Responsible adults-in-the-making: Intergenerational impact of parental migration on Indonesian young women’s aspirational capacity

In the developing economies in Southeast Asia, labour migration is increasingly seen not simply to generate income to meet short-term livelihood needs but to secure the family’s future, often by investing in children’s education. While much work has been done studying the impact of parents’ remittances on children’s wellbeing including education access, the impact of parental migration on children’s (educational) aspirations has received less attention. Viewing youth as social actors, this paper interrogates how they make meaning of their parents’ migration, and how this consequently influences their decisions to activate, delay or reshape their hopes and plans for their own educational and work trajectories. With the increasing feminisation of labour migration in Southeast Asia where gendered regimes in care and domestic work make it easier for women to work overseas, this paper focuses attention on the aspirations of young women at the cusp of adulthood from a migrant-sending area in rural East Java, Indonesia. These young women’s ‘navigational capacity’ (Appadurai, 2004) is not only shaped by tangible obstacles such as the lack of sufficient resources, but is also more subtly moulded by an emerging discourse of self-responsibilisation in the making of ‘dutiful daughters’. Drawing on conceptualisations of multiple ‘logics of aspiring’ operating within spatial contexts (Zipin et al., 2015), we show how young women unsettle, inflect and challenge the normative linear education-work transitions by expressing their desire to replace their parents in accessing labour migration as a livelihood option, and reflect on the dialectical relationship between agency and aspirations.     

The power of people: social capital’s role in recovery from the 1995 Kobe earthquake

Despite the regularity of disasters, social science has only begun to generate replicable knowledge about the factors which facilitate post-crisis recovery. Building on the broad variation in recovery rates within disaster-affected cities, I investigate the ability of Kobe’s nine wards to repopulate after the 1995 Kobe earthquake in Japan. This article uses case studies of neighborhoods in Kobe alongside new time-series, cross-sectional data set to test five variables thought to influence recovery along with the relatively untested factor of social capital. Controlling for damage, population density, economic conditions, inequality and other variables thought important in past research, social capital proves to be the strongest and most robust predictor of population recovery after catastrophe. This has important implications both for public policies focused on reconstruction and for social science more generally.     

Beatrice Ketchemen-Tandia’s contributions to isotope hydrology in sub-Saharan Africa

Hydrogeology Journal -     

Becoming a young migrant or stayer seen through the lens of ‘householding’: Households ‘in flux’ and the intersection of relations of gender and seniority

This paper conceptualises migration and staying by young rural Lao in the empirical context of above replacement level fertility as manifestations of ‘householding’ that interacts with other dimensions of householding. Drawing on the framework of the inter-generational contract and by juxtaposing qualitative and quantitative data I show that becoming a young migrant and becoming or remaining a young stayer is shaped by young migrants’ situated agency.The second part of the paper departs from conventional household-based analyses and introduces the notion of ‘households in flux’. This highlights the dynamic interaction between changing external dynamics affecting rural households, and internal dynamics that constantly reconfigure the field of the household. These conceptual readjustments require going beyond inflexible notions of the household, the analytical disconnection between a focus on migrants and stayers in migration research, and static readings of relations of gender and generation. Furthermore, the paper argues that intra-household relations need to be appreciated as gendered relations of relative seniority which are in the process of householding constantly made and remade, among other things, by young dependents through ‘staying’ and ‘leaving’. These conceptual moves help explain the empirical puzzle of why in rural Lao households young women are both the ones most inclined to become a young migrant as well as most inclined to become or remain a young stayer.     

New Perspectives on China’s Aluminium Utilization and Development

Please refer to the attachment(s) for more details.     

