Maternal Lineages from 10-11th Century Commoner Cemeteries of the Carpathian Basin

Nomadic groups of conquering Hungarians played a predominant role in Hungarian prehistory, but genetic data are available only from the immigrant elite strata. Most of the 10-11th century remains in the Carpathian Basin belong to common people, whose origin and relation to the immigrant elite have been widely debated. Mitogenome sequences were obtained from 202 individuals with next generation sequencing combined with hybridization capture. Median joining networks were used for phylogenetic analysis. The commoner population was compared to 87 ancient Eurasian populations with sequence-based (Fst) and haplogroup-based population genetic methods. The haplogroup composition of the commoner population markedly differs from that of the elite, and, in contrast to the elite, commoners cluster with European populations. Alongside this, detectable sub-haplogroup sharing indicates admixture between the elite and the commoners. The majority of the 10-11th century commoners most likely represent local populations of the Carpathian Basin, which admixed with the eastern immigrant groups (which included conquering Hungarians).

The genetic prehistory of the Baltic Sea region

While the series of events that shaped the transition between foraging societies and food producers are well described for Central and Southern Europe, genetic evidence from Northern Europe surrounding the Baltic Sea is still sparse. Here, we report genome-wide DNA data from 38 ancient North Europeans ranging from ~9500 to 2200 years before present. Our analysis provides genetic evidence that hunter-gatherers settled Scandinavia via two routes. We reveal that the first Scandinavian farmers derive their ancestry from Anatolia 1000 years earlier than previously demonstrated. The range of Mesolithic Western hunter-gatherers extended to the east of the Baltic Sea, where these populations persisted without gene-flow from Central European farmers during the Early and Middle Neolithic. The arrival of steppe pastoralists in the Late Neolithic introduced a major shift in economy and mediated the spread of a new ancestry associated with the Corded Ware Complex in Northern Europe.

Ancestry and demography and descendants of Iron Age nomads of the Eurasian Steppe

During the 1st millennium before the Common Era (BCE), nomadic tribes associated with the Iron Age Scythian culture spread over the Eurasian Steppe, covering a territory of more than 3,500 km in breadth. To understand the demographic processes behind the spread of the Scythian culture, we analysed genomic data from eight individuals and a mitochondrial dataset of 96 individuals originating in eastern and western parts of the Eurasian Steppe. Genomic inference reveals that Scythians in the east and the west of the steppe zone can best be described as a mixture of Yamnaya-related ancestry and an East Asian component. Demographic modelling suggests independent origins for eastern and western groups with ongoing gene-flow between them, plausibly explaining the striking uniformity of their material culture. We also find evidence that significant gene-flow from east to west Eurasia must have occurred early during the Iron Age.

Dynamics of Indian Ocean Slavery Revealed through Isotopic Data from the Colonial Era Cobern Street Burial Site, Cape Town, South Africa (1750-1827)

The Dutch East India Company (VOC) intended the Cape of Good Hope to be a refreshment stop for ships travelling between the Netherlands and its eastern colonies. The indigenous Khoisan, however, did not constitute an adequate workforce, therefore the VOC imported slaves from East Africa, Madagascar and Asia to expand the workforce. Cape Town became a cosmopolitan settlement with different categories of people, amongst them a non-European underclass that consisted of slaves, exiles, convicts and free-blacks. This study integrated new strontium isotope data with carbon and nitrogen isotope results from an 18th-19th century burial ground at Cobern Street, Cape Town, to identify non-European forced migrants to the Cape. The aim of the study was to elucidate individual mobility patterns, the age at which the forced migration took place and, if possible, geographical provenance. Using three proxies, 87Sr/86Sr, δ13Cdentine and the presence of dental modifications, a majority (54.5%) of the individuals were found to be born non-locally. In addition, the 87Sr/86Sr data suggested that the non-locally born men came from more diverse geographic origins than the migrant women. Possible provenances were suggested for two individuals. These results contribute to an improved understanding of the dynamics of slave trading in the Indian Ocean world.

