Since the publication of my article "Network monarchy and crises of legitimacy in Thailand" (Pacific Review, 2005), network monarchy has become an influential concept in the analysis of Thailand's politics. Though widely adopted, the argument has also spawned rival or complementary coinings, ranging from "autonomous political networks" (Joseph Harris) to "working towards the monarchy" (Serhat Uenaldi), and the "deep state" (Eugenie Mérieau), as well as the "parallel state" and the "monarchized military" (Paul Chambers and Napisa Waitoolkiat ). This article revisits the argument, elaborates on the meanings of the original term, and makes a case for network monarchy's continuing salience in the Tenth Reign.
{"title":"Network Monarchy as Euphoric Couplet","authors":"D. McCargo","doi":"10.5509/2021943549","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5509/2021943549","url":null,"abstract":"Since the publication of my article \"Network monarchy and crises of legitimacy in Thailand\" (Pacific Review, 2005), network monarchy has become an influential concept in the analysis of Thailand's politics. Though widely adopted, the argument has also spawned rival or complementary\u0000 coinings, ranging from \"autonomous political networks\" (Joseph Harris) to \"working towards the monarchy\" (Serhat Uenaldi), and the \"deep state\" (Eugenie Mérieau), as well as the \"parallel state\" and the \"monarchized military\" (Paul Chambers and Napisa Waitoolkiat ). This article revisits\u0000 the argument, elaborates on the meanings of the original term, and makes a case for network monarchy's continuing salience in the Tenth Reign.","PeriodicalId":47041,"journal":{"name":"Pacific Affairs","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2021-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47782950","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This study analyzes the effects of the economic sanctions against North Korea since 2016 on the economic well-being of North Korean cities. As a proxy for economic well-being, we use nighttime light (NTL), which we estimate from 1992 to 2019 through an inter-calibration process for DMSP/OLS and SNPP/VIIRS. We found that NTL in North Korea was getting brighter up until 2009, but that the growth rate of total NTL in 25 major North Korean cities began to decrease from 2016. The decline in the NTL growth rate of Pyongyang, the capital city, as well as in cities bordering China and in self-regenerating cities, was relatively slight. By contrast, the declines in the NTL growth rate of coal-mining cities and inland cities without sufficient production bases were greater than those in other cities, and some cities experienced negative growth in 2019. Cities in regions relying on coal mining have traditionally accounted for a large portion of North Korea's exports, and since these cities have been heavily affected by sanctions, coal mining could become a vulnerable sector, which would threaten North Korea's economic well-being.
{"title":"Are Economic Sanctions against North Korea Effective? Assessing Nighttime Light in 25 Major Cities","authors":"Sung Hyun Son, Joonmo Cho","doi":"10.5509/2021943465","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5509/2021943465","url":null,"abstract":"This study analyzes the effects of the economic sanctions against North Korea since 2016 on the economic well-being of North Korean cities. As a proxy for economic well-being, we use nighttime light (NTL), which we estimate from 1992 to 2019 through an inter-calibration process for\u0000 DMSP/OLS and SNPP/VIIRS. We found that NTL in North Korea was getting brighter up until 2009, but that the growth rate of total NTL in 25 major North Korean cities began to decrease from 2016. The decline in the NTL growth rate of Pyongyang, the capital city, as well as in cities bordering\u0000 China and in self-regenerating cities, was relatively slight. By contrast, the declines in the NTL growth rate of coal-mining cities and inland cities without sufficient production bases were greater than those in other cities, and some cities experienced negative growth in 2019. Cities in\u0000 regions relying on coal mining have traditionally accounted for a large portion of North Korea's exports, and since these cities have been heavily affected by sanctions, coal mining could become a vulnerable sector, which would threaten North Korea's economic well-being.","PeriodicalId":47041,"journal":{"name":"Pacific Affairs","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2021-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41828492","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Despite election violence being a commonly agreed upon phenomena in the Philippines, there has been a dearth in academic research on the topic in recent years, largely due to a lack of reliable information. To address this, our article adapts recognized methods from studies such as Lindsay Shorr Newman's 2013 paper, together with Stephen McGrath and Paul Gill's 2014 research on terrorism and elections. To expose the timing of election violence, we tracked incidents relative to election dates for the period from 2004 to 2017, with the results indicating that violence increased closer to an election date, and frequency substantially increased during the 14-year period. This is the first academic journal article since John Linantud in 1998 to focus on the issue of election violence in the Philippines but through adaptive methodologies goes further, enabling national analysis. Furthermore, our findings reveal statistically significant differences regarding the types of terrorist attacks and targets when comparing election and non-election periods. We highlight complicating factors such as the majority of attacks being attributed to "unknown" actors and the complex situation during elections. The results also demonstrate that election violence in the Philippines is dominated by the New People's Army and the use of assassination. The paper makes the case for further research and the creation of a dedicated database of election violence in the Philippines and elsewhere, and evaluates the measures implemented by the government that have failed to stem election violence.
