Pub Date : 2018-01-02DOI: 10.1080/21931674.2018.1427666
Peter Schumacher, M. Leung
Abstract Although Chinese medical aid to African countries is not a new phenomenon, the scale and scope of these engagements has changed significantly after the turn of the Millennium. Chinese government officials don’t grow tired to represent their country as new alternative for African medical development, a narrative that is accompanied with a host of figures such as money donated, Chinese personnel deployed, African practitioners trained and patients treated. However, little is known about the actual events behind these numbers. Drawing on the academic debate around the relationality of mobility and knowledge this paper is looking at the embodied experiences of Chinese-Zambian medical co-operation. By proposing a communication model as conceptual framework, this paper addresses recent criticism that too much scholarly attention has been given to the successful transfer of knowledge, whereas factors that prevent exchanges were largely ignored. Through the application of this model to analyze data obtained during six weeks of fieldwork in Zambia, it was possible to identify several prisms which affect the exchange of knowledge between the Chinese and Zambian teams in our case study decisively.
{"title":"Knowledge (im)mobility through mirco-level interactions: An analysis of the communication process in Chinese-Zambian medical co-operation","authors":"Peter Schumacher, M. Leung","doi":"10.1080/21931674.2018.1427666","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21931674.2018.1427666","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Although Chinese medical aid to African countries is not a new phenomenon, the scale and scope of these engagements has changed significantly after the turn of the Millennium. Chinese government officials don’t grow tired to represent their country as new alternative for African medical development, a narrative that is accompanied with a host of figures such as money donated, Chinese personnel deployed, African practitioners trained and patients treated. However, little is known about the actual events behind these numbers. Drawing on the academic debate around the relationality of mobility and knowledge this paper is looking at the embodied experiences of Chinese-Zambian medical co-operation. By proposing a communication model as conceptual framework, this paper addresses recent criticism that too much scholarly attention has been given to the successful transfer of knowledge, whereas factors that prevent exchanges were largely ignored. Through the application of this model to analyze data obtained during six weeks of fieldwork in Zambia, it was possible to identify several prisms which affect the exchange of knowledge between the Chinese and Zambian teams in our case study decisively.","PeriodicalId":413830,"journal":{"name":"Transnational Social Review","volume":"25 3 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130741295","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2018-01-02DOI: 10.1080/21931674.2018.1427680
Annemarie Duscha, Kathrin Klein-Zimmer, Matthias Klemm, Anna Spiegel
Looking back on nearly three decades of scientific thought on globalization (and knowledge) at least two shifts in argumentation can be identified. The scholarly debate started with a unifying “world view” of globalization, then turned the attention to the more or less suband transnational developments and, recently, has begun to address symbolic battles regarding regulative ideas of world society within a time of crisis and re-nationalization. In the beginning of the 1990s, when the career of the buzz-word “globalization” started, it was mainly driven by the idea of what Appadurai called “modernity at large” (Appadurai, 1996). Globalization seemed to be the transformation of the whole globe into a mirror image of Western modernity. Scholars put forward the idea of a “global age” (Albrow, 1998) transcending the hitherto fragmented international order of political (Western and Eastern) influence spheres and bridging the knowledge division between so-called developed and under-developed world regions. This process was not at all conceived as a uni-directional process without contradictions. Critiques foresaw a phase of “cultural imperialism” based upon the capitalist infrastructure of the globalization mode (Tomlinson, 2001). But the thesis of imperialism shared the basic assumption of a globalized (capitalist) world order in the making. In a second phase of the debate, the production of (global) knowledge was understood accordingly: as a collaborative effort to combine modern ideas with cultural difference adding up to what Geertz called the universe of discourse. Reasoning about globalization is itself part of the historical development which the concept tries to grasp and to elaborate. After 1989 the opening up of a single-world vision seemed to be a realistic possibility (at least from a Western point of view). The implosion of the Soviet Union, the diminishing of the “Iron Curtain” and the supposed end of a global confrontation of economic systems and military threats seemed to open up a historic window of opportunity for the spread of democracy, free market economy and ideas of global equality and human rights in accordance with the promise of preserving cultural diversity in the world. Within such a unifying world vision all sorts of problems (environment, poverty, war, migration) could be regarded as obstacles to be handled by world society as a single entity (the so-called world risk society; Beck, 1999).
