The cultural construction of Italy in Albania and vice versa: Migration dynamics,strategies of resistance and politics of mutual self-definition across colonialism and post-colonialism

This article analyses the shifting ways in which Italy has been strategically represented in Albania during the different key passages of the latter's relatively recent history as a sovereign independent state. As a parallel narrative, the article also examines the way Albania has been equally strategically represented in Italy before and during the two periods in which Italy has been militarily involved in Albania, and the way this has been consistent with an attempt to elaborate and sustain a politically strategic definition of Italian identity and culture. The history of the asymmetrical relationship between Albania and Italy is deeply embedded in the social, cultural and political environments that are on the two shores of the Adriatic Sea. The cultural construction of Albania in Italy and vice versa of Italy in Albania should be linked to seemingly independent instances of domestic reforms. The dynamics of projective identification or dis-identification stemming from these instances should be seen as intertwined within two parallel processes of mutual definition encompassing both the colonial and the postcolonial relations between and within the two countries.     

OPTIMUM LOCATION AND THEORY OF THE FIRM UNDER A REGULATORY CONSTRAINT*

This paper attempts to incorporate space in the theory of a regulated firm. It will show that the A-J effects are not affected in a spatial setting. In addition, it will also demonstrate that as the difference between the regulated fair rate of return and the unconstrained profit-maximizing rate of return on capital becomes greater, the optimum location of the regulated firm moves towards the site of the product market, if capital and labor are complements (substitutes) and if marginal transportation costs (with respect to distance) are an increasing (decreasing) function of labor usage.     

Gender disparities in child health care seeking in northern Vietnam

Vietnam recently demonstrated a skewed sex ratio at birth. Little research has examined postnatal impacts of son preference in Vietnam, such as in child health care seeking. Past research in other Asian countries with son preference has found that parents are more likely to take sons to a health facility when they are sick, to do so more promptly, and invest more resources in care, than daughters. Using data from a paediatric hospital emergency department, we analyse gender differences in illnesses, referral patterns, and outcomes among children to understand how gender disparities in paediatric hospital admissions arise. Almost twice as many boys were brought into the facility as girls. Compared to girls, boys were significantly more likely to have bypassed lower-level facilities and entered care at the tertiary facility, controlling for severity of illness and socio-demographic characteristics. This suggests parents provide preferential treatment to boys, potentially leading to excess morbidity among girls who become ill. However, we find no significant differences in delay of care seeking or evidence of provider bias. Ensuring that girls are able to access appropriate, quality care when needed, will improve equity of access to care for all children.     

Gendered networks and migration decision-making in Northern Vietnam

This paper examines the gender aspect of migrant networks, particularly the different ways networks are expected to assist men's or women's migration during migration decision-making processes. Through the case study of a farming community in Northern Vietnam, it shows that migrant networks are not gender neutral and, more importantly, men and women capitalise on different functions of networks to facilitate their migratory endeavours. Whilst men tend to be connected to relatively more extended networks primarily for practical support, women are more likely to be tied to family networks, which provide them with not just information and practical support but also social protection. These gender-specific expectations and uses of migrant networks have important implications for men's and women's mobility. The paper provides new insights into the way migration choices are made by men and women and at the same time underscores the importance of understanding migrant networks in researching migration.     

Embodied cosmopolitanisms: the subjective mobility of migrants working in the global sex industry

Anti-trafficking rhetoric and policies emphasise the extent of exploitation and coercion of female migrant sex workers and obfuscate the shared ambivalences and contradictions experienced by migrant female sex workers and their male agents and partners. By engaging in the global sex industry, both young men and women negotiate their aspiration to cosmopolitan late modern lifestyles against the prevalence of essentialist patriarchal gender values and sexual mores at home. In the process, established gender normativities, legitimising women's subjection to men, are both reproduced and challenged. The evidence informing this article shows that a minority of women are coerced into the sex industry. There is a direct link between the adherence to essentialist gender/sexual roles and the recourse to violence and exploitation, because migrants' prolonged involvement in the sex industry coincides with the adherence to more cosmopolitan gender/sexual roles, translating into less authoritarian and violent discourses and practices. Hegemonic understandings of migrants' involvement in the global sex industry in terms of ‘trafficking’ erase these important dynamics and dimensions, which underpin intricate feelings and experiences of advantage, disadvantage and exploitation. By failing to engage with the meanings that migrants working in the sex industry ascribe to their working and personal lives, the (anti)trafficking logic of ‘humanitarian intervention’ enforces forms of solidarity and support that appeal to the minority and harm the majority of the people they are supposed to ‘rescue’.     

Female Icons,Feminist Iconography? Socialist Rhetoric and Women's Agency in 1950s China

This article examines the construction of female subjectivity in emulation campaign materials of early Maoist China. Through critical examination of ‘nüjie diyi’ (the first female) model workers, I argue that Maoist proletarian subjectivity reflects a situated agency produced through empowerment and salvationist impulses. As the first women to engage in traditionally male professions like tractor driving, ‘nüjie diyi’ models can be read as objects of CCP policies and ideology. At the same time, however, their public presence challenged gendered conceptualisations of workplace, technological competence and proletarian identity. Moreover, their close ties to Soviet experts located these women within a geopolitical structure that occasioned alternative sites of female agency. As icons of socialist China and representatives of state‐sponsored feminism, ‘diyi’ women embodied historical progress and social change. Through these women multiple contending subjectivities emerged which simultaneously promised and delimited national feminist rhetoric and agency.     

LÖSCHIAN COMPETITION VERSUS SPATIAL COLLUSION: PRICE AND WELFARE COMPARISONS*

ABSTRACT. Löschian duopoly under heterogeneous cost conditions is examined to show that it is not equivalent, contra past findings, to spatial collusion. Moreover, within the confines of the assumed demand and cost conditions spatial collusion is shown to be superior to Loschian competition in terms of both (aggregate) consumer surplus and producer surplus, which implies a possible welfare gain from collusion. A general, if not the general, prices-and-welfare comparison of alternative pricing schema including collusive, Löschian, and optimal pricing is summarily presented in a table.