Geoarchaeological perspectives on paleolandscapes and regional subsurface archaeology

This paper explores geoarchaeological approaches to regional-scale research in dynamic landscapes. Landscape element, a spatial concept from landscape ecology, and the archaeological notion of place are integrated with geomorphological models of landscape evolution. A distributional or non-site approach to the subsurface archaeological record is argued to be most consist with a dynamic view of landscapes. Regional geomorphological studies are shown to be crucial, given the volume of sediment that needs to be searched, in developing efficient subsurface sampling strategies. Various subsurface recovery techniques are reviewed, including the potential use of microartifacts to increase the effectiveness of small bulk samples in sampling the buried archaeological record.     

Regional labor markets and the household migration decision

"The current work extends the modeling of the household migration decision to take into account location-specific influences and relates these to regional wage differentials. This allows for more complete analysis of real wage gains or losses associated with migration and inferences regarding the nature of equilibrium or disequilibrium wage differentials between regions." Data are from the Michigan Panel Study of Income Dynamics for the period 1976-1978. "The results indicate systematic and often substantial influences of household location on the nominal wage and on both job and residence mobility. Based on these findings, comparisons of wage growth patterns are made for those changing jobs and region of residence status. Although compared to other households the wage growth of these migrants is on average lower before migration and higher after migration, the analysis provides no support for arguments that nominal regional wage differentials reflect systematic ordering of real wage differentials. This finding suggests that real wage gains are closely tied to the interregional migration decision but are not related to regional nominal wage differentials in a simple fashion."     

The determinants of labor migration in Egypt

The factors which affect individual decisions with regard to geographic movement in Egypt are examined and the magnitude in which each factor exerts its influence on aggregate geographic labor supply adjustments is estimated. The spatial unit used in the study is the administrative region, of which there are 25. No effort is made to esimate the impact which migration has had on the origin or destination region. The migrant will presumably choose that destination which, given his information, the migrant thinks will be best. The model which is employed attempts to explain gross interregional migration without the explicit introduction of an individual decision function. Rather, migration is related to certain aggregate proxy variables. Among the independent variables employed in the analysis are (origin and destination) income, education, urbanization, and population. The other explanatory variable used is the distance between region i and region j. The migration measure employed refers to cumulative male migration which occurred prior to 1960; the independent variables are defined for a given point in time (1960). The independent variables explain a reasonably large percentage of the variance in migration between regions in Egypt. All variables were significant at the 5% level or better. The findings indicate that distance acts as an important impediment to migration. Migration is away from low wage and toward high wage regions, which may have contributed to a narrowing of regional wage differentials. Migrants are attracted to regions which have large populations and to regions which have a large percentage of urban to total population. A tendency exists for migrants to come from regions with large populations. There is also some tendency for migrants to come from regions which have a relatively large urban population. Migrants do not appear to come from regions with high educational levels.     

U.S. North-South labor migration and trade

The authors examine the roles of labor migration and commodity trade in the inter-regional equalization of the real wage rate in the United States. The emphasis is on North-South patterns. Theoretical models are first outlined and then tested using 1960 and 1970 census data and multi-regional input-output data for 1963. It is found that "the pattern of trade-embodied labor flow closely resembled the pattern of direct labor migration." It is also noted that "the South's hierarchical profile of relative plentifulness among age, education, and race-specific categories of work force tended to persist and remain fairly stable between 1960 and 1970.... One plausible hypothesis is that interregional commodity trade is accomplishing the bulk of the requisite adjustment in bringing about the real wage equalization."     

New perspectives on forced migration in the history of twentieth-century neuroscience

ABSTRACT

This special issue of the Journal of the History of the Neurosciences, comprised of six articles and one commentary, reflects on the multifold dimensions of intellectual migration in the neurosciences and illustrates them by relevant case studies, biographies, and surveys from twentieth-century history of science and medicine perspectives. The special issue as a whole strives to emphasize the impact of forced migration in the neurosciences and psychiatry from an interdisciplinary perspective by, first, describing the general research topic, second, by showing how new models can be applied to the historiography and social studies of twentieth-century neuroscience, and, third, by providing a deeper understanding of the impact of European émigré researchers on emerging allied fields, such as neurogenetics, biological psychiatry, psychosomatics, and public mental health, etc. as resulting from this process at large.     

