Legal and Anthropological Approaches to International Refugee Law

This chapter offers an overview of the contribution of anthropology to the study of international refugee law. It starts with a review of the positivist legal approach, which has long dominated the field of international refugee law, with its focus on rules and states, and argues that this approach is unable to fully explain how refugee law is created and how it develops. Two recent strands—the transnational approach and the participatory approach—have criticized the limitations of the positivist approach and emphasized the role of transnational activities and actors in the process of lawmaking. However, these strands remain rooted in a liberal theory of international law, and they do not capture the complexities of the relevant human experiences. The chapter argues that an anthropological approach shifts the focus from states, borders, and citizenship towards the individual by combining and embedding human interpretations, behaviours, cultural contexts, and personal interactions with the law. Moreover, anthropological methods can enrich the understanding of the implementation of refugee law by empirically assessing legal issues. Beyond that, the chapter suggests areas that could benefit from future academic research at the interface of anthropology and refugee law.

Delayed Return: Consolidation of the Zimbabwean Diaspora and Transnationalism

This article discusses consolidation of the Zimbabwean diaspora and its transnational activities. It presents formation of this particular diaspora as an unanticipated development that is contingent upon circumstances as they evolve in both sending and receiving countries. It draws from longitudinal research with Zimbabwean migrants in Germany and South Africa to illustrate this argument. It also borrows from Tsuda’s transnational outcome framework to provide a nuanced understanding of Zimbabwean migrants’ varied relationships with both Zimbabwe and the receiving countries. The article argues that migrants’ decision to settle for the long-term in the receiving country is not always made at the same time as the decision to migrate itself or in the initial stages of life in the receiving country. There are many cases among Zimbabwean migrants showing that migration was initially perceived as quest for reprieve from the country’s economic and political challenges while they “waited” for the situation to improve. However, the crisis in Zimbabwe has dragged on for more than two decades with no tangible solution in sight thus transforming waiting into settling. Economic and political factors in Zimbabwe as well as factors in the receiving countries influenced the formation and consolidation of the Zimbabwean diaspora and its transnational activities. Diaspora formation and consolidation in this case is an outcome of migrants’ adaptation of their initial plans to new realities obtaining in both the sending and receiving countries.

Measuring Experience in International Business: A Systematic Literature Review

The paper explores the indicators that measure the experience in international business. Literature review was used to ascertain the state of the art of the existing indexes and theories. The internationalisation of businesses is a fundamental strategic step to increase companies' competitive advantage and profits. Nevertheless, even though internationalisation is widely accepted as an important source of value for companies and is a broad object of investigation, there is still much to study about how to measure experience at the level of international business. The absence of a coherent approach to measure experience in international businesses in past empirical studies made it difficult to create a solution with theoretical concepts that would support further studies in this matter. The results are not contradictory, but complementary, as, through individual internationalization indicators, it is possible to evolve and create indices, such as the Transnationality Index or the Transnational Activities Spread Index. The biggest constraint on the analysed indices is the fact that they focus mainly on the internationalisation of transnational companies and the type of data that was used to build the indexes (secondary data). However, by studying international experience through the number of years and the network spread, it is possible to overcome some of the existing challenges.

Capturing Transnational Entrepreneurial Opportunities through Dual Identification: Immigrant Entrepreneurs and Transnational Activities

The purpose of this paper is to explore the way immigrant entrepreneurs (IEs) capture transnational opportunities in their home and host countries. Through an identity lens, this study adopts a qualitative approach in examining transnational entrepreneurship activities conducted by IEs from three countries (Indonesia, Pakistan and South Korea [henceforth Korea]) in one host country (Malaysia). The findings indicate that IEs’ home-host country identities enable them to recognize and exploit entrepreneurial opportunities in multiple countries through unique resources difficult to be imitated by competitors in their home and host countries. This paper contributes to the international entrepreneurship literature by introducing an identity-sensitive model of immigrant entrepreneurship in transnational spaces which will be useful for policy and practice concerning trade and migration.

