Mobility encounter: The narratives of Burmese refugees in Norway

The article examines the lived experiences of Burmese refugees in Norway in order to understand how they experience integration into local society and how they manage their transnational lives in new socio-economic, political, and cultural contexts. The examination is performed from the perspective of mobility as the entanglement of movement, representation, and practice. In teasing out the refugees' various experiences, the author emphasizes the diversity of migrant groups in terms of their ethnicity, religion, gender, and age, as well as multiple dimensions of mobilities. The complex politics of mobility – how different mobilities are produced, practised, and regulated in relation to issues such as transnational migration, diasporic cultures, and communication technologies – is seen as underlying the narratives of Burmese refugees in Norway. Their narratives equate mobilities with escape from poverty, highlighting the linkage that mobility has with poverty and development. The discussion reveals the potential for divisiveness within wider society in Norway, and it is argued that a nuanced understanding of how mobilities are differentially accessed within immigrant groups is essential for conceiving a multicultural society in Norway.     

Tracking the Settlement of North African Immigrants: speculations on the social and cultural impacts of a newly arrived immigrant group

In the past five years Australia has experienced a dramatic increase in the number of North African arrivals. The majority of North African arrivals for the past 4 years have arrived as humanitarian entrants. This migration stream reflected a shift in the regional focus of the humanitarian program towards Africa. The majority of North African arrivals since 2000–01 have been from Sudan. The States of New South Wales and Victoria received the highest proportions of these arrivals. Key issues, and important research topics for social scientists, are at least threefold. First, the domestic politics and international geopolitics of this humanitarian flow need critical analysis. Second, the suitability of settlement services needs to be assessed. Specifically, the effects and merit of privatising service provision to these refugees requires rigorous scholarly assessment. Finally, more needs to be known about the cultural adaptation of this group, especially youth. Research into the experiences of racism and, relatedly, the existence and appropriateness of anti-racism initiatives is required.     

Public perceptions of foreign and Chinese real estate investment: intercultural relations in Global Sydney

Moving foreign human and financial capital through landed property is not a new phenomenon in Sydney. It is a recurring geopolitical strategy that is replete with intercultural tension and deep colonial roots. In contemporary Australia, there is an assumption in public policy and media rhetoric that there is a high level of public concern about foreign investment. However, there is little empirical data that examines public perceptions. In this study, we are interested in whether the dominant voices in this debate represent broad public views about this issue. We sought to fill this gap by conducting a survey of almost 900 Sydney residents, looking at their perceptions of foreign and Chinese investment. We find high levels of public concern and discontent about foreign investment amongst Sydneysiders, with Chinese investors being a key target of this discontent. In the context of high housing prices in Sydney, there were widely held concerns about housing affordability. Survey respondents had a sophisticated understanding of what influences house prices, but with an overemphasis on the role of foreign investment. There is a general lack of support for policy that encourages foreign investment, and a lack of confidence in how the government is regulating foreign investment. Half of our participants reported that they would not welcome Chinese foreign investment in their suburb.     

African Refugee Communities in Southeast Queensland: forces of concentration and dispersion

Black African refugee communities are a relatively recent addition to the Australia landscape. Between 2001 and 2007, over 5000 refugees from various African nations resettled in Queensland. There are very few data about African refugee settlement geography in Australia and no previous study delineating African refugee settlement within the State of Queensland. This research addresses the knowledge gap by examining the geographic distribution and secondary migration patterns of eight African refugee communities in Southeast Queensland. The research adopted a multi-method approach, mapping quantitative data from an existing secondary database and comparing these to qualitative primary data to determine geographical distribution. Additional qualitative data were used to establish secondary migration patterns of the case study communities. Results show noticeable discrepancies between existing secondary datasets and primary data collected from the communities. These inconsistencies are significant because settlement service providers who use the secondary data to budget, plan and deliver essential settlement services might be underestimating the size of the African communities and missing some settlement locations altogether. The results also reveal a tension between the main socio-cultural forces of concentration and housing forces of dispersion that are driving secondary migration in the communities. A policy recommendation to mitigate the potentially negative effects of residential dispersion on settlement outcomes includes the strategic location of service hubs in key suburbs, such as Moorooka, to which the communities are already drawn.     

"Making Place": The "Pacific Solution" and Australian Emplacement in the Pacific and on Refugee Bodies

In September 2001, Australia effected a "Pacific Solution" to its "refugee problem": the interception and transfer of "unauthorised boat arrivals" to processing centres in the Pacific Third World. These centres were agreed to by poor countries that were approached precisely because of their vulnerability and dependence upon Australia, in exchange for increases in aid. Australia thereby created a regional refugee problem and, in so doing, Australian seignorage also demands that the laws of those sovereign countries be placed in stasis so that people not convicted of a crime may be detained indefinitely. The Pacific region, in effect, came to be mapped in terms of its utility to Australia, both downplaying and concealing complex economic, social and political issues. This essay studies the Pacific Solution as a means of Australian "emplacement" in the Pacific and on refugee identity/bodies. Both refugee identity and the Pacific Third World are assessed in terms of their utility in serving as sites for Australian emplacement, whereby and wherein the borders of Australia are reinforced, to the detriment of extant "local" emplacements.     

