Refugees welcome: Arrival gifts, reciprocity, and the integration of forced migrants

2018 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 223-239 ◽  
Author(s):  
Volker M Heins ◽  
Christine Unrau

Against competing political theories of the integration of immigrants, we propose to reframe the relationship between the populations of host countries and arriving refugees in terms of a neo-Maussian theory of gift exchange. Using the example of the European refugee crisis of 2015 and the welcoming attitude of significant parts of German civil society, we argue that this particular situation should be understood as epitomizing the trend toward internal transnationalism. Increasingly, the “international” is becoming part and parcel of the “domestic” sphere. Since Marcel Mauss was concerned with the question of how separate, culturally different communities can establish ties of solidarity and cooperation between each other, we use his work to answer key questions about the relations between international refugees and native citizens in their home countries: What are the expectations underlying gift-giving in the context of welcoming refugees? Should refugees feel obliged to repay the arrival gifts? How should we deal with the normative ambivalence of gift-giving and its potentially humiliating effects on those who receive gifts but are unable to reciprocate? Most importantly, how does gift theory help us to clarify the very concept of integration which is at the heart of recent debates on the ethics of immigration?

Processes ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (8) ◽  
pp. 1264
Author(s):  
Meng Zeng ◽  
Lihang Liu ◽  
Fangyi Zhou ◽  
Yigui Xiao

Many studies have found that FDI can reduce the pollutant emissions of host countries. At the same time, the intensity of environmental regulation would affect the emission reduction effect of FDI in the host country. This study aims to reveal the internal mechanisms of this effect. Specifically, this paper studies the impact of FDI on technological innovation in China’s industrial sectors from the perspective of technology transactions from 2001 to 2019, and then analyzes whether the intensity of environmental regulation can promote the relationship. Results indicate that FDI promotes technological innovation through technology transactions. In addition, it finds that the intensity of environmental regulation significantly positively moderates the relationship between FDI and technological innovation, which is achieved by positively moderating the FDI–technology transaction relationship. Regional heterogeneity analysis is further conducted, and results show that in the eastern and western regions of China, FDI can stimulate technological innovation within regional industrial sectors through technology trading. Moreover, environmental regulation has a significant positive regulatory effect on the above relationship, but these effects are not supported by evidence in the central region of China.


Author(s):  
Danai Christopoulou ◽  
Nikolaos Papageorgiadis ◽  
Chengang Wang ◽  
Georgios Magkonis

AbstractWe study the role of the strength of Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) law protection and enforcement in influencing horizontal productivity spillovers from inward FDI to domestic firms in host countries. While most WTO countries adopted strong IPR legislation due to exogenous pressure resulting from the signing of the Trade-Related Aspects of IPR (TRIPS) agreement, public IPR enforcement strength continues to vary significantly between countries. We meta-analyse 49 studies and find that public IPR enforcement strength has a direct positive effect on horizontal productivity spillovers from inward FDI to domestic firms and a negative moderating effect on the relationship between IPR law protection strength and horizontal productivity spillovers from inward FDI to domestic firms.


2021 ◽  
pp. 002076402110102
Author(s):  
Ruth Abraham ◽  
Marja Leonhadt ◽  
Lars Lien ◽  
Ingrid Hansen ◽  
Edvard Hauff ◽  
...  

Background: Women are more vulnerable to mental health problems than men after migration, but little is known about the influence of religiosity/spirituality on their quality of life. The purpose of this study was to explore religiosity/spirituality, in relationships with various domains of quality of life, among female Eritrean refugees staying in Norwegian asylum centres. Method: A questionnaire assessing sociodemographic characteristics was used together with the World Health OrganizationQuality of Life – Spirituality, Religiosity and Personal Beliefs (WHOQOL-SRPB) questionnaire, which assesses religiosity/spirituality and domains of quality of life. A total of 63 adult female Eritrean refugees who had been granted asylum but were still living in asylum reception centres located in southern and central Norway participated. Results: Religiosity/spirituality was independently associated with psychological quality of life ( B = 0.367, p < .001), level of independence ( B = 0.184, p = .028), social quality of life ( B = 0.500, p = .003), environmental quality of life ( B = 0.323, p < .001) and overall quality of life ( B = 0.213, p < .001), but not with physical quality of life ( B = 0.056, p = .679). There were no significant differences between religious affiliations on religiosity/spirituality or quality of life measures. Conclusion: Consistent with previous research, this study highlights the correlation between religiosity/spirituality and overall quality of life. We recommend a longitudinal follow-up study of similar populations, after they are resettled and integrated into their host countries, to understand the associations between quality of life and religiosity/spirituality over time.


2015 ◽  
Vol 117 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-36
Author(s):  
Maria Araceli Ruiz-Primo ◽  
Min Li

Background A long-standing premise in test design is that contextualizing test items makes them concrete, less demanding, and more conducive to determining whether students can apply or transfer their knowledge. Purpose We assert that despite decades of study and experience, much remains to be learned about how to construct effective and fair test items with contexts. Too little is known about how item contexts can be appropriately constructed and used, and even less about the relationship between context characteristics and student performance. The exploratory study presented in this paper seeks to contribute to knowledge about test design and construction by focusing on this gap. Research Design We address two key questions: (a) What are the characteristics of contexts used in the PISA science items? and (b) What are the relationships between different context characteristics and student performance? We propose a profiling approach to capture information about six context dimensions: type of context, context role, complexity, resources, level of abstraction, and connectivity. To test the approach empirically we sampled a total of 52 science items from PISA 2006 and 2009. We describe the context characteristics of the items at two levels (named layers): general (testlet context) and specific (item context). Conclusion We provide empirical evidence about the relationships of these characteristics with student performance as measured by the international percentage of correct responses. We found that the dimension of context resources (e.g., pictures, drawings, photographs) for general contexts and level of abstractness for specific contexts are associated with student performance.


