Youth,gangs and violence: Analysing the social and spatial mobility of young people in Guatemala City

Youth gangs have become an increasingly significant, and controversial, social institution in low-income communities in many cities in Central America, and yet the local-level impacts of this phenomenon, especially on young people, remain under-explored. Drawing on research with young people in Guatemala City, this paper explores the multiple barriers to the social and spatial mobility of both gang and non-gang members resulting from gang violence. It also examines how young men and women cope with violence, and, given the severe impacts of gang activity on young people, highlights the pressing need for social alternatives to gangs.     

明代社会流动性初探

本文从官方的户籍控制,人口的分化与等级制度的解体,以及客籍、附籍的出现诸方面,对明代中期以后的社会流动性进行了考察.文章认为,明代社会是一个具有相当流动性的社会.社会流动的形式,既有地域之间的人口流动,又有社会阶层之间的流动,而这种社会阶层之间的流动,又包括向上与向下两种流动方式.社会流动的加剧,则显示出晚明社会正好处于一个转型时期.     

The fear of downward social mobility in late medieval England

ABSTRACT

Studies of medieval social mobility have tended to focus upon the success of socially ambitious, generally male, careerists. Alongside this tendency to use social mobility as a synonym for upward mobility has been a tradition of assigning the most agency in creating economic change to ambitious entrepreneurs. This article redresses these imbalances by exploring status anxiety and the fear of downward mobility in late medieval England. Using the surviving letter collections of the fifteenth century together with medieval literature, this article explores not only the importance of gender and the life cycle in shaping these fears but also the subtle distinctions between status anxiety, which often accompanied positions of authority, and a fear of imminent social decline, generally precipitated by financial difficulties. Through a reconsideration of demesne lessees and fraternities and guilds, it also shows how such anxieties and fears could affect both rural and urban economic developments.     

International student mobility: the role of social networks

Building upon recent work on higher education mobility, this paper contends that social networks of friendship and kinship are critical determinants for students deciding to study overseas, not just, as has hitherto been suggested, a complementary factor. It uses original data collected through interviews and focus groups with thirty-eight higher education international students studying at three UK universities and argues that students who choose to study overseas do not operate within a vacuum but rather draw upon extended networks of individuals who have chosen to do so themselves or advocate studying abroad. While this encouragement may be of an explicit and unequivocal nature – telling students that they ought to study overseas – for the majority it is rather more implicit. The students interviewed invariably related that higher education overseas or mobility more generally was an accepted practice among their peers, thereby leading to a normalisation of the mobility process. The paper concludes that international students come to accept mobility as a taken for granted stage within the life course, and, whether intentionally or not, this is often the driving force behind their decision to study overseas.     

Population replacement,social mobility and development in Italy in the twentieth century

Abstract

Many scholars have expressed alarm at the low fertility and sustained immigration that have characterized Italy in the last decade (1.3 children per woman and an increase of more than 200,000 immigrants per year). This article takes a different approach, showing how low fertility and strong migratory balances (involving migration both between Italian regions and from abroad) have enhanced the formation of human capital, facilitating family strategies of upward social mobility, the construction of a more balanced labor market, increases in income and a decline in the graying of the population. The combination of low fertility and sustained immigration, therefore, has been and still is a fundamental resource for development of the population and of Italian society, especially in central and northern Italy. The article also discusses modifications in family and immigration policies suggested by these findings.     

Spatial segregation and urban structure

In this paper, we develop a model of spatial segregation mediated by competitive land prices. Agents of two groups consume city land and benefit from social interactions. Because of cultural or ethnic differences, intragroup interactions are more frequent than intergroup ones. When group sizes differ, population groups sort into distinct neighborhoods. We characterize two‐ and three‐district urban structures. For high population ratios or strong intergroup interactions, only a three‐district city exists. In other cases, multiplicity of equilibria arises. Both groups generally rank these equilibria differently. However, when group sizes are similar, all individuals agree on which spatial equilibrium is best.     