A Fragmentary Archive: Migratory Feelings in Early Anglo-Saxon Women's Letters

The letters by Anglo-Saxon women in the Boniface correspondence are connected by cultural practices and emotions centered on the conversion mission that functioned to maintain connections between the Anglo-Saxon diaspora. A striking recurring focus of these letters is on loss and isolation, which connects them to the Old English elegies. Many of the letters describe the writers' traumatic experiences that result from the death or absence of kin. These are women who endured the trauma of being left behind when others migrated overseas or who, in traveling away from their homeland, found themselves isolated in an alien environment, displaced in time as well as space. This article offers an analysis of the letters, focusing on the queer temporalities they explore, the queer emotions they evoke, and the queer kinships that they forge. It argues that the women's letters represent fragments of an early queer archive of migratory feelings.

Why was Infant Mortality so High in Eastern England in the mid Nineteenth Century?

This paper re-examines the high rates of infant mortality observed in rural areas of eastern England in the early years of civil registration. Infant mortality rates in some rural registration districts in the East Riding of Yorkshire, Cambridgeshire and Norfolk were higher than those in the mill towns of Lancashire. After describing the areas affected, this paper considers three potential explanations: environmental factors, poor-quality child care associated with the employment of women in agriculture, and the possibility that the high rates were the artefactual consequence of migrant women workers bringing their children to these areas. These explanations are then assessed using a range of evidence. In the absence of reliable cause of death data, recourse is had to three alternative approaches. The first involves the use of the exceptionally detailed tabulations of ages at death within the first year of life provided in the Registrar General's Annual Reports for the 1840s to assess whether the 'excess' infant deaths in rural areas of eastern England happened in the immediate post-natal period or later in the first year of life. Second, data on the seasonality of mortality in the 1840s are examined to see whether the zone of 'excess' infant mortality manifested a distinctive seasonal pattern. Finally, a regression approach is employed involving the addition of covariates to regression models. The conclusion is that no single factor was responsible for the 'excess' infant mortality, but a plausible account can be constructed which blends elements of all three of the potential explanations mentioned above with the specific historical context of these areas of eastern England.

Height convergence and internal migration in mid-twentieth-century Italy

Height convergence across Italian regions during the second half of the twentieth century is a widely recognized fact. However, it has been suggested that this process was partly affected by the massive migratory flow of people from southern to northern Italy in the 1950s and 1960s, which greatly slowed the height growth rate in the receiving regions, since immigrants were on average shorter than the receiving northern population. The main aims of this study were to estimate the speed of height convergence of Italian military conscripts in the second half of the twentieth century, and to estimate the contribution of internal migration from the south to the north of Italy to height convergence. We hypothesized that migrants from southern Italy reduced height levels among northerners relative to what they would have been without considering migration. We used cohort data on Italian conscripts born in 1951 and 1980. Results indicate that internal migration may explain from 24 to 32.7 percent of height convergence, meaning that ignoring migration flows yields an overestimation of the height changes for conscripts living in the south of Italy.

[Psychiatrists as refugees in Palestine: 1933-1945]

The paper discusses the migration of German Jewish psychiatrists from Nazi Germany to Palestine during the 1930s. It focuses on their special assimilation process as immigrants who belonged to a culture different from the dominant Eastern European socialist Zionism and as a professional group which belonged to a marginalized discipline.

[Sanitary risks related to importation of workers to Reunion Island during the XIXth century]

The XIXth century is the period of the sugar industrialization in Réunion. In spite of the abolition of the slaves trade in 1817 and the English abolition of the slavery of 1833, the sugar industry imported large numbers of African and Asian workers which exceeded in number the white population and that of the slaves. As the public health and the health controls came under the governor, the prevention was insufficient in the XIXth century. There were several establishments of "decontamination", sanitary observation in Saint-Denis under the authority of the colonial doctor. However, in the absence of a lazaret, the ship which transported imported workers had to be suspected to be contaminated not to be granted access. The lazaret of La grande chaloupe opened lately around 1850. Under the pressure of the industry, traders and captains, not all immigrants passed by the lazaret before entering the island. Therefore, the public health relative to the massive immigration in Réunion depended more on the private domain than on the public domain because the immigration was linked with major economic interests.

