scholarly journals What Makes Me Want You Here? Refugee Integration in a Zambian Settlement Setting

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (15) ◽  
pp. 8380
Author(s):  
Steven Gronau ◽  
Brigitte Ruesink

Many of the world's refugees remain in Africa, where they stay long-term, mainly in neighboring countries. The present directions point to integration, in which the host society and the political surroundings play a key role. This paper aims to investigate the ways in which public opinion towards and contact with refugees support integration processes. We apply this research to a settlement setting in rural Zambia, a recent dataset of 275 households from 2018, and an econometric analysis. This is the first study dealing with a set of factors that affect the hosts’ opinion towards and contact with refugees in an African settlement context, and with respect to the Comprehensive Refugee Response Framework produced by the United Nations. Our results show, particularly, the religiosity, group membership, life satisfaction, food insecurity, agricultural ownership and natural resource uses of the host society to be the main factors that need policy consideration for the promotion of refugee integration. Stakeholders dealing in host–refugee settings and seeking for durable solutions should roll out community programs to address threat perceptions and interaction improvements.

Author(s):  
Mohd. Shuhaimi Ishak

 Abstract Generally speaking, media is extensively used as the means to disseminate news and information pertaining to business, social, political and religious concerns. A portion of the time and space of media has now become an important device to generate economic and social activities that include advertising, marketing, recreation and entertainment. The Government regards them as an essential form of relaying news and information to its citizens and at the same time utilizes them as a powerful public relations’ mechanism. The effects of media are many and diverse, which can either be short or long term depending on the news and information. The effects of media can be found on various fronts, ranging from the political, economic and social, to even religious spheres. Some of the negative effects arising from the media are cultural and social influences, crimes and violence, sexual obscenities and pornography as well as liberalistic and extreme ideologies. This paper sheds light on these issues and draws principles from Islam to overcome them. Islam as revealed to humanity contains the necessary guidelines to nurture and mould the personality of individuals and shape them into good servants. Key Words: Media, Negative Effects, Means, Islam and Principles. Abstrak Secara umum, media secara meluas digunakan sebagai sarana untuk menyebarkan berita dan maklumat yang berkaitan dengan perniagaan, kemasyarakatan, pertimbangan politik dan agama. Sebahagian dari ruang dan masa media kini telah menjadi peranti penting untuk menghasilkan kegiatan ekonomi dan sosial yang meliputi pengiklanan, pemasaran, rekreasi dan hiburan. Kerajaan menganggap sarana-sarana ini sebagai wadah penting untuk menyampaikan berita dan maklumat kepada warganya dan pada masa yang sama juga menggunakannya sebagai mekanisme perhubungan awam yang berpengaruh. Pengaruh media sangat banyak dan pelbagai, samada berbentuk jangka pendek atau panjang bergantung kepada berita dan maklumat yang brekenaan. Kesan dari media boleh didapati mempengaruhi pelbagai aspek, bermula dari bidang politik, ekonomi, sosial bahkan juga agama. Beberapa kesan negatif yang timbul dari media ialah pengaruhnya terhadap budaya dan sosial, jenayah dan keganasan, kelucahan seksual dan pornografi serta ideologi yang liberal dan ekstrim. Kertas ini menyoroti isu-isu ini dan cuba mengambil prinsip-prinsip dari ajaran Islam untuk mengatasinya. Tujuan Islam itu sendiri diturunkan kepada umat manusia ialah untuk menjadi pedoman yang diperlukan untuk membina dan membentuk keperibadian individu dan menjadikan manusia hamba yang taat kepada Tuhannya. Kata Kunci: Media, Kesan Negatif, Cara-cara, Islam dan Prinsip-prinsip.