{"title":"Understanding Election Violence in the Philippines: Beware the Unknown Assassins of May","authors":"Thomas J. Smith, J. Reyes","doi":"10.5509/2021943491","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5509/2021943491","url":null,"abstract":"Despite election violence being a commonly agreed upon phenomena in the Philippines, there has been a dearth in academic research on the topic in recent years, largely due to a lack of reliable information. To address this, our article adapts recognized methods from studies such as\u0000 Lindsay Shorr Newman's 2013 paper, together with Stephen McGrath and Paul Gill's 2014 research on terrorism and elections. To expose the timing of election violence, we tracked incidents relative to election dates for the period from 2004 to 2017, with the results indicating that violence\u0000 increased closer to an election date, and frequency substantially increased during the 14-year period. This is the first academic journal article since John Linantud in 1998 to focus on the issue of election violence in the Philippines but through adaptive methodologies goes further, enabling\u0000 national analysis. Furthermore, our findings reveal statistically significant differences regarding the types of terrorist attacks and targets when comparing election and non-election periods. We highlight complicating factors such as the majority of attacks being attributed to \"unknown\" actors\u0000 and the complex situation during elections. The results also demonstrate that election violence in the Philippines is dominated by the New People's Army and the use of assassination. The paper makes the case for further research and the creation of a dedicated database of election violence\u0000 in the Philippines and elsewhere, and evaluates the measures implemented by the government that have failed to stem election violence.","PeriodicalId":47041,"journal":{"name":"Pacific Affairs","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2021-06-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45689328","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Between 1978 and 2018 the percentage of the Chinese workforce in the service sector rose from 12.2 to 46.3. A large share of this workforce is in sales, selling products ranging from household goods, insurance, advertising space, and education, to various other services. The proliferation of salespeople in China is facilitated by the dramatic increase in the number of university graduates. Personnel in sales jobs, which are particularly popular among graduates from rural backgrounds with degrees from universities with indifferent reputations, experience an extraordinarily high level of mobility. They typically change jobs every few months, either because they are fired or they pursue better opportunities. Based on one year of fieldwork undertaken between 2015 and 2017, this article shows how the rapid expansion of China's higher education subjects students from rural backgrounds to new inequalities, which, in turn, reconfigure the rural-urban divide into multiple intersecting hierarchies. Building on the concept of complexed development, this article analyzes how salespeople experience contradictory mobilities in a web of intersecting hierarchies. It shows how they achieve upward status mobility by breaking away from agricultural and manual labour and becoming university graduates and white-collar workers; but also, how they sometimes experience downward mobility in terms of income in comparison to previous generations of migrants and their less-educated peers.
