The Politics of Exhaustion and the Externalization of British Border Control. An Articulation of a Strategy Designed to Deter, Control and Exclude

In response to contemporary forms of human mobility, there has been a continued hardening of borders seeking to deter, control and exclude certain groups of people from entering nation states in Europe, North America and Australasia. Within this context, a disconcerting evolution of new and increasingly sophisticated forms of border control measures have emerged, which often play out within bilateral arrangements of “externalised” or “offshore” border controls. Drawing on extensive first‐hand field research among displaced people in Calais, Paris and Brussels in 2016–2019, this paper argues that the externalization of the British border to France is contingent upon a harmful strategy, which can be understood as the “politics of exhaustion.” This is a raft of (micro) practices and methods strategically aimed to deter, control and exclude certain groups of people on the move who have been profiled as “undesirable,” with a detrimental (un)intended impact on human lives

Mobilities of Knowledge: An Introduction

Mobilities of Knowledge examines how geographical mobility of people and (im)material things has impacted epistemic systems of knowledge in different historical and geographical contexts. In this chapter, the authors introduce concepts and debates in interdisciplinary research on spatial mobility and the production, dissemination, and transfer of knowledge. They suggest extending Urry’s (2007) typology of interdependent mobilities that constitute the space of flows and the space of places (Castells, 1996) from five to six dimensions through the consideration of mobile knowledges, concepts, and practices. Finally, they outline how the chapters of this volume help to identify generic as well as context-specific practices and processes of knowledge production, dissemination, and transfer and call for more empirical case studies to further the collective development of flexible conceptual understandings

The role of Guanxi in buyer-supplier relationships in Chinese small and medium-sized enterprises – a resource based perspective

This paper examines the role of guanxi (personal relationships or connections) in buyersupplier relationships in Chinese small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), through exploratory research that gained access to companies actually using guanxi. The resource-based view (RBV) provided a systematic approach for analysing the role of guanxi in terms of its potential to be a source of sustained competitive advantage. Business guanxi connections were identified as possessing the potential to be considered an organisational resource. This study identified several valuable attributes of guanxi at the organisational level. However, the guanxi-based advantage can only be sustained under certain conditions. SMEs should create an organisational environment that encourages their employees to actively establish and maintain guanxi connections within the company and beyond. However, companies in China need to recognise that firms that possess superior technological skills or capabilities have a stronger bargaining power, as they are able to deliver quality at competitive prices over the long run

The impact of chronic stress on intracellular redox balance: A systems level analysis

Abstract Chronic psychosocial stress is implicated in the onset and progression of noncommunicable diseases, and mechanisms underlying this relationship include alterations to the intracellular redox state. However, such changes are often investigated in isolation, with few studies adopting a system level approach. Here, male Wistar rats were exposed to 9.5 weeks of chronic unpredictable mild stress and redox status assays were subsequently performed on cardiac, hepatic, and brain tissues versus matched controls. The stressed rats displayed an anxious phenotype, with lowered plasma corticosterone levels (p = 0.04 vs. Controls) and higher plasma epinephrine concentrations (p = 0.03 vs. Controls). Our findings showed organ‐specific redox profiles, with stressed rats displaying increased myocardial lipid peroxidation (p = 0.04 vs. Controls) in the presence of elevated nonenzymatic antioxidant capacity (p = 0.04 vs. Controls). Conversely, hepatic tissues of stressed rats exhibited lowered nonenzymatic antioxidant capacity (p < 0.001 vs. Controls) together with increased superoxide dismutase (SOD) activity (p = 0.05 vs. Controls). The brain displayed region‐specific antioxidant perturbations, with increased SOD activity (p = 0.01 vs. Controls) in the prefrontal cortex of the stressed rats. These findings reveal distinct stress‐related organ‐specific vulnerability to redox perturbations and may provide novel insights into putative therapeutic targets