The role of equilibrium and disequilibrium in modeling regional growth and decline: a critical reassessment

ABSTRACT. The assumption of interregional equilibrium in migration research has recently been attacked. At issue is the motivation for on-going migration if rents and wags accurately compensate for spatial amenity variations; but if rents and wages fail to accurately compensate potential migrants, then amenity valuations must be flawed. We here show that arguments supporting substantial disequilibrium in the US. economy are unconvincing. The substantive issues are then clarified by a model which allows for both equilibrium and disequilibrium migration. We conclude that intertemporally systematic migration stems predominantly from equilibrium forces.     

The effects of internal migration on regional wage and unemployment disparities in Canada

"This paper examines the role of the migration mechanism in the context of a general interregional factor flow adjustment model. Using an estimation technique, which pools cross-section and time series data, the direct effects of migration flows and regional investment on the growth of regional wages and unemployment [in Canada] are examined. The results suggest that migration has a small, but significant impact on regional wages and unemployment rates."     

The peasantariat and politics: migration,wage labor,and agriculture in Botswana

This article examines Botswana's wage labor migration in terms of 2 reigning theories: 1) as a dichotomy between traditional and modern society, with workers viewing agriculture as an alternative to more desirable wage employment; or 2) as a subordination of colonial society to capitalist society, with workers drawn from the resulting underdeveloped and impoverished areas and divorced from their agricultural potential. Approximately 90% of Botswanan households have a wage worker; less than 1/4 of households rely on the agricultural economy alone. 80% of the population works in agriculture in some way, but agriculture contributes only 35% of total rural income. Over 50% of households are below the poverty level, and most must rely on a variety of income sources for subsistence. 68% of rural households (Botswana is 84% rural) have absent wage earners while 45% have 1 or more wage earners present. Absent wage earners work mainly in unskilled and semi-skilled jobs in Botswanan towns (44%) and villages (22%), and lands and cattlepost locations (5%) in South African mines (19%), and other jobs in South Africa (8%). Individuals with low socioeconomic status tend to migrate to South Africa; those with higher status move to Botswanan towns. Working for wages has become customary for most Botswanans. This article undermines conventional development theories by showing the close interweaving of the modern and traditional societies, and arguing that traditional retention of communal land rights and cattle ownership served the capitalistic system by becoming the basis for wage earning; previous income source (agriculture) did not disappear, but their use was altered. South African mining returns to the Botswanan government since 1965 largely benefited a growing petty-bourgeois class and marginally improved the life styles of the peasant labor class. Botswana's development depends on the relationship between the peripherial laboring class and the dominating petty-bourgeois and its internal structure.     

On the role of amenities in models of migration and regional development

"The role of location-specific amenities in human migration decisions, and subsequently regional development, is explored. A framework is developed which motivates a new assessment of existing alternative models of regional development, indicating the need for additional modeling efforts which focus upon amenities as critical elements in such analyses. The approach hinges upon the notion that amenity values are capitalized into wages, rents, or other local prices. This process of capitalization enables researchers to explore the implicit value that society places upon amenities, which can then be used in assessing future regional-development trends in a more comprehensive manner."     

Public policy,local labor demand,and migration in Sweden, 1979-84

"A model of private local labor demand and interjurisdictional migration is presented and estimated using data from Swedish counties and municipalities for 1979-84. Our goal is to compare the effects on local labor markets of distinctive public-sector programs with those of traditional market variables. We find that local income taxes and tax-equalization grants have important effects on local labor markets; regional development policy measures and geographical-mobility subsidies do not. Thus, recent efforts scaling back some of these programs may not materially alter the regional economy's performance. Wages and other traditional market variables are also often found to influence significantly local labor markets."     

The morality of transnationalism: children of Ukrainian labor migrants write about migration,homeland and abroad

Ukraine has experienced a wave of labor migration after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. A large number of Ukrainian children have been directly affected as they grow up in transnational households with one or both parents working abroad. In this article, I aim to describe how Ukrainian children and youth conceptualize migration, homeland and abroad in a context of societal, economic and political change. The analysis is mainly based on a qualitative reading of 143 texts written by Ukrainian children. I argue that Ukrainian children and youth place homeland and abroad on a moral map of belonging, and that migration is conceptualized within such a framework as a morally ambiguous movement.     

