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Am 12. Januar 2015 schwärmten 58 ForscherInnen und Studierende, 31 aus Berlin, 27 aus Chemnitz, auf den Skatepark in der Dresdener Lingnerallee. Ziel der Aktion war es, mehr über die Proteste der "Patriotischen Europäer gegen die Islamisierung des Abendlandes" (Pegida) herauszufinden. Seit Oktober 2014 hatten sich in Dresden immer mehr Menschen unter diesem sperrigen Motto versammelt. Mit den Protesten wuchs auch die Kritik an den völkischen und rassistischen Deutungsmustern, die dort Raum griffen. Wer waren die Demonstrierenden? Was trieb sie auf die Straße? Wie verbreitet waren die Ressentiments, die in Reden, Sprechchören und auf Transparenten hör- und sichtbar waren? ...
Ruling parties as communities of practice and collective identity in China-Ethiopia relations
(2015)
While it helps to put the overemphasis on Chinese agency in the literature into perspective, the recent debate on the role played by African agency in Sino-African relations generally adopts the same rationalist perspective on international politics, and thus stands to miss important aspects of the relations studied. This paper takes the example of Ethiopia, which is often used to highlight African elites’ strategic use of the new options presented by China’s rise, and analyses it from a constructivist perspective. Such a perspective proposes that we need to take the role played by ideas, discourses and emotions seriously, and that Ethiopian policy makers do not exist outside a dense web of personal relations, common knowledge, and shared practices that inadvertently structure their relations with China. More specifically, it is argued here that the ruling parties of China and Ethiopia are linked together in an international community of practice, that exchanges within this community have strengthened the perception of like-mindedness, and that Sino-Ethiopian relations therefore rest on a different basis than is acknowledged by purely rationalist accounts.
Often adopting a feminist perspective, the sociological literature on migrant domestic services (MDS) does not make explicit which feminist paradigm it speaks from. This article situates this literature within ongoing debates in feminist theory, in particular the tension between materialist and poststructuralist approaches. Then, it discusses the empirical relevance of each of those two paradigms on the example of the results of original research into the personalization of employment relationships in MDS.
The contribution proposes a new way of making sense of the diversity of feminist theories, distinguishing between modern and postmodern approaches. Indeed, since the 1980s, feminist theory in the US and Western Europe has undergone a ‘postmodern turn’, which renders previous typologies much less up-to-speed with recent developments in the field. Then, the article examines which paradigms are implicit in the sociological literature on MDS. Initially, personalization in MDS was mainly seen in materialist terms, as a way to maximize the quantity and quality of labour (including emotional labour) extracted from domestic workers. The emergence of postmodern approaches in feminist theory set off a progressive shift in MDS literature. First, this literature showed that personalization also fulfils identity functions for employers and
workers, then it widened its focus to include the affective dimensions of domestic labour (not to be confused with emotional labour). The final section shows how modern and postmodern feminist approaches can be combined within a single research, on the example of original research on personalization in MDS in Belgium and Poland. In particular, the contribution shows that the distinction between material functions of personalization on the one hand, and its emotional/identity functions on the other is not empirically operative. Indeed, migrant domestic workers generally use emotional/identity categories to frame material questions, and vice versa. This final part shows that, rather than representing incompatible approaches, modern and postmodern feminisms complete each other, in this case showing a fuller image of personalization processes in MDS.
This paper1 investigates changes in the domestic work sector when passing from the informal to the formal labor market. The issue is explored within the context of the housework voucher policy (titres-services), which allows households to officially purchase weekly housework services from an authorized agency, through vouchers. This contribution has therefore a twofold focus: observing changes in labor market dynamics and investigating workers’ perception of this change. In order to discuss these issues, I will firstly look at the step from informal to formal labor market through two aspects: ethnic niches and individual labor dynamics – two bedrocks of Brussels domestic work market. Then, I will analyze workers’ personal experiences when acquiring a declared job in the voucher system.
Analyzing objective and subjective changes, a entral question of this article is to which extent the switch to the housework voucher system can bring empowerment to domestic workers. The sector work quality, in objective and subjective terms, has improved mainly by the setting of rules and by allowing workers to enjoy labor rights and a work status. The formal market dynamics of the housework voucher system remain, however, profoundly ethicized and marked by women’s presence, as was/is the shadow market.
The article shows that workers’ understanding of the transition from an informal to a formal sector is largely a result of their previous experiences and social position, mainly regarding migration status. This change will be thus much more assertive for workers who had their migrant status regularization and work formalization processes concomitantly, demonstrating that the most empowering shift is the one of acquiring papers, and not of entering declared work.
This contribution1 is framed within the field of cultural studies and migration and ethnic relations, trying to examine how the Italian American experience has been imaginatively (re)created and received. It will entail an interdisciplinary approach about the cultural and literary analysis of the Italian diaspora in the United States, from a gender perspective that recovers the voice and historical presence of women as has been transmitted in the arts and critical methods. Focusing on the media and literary representations that deal with Italian migration to the United States since the last decades of the 19th century, their welcome or later development until our days, I make particular reference to a community mainly conceived in the masculine, as major receptions and persistent stereotypes about family relations and ethnicity attest. I will analyse, at the same time, the existence of other works that either contest or balance that cultural and gender stereotyping of the Italian American experience or community.
