Labour Circulation Research Articles

Afterlives of Ottoman Orphans in Germany during World War I: Microhistorical and Biographical Approaches to Technology, Expertise, and Labor in Turkey

ABSTRACT: This article applies a (micro)biographical approach to the life stories of two Ottoman orphans sent to Germany to receive vocational training during World War I, Ali and İsmail Dağlı. Coupling family archives, oral and visual sources with state documentation, I elaborate on the post-Ottoman afterlives of German know-how, education, and capital in the social and economic history of Turkey. Biographies of Dağlı brothers show that the successors of both empires restored former channels of circulation of expertise, technology, and labor. Especially seen in the context of Jewish emigration, the life and work history of the brothers elucidate the positive reception of their German education, the importance of their position as “cultural intermediaries,” and the extent of Turkish-German business entanglements.

Value theories in motion: Circular labour migration, unfinished land dispossession and reproductive struggles across the urban–rural divide

This analysis theorises the central role of the urban–rural divide in the making of value relations and exploitation in contemporary labour regimes. Inspired by insights contained in Diane Elson’s ‘value theory of labour’ and informed by evidence on labour circulation in India’s ‘Sweatshop Regime’, the article combines Early Social Reproduction Analyses (ESRA) and debates on ‘forms of exploitation’ to illustrate the integrated nature of the circuits incorporating production and reproduction, use and exchange value across the urban–rural divide. It represents these circuits as a concrete instantiation of ‘value in motion’. In this schema, the countryside emerges as central to the regeneration of the urban labour regime; as key provider of labouring bodies; and as absorber of reproductive costs, also performing the function of ‘global housework’ for contemporary capitalism. The narrative is particularly attentive to post-industrial work trajectories, which further explain how partial land dispossession and informal work interplay to sustain the dynamic nature of value relations as well as workers’ livelihoods beyond factory labour. The conclusions stress the political implications of reproductive readings of value for labour struggles and pro-labour policy.

Logistics of unfreedom: The labour trafficking of Venezuelan truck drivers in Brazil

This article examines the trafficking of Venezuelan truck drivers for labour exploitation in Brazil. The remilitarisation of politics is increasingly a hallmark of elite-driven strategies to manage the circulation of labour and goods from extractive zones. This article introduces the notion of logistics of unfreedom to explain the growing imbrication between techniques of control by the state and corporations that confine the reproduction of migrants within the realm of logistics processes. The analysis focuses on data from participatory observations and the narratives of 22 Venezuelan refugees who were trafficked from a militarised humanitarian zone in Brazil's Amazon to work for a freight road transport company in Southern Brazil. Findings show that a concerted logistic approach to refugee employment channelled mobility, constrained statutory protection and shaped the ethno-political differentiation of Venezuelans in the labour market. This forced Venezuelans to live in trucks where both productive and socially reproductive aspects of their daily lives were overdetermined by the rhythms of goods distribution. The article concludes that this logistic rationale has converged towards a self-contained regime of labour unfreedom that facilitates the labour trafficking of Venezuelan refugees.

Alien Domesticity: Settler-Capitalist Invasion and the Limits of Representation in Ling Ma's Severance

Abstract: This article reads Ling Ma's Severance (2018) for its account of the racial entanglement of transnational mobility, settler capitalism, and homemaking, a dynamic referred to as alien domesticity . The novel narrativizes how the transnational circulation of capital, peoples, and labor over the past four decades has complicated the domestic character of US settler-racial form—and the settler-capitalist character of the domestic novel. I posit alien domesticity as a revision of Amy Kaplan's "manifest domesticity," engaging Asian American and settler colonial studies critiques of the racial logic of settler capitalism to read Severance as a contemporary assessment of American middle-class homemaking and its part in a racial civilizing project. Insofar as it frames Candace Chen's transnational labor with her unsettled movement among various domestic spaces, Severance thus discloses the function of alien domesticity: ultimately, I contend, Candace's competing duties of representation result in her transnational alienation from the novel's domestic narrative.

Drivers of demographic dividend in sub-Saharan Africa

Compared to other developing regions, Africa has experienced a relatively late start to the demographic transition, although certain countries in the continent’s north and south did. As a result, Africa is only now starting to broadly benefit from the demographic dividend. Thus, a study on the drivers of the dividend, the timing and length of the dividend, and the dividend optimization strategies is crucial. The paper uses a cross-country panel data for 34 African countries for the years between 1990 and 2018. To identify the drivers of the demographic dividend, fixed effects econometric analysis is used. The foremost contribution of the paper is that it empirically shows the ongoing demographic transition and the simulated time span of the potential first and second demographic dividends. It also identifies pertinent drivers of the demographic dividend. Besides, as a new conceptual framework, it introduces an innovative analytical framework for augmenting the demographic dividend from formal migration. The framework is named after the “International Surplus Labour Circulation (ISLC) model.”