Demolition of Chengzhongcun and social mobility of Migrant youth: a case study in Beijing

ABSTRACT

Since the late 1980s, millions of poor and low-income rural migrant workers migrating to Chinese metropolises with their children have congregated in chengzhongcun (villages in the city) for low-cost housing. Drawing on data from a 14-month participant observation in one chengzhongcun in Beijing, we critically explore the potential impact of urban expansion on social mobility of migrant youth. We argue that the uncertainty and chaos connected with looming demolition result in substandard schooling and business closures for migrant parents, leading to the stagnant mobility of migrant youth. Expanding the social hierarchy pyramids, we argue that eliminating chengzhongcun, a space that creates the possibility of climbing the social ladder, hampers the social mobility of migrant youth in the context of the rigid class structure in the late-socialist China. This research re-examines the goals of the demolition of chengzhongcun and advances our understanding by analyzing the prospects of disadvantaged migrant youth during and after the demolition process.     

Children’s independent mobility: the role of school-based social capital

ABSTRACT

Research has documented the decline in children’s independent mobility (CIM) globally. CIM is a measure of the level of a child’s freedom to move about his or her local neighbourhood without direct adult supervision. This paper explores the effectiveness of three intervention programmes to change travel behaviours of children to and from school in 26 Catholic primary schools in a range of urban and regional settings in Victoria, Australia. Using pre and post intervention surveys with 1600 students and parents, and interviews with school principals, we measured the influence of a range of individual, social, and built environment factors on the effectiveness of these intervention programmes. The degree of social connectedness of the school and the individual was found to have the most impact on the effectiveness of the intervention programmes to change behaviours, while the interventions themselves were not greatly effective without being embedded in a supportive school culture.     

Gender,migration, mobility and transnationalism

In reviewing the expanding body of work on the linkages between gender, mobility, migration and transnationalism in Gender, Place and Culture over the last decade, this article highlights three significant contributions. First, through critical engagement with transnationalism studies, the journal has produced a sophisticated and variegated strand of work on gender politics and multiple forms of migration and mobility. In this article, we focus primarily on mobility in terms of human movement across national borders, rural–urban migration, as well as the ‘to-ing and fro-ing’ that inform the embodied experiences of being here and there simultaneously as iterated in transnationalism studies [L. Basch, N.G. Schiller, and C.S. Blanc, Nations Unbound: Transnational Projects, Postcolonial Predicaments, and Deterritorialized Nation-States. London: Routledge, 1994]. A second area of strength lies in the coalescence of work providing insights into the connections between social reproduction in a globalising world and intimate forms of global mobility and migration. A third highlight relates to the mutually constitutive relationship between the construction of masculinities and masculinist ideologies, on the one hand, and migration, mobility and transnationalism, on the other. The article concludes with a discussion of two more embryonic areas which merit further development in the journal: the first concerns the social and geographical (im)mobilities implied in cross-border reproductive care1^1. CBRC is what Payne (2013 Payne, J.2013. “Reproduction in Transition: Cross-Border Egg Donation, Biodesirability and New Reproductive Subjectivities on the European Fertility Market.” Gender, Place and Culture, doi:10.1080/0966369X.2013.832656. [Google Scholar]) attributes to the rapid development and spread of assisted reproductive technologies that have given rise to a global market for human eggs, sperm and surrogates. and the global mobility and assemblage of body parts, while the second relates to the distinctive role that feminist geographers interested in migrations and mobilities can play in working collaboratively and transnationally across different worlds.     