Modern volcanism in the Earth’s northern hemisphere and its relations with the evolution of the North Pangaea modern supercontinent and with the spatial distribution of hotspots on the Earth: The hypothesis of relations between mantle plumes and deep subduction

The paper reports results of the analysis of the spatial distribution of modern (younger than 2 Ma) volcanism in the Earth’s northern hemisphere and relations between this volcanism and the evolution of the North Pangaea modern supercontinent and with the spatial distribution of hotspots of the Earth’s mantle. Products of modern volcanism occur in the Earth’s northern hemisphere in Eurasia, North America, Greenland, in the Atlantic Ocean, Arctic, Africa, and the Pacific Ocean. As anywhere worldwide, volcanism in the northern hemisphere of the Earth occurs as (a) volcanism of mid-oceanic ridges (MOR), (b) subduction-related volcanism in island arcs and active continental margins (IA and ACM), (c) volcanism in continental collision (CC) zones, and (d) within-plate (WP) volcanism, which is related to mantle hotspots, continental rifts, and intercontinental belts. These types of volcanic areas are fairly often neighboring, and then mixed volcanic areas occur with the persistent participation of WP volcanism. Correspondingly, modern volcanism in the Earth’s northern hemisphere is of both oceanic and continental nature. The latter is obviously related to the evolution of the North Pangaea modern supercontinent, because it results from the Meso-Cenozoic evolution of Wegener’s Late Paleozoic Pangaea. North Pangaea in the Cenozoic comprises Eurasia, North and South America, India, and Africa and has, similar to other supercontinents, large sizes and a predominantly continental crust. The geodynamic setting and modern volcanism of North Pangaea are controlled by two differently acting processes: the subduction of lithospheric slabs from the Pacific Ocean, India, and the Arabia, a process leading to the consolidation of North Pangaea, and the spreading of oceanic plates on the side of the Atlantic Ocean, a process that “wedges” the supercontinent, modifies its morphology (compared to that of Wegener’s Pangaea), and results in the intervention of the Atlantic geodynamic regime into the Arctic. The long-lasting (for >200 Ma) preservation of tectonic stability and the supercontinental status of North Pangaea are controlled by subduction processes along its boundaries according to the predominant global compression environment. The long-lasting and stable subduction of lithospheric slabs beneath Eurasia and North America not only facilitated active IA + ACM volcanism but also resulted in the accumulation of cold lithospheric material in the deep mantle of the region. The latter replaced the hot mantle and forced this material toward the margins of the supercontinent; this material then ascended in the form of mantle plumes (which served as sources of WP basite magmas), which are diverging branches of global mantle convection, and ascending flows of subordinate convective systems at the convergent boundaries of plates. Subduction processes (compressional environments) likely suppressed the activity of mantle plumes, which acted in the northern polar region of the Earth (including the Siberian trap magmatism) starting at the latest Triassic until nowadays and periodically ascended to the Earth’s surface and gave rise to WP volcanism. Starting at the breakup time of Wegener’s Pangaea, which began with the opening of the central Atlantic and systematically propagated toward the Arctic, marine basins were formed in the place of the Arctic Ocean. However, the development of the oceanic crust (Eurasian basin) took place in the latter as late as the Cenozoic. Before the appearance of the Gakkel Ridge and, perhaps, also the oceanic portion of the Amerasian basin, this young ocean is thought to have been a typical basin developing in the central part of supercontinents. Wegener’s Pangaea broke up under the effect of mantle plumes that developed during their systematic propagation to the north and south of the Central Atlantic toward the North Pole. These mantle plumes were formed in relation with the development of global and local mantle convection systems, when hot deep mantle material was forced upward by cold subducted slabs, which descended down to the core-mantle boundary. The plume (WP) magmatism of Eurasia and North America was associated with surface collision- or subduction-related magmatism and, in the Atlantic and Arctic, also with surface spreading-related magmatism (tholeiite basalts).     

Artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) in sub-Saharan Africa: Re-conceptualizing formalization and ‘illegal’ activity

This article contributes to the debate on the formalization of artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) – low-tech, labour-intensive mineral extraction and processing – in developing countries. A unique sector populated by an eclectic group of individuals, ASM has expanded rapidly in all corners of the world in recent years. Most of its activities, however, are informal, scattered across lands which are not officially titled. But growing recognition of the sector's economic importance, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, has forced donors, and to some extent, policymakers, to ‘rethink’ development strategies for ASM. As part of broader moves to improve the regulation of, and occasionally intensify the delivery of assistance to, the sector, many are now searching frantically for fresh ideas on how to bring operations into the legal domain, where, it is believed, they can be regulated, monitored and supported more effectively. A challenging exercise, this entails first determining, with some degree of precision, why people choose to operate informally in this sector. Drawing on analysis from the literature and findings from research conducted in Ghana and Niger, it is argued that the legalist school (on informality) in part explains how governments across sub-Saharan Africa are ‘creating’ bureaucracies which are stifling the formalization of ASM activities in the region. A more nuanced development strategy grounded in local realities is needed if formalization is to have a transformative effect on the livelihoods of those engaged in ASM in the region and elsewhere in the developing world.     