Mediaevistik ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 11-53
Author(s):  
Bernard S. Bachrach

During the first thirty-three years of his reign as king of the Franks, i.e., prior to his coronation as emperor on Christmas day 800, Charlemagne, scholars generally agree, pursued a successful long-term offensive and expansionist strategy. This strategy was aimed at conquering large swaths of erstwhile imperial territory in the west and bringing under Carolingian rule a wide variety of peoples, who either themselves or their regional predecessors previously had not been subject to Frankish regnum.1 For a very long time, scholars took the position that Charlemagne continued to pursue this expansionist strategy throughout the imperial years, i.e., from his coronation on Christmas Day 800 until his final illness in later January 814. For example, Louis Halphen observed: “comme empereur, Charles poursuit, sans plus, l’oeuvre entamée avant l’an 800.”2 F. L. Ganshof, who also wrote several studies treating Charlemagne’s army, was in lock step with Halphen and observed: “As emperor, Charlemagne pursued the political and military course he had been following before 25 December 800.”3


Author(s):  
Walter Pohl

When the Gothic War began in Italy in 535, the country still conserved many features of classical culture and late antique administration. Much of that was lost in the political upheavals of the following decades. Building on Chris Wickham’s work, this contribution sketches an integrated perspective of these changes, attempting to relate the contingency of events to the logic of long-term change, discussing political options in relation to military and economic means, and asking in what ways the erosion of consensus may be understood in a cultural and religious context. What was the role of military entrepreneurs of more or less barbarian or Roman extraction in the distribution or destruction of resources? How did Christianity contribute to the transformation of ancient society? The old model of barbarian invasions can contribute little to understanding this complex process. It is remarkable that for two generations, all political strategies in Italy ultimately failed.


Author(s):  
Matteo Rizzo

The growth of cities and informal economies are two central manifestations of globalization in the developing world. Taken for a Ride addresses both, drawing on long-term fieldwork in Dar es Salaam (Tanzania) and charting its public transport system’s journey from public to private provision. The book investigates this shift alongside the increasing deregulation of the sector and the resulting chaotic modality of public transport. It reviews state attempts to regain control over public transport, the political motivations behind these, and their inability to address its problems. The analysis documents how informal wage relations prevailed in the sector, and how their salience explains many of the inefficiencies of public transport. The changing political attitude of workers towards employers and the state is investigated: from an initial incapacity to respond to exploitation, to political organization and unionization, which won workers concessions on labour rights. A longitudinal study of workers throws light on patterns of occupational mobility in the sector. The book ends with an analysis of the political and economic interests that shaped the introduction of Bus Rapid Transit in Dar es Salaam and local resistance to it. Taken for a Ride is an interdisciplinary political economy of public transport, exposing the limitations of market fundamentalist and postcolonial scholarship on economic informality and the urban experience in developing countries, and its failure to locate the agency of the urban poor within their economic and political structures. It is both a contribution to and a call for the contextualized study of ‘actually existing neoliberalism’.


Author(s):  
Detlef Pollack ◽  
Gergely Rosta

The case of East Germany raises the question of why religion and church, which had fallen to an unprecedentedly low level after four decades of suppression, have not recovered since 1989. The repressive church politics of the SED were undoubtedly the decisive factor in the unique process of minoritizing churches in the GDR. However, other external factors such as increasing prosperity, socio-structural transformation, and the expansion of the leisure and entertainment sector played an important role, too. In addition, church activity itself probably also helped to weaken the social position of churches. The absence of a church renaissance after 1990 can be explained by several factors, such as the long-term effects of the break with tradition caused by the GDR system, the political and moral discrediting of the church by the state security service, and people’s dwindling confidence in the church, which was suddenly seen as a non-representative Western institution.


2019 ◽  
Vol 49 (2) ◽  
pp. 193-209 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefano Ruzza ◽  
Giuseppe Gabusi ◽  
Davide Pellegrino

AbstractStarting from the imperfect nature of Myanmar's democracy, this paper aims to answer two questions. First, can Myanmar's transition be defined as a case of democratization, or is it, rather, a case of authoritarian resilience? To state this differently: is the progress enjoyed by Myanmar's polity the outcome of an ongoing process that is supposed to lead to a fully fledged democracy, or, rather, an attempt to enshrine elements of authoritarian governance under a democratic guise? Second, if the balance leans towards the latter instead of the former, how did authoritarian resilience work in Myanmar? The transition is analysed from a long-term perspective, moving from the 1988 pro-democracy uprising up to the most recent events. Data were collected from available published sources and from three fieldworks conducted by the authors in Myanmar. The paper concludes that Myanmar's transition is better understood as a case of authoritarian resilience than as democratization and highlights three core traits of Myanmar's authoritarian resilience: first, the very top-down nature of the political transformation; second, the incumbents’ ability to set the pace of political reform through the use of repression and political engineering; and third, the divide-and-rule strategy used as a means to keep contestations separated and local.


