From the Panama Canal to Post‐Fordism: Producing Temporary Labor Migrants Within and Beyond Agriculture in the United States (1904–2013)

In the historical study of modern American capitalism, labor unfreedom in agriculture has been conceptualized as an exception to liberal labor relations in the post‐slavery polity, from debt peonage to the threat of deportation from workplaces populated by non‐citizen migrants. At the same time, state‐enforced labor compulsions and restrictions are increasingly part and parcel of what scholars call neoliberal exceptionalism. This article argues that agricultural and neoliberal exceptionalisms are related, by tracing the historical genealogy and juridical production of a restrictive work status, the deportable temporary labor migrant, across political economies in the modern United States, from imperial construction in the Panama Canal Zone, to agriculture, to the knowledge economy. Contrary to existing notions of temporary work visas as a new form of unfreedom in neoliberalized advanced capitalist states, I show how the threat of deportation is older and rooted in the rise of the liberal regulatory state in a post‐slavery, yet persistently racial capitalist political economy. The import of understanding this history of government intervention increases as the liberal regulatory state's coercive logics and practices intensify and circulate in agriculture and under a post‐Fordist regime of accumulation, reproducing racial capitalism in the labor process.     

White noise: sound,materiality and the crowd in contemporary heritage practice

Sounds of our Shores was a joint venture between the National Trust and the British Library that employed a crowdsourcing methodology to create a permanent archive of British coastal sounds. In this paper I pursue a critical analysis of that project in order to problematise the recent emergence of practices aimed at capturing and preserving everyday sounds as ‘sonic heritage’. More broadly, I use the case study to think through two trends in contemporary heritage practice. These are, first, a turn towards crowdsourcing as a means of democratising representation, and, second, a current trend towards the accumulation and preservation of an ever-broader range and mass of materials as heritage. The framework for my analysis is provided by a dual reading of the term ‘white noise’. Thus, for my purposes, ‘white noise’ describes both an acoustic phenomenon (the product of every possible frequency sounding simultaneously; a sonic expression of perfect equality and perfect chaos), and a particular mode of racialised sound production and audition, modulated and constrained by whiteness. White noise displaces and silences its Others. The white ‘listening ear’, to borrow Jennifer Stoever-Ackerman's terminology, is either deaf to, or appalled by, the sounds those Others make.     

Indonesian domestic workers and the (un)making of transnational livelihoods and provisional futures

Doreen Massey (2005. For Space. London: Sage.) argued that space and time should not be reduced to a bounded locality of the ‘here and now’ and instead proposed re-imagining ‘space as simultaneity of stories-so-far’. We build on her argument to suggest that an appreciation of migrant aspirations and future trajectories require us to go beyond simultaneous ‘stories-so-far’ but also consider ‘stories-to-come’ which may build upon, divert from, or even unmake the ‘stories-so-far’. We apply these ideas to our study (based on a questionnaire survey and in-depth interviews) of the transnational journeys traced by Indonesian domestic workers employed in Singaporean middle-class homes. We argue that socially and culturally specific notions of risk can work to propel and sustain migration into retrogressive occupations like domestic work, as well as disrupt dominant narratives around migrants as strategic actors, necessarily in control of their trajectories and driven by their migration plans. The calculus of risk-taking and aspiration on which transnational livelihoods are predicated is one that takes into account both situatedness in and connectedness across different places (in short simultaneous ‘stories-so-far’). At the same time, future ‘stories-to-come’ may entail both subtle shifts and constant (re)negotiations that propel individual life stories unto different pathways.     

Exploring subject positions and multiple temporalities through an Iranian migrant mother's family photograph albums

In this article, I draw on a research study of one Iranian migrant mother's generation of selves through her material configuration of her personal photograph albums and through our verbal reading of her photographs. The research engages in a visual-material feminist ethnographic approach, and is informed by the work of Gillian Rose and the understanding that family photographs are a means by which women negotiate subject positions. In this article, I discuss an unexpected finding of my research, the significance of multiple temporalities in a migrant mother's production of selves. The photo album practices of the participant mother of this study, ‘Parvin’, depart from the common social convention of mothers arranging their photograph albums to chart family growth following the model of milestones occurring over linear developmental time. Parvin does not limit herself to linear developmental time, but rather she mixes up photographs in her post-migration family albums to generate multiple temporalities woven together by an enveloping ‘mixed’ time. Drawing on both Julia Kristeva and Homi Bhaba's theories of temporality and the subject, I suggest that Parvin produces subject positions for self and family through a continual interweaving of a multitude of pasts into the present and through a subsuming of milestones within cyclical family time. Further, I suggest that through her generation of multiple temporalities, Parvin produces the subject position of ‘accommodating mother’. Finally, I highlight the potential afforded by considering the temporal and the spatial together in studies of migrant identity.     

