Vision Of Migration Research Articles

Correction: International Migration and Work: Charting an Ethical Approach to the Future

Executive Summary This research was conducted at the request of the International Catholic Migration Commission (ICMC) as part of a two-year special initiative entitled “The Future of Work, Labour After Laudato Sì.” 1 This article explores the future of work, international migration, and the intersection of the two at a time of rapid change, uncertainty, and disruption for migrants, laborers, and their families and communities. It draws on human rights principles, international law, and religious values, particularly from the Catholic tradition, to chart an ethical approach to the governance of these timeless phenomena. What does the future hold? Under one dystopian scenario, the future of work will be characterized by massive job loss due to automation, robotics, and artificial intelligence. Politicians and business leaders will characterize the resulting human displacement as an unavoidable “disruption” and byproduct of change. Euphemisms, however, will poorly mask the loss of livelihood, self-esteem, and a central marker of identity for countless persons, particularly the poor and vulnerable. Technological advances will decimate families, communities, and entire ways of life. For many, stable work will become a thing of the past, and technology an instrument of marginalization and discrimination. Algorithms will be used to “perpetuate gender bias” ( ILO 2019a , 35), pit workers against each other, and squeeze the maximum productivity from them for the minimum compensation. The “inappropriate use” and “weak governance” of algorithms will lead to “biases, errors and malicious acts” ( Albinson, Krishna, and Chu 2018 ). Large swaths of the world’s citizens will become (at best) the unhappy dependents of states and global elites. The future of migration seems equally daunting. Current trends suggest that the number of international migrants will continue to rise due to job displacement, violence, natural disaster, and states that cannot or will not meet their fundamental responsibilities. If the past is prologue, unscrupulous politicians and media sources will also continue to blame migrants for the economic and cultural displacement of their constituents, xenophobia will increase, and migrants will encounter hostility in host communities. Natives will criticize their governments and institutions for failing to protect their interests and needs, and migrant laborers will be caught in the middle. This article does not minimize the urgency of the challenges presented by migration and work. It documents the unacceptable living, working, and migration conditions of immense numbers of the world’s citizens. It offers, however, a more optimistic vision of the future than the dystopian view, a vision characterized by international cooperation and solidarity. It recognizes the potential of technology “to render labour superfluous, ultimately alienating workers and stunting their development,” but also its potential to “free workers from arduous labour; from dirt, drudgery, danger and deprivation” and “to reduce work-related stress and potential injuries” ( ILO 2019 , 43). It recognizes the way in which fear of displacement can lead to exclusionary nationalism and xenophobia, but also the possibility of unity based on the shared values embedded in the cultures of diverse persons. It recognizes the costs of migration, but also its immense contributions to host communities. The article argues for person-centered systems and policies that promote the freedom, rights, and dignity of workers, migrants, and migrant workers, and that strengthen migrant host communities. It begins by examining the challenges facing low-income and vulnerable migrants who struggle for decent work, are the most likely to lose their jobs, and are “the least equipped to seize new job opportunities” ( ILO 2019 , 18). 2 It then presents an ethical, person-centered vision of migration and work, rooted in human rights principles, international law, and Catholic social teaching. The article also draws on principles articulated in the Global Compact on Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration (GCM); the Global Compact on Refugees (GCR); and the Holy See’s Twenty Action Points for the Global Compacts. It ends with a series of recommendations that seek to bring this vision to fruition.

Terra Incognita of the Russian Near North: Counter-Urbanization in Today’S Russia and the Formation of Dacha Communities

Abstract This article considers the salient features of counter-urbanization, which take place when urban residents, during the summer months, move to live in their second homes or their dachas [country homes or summer cottages]. Due to the social forces that are the result of incomplete urbanization, class polarization, and the rapid growth of major city centers, there are two powerful oppositional flows of migration taking place today in Russia. The first is centripetal migration or the movement of rural populations to large cities. The second form of migration is centrifugal migration or counterurbanization, which is the relocation of urban populations to rural areas. The article gives a theoretical overview of a new vision of migration as a part of modern flexible ‘liquid’ mobility, which enables urban residents to be constantly ‘on the move’, migrating between their urban apartments and suburban or distant dachas. A theoretical sociological background provides the field research, presented in the article, with an understanding of the realm of meanings of de-urbanization in a short and long historical run and in perspective. Russian men and women, who work in various professions due to advances in telecommunication technologies, are able to spend some extended periods at their dachas where they simultaneously work and enjoy the natural beauty and countryside. The different types of dachas in Russia that are either close to cities or in remote regions are examined. The case study of dacha counter-urbanization in the periphery region of Kostroma oblast' considers: 1) various features of the return counter-urbanization to remote dacha and 2) the social, economic and cultural effects that these dacha settlements have had on both the urban and rural residents.