{"title":"Understanding transnational knowledge","authors":"Annemarie Duscha, Kathrin Klein-Zimmer, Matthias Klemm, Anna Spiegel","doi":"10.1080/21931674.2018.1427680","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21931674.2018.1427680","url":null,"abstract":"Looking back on nearly three decades of scientific thought on globalization (and knowledge) at least two shifts in argumentation can be identified. The scholarly debate started with a unifying “world view” of globalization, then turned the attention to the more or less suband transnational developments and, recently, has begun to address symbolic battles regarding regulative ideas of world society within a time of crisis and re-nationalization. In the beginning of the 1990s, when the career of the buzz-word “globalization” started, it was mainly driven by the idea of what Appadurai called “modernity at large” (Appadurai, 1996). Globalization seemed to be the transformation of the whole globe into a mirror image of Western modernity. Scholars put forward the idea of a “global age” (Albrow, 1998) transcending the hitherto fragmented international order of political (Western and Eastern) influence spheres and bridging the knowledge division between so-called developed and under-developed world regions. This process was not at all conceived as a uni-directional process without contradictions. Critiques foresaw a phase of “cultural imperialism” based upon the capitalist infrastructure of the globalization mode (Tomlinson, 2001). But the thesis of imperialism shared the basic assumption of a globalized (capitalist) world order in the making. In a second phase of the debate, the production of (global) knowledge was understood accordingly: as a collaborative effort to combine modern ideas with cultural difference adding up to what Geertz called the universe of discourse. Reasoning about globalization is itself part of the historical development which the concept tries to grasp and to elaborate. After 1989 the opening up of a single-world vision seemed to be a realistic possibility (at least from a Western point of view). The implosion of the Soviet Union, the diminishing of the “Iron Curtain” and the supposed end of a global confrontation of economic systems and military threats seemed to open up a historic window of opportunity for the spread of democracy, free market economy and ideas of global equality and human rights in accordance with the promise of preserving cultural diversity in the world. Within such a unifying world vision all sorts of problems (environment, poverty, war, migration) could be regarded as obstacles to be handled by world society as a single entity (the so-called world risk society; Beck, 1999).","PeriodicalId":413830,"journal":{"name":"Transnational Social Review","volume":"31 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116118306","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2018-01-02DOI: 10.1080/21931674.2017.1405563
Erika Amundson
Transnational migration throughout Europe due to high rates of unemployment and poverty has led to increased concerns about migrants experiencing episodes of homelessness. In particular, scholars have pointed out that many Nordic countries have encountered an influx of migrants from several newer European Union (EU) member states who became homeless after their arrival (Blume, Gustafsson, Pedersen, & Verner, 2007; Friberg & Eldring, 2013; Hooghe, Trappers, Meuleman, & Reeskens, 2008; Jørgensen, 2012). Although the number of homeless individuals in this part of Northern Europe is relatively low in international comparison, homelessness in these countries remains a substantial social problem. As Sveri (2003) notes, there is a need for further efforts to prevent homelessness in the Nordic countries; however, a strong evidential base for designing policies and initiatives to address migrant homelessness is lacking. As such, this research offers insight from social work professionals in Norway and can be valuable in informing strategic and policy decisions (Hantrais, 2009). Such research is important because commonly held views about homeless migrants have not been well documented, particularly from this unique transnational social work perspective.
