The Political Economy of Mobility Partnerships – Structural Power in the EU's External Migration Policy

The research on European Union (EU) external relations and the EU's own official discourse frequently portray the EU as a soft power that provides its neighbourhood with good governance principles. The European Mobility Partnerships (EU MPs) can be considered the most recent manifestation of this rhetoric. Studies on EU MPs reflect a narrow understanding of power. This paper aims to contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of the power dimension inherent in the EU's external relations. It develops a neogramscian theoretical framework to challenge the rhetoric of the EU as a soft power and normative hegemon. Drawing on semi-structured expert interviews and textual analysis of documents, it seeks to reveal whether and in what ways socio-economic power dynamics shape the EU MPs. This article argues that while, at the beginning, the design of the EU MPs as a policy tool has been very much influenced by neoliberal ideas such as the market-oriented liberalisation of mobility and the flexibilisation of labour, implementation is marked by the neo-mercantilist approach of restricting immigration and maximising the efficiency of readmission. Applying a critical political economy concept of power is helpful in understanding how market forces influence EU external migration policy, transcending a narrow understanding of power.     

西北地区进城农民工配偶相携迁移发展机制研究—基于22省60市的问卷调查

家庭迁移已经成为中国20世纪90年代以来农村劳动力乡城流动中的一个重要特征。运用课题组城镇打工农民就业变化与市民化问卷调查数据,分析了西北地区携眷迁移发展状况,从整体携眷迁移和夫妻不同先行者携眷迁移两个维度建立三个回归模型,将人力资本和社会资本放在统一的分析框架中,探讨西北地区进城农民工携眷迁移发展机制,首次对城市农民工配偶相携迁移机制进行了实证分析,拓展了以往农民工家庭迁移的研究视野。研究表明:西北地区未婚和已婚农民工携眷迁移水平远远低于个体迁移,且女性携眷迁移水平较男性携眷发展更低,与西北外地区携眷发展还有差距。人力资本、社会资本及城市门槛对夫妻不同先行者携眷迁移的影响作用及路径有显著差异,西北地区夫携迁移发展机制主要来自城市打工生活时间、现城镇住房状况、业缘朋友数量等级、迁移距离的作用,而妻携迁移发展的主要渠道和作用较夫携迁移多元化。应努力创建农民工相应迁移机制发挥效应的环境和平台,以增强其家庭成员迁移的人力资本、社会资本及跨越城市迁移门槛的能力,并形成携眷迁移与女性职业提升协同发展的互动机制。     

Impact of International Remittances on Schooling in the Philippines: Does the Relationship to the Household Head Matter?

We study the impact of international remittances on schooling in the Philippines, taking into account the school‐age individual's relationship to the household head. This consideration is important because employment opportunities abroad may be taken at the expense of the quality of child rearing. Our estimation results indicate that there are, indeed, significant negative guardian effects on school attendance and education expenditures when children with overseas parents are looked after by a relative other than a parent or grandparent. However, these negative effects tend to be outweighed by the positive impact of remittance flows from overseas.     

三峡移民对库区经济的影响研究

三峡库区移民是一项投资大,移民人数多,影响地区广,持续时间长的巨大工程。通过对三峡库区移民几个阶段的投入产出分析,总结出三峡移民对库区经济发展的影响是非常巨大的。三峡移民应该走可持续发展的道路,我们既应该看到其对经济发展的短期影响,也要关注其对库区经济的长期影响,只有在深刻认识了三峡库区移民对经济所产生的影响之后,我们才能够寻找到可持续发展库区经济的有效措施,以做好三峡移民的后续工作。     

The contribution of human capital to a holistic response to climate change: learning from and for the Mekong Delta,Vietnam

