Queerly, Hopelessly, Precariously

2021 ◽  
pp. 697-719
Author(s):  
Hwa-Jen Tsai
Keyword(s):  
Migrant Workers ◽  
Global Economy ◽  
Spatial Expansion ◽  
Wall Street ◽  
Feature Film ◽  
Downward Spiral ◽  
Queer Politics ◽  
Politics Of Resistance ◽  
Neoliberal Restructuring ◽  
Critical Intervention

This paper reimagines a queer politics of globalization through three contemporary Taiwanese films. Lesbian Factory (2010) and Rainbow Popcorn (2013) were made by labor activists and focused on a landmark labor protest organized by Filipina migrant workers in Taiwan. However, during the filming process, the documentaries inadvertently turn into productions about migration, workers' protests, and new forms of queer intimacy and relationality forged among people who are on the move. Thanatos, Drunk (2015) is a feature film that centers on those who are forced to move, those without mobility, and those who have failed to move even when doing so is necessary for one's survival. Whether queer or straight in the film, everyone is on a downward spiral in life due to the neoliberal restructuring of the global economy. Drawing from queer theories of negativity, affect, and relationality, this paper rethinks queerness in regard to migration by establishing connections between queers' and migrants' negative relation to space and movement. Further, it cautions against the rhetoric of occupation in the Occupy Wall Street movement. It critiques the tendency to valorize mobility, capacity, and the logic of spatial expansion embedded in that of “occupy,” as well as the same logic that underlines contemporary Chinese nationalist and triumphalist thinking dominating large parts of Chinese and Sinophone locations. Ultimately, this paper is a critical intervention from the position of geopolitical and academic marginality. It reimagines the global politics of resistance against neoliberal economic order, the resurgence of nationalism, and imperialist ambition by placing subjects of resistance on the other side of mobility, spatial expansion, hope, and capacity—where new forms of intimacy and relationality also emerge.

The Central Asian Economies in the Twenty-First Century

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Pomfret
Keyword(s):  
Migrant Workers ◽  
Global Economy ◽  
Oil And Gas ◽  
The United States ◽  
Kyrgyz Republic ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Central Asian ◽  
Asian Economies ◽  
Belt And Road ◽  
External Powers

This book analyzes the Central Asian economies of Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan, from their buffeting by the commodity boom of the early 2000s to its collapse in 2014. The book examines the countries' relations with external powers and the possibilities for development offered by infrastructure projects as well as rail links between China and Europe. The transition of these nations from centrally planned to market-based economic systems was essentially complete by the early 2000s, when the region experienced a massive increase in world prices for energy and mineral exports. This raised incomes in the main oil and gas exporters, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan; brought more benefits to the most populous country, Uzbekistan; and left the poorest countries, the Kyrgyz Republic and Tajikistan, dependent on remittances from migrant workers in oil-rich Russia and Kazakhstan. The book considers the enhanced role of the Central Asian nations in the global economy and their varied ties to China, the European Union, Russia, and the United States. With improved infrastructure and connectivity between China and Europe (reflected in regular rail freight services since 2011 and China's announcement of its Belt and Road Initiative in 2013), relaxation of UN sanctions against Iran in 2016, and the change in Uzbekistan's presidency in late 2016, a window of opportunity appears to have opened for Central Asian countries to achieve more sustainable economic futures.

Language competence, identity construction and discursive boundary-making: Distancing and alignment in domestic migrant worker narratives

2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 (262) ◽  
pp. 97-122 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hans J. Ladegaard
Keyword(s):  
Identity Construction ◽  
Migrant Workers ◽  
Global Economy ◽  
English Language ◽  
Migrant Worker ◽  
Theoretical Concept ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
Language Competence ◽  
Boundary Making

AbstractMany people in developing countries are faced with a dilemma. If they stay at home, their children are kept in poverty with no prospects of a better future; if they become migrant workers, they will suffer long-term separation from their families. This article focuses on one of the weakest groups in the global economy: domestic migrant workers. It draws on a corpus of more than 400 narratives recorded at a church shelter in Hong Kong and among migrant worker returnees in rural Indonesia and the Philippines. In sharing sessions, migrant women share their experiences of working for abusive employers, and the article analyses how language is used to include and exclude. The women tell how their employers construct them as “incompetent” and “stupid” because they do not speak Chinese. However, faced by repression and marginalisation, the women use their superior English language skills to get back at their employers and momentarily gain the upper hand. Drawing on ideologies of language as the theoretical concept, the article provides a discourse analysis of selected excerpts focusing on language competence and identity construction.

Mental Health during Covid-19 Pandemic

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (02) ◽  
pp. 43-44
Author(s):  
R. Arul Saravanan
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Migrant Workers ◽  
Corona Virus ◽  
First Case ◽  
Downward Spiral

The march of the COVID 19 Pandemic has been relentless and India reported its first case on 27th January, 2020 from Kerala. On 24th march, 2020, India announced its first lockdown for prevention of the spread of corona virus. When the first panic button was pressed, there was initially, disbelief and denial. But as the writing on the wall became loud and clear, our populous nation has gone in a downward spiral. We even witnessed one of the largest exoduses in recent times, with thousands of migrant workers, walking back to their villages and homes.

