The Local Drivers of Land Degradation in South‐East Asia

Economic globalisation has led to a huge increase in demand for food, goods and services by expanding urban middle class populations. These demands cause environmental changes that in turn feed back upon the urban environment and human population. While the global changes are well researched, the cumulative significance of local environmental changes is less well known. Yet, the local changes may have greater impact on the decisions which individuals make that affect soil erosion and land degradation. People respond to family circumstances and to local economic opportunities in ways that most suit the needs of their families and households. Several demonstration projects that were not adopted offer lessons in understanding how people make their land‐use decisions. An understanding of people's past experiences, present needs and views of the future helps those seeking to improve environmental management to promote policies and actions that are likely to succeed by being acceptable to those involved.     

Youthful Creativity in Regional Australia: Panacea for Unemployment and Out‐Migration?

This paper addresses the theme of youth out‐migration from rural Australia, in the context of recent policy discussions about creativity and its role in regional development. Ethnographic fieldwork in one rural location – the New South Wales Far North Coast – is drawn upon to highlight how creative industries are being cast as a potential way of promoting cultural activities and jobs for young people, and in turn, how they might be imagined as a means to mitigate youth out‐migration. Yet, creative industries have contradictory employment and social outcomes. Creative industries are likely to generate higher rates of youth participation in economic activities than public data reveal. However, strategies for future job growth should also consider the limitations and instabilities of creative industry employment. Second, and more broadly, the paper discusses those socio‐cultural dimensions of nascent creative industries that may have a more substantial impact when conceived as part of strategies to stem youth exodus from rural areas. Creative activities may contribute to rural development in indirect ways, especially if linked to policy goals of increased tolerance of youth activities, better provision of cultural services, and improved well‐being for young people. While formal job‐creation may be limited, creative industries could mitigate some of the impacts of youth migration to cities by enriching regional social life and mediating perceptions of the advantages and drawbacks of rural versus urban life. This kind of policy imagination requires a shift in attitudes towards young people and a more genuine commitment to encourage young people to feel that they belong in non‐metropolitan areas.     

Heterosexuality and migration in Asia

There have been few analyses of heterosexuality in the context of migration, particularly within Asia. As a corrective, in this themed issue we bring together four articles to contribute to debates on the fluidity of heterosexuality and how the performance of heterosexuality has particular spatialities within East and South-East Asia. Each article uses ethnographic methods to produce nuanced analyses of specific and spatially contingent performances of heterosexuality. A migration focus illuminates how spatial dislocation provides opportunities for both men and women to play out different heterosexual identities. At the same time, migrants come across challenges and obstacles to their performances of heterosexuality, such as the state regulation of the migrant body, economic necessity, and gendered and ethnicised behavioural norms.     

Thai migrants in Singapore: state,intimacy and desire

In this article, I analyse Thai migration to Singapore, drawing on ethnographic fieldwork (2004–06) to discuss the experiences of male construction workers and female sex workers in negotiating heterosexuality during their temporary residence. I argue that these Thai migrants engage in transient heterosexual encounters as one of many calculated, strategic ways of negotiating their intimate identity and subjectivity in the survival circuits of this global city. Their transient sexual acts are intimate products of negotiated moves, which form a major part of their semi-anonymous, temporary life in a foreign land. The sexual practices of Thai migrant workers in Singapore, I argue, are best understood by taking the following factors into account: the host government's regulation and control of its migrant population; the foreign workers' economic and social situations of mobility as inscribed in their highly dynamic traveling biographies; and their rationalized willingness and desire to embrace transient sexual intimacies as part of their employment and/or struggling lives in the global city's survival circuits.     

