Global Networks-A Journal of Transnational Affairs最新文献

A growing body of scholarship on transnational religion is grounded within the analytical framework of the religion–migration relationship and has highlighted migrant individuals and groups as main players in forging religious networking. This ignores a wide range of alternative drivers that are forceful in the (re)making of transnational religious networks. In this introduction of the special issue, we therefore open a collection of nine articles which contribute to alternative articulations of transnational religious networks. In particular, our contributors introduce three alternative drivers – ideas, institutions and digital technologies – in (re)producing religious mobilities, connections and networks across nation borders. At the same time, they offer fascinating insights into the diversified ways alternative actors and channels weave together religious migrants’ imaginations, practices and experiences, formulating new, complex forms of religious (re)production in a transnational world. This special issue also highlights the creativity, flexibility and vitality of Asian religions in the 21st century modernity.

The first purpose of this study is to define the network parameters that enable systemic analysis of international relations, identifying trends towards isolationism and expansionism. The second is to analyse the factors influencing global trends towards isolationism and expansionism from a structural point of view. The results of a network analysis, including a BERGM, indicate a trend towards isolationism in the economic arena since about 2010; in contrast, a trend towards expansionism has been continuously evident in the political and military sectors throughout the study period. These results also show that the international relations system is formed by reciprocal and triadic relations. In specific, the results reveal that the expansionism trends are influenced by relational substructures centred on importing states.

The relationship between power, governance and value creation/capture is a central concern in global value chain (GVC) research. In the context of calls to develop a more expansive view of power in GVCs, we argue for retaining a focus on bargaining power, but shifting the conceptualization of bargaining power from the dyad to the network. We advance two arguments. First, we elaborate an exchange theoretic model in which skew of value capture is a function of the degree of power asymmetry inherent in the ratio of buyers to suppliers. Second, we explain how this model can be expanded to consider the role of external factors, such as the institutional and normative contexts in which exchange occurs. Rather than see these factors as contending forms of power, we treat them as forces that can affect value skew by either attenuating the bargaining power of lead firms or by moderating the distributional effects of power asymmetries between exchange partners. We conclude that an exchange theoretic approach to bargaining power in GVCs provides a parsimonious framework for explaining how inter-firm governance shapes the distribution of value capture in global production.

Osei, O. E., Haagsman, K., & Mazzucato, V. (2023). Overcoming interruptions in educational trajectories: Youth in Ghana with international migrant parents. Global Networks, 23, 428–443. https://doi.org/10.1111/glob.12404

In the above article, the authors would like to add the following acknowledgements.

Global liner shipping network (GLSN) constitutes an essential part of global maritime supply chains, but it could be vulnerable to disruptions. This paper develops an integrated framework for assessing the efficiency and vulnerability of GLSN. Specifically, a novel efficiency metric is proposed to quantify the performance of GLSN, and the framework enables modeling different levels of port disruption scenarios. Results show that the overall GLSN is quite robust under the partial disruption scenario of any single port (or of any single country's ports), but the damage to different countries is highly heterogeneous. Under dismantling scenarios where the identified most critical ports (countries) are successively disrupted, the GLSN vulnerability increases non-linearly with an increasing level of disruption. Our findings demonstrate that it is necessary to monitor and protect the identified critical ports (countries); especially, avoiding their simultaneously complete disruptions is of vital importance to the robust functionality of GLSN.

This paper examines the influence of class on migrants’ social positioning strategies in transnational spaces. It contributes to debates about the processes of transnational class-making and class formation. Going beyond an analysis of class in socio-economic terms, the paper focuses on peoples’ (changing) subjective understandings of middle-class membership as a relevant factor in migrants’ transnational social positioning strategies. Based on qualitative interview data with middle-class migrants in Germany, the presentation relates their experiences with downward social mobility before and after migration to their subjective perspectives on middle-class membership over time and in different places. The findings show that middle-class performance is shaped by migration experiences but also shapes peoples’ mobility trajectories and therefore influences and promotes different transnational lifestyles.

This article seeks to comprehensively understand student-migrant men's identities and masculinities in transnational spaces in Canada. Building on existing literature on transnational masculinities, and partly on identity process theory, I focus on upper-caste Punjabi men who came to Canada as international students. Through in-depth interviews with 22 men, I explore the significance of landownership back home, caste identity and transnational communication in constituting the hegemonic masculinities in transnational spaces and the ‘othering’ within the Punjabi community faced by young men in Canada. By examining how young men respond to the complexities of source and host situation as well as their hegemonic content, I demonstrate the relational and fluid nature of hegemonic Punjabi masculinities. I conclude that even though the hegemonic ideal for men in transnational spaces remains to be the local rural masculinities based on landownership in Punjab, alternative strategies are put in place when that hegemonic ideal becomes difficult to achieve in transnational spaces or when there is a willing disinclination to achieve it such as in case of men who do not express a desire to return.

International student migration (ISM) is one of the fastest growing categories of migrants in Canada. Drawing on the narratives of 30 international students at a Canadian university, this paper investigates international students’ decisions to study overseas and the roles of social networks in shaping mobility. We find that international students negotiate information while embedded in multiple social networks consisting of family, friends, ethnocultural and religious communities, and professional relations in origin and settlement countries. These social networks exceed typical knowledge and connection functions; they act as informal migration agents, providing transnational care and guidance, and ‘do’ family in ways that shape mobility decisions and settlement. The information provided through these networks, however, can be inaccurate or incomplete, requiring the strategic mobilization of new networks to support migration. We conclude that international student mobility relies on building transnational networks to support knowledge transfer, provide care and offer tangible supports. Furthermore, we argue that these fluctuating local and transnational social networks should be more fully recognized in the theorizing of ISM and in strategies implemented for supporting international students.

Although Easterners are assumed to have a high-context culture, Yamashina found that Japanese believe the Chinese to engage in a low-context cultural communication style. We interpreted her results as follows: the Chinese whom Japanese know are likely to engage in intercultural communication that is used in low-context cultural situations (code-switching). To test this interpretation, we used a 17-item online questionnaire on context dependency for participants (Japanese university students, Chinese university students, and Chinese international students living and studying in Japan) to score the self, average Japanese, and average Chinese. Hence, the design was 3 (culture) by 3 (object). The results showed that both Japanese and Chinese students rated people in their counterpart countries as having a low-context communication style, supporting our interpretation. However, this effect was not evident among Chinese international students. These results confirmed that low-context cultural situations may arise when people engage in intercultural communication.

In the last two decades, forced removals have been the main feature of U.S. migration policy toward Latin America. In this research, we explore whether this policy has had implications in terms of Latin Americans’ public opinion toward their northern neighbor. We argue that deportations breed anti-Americanism by cutting off the flow of information and money associated with emigration, which has proven to be a source of better dispositions toward the United States. Using public opinion data and municipal data on deportations in El Salvador, we show that these perceptions have worsened over time and that rates of deportation are related to this trend. By using public opinion data on Latin America and deportation rates in the region, we also show that this pattern holds beyond our case study. We call attention to destination migration policies as a source of resentment among domestic audiences, which can be capitalized by new populisms in the region.