From pioneer migration to family reunification: Polish women’s narratives of lifestyle preferences in Bologna,Italy

In the article I analyse the emergence of lifestyle considerations among former labour migrants and the importance of these new preferences for their choice to settle in the new location. The paper critically engages with the theoretical framework of ‘lifestyle migration’ and discusses its applicability to labour migrants from Central-Eastern Europe settling in Mediterranean countries. I present the interplay between economic and lifestyle reasoning based on two narrative biographical interviews with migrants in Bologna, drawing on my comparative qualitative research in Italy and the UK. The pioneer female migrants went to Italy as care workers in order to fulfill their households’ immediate economic needs. During the years of circular migration the women developed ties to Italy, but found prolonged periods of separation from their families no longer acceptable. The female migrants opted to transfer their whole households to Bologna. Based on the women’s experience and preferences, the families’ consumption preferences and leisure activities transformed in the course of settlement in the Italian city. I claim that lifestyle is a fruitful concept in researching migrants’ changing aspirations, way of life in the new location and the reasons for staying. This approach allows to go beyond the typologies based on the initial motivations for migration.     

How to deal with migrants and the State’s backlash – Polish cities’ experience

Over the last decades, Poland has witnessed a relatively dynamic increase in the number of immigrants. At the same time, current Polish central authorities, politicians of the ruling party and the majority of the population perceive migrants mostly as a threat and a challenge. Municipal authorities lack complex support from central authorities. However, the situation is slowly changing. Some Polish cities are adopting migration policies or including migration issues in the local development strategies. Considering this, the article aims to examine migrants’ integration policies in selected Polish cites considered leaders in this field: Lublin, Gdańsk, Kraków and Wroc?aw. The main research question is: how do Polish cities deal with the backlash from the national government and absence of clear legal regulations on their role and competences in the area of migrant integration? The research method is that of a legal-institutional analysis and case study. The former is used to interpret the legal acts and other documents. Its application is justified by the fact that this paper examines strategic documents adopted at the level of urban governments regarding the integration of migrants. Case study methods made it possible to examine the migrants’ integration policy in four Polish cities.     

Discrimination Against Floating Migrants in China:Take Rural-to-Urban Migrants in Beijing As An Example

This essay firstly examines the destiny of rural-to-urban migrants in Beijing, the capital of China. Relying on data collected from representative survey, the essay then provides the demographic profil...     

Geographies at the margins: borders in South Asia–an introduction

This introduction to a special section exploring \"Geographies at the Margins\" of South Asia offers a discussion that links the literature on borders and margins to the regional complexities and geographies of South Asia. Specifically, we argue for linking of these literatures to develop an optic for thinking about external and internal borders that is at once relational and comparative. South Asia, as has often been observed, is a region marked with multiple borders and margins. It is also a space where the articulation between such spaces is at once suggestive and crucial for understanding the political geography of South Asia and the ways that borders and margins are similarly implicated in working out the postcolonial politics of nation, state, and space.     

Domopolitics, governmentality and the regulation of asylum accommodation

Since the 1999 Immigration and Asylum Act, asylum seekers in the UK have been dispersed across the country to zones of accommodation on a no choice basis. This paper examines the political practices and governmental rationalities which accompany the allocation of asylum accommodation in Britain through the National Asylum Support Service (NASS). The paper draws on discussions of the UK border as a site of ‘domopolitics’, the governing of the state as a home, to suggest that domopolitics is productive of particular relations of calculation, regulation and discipline through which the lives of asylum seekers are conditioned. These entangled modes of governance, it is argued, find expression in a logic of accommodation which acts to discipline asylum seekers and to reinsert modes of arbitrary sovereign authority into a regime of governmental regulation. The rationalities of governance that accompany accommodation create an account of housing which is deliberately decoupled from feelings of security, as accommodation becomes a key space through which a relation to the border is lived for asylum seekers. Domopolitics is thus shown to be productive of a politics of discomfort for those at the limits of the nation.     

马来西亚城市华人移民就业情况研究——基于2005年在马来西亚实地调查的分析

基于2005年在马来西亚吉隆坡和新山实地调查获得的资料,从城市移民在行业分布、职位、就业或经营途径、收入和政府经济政策等各个方面的情况,探讨了华人与马来人城市移民的不同遭遇,比较了华人移民在吉隆坡和新山这两个不同类型城市中的不同境遇。得出结论:城市新移民中马来人比华人获得了更多的政策扶持和发展机会,但华人比马来人拥有更多的投资方式和自己的企业,在城市中华人比马来人受访者的月收入要略高一些;在不同的领域,华人新移民在新山和在吉隆坡的就业或商业机会不同。     

Post-trafficking bordering practices: Perverse co-production,marking and stretching borders

