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.     

太平洋岛国对澳大利亚地缘战略影响的历史考察

历史上太平洋岛国对澳大利亚地缘战略的影响以第二次世界大战为分水岭,主要分为三个阶段：二战前是地缘战略缺失阶段,当时澳大利亚无视周边地缘环境,将国家安全系于遥远英帝国的庇护,忽视近邻岛屿的防御屏障作用,导致国家遭受战火;二战时期是地缘战略构建阶段,随着澳美战时同盟成立,太平洋上的海空航线成为澳大利亚的“生命线”,澳大利亚的独立防务意识也不断加强,意图凭借《澳新协定》将太平洋岛国纳入势力范围;二战后是地缘战略丰富阶段,在太平洋岛国发展问题日益突出和岛屿地区安全态势日趋复杂的背景下,澳大利亚实施援助战略以促进地区的繁荣与稳定。未来,澳大利亚将继续保持该地区最大援助国的地位。     

Place ‘From One Glance’: the use of place in the marketing of New Zealand and Australian wines

Associations between place and wine are historically deep. Past and current narratives of wine production are wedded to environment attributes of particular places, and in both the European and Australasian settings this has been codified by way of formal labelling requirements for the place of origin for wines. In this paper we explore the role of place references on the front labels of Australian and New Zealand wines through a small initial survey. The results reveal that the importance of place references is stronger for New Zealand wines. We argue that this reflects strongly the very different structures of the industries in the two countries, with the emphasis for New Zealand producers on high-quality wines for which origin statements are expected as opposed to the Australian focus on the production of bulk, value-driven wines dependent on the blending of wines across regions and places. This in turn has implications for the future development and marketing trajectories of the two industries.     

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.     

North American Geographers and the Pacific Rim: Leaders or Laggards

The ascendance of the Pacific Rim is an indisputable global happening. North American geography, a logical leader in the study of this high profile phenomenon, has lagged behind other disciplines in Rim-focused research. This article argues in favor of a heightened Rim awareness, surveys recent publications, suggests promising Pacific Rim research directions, and proposes how the Association of American Geographers can help promote Rim studies.     

Maze or Labyrinth: Identifying PTSD Stressors in the Built Space of Zaatari and Calais Refugee Camps

In this study, we analyze the structure of paths within two refugee camps (Calais, France, and Zaatari, Jordan) as a preliminary study examining posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) stressors within such camps. We do so through a geospatial analysis of intersections and viewsheds within the camps. Given that anxiety, and the avoidance associated with it, is a primary characteristic of PTSD, refugees might prefer built environments with fewer stressors or anxiety triggers. This study provides a baseline for analyzing basic stressors in a way to test whether design supports anxiety-based avoidance. The planned structure of Zaatari shows a high prevalence of spatial PTSD stressors with lower visibility and a more maze-like structure than that of Calais. This suggests a coping strategy taken by refugees to produce a more suitable and less stressing labyrinth structure. To properly treat PTSD in geographical space, we suggest a need for consideration of this in the planning, function, and very existence of refugee camps and settlements.     

Managed Temporary Labour Migration of Pacific Islanders to Australia and New Zealand in the Early Twenty-first Century

ABSTRACT

Circular migration was one of several enduring themes in Graeme Hugo’s highly productive research career. Although his specialist field was Asian population movement, during the 2000s he became increasingly interested in labour migration in the Pacific Islands. This paper reviews the development of two managed circular migration schemes targeting Pacific labour that emerged following the UN High-level Dialogue on International Migration and Development in 2006. New Zealand’s Recognised Seasonal Employer (RSE) scheme and Australia’s Seasonal Worker Program (SWP) have attracted international attention as the kind of ‘best practice’ temporary labour migration schemes that Hugo had in mind when he emphasised the positive contributions that circular forms of mobility could make to development in both source and destination countries. The two schemes have transformed mobility between the participating countries and have played a major role in the negotiations over a free-trade agreement between Pacific Forum countries, including Australia and New Zealand. Although the schemes have been in operation for almost 10 years, this paper argues that they are not becoming ‘business as usual’; they embody complex systems of relationships between multiple stakeholders that require ongoing management to ensure that they do not become traps for low-skilled, low-paid ‘permanent’ temporary workers.     