缅甸果敢难民涌入对中国边境地区的影响

缅甸果敢冲突爆发,大量难民为躲避战争纷纷涌入中国云南省的边境地区。进入中国的果敢难民生活拮据,但在中国政府及民众的帮助下,基本生活得到保障。虽然果敢人民与中国边境地区的人民语言相通,生活方式相似,双方人民间隔阂较小,但大量涌入的果敢难民对边境地区造成的影响依然不可忽视,以免因难民问题酿成祸患。研究通过实地考察、问卷调查、深度访谈等方法分析此次冲突对中国边境地区造成的影响。结果表明,难民的涌入使得边境地区的双方贸易往来受损,治安压力增大,生态环境受到威胁,但也为边境地区带来了新的劳动力和经济收入来源。同时,政府针对难民问题也出台了一系列切实有效的措施。总体来说,果敢难民的涌入对中国边境地区的影响在可控范围内,并没有引起边境地区的社会失调。     

Equity Issues in the 'New Prosperity' of the 1990s: The case of Sydney

Equity issues associated with Sydney's engagement with prosperity, especially over the last decade, are examined. Sydney is positioned within the historic contexts of major national economic change and of globalisation, noting especially the rise in importance of the financial, property and business services sectors. These sectors are concentred in inner Sydney and have helped position Sydney as Australia's leading global city, thereby generating jobs and growth in incomes. At the same time, however, there have been major shifts in patterns of income distribution across the Sydney metropolitan area and between Sydney and other parts of Australia. In particular, we note the 'revitalisation' of Sydney's inner-urban areas and their association with new forms of Central Business District (CBD) workforce growth and a significant realignment of journey-to-work patterns. Using Australian Taxation Office income data, the dynamics and some of the equity outcomes of 1990s prosperity within the Sydney metropolitan area are examined, paying particular attention to the impact of change in and around the Sydney CBD and the City of Sydney local government area. We find that there has been a complex shift in the nature of inequality across the Sydney metropolitan area, including a widening in incomes in some instances and a major geographic shift in Sydney's income-divide axis. The paper concludes by arguing that ongoing economic prosperity in Sydney will depend on the extent to which social cleavage can be avoided by a more equitable sharing of the benefits of prosperity.     

Islam in Sydney: Contesting the Discourse of Absence

Non‐recognition is one of the key modes of re‐inscribing the Other. In Sydney's anti‐mosque politics this form of oppression was manifest as a discourse of absence. Sydney Muslims have been portrayed as non‐existent within, or external to, localities where mosques have been proposed. In these circumstances claims to belonging and citizenship by Sydney Muslims have been fundamentally injured. Census data are used to challenge the historical and contemporary constructions of Islamic absence in Australia. Sydney Muslims are a culturally diverse and somewhat disparate faith group. They are increasingly present in areas outside of the initial zones of residential focus. This diversity and dynamism is a substantial challenge for Islamic community building (Ummah) in Sydney and presents rich foci for further research.     

The Asymmetric Border: The United States’ Place in the World and the Refugee Panic of 2018

The year 2018 saw a moral panic in the United States in the media and among many citizens over the treatment of refugees/asylees at the U.S. southern border, particularly the separation and detention of children apart from their parents. This happened in the context of a period in U.S. political history in which “immigration,” without much discernment about different types of immigration, was central to political discourse. In fact, in terms of numbers, there was no immigration crisis at the border. Undocumented migration from Mexico across the southern border of the United States has been in decline for many years, and the irregular movement of people from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras is currently small by historical standards. The only crisis, to which the U.S. panic was a response, has been a human rights crisis. Families and children seeking asylum from horrendous civil‐rights conditions in their countries of origin were criminalized and denied their right to asylum hearings. The panic points both to the extreme politicization of immigration in the United States, particularly since Donald Trump's entry into national politics in 2015, and to popular confusion over categorizing different types of immigrants. But it also raises questions about the nature of the U.S. southern border in relation to the United States’ place in the world. Rather than thinking about the United States as simply the rich destination country of unfortunate people coming from poor origin countries, the refugee panic of 2018 brings into the focus the fact that the United States itself is complicit in the conditions in those countries that produce so many refugees in the first place.     