{"title":"Homelessness among transnational migrants in Norway","authors":"Erika Amundson","doi":"10.1080/21931674.2017.1405563","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21931674.2017.1405563","url":null,"abstract":"Transnational migration throughout Europe due to high rates of unemployment and poverty has led to increased concerns about migrants experiencing episodes of homelessness. In particular, scholars have pointed out that many Nordic countries have encountered an influx of migrants from several newer European Union (EU) member states who became homeless after their arrival (Blume, Gustafsson, Pedersen, & Verner, 2007; Friberg & Eldring, 2013; Hooghe, Trappers, Meuleman, & Reeskens, 2008; Jørgensen, 2012). Although the number of homeless individuals in this part of Northern Europe is relatively low in international comparison, homelessness in these countries remains a substantial social problem. As Sveri (2003) notes, there is a need for further efforts to prevent homelessness in the Nordic countries; however, a strong evidential base for designing policies and initiatives to address migrant homelessness is lacking. As such, this research offers insight from social work professionals in Norway and can be valuable in informing strategic and policy decisions (Hantrais, 2009). Such research is important because commonly held views about homeless migrants have not been well documented, particularly from this unique transnational social work perspective.","PeriodicalId":413830,"journal":{"name":"Transnational Social Review","volume":"63 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124975016","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2018-01-02DOI: 10.1080/21931674.2017.1416850
Wendy McGuire
Abstract There is a growing LGBTIQ+ refugee population in Canada as individuals and couples flee from countries with anti-gay laws and persecutory environments. The LGBTIQ+ Refugee Digital Storytelling Project was carried out in 2016 as part of a broader community-based research study with Metropolitan Community Church (MCC) of Toronto exploring how God and religion are tied up in transnational pro- and anti-gay LGBTIQ+ social movements. The project aimed to provide a space for refugees to narrate their own stories in their own way to make sense of the experiences with others facing similar challenges. Drawing on theories of transnational social exclusion and inclusion, borders as processes and trauma narratives, this paper explores whether the LGBTIQ+ Digital Storytelling Project facilitated inclusionary processes that drew refugees into the MCC in valued roles and whether the discursive moments the border narratives produced by this project offered were inclusionary and/or exclusionary.
{"title":"The LGBTIQ+ refugee digital storytelling project: facilitating inclusion in a queer Canadian christian community","authors":"Wendy McGuire","doi":"10.1080/21931674.2017.1416850","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21931674.2017.1416850","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract There is a growing LGBTIQ+ refugee population in Canada as individuals and couples flee from countries with anti-gay laws and persecutory environments. The LGBTIQ+ Refugee Digital Storytelling Project was carried out in 2016 as part of a broader community-based research study with Metropolitan Community Church (MCC) of Toronto exploring how God and religion are tied up in transnational pro- and anti-gay LGBTIQ+ social movements. The project aimed to provide a space for refugees to narrate their own stories in their own way to make sense of the experiences with others facing similar challenges. Drawing on theories of transnational social exclusion and inclusion, borders as processes and trauma narratives, this paper explores whether the LGBTIQ+ Digital Storytelling Project facilitated inclusionary processes that drew refugees into the MCC in valued roles and whether the discursive moments the border narratives produced by this project offered were inclusionary and/or exclusionary.","PeriodicalId":413830,"journal":{"name":"Transnational Social Review","volume":"116 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132921310","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2017-12-27DOI: 10.1080/21931674.2017.1415495
M. Kapetanovic
in previous studies (p. 163). Despite the focus on one region, Baskerville offers a balanced perspective that disentangles the long-held, general image of people “on the move” in agricultural settings: the author weighs economic positions and cultural variables for rural mobility and relies on occasional snapshots (i.e. Benson) to illustrate longitudinal trends within the data (p. 141). Due to its topical scope Lives in Transition is an essential reference guide for researchers interested in all aspects of computer based data-mining and longitudinal analysis. The wide range of chapters provokes questions concerning social strategies and other variables that nudge individuals and families in their patterns of mobility. Moreover, it inspires research into cross-border migration, transformation of the farming economy, and urban social change in other regions of the world. The volume, however, offers little in terms of methodological reflection, and lacks a poignant conclusion, making it unlikely to have an impactful word in such a tantalizing subject.