Supporting youth-led community geography on the impacts of neighbourhood social infrastructure on young people’s lives: a case study from East Scarborough,Canada

This paper is a reflection on 3 years of youth engagement in neighbourhood-based geographic research on the state of social infrastructure in East Scarborough, Toronto, Canada. It revolves around the evolution of LIFT, a youth-led advocacy group with the mandate to engage youth in community-based research to identify gaps in resources and inform local organizations about youth priorities. Using critical reflection as research method, we explore how community geography can be a responsive approach to the needs of youth to analyze their lived experience and collect data to influence decision-making in their communities. We articulate a series of propositions and core assumptions to inform a non-adultist, youth-focused community geography, highlight the ethical dimensions of this work, as well as discuss the often-complicated institutional and interpersonal dynamics that shape the success and sustainability of youth-led community geography.

     

Assessment of formaldehyde pollution based on Weber exponent and perception of people’s smell

Formaldehyde’s, as the irritant and active gas in atmosphere, pollution assessment by perception of people is significative. Although related study is seldom reported, it is necessary to improve the general contamination evaluation based on Weber–Fischna law and combine with human’s real feeling. Therefore, based on the law, Weber exponents were counted by a convenient optimal calculation, and the results could accurately embody the different standard range of formaldehyde concentration. In addition, by the human smell perception experiment, it was firstly found that the score assessment could also express the pollution condition more practically. According to the scores, expanding exponents could cause the assessment more clearly and closer to human real smell perception.     

Tea forest in the making: Tea production and the ambiguity of modernity on China’s southwest frontier

The simultaneous but incompatible desires for both “tradition” and “advancement” have produced the “ambiguity of modernity” in the areas of minority nationalities (shaoshu minzu diqu) on China’s southwest frontier. This paper, in accordance, directly addresses the ambiguity of modernity through the investigation of the tea landscape in Yunnan. This essay builds on Aihwa Ong and Stephen Collier’s “global assemblage” framework to analyze the relationship between the “global form” of modernity and the situated assemblages of “ambiguity of modernity” in southwest China. Data are based on ethnographic research in the village of Mangjing, located in Jingmai Mountain, a renowned tea mountain in Yunnan. Most of the villagers in Mangjing are one of the minority nationalities of China, Bulang. I discuss the state-led project in transforming the modern tea plantation for “restoring” a landscape deemed as “ancient tea forest” (guchalin) in Mangjing. In addition, I address Bulang villagers’ and government officials’ multiple responses to the transformation of tea landscapes. I argue that the transformation of tea landscapes has been the practice to turn the “global form” of modernity into the shifting “assemblages” amongst tradition, modernity, science, and nature. The ambiguity of modernity has emerged from the shifting assemblages, providing both the state and Bulang villagers more leeway to symbolically and physically (re)produce meanings for the tea landscapes to meet the contingent market demand for tea. The transformation of tea landscapes, however, has become another process to perpetuate Bulang villagers’ social status of being “low quality” as China’s minority nationalities.     

A ‘cartography of concern’: Place-making practices and gender in the artisanal mining sector in Africa

Sites of artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) in sub-Saharan Africa are often places of contestation and dispossession, particularly because mining laws and policies have generally been crafted to foster large-scale mining. This paper builds on research mapping the multiple ways in which ASM is associated with various wrongs – criminality, illegality, immorality, destructiveness - to consider how various, complex gendered relations and place-making practices within mine sites are occluded as a result. We consider these erasures in the context of ASM formalization efforts linked to particular state visions. We note that while negative perceptions of ASM persist, governments, donors and mining companies are increasingly engaging in different forms of negotiation with ASM representatives, particularly through establishing legal ‘ASM zones’ and encouraging or mandating artisanal miners to form associations or cooperatives: processes of formalization. With reference to African case studies, we outline potential issues and challenges in efforts to formalize ASM, while offering insights into how the politics of place-making inform these initiatives. Focusing in particular on the gendering of both the dominant place-making of ASM by policy-makers and regulators and the actual emplaced practices of ASM activities in specific mining sites we highlight the multiple, at times competing and other times overlapping, visions of space at work in this widespread economic activity.     