Globalised dreams,local constraints: migration and youth aspirations in an Indian regional town

Youth in India’s regional towns face a paradox: they are exposed to discourses of neoliberal globalisation through education and media, yet are unable to seize the benefits of globalisation, due to regional isolation. In this paper, we explore how aspirations of youth in India’s regional towns are influenced by their geographic marginalisation. Drawing on interviews and ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Darjeeling, a regional town in West Bengal, we demonstrate that regional youth feel disadvantaged in their access to middle-class jobs, modern education and lifestyles associated with neoliberal globalisation. Consequently, they express strong desires for ‘exposure,’ which can only be met through migration, particularly to India’s metropolitan cities. They are frustrated in their aspiration to migrate, however, as they feel constrained by the traditional family structure, discrimination in the larger cities and the uneven temporalities between regional towns and ‘global India.’ Their experiences highlight the geographically uneven effects of neoliberal globalisation.     

The social selectivity of migration flows affecting Britain's larger conurbations: An analysis of the 1991 census regional migration tables

Little is known about the social composition of migration affecting British cities, despite the currently high political salience of this issue. This is principally because of the very limited availability of reliable city‐scale data on such migrant characteristics as occupation and income. This paper uses the Regional Migration Tables from the 1991 Census to document the migration of labour force members to and from Britain's larger conurbations, distinguishing six main Social Groups defined on the basis of occupation. It is found that all eight areas were net losers of economically active people, that all six Social Groups were generally contributing to these net losses and that, in every case except London, there was a strong positive relationship between social status and the rate of net out‐migration to the rest of Britain. This latter case suggests the need for further work, which would benefit from the more detailed migration datasets that are promised from the 2001 Census.     

Spaces of protest: gendered migration,social networks,and labor activism in West Java,Indonesia

This article examines the gender geography of labor activism through a comparative investigation of two communities in West Java, Indonesia. Based on in-depth interviews and a survey of workers carried out in 1995, 1998, and 2000 in the two sites, it explores the place-specific meanings attached to migrants’ social networks and gender relations, and their roles in mediating the gendered patterns of labor protest in the two villages. Previous analyses of labor protest in Indonesia have occluded scales and processes that are critical to understanding how gender dynamics are linked to the geography of protest. By contrast, attention to the gender- and place-based contexts of women’s activism illustrates the complex interactions between migrants’ local interpretations of gender norms, social network relations, household roles, state gender ideology, and global neo-liberal restructuring. Through examining these interactions, gender is conceptualized as ontologically inseparable from the production of specific activist spaces, rethinking the uni-directional spatial logic and deterministic views of gender and place put forth in theories of the New International Division of Labor.     

The transition from polis to kastron in the Balkans (III-VII cc.): general and regional perspectives

Abstract

Much of the evidence for the changes which scholars perceive in the Late Roman-to-Early Byzantine periods (the ‘Late Antique era’) and in the ‘Dark Age’-to-Middle Byzantine periods in the eastern empire, that is, changes occurring between the mid third and the eighth-to-ninth centuries, whether this evidence is textual, archaeological, or topographical, concerns in one way or another what might be called the upper levels of the settlement-system. These levels consist of settlements or sites distinguishable at various times from the undefended rural majority (or what in most areas forms the majority) of settlements by status (i.e., civic, that of a polis), form, size, situation, or associated functions. They may for present purposes be simply categorised as civic urban settlements, non-civic urban settlements, and non-civic nonurban fortifications or fortified settlements. To study the fate of such places, as settlements and as communities, is to confront the cultural, economic, and internal political history of the period in all its complexity, a task which in most respects is inconceivable without recourse to archaeology and topography. The following observations concern the need to rectify some imbalances in the emphases of research which distort some general analyses of the history of Late Antique and also Middle Byzantine settlements, and so distort our view of cultural, economic, and political change in the periods named.     

Anthropological perspectives on death and mourning

Loring M. Danforth with photography by Alexander Tsearas. The Death Rituals of Rural Greece. 1982. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 170 pages (text) with 31 photographs. $30.00 cloth, $12.50 paper.     

Real wage rigidity in regional labor markets in the U.K., the U.S., and West Germany

"This paper examines the extent to which regional differences in wage rigidity exist and can help explain interregional differences in unemployment trends. Phillips-curve models of manufacturing wage inflation are estimated for the 10 largest states in the U.S., the 10 economic regions in the United Kingdom, and the 11 Lande in the Federal Republic of Germany over the 1971 to 1985 period. There is evidence of significant differences in the responsiveness of wage inflation to unemployment and the rate of change in consumer prices across the regions within each country and across the three nations."