Asian Migrants of the Middle in Local and Global Context

Author(s):  
Shanthi Robertson

This chapter establishes the empirical context of migration from Asia to Australia in the 21st century and makes a set of arguments around the empirical value of studying these middling forms of migration. It explores the wider contexts of 21st-century, middle-class Asian migration, as well as establishes the use of the term 'middling mobility' to describe the experiences of the research participants. It argues that an analysis of more 'middling' forms of mobility can be useful in drawing out some of the paradoxes and tensions of mobile lives in which friction and fluidity, hypermobility and immobility, and precarity and security, often coexist and intertwine at different stages and in different ways. It seeks to show that researching migrant lives 'in the middle' can usefully highlight often hidden nuances around the interrelationships of temporality and mobility, and of spatial mobility and social mobility, by opening up analysis of the uneven experiences that exist between the liminality of the migrant precariat and the fluidity of the mobile elite.

2021 ◽  
pp. 147490412098838
Author(s):  
Nafsika Alexiadou ◽  
Linda Rönnberg

This article examines the national and European policy contexts that shaped the Swedish internationalisation agenda in higher education since 2000, the policy ideas that were mobilised to promote it, and the national priorities that steered higher education debates. The analysis highlights how domestic and European policy priorities, as well as discourses around increasing global economic reach and building solidarity across the world, have produced an internationalisation strategy that is distinctly ‘national’. Drawing on the analysis of the most recent internationalisation strategies we argue that the particular Swedish approach to internationalisation has its ideational foundations in viewing higher education as a political instrument to promote social mobility and justice, as well as a means to develop economic competitiveness and employability capacity. In addition, internationalisation has been used to legitimise national reform goals, but also as a policy objective on its own with the ambition to position Sweden as a competitive knowledge nation in a global context.


2021 ◽  
pp. 87-105
Author(s):  
Tommy Bruhn ◽  
Joanna Doona

Public accusations often lead to controversy. Accusations have been studied as causing certain types of defense, as well as for how accusing parties persuade audiences of guilt, and amplify an act’s offensiveness. We investigate a satire programme as a strategic act, with a specific focus on how its accusatory rhetorical structure strategically invites certain responses, and counteracts others. We show how a segment in the news satire programme ‘Swedish News’ constructed a complex accusation against the Swedish private school queue system, and against the character of the educated middle class who tend to use it. The segment’s structure places the accused middle class as an addressed audience in three different subject positions, wherein the relationship between them motivates penance rather than defense. The analysis shows how a changing positioning of the same group as judge, victim and accused can perform certain functions in accusatory speech, indicating roads to redemption and opening up for possibilities of reconciliation


2019 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 91-104
Author(s):  
Antonina Stasińska

In postmodern times of emphasized fluidification, individualism and cosmopolitanism, mobility becomes self-evident and naturalized, yet socially desirable and anticipated. Therefore it is valuable to use ethnography to look at individual experiences. They are young, educated, and mobile, pursuing their dreams and goals while living in big cities: Poles and other (not only) European citizens who maintain transnational long-distance relationships create perfectly suitable representatives of the category of ‘privileged mobility’. This article is based on ethnographic fieldwork I conducted in 2016–2018, and it employs an auto-ethnographic perspective in order to examine the notion of privilege (Amit 2007), with its borders and limitations, through the analytical lens of mobility. The article puts forward the perspective of my research participants and thus provides a detailed portrait of the researched group, in order to show how mobility is rooted in their everyday lives and how privileged they really are. I argue that mobility, defined as one of the most stratifying factors (Bourdieu 1984), can be applied as a mirror that reflects position in the social strata. In this specific ethnographic context, spatial mobility can be seen as a useful tool, which exposes social and individual dimensions of being privileged while living in transnational long-distance relationships


2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 78-93
Author(s):  
Anna Romanowicz ◽  

Arranged marriages are the most common (and perceived as traditional) form of formalized heterosexual relationships in India. However, interest in relationships based on romantic love – especially among urban middle class –is increasing. The goal of the article is to present various practices related to romantic love, which cannot be inscribed in a rigid division for arranged and love marriages; to present everyday strategies and tactics, as they are being practiced by my research participants in context of sociocultural changes. The article is based on information gathered in ethnographic fieldwork (with a technique of participant observation) in Delhi.


Author(s):  
Wojciech Łukowski

Spatial and social mobility in an increasingly globalized world is associated with new challenges for social sciences, including political science. This also applies to methods and methodology. The article aims to reveal the cognitive potential that lies in the use of multi–sited ethnography for research on politics and on the study of political behaviors (das Politische). The utility of this approach is illustrated on the basis of the research on social and spatial mobility of small town residents conducted with the use of this method.


Sociologija ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 59 (2) ◽  
pp. 189-205 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nena Vasojevic ◽  
Mirko Filipovic

In the 19th century, at the time when Serbia was being established, the education of students scholars abroad was viewed as one of the main tools for professional development and a strong society. Medical students were one of the first who were sent to study abroad. This practice was associated with increasing vertical social mobility of society. The results achieved in the 19th century encouraged us to focus on the study of temporary migrations of students scholars from Serbia in the 21st century. This article was created as a result of this study.4 Our goal was to define the profile of medical students scholars who studied abroad in the 21st century thanks to the state funds, to determine the reasons why they opted for education outside their country, and to determine the level of openness of the Serbian society towards them. However, the main objective was to contribute to the research of reverse migration.


Author(s):  
Shanthi Robertson

This book provides fresh perspectives on 21st-century migratory experiences in this innovative study of young Asian migrants' lives in Australia. Exploring the aspirations and realities of transnational mobility, the book shows how migration has reshaped lived experiences of time for middle-class young people moving between Asia and the West for work, study and lifestyle opportunities. Through a new conceptual framework of 'chronomobilities', which looks at 'time-regimes' and 'time-logics', the book demonstrates how migratory pathways have become far more complex than leaving one country for another, and can profoundly affect the temporalities of everyday life, from career pathways to intimate relationships. Drawing on extensive ethnographic material, the book deepens our understanding of the multifaceted relationship between migration and time.


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