Analysis of the transformation of enterprise activities under the influence of global shifts

The article identifies the main motives of transnational activities of companies, namely: the desire for cheaper and better factors of production; entering new markets; reduction of competition due to the acquisition of assets of foreign companies; the ability to achieve the effect of scale of production. The classification of factors that are the basis for the formation and operation of transnational companies (TNCs) on the following grounds: unit of study, level of analysis, level of universality, research architecture, factor analysis, genesis of factors, status factors. The author proposes a theory based on a generalized analysis of theories of transnationalization in the context of comparing the features of the development of TNCs and any other business entity. The author develops a mechanism of interaction between donors and recipients within the market theory of transnationalization of production. The factors influencing the dynamic development of TNCs and their transformation into one of the most important institutions of the modern market economy are described. The influence of TNCs on home countries and host countries is analyzed. The main characteristics of technological systems are investigated. It is noted that the formation of the optimal structure of TNCs is based on the optimal distribution of functions between structural units, establishing a system of relations between them, which allows for rapid exchange of information, management decisions and implement them in optimal time. The characteristic of organizational structure of mechanistic and organic types of TNCs is presented. The Hammer-Champi reengineering methodology is proposed. The investment activity of modern enterprises operating in the conditions of global transformations is investigated. The author has improved the mechanism for managing the investment attractiveness of an industrial enterprise.

Settlement Patterns of Korean Immigrants in the Toronto Census Metropolitan Area (DMA)

This paper focuses on settlement patterns of Korean immigrants in the Toronto Census Metropolitan Area (CMA) highlighting their high self-employment rate and active transnational activities. The objectives for the paper are to explore various causes of a high level of self-employment rate among Korean immigrants, and to examine settlement patterns of Korean immigrants in the Toronto CMA by reviewing their immigration data, employment income and self-employment income data, residential locations, ethnic economy and human capital, and to understand how their active transnational activities combined with the factors listed above affected their settlement and integration experiences in Canada as they are inter-connected with various social and economic fabrics of the Korean community in the Toronto CMA.

Settlement Patterns of Korean Immigrants in the Toronto Census Metropolitan Area (DMA)

This paper focuses on settlement patterns of Korean immigrants in the Toronto Census Metropolitan Area (CMA) highlighting their high self-employment rate and active transnational activities. The objectives for the paper are to explore various causes of a high level of self-employment rate among Korean immigrants, and to examine settlement patterns of Korean immigrants in the Toronto CMA by reviewing their immigration data, employment income and self-employment income data, residential locations, ethnic economy and human capital, and to understand how their active transnational activities combined with the factors listed above affected their settlement and integration experiences in Canada as they are inter-connected with various social and economic fabrics of the Korean community in the Toronto CMA.

US-TALIBAN PEACE TALKS: CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES

Purpose: The study explores the after-effects of US-Taliban peace talks and how these can bring peace in decades' long war-wracked Afghanistan. It also investigates whether or not the ever-widening trust deficit between the stakeholders be bridged through these talks and in the future, Afghan soil will never be used for transnational activities. How can these talks neutralize and influence militant groups to join mainstream politics? Methodology: Relevant data were collected from newspaper articles, editorials, websites, journals, research reports, and magazines and minutely analyzed. The research is qualitative and explanatory cum exploratory in nature. Analytical techniques were utilized to evaluate data on the outcomes of the Doha-based US-Taliban peace talks. Main Findings: The study finds that it's easy to conclude table talks but hard to implement on the ground. Decades' long trust deficit will not come to an end until and unless all the stakeholders move forward positively. Intra-Afghan dialogue is the most important step to bring the political instability to an end and constitutional accommodation be made accordingly to space all these in mainstream politics. Applications: Findings of the study, to some extent, will be fruitful for the stakeholders to prioritize the steps to bring peace to Afghanistan. It also cautions regional and international actors to pursue their interests without using the soil of Afghanistan for seditious activities in rival countries. Novelty: The study is unique in the sense that it explores the ways and means through which decades’ long trust deficit can be bridged by looping into the stakeholders for lasting peace to Afghanistan and the region.

Transnational Accessibility between Residential Areas Based on Multimodal Transport System

Due to the development of globalization, transnational activities are more frequent and evaluations of current accessibility are the basis for accessibility improvements. Accessibility evaluation indices generally contain two parts: travel time and travel probability. However, complex transnational processes involve the multimodal transport system, including air and land transport networks, which makes the calculation of these indices more difficult because large quantities of fundamental data, in addition to suitable models, are needed. In this study, residential areas were set as the basic evaluation unit for fine-scale and whole-process analysis. Then, multiple web-sourced platforms were introduced to acquire the travel time between each pair of residential areas. The temporal-range radiation model was applied to calculate transnational travel probability by considering spatial interactions of populations. Finally, the weighted-average travel time to South Asia and Southeast Asia (SA&SEA) countries was generated to represent the overall accessibility for each populated area in China. The results showed that China had better accessibility to SEA than SA, and countries with high accessibility were Thailand, Singapore, and Malaysia. In China, southwest, south, and southeast regions showed larger accessibility to SA&SEA. Improvements of accessibility were also indicated by conjoint analysis of airport nodes. The proposed framework can help to delineate the spatial patterns of transnational accessibility and guide the enhancements of accessibility.