This paper highlights the significance of post-trafficking scenarios for understanding bordering practices in political geography. In so doing, it addresses two significant research gaps: the lack of attention to trafficking in geography and the failure of wider interdisciplinary debates to engage with post-trafficking specifically. While extensive research in political geography has addressed the related experiences of refugees, asylum seekers and ‘illegals’, much of this work has centred on policies, processes and practices that aim to keep ‘unwanted strangers out’. By contrast, very little research has addressed how the border is configured for and by those who are crossing-back over; those who are ‘returning home’, in this case from diverse trafficking situations. The paper draws on recent empirical research on post-trafficking citizenship and livelihoods in Nepal which examined how women returning from trafficking situations deal with stigma and marginalisation. Our analysis illuminates how bordering practices circumscribe and shape women's lives in powerful ways as they seek to (re)establish a sense of belonging and respect. We examine the interplay of state and non-state actors (national and transnational) in structuring mobility and anti-trafficking advocacy through a range of bordering practices and explore how the border is (co-)produced by varied actors at different border sites. This includes women returning from diverse trafficking situations, who invoke the border to argue that they are ‘not as trafficked’ as other women, and others who perform the border differently as agents for trafficking prevention.     

Nations-of-intent: from counterfactual history to counterfactual geography

The locations of international borders reflect political aspirations as well as power politics and attempts to bring state boundaries in line with nations. The expulsion of Singapore from Malaysia and the exclusion of the Philippines from the United States indicate the power of narrowly defined borders to govern national identity. The concept ‘nations-of-intent’ allows us to explore counterfactual borders as a way of examining how political aspirations translate into national borders. The paper explores three Asian cases – Malaysia, Mongolia and Vietnam – and makes reference to Indonesia in considering how different senses of what was possible and desirable in the context of decolonization generated different ideas about where borders should lie. This approach also allows us to interrogate losing forces retrospectively about the policies they would have followed within different border configurations.     

“We are not animals!” Humanitarian border security and zoopolitical spaces in EUrope

This article juxtaposes two prominent discourses accompanying the neoliberalisation of EUrope's borders. The first is the emerging notion of humanitarian ‘migrant-centredness’ found in the policies of elites and security professionals in the field of EUropean border security and migration management. The second is the use of animalised metaphors and imagery that pervade narratives of ‘irregular’ migrants' embodied experiences of detention across and beyond EUrope. It argues that what is at stake in this juxtaposition is more than simply a discrepancy between the ‘rhetoric’ of neoliberal bordering and the ‘reality’ of ‘irregular’ migrants' experiences. Such a view, which is commonly held among diverse critics of border violence, ultimately makes a problematic appeal back to the very humanitarian frame that has already been coopted by authorities associated with or even complicit in that violence. Seeking an alternative diagnosis and ground for critique beyond the ‘rhetoric/reality’ bind, the analysis draws on conceptual resources found in (post)biopolitical theory – particularly Jacques Derrida's concept of ‘zoopolitics’ – in order to identify and explore animalisation as a specific spatial technology of power. Understanding the work that the zoopolitical threshold does in shaping contemporary spaces of incarceration and producing animalised subjects offers new insights into both governmental logics of border security and the limits of humanitarian-based critiques.     

从异化到共鸣：旅游小企业主移民向往的生活

以喜洲旅游小企业主移民为例,从异化与共鸣理论视角探析旅游小企业主移民地理流动背后的深层动力机制。研究发现,喜洲旅游小企业主移民以地理流动作为重新组织个人工作与生活的契机,尝试改变自我与外部世界的关系,以抵抗自我在现代社会中的时间、空间、行动与物界方面的异化。尽管物理空间上的迁移使得他们断离了以往生活中的种种异化现象,在乡村生活中与自然世界、物质世界与社会世界的共鸣中获得了幸福感与认同感。然而社会空间上的连结、社会体制的内化与现代生活惯习的延续让他们无法做到真正意义上脱离异化。同时,乡村旅游目的地的现代化进程也使得旅游小企业主移民被动进入社会“再异化”的循环。异化与共鸣的多面性使得旅游小企业主移民的迁移过程形成了多层异化与共鸣的生活实践。     

“局”与晚清的近代化

"局"为应对19世纪中叶以来的新兴政务而设,因此从局的发展和变迁,可以看出晚清近代化的步伐.局大体经历了三个发展阶段:第一阶段为局的初步兴起.为了应付1853-1874年间的王朝叛乱,筹款和军需之局在战事中大量兴办.第二阶段为民政事务的局大量兴起.战后,为了恢复地方秩序,局由战事转为民事,其维护了地方社会的发展,造成了上海、汉口等初兴城市的地方自治.第三阶段,局成为国家官僚体系的组成部分.戊戌维新后,局在兴办农工商事务中的作用日益显著;清末新政改革,正式以局为国家官制改革的核心.局的兴办模式也随着发生了变化,由最初的军幕制度到委绅设局,再到科层管理,局的成熟终于成为现代文官制度确立的标志.