郑洛地区史前聚落遗址人居环境宜居度指数模糊综合评价

以地貌、土壤、坡向、坡度、高程5个指标构建郑洛地区史前聚落遗址人居环境指数模糊综合评价体系,使用基于地理探测器的因子探测法确定各单因素权重,根据环境驱动因子分级标准及等级值,采用梯形和三角形隶属函数计算单因素评价值,再使用加权平均的综合评价类型和等距法,得到了郑洛地区史前聚落遗址人居环境指数综合等级,运用SPSS数据探索功能,分析宜居度最高地区的具体环境特征,并分别以仰韶后期和龙山时期的实际遗址分布数据对该等级评价系统的准确性进行验证。研究结果表明,该模型评价结果较为准确可靠。     

A Comparison of Charcoal and Archaeological Information to Address the Influences on Holocene Fire Activity in the Sydney Basin

The influence of Aboriginal people on fire activity and hence the vegetation of Australia has long been debated. This study aimed to document the local fire activity of the Holocene in the catchment of a small freshwater reed swamp located in the Sydney Basin and to compare this with nearby archaeological evidence; including artefact discard rates and the number of base camps and activity locations used through time. This archaeological evidence was used as an index of human activity through time to assess anthropogenic influences on fire activity. Charcoal (>250 µm) was quantified in a radiocarbon-dated sediment core from Griffith Swamp covering ～6000 calibrated years BP. A substantial increase in fire activity was found from ～3000 years BP and a lesser increase approximately 700 years ago. The change in fire activity at ～3000 years BP was approximately coeval with changes in archaeological evidence from Upper Mangrove Creek, suggesting either greater human presence in the landscape or altered subsistence and land-use strategies. Fire frequency in the catchment of Griffith Swamp peaked at about eight episodes per century, perhaps in response to environmental change that promoted both increased human activity and a higher natural fire frequency. This study provides an extended temporal perspective on fire and humans in this landscape, demonstrating how palaeoecology can provide practical information for the contemporary management of such fire-prone ecosystems.     

Generation and Place of Residence in the Symbolic and Lived Identity of Maltese in Sydney,Australia

Maltese symbolic and lived identities are examined to explore the changes that occur in cultural identity between generations and place of residence within metropolitan Sydney. The results are employed to problematise Sandberg's straight-line theory, that is, that ethnic identity will decline with each successive generation. Our results, exploring ethnic identity in both its symbolic and lived-experience forms, confirm arguments that global cities are not homogeneous territories, as implied by Sandberg, but rather sites of cultural difference. The results suggest that, regardless of place of residence or generation, the symbolic Maltese identities remain similar, combating the old, naive assimilationist assumption that all immigrants would quickly abandon their ethnic identity, and favouring arguments supporting hybrid identities. Similarly, results for Maltese identity as lived experience suggest that their Maltese identity is less important only for those second-generation Maltese living in census collection districts with less than 10 per cent of the population born in Malta.     

Qualitative GIS and the visualization of narrative activity space data

Qualitative activity space data, i.e. qualitative data associated with the routine locations and activities of individuals, are recognized as increasingly useful by researchers in the social and health sciences for investigating the influence of environment on human behavior. However, there has been little research on techniques for exploring qualitative activity space data. This research illustrates the theoretical principles of combining qualitative and quantitative data and methodologies within the context of geographic information systems (GIS), using visualization as the means of inquiry. Through the use of a prototype implementation of a visualization system for qualitative activity space data and its application in a case study of urban youth we show how these theoretical methodological principles are realized in applied research. The visualization system uses a variety of visual variables to simultaneously depict multiple qualitative and quantitative attributes of individuals' activity spaces. The visualization is applied to explore the activity spaces of a sample of urban youth participating in a study on the geographic and social contexts of adolescent substance use. Examples demonstrate how the visualization can be used to explore individual activity spaces to generate hypotheses, investigate statistical outliers, and explore activity space patterns among subject subgroups.     

兰州沙尘暴样品磁学性质与粒度分析及其与悉尼样品的对比

对2009年9月23日悉尼特强沙尘暴和2010年4月兰州沙尘暴样品进行了磁学参数和粒度测量.结果表明:悉尼尘暴样品中磁性矿物含量远远低于兰州样品.磁性矿物种类略有不同,兰州样品主要含有磁铁矿、磁赤铁矿,可能含有赤铁矿;悉尼样品除了上述矿物外,还含有针铁矿.悉尼样品比兰州样品的磁性矿物颗粒要细.悉尼样品的粒度分布曲线呈现四峰态,粒度曲线呈现宽扁形态;兰州样品呈现三峰态,粒度曲线则呈窄高的形态.沙尘暴样品与源区样品磁学性质的大相径庭及粒度曲线的多峰态分布都说明了沙尘暴物源的非惟一性.此外,将兰州沙尘暴样品与九州台黄土-古土壤样品的粒度进行了比较,结果显示,1～10 μm组分含量的增加及10～20 μm组分含量的减少主要与不稳定矿物的物理化学风化过程有关,0.02～1μm组分含量增加的主要原因是新矿物的生成及不稳定矿物的风化.沙尘暴样品与黄土-古土壤样品的粒度分布曲线具有一定的相似性,说明现代沙尘暴事件是地质时期风尘活动的持续,现代风积作用仍在继续.     