The audacity of the ocean: Gendered politics of positionality in the Pacific

Throughout the contemporary Pacific, relationships that indigeneity makes possible are emerging as celebrated resistance to post-colonial development anxieties. In the process, lived experience heightens the commitment to decolonize thinking, language and practice in teaching and research. Not only because these imperatives are highly personalized but also because they are gendered and heavy with generational trauma. These gendered dynamics circulate around popular culture and imaginaries of Pacific paradise but also problematically around the challenges of long-standing intolerances especially around gender and race. The paper asks how a gendered politics of positionality engages with emerging positionalities that uncritically allow for such intolerances. I touch on two ways in which colonial continuities of belittlement are often reinforced, but are also offering hopeful and careful decolonial scholarly futures. The first is the naming of the Pacific and the second is supervising women doctoral candidates from the Pacific. In this paper, the audacity of the ocean offers a metaphorical opportunity to carefully reconcile these tensions and provide trajectories for decolonial knowledge-making. However, it also offers a material way of understanding the on-going work with ‘tensions’ and disruptions in their ever present but changeable forms. Oceanic tropes and a feminist Oceanic audacity of embodied engagement in the Pacific offer dynamic and gendered intellectual agility which runs counter to the tropical imageries of languid indifference.

black/is a state of mind like the colour of an island Teaiwa (2017) we sweat and cry salt water, so we know that the ocean is really in our blood Teaiwa (2008)

     

Heterolocalism,Networks of Ethnicity,and Refugee Communities in the Pacific Northwest: The Portland Story*

Geographic studies of refugee issues have emerged as salient topics of inquiry in the past decade. This spatial analysis of the migration experiences and heterolocal settlement patterns of refugees in an increasingly diverse part of the Pacific Northwest focuses on a place that the Atlantic Monthly recently called the last Caucasian bastion in the United States. Perceived as a region better known for its dense forests, progressive environmental policies, and rural ambience, the Portland metropolitan area and its hinterland in the Willamette Valley now resonate with ethnic and racial diversity. This article analyzes the spatial patterns and related networks of the three largest refugee groups in the region. Findings indicate that an overlapping and interrelated set of political, social, cultural, and economic networks are the most important factors in determining refugee residential patterns.     

Pacific islands in the global economy: Paradoxes of migration and culture

Predictions for the future of small islands and island states are invariably pessimistic. Poverty has increased, free trade offers limited possibilities, governance is weak and urban biased, and aid dependence has not declined despite aid fatigue. Populations are contracting from outer islands. One outcome has been increasing migration and remittances, as safety valve and diversification strategy. Selective migration and limited return migration have contributed to skill drain. Yet migration has enabled peripheries to survive through improved welfare and investment, and sustained social structures. Formal development strategies, whether international or national, emphasize 'modernity', with culture to be abhorred and ignored; yet hybridity offers possibilities for more equitable sustainable development. A combination of migration, economic diversification and cultural hybridity provides alternative development trajectories.     

The Ethics of Place and Environmental Change: Some Examples from the South Pacific

This paper concerns place and ‘placelessness’, and suggests links between those two and types of environmental ethic. An historical analysis of place based ethics and environmental degradation draws on examples from the Pacific basin. Finally, relationships between environmental ethics and traditional patterns of resource exploitation are proposed for several island societies.     

溶液结构的X射线衍射研究—1实验技术

本文介绍了Ｘ射线衍射法测定液体结构的一些实验技术，包括光源波长和稳定性、单色Ｘ射线的获得、测量条件的选择、实验数据的校正等。     

Regionalism in the Asia Pacific: is Geography destiny?

The renaissance in geographical 'bloc' development in the 1990s has generated expectations that prevailing international regionalism is compatible with the dominant global integration model. Nascent regionalism in the Asia Pacific best captures this trend with regional initiatives being established on the basis of 'open' regionalism as opposed to 'closed' regionalism that is associated potentially with institution building and regional governance. In this paper, I examine the shape and nature of Asia Pacific regionalism. I show how countries here favour a process of regime building that is centred on network building among state and private actors without any goal towards institution building. Asia Pacific regionalism is less concerned with the production and governance of regional space than the assertion of a collective Asian political culture that preserves state sovereignty.     