{"title":"Keep On Moving: Rural University Graduates as Sales Workers in South and Central China","authors":"Willy Sier","doi":"10.5509/2021942265","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5509/2021942265","url":null,"abstract":"Between 1978 and 2018 the percentage of the Chinese workforce in the service sector rose from 12.2 to 46.3. A large share of this workforce is in sales, selling products ranging from household goods, insurance, advertising space, and education, to various other services. The proliferation\u0000 of salespeople in China is facilitated by the dramatic increase in the number of university graduates. Personnel in sales jobs, which are particularly popular among graduates from rural backgrounds with degrees from universities with indifferent reputations, experience an extraordinarily high\u0000 level of mobility. They typically change jobs every few months, either because they are fired or they pursue better opportunities. Based on one year of fieldwork undertaken between 2015 and 2017, this article shows how the rapid expansion of China's higher education subjects students from\u0000 rural backgrounds to new inequalities, which, in turn, reconfigure the rural-urban divide into multiple intersecting hierarchies. Building on the concept of complexed development, this article analyzes how salespeople experience contradictory mobilities in a web of intersecting hierarchies.\u0000 It shows how they achieve upward status mobility by breaking away from agricultural and manual labour and becoming university graduates and white-collar workers; but also, how they sometimes experience downward mobility in terms of income in comparison to previous generations of migrants and\u0000 their less-educated peers.","PeriodicalId":47041,"journal":{"name":"Pacific Affairs","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2021-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47788753","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This essay examines two films by the Chinese documentary filmmaker Wang Bing about temporary migrant workers in small, privately owned garment workshops in Zhejiang Province, China: Bitter Money (Ku Qian; 2016) and 15 Hours (Shi Wu Xiao Shi; 2017). Wang's films portray Chinese garment workers' lived experiences of "suspension," as defined by Biao Xiang in this issue, in unique cinematic ways. Social sciences have paid close attention to the experiences of migrant workers, but art documentaries use audiovisual and aesthetic means to explore their everyday reality, producing what D. MacDougall calls distinctive "affective knowledge." Wang's films are usually categorized as part of the Sixth Generation of Chinese filmmakers, known for capturing social issues through observational methods. In this essay, I identify Wang's works with the aesthetics of "slow cinema" and a global documentary trend in the visual arts as theorized by T. J. Demos in The Migrant Image. Based on close observation coupled with empathetic insight, Wang develops his own subjective method to portray people in a transformed and still changing China, where suspension is a common state of being. Ultimately, Wang's films not only make the personal experiences of migrant workers visible and tangible, but also problematize their underlying, collective condition of suspension due to the contract labour system and associated hypermobility. The suspension approach suggests a productive way of bringing documentary art and social sciences into dialogue.
{"title":"Documenting China's Garment Industry: Wang Bing's Portrayal of Migrant Workers' Suspended Lives within the Contract Labour System","authors":"S. V. D. Meulen","doi":"10.5509/2021942371","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5509/2021942371","url":null,"abstract":"This essay examines two films by the Chinese documentary filmmaker Wang Bing about temporary migrant workers in small, privately owned garment workshops in Zhejiang Province, China: Bitter Money (Ku Qian; 2016) and 15 Hours (Shi Wu Xiao Shi; 2017). Wang's\u0000 films portray Chinese garment workers' lived experiences of \"suspension,\" as defined by Biao Xiang in this issue, in unique cinematic ways. Social sciences have paid close attention to the experiences of migrant workers, but art documentaries use audiovisual and aesthetic means to explore\u0000 their everyday reality, producing what D. MacDougall calls distinctive \"affective knowledge.\" Wang's films are usually categorized as part of the Sixth Generation of Chinese filmmakers, known for capturing social issues through observational methods. In this essay, I identify Wang's works\u0000 with the aesthetics of \"slow cinema\" and a global documentary trend in the visual arts as theorized by T. J. Demos in The Migrant Image. Based on close observation coupled with empathetic insight, Wang develops his own subjective method to portray people in a transformed and still changing\u0000 China, where suspension is a common state of being. Ultimately, Wang's films not only make the personal experiences of migrant workers visible and tangible, but also problematize their underlying, collective condition of suspension due to the contract labour system and associated hypermobility.\u0000 The suspension approach suggests a productive way of bringing documentary art and social sciences into dialogue.","PeriodicalId":47041,"journal":{"name":"Pacific Affairs","volume":"94 1","pages":"371-396"},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2021-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43830285","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Since the late 2000s, many rural-to-urban migrants in China have lost their rural land to development plans, resettled in designated areas, and acquired formal urban residency. They stopped migrating, and have apparently ended their life of "suspension," namely protracted mobility. While most existing research literature on this population foregrounds the issue of land dispossession, this article argues that, following resettlement, these former migrants' lives can be more accurately characterized as a state of suspension instead of dispossession. Many resettled young adults, while having secured livelihood thanks to state compensation, are excluded from the technology- and capital-intensive developments to which they have lost their land. Some of these young people instead became petty speculators and rentier capitalists by liquidating their compensated assets through mortgages, private lending, rent, and other financial means. They are constantly waiting for the next investment opportunity and windfall gain. Although physically settled down and economically secure, they remain anxious and unsettled. They continue to orient their lives towards an elusive future rather than striving to transform the here and now, thus living in a state that I call "suspension 2.0."
