1,720,998 research outputs found
Myth and Reality in Irregular Migration from Myanmar
No full textMigration studies is an interdisciplinary study within a broader field of development studies due to its association with debates about development and underdevelopment. Irregular migration is one of the most significant topics in migration studies and its complex nature has attracted many scholars from around the world. Most literature on irregular migration has focused on its illegality and the situation of irregular migrants in the destination country and therefore, much of the previous literature on irregular migration only presents the process as a dangerous and abusive phenomenon for irregular migrants, and depicts brokers and agents as evil and exploitative. Public perception and policy discussions are dominated by myths, rather than facts, about debts and danger. These established myths often overshadow the reality about the impacts of irregular migration as experienced by actual migrants and their local communities. These confused interpretations of irregular migration highlight a need for further research.
This thesis examines a case of cross-border irregular migration from Myanmar to Thailand in order to explore the impacts of irregular migration in a wider field. Its main purpose is to investigate the processes and impacts of irregular migration on families left behind in sending areas. This is achieved by employing a qualitative case study approach to gain deeper understanding of the topic in the local context, using two data collection methods: participant observation and semi-structured interviews. The study hypothesizes that irregular migration in the Myanmar context conforms less to the “evil” image, than to the patterns of conventional labour migration described by the “New Economics of Labour Migration” theory. The main research questions posed to achieve these aims were: What are the processes of irregular migration? What are its impacts on families left behind? How are these impacts different from the impacts resulting from legal migration?
The study draws two main conclusions. First, human smuggling operations in this study’s context are based on the personal contacts, and therefore irregular migration is often accomplished with the help of friends, relatives or siblings of the migrants themselves and not by hostile, exploitative smugglers. Secondly, departing from the traditional notion that irregular migration is harmful, the findings from this study suggest that the social and economic impacts resulting from irregular migration are surprisingly similar to the impacts of conventional international migration in many respects
Transnationalism and Development: The Impact of Remittances to Timor-Leste
No full textThe aim of this thesis is to Explorer the impact of remittances, sent from Timorese workers in the United Kingdom of Great Britain, Northern Ireland, South Korea and Australia, on the Development of Timor-Leste.
The research in this study is from three different perspectives. Firstly, the migration processes and the remittance service providers, which are involved in managing the transfer of remittances from Timorese workers overseas to their families at home. Secondly, the remittance is used by recipient familieson the consumption (durable and non durable goods). Finally, the remittance is used on human capital invest-ment and business investment. From these three perspectives, this thesis examines how remittances con tribute to the development of Timor-Leste. Using a qualitative method, the study addresses one main question: What is the impact of remittances to Timor-Leste?
The study was underpinned by qualitative research conducted in Timor-Leste, which has a total popula-tion of 1.1 million. I administered the field research in 7 locations to 30 participants. These included 10 remittance receiving households in the urban district of Dili and 10 from the rural areas of Baucau, Lospa-los, Viqueque, Ainaro, Covalima and Oecusse. Another 10 interviewees were migrant workers domiciled in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, South Korea and Australia. The interviews also conducted with relevant Government institutions regarding the process of emigration to work in United Kingdom of Great Britain, Northern Ireland, South Korea and Australia. Also, bank and non-bank institusions as the channel used to transfers remittances from the host countries of the migrants to their families at home.
In adopting a combination of theoretical approaches, especially the New Economy of Labour Migration, I argue that remittances have a positive contribution to the development of household participants‟ welfare, the development of human capital and they enable remitters and their families in Timor-Leste to start small and medium businesses. The study also found that the ultimate use of remittances is variously in-vested in productive and unproductive sectors. I further argue that the positive impact of remittances on peoples‟ lives significantly increases the numbers of overseas migrants, which attracts a greater flow of remittances into the country and that urgent government policies are needed to facilitate these more easily
Assessing the poverty impact of internal resettlement programs on the ethnic minorities in Lao PDR
No full textThis research assesses how poverty-based resettlement programs make a contribution to poverty reduction and controlling migration of ethnic people in rural Laos. In 2009, the government of Laos launched new resettlement programs in six northern provinces. The programs aimed to improve the accessibility to land of people who were remaining poor in some rural areas. Primarily, poor people were required to resettle in a village where land could be available for them.
I investigated two resettlement sites in Thathome district, Xiangkhoang province. I applied a qualitative approach to examine the poverty experiences of settlers. In particular, I focused on identifying the causes and impacts of poverty-based resettlement programs on ethnic migrants. Semi-structured interviews were used to gather responses from migrants, government officers and host villagers. Two focus group interviews were organized with migrant participants who came from different locations.
The findings revealed that poverty-based resettlement programs did not directly address the core causes of poverty and migration of poor people in rural Laos. Conversely, the improper planning and implementation of programs were responsible for poverty that happened in the resettlement sites. The programs were carried out while the local government was hampered by insufficient funds. There was little support and assistance provided to settlers during the transitional periods. As a result, settlers faced worse hardship than they had in their original villages. Poverty-based resettlement programs instead of reducing poverty had created a situation whereby there was a greater potential for poor people to become trapped in continued poverty
The post-move satisfaction of individuals moving within New Zealand
No full textPeople who change their residence voluntarily do so primarily in order to improve their circumstances. A prevailing assumption in the literature is that migration will yield positive returns. A new body of literature now questions both the conceptual and empirical basis for this assumption noting that the range of outcomes and the mover's own individual assessments have often remained untested empirically.