Isotopic constraints on the age of the Earth’s core: Mutual consistency of the Hf-W and U-Pb systems

The estimation of the time of Earth??s core formation on the basis of isotopic systems with short-lived and long-lived parent nuclides gives significantly different results. Isotopic data for the ¹⁸²Hf-¹⁸²W system with a ¹⁸²Hf half-life of approximately 9 Myr can be interpreted in such a way that the core was formed 34 Myr after the origin of the solar system assuming complete core-mantle equilibrium. Similar estimates on the basis of the U-Pb isotopic system suggest a significantly longer mean time of core formation of approximately 120 Myr. If the Earth??s core were formed instantaneously, both isotopic systems would have shown identical values corresponding to the true age. The discrepancy between the U-Pb and Hf-W systems can be resolved assuming prolonged differentiation of prototerrestrial material into silicate and metallic phases, which occurred not simultaneously and uniformly in different parts of the mantle. This resulted in the isotopic heterogeneity of the mantle, and its subsequent isotopic homogenization occurred slowly. Under such conditions, the mean isotopic compositions of W and Pb in the mantle do not correspond to the mean time of the separation of silicate and metallic phases. This is related to the fact that the exponential function of radioactive decay is strongly nonlinear at high values of the argument, and its mean value does not correspond to the mean value of the function. There are compelling reasons to believe that the early mantle was heterogeneous with respect to W isotopic composition and was subsequently homogenized by convective mixing. This follows from the fact that the lifetime of isotopic heterogeneities in the mantle is close to 1.8 Gyr for various long-lived isotopic systems. There is also no equilibrium between the mantle and the core with respect to the contents of siderophile elements. Because of this, the mean isotopic ratios of W and Pb cannot be used for the direct computation of the time of metal-silicate differentiation in the Earth. Such estimation requires more sophisticated models accounting for the duration of the differentiation process using several isotope pairs. Given the prolonged core formation, which has probably continued up to now, the question about its age becomes ambiguous, and only the most probable growth rate of the core can be estimated. The combined use of the U-Pb and Hf-W systems constrains the time of formation of 90% of the core mass between 0.12 and 2.7 billion years. These model estimates could have been realistic under the condition of complete disequilibrium between the silicate and metallic phases, which is as improbable as the suggestion of complete equilibrium between them on the whole Earth scale.     

Model or measurements? A discussion of the key issue in Chapman and Pollack’s critique of Hamza et al.’s re-evaluation of oceanic heat flux and the global power

Chapman and Pollack (C and P)[2007, Int J Earth Sci] criticize Hamza et al. [2007, Int J Earth Sci] for using actual heat flux measurements in young oceanic crust instead of values from 1-D cooling models. The rationalization of C and P and previous authors is that hydrothermal circulation causes the discrepancy between model and measurement. However, the discrepancy between model values and measured heat flux exists over the entire ocean floor and is opposite to the perturbations that hydrothermal circulation would superimpose on a conductive system [Hofmeister and Criss (2005) Tectonophysics 409:199–203]. The error lies in force-fitting a 1-D cooling model to the 3-D oceanic crust [Hofmeister and Criss (2005) Tectonophysics 395:159–177]. Shortcomings of the 1-D model include mathematical errors, such as use of volumetric rather than linear thermal expansivity to describe contraction which, by assumption, is limited only to the Z -direction [Hofmeister and Criss (2006) Tectonophysics]. This 3× error, traceable to McKenzie and Sclater [1969, Bull Vocanol 33–1:101–118], accidentally provides good agreement of model values with globally averaged seafloor depths for young, but not old ages, and is the sole rationale for using the simplistic cooling model. There is no justification for selective substitution of erroneous 1-D model values for measurements only for the younger half of the 3-D oceanic crust, as stridently and arbitrarily promoted by C and P. Hamza et al. [2007, Int J Earth Sci], in contrast, use the scientific method, which calls for discarding models that do not well describe physical phenomena. The remainder of this report summarizes the shortcomings of cooling models, particularly the half-space cooling (HSC) model touted by C and P, and explains how hydrothermal circulation affects heat flux. We focus on the basics, as these have been misunderstood. With the key issues of C and P being erroneous, it is not necessary to address their remaining comments, many of which enumerate the vote for an imagined, gargantuan circulation of hot fluid through oceanic basins that is somehow warmed without removing heat from the rocks. The use of “consensus” to belittle valid challenge is the enemy of the scientific method.     

