Global Networks-A Journal of Transnational Affairs最新文献

This article explores how migrant-background youth ‘do siblingship’ transnationally. Transnational migration and anthropological kinship research have both emphasised the plasticity of familial ties and concrete practices involved in ‘doing family’ and ‘doing kinship’. Yet, their focus on inter-generational relationships has neglected intra-generational kinship, especially among youth in transnational contexts. Recent research shows that migrant-background youth's family constellations change throughout their mobility trajectories and that peer relationships provide crucial support and resources. Building on these insights and drawing on ethnographic data, this article analyses three dynamics of migrant-background youth's transnational siblingship between Ghana and Germany: care, comparison, and competition. The article argues that studying transnational intra-generational kinship improves our understanding of young people's resource environments and social positioning in transnational contexts and contributes to theorisations of kinship in a mobile, interconnected, and unequal world. The article concludes by outlining a research agenda to further elucidate how young people ‘do siblingship’ transnationally.

Taking the perspective of grandparents living in the origin country, our article is innovative in examining a range of ties within social networks, not only transnational ones but also family ties in-country with both close-by and geographically dispersed relatives. We analyse focus group discussions with Polish grandparents whose grandchildren live in different locations. Thus, we are looking at transnational ties as part of interlocking personal networks spanning distances, including internal migration. By comparing grandparents’ interactions with those who are near and far, we advance understanding of how distance impacts feelings of closeness and bonding between generations. This networks lens reveals how varied communication practices and contact patterns affect emotional wellbeing of ageing (grand)parents at origin. Although technology helps maintain contact, especially transnationally, it does not offer a multisensory experience—a limitation which becomes evident when compared with in-person childcare and family socialising.

We analyse processes of supermarketisation in South Africa and its implications for inclusion, exclusion and industrial concentration in the mid-sections of agri-food value chains. Empirical material from maize processing shows differentiated impacts accompanying major retailers’ growing power and extended reach into the food system's township and rural peripheries. Large firms’ co-evolutionary adaptations and constitutive power counteract supermarket buyer power. Smaller firms struggle with adverse incorporation in supermarket supply chains, relying instead on strategies targeting independent wholesale and the informal retail economy. However, this carries major risks, requires complex capabilities and is increasingly threatened by market delocalisation accompanying supermarketisation. Contrary to expectations of retail modernisation enabling inclusive agri-food value chain development by connecting marginalised rural producers to larger urban markets, we highlight the potential for inverse processes whereby ‘peripheral supermarketisation’ extends the reach of large firms in rural markets and shrinks the ‘interstices’ incubating small agri-food producers.

The invasion of Ukraine in 2022 resulted in the largest wave of displacement in Europe since World War II, with approximately eight million people–primarily women, children and older people–leaving Ukraine. Over 42 thousand individuals arrived in Latvia in the first month after the outbreak of war, seeking refuge and received widespread government and civil organisation support. This study explores migration and settlement experiences of Ukrainian war-displaced people in Latvia over the very early period of displacement. It takes an intertemporal approach and studies the development of aspirations and perceptions in the decision-making process, based on 72 interviews conducted with Ukrainians during the early months of the conflict in March–April 2022 and 7 months later. We document the transition from immediate concerns around displacement to more long-term considerations about settling and integration. We find that plans with respect to settlement and integration are intertwined with uncertainties; intentions for returning home remain strong but tend to lose the time dimension. The displaced remain in the liminal space between countries caused by families left behind or in other countries, as well as duty and desires to return home but being unable to do so for safety reasons. We assert that social networks play a major role in the early stages of forced migration decisions but in varied ways depending on the time. Overall, the decision-making whether to settle in the host country, return to the home country or move onward are complex and dynamic processes that undergo temporal changes.

Elite theorists assume that transnational capitalist class unity is facilitated through transnational elite spaces and networks. We argue for a more glocal notion of transnational unification that highlights the role of same-nation networks of interlocking directorates linking major transnational corporations (TNCs) in disseminating corporate political behaviours on a global scale. The same-nation elite networks are effective mechanisms of transnational unity because their members, whom we call ‘glocal interlockers’, are at once socialized into the global system and influential figures in their national TNC communities. Empirically, we analyze how interlocking directorates among the world's largest 189 TNCs facilitated the worldwide adoption of private environmental practices in the period 2006–2013, in the context of TNCs’ mobilization to preempt an intergovernmental regulatory regime on climate change by promoting a global governance privatization agenda. We find that firms’ level of centrality in glocal interlocks networks explained their levels of private environmental practices adoption, while their centrality in the transnational inner circle of cross-border interlockers did not. These results suggest that the persistence of local elite formations can enable rather than hinder transnational corporate unity.

Scholars have extensively written about how convivial cross-cultural encounters, driven by global mobility, underpin mutual understanding and cosmopolitan aspirations. However, little attention has been paid to encounters that cause friction or require considerable effort to bridge differences. This paper centres on conflictual and negative experiences of encountering cultural diversity through the lens of Global South Fulbright students in the Boston area of the United States. As one of the most prestigious educational and cultural exchange programmes in the United States, the Fulbright Program advocates for cultural diplomacy, and its participants are regarded as cultural ambassadors to enhance cross-cultural understandings. By examining the unfavourable experiences of these cosmopolitan-oriented students, I develop a framework to analyse how the friction and fragility of cosmopolitanism are produced through interpersonal, structural and circumstantial causes, leading to their withdrawal from cosmopolitanism. This framework helps analyse challenges to cosmopolitanism in a post-pandemic world marked by growing xenophobia and provincialism.

This article examines the emerging position of women refugees during a global crisis. On the basis of an empirical study of the Eritrean community in Tel Aviv, Israel, I analysed the ways in which gender identity is formulated and recreated following the social and economic restrictions of the Covid-19 pandemic. In contrast to previous literature which has highlighted men's central position in forced migrant communities, I suggest viewing the global pandemic as an accelerator of women's presence in two circles of belonging: the family unit and the Eritrean community. I argue that structural changes imposed by the pandemic have established new gender roles and divisions of power, positioning women as a source of authority and a subject of choice. As a significant proportion of Eritrean men lost their income during the pandemic, they were forced to adopt a different role within the family unit. Eritrean women, on the other hand, managed to keep their jobs and became the family's sole provider. In addition to increasing their family's economic dependence on them, Eritrean women also became central figures in their community through the creation of new social networks designed to satisfy the emotional and economic needs of its members. This has enabled women refugees to reinforce their social mobility and become relatively autonomous.