Friendship in a ‘Russian bar’ in London: An ethnography of a young Russian-speaking migrant community

Urban Studies ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 55 (3) ◽  
pp. 589-604 ◽  
Author(s):  
Darya Malyutina

Friendship is increasingly drawing attention as a concept used to explain the variety of ways in which migrants develop and sustain local and transnational relations. The advantage of this approach is its focus on social capital and those ‘sustaining and inspirational aspects’ of friendship that contribute to shaping different aspects of mobile individuals’ lives (Conradson and Latham, 2005, Friendship networks and transnationality in a world city: Antipodean migrants in London. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 31(2): 301), instead of interpreting migrant sociality and urban conviviality in super-diverse conditions in terms of ethnic communities. At the same time, the focus on friendship suggests the contingent and nuanced character of these close social ties. Drawing upon an ethnographic case study of a group of young Russian-speaking migrants from post-Soviet countries and their social relationships in a London bar, this article explores the role of friendship in a migrant group located within a particular physical and social space. The place served as an important social junction, and its Russian-speaking network of bartenders and regulars was a source of friendly support and empowerment for its members, helping them confront feelings of marginality. However, close and intimate ties were also at times connected with power relations, reflecting social divisions and the reinforcement of ethnic/national stereotypes regarding those excluded from this social network. This article highlights that friendship encompasses a diverse and dynamic range of inclusionary and exclusionary practices, and discusses how migrant sociality can be negotiated through these practices.

2018 ◽  
Vol 62 (3) ◽  
pp. 143-167
Author(s):  
Karol Kurnicki

Space gains significance through processes of social differentiation and bordering, and in consequence is connected with the creation and maintenance of social divisions. The author seeks confirmation of this fact at the level of everyday practices in housing settlements, tracking the mechanisms used by people in situations of contact and confrontation with others in the social space. He sets himself several aims: (1) he attempts to analyze selected spatial practices (parking within the settlement, the creation of belonging), reflecting the internal structuring strategies of housing settlements; (2) he points to the causes of that structuring, that is, the main contexts in which these practices occur and are strengthened; (3) he highlights the important role of space in processes of bordering and differentiation. Practices connected with parking and the creation of belonging, although apparently disparate and deriving from contrary spheres of social life make it possible to hypothesize that the striving for separation and the increased importance of space determine the organization of borders, divisions, and social relations in housing settlements.


2017 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
P. V. Jadhav

A person’s livelihood consists of her/his abilities, assets and activities required for a means of living. A gender analysis in the context of rural livelihood enables us to identify the different activities that men and women do. This paper intends to examine the role of gender in determining livelihood aspects like occupation structure and migration. It also investigates the role played by gender in determining employment, family income, and income distribution of individuals. The study is based on a census of 143 households of a village from the Bhadrak district of Odisha. The study observes significant gender gap in occupation structure, and income distribution across gender. If women are employed, household income increases significantly.


2020 ◽  
pp. 239965442094151
Author(s):  
Nidhi Subramanyam ◽  
Neema Kudva

Scholarship on community responses to land grabs for Special Economic Zones (SEZs) has overwhelmingly analysed cases of mobilization against SEZs or the subsequent trajectories of anti-dispossession struggles. We build on the role of the neoliberal broker state developed within this scholarship as well as theories on state and capital rescaling, and quiescence to power to explain the production of acquiescence to dispossession. Our in-depth case study of a large SEZ, the Mahindra World City (MWC) in Tamil Nadu, India, argues that acquiescence is produced in part by a multiscalar broker state that uses several intersecting strategies. These include threatening landowners with coercive eminent domain, facilitating market-based land acquisition by rescaled private capital that operates through a locally embedded network of brokers who persuade landowners, and utilizing the gains from brokerage to finance a populist welfare state that cushions the adverse impacts of dispossession. The use of customized market-based compensation further individualizes the experience of dispossession in an urbanizing context with no living memories of prior collective mobilization against dispossession. The multiscalar state thus intersects with rescaled capital in and through coercive, persuasive, and selected welfare strategies variously employed at the subnational and local scales to blunt resistance and produce acquiescence in the face of dispossession. Examining the decade long process of land acquisition in the MWC SEZ helps us theorize an evolving broker state and understand why it remains largely uncontested in contemporary rent-driven development.


2022 ◽  
pp. petgeo2021-029
Author(s):  
Diveena Danabalan ◽  
Jon G. Gluyas ◽  
Colin G. Macpherson ◽  
Thomas H. Abraham-James ◽  
Josh J. Bluett ◽  
...  

