavers' or 'returners'. Both qualitative and quantitative data show that 'stayers' see themselves as most contented with rurality. 'Leavers' are most negative to rural living. 'Returners', though also critical about rural living, are highly positive towards social relations in their communities. Furthermore, national and gender differences are evident. These varying adolescent constructions of rurality are discussed in relation to possible national policies.     

Endangered Youth? Youth,gender and sexualities in urban Botswana

Age is now recognised as a significant social cleavage in research on youth in the South. Using participatory urban appraisal methodologies, this article explores constructions of sexualities among urban youth in Botswana, a country that is currently experiencing an HIV/AIDS epidemic and high levels of teenage pregnancy. We argue that not only are young people sophisticated sexual beings, but that there is a need to adopt more holistic approaches to examining sexualities among them so as to appreciate that constructions of sexualities are multi‐faceted, highly diverse and heavily gendered. This appreciation must then be integrated into a multi‐sectoral policy approach that moves beyond information provision towards one that addresses changes in gender, cultural and sexual identities.     

Thought and action? Perspectives on Mazzini and Garibaldi on the bicentenaries of their births

Abstract

The introduction provides a context for the six papers that were presented at two different symposia marking the birth bicentenaries of Giuseppe Mazzini and Giuseppe Garibaldi. The papers, revised for publication, address specific contributions made by these two founding figures of the modern Italian nation to the history of the Risorgimento, the ideologies of republicanism, democracy and nationality. The papers also make room for a discussion of their contrasting political modes, and look at their politics before and after Italy's political unification in 1860–61. The comparative approach highlights differences and similarities between Mazzini's and Garibaldi's political strategies and illuminates the choices available to those who wanted to unify the peninsula. The broad themes around which these papers are organized restore to these two figures the broad cosmopolitan dimensions that made the Risorgimento a movement of global impact.     

It’s Getting Better All the Time: Comparative Perspectives from Oceania and West Africa on Genetic Analysis and Archaeology

Technological advances are making genetic data collection and analysis feasible on a scale unimaginable only a few years ago. Early genetic research using mitochondrial DNA and the Y chromosome provided important insights for macroscale modeling of regional and continent-wide population movements, but the capacity to study the entire genome now opens an era of finer-grained, mesoscale studies of regional and local population histories that are more compatible with the scale of archaeological analysis. The utility of integrating both types of data is illustrated by a case study from Oceania, where genetic studies were used to evaluate two models for the geographic origins of the populations that colonized Polynesia beginning ca. 3000 bp, bringing with them the distinctive Lapita cultural assemblage. A second case study considers the application of genetic studies to an understanding of Fulbe history, especially that of the pastoral Fulbe. Both archaeological and genetic data are underdeveloped for the key Fulbe homeland regions of Mauritania and Senegal, but recent research in the Middle Senegal Valley permits some conjectures on the history of Fulbe nomadic pastoralism. The article concludes with suggestions for a multidisciplinary research agenda to expand and upgrade the quality of relevant archaeological data, incorporate biodistance studies of human skeletal material, and improve and expand genetic sampling using more historically sensitive collection protocols.     

Getting “Out of Africa”: Sea Crossings,Land Crossings and Culture in the Hominin Migrations

Palaeoanthropologists and archaeologists have advanced a wide range of explanatory narratives for the various movements of Homo erectus/Homo ergaster, and the first modern Homo sapiens, “Out of Africa”—or even back again. The application of Occam's razor—a parsimonious approach to causes—gives a more cautious approach. There is nothing in the available evidence that would require the ability for a human water crossing from Africa before the later Pleistocene, whether across the Strait of Gibraltar, the Sicilian Channel or the southern Red Sea (Bab el-Mandab). A parsimonious narrative is consistent with movements across the Sinai peninsula. The continuous arid zone from northern Africa to western Asia allowed both occupation and transit during wet phases of the Pleistocene; there is no requirement for a “sponge” model of absorption followed by expulsion of human groups. The Nile Valley as a possible transit route from East Africa has a geological chronology that could fit well much current evidence for the timing of human migration. The limited spatial and temporal opportunities for movements “Out of Africa,” or back again, also puts particular difficulties in the way of the gene flow required for the multiregional hypothesis of the development of modern Homo sapiens.     

Subsidizing Migration? Mexican Agricultural Policies and Migration to the United States

Migration theories often ignore the role that states play in stimulating migration through public assistance policies. Using the case of Mexico, this article explores the role of the state as a migrant‐producing actor by examining the relationship between migration and social assistance policies in the form of monetary cash transfers. It argues that direct, unconditional cash transfers, like those provided by agricultural programs such as Procampo, rather than providing the incentives needed to retain individuals in their home country, may instead be providing the resources needed to migrate, particularly if the amount of the transfer is insufficient to spur investment. Instead of discouraging migration by enhancing economic opportunities and reducing poverty, such policies can actually make it easier and more appealing for its beneficiaries to migrate.     