{"title":"Partisans in Yugoslavia: Literature, films and visual culture","authors":"M. Kapetanovic","doi":"10.1080/21931674.2017.1415495","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21931674.2017.1415495","url":null,"abstract":"in previous studies (p. 163). Despite the focus on one region, Baskerville offers a balanced perspective that disentangles the long-held, general image of people “on the move” in agricultural settings: the author weighs economic positions and cultural variables for rural mobility and relies on occasional snapshots (i.e. Benson) to illustrate longitudinal trends within the data (p. 141). Due to its topical scope Lives in Transition is an essential reference guide for researchers interested in all aspects of computer based data-mining and longitudinal analysis. The wide range of chapters provokes questions concerning social strategies and other variables that nudge individuals and families in their patterns of mobility. Moreover, it inspires research into cross-border migration, transformation of the farming economy, and urban social change in other regions of the world. The volume, however, offers little in terms of methodological reflection, and lacks a poignant conclusion, making it unlikely to have an impactful word in such a tantalizing subject.","PeriodicalId":413830,"journal":{"name":"Transnational Social Review","volume":"7 3 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-12-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129117843","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2017-12-11DOI: 10.1080/21931674.2017.1411668
M. A. Gjorgjioska
the 1960s moved into the 1970s, Greek student activists found a parallel between their struggle against the US-backed Greek junta and another: the one in Chile, against the terrifying and cruel right-wing dictator Pinochet. The Cold War took many casualties, far from the White House and the Kremlin. Those who are interested in the psychology of trauma will find something in this book to further their studies. One example would be the rape of women activists by the military. These women were often raised under traditional notions of sexual modesty. More research could certainly be done on this topic, and perhaps better to be accomplished by women scholars. The women Kornetis interviewed did not refer directly to their experiences of rape, although the implications were clear enough. For an introduction to what is truly meant by the now-popular term “transnational,” Children of the Dictatorship would make an excellent contribution. Readers from The First World or The North or The West – however we wish to denominate privileged political status and wealth – can easily see how no nation is an island, and that those who live in small countries really do have histories and cultures worth defending. Of course, readers from small countries can bypass that lesson for many others. How specific cultures might persist under the current form of voracious capitalism and technological innovation remains a question for us all. Accessible though it is, the scholarship of Children of the Dictatorship is hardly introductory. Kornetis’ affinity for theory allows him to employ it without showiness or verbal tangle. My only criticism of the book is that its emphasis on description and explication robs the Polytechnic occupation of its inherent drama. The penultimate, and culminating, chapter is dubbed “Ten Months that Shook Greece.” The prose belies the title. But perhaps the relationship between the social sciences and the humanities ought not to be too easily settled.