Transnational aging careers: on transformation of kinship and citizenship in the context of migration among Bulgarian Muslims in Spain

This article focuses on “transnational aging careers,” a group of elderly migrants who are in constant movement between social contexts, families, and states. Drawing on a case of Bulgarian Muslim migrants in Spain, I look into the ruptures in the structure of care arrangements, kin expectations, and family relations, which migration triggers. I suggest that these transformations, albeit subtle, lead to reformulation of the fabric of the family. In this way, transnational care-motivated mobility affects future security based on kin reciprocity. At the same time, migration disrupts aging careers’ social citizenship both in Bulgaria and in Spain by limiting or even excluding them from state welfare support. I argue that these two lines of transformation, kinship and citizenship, result in new forms of gender and intergenerational inequalities. Furthermore, their intersection leads to a move from welfare to kinfare, which not only affects present arrangements between migrants, but also entails future insecurities.

Negotiating user preferences, discrimination, and demand for migrant labour in long-term care

The restructuring of long-term care for older people has been marked both by the role of the market and by the role of migrant labor. This article develops the analysis of these processes at the microlevel of the provision of care. It draws on data collected as part of a cross-national comparative study on the employment of migrant care workers in residential care homes and home care services for older people in England and Ireland. The article examines, first, the ways in which divisions of race, ethnicity, and citizenship shape the preferences of service providers/employers and some service users as regards who provides care. Second, it examines how the institutional context of quasi-markets in long-term care shapes the negotiation of demand for migrant labor, the racialized preferences of individual users, alongside the rights of care workers to non-discrimination. It is argued that market-oriented policies for personalization, as well as for cost containment, raise implications for divisions of race, ethnicity, and citizenship in the provision of long-term care. At the same time, those divisions point to the limits of framing care in terms of the preferences of the individual as opposed to the social relations in which care is embedded.

Labour mobility and housing: the impact of housing tenure and housing affordability on labour migration in the Czech Republic

This article examines whether housing tenure and regional differences in housing affordability have an impact on labour mobility. This relationship is important for understanding the sources of structural unemployment and impediments to economic growth. Using two sample surveys from the Czech Republic, this research reveals that at the individual level housing tenure is the most powerful factor determining willingness to change residence for employment reasons. A time-series regression analysis reveals that the impact of housing affordability on observed interregional migration patterns is relatively weak and that this effect is concentrated among the highly educated seeking employment in the capital, Prague. These results demonstrate that housing tenure has a significant impact on labour migration plans in case of unemployment and that the dynamic impact of regional differences in housing affordability on labour mobility is concentrated within the most highly skilled segment of the labour force.

Care of older people in migration contexts: local and transnational arrangements between Peru and Spain

Care arrangements for the elderly are becoming a main social process in contemporary societies due to socio-political and lifestyle changes over the last few decades. The family and the State play a basic role in the construction of care systems and in the establishment of strategies to access care resources. In the present context of migration, these resources interact at a transnational level, challenging family and State migratory regimes. These new realities need the recognition of basic international social rights, as the experiences of Peruvians living in a migration context in Spain show.

Rethinking care through social reproduction: articulating circuits of migration

Care has come to dominate much feminist research on globalized migrations and the transfer of labor from the South to the North, while the older concept of reproduction had been pushed into the background but is now becoming the subject of debates on the commodification of care in the household and changes in welfare state policies. This article argues that we could achieve a better understanding of the different modalities and trajectories of care in the reproduction of individuals, families, and communities, both of migrant and nonmigrant populations by articulating the diverse circuits of migration, in particular that of labor and the family. In doing this, I go back to the earlier North American writing on racialized minorities and migrants and stratified social reproduction. I also explore insights from current Asian studies of gendered circuits of migration connecting labor and marriage migrations as well as the notion of global householding that highlights the gender politics of social reproduction operating within and beyond households in institutional and welfare architectures. In contrast to Asia, there has relatively been little exploration in European studies of the articulation of labor and family migrations through the lens of social reproduction. However, connecting the different types of migration enables us to achieve a more complex understanding of care trajectories and their contribution to social reproduction.

Migrants and the diffusion of low marital fertility in Belgium

Although the diffusion of fertility behavior between different social strata in historical communities has received considerable attention in recent studies, the relationship between the diffusion of fertility behavior and the diffusion of people (migration) during the nineteenth century remains largely underexplored. Evidence from population registers compiled in the Historical Database of the Liège Region, covering the period of 1812 to 1900, reveals that migrant couples in Sart, Belgium, from 1850 to 1874 and from 1875 to 1899 had a reduced risk of conception. The incorporation of geographical mobility, as well as the migrant status of both husbands and wives, into this fertility research sheds light not only on the spread of ideas and behaviors but also on the possible reasons why the ideas and behaviors of immigrants might have been similar to, or different from, those of a native-born population.

