Mobility and Identity in Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss

Les migrations récentes vers Hong Kong Hong Kong est une enclave du système capitaliste occidental à la périphérie du monde socialiste. Les relations entre Hong Kong et la République Populaire de Chine ne se réduisent pas seulement à des flux de capitaux, mais il y a de très importantes relations humaines. Hong Kong est une ville de migrants, mais malgré de grands efforts pour contrôler les mouvements d'immigration pendant la période récente, les relations entre les systèmes capitaliste et socialiste se développent d'une manière continue en étroite liaison avec les mouvements de population. L'article présente les migrations de la population de la Chine vers Hong Kong, pendant la période récente : 1970-1980.

The authors analyze recent efforts at international cooperation to limit illegal migration, particularly through the use of legal migration avenues like guest worker schemes. They show that while guest worker schemes may be desirable as an avenue of international migration, they are an inefficient instrument to induce cooperation on illegal migration. On the one hand, guest worker schemes suffer from a negative selection problem relative to illegal migration, which tends to erode their attractiveness to source countries. On the other hand, guest worker schemes increase total (legal and illegal) migration which make them a costly compensating device for the host country. Moreover, guest worker schemes create additional pressure on host countries to implement tough laws against illegal immigration even when the host finds such laws undesirable. Thus, less favorable treatment of illegal immigrants, as in California Proposition 187, may be an inevitable rather than incidental outcome of reliance on guest worker schemes. In contrast, countries that are willing to use transfers and other forms of economic assistance to induce source countries to cooperate can afford relatively liberal treatment of illegal immigrants.

This paper analyzes differences between legal and illegal Mexican migration to the United States as reflected by the migrant population of a rural, mestizo town in Michoacán, Mexico, in which 75 percent of families send migrants north on a periodic basis. Data collected during 1977–78 on a total town population numbering 2,621 inhabitants indicated that immigration stutus plays a key role in determining the size and composition of migrating parties, the duration of time spent away from home, and frequency of movement while in the United States. Compared to illegal migrants, it was found that legal migrants, or holders of U.S. resident visas, tended to migrate in larger groups and were much more likely to be accompanied by wives, children, and non-working dependents. The average period of time spent away from home by legal migrants each year also tended to be significantly less than that of illegals. Finally, legal migrants demonstrated far greater mobility while in the United States than illegals, both in terms of distances traveled and frequency of movement.

Illegal migrants in Europe are, generally, only entitled to emergency care and services for children and pregnant women. In 2002 legal changes in Spain made accessible medical cards and free medical care for illegal migrants in similar terms than the legal migrants or the Spanish population. We interviewed 380 migrants to assess whether there were differences on health services utilization by legal status. We did not find differences in the utilization of health services when ill between legal and illegal migrants. However, a significantly lower utilization of health services was associated with less education (RP = 0.4; 95% CI: 0.2-0.9).

Political borders are controversial and contested spaces. In an attempt to better understand movement along and through political borders, this project applied the metaphor of a membrane to look at how people, ideas, and things ''move'' through a border. More specifically, the research team employed this metaphor in a system dynamics framework to construct a computer model to assess legal and illegal migration on the US-Mexico border. Employing a metaphor can be helpful, as it was in this project, to gain different perspectives on a complex system. In addition to the metaphor, the multidisciplinary team utilized an array of methods to gather data including traditional literature searches, an experts workshop, a focus group, interviews, and culling expertise from the individuals on the research team. Results from the qualitative efforts revealed strong social as well as economic drivers that motivate individuals to cross the border legally. Based on the information gathered, the team concluded that legal migration dynamics were of a scope we did not want to consider hence, available demographic models sufficiently capture migration at the local level. Results from both the quantitative and qualitative data searches were used to modify a 1977 border model to demonstrate the dynamic nature of illegal migration. Model runs reveal that current US-policies based on neo-classic economic theory have proven ineffective in curbing illegal migration, and that proposed enforcement policies are also likely to be ineffective. We suggest, based on model results, that improvement in economic conditions within Mexico may have the biggest impact on illegal migration to the U.S. The modeling also supports the views expressed in the current literature suggesting that demographic and economic changes within Mexico are likely to slow illegal migration by 2060 with no special interventions made by either government.