Wall Street women: professional saviors of the global economy

2015 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 137-155 ◽  
Author(s):  
Melissa Fisher
Keyword(s):  
Financial Crisis ◽  
Global Economy ◽  
First Generation ◽  
Field Work ◽  
Financial Policy ◽  
Wall Street ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Cultural Power ◽  
The 2008 Financial Crisis ◽  
Practical Implications

Purpose – This paper aims to, by drawing on two decades of field work on Wall Street, explore the recent evolution in the gendering of Wall Street, as well as the potential effects – including the reproduction of financiers’ power – of that evolution. The 2008 financial crisis was depicted in strikingly gendered terms – with many commentators articulating a divide between masculine, greedy, risk-taking behavior and feminine, conservative, risk-averse approaches for healing the crisis. For a time, academics, journalists and women on Wall Street appeared to be in agreement in identifying women’s feminine styles as uniquely suited to lead – even repair – the economic debacle. Design/methodology/approach – The article is based on historical research, in-depth interviews and fieldwork with the first generation of Wall Street women from the 1970s up until 2013. Findings – In this article, it is argued that the preoccupation in feminine styles of leadership in finance primarily reproduces the power of white global financial elites rather than changes the culture of Wall Street or breaks down existent structures of power and inequality. Research limitations/implications – The research focuses primarily on the ways American global financial elites maintain power, and does not examine the ways in which the power of other international elites working in finance is reproduced in a similar or different manner. Practical implications – The findings of the article provide practical implications for understanding the gendering of financial policy making and how that gendering maintains or reproduces the economic system. Social implications – The paper provides an understanding of how the gendered rhertoric of the financial crisis maintains not only the economic power of global financial elites in finance but also their social and cultural power. Originality/value – The paper is based on original, unique, historical ethnographic research on the first generation of women on Wall Street.

Nineteenth-Century United States Literary Culture and Transnationality

PMLA ◽  
2003 ◽  
Vol 118 (1) ◽  
pp. 78-89 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Carlos Rowe
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Migrant Workers ◽  
Global Economy ◽  
First Language ◽  
Cultural Hybridity ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Critical View ◽  
Nineteenth Century United States ◽  
Late Modern ◽  
The Continuum

The term transnationalism is used frequently in reference to the rapid circulation of “capital, labor, technology, and media images” in the global economy governed by postindustrial capitalism (Sharpe 110). When incorporated into such phrases as transnational capitalism, the term implies a critical view of historically specific late modern or postmodern practices of globalizing production, marketing, distribution, and consumption for neocolonial ends. By the same token, transnationalism is often used to suggest counterhegemonic practices prompted by or accompanying the migrations and diasporas occasioned by these new economic processes of globalization. Thus, Homi Bhabha's privileging of “cultural hybridity” as a way to resist global homogenization is often traceable to his emphasis on “migrant workers,” who are “part of the massive economic and political diaspora of the modern world” and thus “embody […] that moment blasted out of the continuum of history” (8). If these new, exploited cosmopolitans experience every day their dislocation from the familiar boundaries of nation, first language, and citizenship, they may also be particularly able to comprehend how to negotiate transnational situations, even in some cases turning such circumstances to their advantage.

Guest Workers and Resistance to U.S. Corporate Despotism

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Immanuel Ness
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Migrant Workers ◽  
Global Economy ◽  
The United States ◽  
Rapid Expansion ◽  
Organized Labor ◽  
Migrant Labor ◽  
Industrial Workers ◽  
Guest Workers ◽  
Labor Costs

This book thoroughly investigates the use of guest workers in the United States, the largest recipient of migrant labor in the world. The book argues that the use of migrant labor is increasing in importance and represents despotic practices calculated by key U.S. business leaders in the global economy to lower labor costs and expand profits under the guise of filling a shortage of labor for substandard or scarce skilled jobs. The book shows how worker migration and guest worker programs weaken the power of labor in both sending and receiving countries. The in-depth case studies of the rapid expansion of technology and industrial workers from India and hospitality workers from Jamaica reveal how these programs expose guest workers to employers' abuses and class tensions in their home countries while decreasing jobs for American workers and undermining U.S. organized labor. Where other studies of labor migration focus on undocumented immigrant labor and contend immigrants fill jobs that others do not want, this is the first to truly advance understanding of the role of migrant labor in the transformation of the working class in the early twenty-first century. Questioning why global capitalists must rely on migrant workers for economic sustenance, the book rejects the notion that temporary workers enthusiastically go to the United States for low-paying jobs. Instead, the book asserts the motivations for improving living standards in the United States are greatly exaggerated by the media and details the ways organized labor ought to be protecting the interests of American and guest workers in the United States.

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