In the ‘age of transnationalization’, spatial mobility is highly valued as a resource and accordingly ‘sedentariness’ is often symbolically devalued. Migration between Poland and Germany (mainly from Poland to Germany) has a century-long tradition. Not only has it yielded the emergence of a dense transnational social space, but is also considered as a re-enactor of cultural traits and symbolic meanings. Spatial mobility is tied to notions of social mobility and to projects of life-making. Since legal restrictions for Polish migrants seeking to work and settle in Germany have vanished, the quest for ‘normalcy’ has enhanced and pressures towards even more migration have increased. I argue that symbolic meanings of mobility are decisive for hierarchies in transnational social spaces. I have put main emphasize on families’ practices of caring for and caring about each other: the first being more a physical or material activity, while the latter is a more symbolic and emotional one. The interviews reveal that people draw multiple differentiations between migrant populations in terms of their migration reasons as well as between the mobile and the immobile. Those differentiations are embedded in the distinct feature of the transnational social space between Poland and Germany with assumed differences in terms of ‘modernity’. At the end the symbolic meanings of mobility also help explain the puzzle of why the emigration rates from Poland are constantly high, although Poland is a comparatively wealthy country.
This paper studies the linkage between international male migration and changes on land inheritance patterns in rural Oaxaca (Mexico). Land inheritance is a long-term exchange between parents and male adult children in Oaxaca: sons are bequeathed with land as long as they provide for their parents (and their wives care for their in-laws) while daughters are excluded from the family patrimony. Drawing on theoretical sample and 37 in depth interviews, this paper argues that intergenerational solidarity based on the parent-son alliance through inheritance is breaking down due to the uncertainty of men´s migration project along with the increase in the fallback position of wives, who may refuse to take care of elderly in-laws. Other alliances emerge instead: parents try to build new alliances with their daughters, bequeathing them agricultural and building plots. However, these new alliances and inheritance shifts are neither a heterogeneous process nor an automatic change and several family and social dimensions must be included to understand the different outcomes.
Globale Finanzplätze im Vergleich : Frankfurt und Sydney zwischen Global City und lokaler Variation
(2015)
Frankfurt und Sydney sind international bedeutende Knotenpunkte des Global- Cities-Netzwerks. Als transnationale Finanzzentren erreichen sie im Global Financial Centres Index (GFCI) ähnliche Platzierungen. Populäre Rankings wie der GFCI entfalten ihre Wirkungsmacht in einem politischen Diskurs, der die Konkurrenz von Finanzzentren in einem hierarchischen Städtenetzwerk betont und so die Orientierung an den Champions der Finanzmetropolen forciert. Der hier vorgenommene kontrastive Vergleich Frankfurts und Sydneys zeigt hingegen, dass die stark von Globalisierungs- und Finanzialisierungstendenzen beeinflussten Städte sich nicht einfach einem Idealtypus von Global Cities angleichen. Vielmehr sorgt die Einbettung in unterschiedliche Entwicklungslinien – im Falle Frankfurts in die Tradition einer koordinierten Marktwirtschaft, im Falle Sydneys in die Tradition einer liberalen Marktwirtschaft – für die Ausbildung von Finanzsystemen mit unterschiedlichem Charakter und unterschiedlicher Reichweite. So weist der Finanzplatz Frankfurt im Vergleich mit Sydney eine starke globale Vernetzung auf, wenngleich die Merkmale der koordinierten Marktwirtschaft - geringere Börsenkapitalisierung der Unternehmen, einer primär kreditbasierten Unternehmensfinanzierung und geringere Finanzmarktorientierung der Bevölkerung nachwirken. Demgegenüber profitiert der Finanzstandort Sydney von einer durchwegs finanzialisierten Ökonomie, was sich in der Finanzmarktorientierung von Unternehmen und jener der allgemeinen Bevölkerung ausdrückt, weist aber eine stärkere Binnenorientierung, also die Fokussierung auf den nationalen Markt auf.
Im Kontext der Diskussion zur „Globalisierung des Managements“ und der daraus entstandenen These einer transnationalen Klasse untersuchen wir in diesem Beitrag den Stellenwert internationaler Berufserfahrung bei Bankvorständen in Deutschland und weltweit. Bisherige Forschungen (etwa Pohlmann 2009) argumentieren, dass bei den Top-100- Industrieunternehmen in den USA, Ostasien und Deutschland Karriereverläufe im mittleren und Spitzenmanagement kaum internationalisiert sind und Hauskarrieren die Regel seien. Unsere eigene explorative Untersuchung legt die Vermutung nahe, dass die Situation im deutschen sowie im globalen Bankensektor anders aussieht. Vor allem in Deutschland verlaufen die Top-Karrieren im Unterschied zu Industrieunternehmen deutlich internationaler, was auf andere personelle Konstellation im Feld des global vernetzten Finanzsektors hinweist. Im deutschen wie im globalen Finanzsektor könnten wir es hierbei mit dem Phänomen einer „Transnationalisierung ohne Migration“ zu tun haben.
In methodischer Hinsicht macht unsere Studie auf die Grenzen quantitativer Forschungsdesigns bei der Untersuchung internationaler Berufserfahrung und internationalen Arbeitspraxen aufmerksam. Daher plädieren wir für ein an die Kategorien der Bourdieu‘schen Sozialtheorie angelehntes qualitatives Forschungsdesign für die Untersuchung der Herausbildung einer globalen Klasse auf den globalisierten Finanzmärkten.