The concept of “Global Ethics” refers to the analysis and identification of ethical solutions to the challenges of the contemporary world. Among the current global problems we bring to the fore: illegal immigration as a component of human trafficking, but also other global issues interdependent with the two crimes above: violation of human rights and freedoms, poverty, resource scarcity, discrimination, illegal international business and trade, all of which, requesting from the authorities and beyond, legislative and ethical solutions. Legal migration is the widely accepted form globally, since it can be determined over time, but also controlled in terms of the number of people, fields and jobs. Illegal migration is the alternative used by people who cannot use the legal route to go abroad. A component of trafficking in human beings, illegal migration is a global scourge, hard to control, caused by organised criminal groups, but also by the increasing ingenuity of criminals. Although the phenomenon is manifesting itself worldwide, it is accentuated by the fact that there is a lack of appropriate legislation and an effective system of cooperation between government institutions and civil society.Trafficking in human beings must be related to the causes that led to its emergence: discrimination in the labour market revealed by high unemployment rates (women vs. men), poverty combined with low remuneration for work performed, corruption of authorities, poor border control, restriction of legal migration opportunities, internationalization of criminal groups correlated with high profits from human trafficking, poor information of people who want to emigrate about the real effects of the labour market. Knowing this phenomenon, but also of the causes that cause it to occur, determines the process of working for knowledge, resolution and fight against it. The present work is intended to be a source of information that makes available to those interested that information about illegal migration, as well as how state structures can and should be involved in the situation.

Contrary to widespread popular belief, a significant number of Mexican migrants work only temporarily in the United States and then return to their homes in Mexico to spend their earnings. This paper examines the impact of this seasonal migration on economic stratification and inter-personal relations within one rural Mexican town. I compare three groups of townspeople: legal migrants, illegal migrants and non-migrants. Legal migrants have improved their standard of living faster than the other two groups and have become, in effect, an economic elite. Heightened economic stratification has also produced serious divisions in what was once a relatively homogeneous social system. As a result, inter-personal relations between townspeople have become increasingly circumscribed by wealth and migrant status.

This chapter examines how the city—and in particular, urban infrastructure and de facto segregation—shapes the physical and psychological experiences of Third World illegal migrants in Kiran Desai’s Man Booker Prize-winning novel, The Inheritance of Loss (2006). It situates Desai’s literary representations within the context of recent studies that have shown how illegal migrants face pronounced versions of the pressures associated with the globalisation of capital, neo-liberal politics, and flexible economic regimes within the new twenty-first-century labour processes: low pay, punishing hours, and high levels of job insecurity, together with the added anxiety of potential deportation. It examines how Third World undocumented labour’s lack of social and material rights to essential urban infrastructures influence the urban imaginary and aesthetics of subterranean space and segregation in Desai’s contemporary postcolonial novel. Here, the planned violence of the city is expressed in the exclusion, containment, and marginalisation of the global underclass built into the infrastructure of the major metropolitan city of New York, which becomes an extension of the cities of the global North. This challenges North American founding narratives of freedom and democracy, and underscores horizontal continuities with the global South, figuring them as integrated, rather than parallel spaces.

In this paper the author analyses all the cases from the 2002 practice of Magistrate Court in Belgrade, which relate to prostitution and illegal migration. The main aim of this paper is to show who are the women and men who are accused and punished for prostitution and illegal migration, as well as to argue that the part of them are in fact victims of trafficking in human beings. In conclusion, the author suggests the necessity for training of magistrate judges in order to be able to recognize victims of trafficking and, consequently, to be able to treat them as victims rather than as offenders.

In several chapters we have analysed the consequences of both internal and international migration of labour in the context of models of international trade. However, in all chapters, except parts of chapter eight, international migration has been treated as legal migration. As noted earlier, illegal migration is a worldwide phenomenon; present both in third world and advanced economies. For example, India receives illegal migrants from Nepal and Bangladesh. Americans receive both legal andlor illegal migrants from its neighbouring countries. Both types of migrants are of great concern to politicians and policy makers, since such migration has an impact on resident welfare1.

For a long time, the relationship between the European Union (EU) and the African, Caribbean and Pacific Group of States (ACP) was characterized by the focus on trade issues. In recent years however, other policy aspects have emerged, amongst which migration. This evolution results from the gradual recognition of the importance of migration in the Union’s external relations. The mainstreaming of migration in the relations with third countries raised the need for a Global Approach to Migration (2005) connecting illegal and legal migration, as well as introducing a positive migration-development nexus. The acknowledgement of a possible positive contribution of legal migration ‐ if well managed ‐ for developing countries, has resulted into new concrete initiatives such as circular migration, mobility partnerships and the Blue Card Directive. A closer look at the policy frameworks, as well as specific measures demonstrate however, that a true comprehensive approach is a long way from home. It is examined if the specific EU-ACP relationship offers a different point of view and effectively makes migration work for the development of both parties. More specifically, do the Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) correspond to the abovementioned goal? A comprehensive and coherent legal framework that unites the interests of the Union and its Member States, on the one hand, and those of the developing countries, on the other hand, seems a distant perspective. It is concluded that ambitious policy objectives have been set and are waiting to be addressed by corresponding policy frameworks and legal commitments.