{"title":"Nations and citizens in Yugoslavia and the post-Yugoslav states: one hundred years of citizenship","authors":"M. A. Gjorgjioska","doi":"10.1080/21931674.2017.1411668","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21931674.2017.1411668","url":null,"abstract":"the 1960s moved into the 1970s, Greek student activists found a parallel between their struggle against the US-backed Greek junta and another: the one in Chile, against the terrifying and cruel right-wing dictator Pinochet. The Cold War took many casualties, far from the White House and the Kremlin. Those who are interested in the psychology of trauma will find something in this book to further their studies. One example would be the rape of women activists by the military. These women were often raised under traditional notions of sexual modesty. More research could certainly be done on this topic, and perhaps better to be accomplished by women scholars. The women Kornetis interviewed did not refer directly to their experiences of rape, although the implications were clear enough. For an introduction to what is truly meant by the now-popular term “transnational,” Children of the Dictatorship would make an excellent contribution. Readers from The First World or The North or The West – however we wish to denominate privileged political status and wealth – can easily see how no nation is an island, and that those who live in small countries really do have histories and cultures worth defending. Of course, readers from small countries can bypass that lesson for many others. How specific cultures might persist under the current form of voracious capitalism and technological innovation remains a question for us all. Accessible though it is, the scholarship of Children of the Dictatorship is hardly introductory. Kornetis’ affinity for theory allows him to employ it without showiness or verbal tangle. My only criticism of the book is that its emphasis on description and explication robs the Polytechnic occupation of its inherent drama. The penultimate, and culminating, chapter is dubbed “Ten Months that Shook Greece.” The prose belies the title. But perhaps the relationship between the social sciences and the humanities ought not to be too easily settled.","PeriodicalId":413830,"journal":{"name":"Transnational Social Review","volume":"60 6","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-12-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134476764","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2017-12-11DOI: 10.1080/21931674.2018.1463055
A. Blum, D. Schäfer
Abstract In our ethnographic study we were focusing on constructions of difference concerning different categories of difference such as race and gender, but also age, class, etc. Those categories of difference are constructed simultaneously in social processes and they are also reproduced in interactions in volunteer work abroad, which is currently booming among young people. We refer to powerful practices of self-ascription and consider this critically in the case of volunteer work. We considered the interactions between the white volunteers and the local people by interacting with them, and thus we identified an imbalance of power and dominance, for example, in educational practices. Categorizations of difference concerning race were dominant and they influenced all interactions decisively. In addition, they arranged gender constructions along the characteristics of color. We defined this fact as a perpetuation of colonial practices which unconsciously have an effect. These attributions are internalized and reproduced in interaction processes.
{"title":"Volunteer work as a neo-colonial practice: Racism in transnational education","authors":"A. Blum, D. Schäfer","doi":"10.1080/21931674.2018.1463055","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21931674.2018.1463055","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In our ethnographic study we were focusing on constructions of difference concerning different categories of difference such as race and gender, but also age, class, etc. Those categories of difference are constructed simultaneously in social processes and they are also reproduced in interactions in volunteer work abroad, which is currently booming among young people. We refer to powerful practices of self-ascription and consider this critically in the case of volunteer work. We considered the interactions between the white volunteers and the local people by interacting with them, and thus we identified an imbalance of power and dominance, for example, in educational practices. Categorizations of difference concerning race were dominant and they influenced all interactions decisively. In addition, they arranged gender constructions along the characteristics of color. We defined this fact as a perpetuation of colonial practices which unconsciously have an effect. These attributions are internalized and reproduced in interaction processes.","PeriodicalId":413830,"journal":{"name":"Transnational Social Review","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-12-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121377212","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2017-09-02DOI: 10.1080/21931674.2017.1359998
Raluca Bejan