Conceptual contours of migration studies in and from Asia

Conceptual contours of migration studies in and from Asia

Re-visiting the ‘black box’ of migration: state-intermediary co-production of regulatory spaces of labour migration

ABSTRACT It is now widely held that a variety of intermediary actors, including recruitment and staffing agencies, multinational corporations and local brokers, shape labour migration. This paper argues that in order to better understand the global circulation of labour it is necessary to explore the involvement of these actors in the production of the regulatory spaces through which migrant labour is brokered. Indeed, migration intermediaries do not only navigate borders on behalf of their migrant clients. Nor is ‘the state’ primarily a backdrop against which the understanding of the role of intermediaries may be developed. Instead, we argue, regulatory spaces of labour migration are made and remade through direct and indirect exchanges and interactions between intermediaries and state actors. Through an analysis of three moments of regulatory change in Sweden, the paper shows that such interaction does not take place in an even landscape but, rather, that the ability of migration intermediaries to influence the regulation of migration lies in the capacity to form close relationships or establish a powerful presence. A focus on the dynamic co-production of regulatory spaces by intermediaries and state actors, in our view, offers a more nuanced account of how labour migration currently is brokered and regulated.

Place and Space in Nineteenth-Century Representations of Old London: The Thieves’ House on West Street

Abstract The proposed demolition in 1844 of the infamous ‘Thieves' House’, a dilapidated structure situated on West Street in the notorious London slum of West Smithfield, was the focus of great public interest. Thousands of spectators reportedly came to see the house in the days leading up to its destruction, with some privileged individuals given lamp-lit tours of its interior. An unremarkable facade belied its strange internal construction, which incorporated trap doors, false walls and secret passages. These were described in detail in several journalistic accounts in which the house was imagined as a lair of thieves and murderers, fitted out for the commission and concealment of crime. The house seized the imagination of both authors and artists, becoming the inspiration for serialized fiction, three dramas, and a large body of drawings and prints. While the various representations of it foreground the familiar ‘slum’ narratives of dereliction, degeneration and criminality, this article uncovers a counter-narrative of nostalgia and regret for the old city as a space shaped by the needs of its inhabitants, in contrast to the emerging metropolis designed for the circulation of labour and capital.

Channelling through bureaucracy: How migration intermediaries and state actors (re)shape Chinese migration to the Swedish restaurant industry

The role of migration mediation in the global circulation of labour has been receiving increasing attention. Channel is a frequently used, but under-theorised, concept in such studies. Drawing on mobilities perspectives, especially migration infrastructure and three aspects of mobility (route, speed and friction), this paper fosters a framework – channelling through bureaucracy. It seeks to go beyond seeing channels as structure and mechanism to argue channelling is a productive and differentiating process whereby both state and intermediary actors actively intervene in migrants’ mobilities. Based on documentary analysis, interviews and participatory observation in Sweden and China, we demonstrate how, in the last decade, migration intermediaries and state actors channel Chinese migrants’ mobilities in relation to three major shifts in Swedish immigration bureaucracy. The empirical findings illustrate that, as a concept, channelling illustrates, specifically, how conflicts and collaborations between the regulatory and commercial dimensions of migration mediation drive new modes of operation and self-reinforcing of migration infrastructures. Additionally, the study indicates how channelling operates through these three specific aspects of mobility to include, exclude, favour, disadvantage, filter and direct different intermediary actors and migrants. Future research could draw on mobilities studies and the specific forms of interactions between state actors and migration intermediaries to deepen the understanding of migration mediation.

Towards a feminist political economy of time: labour circulation, social reproduction & the ‘afterlife’ of cheap labour

This article explores ‘time’ as a crucial category of analysis shaping and shaped by the dynamics of exploitation and social reproduction across the global assembly line. Focusing on the Indian garment industry, the article develops a feminist political economy of time stressing the productive and reproductive temporalities of exploitation, which give rise to multiple forms of labour circulation, including early exit from industrial work. Then, the study places this early exit under the microscope, and analyses the ‘afterlife’ available to women workers outside the factory, which often involves a transition back to informal occupations. The narrative draws both on extensive knowledge of India’s garment sweatshops, and on the detailed analysis of twenty life histories of women former factory workers in Bengaluru. The investigation of the feminist political economy of time of the global assembly line developed here suggests the presence of a revolving door between industrial and informal work in the lives of the working classes. It disproves linear global industrial development narratives constructing industrial work as ‘better work’ and contributes to feminist IPE debates by illustrating how social reproduction – its rhythms, temporalities, and everyday necessities – concretely co-constitutes the world of work across the global economy.