We consider a destination country with an aversion toward legal and illegal migration. Candidate migrants differ in terms of skills level and the legal migrants pay income taxes. There is a positive probability to become clandestine once a candidate migrant is rejected. We show that the government will give the priority to candidate migrants with high skills. We derive the optimal quotas of the legal immigration and show that the number of legal migrants increases as soon as the probability of entering into the destination country illegally becomes larger.

A tendency of the protagonists of South Asian diaspora literatures is to look backward to their left behind land in nostalgic reminiscence. This nostalgic reminiscence, however, should not be thought of as a debilitating form of escapism; instead, the diasporic protagonists’ nostalgia offers valuable insights into their present condition of disenfranchisement. In this paper, analyzing the diasporic experiences of the protagonists of three literary works of South Asian diaspora—Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s “Silver Pavements, Golden Roofs,” Jhumpa Lahiri’s “Mrs. Sen’s” and Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss, I contend that exclusion from first-class citizenship rights, marginalization and the inability to exercise rights and power result in a sense of alienation in the protagonists which consequently lead them to be nostalgic. Simultaneously, I challenge the general tendency of seeing nostalgia as a mere uncritical yearning for the lost home, and using Iris Marion Young’s institutional racism theory and the theories of Stuart Tannock and Fred Davis on nostalgia, I advocate to see nostalgia from a more critical angle — where nostalgia not only functions as active critique but is also instrumental in unveiling the protagonists’ desire for equality and empowerment.

A tendency of the protagonists of South Asian diaspora literatures is to look backward to their left behind land in nostalgic reminiscence. This nostalgic reminiscence, however, should not be thought of as a debilitating form of escapism; instead, the diasporic protagonists’ nostalgia offers valuable insights into their present condition of disenfranchisement. In this paper, analyzing the diasporic experiences of the protagonists of three literary works of South Asian diaspora—Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s “Silver Pavements, Golden Roofs,” Jhumpa Lahiri’s “Mrs. Sen’s” and Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss, I contend that exclusion from first-class citizenship rights, marginalization and the inability to exercise rights and power result in a sense of alienation in the protagonists which consequently lead them to be nostalgic. Simultaneously, I challenge the general tendency of seeing nostalgia as a mere uncritical yearning for the lost home, and using Iris Marion Young’s institutional racism theory and the theories of Stuart Tannock and Fred Davis on nostalgia, I advocate to see nostalgia from a more critical angle — where nostalgia not only functions as active critique but is also instrumental in unveiling the protagonists’ desire for equality and empowerment.

It is indicated that the extraordinary importance of the researched issue is also confirmed by the content of the Association Agreement between Ukraine, on the one hand, and the European Union, the European Atomic Energy Community and their member states, on the other hand, which enshrines the importance of joint management of freedom of movement (migration flows) between territories and a comprehensive dialogue on all issues in the field of migration, in particular illegal migration, legal migration, illegal transportation of persons across the state border and human trafficking, as well as the inclusion of problematic issues in the field of migration in the national strategies of economic and social development of the regions where migrants come from. The special importance of the problems of freedom of movement within the framework of migration control is also reflected in national legislation by the fact that, in accordance with the provisions of the Constitution of Ukraine, the principles of regulation of demographic and migration processes, as well as the procedure for the formation and functioning of free and other special zones with economic or a migration regime different from the general one.
 The authors note that the formation and development of the ideas of freedom as a principle of law is a constant process that reflects the challenges of different eras. The modern world requires not only the maintenance of these ideas, but also their active improvement in accordance with the new realities and progress of society. Ensuring freedom remains the main task for human rights defenders, legislators and citizens. Paying attention to new challenges, such as global problems, technological progress, socio-cultural transformations, allows improving existing concepts of freedom and adapting them to new conditions.
 Joint efforts, effective international cooperation and mutual respect for human rights are key elements for the development of ideas of freedom. The global community should actively work on creating inclusive and effective human rights protection mechanisms at all levels.
 In the light of the new challenges facing humanity, the preservation and development of the ideas of freedom become not only the task of legislators, but also a matter of public consciousness and the active participation of every member of society. Only a joint effort and a constant willingness to improve our understanding of freedom can ensure the permanence of this important principle of law in the present and future world.