Commercial helium systems have been found to date as a serendipitous by-product of petroleum exploration. There are nevertheless significant differences in the source and migration properties of helium compared with petroleum. An understanding of these differences enables prospects for helium gas accumulations to be identified in regions where petroleum exploration would not be tenable. Here we show how the basic petroleum exploration playbook (source, primary migration from the source rock, secondary longer distance migration, trapping) can be modified to identify helium plays. Plays are the areas occupied by a prospective reservoir and overlying seal associated with a mature helium source. This is the first step in identifying the detail of helium prospects (discrete pools of trapped helium). We show how these principles, adapted for helium, can be applied using the Rukwa Basin in the Tanzanian section of the East African Rift as a case study. Thermal hiatus caused by rifting of the continental basement has resulted in a surface expression of deep crustal gas release in the form of high-nitrogen gas seeps containing up to 10% 4He. We calculate the total likely regional source rock helium generative capacity, identify the role of the Rungwe volcanic province in releasing the accumulated crustal helium, and show the spatial control of helium concentration dilution by the associated volcanic CO2. Nitrogen, both dissolved and as a free gas phase, plays a key role in the primary and secondary migration of crustal helium and its accumulation into what might become a commercially viable gas pool. This too is examined. We identify and discuss evidence that structures and seals suitable for trapping hydrocarbon and CO2 gases will likely also be efficient for helium accumulation on the timescale of the Rukwa basin activity.The Rukwa Basin prospective recoverable P50 resources of helium have been independently estimated to be about 138 billion standard cubic feet (2.78 x 109 m3 at STP). If this volume is confirmed it would represent about 25% of the current global helium reserve. Two exploration wells Tai 1 and Tai 2 completed by August 2021 have proved the presence of seal and reservoir horizons with the reservoirs containing significant helium shows.This article is part of the Energy Geoscience Series available at https://www.lyellcollection.org/cc/energy-geoscience-series


Author(s):  
June Y. Lee ◽  
Jane Yeonjae Lee

Increasingly, studies of entrepreneurship and migration have examined the role of immigrant entrepreneurs in revitalising and diversifying the economy of the host society. Further, recent transnational skilled entrepreneurs have been understood as being much more mobile in building international networks and collaborations between their home and host societies. These studies have tended to focus on the technically oriented entrepreneurs and to produce a single grand narrative about a particular migrant group that transfers knowledge and becomes a technical pioneer in their home society. This article scrutinises a group of first-generation Korean American female transnational entrepreneurs (FTEs) living in Silicon Valley and builds a nuanced understanding about the diversity and complexity of being transnational entrepreneurs. Through a multi-layered qualitative approach, the study illustrates that three major mechanisms are at play: 1) the ecosystem of Silicon Valley; 2) the dynamics of gender and ethnicity; and 3) the adoption to live in a transnational social field. These mechanisms shape the motivations, experiences, and performances of Korean American FTEs. This article reveals the contesting ways in which these three mechanisms work simultaneously with each other.


Insects ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 61 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark K. Asplen

Gains in our knowledge of dispersal and migration in insects have been largely limited to either wing-dimorphic species or current genetic model systems. Species belonging to these categories, however, represent only a tiny fraction of insect biodiversity, potentially making generalization problematic. In this perspective, I present three topics in which current and future research may lead to greater knowledge of these processes in wing-monomorphic insects with limited existing molecular tools. First, threshold genetic models are reviewed as testable hypotheses for the heritability of migratory traits, using the sweet potato whitefly (Bemisia tabaci) as a case study of a behaviorally-polymorphic migratory species lacking morphological or physiological differentiation. In addition, both adaptive and non-adaptive explanations for the empirically variable relationship between egg production and flight in wing-monomorphic insects are discussed. Finally, with respect to the largest order of insects (Hymenoptera), the role of sex determination mechanisms for haplodiploidy as a driver for natal dispersal (for inbreeding avoidance) versus philopatry (such as in local mate competition) is discussed.


1987 ◽  
Author(s):  
William A. Worrall ◽  
Ann W. Stockman

2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 389-398
Author(s):  
Ruchi Singh

Rural economies in developing countries are often characterized by credit constraints. Although few attempts have been made to understand the trends and patterns of male out-migration from Uttar Pradesh (UP), there is dearth of literature on the linkage between credit accessibility and male migration in rural Uttar Pradesh. The present study tries to fill this gap. The objective of this study is to assess the role of credit accessibility in determining rural male migration. A primary survey of 370 households was conducted in six villages of Jaunpur district in Uttar Pradesh. Simple statistical tools and a binary logistic regression model were used for analyzing the data. The result of the empirical analysis shows that various sources of credit and accessibility to them play a very important role in male migration in rural Uttar Pradesh. The study also found that the relationship between credit constraints and migration varies across various social groups in UP.


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