Home divided,home reconstructed: children in rural–urban migration in contemporary China

This article is centred on the geographies of Chinese children in contemporary China – an area which has been problematically overlooked in geographical literature on childhood. In employing unique mobile research methods by tracking migrant children through the migration cycle, the author conducted an extensive ethnographic study of rural migrant children aged 8–17 in China. The article explores rural children's everyday lived experience of migration and how migrant children negotiate and articulate home and belonging while on the move. The study demonstrates the dynamic environment that migrant children inhabit, the fluid, contextual and mobile nature of their life in rural migrant households, their migrancy and their active involvement in homemaking.     

China’s services sector: the new engine of economic growth

This paper presents a review of services sector development in China. It is found that China’s services have recently emerged as the dominant contributor to economic growth and job creation. Trade in services has also increased dramatically, although China maintains a huge deficit. In comparison with economies at a similar stage of development, however, China’s services sector is lagging behind. Both GDP and employment shares of the services sector are relatively small. Services trade also accounts for a relatively small share of China’s total trade. In particular, China’s new services are underdeveloped. As per capita income rises and resultant urbanization accelerates, the country’s services sector is expected to expand further and hence play a key role in rebalancing China’s economy away from its over-reliance on manufacturing and exporting. To reach this goal, further reforms and prudent government policies are needed.     

Conceptions of place: approaching space,children and physical activity

In this paper, we argue that place mapping is useful for approaching children's conception of place and that this is of relevance when designing physical activity interventions. We contend that socio-material factors influence children's perception and use of places, and are crucial to understand in relation to their use of local neighbourhoods for physical activity. A place mapping of children's understandings and everyday use of their local neighbourhood in suburban Copenhagen was conducted with a fifth grade elementary school class. The mapping and subsequent analysis resulted in three categories of relevance to children's conceptions of place; located social experiences, experiences of the unknown, and children's contested spaces. We argue that such knowledge can provide useful information in the development and evaluation of activities that promote physical activity in urban spaces.     

城市化下的“卫生”困境与突破--论19世纪后半期美国城市公共卫生改革

19世纪后半期迅猛发展的美国城市化,使美国社会经济生活出现全方位的变化。同时,人口高度密集的城市环境导致公共卫生问题恶化,出现所谓的卫生危机,从而促发了城市公共卫生改革。此后,在美国城市的环境治理和疫病防治方面都出现系列性变化,城市公共卫生开始走上正轨。在此过程中,政府开始直接干预公共卫生,大众卫生意识得以强化,为美国城市卫生事业留下了宝贵遗产。     

China’s Evolving Policy towards the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea under Xi Jinping

Despite international pressure to condemn North Korea (DPRK), China’s successive leaderships have dealt carefully with Pyongyang, especially vis-à-vis its nuclear weapons program. This moderate stance reflects the two countries’ decades-long relationship, summarised in the Chinese idiom that Pyongyang and Beijing are “as close as lips and teeth”. Nevertheless, the DPRK’s third nuclear test in February 2013 raised enormous challenges for the new Xi Jinping leadership to maintain the previous DPRK policy focused on the status quo and stability on the Korean Peninsula. China’s attitudes and policies towards the DPRK after the provocative third test signified a possible reorientation of Beijing’s DPRK policy. This generated repercussions in the countries concerned and prompted debates among experts. This article asks how these events should be understood and what their implications are for the Xi leadership’s policy on the DPRK, the stability of the Korean Peninsula, and Northeast Asia. Given China’s competitive relations with other major powers, we conclude that the Xi leadership will not abandon the DPRK; indeed it will reinforce the policy of strengthening China’s influence over it. Nonetheless one aspect of doing so will involve China opening up to other – cooperative, multilateral – approaches to reinforcing stability on the Korean Peninsula and in Northeast Asia.     

Knowledge Production,Urban Locations and the Importance of Local Networks

This paper analyses the relationship between knowledge production and urban locations in industrial design, a knowledge-intensive business service (KIBS). KIBS concentrate in urban locations. This is often explained by the co-location of client firms and market access in large cities. Recent research on knowledge production, however, reveals that knowledge productive networks are significant for both the competitiveness and location of KIBS. Thus, to understand the urban location of industrial design, it is important to analyse how knowledge production is organized within the industry. Industrial design is concentrated in urban locations, but most of its clients are located elsewhere. Hence, it seems that industrial design firms concentrate in urban locations mainly because their knowledge networks include specific types of formal and informal local social networks.     

Migration,the Urban Periphery,and the Politics of Migrant Lives

This paper explores the politics of migration through a focus on labor migration regimes and the urban lives of migrants in the Seoul Metropolitan Region of South Korea. In particular, it draws attention to the ways in which migrant lives highlight the limits of the contemporary emphasis on control in migration management regimes. The paper contends that while migration management certainly reworks the socio‐legal status of migrants, the desire for control is often displaced in the everyday presence and practices of migrants as urban residents. In order to develop this argument I focus on the notion of the urban periphery as a spatio‐temporal configuration that manifests marginalization but is also potentially generative, innovative and destabilizing. The paper proceeds by exploring three dimensions of the periphery: (1) the mobile commons that emerges in everyday life; (2) the process of becoming undocumented and the subversion of control; and (3) the tactics of recognition that challenge the peripheral location of migrants. In each case the focus on the urban periphery draws attention to the importance of visibility and invisibility in migration, to the uneven spatio‐temporal configuration of migrant lives in the city, and to the ways in which migrant desires constitute a politics that exceeds what is normatively expected of them.     

Feminist Forays in the City: Imbalance and Intervention in Urban Research Methods

In this paper I argue that imbalances and silences persist in urban research. In particular, there is insufficient attention to anti‐racist and feminist theoretical, methodological, and empirical insights. Intersectional and materialist urban analyses that take difference seriously are under‐represented, while patriarchy, privilege, and positivism still linger. As a partial and aspirational remedy, I propose a “Feminist Partial Political Economy of Place” (FPEP) approach to urban research. FPEP is characterized by: (1) attention to gendered, raced, and intersectional power relations, including affinities and alliances; (2) reliance on partial, place‐based, materialist research that attends to power in knowledge production; (3) emphasis on feminist concepts of relationality to examine connections among sites, scales, and subjects, and to emphasize “life” and possibility; and (4) the use of theoretical toolkits to observe, interpret and challenge material‐discursive power relations. My own critique and research centers on North American cities, but FPEP approaches might help produce more robust, inclusive, and explanatory urban research in varied geographic contexts.