Migration, Networks and Territories in the Ouneine Valley, High Atlas, Morocco

Under normal political conditions within modern capitalism migration fulfils a function of socio-economic regulation within local societies. Mobility develops as one of a number of social responses of particular populations as part of complex livelihood strategies. But migration and mobility are not open to everyone. The relationship of particular populations to national and international space is complex. Official approaches to migration in Morocco tend to consider the impacts of migration as ‘statistical aggregates’, abstract and detached from the local context and history of the group. The resulting vision of migration is usually either overly negative, associated with the misery it produces, such as rural exodus associated with growing urban poverty, or overly positive, focusing on international migration and remittances. This paper attempts to put migration in context, in the lives of the groups affected by the territorial reconfiguration and social reproduction provoked by migration. This more grounded anthropological approach enables us to see migration in relation to the weight of historical context and the mechanisms of social change which provoke migration and to which it contributes.

Archaeology and Culture in Southeast Asia: Unraveling the Nusantao (review)

Reviewed by: Archaeology and Culture in Southeast Asia: Unraveling the Nusantao John A. Peterson Archaeology and Culture in Southeast Asia: Unraveling the Nusantao. Wilhelm G. Solheim II, with contributions from David Bulbeck and Ambika Flavel. Foreword by Victor Paz. Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press, 2006. 316 pp. + xvi, illustrations, maps. ISBN 9715425089. Bill Solheim founded this journal, Asian Perspectives, which first appeared in 1957. For over 50 years he has been a leader and contributor to Southeast Asian archaeological studies. He has been prolific, and his work has been foundational for studies in the region. He has recently revised and republished his Archaeology of the Central Philippines: A Study Chiefly of the Iron Age and Its Relationships (Solheim 2002) as well as updated earlier reports in "Archaeological Survey in Papua, Halmahera, and Ternate, Indonesia" (chapter 6 in this volume under review). He also recently revisited ceramic collections in the Sarawak Museum from the Gua Sirah project, which he is currently preparing for publication. In other words, Solheim has been vigorous and productive since his "retirement" from teaching in 1991 from the Department of Anthropology at the University of Hawai'i. He is currently on the faculty of the Archaeological Studies Program at the University of the Philippines in Diliman. The festschrift Southeast Asian Archaeology was published in 2005 in his honor by his colleagues and former students, and it includes articles from throughout Mainland and Island Southeast Asia—the latter a neologism that he helped coin. This book on the Nusantao is a consummate review by Solheim of his life's work in the region. It is written in a fresh and sometimes conversational style, with an eye not only toward reviewing his previous work, but also accommodating recent findings and literature. Solheim takes advantage of hindsight to revise a few earlier misconceptions or misstatements, and he also takes the opportunity to frame his vision of migration in the region in light of a current controversy of contending models. In this sense, this volume presents the history of an idea as well as the fieldwork and analyses that Solheim has done over the past half century. Unraveling the Nusantao is at the same time a recounting of the data, a historiography of the concept, a personal intellectual biography, and also a vision of a vibrant maritime culture that has inhabited the region since the Late Paleolithic. It is a compelling argument for his model of dispersive and expansive settlement in Southeast Asia. The concept has evolved considerably from its earliest presentations as a Neolithic era "Nusantao" culture, and this volume reflects not only the emergence of data but also an emerging and quite sophisticated model of migration. The theme is central to theory and interpretations of migration throughout the region and is currently controversial in its opposition to models that focus on Taiwan as the fulcrum of Austronesian Neolithic period diffusion. Solheim examines this alternate model and compares it unfavorably to the data, as well as to his own theory. Solheim himself eschews the term "theory," as he has long been skeptical of fads and fashions, old wine in new skins, or revisionistic explanations. In contrast, Solheim remains close to his experience of the archaeological landscapes of the region, to the data, and to his prodigious knowledge of artifacts, sites, and collections in his illumination of a powerful and resilient model for settlement and migration. He presents the ethnographic, ethnohistorical, and linguistic as well as archaeological bases for his theory. The book is divided into seven chapters, with two contributions regarding the analyses of his Sa Huynh–Kalanay ceramic tradition [End Page 235] that he had first proposed in 1952 for the central Philippines as the Kalanay tradition. He later expanded the concept into a panregional tradition where ceramic styles from the Sa Huynh site in Vietnam were interpreted as genetically related to the Kalanay, with stylistic flow occurring over probably a very short period of time during the Neolithic and evolving throughout the early Iron Age in the region. David Bulbeck and Ambika Flavel have contributed appendices to this volume that statistically support Solheim's earlier stylistic lumpings. Another brief section, an account of survey results from...