Spatial segregation and class subjectivity in Turkey

Drawing on ethnographic research in an upper-class district in Turkey, this article examines social and spatial experiences of young low-wage service workers who travel daily back and forth between their homes in low-income neighbourhoods and their jobs in gated communities, upscale shopping malls and corporate offices. The paper argues that the significance of upper class districts or gated communities for urban inequality lies not in the sites themselves, nor the lifestyles of their elite inhabitants as commonly treated in the literature, but rather in the ways in which they relate to the outside and outsiders. Within this framework, the paper analyses the district’s effect on urban spatial segregation and urbanites’ sense of place in society. While resentment and reaction to inequalities and upper class customers are prevalent in young workers’ narratives, workers’ class subjectivities are also marked by a sense of mobility and liminality between the upper middle classes in their work district and their families, friends and neighbours back home. This sense of socio-spatial ‘in-betweenness’ is reinforced by being young, hence a sense of temporal liminality between youth and adulthood. The study contributes to the understanding of urban inequality at the intersection of spatial, emotional and temporal experiences of urbanites.     

Gender differences in children's pathways to independent mobility

This paper presents some empirical findings relating to the independent mobility of children in two parts of south-east England – one a south London borough, the other a suburban county north of London. In both locations boys appear to enjoy greater mobility than girls, and become independent much earlier. But closer analysis suggests that girls manage to attain similar levels of independence from adults by travelling more in groups. This collective independence achieved through peers is often overlooked, and may compensate modern children to some extent for their loss of individual freedom.     

Planning Sustainability: Intergenerational and Intragenerational Justice in Spatial Planning Strategies

Abstract: Subsequent to the Brundtland Report (World Commission on Environment and Development 1987, Our Common Future), sustainability has been set up in many countries as a mission statement of cross‐sectoral policies. Sustainable development carries the normative notions of equity, empowerment and environmentally sensitive economic development. Thus, it seems to suggest a fundamentally different vision to neoliberal dogma, which is at the same time described as dominating all socio‐political processes. This paper intends to explore the relation between these two discursive framings of contemporary policies through the example of German spatial planning guidelines. More precisely, it addresses social justice as one pillar of sustainability and how it is operationalised in spatial planning policies in Germany. This may exemplify how the seemingly opposing discourses interact in policy practices. The empirical analysis suggests that the ways in which the German spatial planning report focused on social space in territorial terms promotes an economistic and truncated view of social justice, one which fosters the neoliberal idea of regional competition for global capital and reduces socio‐spatial justice to territorially equally distributed economic inclusion.     

Spatial inequality and urban costs: Revisiting the home market effect

This paper investigates how the interactions between product differentiation, transport costs, and urban costs determine the spatial inequality in a general‐equilibrium model. We shed light on the interrelation between different definitions of home market effect (HME) in literature. While the wages in the large region are always higher, the HME in industrial distribution occurs in a limited range of parameters, implying that the HME in factor price is more pervasive. Moreover, we show that the reverse HME is the more common outcome. It indicates that neglecting urban costs in theoretical methodologies tends to overestimate the existence of HME. We also disclose how a change in urban costs or transport costs affects regional inequalities and welfare.     

Gender and mobility: new approaches for informing sustainability

Feminists have long known that gender and mobility are inseparable, influencing each other in profound and often subtle ways. Tackling complex societal problems, such as sustainability, will require improved understandings of the relationships between gender and mobility. In this essay I propose new approaches to the study of mobility and gender that will provide the knowledge base needed to inform policies on sustainable mobility. Early in the essay I survey the large literature on gender and mobility, teasing out what I see as two disparate strands of thinking that have remained badly disconnected from each other. One of these strands has informed understandings of how mobility shapes gender, while the other has examined how gender shapes mobility. Work on how mobility shapes gender has emphasized gender, to the neglect of mobility, whereas research on how gender shapes mobility has dealt with mobility in great detail and paid much less attention to gender. From this overview of the literature, I identify knowledge gaps that must be bridged if feminist research on gender and mobility is to assist in charting paths to sustainable mobility. I argue for the need to shift the research agenda so that future research will synthesize these two strands of thinking along three lines: (1) across ways of thinking about gender and mobility, (2) across quantitative and qualitative approaches, and (3) across places. In the final part of the essay I suggest how to achieve this synthesis by making geographic, social and cultural context central to our analyses.     