2015年缅北冲突下的果敢难民空间分布特征

通过实地调研、问卷调查、深入访谈等方式,并结合GIS及统计分析法,从宏观和微观上对2015-02-09果敢冲突涌进中国的果敢难民的空间分布特征及原因进行了分析。结果表明：冲突下果敢难民主要受地理距离、政策、社会关系、经济和自然条件等因素影响,难民集中分布在果敢与中国边境交界的中国一侧。从宏观地域格局上看,难民分布的总体特征是沿边境线呈条带状的空间分布,且呈现出向中国境内纵深递减的趋势;从微观上看,主要呈现出集聚型、分散型、集聚-分散型分布的特征。     

The Reliability of Using the Iterative Proportional Fitting Procedure*

This paper demonstrates the utility of the iterative proportional fitting procedure (IPF) in generating disaggregated spatial data from aggregated data and evaluates the performance of the procedure. Estimates of individual level data created by IPF using data of equal-interval categories are reliable, but the performance of the estimation can be improved by increasing sample size. The improvement usually is enough to offset the increase in error created by other factors. If the two variables defining the cross-classification have a significant interaction effect and the number of categories in each variable is larger than two, then IPF is preferred over an independent model.     

The Response of Aboriginal Burning Practices to Population Levels and El Niño–Southern Oscillation Events during the mid- to late-Holocene: a case study from the Sydney Basin using charcoal and pollen analysis

Pollen and macroscopic charcoal have been analysed from a sedimentary sequence representing approximately 6100 years from a site within Wollemi National Park. This is located to the north-west of Sydney and forms a part of the Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage Area. The overall aim of the work was to examine the prehistoric interrelationships between vegetation, fire and human activity. There were relatively minor changes in the vegetation over the last ～6000 years, perhaps reflecting the climate- and fire-resilient nature of the sclerophyllous vegetation found on Hawkesbury Sandstone throughout the Sydney Basin. Casuarinaceae declined in the late Holocene, a trend that has been detected in numerous palaeoecological studies throughout south-eastern Australia. This decline was unrelated to fire, which has been a persistent feature at the site over the entire analysed sequence. The fire regime at the site changed from 5.7 ka, which is interpreted as reflecting the onset of increased climatic variability associated with El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) events. Another dramatic change in the fire regime occurred at 3 ka, which was coeval with archaeological changes in the region. It is possible that the change in fire activity from 3 ka represented an alteration to Aboriginal management strategies associated with an increasing population and/or the increased risk of conflagrations in an ENSO-dominated climate.     

On the Fringe of Neoliberalism: residential development in outer suburban Sydney

Although there is widespread consensus in human geography that neoliberalism is achieved through the intersection of multiple scales and states, there has been growing emphasis in recent years on the hybrid qualities of neoliberalist-styles of governance. Because hybrid approaches draw attention to the wide range of actors and contradictory agendas underpinning the always uneven expression of neoliberalist projects, they are particularly suited to the identification of residual state capacities in contexts where neoliberalist forms dominate economic and political life. Drawing on two cases of large-scale residential development in New South Wales, namely Warnervale Town Centre on the New South Wales Central Coast and the Australian Defence Industry site at St Marys in Sydney's west, the present paper adopts an hybrid approach in order to identify current state capacities. Through a comparison of both sites, it identifies the potential for socially and ecologically balanced development in the outer suburban context.     

Prosperity and the Suburban Dream: Quality of life and affordability in western Sydney

Over the past 10 years Sydney has experienced a remarkable wave of economic prosperity and growth, partly due to its developing role as a regionally significant global city. Through this period, maintaining the quality of life in the city has been regarded as particularly important. Yet traditional accounts of the global city have stressed quality-of-life features of the inner city. In this paper I examine the implications of the prosperity of global Sydney for the quality of life of western Sydney, paying particular attention to environmental amenity and the affordability of housing. The paper argues, first, that growth in the Sydney region has depended upon continued growth in western Sydney. It highlights key instances in which residents have resisted developments associated with this growth and regarded as major threats to the environmental amenity of the region. Second, the paper argues that the prosperity of Sydney, combined with changes to government policy, have impacted upon the supply of affordable rental housing in western Sydney. This is particularly significant in the case of public housing. Managing growth in the city will require attention to managing quality-of-life issues in the metropolis as a whole.