In recent years students of migration have been attempting to redress the balance between understanding of the causes of migration on one hand and the way outcomes are distributed across movers on the other. With the increasing application of the large scale social survey the field is able to ask movers themselves to articulate the net returns to their own migration. The analysis of these subjective responses is the primary source of data used by the international literature on post-move satisfaction.
What the literature is now showing is that post-move satisfaction can range widely from the negative to the very positive. This is hardly surprising given that residential relocation is a major form of adaption the retrospective judgement of which depends both on expectations and different degrees of realisation. In my research I focus on how satisfied movers say they are with their outcomes of their move. I also address the degree to which levels of satisfaction with specific domains (social, employment, etc) is higher or lower than before the move. Both these questions have been asked in Statistics New Zealand's 2007 Dynamics and Motivations for Migration Survey, along with a wide range of personal, move related and contextual information. This internationally unique instrument which carries the responses of nearly 5000 movers within New Zealand forms the empirical base of my study.
The results are instructive. Respondents' satisfaction with the outcomes of internal migration are highly variable, and this variance is systematically related to the demographic and socio-economic characteristics of the movers. Post-move satisfaction at both the global and domain level is also sensitive to the characteristics of the move itself (whether within or between local labour markets and to distance). The locations involved, as well as changes in mover's personal circumstances over the period also influence the subjective evaluations of the move.
There are several reasons for looking closely at post-move satisfaction and why it varies. First, satisfaction has a close and well documented relationship to subsequent moves. Getting the move 'right' may have an important impact on individual's long term welfare as well as their community's satisfaction as a whole. Second, changing dwellings is one of the major adjustments people make in realigning their lives, financially and socially and the ability of people to make accurate decisions which raise their perceived standard of living is important in facilitating well-being in general. The study of post-move satisfaction may also help us judge the optimal realignment of people and places. But in the short run it is probably the way that the post-move satisfaction literature is focussing our attention on the highly variable nature of outcomes of migration which is important. Understanding the reasons for this variability ushers in a new set of challenges to migration theory
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Dreams from Kiribati: Maintaining identity and social resilience post-migration
No full textClimate change is widely regarded as a factor that contributes to migration through sea level rise and consequently Kiribati is expected to become uninhabitable and require mass migration. The question around how to resettle Kiribati’s population is without an answer. This thesis sought how the people of Kiribati envision their society will look, function and feel post-migration. This thesis used the strength based methodology Appreciative Inquiry to frame migration in a positive way to help get participants beyond the frightening idea of migrating and rather explore dreams for making migration work for the people of Kiribati.
Fieldwork in Kiribati found participants’ dreams cover a wide array of needs such as identity, community connectedness, liveable income, recognised education and the ability to celebrate their culture. These dreams correlate strongly with the components of social resilience which indicates holistic adaptation planning is likely to be the most effective approach. Of all resilience influencing components, the relationship between culture and identity appears the most integral and if the I-Kiribati are able to reproduce their culture in ways that are less dependent on location, the migrating population will likely be more socially resilient when their location of residence changes
Brain Gain in Fiji? How do past emigrants’ experiences shape the education decisions and emigration plans of tertiary students in Fiji?
No full textThis thesis examines the case of Fijian youths’ increasing demand for higher education in order to explore the brain gain theorem. Its primary aim is to understand how past emigrants’ experiences shape the education decisions and emigration intentions of tertiary students in Fiji. This is achieved through semi-structured interviews with Fijian youths as well as an examination of policy and media reports. The research questions through which these aims are achieved are: Why do Fijian students enter higher education? Do Fijian students intend to migrate, and if so, why or why not? And what are the constraints and obstacles to Fijian students’ emigration intentions? The central conclusion of this thesis is that the brain gain effect is present in Fiji because half of the student-participants responded to the incentive effect, defined as the prospect of migration raising the expected returns to higher education, which is created by two distinct cultures of migration and three of the Fijian governments’ initiatives. The strength of their social ties determined whether they had perfect or imperfect information about the constraints and obstacles to their emigration intentions which in turn, determined the type of brain gain effect Fijian communities may be experiencing.
In this thesis, the relationship between emigration and human capital formation is understood through the notion of the brain gain effect, defined as prospect of migration leads to a higher average level of education per individual in origin countries. Existing empirical studies have employed quantitative methods to establish the correlation between past emigration rates and current enrolment rates. The significance and novelty of this thesis lies in its adoption of qualitative case study methods in which real people were asked what they are doing and why, thus bringing us closer to a causal understanding of the relationship between higher education and emigration. In addition, by including ethnic and skill-level variables in the research design, this thesis shows that those remaining behind after upskilling may be some of Fiji’s ‘best and brightest.
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
- …