Care workers, care drain, and care chains: reflections on care, migration, and citizenship

In this article, we discuss a case study that deals with the care chain phenomenon and focuses on the question of how Poland and the Ukraine as sending countries and Poland as a receiving country are affected and deal with female migrant domestic workers. We look at the ways in which these women organize care replacement for their families left behind and at those families’ care strategies. As public discourse in both countries is reacting to the feminization of migration in a form that specifically questions the social citizenship obligations of these women, we also look at the media portrayal of the situation of nonmigrating children. Finally, we explore how different aspects of citizenship matter in transnational care work migration movements.

Transnational spaces of care: migrant nurses in Norway

This article argues that international nurse recruitment from Latvia to Norway is not a win–win situation. The gains and losses of nurse migration are unevenly distributed between sender and receiver countries. On the basis of empirical research and interviews with Latvian nurses and families they left behind, this article argues that nurse migration transforms families and communities and that national health services now become global workplaces. Some decades ago feminist research pointed to the fact that the welfare state was based on a male breadwinner family and women’s unpaid production of care work at home. Today this production of unpaid care is “outsourced” from richer to poorer countries and is related to an emergence of transnational spaces of care. International nurse recruitment and global nurse care chains in Norway increasingly provide the labor that prevents the new adult worker model and gender equality politics from being disrupted in times where families are overloaded with elder care loads.

Who has time for Ćejf? Postsocialist migration and slow coffee in neoliberal Chicago

The official end to communism in Eastern Europe marked the onset of major migratory movements. Perhaps the most abrupt of these population shifts was the displacement of more than two million people in Yugoslavia's violent dissolution. Much of the existing literature on refugee migration has focused on victimization and citizenship claims. Alternatively, I draw on ethnographic research among Bosnian refugee-immigrants in Chicago to examine how a group of adult women migrants used one commodity - coffee - to manage and evaluate their displacements. The kind of slow-coffee drinking described here is informed by an ethics of consumption developed under Yugoslav socialism, nostalgias for pre-Yugoslav Islam and pre-Ottoman Bosnia, and exposure to U.S. neoliberalism. Placing consumption at the center of analysis reveals the structural constraints of the postconflict period and brings to light refugees’ active navigations of everyday life and society in their postsocialist present, lived out as refugees in the United States.

The grotesque female in Malaysian poems: shaping the migrant's psyche

The works of Malaysian poet, Wong Phui Nam's Against the Wilderness (vii) China bride and Variations on a Birthday Theme (iv) Kali, illustrate a bride and a mother in terrifying images. Wong's stylistic form of representing the female body through startling images of inversion and degradation evoke feelings of unease. The suspension between the known and the unknown causes a bewildering reality verging on madness. Interpreted through the lens of the carnivalesque, specifically, the grotesque body, festive language and parody, I attempt to reconstruct the psyche of the Chinese migrant which underpins these poems. The migrant who arrived in Malaya during the colonial era in the early nineteenth century faced political and social struggles in adapting to a new land. In the poems, the migrant juxtaposes his position to a female and uses the female body as a site of contention to intensify the torment of the psyche and to reflect the despair of the Chinese in Malaysia.

Social mobility and reproduction among nineteenth-century Colorado silver prospectors

Popular cultural convention holds that, for those with enough gumption, the American frontier was a land of unparalleled opportunity. However, careful research throws doubt on the universality of this convention. Thus, the authors explore factors that increase or decrease opportunities for upward mobility in frontier towns. The authors' longitudinal study of late nineteenth century silver prospectors in Gothic, Colorado, demonstrates that while enthusiastic prospecting in Gothic did not lead to upward social mobility, it did provide enhanced reproductive opportunities.