Abstract

The Mekong Delta has been identified by the International Panel on Climate Change as one of the three most vulnerable areas in the world as sea levels rise due to climate change. The Vietnam Government has implemented a range of policies to assist migration in order to address these environmental problems. While much research has focused on the environmental causes of, and responses to, climate change there has been less research on the impact of environmentally motivated responses to climate change on labour force and human capital factors. This paper examines the experience of the Vietnam Government in encouraging internal migration from vulnerable agricultural areas to urban industrial cities, to explore the human capital effects of these environmentally motivated response to climate change. The paper first presents the environmental argument for migration in response to climate change, together with examples of what the Vietnam Government has done to encourage migration from the rural (originating) areas to other rural resettlement and city (receiving) areas. It then uses data collected as part of recent study into the impact of government encouragement for internal migration to explore the labour force and human capital impacts in both the originating region and receiving areas. The findings suggest that while there are social and economic advantages there are challenges, including ensuring that job opportunities are available, migrants and appropriate skills, and that labour contracts provide for job security and healthy and safe working result in improved living conditions. To address these challenges, this paper proposes a more integrated approach that acknowledges and addresses associated human capital (skills upgrading) and business development needs and integrates these with environmentally-motivated policies.     

Immigration, In-Migration, Ethnicity and Entrepreneurship in the United Kingdom

This paper develops and tests hypotheses concerning the effect of migrant status and ethnicity on propensity to engage in entrepreneurship (defined as new business activity) at the individual level in the UK. The hypotheses are tested using bivariate analysis (Pearson tests of independence) and multivariate analysis (binary logistic regression). Bivariate analysis suggests that new business activity varies with migrant status and ethnicity. Multivariate analysis suggests that migration increases the odds of engaging in new business activity, that the independent effect of ethnicity is marginal, and that being a recent ethnic minority migrant decreases the odds, after controlling for other individual level factors. At the regional level, a preliminary analysis suggests that gross migration flow has a higher correlation with new business activity than other commonly used regional demographic or economic development measures.      

地震资料叠前深度偏移处理质量控制

叠前深度偏移处理目前已广泛应用于地震勘探资料处理中,被认为是解决复杂地质构造正确成像困难问题较好方法,但其处理成果同时又受多种因素影响,需要在资料处理过程中加以控制。通过分析这些影响因素,提出消除或削减这些影响的方法,达到正确还原地层构造形态的目的。     

Migration and Americanization: The special case of Belgian economics*

One of the distinguishing features of Belgian economics is that, from the early 1920s, so many of Belgium's best economists pursued postgraduate studies at top American universities, a case of ‘temporary’ migration. This was made possible by the fellowships granted by the Commission for Relief in Belgium, a legacy of the First World War. After a stay in the US of a few years, most returned to Belgium. However, they maintained strong links with the US. Also, they tried to recreate in Belgium the most valuable elements of their American experience. It would lead to a strong and early Americanization of Belgian economics. Moreover, they were at the forefront of several initiatives to organize economics on a European scale, such as the European Economic Review and the European Economic Association.     

(Non-)Existence of Equilibria in Multicommunity Models

This paper reconsiders equilibrium existence in models with migration and voting over local public goods. We show that under some straightforward assumptions on preferences and income distributions, the basic structure of multicommunity models (i.e., perfect mobility, majority rule, single crossing property) implies that no equilibrium with jurisdictions conducting different policies can exist. Stratification equilibria—with sorting of the population according to income classes—are therefore not as natural as is sometimes suggested. Mechanisms that can serve to support stratification (i.e., tight housing markets, returns to scale in the provision of publicly consumed goods) are discussed.     

Different Roles of Land in Rural-Urban Migration： Evidence from China＇s Household Survey

This paper explores the influence of land holding on rural–urban migration using China's 2008 household survey data. It shows that the contradictory findings of existing published literature can be explained by introducing a migration distance variable. The empirical studies show that land holding plays a different role in short‐distance and long‐distance migration. Land holding has a U‐shaped curve association with the probability of short‐distance migration and has an inverted‐U‐shaped association with the probability of long‐distance migration. Therefore, the government needs to provide more job information and migration subsidies to farmers who have little land to overcome difficulties in the process of migration so as to reduce rural–urban inequality.