{"title":"Suspension 2.0: Segregated Development, Financial Speculation, and Waiting among Resettled Peasants in Urban China","authors":"Yang Zhan","doi":"10.5509/2021942347","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5509/2021942347","url":null,"abstract":"Since the late 2000s, many rural-to-urban migrants in China have lost their rural land to development plans, resettled in designated areas, and acquired formal urban residency. They stopped migrating, and have apparently ended their life of \"suspension,\" namely protracted mobility.\u0000 While most existing research literature on this population foregrounds the issue of land dispossession, this article argues that, following resettlement, these former migrants' lives can be more accurately characterized as a state of suspension instead of dispossession. Many resettled young\u0000 adults, while having secured livelihood thanks to state compensation, are excluded from the technology- and capital-intensive developments to which they have lost their land. Some of these young people instead became petty speculators and rentier capitalists by liquidating their compensated\u0000 assets through mortgages, private lending, rent, and other financial means. They are constantly waiting for the next investment opportunity and windfall gain. Although physically settled down and economically secure, they remain anxious and unsettled. They continue to orient their lives towards\u0000 an elusive future rather than striving to transform the here and now, thus living in a state that I call \"suspension 2.0.\"","PeriodicalId":47041,"journal":{"name":"Pacific Affairs","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2021-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47063798","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
"Suspension" is the translation of the Chinese term xuanfu, which has been widely used in public discussions in China since the mid-2010s. Suspension indicates a state of being in which people move frequently, conduct intensive labour, and pause routine life—in order to benefit fast and then quickly escape. People keep moving, with no end in sight, instead of changing their current conditions, of which they disapprove. As a result, frantic entrepreneurial energy coexists with political resignation. Suspension is a life strategy, a multitude of experiences, a feeling—and now, a keyword: a crystallized consciousness with which the public problematize their experiences. This special issue develops this term into an analytical approach based on ethnographic research involving labour migrants in and from China. This approach turns migration into a basis for critical analyses on issues far beyond it; enables co-research between researchers, migrants, and the broader public; and seeks to cultivate agency for change among actors. This introductory essay, based on the author's long-term field research and public engagement, outlines why we need such an approach, and how we might develop it.