Segmented Possibilities: Migrant life Histories of Hindustani Workers in Post Colonial India

AbstractStarting in the late 19 th century, workers from north India came to constitute the backbone of the urban and industrial labour force in Calcutta and neighboring mill municipalities. As they settled in and around the colonial metropolis, these Hindustani workers maintained strong connections with their rural homes. One generation after the other, they reproduced this dual settlement over the following decades. This bi-local structure of labour circulation, which linked village and city through the constant coming and going of men and women, progressively broke down from the late 20 th century onwards, following the closure of the large textile, engineering and paper industries which underpinned the economic vitality of the Calcutta region. The article sketches out the history of this socio-spatial configuration over the second half of the 20 th century, through the life histories of two migrant Hindustani workers. Born around 1940, Siraj Prajapati and Mohan Lal both spent the greater part of their working lives in Calcutta's industrial suburbs. Siraj, a potter by caste, was engaged in the artisanal production tea-cups in Howrah. Born into one of the most marginalized sections of north Indian society, Mohan managed to train as a mason, and was employed in the Titagarh Paper Mill through the 1960s and 70s. Both have now settled back in their respective villages of eastern Uttar Pradesh. Teasing out the contradictory ways in which both men frame their life trajectories, the article contributes a micro-perspective to the social history of rural-urban migration in post-colonial north India.

The Potential for Cross-National Research (Re)connection and Collaboration among Home and Host Country STEM Scientists through Labor Circulation: The Case of Serbia and the U.S.

This interview- and document review-based case study, conducted in 2017, captured visions of and possibilities for cross-national research connections and collaboration between Serbia and the U.S. through the eyes of seven Serbian science and engineering professors/scientists at three Mid-Western research universities in the U.S. Global labor circulation was equally explored as a channel for such connection and collaboration endeavors. The scientists' journey was first contextualized through their migration experiences from Serbia to the U.S. in the 1990s. Major thematic interview findings synthesized into promising, yet complex, circulatory flows of high skill labor between the two countries. This theme was channeled through aspirations to connect back with Serbia and engage in joint projects, the circulation potential to offset the loss of talent at home, temporary returns including the expatriated scientist's return criteria, and the meaning of successful research collaboration. Most of the respondents were enthusiastic to reconnect with their home country, although some explicitly wished to see a sign of interest from the home country first. Joint student training and advising and visiting professorships were the most suggested types of collaborations. Document reviews supplemented interviews and pointed to internationalization of the Serbian academia. This emergent theme was channeled through national and university internationalization strategies, student and staff mobility through exchange programs (although mainly in Europe), and success-stories of Serbian alumni abroad. Placing science on the national education and development agenda of Serbia and making academia-industry connections was imperative. Altogether, the findings pointed to complexities in reconnecting across the ocean, in spite of the circulation potential and especially in view of power and structural dynamics in home and host countries. Capitalizing on the circulation channel is not a simple undertaking. Besides researchers and practitioners, educational policy makers in Serbia are earnestly invited to consider this study and the experiences of the established Serbian scientists, and create ways of connecting to this rarely tapped-into potential.

Settings in Trading Services International Economic Law

International trade, as one part of economic activity or business activities, in the last decade, has shown very rapid development, amid increasing business attention on global business activities. This phenomenon can be seen from the increased circulation of goods, services, capital and labor between countries, and the development of business activities through export-import relations, investment, service trade, licensing and franchising, intellectual property rights, and various other international types trading.

Settings in Trading Services International Economic Law

International trade, as one part of economic activity or business activities, in the last decade, has shown very rapid development, amid increasing business attention on global business activities. This phenomenon can be seen from the increased circulation of goods, services, capital and labor between countries, and the development of business activities through export-import relations, investment, service trade, licensing and franchising, intellectual property rights, and various other international types trading.