The Role of Mid-Latitude Pacific Cyclones in the Winter Precipitation of California*

The characteristics of the mid-latitude Pacific cyclones that produce precipitation over California are investigated statistically to determine their role in governing precipitation receipt. From all cyclones occurring over the Pacific Ocean from December through March and between 1965–1990 inclusive, we identify a subset of cyclones likely to produce precipitation over California. The characteristics analyzed are track, frequency, duration, speed, central pressure, and proximity. These are related to monthly precipitation for the entire period and are also used to explain the difference in precipitation received during the earlier (wet) and latter (dry) halves of the 1980s. Results indicate that the winter cyclones responsible for precipitation over California originate in the southeast quadrant of the region influenced by the Aleutian Low and decay south of the Gulf of Alaska. The extent of cyclonic activity over the east Pacific Ocean near California diminished during the dry period. There were fewer cyclones, they were significantly weaker, and they traveled along a more meridional track during the dry period.     

Rural restructuring and social sustainability: some reflections on the Western Australian wheatbelt

Over the past three decades the Western Australian wheatbelt has undergone dramatic economic, environmental and social changes precipitated, primarily, by the process of rural restructuring. Farm amalgamation, environmental degradation, labour market adjustments and severe population decline have been consistently noted trends throughout much of the wheatbelt. The ongoing and integrated nature of these problems has led to increasing calls for a more holistic approach to sustainable rural development. This paper argues that while considerable efforts are being made to find solutions to the economic and environmental problems faced in the wheatbelt, these endeavours do not address many important problems faced by rural communities. It therefore advocates the inclusion of a social dimension in any attempt to achieve an overall goal of rural sustainability.     

The resource boom and socio-economic well-being in Australian resource towns: a temporal and spatial analysis

The economy of Western Australia has long been characterized by a heavy dependence on extractive industries. The past decade, however, has seen the mining industry expand very rapidly, with significant implications for the small towns that support the sector. In this article, we consider the socio-economic performance of these towns through an assessment of unemployment, welfare dependence and incomes. In contrast to many other studies of resource boomtowns that typically focus on a single locality or time period, in this study we focus explicitly on spatial and temporal variability. We examine the ways in which place-specific characteristics—the commodity produced, local economic diversity and basic demographic features of a town—interact and have contributed to change in socio-economic well-being of mining communities across Western Australia over a 10-year period.     

Regional development,redistribution and the extraction of mineral resources: The Western Australian Goldfields as a resource bank

The first decade of the twenty-first century was one of the most prosperous in Australia's history. The boom was led by a buoyant minerals and energy resource sector, contributing to high levels of economic growth, rising real wages and low unemployment. Yet, as with the nation's previous resources booms, there were marginal transformations in the economies of those regions from which the minerals were extracted. Overwhelmingly, the wealth generated by the resource boom has concentrated in the cities. Moreover, public expenditure in resource regions also remains comparatively low, and indeed tend to reproduce a development framework oriented towards extraction rather than diversification. This paper employs elements of Innis' staples thesis to help explain this pattern of regional development, and in particular the relatively low levels of reinvestment in resource peripheries. Drawing on the notion of a 'resource bank', we contend that resource regions are often viewed as a reserve of latent wealth that can be drawn upon for the benefit of the urban 'core'. Yet, we also highlight emerging strategies aimed at overcoming this and that seek to return a greater proportion of wealth to those regions from which it was extracted.     

亚太地区地缘格局变迁与中国的地缘安全战略

在系统分析亚太地区地缘政治和地缘经济格局变迁以及各国亚太战略变化的基础上,本文探讨了面向21 世纪中国实现国家安全的地缘政治与地缘经济战略。文章分析提出了构建中国跨世纪地缘安全框架的四条建议:(1) 大力推进世界地缘格局的多极化进程,实现全球地缘格局的相对均衡;(2) 推进沿边地区开发开放的国际合作,确保国家统一和政治稳定;(3) 构建合理的国内区域经济格局,这是提高国际地缘安全的国内地缘保证;(4) 纵深推进科教兴国战略推动产业结构升级,从而增强国家的核心竞争能力