scholarly journals Lamb Buddha's Migrant Workers: Self-Assertion on China's Urban Fringe

2010 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 3-37 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael B. Griffiths

This paper presents an analysis of the everyday practices of individuality among the migrant workers with whom I worked at “Lamb Buddha”, a hotpot restaurant in Anshan City, Liaoning Province, during the summer of 2007. The majority of the data comes from four young men, meaning that the analysis complements extant studies of Chinese female migrant workers by allowing male-gendered inflections of discourse prominence. The paper examines the internal structure of “symbolic boundaries” drawn and managed in judgements, positioning statements, and so forth, attempting to regress the modalities by which these migrants assert themselves, thus showing how individuality arises from a discursive environment structured by relation to similar peers and distinctly different others.

2021 ◽  
pp. 003802612110596
Author(s):  
Siyang Cao

Reading through the concept of shenti (body–self), this article examines the everyday processes by which Chinese young men make sense of and articulate ideal embodied masculinity as situated in different relationships. Drawing on 30 in-depth interviews with urban young men, I argue that the Chinese masculine self is essentially constitutive of and constructed through shenti during the men’s ordinary daily experiences. I highlight the relational formation of shenti as lying at the core of constructing ideal Chinese manhood, teasing out the different layers of body–self and relationality underpinning an individual man’s bodily practices and social interactions. Engaging with traditional cultural values of the ideal body–self and a feminist interactionist approach to gendered embodiment, shenti provides an important analytical lens that will enable us to expand ethnocentric discourses of the sociology of the gendered body by revealing the embodied and experiential aspects of culture in everyday practices. In doing so, this article contributes to enriching the existing debates around cultural variations in the male body and embodied masculinity by offering a Chinese perspective.


Modern Italy ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-17 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lena Näre

Changing from a country of emigration into one of immigration has been one of the major phenomena of Italian society in recent years. One of the realms where this has been most evident is in Italian households employing migrants for domestic service and care work. This article looks at domestic and care practices in the everyday life of a Neapolitan household. Based on participant observation conducted in Giuseppe's apartment, it shows how the traditional Neapolitan way of life can be maintained by employing a live-in worker. It discusses some of the contradictions and tensions involved in this kind of work, and, by looking at everyday life, it also questions depictions of vulnerable migrant workers at the mercy of their employers.


Author(s):  
Tyas Retno Wulan ◽  
Lala M. Kolopaking ◽  
Ekawati Sri Wahyuni ◽  
Irwan Abdullah

Social remittances (ideas, system practice, and social capital flow from the receiving country to the home country) of Indonesian female migrant workers (BMP) in Hong Kong appeared better and more complete than other BMP in other countries like Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, or Singapore.  Based on that research, we are encouraged to do extensive research in order to identify factors  that push  BMP’s social remittances development  in Hong Kong, to identify kinds of social remmitances they receive  and to understand on how far their social remittances become a medium to empower them and their society.  This study is done in qualitative method that uses an in-depth interview technique and FGD.  Subjects of study are BMP, the government (Ministry of Manpower and Transmigration and BNP2TKI), NGOs, migrant workers’ organization and researchers of BMP. The study done in Cianjur (West Java), Wonosobo and Banyumas (Central Java) and Hong Kong indicates that during their migration process, female migrant workers not only have economical remittance that can be used for productive activities, but also social remittances.  The social remittances are in the form practical knowledge such as language skill and nursery; knowledge on health, financial management; ethical work; the mindset changing and networking. The study  indicate that female migrant workers are extraordinary women more than just an ex-helper.  Their migration has put them into a position as an agent of development in society.Key words: Indonesians  female migrant workers, social remmitances, empowerment


Author(s):  
Jeffrey L Dunoff ◽  
Mark A Pollack

This chapter discusses the inner working of ICs, such as the drafting of judicial opinions; practices concerning separate opinions; the role of language and translation; and the roles of third parties. It also presents a preliminary effort to identify and examine the everyday practices of international judges. In undertaking this task, the authors draw selectively upon a large literature on ‘practice theory’ that has only rarely been applied to international law in general or to international courts in particular. A typology and synoptic overview of practices is presented.