Migration in far west Nepal: intergenerational linkages between internal and international migration of rural-to-urban migrants

In Nepal, international labor migration to India and overseas, as well as internal migration to the rural Nepalese lowlands, is of high socioeconomic significance. Scholarly debates about migration in Nepal have gradually shifted from an economic to a more holistic perspective, also incorporating social dimensions. However, little evidence has been generated about internal migration to urban destinations and the potential linkages between international and internal migration. This article draws on Bourdieu's “Theory of Practice” and sees migration as a social practice. Accordingly, migration practice is regarded as a strategy social agents apply to increase or transfer capitals and ultimately secure or improve their social position. Evidence for this argument is based on a qualitative case study of rural to urban migrants in Far West Nepal conducted in July and August 2009. The study at hand addresses linkages between internal and international migration practices and provides insight about a social stratum that is often neglected in migration research: the middle class and, more precisely, government employees. The authors show that social relations are crucial for channeling internal migration to a specific destination. Furthermore, they unveil how internal migration is connected to the international labor migration of former generations. Finally, the authors examine how migration strategies adopted over generations create multi-local social networks rooted in the family's place of origin.

Don't ask me where I'm from: thoughts of immigrants to Catalonia on social integration and cultural capital

Once you get here, you realize that thinking Foucault was writing for you was terribly naïve, since in reality I did not exist as a subject for anyone like Foucault, or if I did it was only as an object of study’, recalls one of the protagonists in this essay, a collage of fragments of interviews with foreign immigrants from impoverished countries who have settled in Barcelona and other Catalan towns in recent years. Widespread prejudice in the host society dictates that these people are generalized as being on a lower cultural level, anonymous members of the growing mass of immigrants prepared to work at any price. The prejudice seems to be confirmed by the fact that the great majority of them do low-skilled or unskilled work in sectors such as the building trade, hotels and restaurants and domestic service. The reality, however, is very different. The average level of formal education of these immigrants is similar to that of the host population. It is the precariousness of their legal status or the often insurmountable barriers preventing recognition of their academic and/or professional qualifications, or simply cultural prejudice, that condemn them to accept jobs well below their personal potential. Thus, the host society wastes social and cultural capital of the first order, and lays foundations for a permanent division between ‘us’ and ‘them’. This essay offers a modest but revealing sample of the quality and diversity of the ideas and viewpoints of the immigrants themselves, an asset we continue to at best underestimate or more often ignore altogether.

"Deseos y Dolores": mapping desire, suffering, and (dis)loyalty within transnational partnerships

This piece considers the deseos -- wants, desires, needs -- and dolores -- pain or sorrow -- of individuals in US-Mexico transnational partnerships. For transnational Mexicans, “desire” manifests as diverse, even contradictory, expressions of emotion. Migration is intertwined with multiple desires within intimate relationships, but is also tied to suffering across borders. Conflicting articulations of deseos y dolores reveal gender politics as well as the broader socioeconomic inequalities that drive migration and result in the transborder movement that separates couples and family members in a transnational space.

South Africans and Mexicans in Florida: intergroup conflict

Newly arriving immigrants from Southern Africa and Mexicans do not get on well in the sunbelt state of Florida. A persistent theme emerging from discussions with South Africans on their relationship with Mexicans is that both sides perceive the other as culturally ethnocentric. The antagonistic relationship between both social groups is due to strong ethnic bonds and the clash of cultures.

Bridges to nowhere: hosts, migrants, and the chimera of social capital in three African cities

Interest in migrant social networks and social capital has grown substantially over the past several decades. The relationship between “host” and “migrant” communities remains central to these scholarly debates. Recently urbanized cities in Africa, which include large numbers of “native-born” or internal migrants, challenge basic presumptions about host/migrant distinctions informing many of these discussions. Using comparable survey data from Johannesburg, Maputo, and Nairobi, we examine 1) the nature of social connectedness in terms of residence and nativity characteristics; and 2) the relationship between residence and nativity characteristics and three measures of trust within and across communities. Our findings suggest that the host/migrant distinction may not be particularly revealing in African cities where domestic mobility, social fragmentation and the absence of bridging institutions result in relatively low levels of trust both within and across communities. These findings underscore the need for new concepts to study “communities of strangers” and how people strategize their social mobility in urban contexts.

