Going North, coming South: Guatemalan migratory flows

2009 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 155-164
Author(s):  
Michelle J. Moran-Taylor
Keyword(s):  
International Migration ◽  
Return Migration ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
New Ideas

Understanding the return aspect of international migration is vital because returnees replete with new ideas, perceptions on life, and monies affect every dimension of social life in migrants’ places of origin.  Yet, return migration remains uneven and an understudied aspect of migratory flows because migration scholars have privileged why individuals migrate, the underlying motivations for their moves abroad, and how migrants assimilate and succeed in their destinations abroad. Drawing on ethnographic research, this article addresses the migratory flows of Ladino and Mayan Guatemalans:  those who go North, but in particular, those who come South. And in doing so, it highlights their similar and divergent responses towards migration processes.

Pendidikan Islam dan Humanitas

2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 341-355
Author(s):  
Mohammad Liwa Irrubai
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Liberal Education ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Current Issue ◽  
Alternative Solution ◽  
Educational Objectives ◽  
Basic Issue ◽  
New Ideas ◽  
Education Today ◽  
Human Problem

Today, the human problem in social life concerning education is growing more complex; many new ideas emerge as the level of human intellectuality grows. This paper will reveal the current issue of education in Indonesia and discuss ideas from the concept of liberal education. The basic issue of education criticized by liberal education is that education today focuses more on the needs of society than the educational objectives themselves. Education as a tool to transfer science, values, and agents of social change is seen as one alternative solution in the framework of improving people's lives. The education in which values are embodied is one of the efforts offered by genuine liberal education, aimed at giving us the habits, ideas and techniques necessary to continue our own education. Humans have the ability to learn continuously throughout life so that we can prepare ourselves to study and again as long as we are alive.

scholarly journals Grimy Heritage: Organic Bar Streets in Shanghai and Tokyo

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 76-88 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Farrer
Keyword(s):  
Social Life ◽  
Community Formation ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Built Environments ◽  
Moral Reasons ◽  
Commercial Sex ◽  
Government Officials ◽  
Historical Sources ◽  
Social Functions

Abstract Every city has built environments that are largely regarded as eyesores, for aesthetic, social, or moral reasons. Urban nightlife streets are examples of such ‘grimy heritage’. Not only shabby and disorderly, they harbour forms of commercial sex, drinking cultures, and ephemeral nightlife cultures that many city residents and government officials consider undesirable. Sometimes their built forms are regarded as the enemy of genuine heritage architecture, since they obscure more solid, carefully designed structures around them. However, in many cities, organic nightlife streets—developing in such spaces precisely because they were derelict or poorly regulated—serve important social functions as spaces of creativity and community formation. This paper examines the ways that such ‘grimy heritage’ has developed in Shanghai and Tokyo, using examples from ethnographic research and historical sources, and addressing the question of the contribution of the ‘grimy heritage’ to authentic, urban social life.

The Norwegian Historic Population Register and Migration

2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 249-263
Author(s):  
Lars Holden ◽  
Svetlana Boudko
Keyword(s):  
International Migration ◽  
Internal Migration ◽  
Return Migration ◽  
High Probability ◽  
Population Register ◽  
Place Of Birth ◽  
Migration Research ◽  
National Population Register ◽  
Automatic Methods ◽  
And Migration

This article describes the development of the Norwegian Historical Population Register, which is the first open national register. In the period 1735–1964, 9.7 million people lived in Norway, and for them 37.5 million events (such as birth, death, or migration) have been recorded in sources. We link together as many events as possible for the same persons and families, but only include links that have a high probability of being correct. The linking is performed by automatic methods and crowdsourcing. A national population register is important for migration research. It allows us to reconstruct (stepwise) internal migration in Norway, frequently followed by international migration from Norway, as well as return migration to Norway. Many non-Norwegian sources also specify place of birth by country, and this makes it possible to identify individuals in Norwegian sources.

scholarly journals The Social Life of the “Forever Chemical”

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 146-163
Author(s):  
Daniel Renfrew ◽  
Thomas W. Pearson
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Cultural Dimensions ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
The Public ◽  
Toxic Event ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Polyfluoroalkyl Substances

This article examines the social life of PFAS contamination (a class of several thousand synthetic per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) and maps the growing research in the social sciences on the unique conundrums and complex travels of the “forever chemical.” We explore social, political, and cultural dimensions of PFAS toxicity, especially how PFAS move from unseen sites into individual bodies and into the public eye in late industrial contexts; how toxicity is comprehended, experienced, and imagined; the factors shaping regulatory action and ignorance; and how PFAS have been the subject of competing forms of knowledge production. Lastly, we highlight how people mobilize collectively, or become demobilized, in response to PFAS pollution/ toxicity. We argue that PFAS exposure experiences, perceptions, and responses move dynamically through a “toxicity continuum” spanning invisibility, suffering, resignation, and refusal. We off er the concept of the “toxic event” as a way to make sense of the contexts and conditions by which otherwise invisible pollution/toxicity turns into public, mass-mediated, and political episodes. We ground our review in our ongoing multisited ethnographic research on the PFAS exposure experience.

