Approaching new migration through Elias' 'established' and 'outsiders' lens

When considering social positions and features that become distinguishing for migrants’ positioning, scholars quite often rely on empirical descriptions, based on discrete and supposedly clearly definable factors. Whereas elements such as legal position, citizenship, etc. are of huge relevance in numerous contexts, in other domains relying on such delineations while studying discriminatory processes oversimplifies the picture. In this paper, a conceptual issue regarding the understandings of the positions of migrants (particularly recent migrations to the Western Europe) is raised. After a discussion of the definitions of ‘new migrations’, a broad heuristic device for thinking about ‘new’ migrants’ positioning will be outlined. This framework – inspired by Elias’ and Scotson’s ‘The Established and the Outsiders’ (1994 [1965]) – can be adapted in different manners by academics addressing topics related to definition, marginalization, and discriminatory processes. The central point is that although various characteristics (e.g. ethnicity, legal position) can be assigned importance in human figurations, the relationships of othering, inequality, and domination need to be seen in the light of the configuration of social relationships and power imbalances

Why "should we"? A well-grounded argument for refugee acceptance and integration

L'attuale e inedito arrivo nell'UE di migranti e richiedenti asilo in fuga da paesi devastati dalla guerra ha creato un intenso dibattito sull'obbligo e l'opportunità di accettarli e integrarli nelle nostre società. Tra preoccupazioni umanitarie e convenienza politica, e al di là della retorica dei media, è possibile argomentare a favore dell'accettazione e dell'integrazione sulla base di un solido processo di analisi e valutazione dei dati. Questo articolo si propone di presentare e discutere le evidenze provenienti da ricerche che suggeriscono che dovremmo sostenere l'accettazione e l'integrazione dei rifugiati nell'Unione europea, nel suo complesso, e in Italia in particolare. Dopo aver descritto i principali eventi recenti riguardanti la crisi migratoria dell'UE, vengono esaminate una serie di questioni chiave: le dimensioni reali dei flussi, la minaccia alla sicurezza, gli obblighi derivanti dal diritto internazionale, il rapporto costi-benefici e, infine, l'importanza educativa della diversità culturaleThe current unprecedented influx of migrants and asylum seekers fleeing from war-torn countries into the EU has created an intense debate on the obligation and opportunity to accept and integrate them in our societies. Between humanitarian concerns and political convenience, and beyond the rhetoric of the media, it is possible to argue in favour of acceptance and integration based on a sound process of data analysis and assessment. This article aims to present and discuss evidence from research that suggests we should support acceptance and integration of refugees in the EU, as a whole, and in Italy specifically. After describing the main recent events concerning the EU migration crisis, a number of key issues are investigated: the real dimensions of the influx, the security threat, the obligations deriving from international law, the cost-benefit ratio and, finally, the educational importance of cultural diversity

Imagining migration: The impact of place on children’s understanding of ‘moving house’ in Southern Africa

Research pertaining to children’s geographies has mainly focused on children’s physical experiences of space, with their ‘imagined geographies’ receiving far less attention. The few studies of children’s imagined geographies that exist tend to focus on children’s national identities and their understanding of distant places. However, children’s lives are not necessarily static and they often move between places. Research has not so far considered children’s images of these transitional spaces or how such images are constructed. Through an examination of over 800 thematic drawings and stories, regarding ‘moving house’, produced by children aged 10 to 17 years in urban and rural communities of Lesotho and Malawi, this paper explores southern African children’s representations of migration. The research considers how ideas of migration are culturally-constructed based on notions of family, home and kinship, particularly in relation to the fluid family structure characteristic of most southern African societies. The results suggest that most children imagine migration as a household rather than an individual process, rarely including micro-migrations between extended family households in their drawings. Further, children’s images of migration are place-rooted in everyday life experiences. Their representations concentrate on the reasons for migration, both negative and positive, which are specifically related to their local social and environmental situations. The paper concludes by exploring the implications of these conceptualisations of moving house for children’s contemporary migration experiences