Getting the best of both worlds? Britain,the EU and migration policy

In perhaps unexpected ways Britain has become quite closely linked to key aspects of EU migration and asylum policy. This could be a rather surprising outcome given that the UK is outside Schengen, opted out of the free movement, asylum and migration provisions of the Amsterdam Treaty and remains fixed on the maintenance of border controls at ports of entry to the UK. However, the differential and conditional engagement that has developed with EU migration and asylum policy has been described by Tony Blair as ‘getting the best of both worlds’. What could it mean to get the best of both worlds? Can the ‘two worlds’ of Britain and Europe be so neatly distinguished? To answer these questions the article surveys the extent of British engagement with EU migration and asylum policy and explains when, how and why the UK has opted into key aspects of it, particularly the more coercive components concerned with asylum and border controls.     

Nearby,but Not Wanted? The Bypassing of Rural Hospitals and Policy Implications for Rural Health Care Systems

This study examines the underutilization of rural hospitals. The authors study hospital and patient characteristics to determine why and how rural patients bypass local rural hospitals despite the availability of comparable medical services. The general conditional logit analysis of data on patients and hospitals suggests that hospital characteristics (size, ownership, and distance) and patient characteristics (payment source, medical condition, age, and race) influence rural patients' decisions to bypass local rural hospitals. The study offers two suggestions (policy implications) to better utilize rural health care institutions: a market-centered approach, and more effective government intervention for horizontal and vertical hospital integration.     

Working for Inclusion? Conditional Cash Transfers,Rural Women,and the Reproduction of Inequality

Throughout the global South, conditional cash transfer programmes (CCTs) are used to promote socially inclusive development. CCTs are widely evaluated for their capacity to build children's human capital. In contrast, this paper aims to hold “social inclusion” to account by elucidating the impacts of Peru's CCT “Juntos” on the poor, rural mothers who are expected to meet programme conditions. Grounded in extensive ethnographic research in households, clinics, schools, and village halls, the paper interrogates the work of social inclusion in spaces where uneven development manifests itself in privation. Considered in light of critical feminist theories of performativity and social reproduction, the findings shed light on a far less optimistic reality for the work of social inclusion. This paper contributes a rich empirical account to critical literature on cash transfers and the discourses that drive them, and suggests that the circumstances under which women are required to fulfil programme conditions challenge the substance of contemporary “inclusive” development.     

Local and “Global” Perspectives on the Middle Woodland Southeast

During the Middle Woodland period, from 200 BC to AD 600, southeastern societies erected monuments, interacted widely, and produced some of the most striking material culture of the pre-Columbian era, but these developments are often overshadowed by the contemporaneous florescence of Hopewell culture in Ohio. I argue that the demonstrable material links between the Middle Woodland Southeast and Midwest demand that we cease to analyze these regional archaeological records in isolation and adopt multiscalar perspectives on the social fields that emerged from and impacted local Middle Woodland societies. In synthesizing recent research on Middle Woodland settlement, monumentality, interaction, and social organization, I make explicit comparisons between the Middle Woodland Southeast and Ohio Hopewell, revealing both commonalities and contrasts. New methodological approaches in the Southeast, including geophysical survey techniques, Bayesian chronological modeling, and high-resolution provenance analyses, promise to further elucidate site-specific histories and intersite connectivity. By implementing theoretical frameworks that simultaneously consider these local and global dimensions of Middle Woodland sociality, we may establish the southeastern Middle Woodland period as an archaeological context capable of elucidating the deep history of the Eastern Woodlands as well as long-standing issues surrounding middle-range societies.     

'Pomorze' or 'Preussen'? Polish Perspectives on Early Modern Prussian History

The attitudes of Polish historical scholarship towards the historyof early modern Prussia has been deeply marked by the partitionsof Poland and the anti-Polish coalition between Prussia, Russiaand Austria, which denied Poland its own statehood for wellover a century. In contrast to nineteenth-century German ‘Landesgeschichte’,which focused on local research and archival resources, historiansfrom Poland have usually opted to stay more within patternsof national history-writing. When the Polish state was reconstitutedafter the First World War, hostilities built up between Germanand Polish historical schools on Prussia, expressed in the NationalDemocratic-influenced myl zachodnia (Western thought) on thePolish side, and a not less expansionist Ostforschung on theother side of the border. It was only after the catastropheof the Second World War, the redrawing of national borders ineast central Europe, and under the influence of Marxist historicalconcepts in the People's Republic of Poland that nationalistapproaches as well as the ‘black legend’ of thePrussia's past were temporarily suppressed and finally replacedby a more research-led scholarship. During the second half ofthe twentieth century, Polish historiography was in fact muchquicker and more thorough than its German counterpart to forgethe history of Prussia into a major academic subject. Sincethe 1980s, if not earlier, an extremely fruitful dialogue hasdeveloped between scholars—a dialogue which does not alwayspenetrate journalistic and public awareness, as recent polemicssurrounding the controversially planned ‘Centre for Expulsions’in Berlin have shown.     