2020 ◽  
Vol 68 (5) ◽  
pp. 999-1014
Author(s):  
Amín Pérez

This article proposes a new understanding of the constraints and opportunities that lead intellectuals engaged in different political and social fields to create alternative modes of resistance to domination. The study of the Algerian sociologist Abdelmalek Sayad offers insights into the social conditions of this mode of committed scholarship. On the one hand, this article applies Sayad’s theory of immigration to his transnational intellectual engagements. It establishes how immigrants’ intellectual work are conditioned by their trajectories, both before and after leaving their country, and by the stages of emigration (from playing a role in the society of origin to becoming caught up in the reality of the host society). On the other hand, the article illuminates the constraints and the spaces of possible action intellectuals face while moving across national universes and disparate political and academic fields. Sayad’s marginal position within the academy constrained him to work for the French and Algerian governments and international organizations while he was simultaneously engaged with political dissidents, unionists, writers, and social movements. In tracking Sayad’s roles as an academic, expert and public sociologist, the article uncovers the conditions that grounded improbable alliances between those fields and produced new forms of critique and political action. The article concludes by drawing out some reflections that ‘collective intellectual’ engagements elicit to the sociology of intellectuals.


2001 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 213-240 ◽  
Author(s):  
Manying Ip Wardlow Friesen

The new Chinese community in New Zealand (formed since 1987) is made up of immigrants from the People's Republic of China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Malaysia as well as other countries. Initially looked upon as harbingers of the “Asian economic miracle” by the New Zealand government, the new arrivals met with numerous unforeseen difficulties. This article is based on the findings of surveys and in-depth interviews in which the primary migrants were asked about their motives for migration, the economic and social outcomes of their migration, their perception of the comparative strengths of their native land and New Zealand, and their long-term view on settlement and return migration. The surveys are also set against background statistics from the 1996 census as well as immigration figures up to 2000. The findings challenge the assumption of the importance of the economic motivation of migration, and point to the primacy of social and environmental factors. They also suggest that transnationalism is a long-term strategy, instead of a temporary expediency, but also that most Chinese migrants in New Zealand have tried to integrate with the host society when possible.


2009 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-14 ◽  
Author(s):  
Manasi Kumar ◽  
Erica Burman

We welcome readers to the first special issue (11.1) of the Journal of Health Management. We hope the readers find the articles and various reviews enriching and provocative, both in terms of the range of ideas and critical approaches addressed. The key theme of this double issue concerns the political limits of mega-development projects such as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The primary focus of the articles collected here is to provide an insightful, constructive and in-depth critique of the United Nations (UN) MDGs along with critical deliberations on their short- and long-term implications not only for health management but also for a wide range of issues around development and social change.


1971 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 36-57
Author(s):  
William Wallace

THE STUDENT OF POLITICS AND THE PRACTITIONER OF POLITICS approach the same problem from different ends. The student is concerned with searching for the underlying realities which can explain the surface shifts of political ephemera; or perhaps with disentangling the different levels of reality which he discerns from his dispassionate observation of the political scene. The practitioner is concerned above all with the intricacies of day-to-day politics. He is interested in long-term patterns of political behaviour only insofar as they affect his political chances, or insofar as foreknowledge will enable him to change and shape the developing pattern. At the opposite ends of this division of interest in the phenomena of politics one may imagine, as ideal types, the ‘pure’ political scientist, the neutral observer of the political battle whose attitude to the contestants and their fluctuating fortunes is one of scholarly detachment, and the dedicated politician, glorying in the clash and chaos of the battlefield, with little more than contempt for those who stand aside and watch. For those who stand towards either end of this division, there are now two separate worlds of politics.


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