{"title":"Suspension: Seeking Agency for Change in the Hypermobile World","authors":"B. Xiang","doi":"10.5509/2021942233","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5509/2021942233","url":null,"abstract":"\"Suspension\" is the translation of the Chinese term xuanfu, which has been widely used in public discussions in China since the mid-2010s. Suspension indicates a state of being in which people move frequently, conduct intensive labour, and pause routine life—in order to\u0000 benefit fast and then quickly escape. People keep moving, with no end in sight, instead of changing their current conditions, of which they disapprove. As a result, frantic entrepreneurial energy coexists with political resignation. Suspension is a life strategy, a multitude of experiences,\u0000 a feeling—and now, a keyword: a crystallized consciousness with which the public problematize their experiences. This special issue develops this term into an analytical approach based on ethnographic research involving labour migrants in and from China. This approach turns migration\u0000 into a basis for critical analyses on issues far beyond it; enables co-research between researchers, migrants, and the broader public; and seeks to cultivate agency for change among actors. This introductory essay, based on the author's long-term field research and public engagement, outlines\u0000 why we need such an approach, and how we might develop it.","PeriodicalId":47041,"journal":{"name":"Pacific Affairs","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2021-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43104383","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article explores the "ethical labour" of suspension––the conscious effort of deferring one's ethical judgement and reflections in order to avoid irreconcilable ethical conflicts between one's present activities and long-term goals. While people engage in ethical judgement and reflections in everyday social interactions, it is the laborious aspect of regulating one's ethical dispositions that I highlight in the concept of "ethical labour." Although it cannot be directly commodified, ethical labour is a form of labour as it consumes energy and is integral to the performance of other forms of labour, particularly intimate and emotional ones. This formulation of ethical labour draws on my long-term ethnographic research with a group of young women migrants working as hostesses in high-end nightclubs in southeast China. Many of them perform socially stigmatized work with the goal of contributing to their family and saving money for a dignified life in the future. Ethical labour is essential to their hostess work because it enables them to juggle multiple affective relationships and defer the fundamental ethical conflict. They express ethical labour through the phrase "to be a little more realistic," making sure that they obtain what they want at a particular moment. But ethical labour does not simply mean pushing ethical questions aside. It is sustained by conscious effort and is overshadowed by fears of ageing and failure to achieve long-term life goals. Prolonged ethical labour often fails to resolve ethical conflict and may intensify one's stress. My analysis of these women migrants' situation contributes to the sex-as-work debate regarding women's agency in work and their subjection to exploitation.
{"title":"\"To Be a Little More Realistic\": The Ethical Labour of Suspension among Nightclub Hostesses in Southeast China","authors":"Jiazhi Fengjiang","doi":"10.5509//2021942307","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5509//2021942307","url":null,"abstract":"This article explores the \"ethical labour\" of suspension––the conscious effort of deferring one's ethical judgement and reflections in order to avoid irreconcilable ethical conflicts between one's present activities and long-term goals. While people engage in ethical judgement\u0000 and reflections in everyday social interactions, it is the laborious aspect of regulating one's ethical dispositions that I highlight in the concept of \"ethical labour.\" Although it cannot be directly commodified, ethical labour is a form of labour as it consumes energy and is integral to\u0000 the performance of other forms of labour, particularly intimate and emotional ones. This formulation of ethical labour draws on my long-term ethnographic research with a group of young women migrants working as hostesses in high-end nightclubs in southeast China. Many of them perform socially\u0000 stigmatized work with the goal of contributing to their family and saving money for a dignified life in the future. Ethical labour is essential to their hostess work because it enables them to juggle multiple affective relationships and defer the fundamental ethical conflict. They express\u0000 ethical labour through the phrase \"to be a little more realistic,\" making sure that they obtain what they want at a particular moment. But ethical labour does not simply mean pushing ethical questions aside. It is sustained by conscious effort and is overshadowed by fears of ageing and failure\u0000 to achieve long-term life goals. Prolonged ethical labour often fails to resolve ethical conflict and may intensify one's stress. My analysis of these women migrants' situation contributes to the sex-as-work debate regarding women's agency in work and their subjection to exploitation.","PeriodicalId":47041,"journal":{"name":"Pacific Affairs","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2021-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46801715","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Ever since Beijing has sought to fuel domestic growth through Chinese-led development overseas—first under the aegis of Jiang Zemin's Going Out Policy and more recently as part of Xi Jinping's Belt and Road Initiative— thousands of Chinese have moved overseas for work. Africa has been one of the destinations of Chinese companies and their expatriate staff. Although we have learned a great deal about China's mega-projects across the African continent, little is known about the certified engineers and experienced builders who carry them out. What brings them to Africa? And, more importantly, what makes them stay for years on end, even if they wish to return to China? In this article I zoom in on the lives of Chinese men employed in Ethiopia's construction industry to show how three decades of domestic growth in China has pushed workers overseas, while jeopardizing their return. Workers' lives are marked by double displacement. They are not only isolated from local African communities through a dormitory labour regime that controls their time and limits their mobility, but also, more importantly, they are displaced from social life in China. Domestic development has at once increased aspirations and made them harder to obtain, especially for men, who are expected to fulfill the promise of upward social mobility for themselves and their families. In order to realize aspirations and meet social expectations related to social reproduction, geographic mobility has become a necessity for men who cannot rely on family wealth or connections, forcing them into a state of suspension.