Sexuality in diasporic space: rural-to-urban migrant women negotiating gender and marriage in contemporary China

Feminist geographers use the term diasporic subjectivity to emphasize the relational quality of identity as it is constructed in the dynamic in-between space occupied by the migrant and traversed by norms and practices associated with the village community, migrant peers, and urban consumer society, as well as nation-states. Using ethnographic methods, I explore how young, single rural Chinese women who migrated to Beijing in the 1990s negotiate sexuality in diasporic space, within the discursive and institutional orders of state, market and family. Though migration does not fundamentally alter these structures that construct inequality around place-based identity, gender and class, it does enable rural women to shift position within them and, significantly, to imagine that further, future change is possible. Foregrounding migrant women's agency in remaking gender identity from so-called rustic peasants to modern girls as well as in choosing marital partners and conducting courtship provides an important counterweight to the primary emphasis on structure found in much of the migration literature.     

《中国移民史》唐宋湖南移民实例考校

《中国移民史》列有109个唐宋湖南移民实例,本文对其中在史料和史实方面存在诸多问题的65例进行了考校,并归纳了其中存在的主要问题:一是对史料的理解与引用有误。这主要表现为一人误作二人,甲卷引作乙卷,姓名张冠李戴,牵强列入或列之无据,将移民与移民后裔相混淆,以及有关移民迁移的时间和地点等方面的问题。二是没有考察史料的史源。这主要表现在:引用后人史料,没注意到前人文献中已有相同的、甚至更为可靠的史料,没有甄别第一手资料和二手资料;没有考察相关史料,对引用史料中所提供的一些有关移民信息的线索没有追根溯源、旁征侧证。     

基于腾讯迁徙数据的中国“春运”城市间人口流动空间格局

“腾讯迁徙”大数据基于位置服务，实时、动态、完整、系统地描述了用户日常出行活动的轨迹。通过采集“腾讯迁徙”数据平台中2018年春运期间中国346个地级及以上城市之间的逐日人口流动数据，分“节前、节中、节后”3个时间段，利用复杂网络分析方法，从人口流动的集散层级、集散体系分层集聚特征、人口流动空间格局、网络空间特征等角度分析各时间段城市间的人口流动特征与空间格局。结果表明，腾讯迁徙大数据直观地揭示了春运期间中国城市间人口流动空间格局，3个时段人口的净流入均呈现十字形骨架支撑的菱形分布，人流集散中心主要集中在京津冀、长三角、珠三角和成渝4大城市群，与城市等级有较强的一致性。人口流动集散体系呈明显的分层集聚，城市行政级别的高低与人口流动影响力存在一定的正相关关系，大部分城市人口流动处于“相对平衡”状态。人口流动网络呈现东密西疏的分布特征和东部并联、西部串联的网络关联特征。人口流动网络局部具有较明显的“社区”结构特征，聚为3个大区级、5个跨区域级和1个地区级社区。     

Determinants of temporary labour migration in southern India

We present new data from three village panchayats in northwest Tamil Nadu and investigate the associations between demographic and socioeconomic factors with temporary labour migration from this setting. Individual (n?=?1110) and household (n?=?278) level logistic regression models were used to demonstrate how factors at each of these levels can influence temporary labour migration trajectories. Young males were most likely to temporarily migrate for work from this region. Additionally, large households from historically disadvantaged castes with marginal land and housing were most likely to have at least one migrant member. Households with multiple migrant members appear to use temporary migration to cope with serious deprivation relative to households with only one migrant member. These findings provide a strong case that can be compared to other settings in India and can be used to inform improved policy and targeted development initiatives to support temporary migrant workers and their households.     

跨国迁移对农村留守妇女婚姻家庭生活的影响——基于福建省明溪县H村的个案研究

论文基于质性研究方法,以人口国际迁移现象比较突出的明溪县H村为研究个案,从家庭收支特征、家庭地位、婚姻生活状态和社会支持网络等方面考察和分析了丈夫跨国迁移对农村留守妇女婚姻家庭生活的影响。研究结果显示,丈夫出国使家庭条件和物质生活得到改善,推动了农村妇女家庭地位的改善,电话联系弥补了夫妻空间分离造成的负面影响,但丈夫缺位使留守妇女承担了多重责任,婚姻品质和社会生活也因为丈夫出国而改变。与此同时,留守妇女的消费结构和消费观念并没有因为丈夫出国而发生明显的改变,社会生活支持网络并未弱化,仍是传统的亲属网络。