Southeast Asian Trajectories of Labour Mobility: Precarity, Translocality, and Resilience

AbstractWithin and across Southeast Asian national borders, there has been a growing circulation of labour, capital, people, and goods. Meanwhile, urbanisation, agrarian changes, and liberal economic restructuring have been drawing a large section of the rural population into mobile economies and trade networks. This special issue explores the linkage between mobility and the growing precaritisation of labour resulting from neoliberalised development policies, nationalist citizenship regimes, and discourses, and arbitrary state power. Arguably, the consequent insecurity and uncertainty have profound implications for the social and economic life of migrant labourers. Although these conditions engender dangers and risks, they also hold possibilities for crafting translocal livelihoods and social relations. In this introduction, we investigate the diverse trajectories of labour migration in Southeast Asia through a critical discussion on the concept of ‘precarity’ that underscores the resilience of labour migrants despite the precarious conditions of their lives. The special issue suggests that, while precarious labour has long been part of regimes of control and exploitation in the region, precarity today is shaped by the blurry boundaries between the legal and the illegal, between local and global lives, and between different worlds of belonging.

Labour migration brokerage and Dalit politics in Andhra Pradesh: a Dalit fabric of labour circulation

ABSTRACTWhy and how do labour migrant brokers engage with henchmen of bosses, small-time criminals and violent politicians? What significance do labour brokers’ political relations have in the fabric of labour circulation? This article argues for migration brokerage to be examined along a broad continuum of brokerage to explore the local fabric of labour circulation in the Indian construction sector. Considering migration brokerage as part of a broader landscape of brokerage firstly allows look at how migration brokers concretely navigate the worlds of labour and politics to pursue their activities and to further their own agendas. It secondly offers insight into how the everyday relations between migrant brokers and henchmen of bosses shape the lives of migrant labourers in the urban construction sector. Based on a detailed ethnography of the relation between a Dalit labour maistri and a Dalit henchman of a boss in a context of violent criminal political economy, this article explores the roles of Dalit politics in shaping the Dalit fabric of labour circulation and labour broker’s trajectories in South India. It further looks at the ambivalent production and mobilisation of Dalit identities in the making of an ideal Dalit migrant labourer.

Culture of Friendship Among the Apatanis of Arunachal Pradesh

The Apatanis of Ziro Valley are a tribe in Arunachal Pradesh. The community is known for their sedentary agriculture among all dry farming communities in this state. It is sustained without the use of draught power and an indigenously developed irrigation system. Inhabiting a small sequestered plateau, their agriculture represents the most efficient in terms of energy use. Among the traditional institutions of the Apatani is the labour gang known as the Pataň. Its composition is based largely on village friendship cutting across genders that are equally represented, in addition to kinship-based unity. This aspect is evident in a tradition during Myoko festival where friends visit across villages to renew their ties. The festival and its associated rituals also assign a special position to friendship. The paper seeks to explore the ritual aspect of friendship and its relevance of friendship in the circulation of labour for sedentary agriculture.

Thomas Waters and the Paper Money Factory Project of Meiji Japan

This paper deals with the plans of a paper money factory built in Tokyo in 1876, and considers the development of the architectural practice of one of the prominent Oyatoi engineers, Thomas Waters. The project of the paper money factory, which highlights the prominent brick-made western architecture in the early Meiji period, was thought to have originally been designed by T. Waters and then succeeded by Charles Boinville, although the detail of this has until now remained unclear. Other than the floor plans and elevation with the signature of T. Waters, the author has found some plans of the paper money factory, and as a result can clarify the detailed process of the project. In addition, the author makes use of the various plans of the paper money factory and has made a restored CAD copy of the factory in order to analyze the particulars of T. Waters′ plans. Further to this, it is compared with the plans of another project connected to him, thus T. Waters′ significant influence is considered as to the secure control of goods and labor circulation.

The Double-Edged Sword: Guanxi and Science Ethics in Academic Physics in the People’s Republic of China

As China continues to open up to the transnational circulation of labor, ideas, technology and capital under globalization, we must wonder: will Chinese society’s more cosmopolitan and transnational groups continue to be guided by guanxi? The authors conducted 40 in-depth interviews with Chinese physicists at 11 research universities in three cities in order to examine the role of ethics, including guanxi, in the professional lives of one of China’s most cosmopolitan populations, the elite scientific community. Analysis reveals, counter-intuitively, that Chinese physicists very much think about guanxi in relation to their research grants and scientific collaboration, that the ethical connotation of guanxi is contextual, and that some see it as a double-edged sword. They realize that guanxi can empower the individual scientist and the scientific community even as it weakens them both.

PENGATURAN PERDAGANGAN JASA DALAM HUKUM EKONOMI INTERNASIONAL

International trade as one part of economic activity or business activities, in the last decade shows very rapid development, amid increasing concern businesses to international business activities. This phenomenon can be observed from the growing flow of circulation of goods, services, capital and labor between countries, as well as the development of business activities through relations import-export, investment, trade in services, license and franchise (license and franchise), intellectual property rights as well as various types of trade other international.Keywords: Setting for Trade in Services, International Economic Law