Local Host Communities Research Articles

American students abroad: Negotiation of difference?

This paper considers the ways in which American students' active engagement in local host communities abroad is at risk. Constraining forces include the new demographics of American study abroad, prejudicial attitudes toward international education and sheltered program designs, a research enterprise committed to representing the perspectives of students primarily, and the influence of globalization on communicative practice and habits of thought. To counter these influences, the elements of an activist stance are proposed.

Ethnic And National Identities Of Africans In The United States*

ABSTRACT. The emerging scholarly literature on contemporary African migration to the United States has primarily focused on populations concentrated in large urban areas. In contrast, this study considers the experiences of African university students living in two distinctly different places, Eugene, Oregon, and Washington, D.C., to examine how the context of the local host community shapes ethnic and national identities. Specific contextual variations under consideration are the extent to which newcomers have contact with coethnics/conationals and access to material and nonmaterial culture. Results based on thirty‐six in‐depth interviews show that, despite easy access to coethnics, some students in the Washington metropolitan area readily identified with conationals. Likewise, in the absence of coethnics in Eugene, many students described strengthening national identities; and, in the absence of conationals, they have constructed panethnic African identities. Additional research into the experiences of newcomers in various host‐community contexts is needed.

Resolving Water Conflicts in Mining Areas of Ghana Through Public Participation A Communication Perspective

Mining as a sector is vital to a country's economic growth but the impact of the activities on environment can be an important cause of concern. In Wassa West district of Ghana, mining as an industry has been promoted in the recent past, but with significant impact on environmental aspects, especially water, leading to conflicts between the local communities and the mining companies. The practical theory of ‘Trinity of Voice’ (TOV) has been proposed for understanding the community-related intricacies underlying multi-stakeholder decision-making processes and proposing a futuristic course of action for effective public participation in the same. This article attempts to understand the causes underlying the mining-related water conflicts in Ghana using the TOV theory. Using this theory, the article proposes a practical framework for enhanced effective participation of members from local host communities that in turn can enable resolving the existing conflicts and preventing the same in future.

Forced migration in eastern Africa: democratization, structural adjustment, and refugees

Rethinking African Refugees and Forced Migration Wars and Rumors of War: The Politics of Forced Migration for Kenya and Tanzania Changes in Official Refugee Policies Local Host Communities' Responses to Refugees The International Community and Refugees in Tanzania and Kenya Refugee Women in Kenya and Tanzania Conclusion

Decay of similarity of gamasid mite assemblages parasitic on Palaearctic small mammals: geographic distance, host‐species composition or environment

AbstractAim The similarity between parasite assemblages should decrease with increasing geographic distance between them, increasing dissimilarity in environmental conditions, and/or increasing dissimilarity of the local host fauna, depending on the dispersal abilities of the parasites and the intimacy of their associations with the host. We tested for a decay in the similarity of gamasid mite assemblages parasitic on small mammals with increasing geographic, ‘environmental’ and ‘host faunal’ (= ‘host’) distances.Location We used data on assemblages of haematophagous gamasid mites (superfamily Dermanyssoidea) parasitic on small mammals (Insectivora, Lagomorpha and Rodentia) from 26 different regions of the northern Palaearctic.Methods Similarity in mite assemblages was investigated at the compound community level across all regions, and at the component community level, across populations of the same host species for each of 11 common host species. Similarity between pairs of mite communities was estimated using both the Jaccard and the Sorensen indices. Environmental distance was estimated as the dissimilarity between locations in a composite measure of climatic variables, and host faunal distance was simply taken as the reciprocal of indices of similarity between the composition of host faunas in different locations. Generalized Linear Models (GLM) and Akaike's Information Criterion were used to select the best model of decay in similarity as a function of geographic, ‘environmental’ and ‘host faunal’ distances.Results Overall, despite slight differences among host species, the similarity in mite assemblages decreased with both increasing ‘environmental’ distance and increasing ‘host faunal’ distance, but was generally unaffected by geographic distance between regions. The similarity of component communities of gamasid mites among host populations was determined mainly by similarity in the physical environment, whereas that of compound communities varied mainly with host‐species composition.Main conclusions Our results indicate that the general decay in community similarity with increasing geographic distances does not apply to assemblages of gamasid mites; it is possible that they can overcome great distances by means of passive dispersal (either by phoresy or wind‐borne), or more likely they occur wherever their hosts are found as a result of tight cospeciation in the past. Mite assemblages on small mammalian hosts seem to be affected mainly by local environmental conditions, and, to a much lesser extent, by the species composition of local host communities.