What is the Alternative? Youth,Entrepreneurship and the Developmental State in Urban Ethiopia

This article investigates the implementation of small‐scale entrepreneurship programmes in inner‐city Addis Ababa. Drawing on eighteen months of ethnographic fieldwork, it discusses the failure of these programmes to open up opportunities for social improvement for young people. It also analyses how young people confronted with this failure suggest ways of conceptualizing ‘alternatives’ to established development concepts of poverty reduction, such as microfinance and small‐scale entrepreneurship. In doing this, the author does not pretend either to offer a grand solution or to invent a brand new developmental concept. Rather, the aim is to provide a critical commentary on the reasons why some of the current academic debate on alternatives to neoliberalism have, de facto, amounted to an endorsement Ethiopia's political authoritarianism.     

Coconut Crisis in Kerala? Mainstream Narrative and Alternative Perspectives

India's oilseeds sector, which includes its coconut economy, experienced drastic changes in the wake of agricultural liberalization in the mid‐1990s. A persistent coconut crisis ‘narrative’ emerged after sharp price declines between 2000 and 2002 in which small farmers in the state of Kerala, India's main coconut producer, were identified as victims of the liberalized importation of cheap palm oil. This article describes this crisis narrative based on a literature review of academic and official reports, and challenges its problem analysis by juxtaposing it with information from ethnographic research with local farmers and traders. The research indicates that local labour shortages and increased regional competition also had a strong impact on Kerala's coconut market, production and processing, which varied from region to region. Furthermore, small farmers, with their diversified livelihoods, did not recognize a ‘crisis’ as such. Drawing upon the ‘advocacy coalition framework’, the article also indicates reasons for the emergence and persistence of the coconut crisis narrative and points to complex processes of restructuring social space in the age of globalization.     

Migration,Geographies of Marginality and Informality—Impacts on Upper and Lower Ends of Urban Systems in the North and South

Since the onset of post-industrialism, the research focus in the developed world has increasingly shifted to the role of the information and communication technology, knowledge workers and the creative sector in the global economy. It has led to what could be described as an iceberg approach to economic research. In this approach, the focus is primarily on what happens in the part of the global economic iceberg above the waterline—the “clean”, “fast-moving”, “technologically advanced” elements of the global economy. However another element of the global economy, the informal sector, is growing at an alarming rate in cities in both the developed and developing worlds. These activities are unobtrusively operating in a part of the iceberg below the waterline that receives relatively little attention from the research community. The purposes of this paper are to demonstrate how the information networks created in the iceberg above the waterline are being used by a growing section of the society in the developing world in order to reach first-world destinations. It shows how informality is changing the urban landscape in first-world cities where large concentrations of non-Western populations occur. The paper then shifts its attention to the overwhelmingly informally driven economies of African cities and outlines the inappropriateness of standard economic measures to accurately portray conditions there.     

Migration and implicit amenity markets: does incomplete compensation matter?

We first develop an empirical approach for generating measuresof wage over or under compensation (incomplete compensation)for location attributes. We then devise a method to test whethermigration is influenced by incomplete compensation in wagesfor location characteristics. An intercity wage regression isestimated where fixed effects capture the impact of site characteristicson wages. We then regress the fixed effects on a comprehensivevector of site attributes, where the residuals from this stagecapture incomplete compensation in wages. The derived measuresof incomplete compensation are included in a standard microdata-baseddiscrete choice model of migration. The results suggest thatincomplete wage compensation for site characteristics mattersin migration decisions, and the findings are consistent withtendencies toward spatial equilibrium in the distribution ofpopulation.     

A ‘German Invasion’? Irish Rural Radicalism,European Integration,and Irish Modernisation, 1958–73

Land hunger was a pervasive feature of Irish rural society which had not disappeared with the attainment of national independence. Rural agitation for land redistribution was conducted by many small indigenous farmers and it acquired an extraordinary anti-German tone after 1960. This was partially fuelled by a wave of international media speculation about Ireland as a base for Nazis eluding justice, but it was also driven by the notable success of Irish agencies in attracting German investment to Ireland. Consequently, the land question spilled into Irish efforts to attract Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) and Ireland's application to join the European Economic Community (EEC). Governments were slow to respond to the demands of the rural radicals: heavy-handedness against foreign landholdings might endanger Ireland's international reputation at the very time that the country was seeking to shake off an anti-progress and insular image. Militant republican involvement in land agitation stirred additional concern. When the Irish Land Commission compulsorily purchased the properties of a handful of West Germans in 1969, the Bundestag of the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) debated the matter. This ostensibly served as the rationale for vandalism, arson, and bomb attacks against foreign-owned farms and properties at a critical point: Northern Ireland was careering out of control and Dublin's priority was to join the EEC. The government defended the right to private property and it could not halt the EEC's liberalisation of agricultural land purchases after 1970: membership of the EEC was the overriding strategic objective. In sum, land ownership had formed part of the bedrock of Irish nationalism since at least the nineteenth century and Irish adaptation to the liberal international economy generated predictable resistance. The linkage between land ownership and national citizenship was not unique to the Irish, as the Danes, the Dutch, and several countries bordering West Germany experienced comparable difficulties in the 1960s and the 1970s.