基于ESDA的城市外来人口社会融合水平空间差异研究——以上海为例

基于上海的调查分析,在因子分析的基础上将ESDA方法应用于社会融合水平研究。运用全局Moran's I指数、热点分析、空间回归等指标和模型,从全局和局部两个层面研究了城市外来人口社会融合水平空间差异及影响因素。结果表明:从总体上看,上海外来人口社会融合水平较高,但各个区县差异较大;从局部上看,中心城边缘区社会融合水平较高且内部存在关联性,形成了显著的"热点"区域;空间地理因素和制度因素对外来人口社会融合水平空间差异有显著影响,其中公共服务支出、社会保障支出两个因素作用最显著。     

黄绍伦教授与华人研究：一个社会学家的观点

本文是第一篇全面介绍黄绍伦教授在华人研究方面成果的文章。在探究了黄绍伦学术志趣的形成和学术经历之后,文章主要介绍和评价了他在华人企业家族主义、文化传统与东亚现代化、移民潮与香港的稳定与繁荣三个领域的主要理论和观点,最后扼要介绍了他领导开展的其他学术活动。作者认为,作为一个社会学家,黄绍伦所强调的理论取向和广博视野,对于提升华人研究的理论层次,更好地与社会科学的理论脉络和发展趋势相衔接,具有重要的参考价值。     

归侨认同意识的形成及其动态——以广东粤海湾华侨农场为例

基于田野调查的内容,选择粤海湾华侨农场作为研究对象,采用"多元社区"概念,以归侨群体在文化适应过程中的能动作用为理论视角,从多元社区的形成、归侨文化与认同意识的形成、归侨认同意识的动态等方面考察和分析了归侨社区内部高度复合性的群体关系以及由此而产生的内部传统调适和整合机制。     

基于城市适应的外来民工群岭南文化融入剖析

在珠三角地区,外来民工因数量庞大而逐渐成为相对独立的社会群体。作为迁移者,外来民工异地打工的同时,自身原有的文化基因会与迁入地的文化产生交融和碰撞,这种文化冲融伴随着外来民工城市适应的全过程。笔者首先通过走访,明晰外来民工对岭南文化的基本感知点:生活商业化、观念开放化、人情淡漠化和行事务实化,进而以此构筑外来民工基于经济、社会、文化的城市适应研究视点,采用问卷对外来民工的岭南文化认知和适应范式进行调研,剖析外来民工群基于城市适应的岭南文化融入特征。     

农民工随迁子女的课余空间行为及其对城市融入的影响研究——基于上海市某小学学生的调查

空间行为有助于表征主体的社会融入状况。基于移民融入城市的一般机理,并结合对上海市某小学学生的活动日志调查,探讨了农民工随迁子女的课余空间行为特征及对其城市融入的影响。研究表明,随迁子女的课余活动主要局限于农民工群体的生活空间和交际圈,明显地以居住地和学校为中心,空间范围较小,与城市儿童行为空间的交叠度较小,内群体交往倾向明显,从而在文化、心理和身份偏好上难以产生对所寄居城市的认同感,不利于他们的城市融入,为此,建议相关学校为随迁子女利用课余时间融入所在城市创造更多机会。     

Identity challenged: Taiwanese women migrating to Australia

This article investigates the experiences of Taiwanese women who migrated to Australia between 1980 and 2005. It is part of a larger project about the migration experiences of Taiwanese women who moved to Australia and to Canada with the aim of providing a direction for facilitating cultural transition for future female migrants. The article presents some of the findings from 21 semi-structured interviews which were conducted between July and October 2011, shedding light on the role that gender, age at the time of migration and family situation play in debates around cultural identity and the place of Taiwanese women in Australia. Relational-cultural theory serves as the theoretical framework for the central argument that – in spite of the differences between younger women and those in their 30s and 40s in relation to the motivation to migrate and ways to connect – the ability to build new relationships in Australia while maintaining existing ones in Taiwan is essential to establishing a positive view of self, and consequently to successful migration.