Genealogy ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 18
Author(s):  
Elaine Penagos

Healing is the basis of belief in San Lázaro, a popular saint among Cubans, Cuban-Americans, and other Latinx peoples. Stories about healing, received through faith in San Lázaro, are typically passed on through family members, rendering them genealogical narratives of healing. In this photo essay, the author draws on her maternal grandmother’s devotion to San Lázaro and explores how other devotees of this saint create genealogical narratives of healing that are passed down from generation to generation. These genealogical narratives of healing function as testaments to the efficaciousness of San Lázaro’s healing abilities and act as familial avenues through which younger generations inherit belief in the saint. Using interview excerpts and ethnographic observations conducted at Rincón de San Lázaro church in Hialeah, Florida, the author locates registers of lo cotidiano, the everyday practices of the mundane required for daily functions and survival, and employs arts-based methods such as photography, narrative inquiry, and thematic poetic coding to show how the stories that believers tell about San Lázaro, and their experiences of healing through faith in the saint, constitute both genealogical narratives of healing and genealogical healing narratives where testimonies become a type of narrative medicine.


2021 ◽  
pp. 239965442110000
Author(s):  
Eeva-Kaisa Prokkola

The past decade has witnessed a shift from “open borders” policies and cross-border cooperation towards heightened border securitization and the building of border walls. In the EU context, since the migration influx of 2015–2016, many Member States have retained the re-instituted Schengen border controls intended to be temporary. Such heightened border securitization has produced high levels of anxiety among various populations and increased societal polarization. This paper focuses on the processes underpinning asylum seeker reception at the re-bordered Finnish-Swedish border and in the Finnish border town of Tornio. The asylum process is studied from the perspective of local authorities and NGO actors active in the everyday reception, care and control practices in the border securitization environment enacted in Tornio in 2015. The analysis highlights how the ‘success’ of everyday reception work at the Tornio border crossing was bound to the historical openness of the border and pre-existing relations of trust and cooperation between different actors at various scales. The paper thus provides a new understanding of the significance of borders and border crossings from the perspective of resilience and highlights some of the paradoxes of border securitization. It notes that although border closures are commonly envisioned as a direct response to forced migration, the everyday practices and capacities of the asylum reception at the Finnish-Swedish border are themselves highly dependent on pre-existing border crossings and cross-border cooperation.


2016 ◽  
Vol 49 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-27 ◽  
Author(s):  
ROBERT SAMET

AbstractDespite recent attention to the relationship between the media and populist mobilisation in Latin America, there is a misfit between the everyday practices of journalists and the theoretical tools that we have for making sense of these practices. The objective of this article is to help reorient research on populism and the press in Latin America so that it better reflects the grounded practices and autochthonous norms of the region. To that end, I turn to the case of Venezuela, and a practice that has been largely escaped attention from scholars – the use of denuncias.


2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-61 ◽  
Author(s):  
Minh T.N. Nguyen

AbstractThis article discusses the everyday practices of a mobile network of migrant waste traders originating from northern Vietnam, locating them in an expanding urban waste economy spanning across major urban centres. Based on ethnographic research, I explore how the expansion of the network is foregrounded by the traders’ dealing with the precarious nature of waste trading, which is rooted in the social ambiguity of waste and migrants working with waste in the urban order. Characterised by waste traders as a “half-dark, half-light zone”, the waste economy is unevenly regulated, made up of highly personalised ties, and relatively hidden from the public. It is therefore rife with opportunities for accumulating wealth, but also full of dangers for the waste traders, whose occupation of marginal urban spaces makes them easy targets of both rent-seeking state agents and rogue actors. While demonstrating resilience, their practices suggest tactics of engaging with power that involve a great deal of moral ambiguity, which I argue is central to the increasing precaritisation of labour and the economy in Vietnam today.


2017 ◽  
Vol 55 (3) ◽  
pp. 349-370
Author(s):  
Bram J. Jansen

ABSTRACTThis paper aims to contribute to debates about humanitarian governance and insecurity in post-conflict situations. It takes the case of South Sudan to explore the relations between humanitarian agencies, the international community, and local authorities, and the ways international and local forms of power become interrelated and contested, and to what effect. The paper is based on eight months of ethnographic research in various locations in South Sudan between 2011 and 2013, in which experiences with and approaches to insecurity among humanitarian aid actors were studied. The research found that many security threats can be understood in relation to the everyday practices of negotiating and maintaining humanitarian access. Perceiving this insecurity as violation or abuse of a moral and practical humanitarianism neglects how humanitarian aid in practice was embedded in broader state building processes. This paper posits instead that much insecurity for humanitarian actors is a symptom of the blurring of international and local forms of power, and this mediates the development of a humanitarian protectorate.


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