"Now if you have only sons you are dead": migration, gender, and family economy in twentieth century northwestern Ghana

This article explores the interconnectedness between labor migration, gender, and the family economy in northwestern Ghana in the 20th century. It focuses specifically on the Dagaaba of the Nadowli and Jirapa administrative districts of what is now the Upper West Region (UWR). It examines how the relationships between men and women in terms of roles, status, access to productive resources and inheritance, changed in tandem with broader changes in society in the 20th century; changes that over time produced enhanced value and elevated status for women in the family. These changes in gender relations are reflected increasingly in the belief among elderly men that ‘now if you have only sons, you are dead’. By focusing on the lived experiences of ordinary women and men in the migration process, it argues that even though indigenous social structures privileged men over women in almost all spheres of life, Dagaaba women were nonetheless significantly active in shaping the history of their communities and that gender relations in Dagaaba communities were not static — they changed over time and generation. This article contributes to the ongoing discussion of the internal migration phenomenon in West Africa, which has so far attracted scant historical analysis.

Democracy on the edge: limits and possibilities in the implementation of an urban reform agenda in Brazil

The 1990s in Brazil were a time of institutional advances in the areas of housing and urban rights following the signing of the new constitution in 1988 that incorporated the principles of the social function of cities and property, recognition of the right to ownership of informal urban squatters and the direct participation of citizens in urban policy decision processes. These propositions are the pillars of the urban reform agenda which, since the creation of the Ministry of Cities by the Lula government, has come under the federal executive branch. This article evaluates the limitations and opportunities involved in implementing this agenda on the basis of two policies proposed by the ministry — the National Cities Council and the campaign for Participatory Master Plans — focusing the analysis on government organization in the area of urban development in its relationship with the political system and the characteristics of Brazilian democracy.

The form, the permit and the photograph: an archive of mobility between South Africa and India

Inspired by recent scholarship that calls for a more critical engagement with archives and knowledge production, this article plots the biography of an archive in Cape Town. Unravelling the layers of paperwork, it locates the origins of the archive in a repressive state project of excluding Indian immigrants and controlling those within the borders of the Cape Colony. The paper trail reveals documents of identity and the state’s attempts to verify identity. In seeking to answer the question as to how the historian should approach such an archive of control and surveillance, it concludes that a social history and gendered approach to migration is possible and the real treasures are those documents that enter the archive beyond the limits of state intentions.

Squatting and urban renewal: the interaction of squatter movements and strategies of urban restructuring in Berlin

Squatting as a housing strategy and as a tool of urban social movements accompanies the development of capitalist cities worldwide. We argue that the dynamics of squatter movements are directly connected to strategies of urban renewal in that movement conjunctures occur when urban regimes are in crisis. An analysis of the history of Berlin squatter movements, their political context and their effects on urban policies since the 1970s, clearly shows how massive mobilizations at the beginning of the 1980s and in the early 1990s developed in a context of transition in regimes of urban renewal. The crisis of Fordist city planning at the end of the 1970s provoked a movement of "rehab squatting" ('Instandbesetzung'), which contributed to the institutionalization of "cautious urban renewal" ('behutsame Stadterneuerung') in an important way. The second rupture in Berlin's urban renewal became apparent in 1989 and 1990, when the necessity of restoring whole inner-city districts constituted a new, budget-straining challenge for urban policymaking. Whilst in the 1980s the squatter movement became a central condition for and a political factor of the transition to "cautious urban renewal," in the 1990s large-scale squatting — mainly in the eastern parts of the city — is better understood as an alien element in times of neoliberal urban restructuring.

Housing shortage and communal politics in European cities around 1900: the cases of Basel 1889 and Belgrade 1906

In the second half of the nineteenth century, European cities faced a problem well known in postindependence India: the population escalated due to immigration from the rural areas causing rapid and considerable housing shortage. This forced large parts of the poorer classes into miserable living conditions. Lack of space, money and hygiene facilitated the epidemic spread of diseases such as tuberculosis and diarrhoea. The town authorities were called upon to stop speculation and to launch state financed housing projects. However, in reality the situation was very different depending on the place, political aims and financial possibilities arising out of the particular crisis. This article discusses the issue in two continental European cities of around 100,000 inhabitants. The Swiss town of Basel was a hub of trade in Central Europe, while Belgrade was the capital of the Southeastern European kingdom of Serbia.

“Humanitarian aid is never a crime”: humanitarianism and illegality in migrant advocacy

I analyze the case of humanitarian pro-migrant activists in southern Arizona between 2000 and 2010 to explore how contending groups wield law and legality claims in a dynamic policy environment. Humanitarian activists both evade and engage the law. They appeal to a higher law to elude charges that they are acting illegally, while seeking assurances that their actions are within the law. Law enforcement agents rely on the authority and technical neutrality of the law in redefining humanitarian aid as illegal, while expanding their own claims to carry out humanitarian work. This case study of advocacy on behalf of “illegal” migrants highlights how both activists and those who enforce the law redefine legality in strategic ways.