Children's interdependent mobility: compositions,collaborations and compromises

This paper discusses findings from Australian research that used a qualitative and participatory methods approach to understand how children develop and negotiate their everyday mobility. Children's mobility negotiations are discussed in reference to interactions with parents, peers and places; journeys in relation to their multi-modality, compositionality and temporality; and mobility formations in terms of ‘companionship’ – travel companions, companion devices and ambient companions. Children's mobility is characterised by interdependencies that both enable and configure this mobility. Three themes – compositions, collaborations and compromises – are used to detail and describe some of the ways these interdependencies take shape and unfold.     

Spatial inequality and dynamics of foreign hypermarket retailers in China

The globalisation of retailing has intensified since the mid‐1990s with the rise of a group of international retailers. Foreign retailers have greatly impacted the Chinese retail market since the opening up of the retail sector in 1992. This study aims to examine spatial inequality and dynamics of foreign hypermarket retailers at different geographic scales in China. Although the relative gaps in foreign hypermarkets among Chinese regions are narrowing, the absolute gaps are widening. Logistic regression models are used to identify locational determinants of foreign retailers Carrefour, Wal‐Mart, and RT‐Mart at the intercity level. Carrefour prefers cities with larger urban district populations, longer time of being open to international retailers, and more foreign investment. While urban district populations are significant to Wal‐Mart and RT‐Mart as well, they favour cities where people have higher annual salaries and aim to achieve internal economies of scale at the provincial level. The three leading foreign retailers also have different first‐city and city size preferences in their provincial expansions.     

On children's independent mobility: the interplay of demographic,environmental, and psychosocial factors

In the past 50 years, a marked reduction has occurred in European and North American children's freedom of movement and outdoor play. Using a structural equation model, the present study investigates the interaction between personal, environmental, and psychosocial factors that affect children's independent mobility. The study involved 313 mothers of 8–10-year-old Italian children. The results supported the hypothesized model: the age of the child, the maternal perception of social danger, and positive potentiality of outdoor autonomy were the most influential variables on children's independent mobility, measured as an index. Further, the maternal perceptions mediated the influence of the other demographic, psychosocial, and environmental variables on independent mobility.     

An archaeology of social relations in an Egyptian village

Postprocessual archaeology has placed great importance on individuals and social interaction, though in practice this often proves a difficult project to realize. The rich archaeological and cultural data offered in an Egyptian context suggest that it is possible to identify how specific individuals and groups functioned with a domestic context, taking into account the complex vectors of social inequality—age, sex, class, status, and life experience. In the process, this paper seeks to question the narrow construal ofgender as analogous to the domain of women, and show the inadequacies of such an approach. It offers an opportunity to mesh material culture with social theory by linking sociocultural, spatial, and temporal data.     

Senators and social mobility in sixth-century Gaul

In the historical and hagiographical writings of Gregory of Tours and in the poetry of Venantius Fortunatus we encounter a group of men who make the claim that they are descendants of the Roman senators of an earlier time. This paper sets out to examine the status of this group in the light of the suggestion by Frank D. Gilliard that in the imprecise Latin of Gregory of Tours the word senator was often used to denote someone who was merely a large landowner. Since Gilliard has suggested that the blanket term senator may mask the parvenus in sixth-century society, discussion of the status of sixth-century senators has here been set in the wider context of social mobility in Merovingian church and state. It is the suggestion of this paper that it was a claim to senatorial family background, rather than the possession of wealth or land, that qualified one, in Gregory's eyes as a senator. Further, there is such ample evidence of upward social mobility, to positions of power and prestige outside the senatorial ranks, and often in royal service, that the conclusion is drawn that for the ambitious in Merovingian society, the patronage of the Frankish kings may have come to mean more than the much vaunted illustrious descent of the senators.