The following conversation took place in October 2015, in Toronto, succeeding an event at Beit Zatoun, a community space open to dialogs that address current political and cultural issues from a framework of social justice and human rights. An Ecuadorian based author, journalist and political activist, Irene León held at the time an advisory position for the Ecuadorian Minister of Foreign Affairs on issues of strategic and transnational interest. Her work was mainly centered on the legal-juridical matters that surrounded the Chevron versus Ecuador legal case. In Ecuador, the Texaco/Chevron oil exploitation between 1964 and 1990 contaminated the Amazonian rainforest, polluted the drinking water and negatively affected the local agriculture. Chevron was sentenced in 2011, by an Ecuadorian court, to pay damages totalling 9.5 billion dollars to the affected Indigenous communities. However the company liquidated all its assets in Ecuador, and the judgment could not be enforced. The Chevron – Ecuadorian plaintiffs litigation issue ended up being disputed in Canada, where the Supreme Court has unanimously voted (in September 2015) that Ecuador’s Indigenous communities have the right to pursue the judgment at the Ontario Court of Appeal. Chevron also filed, in 2009, an international plea against Ecuador, at The Hague, for private arbitration. Irene León was invited by the Anti-Chevron Canada (a grassroots group), to talk about the case, and to broadly contextualize it within the topic of transnational corporate responsibility. The day after her talk at Beit Zaton, Irene León continued the discussion. She spoke about the ideological shift brought forward by the transnational capital interests and practices, about the alternative efforts carried out in Latin America to resist the intrusions of multinational corporations, and about developing unorthodox relationships of exchange that would steer away from the ‘market’ and would organize different ways of economic (re) production. Latin America has been long involved in a political project of ideological change. We can only think of the Pink Tide movements that started in the 1990s, which included working class and Indigenous campaigns against neoliberalism and against American imperialism, while simultaneously promoting anti-capitalist structural reforms, particularly against the IMF, privatization and social restructuring (Prashad, 2013). By now, many South American nations have elected governments from the left side of the political spectrum (Prashad, 2013): Brazil (2002), Argentina (2003), Uruguay (2004), Bolivia (2006), Chile (2006), Ecuador
{"title":"Irene León on the project of Buen Vivir as a challenge to corporate transnationalism","authors":"Raluca Bejan","doi":"10.1080/21931674.2017.1359998","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21931674.2017.1359998","url":null,"abstract":"The following conversation took place in October 2015, in Toronto, succeeding an event at Beit Zatoun, a community space open to dialogs that address current political and cultural issues from a framework of social justice and human rights. An Ecuadorian based author, journalist and political activist, Irene León held at the time an advisory position for the Ecuadorian Minister of Foreign Affairs on issues of strategic and transnational interest. Her work was mainly centered on the legal-juridical matters that surrounded the Chevron versus Ecuador legal case. In Ecuador, the Texaco/Chevron oil exploitation between 1964 and 1990 contaminated the Amazonian rainforest, polluted the drinking water and negatively affected the local agriculture. Chevron was sentenced in 2011, by an Ecuadorian court, to pay damages totalling 9.5 billion dollars to the affected Indigenous communities. However the company liquidated all its assets in Ecuador, and the judgment could not be enforced. The Chevron – Ecuadorian plaintiffs litigation issue ended up being disputed in Canada, where the Supreme Court has unanimously voted (in September 2015) that Ecuador’s Indigenous communities have the right to pursue the judgment at the Ontario Court of Appeal. Chevron also filed, in 2009, an international plea against Ecuador, at The Hague, for private arbitration. Irene León was invited by the Anti-Chevron Canada (a grassroots group), to talk about the case, and to broadly contextualize it within the topic of transnational corporate responsibility. The day after her talk at Beit Zaton, Irene León continued the discussion. She spoke about the ideological shift brought forward by the transnational capital interests and practices, about the alternative efforts carried out in Latin America to resist the intrusions of multinational corporations, and about developing unorthodox relationships of exchange that would steer away from the ‘market’ and would organize different ways of economic (re) production. Latin America has been long involved in a political project of ideological change. We can only think of the Pink Tide movements that started in the 1990s, which included working class and Indigenous campaigns against neoliberalism and against American imperialism, while simultaneously promoting anti-capitalist structural reforms, particularly against the IMF, privatization and social restructuring (Prashad, 2013). By now, many South American nations have elected governments from the left side of the political spectrum (Prashad, 2013): Brazil (2002), Argentina (2003), Uruguay (2004), Bolivia (2006), Chile (2006), Ecuador","PeriodicalId":413830,"journal":{"name":"Transnational Social Review","volume":"218 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132614944","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2017-09-02DOI: 10.1080/21931674.2017.1317196
Katrine Mellingen Bjerke
Abstract Scholarship on transnational migration illuminates social relations and movement across two or more nation-state borders. However, recent scholarship has criticized this earlier work for neglecting barriers to these cross-border movements and ties. Calls have been made to include the physical body and its impacts on migrants’ ability to lead transnational lives. Based on biographical interviews with elderly migrants from Poland and Pakistan living in Norway, this article argues that the physical aging process may constrain older migrants’ mobility and deepen their attachment to their place of residence. The concept of bodily place attachment has been coined to highlight this increased sedentariness. In the article, bodily place attachment occurs in three forms: first, through the increased bodily vulnerability that aging brings; second, through familiarity with the physical make-up of their environment, which is important in situations of sensory decline; and third, through dependence on personal care by the welfare state. By adding the concept of bodily place attachment, the article provides nuance to former theories on transnationalism by identifying the physical body as a potential barrier to transnational practices and by describing how certain bodily practices arise that tie people to their place of residence.