Economics of human trafficking

Because freedom of choice and economic gain are at the heart of productivity, human trafficking impedes national and international economic growth. Within the next 10 years, crime experts expect human trafficking to surpass drug and arms trafficking in its incidence, cost to human well-being, and profitability to criminals (Schauer and Wheaton, 2006: 164-165). The loss of agency from human trafficking as well as from modern slavery is the result of human vulnerability (Bales, 2000: 15). As people become vulnerable to exploitation and businesses continually seek the lowest-cost labour sources, trafficking human beings generates profit and a market for human trafficking is created. This paper presents an economic model of human trafficking that encompasses all known economic factors that affect human trafficking both across and within national borders. We envision human trafficking as a monopolistically competitive industry in which traffickers act as intermediaries between vulnerable individuals and employers by supplying differentiated products to employers. In the human trafficking market, the consumers are employers of trafficked labour and the products are human beings. Using a rational-choice framework of human trafficking we explain the social situations that shape relocation and working decisions of vulnerable populations leading to human trafficking, the impetus for being a trafficker, and the decisions by employers of trafficked individuals. The goal of this paper is to provide a common ground upon which policymakers and researchers can collaborate to decrease the incidence of trafficking in humans.

Childhood conditions, migration, and mortality: Migrants and natives in 19th‐century cities

Migrants often have lower mortality than natives in spite of relatively unfavorable social and economic characteristics. Although migrants have a short-run advantage due to the selective migration of healthy workers, persistent health and mortality differences between migrants and natives may be long-run effects of different experiences in childhood. We made use of a natural experiment resulting from rural-to-urban migration in the mid-19th century. Mortality was much higher in urban areas, especially in rapidly growing industrial cities. Migrants usually came from healthier rural origins as young adults. Data used in this study is available from 19th-century Belgian population registers describing two sites: a rapidly growing industrial city and a small town that became an industrial suburb. We found evidence of three processes that lead to differences between the mortality of migrants and natives. First, recent migrants had lower mortality than natives, because they were self-selected for good health when they arrived. This advantage decreased with time spent in the destination. Second, migrants from rural backgrounds had a disadvantage in epidemic years, because they had less experience with these diseases. Third, migrants from rural areas had lower mortality at older (but not younger) ages, even if they had migrated more than 10 years earlier. We interpret this as a long-run consequence of less exposure to disease in childhood.

The Value of "Experience" and the labour market entry of new immigrants to Canada

We use data from three waves of the Longitudinal Survey of Immigrants to Canada to compare how pre-immigration experience in hi-tech and regulated occupations affects employment outcomes. While differences do decline over time, those with experience in an unregulated hi-tech occupation are more likely to be employed sooner in a matching and/or full time job. Immigrants with hi-tech occupational experience are more likely to have their foreign experience accepted, possibly due to the transferability of these skills and the absence of institutional barriers. These findings indicate important sectoral, regulatory, and institutional differences in the treatment of pre-immigration experience, with policy implications.

Outsourcing care: how Peruvian migrants meet transnational family obligations

Migration from Peru has increased dramatically over the past decade, but the social and relational repercussions of these transnational movements have not yet been fully explored. Examination of the way migrants manage their responsibilities to dependent kin in Peru reveals that child fostering makes it possible for adults to migrate in search of better work opportunities by ensuring care for their children and company for their older relatives. For Peruvians engaging in labor migration, child fostering tempers some of the challenges of continuing to participate in established social networks from a distance.

The global household: toward a feminist postcapitalist international political economy

The goal of this article is to introduce a new category into international political economy-the global household-and to begin to widen the focus of international political economy to include nonmarket transactions and noncapitalist production. As an economic institution composed of transnational extended families and codwellers (including international migrants and family members left behind in countries of origin), the global household is engaged in coordinating international migration, sending and receiving billions of dollars in remittances, and organizing and conducting market- and non-market-oriented production on an international scale. We first trace the discursive antecedents of the global household concept to theories of the household as a site of noncapitalist production and to feminist ethnographies of transnational families. In order to demonstrate the potential significance and effect of this newly recognized institution, we estimate the aggregate population of global households, the size and distribution of remittances, and the magnitude and sectoral scope of global household production. We then examine the implications of the global household concept for three areas of inquiry: globalization, economic development, and the household politics of economic transformation. Finally, we briefly explore the possibilities for research and activism opened up by a feminist, postcapitalist international political economy centered on the global household.

