Compelling culture: The rhetoric of assimilation among Samoan migrants in the United States

Studies of assimilation tend to focus on whether or not members of a migrant group are adjusting to their new surroundings. This article inverts this focus, asking not how migrant groups adjust, but rather how migrant groups use the language of assimilation to explain generation gaps and other exigencies of migration. This inversion sheds light on the ways a migrant group's epistemological assumptions underlie their understandings of cultural identity, and shape how they might respond to dilemmas caused by migration. Building upon ethnographic fieldwork among Samoan migrants in the United States, the article explores how and why community workers use the rhetoric of assimilation to teach Samoan parents how to raise children in the US context.     

Clara Law's Floating Life and Hong Kong-Australian 'flexible citizenship'

Clara Law's film Floating Life was the first Australian film to be nominated for an Oscar for Best Foreign Film, and the first Australian film to deal with migrant Hong Kong Chinese identities 'from inside'. From perspectives of transnational Chinese migration and flexible citizenship, this article looks at Floating Life as a Hong Kong Chinese migrant reading of Australia, which defamiliarizes and recontextualizes familiar Australian localities and geopolitical formations, contrasting them with the film's other principal loci of Hong Kong and Germany. It also interprets the film as a neo-Confucian study of family disintegration in a migrant context, and an exploration of notions of home and identity.     

Bringing class back in: class consciousness and solidarity among Chinese migrant workers in Italy and the UK

The growing literature on international migration has a tendency to emphasize homogenous elements such as shared ethnic background, social network and cultural similarities in shaping immigrants' identity. We argue that this underestimates the differences (and sometimes conflicts) of interests between ethnic employers and migrant workers and that class needs to be brought back into the studies of ethnic relationship. Based upon findings from a series of fieldwork in Veneto, Italy and East Midlands, UK, this article contends that class consciousness has co-existed, sometimes uneasily, alongside co-ethnic and cultural relationships among Chinese migrant workers and has played an important part in the making of new Chinese communities. By analysing the perspectives of Chinese migrant workers and their relationship with co-ethnic entrepreneurs, this article illustrates complex factors behind the formation, diffusion and development of class consciousness among Chinese migrant workers.     

Discordant temporalities of migration and childhood★

Childhood, though it is understood cross-culturally in very different ways, always has a distinctive temporal framework, since children's growth and development cannot be undone. Yet, in many contexts, the times of childhood have become discordant with the rhythms, timescales, and temporal controls of migration. Focusing on the children of Indonesian and Filipino migrants in Sabah, Malaysia, this article explores the contemporary clash between the temporalities of migration and childhood. Children face separations and ruptures in shared time due to Malaysia's migration regime, and experience the temporariness of migrant life differently to their parents. Educational exclusion leads to temporal discontinuities between Malaysian-citizen and migrant childhoods, and racialized understandings of national time emphasize the negative potentiality of migrants’ children. Overall, the article argues for the importance of considering the interaction between the temporal conflicts of capitalism and forms of natural time such as childhood.     

Movements,moments and moods. Generation as unity and strife in Peruvian migration

This article discusses the meaning and use of generation in migration studies. It argues that the term is useful to examine how migrants create linkages between their pre- and post-migration lives. The article draws on Mannheim's notions of ‘generational units’ and ‘fresh contact’ to scrutinize how Peruvians engage resources from their previous lives in Peru to achieve social mobility in the USA, Japan, Spain and Argentina. In particular, the article focuses on the role of education, ethnicity and conflict in Peruvians’ efforts to create support networks and form migrant institutions. It suggests that generational units grow out of migrants’ shared experience of mobilizing the same resource to establish fresh contact with their receiving society. The article concludes that while generational belonging can generate a strong sense of solidarity among some groups of migrants, this often happens at the cost of the unity and inclusion of the migrant community at large.     

Segmented assimilation and socio-economic integration of Chinese immigrant children in the USA

Research on the new second generation has paid much attention to testing one of the hypotheses posed by segmented assimilation theory – downward assimilation into America's underclass – and has neglected to examine other possible outcomes. In this paper, I address a much understudied pathway – assimilation by way of the ethnic community – based on a case study of Chinese immigrant children in the USA. I show that the children of Chinese immigrants have made inroads into mainstream America through educational achievement, not only because of the strong value their parents put on education but also because resources generated in the ethnic community help actualize that value. The Chinese American experience suggests that, in order to advance to the rank of middle-class Americans, immigrant parents have chosen the ethnic way to facilitate children's social mobility and achieved success. Paradoxically, ‘assimilated’ children have also relied on ethnicity for empowerment to fight negative stereotyping of the racialized other.     

Commercial biotechnology in Hungary: beyond small potatoes

Despite a number of unfavourable conditions, Hungary is striving to develop its biotechnology industry. This article examines the cultural, infrastructural, scientific and economic factors that may influence this development. Recent changes in Hungary's political leadership may accelerate the development of the country's biotechnology industry.     