Making Merit: The Indian Institutes of Technology and the Social Life of Caste

2015 ◽  
Vol 57 (2) ◽  
pp. 291-322 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ajantha Subramanian
Keyword(s):  
Social Life ◽  
The State ◽  
Social Embeddedness ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Relational Approach ◽  
Institutes Of Technology ◽  
The Social ◽  
State Capital

AbstractThe politics of meritocracy at the Indian Institutes of Technology illuminates the social life of caste in contemporary India. I argue that the IIT graduate's status depends on the transformation of privilege into merit, or the conversion of caste capital into modern capital. Analysis of this process calls for a relational approach to merit. My ethnographic research on the southeastern state of Tamilnadu, and on IIT Madras located in the state capital of Chennai, illuminates claims to merit, not simply as the transformation of capital but also as responses to subaltern assertion. Analyzing meritocracy in relation to subaltern politics allows us to see the contextual specificity of such claims: at one moment, they are articulated through the disavowal of caste, at another, through caste affiliation. This marking and unmarking of caste suggests a rethinking of meritocracy, typically assumed to be a modernist ideal that disclaims social embeddedness and disdains the particularisms of caste and race. I show instead that claims to collective belonging and to merit are eminently commensurable, and become more so when subaltern assertion forces privilege into the foreground. Rather than the progressive erasure of ascribed identities in favor of putatively universal ones, we are witnessing the re-articulation of caste as an explicit basis for merit and the generation of newly consolidated forms of upper-casteness.

International Migration from the Dominican Republic: Findings from a National Survey

1979 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 235-254 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antonio Ugalde ◽  
Frank D. Bean ◽  
Gilbert Cárdenas
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
New Jersey ◽  
Dominican Republic ◽  
Survey Data ◽  
International Migration ◽  
National Survey ◽  
Return Migration ◽  
The United States ◽  
Migration Patterns

The Dominican migration to the United States has been primarily directed to the New York area. The officially reported addresses given by Dominican aliens to the INS suggest a heavy concentration in the New York/New Jersey region. Using survey data, this study seeks to provide a profile of international Dominican migrants most of whom come to the United States. Reasons for migration by age, sex, and social strata are discussed, and an examination of return migration patterns is presented.

scholarly journals Return migration and re-integration of returnees challenges in the origin country

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 4-24
Author(s):  
Alkida Ndreka
Keyword(s):  
International Migration ◽  
Host Country ◽  
Return Migration ◽  
Children And Youth ◽  
Return Migrants ◽  
Migration Policies ◽  
Cultural Aspect ◽  
Cultural Life ◽  
Complex Process

Abstract Return migration, traditionally not a well-studied and often neglected area, is becoming an important component of the international migration debate. Reintegration is an essential part of return migration and identified as a complex process that is experienced differently by returnees. The adaptation of immigrants in the host country has been extensively studied, while much less attention has been paid to economic and socio-cultural reintegration and the difficulties return migrants face once they come back to their homeland. Especially children and youth born in destination countries with sociolinguistic and socialization difficulties face a particularly tough reintegration process. Theoretically, there is comprehensive literature focused on return migration and reasons for return, but less in return migration policies and reintegration process. Empirically, there is a lack of studies focused on the reintegration of returnees, particularly in the socio-cultural aspect. With increased attention to the importance of this process, many states and governments have established policies or programs to encourage the return of their citizens, and facilitate returnees’ successful and permanent relocation in the new society of the origin country. This paper aims to analyze theoretically and empirically the processes of reintegration of returnees in the origin country by identifying the challenges they encounter in the economic and social-cultural life of the origin country.

scholarly journals Fieldwork through the Zoomiverse

2021 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-78
Author(s):  
Richard Vokes ◽  
Gertrude Atukunda
Keyword(s):  
Social Life ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Shared Experience ◽  
Term Study ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
The Past ◽  
Long Term Study ◽  
Online Platforms ◽  
Zoom In

We have been conducting collaborative ethnographic research together for over 20 years. Over the past 12 months, this collaboration has included face-to-face encounters, both in Kampala, Uganda, and in Perth, Australia. However, since the advent of COVID-19-related ‘lockdowns’ in our respective countries, our engagements have been conducted exclusively over online platforms, including WhatsApp, Facebook and – increasingly – Zoom. In this article, we reflect upon our shared experience of conducting ethnography through this platform as a tool for understanding the effects of the pandemic in Uganda. We argue that, despite all kinds of material constraints (at both ends), Zoom has much to off er the ethnographer particularly because it can generate an intimate understanding of experience and time. However, against this advantage, some aspects of social life remain beyond the range of its channels, for which an assemblage of additional methods are required. We finish by reflecting upon what these methods have contributed to our long-term study of emergent cultures of mobility in Uganda – a study which is now being conducted in an ostensible context of immobility.

Men and Modernity in Porfirian Mexico

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert M. Buffington
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Social Revolution ◽  
New Era ◽  
Self Help ◽  
New Ideas ◽  
Male Honor ◽  
The 19Th Century

The Porfirian era (1876–1911) marked a watershed in social understandings of manhood. New ideas about what it meant to be a man had appeared in Mexico by the middle of the 19th century in the form of self-help manuals intended primarily for middle-class and bourgeois men who sought to distinguish themselves in a post-independence society that had done away with legal distinctions, including aristocratic titles. Marks of distinction included cleanliness, good grooming, moderation, affability, respectability, love of country, and careful attentiveness to the needs and opinions of others, including women, children, and social “inferiors”—an approach that artfully combined longstanding notions of masculine responsibility and authority with modern ideas about self-mastery and citizenship, especially the sublimation of volatile “passions” in all domains of social life. Modern qualities also mapped onto traditional concerns about male honor predicated on the fulfillment of patriarchal duties, especially the control of female dependents. The socially validated, “hegemonic” masculinity produced by this amalgamation of modern and traditional ideas proved burdensome for many middle-class men, who struggled to maintain an always precarious sense of honor or who rejected the constraints it sought to impose on their behavior. For men from less privileged classes, it represented an impossible ideal that they sometimes rejected through the adoption of antisocial “protest” masculinities and often satirized as delusional or unmanly, even as they too came to define their masculinity in relation to a modern/traditional binary. The modern/traditional binary that characterized ideas about masculinity for all sectors of Porfirian society has persisted until the present day, despite the epochal 1910 social revolution that inaugurated a new era in Mexican social relations.

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