Neither predator nor prey: What trafficking discourses miss about masculinities,mobility and work

Within trafficking discourses, men appear as predatory and exploitative, while boys appear as victims. This flattens the complexities of social life and obscures the ways that constructs of masculinity frame the trajectories of labour migrants and their brokers. This article challenges those discourses, drawing on research with two groups of labour migrants characterized as ‘victims of trafficking’, as well as with ‘traffickers’ who help them to move and work. The first are adolescents moving from Benin to the gravel quarries of Abeokuta, Nigeria. The second are adults from across West Africa who have made the illegal journey to Italy, where they live in ‘ghettos’ and work as gang labourers on harvests. In each case, migrants and their brokers come from the same or similar communities; (shared) ideals of masculinity structure their mobility and labour. Gendered transitions towards adulthood, the pressure to attain riches and status and a duty of responsibility to those younger and less successful are important. A focus on their masculinities takes us beyond ‘victim-perpetrator’ dyads.     

IRON AGE DIET AT GLASTONBURY LAKE VILLAGE: THE ISOTOPIC EVIDENCE FOR NEGLIGIBLE AQUATIC RESOURCE CONSUMPTION

Summary.   The British Iron Age site at Glastonbury Lake Village in Somerset is well known for the extensive and prolonged excavations, the comprehensive publications and the superb preservation of organic remains. The environmental material recovered has led to detailed discussion about the nature of the inhabitants' diet. In particular, the recovery of fish and bird bone has led to speculation about the consumption of foods from the wetlands. Previous carbon and nitrogen isotopic analysis of British Iron Age skeletal material has failed to detect significant levels of aquatic resources in the diet during this period, even where sites are located directly on the coast or close to river systems. There is also very little archaeological evidence to suggest that fishing was a major subsistence strategy. The isotopic analysis of skeletal material from Glastonbury Lake Village was undertaken with the hypothesis that if aquatic resources were to be found at significant levels in the diet of a British Iron Age community, this was a site which might reveal it. The results suggest that such consumption is not visible isotopically and was negligible.     

PAUL VIDAL DE LA BLACHE and THE CONCOURS D'AGREGATION OF 1866

Agrégation played a key role in the operation of the Université de France of the nineteenth century but is poorly understood in the English-speaking world. Characteristics of the French Université are outlined, and the agrégation competition of 1866 in which Vidal de la Blache participated is described in detail, as further illustration of the early training and intellectual orientation of the future founder of the French school of human geography. Characteristics of the successful candidates in the agrégation examinations are then examined, and possible reasons for the perennial shortage of agrégés teaching in the Université are suggested .
Alors que l'agrégation était une force majeure pour le fonctionnement de l'Université de France au xixmesiècte elte n'est que faiblement comprise au delà du monde français. Dans cet article, j'expose quelques traits principaux de l'Université française et j'explique en détail le concours d'agrégation de 1866, dans lequel Vidal de la Blache a concouru, pour illustrer cette étape importante dans la formation intellectuelle et professionnelle du future fondateur de I'Ecole française de la Géographic humaine. Puts, j'examine les caratéristiques des concurrents reçus à l'agrégation et j'avance quelques raisons possibles pour expliquer le deficit continuel d'agrégés dans les postes enseignants de l'Université, durant le XIXme siècle .