Family Income Affects Children’s Altruistic Behavior in the Dictator Game

This study aimed to examine how family income and social distance influence young rural Chinese children’s altruistic behavior in the dictator game (DG). A total of 469 four-year-old children from eight rural areas in China, including many children left behind by parents who had migrated to urban areas for work, played the DG. Stickers comprised the resource, while recipients in the game were assumed to be either their friends or strangers, with the social distance (i.e., strangers compared to friends) as a between-subjects variable. Children donated significantly more stickers to their friends than to strangers. Moreover, children from lower income families donated more stickers than children from higher income families. However, no gender and parental migrant status differences in children’s prosocial behaviors were evident in this sample. Findings of this study suggest that children’s altruistic behaviours to peers are influenced by family characteristics since preschool age. The probable influence of local socialization practices on development and the possible adaptive significance were discussed.     

The Nation‐State,Public Education,and the Logic of Migration: Chinese Students in Hungary

Public education remains the nation‐state's foremost instrument of forging citizens. But the emergence of ‘international education’, a system explicitly based on the ideology of globality and outside the purview of national curricula, provides a way to circumvent the citizen‐making machine. This article, based on fieldwork among Chinese secondary school students in Hungary, considers the interaction between ‘international education’ and transnational migrants in a nation‐state whose public education, as the state itself, has little interest in the ‘integration’ of non‐natives.     

From the Montaña to the city: a history of proletarianization of Mixteco indigenous from Guerrero,Mexico in New York City

Since the late 1980s, indigenous Mixtecos of the Montaña region, in the southern state of Guerrero, Mexico, have become new members of the Mexican migrant working class in New York City (NYC). This article examines the contemporary history of proletarianization via migration of the Mixtecos of the Montaña. It shows to what extent the region became a supplier of migrant labor, and how its inhabitants transitioned from peasants and semi-proletarians of Mexico’s northwest agribusinesses to transnational migrant proletarians, as a result of major regional transformations related to state violence and drug cartel penetration. Indigenous Mixtecos have endured social inequality, racism, and state violence from post-revolutionary to contemporary neoliberal governments in Guerrero. Before their migration to NYC, they have gone through different rounds of proletarianization which differ from the Mexican mestizo migrant flow. The article aims to contribute to unravel such particularities, which have been subsumed as part of a homogeneous pattern in the history of Mexican migration and proletarianization in NYC.Based on ethnographic research conducted for my doctoral dissertation (2014) and using oral history, the article traces, through the life story of a Mixteco migrant worker, the different rounds of dispossession in the history of proletarianization of Mixteco indigenous migrants from the Montaña.     

A Moist Heart: Love,Politics and China's Neoliberal Transition in the Films of Jia Zhangke

The human dimension of the sweeping reforms introduced by Deng Xiaoping since the late 1970s and the struggles imposed upon the country's huge marginalized population, especially on the rural and migrant working classes, are a central theme of Jia Zhangke's films. Working as an independent filmmaker within the constraints of government funding and the commercial demands of the Chinese market, Jia makes this critique poignantly and ironically through popular music. In Jia's hands, popular music turns into a political investigation and expression of the changing political economy of love, carefully yet boldly challenging mainstream ideologies and practices currently reinventing notions of Chinese identity, history and progress.     

The early history of migration and settlement of Yemenis in Cardiff, 1939–1970: religion and ethnicity as social capital

Utilizing Putnam's concept of bonding social capital, this article explores the under-researched topic of the history of migrant men's reproduction of social capital in Cardiff, Wales. Drawing upon a series of oral history interviews with a respected imam of more than fifty years, and informed by existing research on Muslim migrants, we explore both the advantages and disadvantages of community relationships between Yemeni men in relation to trust, reciprocity and interpersonal well-being. By examining these complex bonds, this article contributes to the literature on religious and ethnic social networks by challenging the assumption that migrants always benefit from social resources (Wilson 1978; Shah 2007), and offers an alternative account of religiously underpinned social capital to those of studies of majority ethnic Christians in North America (Smidt 2003). Uniquely, this article also points to the divergences between religious and ethnic capitals in the context of Yemeni migrants' social resources during 1939–1970.     

A Study of Energy Consumption and Exhaust Emissions from Beijing's Civil Vehicles from Years 2008 to 2020

The number of Beijing's civil vehicles is growing rapidly due to the great support of the automobile industry and the Chinese government and the increasing average per capita income of China's people. Exhaust emissions from vehicles have already become the main source of Beijing's air pollution. Based on the Long-range Energy Alternatives Planning System (LEAP), this article predicts the energy consumption and exhaust emissions from Beijing's civil vehicles. Also, we estimated the reduction potentials of China's new fuel consumption standards and exhaust pollutants standards that will be implemented from 2008 to 2020. Two scenarios were developed: “Business as Usual” (BAU) and “New Standard” (NS). In the BAU scenario, the Chinese government would do nothing to improve the fuel consumption standards and exhaust pollutants standards in the future. In the NS scenario, the Chinese government would implement more strict fuel consumption standards and exhaust pollutants standards for Beijing's civil vehicles. By comparing the results of the two scenarios for year 2020, the energy consumption will experience a reduction of 7.8%, and the exhaust pollutants CO, HC, NO_X, PM, and the emissions of CO₂ would decrease by 43.3%, 36.4%, 60.3%, 81.2%, and 7.8%, respectively.     

