Spatial Competition and Farm Tourism - A Hedonic Pricing Model

Changes in EU agricultural policies towards additional focus on rural development issues raise questions regarding the economic impact of local/spatial competition. Traditionally, farmers have typically been price takers in markets for major agricultural products. This is, however, not necessarily true in the case of local markets for “new enterprises”. This article examines local/and spatial competition for farm tourism services, specifically “Self catering” in Sweden. The results show that spatial dependences exist and have to be considered in the econometric estimation of the hedonic pricing model. Using spatial econometrics it is shown that the price is affected by the average price, the demand for and supply of lodging in the regional market. Notable is that the results indicate that local competition has a positive effect on the price while regional competition has a negative effect. Marketing channels used as well as size and ranking of the service were found to affect the price of lodging. Diversification does not seem to positively affect prices. The findings illustrate the potential importance of local competition for rural developments studies. It also raises questions concerning policies promoting diversification and multifunctionality as a way of revitalizing urban areas.Community/Rural/Urban Development,

Hardwiring the frontier? The politics of security technology in Europe’s ‘fight against illegal migration’

Migration controls at the external EU borders have become a large field of political and financial investment in recent years – indeed, an “industry” of sorts – yet conflicts between states and border agencies still mar attempts at cooperation. This article takes a close look at one way in which officials try to overcome such conflicts: through technology. In West Africa, the secure “Seahorse” network hardwires border cooperation into a satellite system connecting African and European forces. In Spain’s North African enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla, advanced border fencing has joined up actors around a supposedly impenetrable divide. And on EU level, the “European external border surveillance system” or Eurosur papers over power struggles between agencies and states through “decentralized” information-sharing – even as the system’s physical features (nodes, coordination centres, interfaces) deepen competition between them. The article shows how such technologies, rather than “halting migration”, have above all acted as catalysts for new social relations among disparate sectors, creating areas for collaboration and competition, compliance and conflict. With these dynamics in mind, the conclusion sketches an “ecological” perspective on the materialities of border control – infrastructure, interfaces, vehicles – while calling for more research on their contradictory and often counterproductive consequences

Here be dragons: mapping an ethnography of global danger

For a brief post-Cold War moment, it seemed as if global division would yield to connectivity as marginal regions would be rewired into the world economy. Instead, the post–9/11 years have seen the spread of ever-larger “no-go zones,” seen as constituting a danger especially to Western states and citizens. Contact points are reduced as aid workers withdraw, military operations are conducted from above, and few visitors, reporters, or researchers dare venture beyond the new red lines. Casting an eye on this development while building on anthropology’s critical security agenda, this article draws an ethnographic map of “global danger” by showing how perceived transnational threats— terrorism, drugs, and displacement—are conjured, bundled, and relegated to world margins, from the sub-Saharan Sahel to the Afghanistan-Pakistan borderlands. Drawing on fieldwork conducted in Mali, it shows how a relationship by remote control has developed as Western interveners seek to overcome a fundamental dilemma: their deep concern with threats emanating from the danger zone set against their aversion toward entering it. As ambivalent sites of distance and engagement, I argue, such zones are becoming invested with old fantasies of remoteness and otherness, simultaneously kept at arm’s length and unevenly incorporated into a world economy of risk

The global front against migration

Author’s note: This is an edited version of an appendix to my book Illegality, Inc.: Clandestine migration and the business of bordering Europe(University of California Press 2014. Illegality, Inc. is concerned with the “fight against illegal migration” in West Africa and southern Europe, and follows migrants and border workers through their interactions across the emerging Euro-African borderlands. Focusing on the Spanish case, which has been held up as a “success” in the “fight against illegal migration”, the book looks in turn at the trauma and drama of deportation to Senegal and Mali; Euro-African cooperation in the policing of the frontiers; and activism and aid work in the borderlands as well as in Spain’s North African enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla, tiny EU territories where many migrants find themselves indefinitely retained. While the book drills down into the Spanish section of the EU’s “external borders”, this article instead looks briefly towards the U.S.-Mexico frontier to unearth some deeper trends in migration controls. Prepared in 2013, it was written at a particular time, just before large numbers of refugees started arriving into southern Europe, and just as the US Senate debated ambitious immigration reforms which have since faded from view. As the article suggests, the reason for this shift away from reform may not be surprising – a politics of fear, concentrated on the border – yet to understand the implications and entrenchment of these destructive border politics, we need to unearth the logics behind “more border security” on both sides of the Atlantic. Exploratory in nature, my comments here are meant to open debate about these logics, as well as about their day-to-day workings and human consequences