Knowledge, power, and tribal mapping: a critical analysis of the “return of the Truku people”

Over the past decade, Indigenous peoples in Taiwan have shown a strong desire for the ??return of the Native??; this includes the Truku people in eastern Taiwan. Seizing a favorable climate of political opportunity structure in 2004, the Truku people first succeeded in obtaining the Taiwanese government??s recognition as an independent Indigenous nation??formerly considered a subgroup of the Atayal Nation. Then, riding on accumulated political resources, a few Truku elites started to engage in a government-initiated tribal mapping project. However, while tribal mapping originated in some North American Indigenous communities with a bottom-up process and spirit, the Taiwanese government sent both money (through the municipal government) and an academic expert team into the community to initiate and to assist (the elite group) with the tribal mapping project. These top-down government initiatives resulted in at least two major ill effects. First of all, two other subgroups of the Atayal Nation living in the same region were systematically excluded from the tribal mapping project, to the extent that their own traditional territories became part of the traditional territory of the newly formed Truku Nation. Secondly, possibly expecting a high political payoff on the part of elites, elite competition arose during the process of tribal mapping, with the interests of other community members largely ignored. As such, instead of establishing a decolonizing force, the ??return of the Truku?? appears to have achieved ??colonialism from within.?? This paper analyzes this process and considers ways to develop a more democratic strategy for the ??return of the Truku.??     

Young people’s voiceless politics in the struggle over urban space

This article discusses the particularity of young people’s politics as it unfolds in the practice of everyday life. By exploring a conflict concerning the use of a public park in the City of Oulu, Finland, we discuss how young people may participate in struggles over urban space trough politics that is not based on voice but voicelessness. This political engagement can be understood as a form of nonparticipatory politics that is easily left unnoticed—politics that shirks civic involvement, customary participatory practices and articulated resistance. We deem it important to acknowledge such action as political for two reasons. First, voiceless politics is a weapon of the weak: It is used when other political agencies are not feasible e. Viewing non-participation as apolitical will only further marginalize those who practice politics in such ways. Second, it is important to find ways of acknowledging nonparticipatory action because, while not commonly understood as politics, it is not easily bypassed in political struggles either. By distinguishing political aspects from young people’s urban behaviors, instead of hearing their presence as mere noise, provides tools for bringing their politics to the public agenda and thus developing more democratic urban spaces.     

‘When I think home I think family here and there’: Translocal and social ideas of home in narratives of migrant children and young people

This paper offers theoretically informed empirical insights into migrant children’s experiences of mobility and home. Drawing on research into the first-generation children of Polish labour migrants in Scotland, the paper explores the meanings that children attach to home and other specific places. In particular, it focuses on questions of the translocal and social nature of migrant children’s sense of place and construction of home. The spoken narratives, subjective maps and drawings analysed here reflect children’s multiple and intersecting relationships and identifications, with both their country of origin and the host country, in addition to how their notion of home is grounded in social attachments. Emphasising the continuing importance of ‘place’ in migrant children and young people’s everyday experiences, the research concludes that subjective homemaking practices are just as important as objective educational attainment and other traditional social indicators in providing an understanding of the outcomes of migrant settlement. It also suggests that there is an emerging translocal identity among some young Polish migrants, whose changing understanding of home incorporates images and emotions from both their locality of origin and their current place of residence.