{"title":"Chinese Workers in Ethiopia Caught between Remaining and Returning","authors":"M. Driessen","doi":"10.5509/2021942329","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5509/2021942329","url":null,"abstract":"Ever since Beijing has sought to fuel domestic growth through Chinese-led development overseas—first under the aegis of Jiang Zemin's Going Out Policy and more recently as part of Xi Jinping's Belt and Road Initiative— thousands of Chinese have moved overseas for work. Africa\u0000 has been one of the destinations of Chinese companies and their expatriate staff. Although we have learned a great deal about China's mega-projects across the African continent, little is known about the certified engineers and experienced builders who carry them out. What brings them to Africa?\u0000 And, more importantly, what makes them stay for years on end, even if they wish to return to China? In this article I zoom in on the lives of Chinese men employed in Ethiopia's construction industry to show how three decades of domestic growth in China has pushed workers overseas, while jeopardizing\u0000 their return. Workers' lives are marked by double displacement. They are not only isolated from local African communities through a dormitory labour regime that controls their time and limits their mobility, but also, more importantly, they are displaced from social life in China. Domestic\u0000 development has at once increased aspirations and made them harder to obtain, especially for men, who are expected to fulfill the promise of upward social mobility for themselves and their families. In order to realize aspirations and meet social expectations related to social reproduction,\u0000 geographic mobility has become a necessity for men who cannot rely on family wealth or connections, forcing them into a state of suspension.","PeriodicalId":47041,"journal":{"name":"Pacific Affairs","volume":"94 1","pages":"329-346"},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2021-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41333718","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Communities with large concentrations of migrants, who often live in makeshift and illegal housing, have been common on the margins of large cities in China since the 1980s. Why do so-called "urban villages" persist and even flourish despite repeated government crackdowns? By addressing this question, this article sheds light on a subtle dynamic of city making that has not been fully appreciated by scholarly literature and media reports that have focused on large-scale demolition and eviction in China's rapid urbanization. Drawing from my two years of field research in Hua village, a community on Beijing's fringes in line for land expropriation, I explore how multilateral negotiations between local residents (villagers), migrant tenants, the village committee, and municipal government led to a cyclical movement of temporary housing construction, demolition, and extension. The dynamics of recurring demolishment and reconstruction engendered spaces of suspension, which enabled migrants to enter the urban economy at a low cost. Such spaces, however, offered no formal protection or basis for developing lasting social relations, and always faced the prospect of being demolished, but nevertheless were constantly available and even expanding.
{"title":"Spaces of Suspension: Construction, Demolition, and Extension in a Beijing Migrant Neighbourhood","authors":"Tzu-Chi Ou","doi":"10.5509/2021942251","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5509/2021942251","url":null,"abstract":"Communities with large concentrations of migrants, who often live in makeshift and illegal housing, have been common on the margins of large cities in China since the 1980s. Why do so-called \"urban villages\" persist and even flourish despite repeated government crackdowns? By addressing this question, this article sheds light on a subtle dynamic of city making that has not been fully appreciated by scholarly literature and media reports that have focused on large-scale demolition and eviction in China's rapid urbanization. Drawing from my two years of field research in Hua village, a community on Beijing's fringes in line for land expropriation, I explore how multilateral negotiations between local residents (villagers), migrant tenants, the village committee, and municipal government led to a cyclical movement of temporary housing construction, demolition, and extension. The dynamics of recurring demolishment and reconstruction engendered spaces of suspension, which enabled migrants to enter the urban economy at a low cost. Such spaces, however, offered no formal protection or basis for developing lasting social relations, and always faced the prospect of being demolished, but nevertheless were constantly available and even expanding.","PeriodicalId":47041,"journal":{"name":"Pacific Affairs","volume":"94 1","pages":"251-264"},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2021-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44889789","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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