Stellar Populations and Radial Migrations in Virgo Disk Galaxies

We present stellar age profiles for 64 Virgo cluster disk galaxies whose analysis poses a challenge for current galaxy formation models. Our results can be summarized as follows: first, and contrary to observations of field galaxies, these cluster galaxies are distributed almost equally amongst the three main types of disk galaxy luminosity profiles (I/II/III), indicating that the formation and/or survival of Type II breaks is suppressed within the cluster environment. Second, we find examples of statistically-significant inversions ("U-shapes") in the age profiles of all three disk galaxy types, reminescent of predictions from high-resolution simulations of classically-truncated Type II disks in the field. These features characterize the age profiles for only about a third (<36%) of each disk galaxy type in our sample. An even smaller fraction of cluster disks (~11% of the total sample), exhibit age profiles which decrease outwards (i.e., negative age gradients). Instead, flat and/or positive age gradients prevail (>50%) within our Type I, II and III sub-samples. These observations thus suggest that while stellar migrations and inside-out growth can play a significant role in the evolution of all disk galaxy types, other factors contributing to the evolution of galaxies can overwhelm the predicted signatures of these processes. We interpret our observations through a scenario whereby Virgo cluster disk galaxies formed initially like their bretheren in the field but which, upon falling into the cluster, were transformed into their present state through external processes linked to the environment. Current disk galaxy formation models fail to reproduce these results, thus calling for adequate hydrodynamical simulations of dense galaxy environments, for which the current paper provides many constraints. [Abridged]Comment: 47 pages, 10 figures. ApJ, in press. Full resolution version available at http://www.astro.queensu.ca/~courteau/papers/migrations2012.pd

International economic assistance and migration: the case of Sub-Saharan countries

Development aid is commonly advocated as one of the most effective instruments to reduce international migration. Nevertheless, empirical evidence shows that push factors do not automatically result in massive migrations and that aid policies systematically fail to meet their stated objectives. Recently, several contributions have argued that an increase in sending countries’ wealth may lead to a rise in migration, rather than to a reduction, because it enables people to assume the costs and risks of migrating. However, despite the growing number of studies on this phenomenon, the role played by Official Development Assistance (ODA) has not received attention yet. This paper is aimed at providing empirical evidence on this specific issue. In particular, we investigate the relation between ODA and international migration rates of Sub-Saharan countries. We argue that ODA may have a positive effect on migration decisions for two reasons. First, ODA improves workers’ ability to cover the costs of migration, by providing new job opportunities and in turn increasing incomes in the recipient country. Second, ODA, that is often associated with development programs in education, communication services and business opportunities, may also stimulate mobility aspirations of potential migrants. We develop an econometric analysis in order to investigate this hypothesis. Specifically, we perform a three-stage least square estimation on a sample of 48 Sub-Saharan countries. We build a two-equation model, so as to allow for endogeneity of ODA, and find that ODA has a positive and statistically significant effect on migration outflows. Thus, as our main contribution, we argue that development aids are not substitute for migration and that the traditional aid policies (such as those of the European Union), aimed at curbing migration by providing international financial aids, might need to be reconsidered.international migration; official development assistance; Sub-Saharan countries

Understanding the thermal implications of multicore architectures

Multicore architectures are becoming the main design paradigm for current and future processors. The main reason is that multicore designs provide an effective way of overcoming instruction-level parallelism (ILP) limitations by exploiting thread-level parallelism (TLP). In addition, it is a power and complexity-effective way of taking advantage of the huge number of transistors that can be integrated on a chip. On the other hand, today's higher than ever power densities have made temperature one of the main limitations of microprocessor evolution. Thermal management in multicore architectures is a fairly new area. Some works have addressed dynamic thermal management in bi/quad-core architectures. This work provides insight and explores different alternatives for thermal management in multicore architectures with 16 cores. Schemes employing both energy reduction and activity migration are explored and improvements for thread migration schemes are proposed.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

The Philosophy of Perception: An explanation of Realism, Idealism and the Nature of Reality

This paper investigates the nature of reality by looking at the philosophical debate between realism and idealism and at scientific investigations in quantum physics and at recent studies of animal senses, neurology and cognitive psychology. The concept of perceptual relativity is examined and this involves looking at sense perception in other animals and various examples of perceptual relativity in science. It will be concluded that the universe is observer dependent and that there is no reality independent of the observer, which is knowable to the observer. The paper concludes by an investigation of what an observer dependent universe would be like and that recognition of an observer dependent world would lead to a more open minded and tolerant world

Besides Looking: Patrimony, Perfomativity and Visual Cultures

David Dibosa’s paper, 'Besides Looking: Patrimony, Performativity and Visual Cultures in National Art Museums', is an exploration and a further elaboration of the relations between the development of visual media practices within the research – what we have previously indicated as stemming from practice-based research approaches – and transmigrational visual cultures. David asks how perspectives derived from the study and articulation of Visual Cultures, (Hall, Mirzoeff, Evans, Rogoff) might usefully frame our understanding of transmigrational ‘viewing strategies’ and more specifically the practices of Tate Encounters’ participants. He introduces an important counter to the idea that either the art museum or the research framing can address the transmigrational viewer other than in an engagement at the point of viewing. This stresses the dynamic, rather than settled, historical sense of migrant experience that has become contained in notions of ‘heritage’, and ethnic categorisations. He looks to performativity to offer a way out of the impasse of categorisation and his focus upon transmigrational experience as fluid leads him to the idea that a corresponding art museum viewing strategy might be that “which has not yet been seen” or “a kind of seeing on the move”