An English approach to the American frontier

Studies of frontier migration in the American west are hampered by lack of data because few records contain evidence of reasons for migrating or evidence of decisions taken by individual migrants or groups of migrants. An extensive collection of letters from two English brothers who, in 1882, migrated to an English farm colony in north-west Iowa, then moved into horse-raising in Wyoming, then returned to Iowa, and later went back to Wyoming, provides an unusually illuminating case study in frontier migration. The letters reveal reasons for the frequent moves in the west over a seventeen-year period ending with the brothers' successful establishment as sheep ranchers in Wyoming. They show how each shift was conditioned by their previous experience of economic difficulties and by their persistent reliance upon contacts in England.     

Invisible men: mobility and political change on the frontier of late Roman Africa

The political hierarchies that developed in North Africa in the post‐Roman period have traditionally been ascribed either to invading groups from the Sahara, or to indigenous elites who transformed their political authority to respond to changing circumstances. The present article suggests that such interpretations have neglected the role played by seasonal pastoralists within the emergence of these new polities. Human mobility was a crucial feature of the late antique Maghreb, as analysis of the later Roman frontier system reveals. Equally, contemporary anthropological scholarship emphasizes the influence that mobile groups can have in periods of social and political upheaval and their capacity for hierarchical stratification. The article offers two brief case studies, and argues that Antalas, leader of the ‘Frexes’ in southern Byzacena, and the occupants of the ‘Djedar’ tumulus mausolea near Tiaret, are best viewed as products of a mobile society.     

Migration and employment change: empirical evidence on the spatial and temporal dimensions of the linkage

"This paper uses a unique set of [U.S.] data to estimate the magnitude of the linkages between employment changes and net employment migration. A simple simultaneous system is specified and estimated for 17 consecutive years. In an average year two extra jobs attract about one additional net migrant, and one additional net migrant has a direct effect on area employment of almost 1.4 jobs." The data are from the One-Percent Social Security Continuous Work History Sample and are for the years 1958 to 1975. The changes in this relationship over time as the economic situation varies are analyzed.     

跨国主义的移民研究——欧美学者的观点和贡献

在已有研究的基础上,从跨国移民的政治选择、跨国移民的经济贡献、跨国移民的文化再造、跨国移民的活动领域、回归移民的再适应、跨国主义移民研究等多方面介绍和评述了欧美学界跨国主义移民研究的主要观点、基本内容和特征以及学术贡献,并对跨国移民研究中需要进一步探讨的问题进行了梳理.     

Patterns of fertility change in Ghana: a time and space perspective

This article examines fertility change in Ghana based on a time and space perspective. The sample draws on three birth cohorts of women born in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, resident in five distinct societies selected from three settlements in Ghana. The findings of the study show that fertility change is occurring in a socioeconomic and geographically distinct manner. Significant fertility declines are traced to the 1960 birth cohorts in all the study areas. For the 1970 cohort this decline continues in the elite areas whereas the urban indigenous areas exhibit a rise in teenage fertility which is not, however, followed by higher fertility after the age of 20. In the rural area fertility rises from the 1960 to the 1970 cohort up to age 24, which is the end point of study for this cohort. The spatial variability between the five study areas has profound implications for the ongoing fertility change in Ghana and Sub-Saharan Africa.     

Socio-political change on a slave-raiding frontier: war,trade and 'Big Men' in nineteenth century Sisalaland,Northern Ghana

Abstract

Life in nineteenth century northern Ghana was characterised by insecurity as inhabitants experienced frequent slave-raiding. Local villages forged alliances with raiders as a means to alter the local political balance in their favour. Preliminary research indicates that many of the local powerbrokers who emerged as war leaders during this period also occupied easily defensible locations or well-fortified villages with access to trade routes. Archaeological investigations at the hilltop site of Yalingbong reveal that the community was well-situated to take advantage of increased trading opportunities but that status differences within the site are not marked.     

Staking claims: Hybrid governance and state-making on the North Kosovo frontier

This article examines how state and non-state actors claim public authority in areas of contested sovereignty. It develops the concept of the frontier as a point of departure. As zonal spaces of weakly established or overlapping authority, frontiers have historically been sites of collaboration between state and non-state actors. Extending the concept to shed light on contemporary forms of state and non-state governing arrangements, I argue that frontiers can be can also be analysed across specific domains of public authority. I highlight three domains in particular: the symbolic domain, where the state is imagined as a collective actor; the contractual domain, which depends on the use of public services to establish a social contract; and the protective domain, the classic Hobbesian justification for the state as a provider of security. Applying the frontier framework to North Kosovo, I argue that Serbia has sustained a near monopoly over the symbolic and contractual domains in the contested region yet is severely constrained in the protective domain. As a result, Belgrade has relied on outsourcing authority to local illicit actors to maintain leverage. However, these actors have also carved out their own autonomous forms of authority and actively manipulate the ambiguous political boundaries in North Kosovo to their advantage.     

青海与边塞诗人

翻开中国诗歌史不难发现,历代边塞诗人都把关注的目光投向青海这块古老而年轻、神秘而奇特的西陲边地,并创作出了大量反映青海独特的高原生态环境和历史人文景观的诗篇。青海自然景致的独特性、人文历史的多样性、风土民情的相容性带给了历代边塞诗人们无尽遐想的空间,并成为他们不竭的诗歌创作之源。     

Rescaling Migration Studies: Migration Policy-Making and Implementation at the Local Government Level

How ‘the state’ perceives and responds to migration is gaining increasing attention. This analysis seeks to encourage debate on scales of governance in migration studies through a focus on policy-making and implementation on the part of local government officials in Scotland. Contributions include the elucidation of how immigrants are differentiated by individual local state actors and how this relates to the wider practices of local government towards them, and a typology conceptualising the heterogeneity of local state responses to immigration. This analytic emphasis on local state perceptions of, and responses to, migration and migrants hopes to inspire more nuanced and policy relevant understandings of ‘the state’ in migration research.     

Deep commoning: public folklore and environmental policy on a resource frontier

Abstract

This article explores the concept and practice of the commons as a holistic, multi-sectoral, cross-disciplinary framework for critical heritage work on resource frontiers. Drawing from my research on forest commoning in the Appalachian coalfields, I argue that land-based systems of commoning vital to communities in the path of resource extraction merit more attention from heritage workers. Commons tend to disappear through their atomization into siloed objects of study and stewardship. This disappearance, partly a function of reductionist, dualistic thinking, also signals a persistent colonialist myth of emptiness. I argue that the embodied, participatory field methods of public folklorists are particularly well-suited to the study and accreditation of land-based commons as heritage. Building on the idea of ‘deep ecology’, the notion of ‘deep commoning’ espouses our implication in worlds we bring into dialogue through the practice of public folklore as critical heritage work.