Children's labour in ethnic family businesses: The case of Chinese take‐away businesses in Britain

Reliance upon unpaid and committed family labour is said to make many ethnic businesses competitive. However, most analysts' references to this labour have not taken into account the nature of family members' and, in particular, children's work roles or the ways in which their labour is elicited and maintained. Here, the nature of children's labour participation in ethnic businesses is investigated in the case of families running Chinese take‐away businesses in Britain. This article focuses on how children in these families understand their often double‐edged experiences of ‘helping out’, as part of a ‘family work contract’, and on the ways in which families negotiate children's labour over time. Given these families' experiences of migration and ethnic minority status, I argue that Chinese children's work in take‐away businesses must be examined in relation to the intersections of family obligations and relationships, livelihood strategies and pressures, and issues of cultural identity.     

Researching ethnicity,identity, subjectivity: anything but the four-lettered word

This article gives a frank account of how anthropological research on Cape Verdean migrant experiences of parenthood in Portugal developed from avoiding the use of the analytical concept of ‘race’ to encountering ‘race’ as a category of practice in fieldwork and discusses the implications of this for analysing the data. Although the aim of the research was to look beyond categorizations, in order to explore the emotional dimensions of lived experience, the effects of ‘racial automatisms’ upon migrant subjectivities cannot be ignored. Racist effects are nonetheless distinguished from racist intentions. The ethnography elucidates the political potential of ‘race’ to foment critical reflection upon the relationship between an individual's personal and collective identities.     

Photography that listens

In the following article, the author discusses selectivity in photography and how it can be used as a valuable tool in guiding field research. Borrowing from Henri‐Cartier Bresson's notion of capturing “decisive moments” with a camera, the author presents a case study of decisive moments shot during her research on first generation Indian and Pakistani children in London. The framing of decisive moments was guided by directions from the people being photographed as well as by the anthropologist/ photographer's own questions and perceptions.     

Reorganization of a nutrition unit in Papua New Guinea.

Adequate nutrition is a medical priority. It has been estimated that more than half the children in the Chimbu District of Papua New Guinea are malnourished. A practical scheme combat poor nutrition there was based on emphasizing the value of breast-feeding and of locally grown foods. The daily menu given was the same, with three meals each day. The scheme''s underlying principles can be adapted for any developing country or for migrant and other minority groups in a developed country.     

Press discourses on Roma in the UK,Finland and Hungary

ABSTRACT

This article analyses the political and media discourses on Roma in Hungary, Finland and the UK, in relation to the local Roma in these countries as well as those who migrated from Central and Eastern Europe countries following the fall of communism. The authors have analysed left of centre and right of centre major newspapers in these three countries, focusing on specific case studies which were the foci of public debates during the last two decades. We also examined a common case study in 2013 (“blond Maria”) that was discussed throughout Europe. In each news paper, the constructions of Roma, local and migrant, and the changes to related discourses over the period were studied. In conclusion, we examine the multi-layered processes of social and political borderings in Europe which dominate discourses on Roma, “indigenous” and migrant, and the extent to which they constitute a coherent “European” construction of “the Roma”.     

Memories of ethnic violence in Sri Lanka among immigrant Tamils in the UK

This article contributes to recent studies on the relationship between ethnicity and memory in the formation of transnational communities. The focus of the article is migrant Tamils' memories of violence in Sri Lanka in 1958, in the aftermath of an act declaring Sinhala to be the sole language of administration in the country. The ways in which past violence is remembered by this overlooked older generation helps in understanding the particular impetus of the contemporary Tamil diaspora, which continues to play a key role in shaping the image of Sri Lanka abroad. Research on the formation of the diaspora must therefore be situated within a more concrete history of relations between Sinhalese and Tamils in post-independence Sri Lanka.     

Conductive education at the Pet? Institute,Budapest.

Conductive education, which was developed at the Petö Institute in Budapest, has been publicised incorrectly as a method of treatment for children with cerebral palsy. From the results of information given and our own observations during a week''s visit to the institute we conclude that a minority of carefully selected children with cerebral palsy and spina bifida, who have a relatively good prognosis, are educated at the institute; the education is carried out with appropriate medical, surgical, and orthotic intervention; and the children probably function better as a result of the intensive programme than do similar children in Britain in areas where therapy is scarce. They seem to achieve, however, what we would expect similar children in Britain to do when facilities are adequate. Though our findings do not therefore justify using public funds to refer children to the institute, some (self selected) families benefit from a visit, particularly from the positive attitudes of the staff. The role of the conductor and the integration of programmes into a classroom setting have much to recommend them, and conductive education, if successfully transferred to Britain, might be beneficial to a wider range of children than in Hungary.