Tempo ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 76 (299) ◽  
pp. 44-56
Author(s):  
Jonathan Packham

AbstractSonorama is a 2015 sonic artwork by Claudia Molitor, consisting of a number of audio files designed for listening on a train journey between London St Pancras and Margate, and a graphic score based on the composer's own ‘reading’ of this journey. This article analyses the relationship between the sonic and the spatial in the work, exploring how Molitor's site-specific composition interacts with its environment on multiple scales. By drawing on the strategy of ‘situated listening’ developed by Gascia Ouzounian, as well as urbanist language introduced by Richard Sennett, this article seeks to elucidate the relationship between a number of ‘nested’ spaces, present across varying realisations, and the political agenda that energises the work. Written in the midst of summer 2015's European refugee crisis, the work brings into sharp focus themes of British exceptionalism, immigration and inclusion.


2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 123-155
Author(s):  
Elva Orozco Mendoza ◽  

This article offers an interpretation of anti-feminicide maternal activism as political in northern Mexico by analyzing it alongside Hannah Arendt’s concepts of freedom, natality, and the child in The Human Condition. While feminist theorists often debate whether maternalism strengthens or undermines women’s political participation, the author offers an unconventional interpretation of Arendt’s categories to illustrate that the meaning and practice of maternalism radically changes through the public performance of motherhood. While Arendt does not seem the best candidate to navigate this debate, her concepts of freedom and the child provide a productive perspective to rethink the relationship between maternalism and citizenship. In making this claim, this article challenges feminist political theories that depict motherhood as the chief source of women’s subordination. In the case of northern Mexico, anti-feminicide maternal activism illustrates how the political is also a personal endeavor, thereby complementing the famous feminist motto.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Zell

This book offers a new perspective on the art of the Dutch Golden Age by exploring the interaction between the gift's symbolic economy of reciprocity and obligation and the artistic culture of early modern Holland. Gifts of art were pervasive in seventeenth-century Europe and many Dutch artists, like their counterparts elsewhere, embraced gift giving to cultivate relations with patrons, art lovers, and other members of their social networks. Rembrandt also created distinctive works to function within a context of gift exchange, and both Rembrandt and Vermeer engaged the ethics of the gift to identify their creative labor as motivated by what contemporaries called a love of art


2022 ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
Samera Esmeir

Modern state law is an expansive force that permeates life and politics. Law's histories—colonial, revolutionary, and postcolonial—tell of its constitutive centrality to the making of colonies and modern states. Its powers intertwine with life itself; they attempt to direct it, shape its most intimate spheres, decide on the constitutive line dividing public from private, and take over the space and time in which life unfolds. These powers settle in the present, eliminate past authorities, and dictate futures. Gendering and constitutive of sexual difference, law's powers endeavor to mold subjects and alter how they orient themselves to others and to the world. But these powers are neither coherent nor finite. They are ripe with contradictions and conflicting desires. They are also incapable of eliminating other authorities, paths, and horizons of living; these do not vanish but remain not only thinkable and articulable but also a resource for the living. Such are some of the overlapping and accumulative interventions of the two books under review: Sara Pursley's Familiar Futures and Judith Surkis's Sex, Law, and Sovereignty in French Algeria. What follows is an attempt to further develop these interventions by thinking with some of the books’ underlying arguments. Familiar Futures is a history of Iraq, beginning with the British colonial-mandate period and concluding with the 1958 Revolution and its immediate aftermath. Sex, Law, and Sovereignty is a history of “French Algeria” that covers a century of French colonization from 1830 to 1930. The books converge on key questions concerning how modern law and the modern state—colonial and postcolonial—articulated sexual difference and governed social and intimate life, including through the rise of personal-status law as a separate domain of law constitutive of the conjugal family. Both books are consequently also preoccupied with the relationship between sex, gender, and sovereignty. And both contain resources for living along paths not charted by the modern state and its juridical apparatus.


Author(s):  
Xingan Li

Gift-giving is a prevalent human activity existing in different temporal and different spatial dimensions. Main issues discussed in this article are about gift exchange in socio-legal context, particularly in pertinent to marriage and divorce, as well as law enforcement against offence of bribery in China. The research identifies different modes of gift giving, including gift exchange and unilateral gift-giving. The research further explores into giftgiving by parents before marriage and during family life of their children, with special regard to real estate as a gift. The research also discusses gift as distinguished from and as identified as offence of bribery under Chinese law.La donación es una actividad humana predominante que existe en diferentes dimensiones espaciales temporales y diferentes. Los principales temas discutidos en este artículo son los siguientes: el intercambio de obsequios en el contexto socio-legal, particularmente en lo referente al matrimonio y el divorcio, así como la aplicación de la ley contra el delito de soborno en China. La investigación identifica diferentes modos de donación, incluyendo el intercambio de regalos y donaciones unilaterales. La investigación explora más a fondo la donación de los padres antes del matrimonio y durante la vida familiar de sus hijos, con especial atención a los bienes raíces como un regalo. La investigación también discute el regalo como distinto de y como identificado con el delito de soborno bajo la ley china.


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