Borrelia burgdorferiSensu Stricto in Yellow-Necked Mice and FeedingIxodes ricinusTicks in a Forest Habitat of West Central Poland

Wild rodents and the subadult Ixodes ricinus (L.) ticks infesting them were examined for the presence of Borrelia burgdorferi Johnson, Schmid, Hyde, Steigerwalt & Brenner s.l. in a sylvatic habitat in west central Poland during May-September 2002. In total, 818 feeding ticks were recovered from 73 infested yellow-necked mice, Apodemus flavicollis Melchior; in addition, bank voles, Clethrionomys glareolus Schreber, were rarely captured and proved to be weakly parasitized. Only 2.7% of A. flavicollis and 2.2% of 320 engorging larvae were polymerase chain reaction (PCR) positive for the bacterium. All spirochete-PCR-positive samples yielded exclusively B. burgdorferi s.s. This genospecies was also the most prevalent in questing nymphs and accounted for 87.5% of the total number of Borrelia infections in nymphal ticks collected during May and June 2 yr later. The presence of the same genospecies both in naturally engorged larvae and blood-positive animals as well as the high predominance of B. burgdorferi s.s. in questing nymphs strongly differs from most study sites investigated in Europe. This unique pattern of Borrelia-diversity in both rodents and ticks seems to be determined by highly site-specific host vertebrate cenosis, and yellow-necked mice are involved in the maintenance of B. burgdorferi s.s. in the forest habitat. However, the transmission efficiency of this spirochete from the mice to the I. ricinus vector seems to be very low. The research provides additional information on the complexity of B. burgdorferi s.l. ecology in Europe, pointing to the importance of the local host community.

Housing and Welfare Services in Hong Kong for New Immigrants from China: Inclusion or Exclusion?

Hong Kong presents a peculiar case of the strains involved in assimilating immigrants from Mainland China due to (1) its reunification with China in 1997 after 150 years of British colonial rule, and (2) the uneasy relationship between Chinese immigrants and the local host community, despite sharing the same ethnic background. A host of historical, socio-economic and political factors contribute to the exclusion of Mainlanders by the Chinese locals. There appears to be a convergence between local citizens and the state in labeling, stigmatizing and scapegoating the Mainland immigrants. Exclusionary social policies in housing, social security, employment and personal welfare have rendered Chinese immigrants to live in poverty and with little access to opportunity structures.

Environmental regulation, public safety and national security: case study of the response management plan program

Under the Community Right–to–Know provisions of the Clean Air Act and SARA, industrial and municipal sites that handle materials that could potentially result in emergency air releases were compelled to produce RMPs or Response Management Plans. These plans were to provide local response agencies and host communities with information on what to do in case of serious releases. These data were to be web published and available to the general public. Concerns were voiced by the Federal Bureau of Investigation about the implications for access of this information by terrorist groups and individuals. A classic conflict of public policy imperatives arose from conflicting missions of the agencies and their client bodies including the industries and communities in which the RMPs were produced. This paper will look at these conflicts in authorities, the stated positions of the involved agencies, the impacts of the change in Presidential administrations and potential pathways for resolving the conflicts through legal, political and social mechanisms.

Material Culture and Social Identity : the Evidence for a 4th Millennium BC Mesopotamian Uruk Colony at Hacinebi, Turkey

Archaeological analyses of interaction between colonies and host communities require an understanding of the relationship between material culture and alternative forms of social identity. Foreign material culture assemblages in indigenous settlements may reflect exchange, emulation, or actual ethnic differences between colonizing groups and local host communities. Establishing the presence of colonies and reconstructing the organization of cross-cultural interaction is especially important for the Uruk expansion - which has been termed the world's earliest known colonial network. This paper presents a cross-culturally applicable definition of colonies, and suggests ways to distinguish between the archaeological signatures of trade, emulation, and colonization. Based on these criteria, the available evidence indicates that the Uruk Mesopotamian art if actual materials at the site of Hacinebi in the Euphrates River valley of southeast Turkey result from the presence of an ethnically distinct colony inside the 4th millennium local Anatolian settlement.

Psychological distress in the local hillsborough or ‘host’ community following the Hillsborough football stadium diaster

AbstractThis paper describes levels of psychological distress and accounts of disaster among the local host community following the Hillsborough Football Stadium disaster. Thirty‐two participants were interviewed 4–6 months after the event. Rates of psychological distress symptoms were high in the sample as measured by PTSD (DSM III criteria), Impact of Events Scale (IES) and the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ‐28). The study also explores the relationships between levels of exposure, levels of distress and participants' accounts of the disaster. Implications for community outreach projects after disasters are discussed.