Cabaret dancers: “Settle down in order to stay mobile?” Bridging theoretical orientations within transnational migration studies

Adopting a transnational perspective has become essential in understanding the contemporary practices taking place across borders, especially with respect to migrants. In this article, I argue that we can distinguish two theoretical orientations within transnational migration studies: one theorizing the complexity of transnational processes and focusing on established migrants settled in host countries; and the second theorizing transnational practices on the basis of different but continuous forms of mobility. Using the example of cabaret dancers in Switzerland, I show how they develop a very specific form of transnationality, which corresponds at first sight to the second theoretical orientation. Some of them are genuinely “world travelers”—they work in erotic clubs in Switzerland, Japan, or Lebanon, go home regularly to visit their families, or continue their studies. As such, their transnational morphology is highly influenced by gender as well as by the (transnational) nature of the sex industry and the opportunities and legal structure in Switzerland. Nevertheless, to remain in circulation, the dancers need to develop a kind of mobility capital, which involves, paradoxically, becoming “sedentarized” to a certain degree in Switzerland. The article thus advocates a theoretical framework that better captures the experiences of settled as well as of circulatory migrants.

"The perfect business": human trafficking and Lao-Thai cross-border migration

Over the past few years some governments and development organizations have increasingly articulated cross-border mobility as "trafficking in persons". The notion of a market where traffickers prey on the "supply" of migrants that flows across international borders to meet the "demand" for labour has become a central trope among anti-trafficking development organizations. This article problematizes such economism by drawing attention to the oscillating cross-border migration of Lao sex workers within a border zone between Laos and Thailand. It illuminates the incongruity between the recruitment of women into the sex industry along the Lao-Thai border and the market models that are employed by the anti-trafficking sector. It discusses the ways in which these cross-border markets are conceived in a context where aid programming is taking on an increasingly important role in the politics of borders. The author concludes that allusions to ideal forms of knowledge (in the guise of classic economic theory) and an emphasis on borders become necessary for anti-trafficking programmes in order to make their object of intervention legible as well as providing post-hoc rationalizations for their continuing operation.

"Every morning before you open the door you have to watch for that brown envelope": complexities and challenges of undertaking oral history with Ethiopian forced migrants in London, UK

The experience, "voice," and perceptions of the "individual refugee" is conspicuous by its virtual absence from academic research. The few studies dealing with black adn minority ethnic experiences from an emic perspective in relation to mental health do not specifically refer to refugees or asylum seekers. This article explores the use of oral history techniques when researching Ethiopian forced migrants in the U.K. Based on two pilot research projects which explored Ethiopian culture and experience in reference to mental health adn well-being, it will focus on some of the complexities and challenges encountered. This article acknowledges the need for an understanding of cultural traditions as well as history and experience when planning and implementing such research as this proved to be an essential part of the research process, ensuring that individual stories and truths were allowed to evolve. The oral history approach for this research therefore ensured that the experiential knowledge of the Ethiopian forced migrant participants was given space, authenticity, and validity.

Sweat or no sweat: foreign workers in the garment industry in Malaysia

In the last decade factory owners, in response to brand-name Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) parameters, have joined associations that verify (through a monitoring and audit system) that management does not exploit labour. There have been no reports of violations of codes of conduct concerning Malaysian workers but for foreign workers on contract there are certain areas that have been reported. These areas, including trade union membership, the withholding of workers' passports and unsuitable accommodation, generally escape notice because auditors who monitor factory compliance do not question the terms of contracts as long as they comply with national labour standards. This paper is based on research with foreign workers in Malaysia and argues that despite the success of the anti-sweatshop movement in a global context, the neo-liberal state in Malaysia continues to place certain restrictions on transnational labour migrants which breach garment industry codes of conduct. Available evidence does not support the assumption that CSR practices provide sufficient protection for both citizen and foreign workers on contract in the garment industry.