{"title":"Bodily attachment to place: The case of elderly migrants in Norway","authors":"Katrine Mellingen Bjerke","doi":"10.1080/21931674.2017.1317196","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21931674.2017.1317196","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Scholarship on transnational migration illuminates social relations and movement across two or more nation-state borders. However, recent scholarship has criticized this earlier work for neglecting barriers to these cross-border movements and ties. Calls have been made to include the physical body and its impacts on migrants’ ability to lead transnational lives. Based on biographical interviews with elderly migrants from Poland and Pakistan living in Norway, this article argues that the physical aging process may constrain older migrants’ mobility and deepen their attachment to their place of residence. The concept of bodily place attachment has been coined to highlight this increased sedentariness. In the article, bodily place attachment occurs in three forms: first, through the increased bodily vulnerability that aging brings; second, through familiarity with the physical make-up of their environment, which is important in situations of sensory decline; and third, through dependence on personal care by the welfare state. By adding the concept of bodily place attachment, the article provides nuance to former theories on transnationalism by identifying the physical body as a potential barrier to transnational practices and by describing how certain bodily practices arise that tie people to their place of residence.","PeriodicalId":413830,"journal":{"name":"Transnational Social Review","volume":"32 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116825420","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2017-08-31DOI: 10.1080/21931674.2017.1359959
C. Schmitt, Linda L. Semu, Matthias D. Witte
The above quote is from an interview with a young woman who was born in the West African country Benin and moved to France with her family. She has been living in France since the mid-1980s and identifies herself as a Frenchwoman and a Beninese. On the European continent and in Africa, the young woman (as well as many others like her) experiences denial: her belonging to Benin and Africa as well as to France and Europe is denied her. She is not treated as an equal. In France, skin color is the marker of denigration: “people show you, you are not really French, you are African I am black.” In Benin, it is her sporadic visits to her country of origin that lead to a denial of belonging. This case demonstrates the dominance of a kinship and decent principle (jus sanguinis) based on the idea of race: Being French is associated with fair skin color. In this context, dark-skinned people are considered non-French. The light skin color is a place of structural advantages and privileges (Pokos, 2009, p. 113) as well as a dominant culture which negotiates who supposedly belongs to a country and who does not. Globalization, with its attendant increase in movement, has simultaneously intensified and normalized strangeness, raising normative and subjective questions of belonging and exclusion (Anthias, 2008).
上面这句话是对一位年轻女子的采访，她出生于西非国家贝宁，随家人移居法国。自20世纪80年代中期以来，她一直生活在法国，并将自己定位为法国女性和贝宁人。在欧洲大陆和非洲，这名年轻女子(以及许多像她一样的人)经历了否认:她属于贝宁和非洲，也属于法国和欧洲，都被否认了。她没有被平等对待。在法国，肤色是诋毁的标志:“人们告诉你，你不是真正的法国人，你是非洲人，我是黑人。”在贝宁，是她偶尔去她的原籍国，导致她拒绝归属。这个案例证明了基于种族观念的亲属关系和体面原则(血权原则)的主导地位:作为法国人与白皙的肤色有关。在这种情况下，深色皮肤的人被认为不是法国人。浅肤色是一个具有结构性优势和特权的地方(Pokos, 2009, p. 113)，也是一种主导文化，它可以协商谁应该属于一个国家，谁不属于一个国家。全球化，伴随着流动的增加，同时强化和规范了陌生感，提出了归属和排斥的规范性和主观问题(Anthias, 2008)。
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