Europe’s failed 'fight' against irregular migration: ethnographic notes on a counterproductive industry

Despite Europe's mass investments in advanced border controls, people keep arriving along the continent's shores under desperate circumstances. European attempts to ‘secure’ or ‘protect’ the borders have quite clearly failed, as politicians themselves increasingly recognise – yet more of the same response is again rolled out in response to the escalating ‘refugee crisis’. Amid the deadlock, this article argues that we need to grasp the mechanics and logics of the European ‘border security model’ in order to open up for a change of course. Through ethnographic examples from the Spanish-African borders, the article shows how the striving for border security under a prevailing emergency frame has generated absurd incentives, negative path dependencies and devastating consequences. At Europe's frontiers, an industry of border controls has emerged, involving European defence contractors, member state security forces and their African counterparts, as well as a range of non-security actors. Whenever another ‘border crisis’ occurs, this industry grows again, feeding on its own apparent ‘failures’. This vicious cycle may be broken, the article concludes, once policy-makers start curtailing the economies of border security underpinning it – yet the challenges are formidable as the industry retrenches along with the political response to the drama it has itself produced

“Illegal” migration is a problem of our own making

LSE’s Ruben Andersson argues that rich nations’ efforts to quell “irregular” migration by land and sea are failing spectacularly

Intervention at risk: the vicious cycle of distance and danger in Mali and Afghanistan

In crisis-hit countries, intensive risk management increasingly characterizes the presence of international interveners, with measures ranging from fortified compounds to ‘remote programming’. This article investigates the global drive for ‘security’ from an ethnographic perspective, focusing on Afghanistan and Mali. By deploying the concepts of distance and proximity, the article shows how frontline ‘outsourcing’ and bunkering have generated an unequal ‘risk economy’ while distancing interveners from local society in a trend that itself generates novel risks. To conclude, the article asks whether alternative forms of proximity may help to break the vicious cycle of danger and distance at work in today’s crisis zones

Slättens musikanter : en musiketnologisk studie av orkesterspel i Västra Vemmenhög

Denna musiketnografiska uppsats beskriver den skånska orkestern Wemmenhögs Musikanters verksamhet. Syftet är att belysa de bakomliggande krafter som driver deltagarna att spela i orkestern samt se vilken betydelse den har för Västra Vemmenhög med omnejd. Det empiriska materialet är hämtat från intervjuer av orkesterns medlemmar, gästande musiker, fältobservationer och deltagande observation. Resultatet visar att den drivande kraften har sitt ursprung i en kantor och folkskollärares brinnande intresse för musik kopplat till ett musicerande där kontextens huvudtema är att tillvara människans förmåga att uttrycka sig musiskt. Resultatet visar även att orkesterns har stor social och musisk betydelse för dess medlemmar, och att orkesterns konserter är uppskattade inslag i Skurups kommuns musikliv. För dagens nyinflyttade vemmenhögsbor är däremot orkesterns verksamhet föga känd. Detta till skillnad mot byns äldre, och till tätorten Skurup, utflyttande invånare vilka följt orkestern från dess uppbyggnad från början av 1980-talet

Calais migrant response overblown – Ruben Andersson on BBC Radio Scotland

David Cameron recently described the ongoing migrant crisis in Calais as “totally unacceptable” and called an emergency cobra meeting. Speaking to BBC Radio Scotland, Dr Ruben Andersson described the reaction to the current scenario in Calais as disproportionate and ineffective. Kris Gulati explains

Clandestine migration and the business of bordering Europe

Irregular, clandestine or so-called “illegal” migration by land and sea is rarely out of the political and media agenda in Europe despite its statistically limited significance. Taking this mismatch as its starting point, this thesis explores the industry that has emerged around clandestine migration in recent years – the transnational policing networks, aid organisations and media outlets that all make the “illegal immigrant” their target, beneficiary and source. It focuses on the migration circuit between West Africa and Spain, where a joint European response to irregular flows was first tried and tested under the umbrella of the border agency Frontex. It is also here that success in “fighting illegal migration” has been most readily announced following the brief, spectacular migration “crises” in Spain’s North African enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla in 2005 and in the Canary Islands in 2006. The thesis explores ethnographically how clandestine migration has been constituted as a field of intervention and knowledge-gathering since this time. In this field, it is argued, the roles of policing, caring for and informing on migrants intermingle while producing shared models, materialities and classifications that impinge upon the travellers labelled “illegal”. Drawing on the dynamic nominalism of Ian Hacking, the actor-network theory of Bruno Latour and a growing body of critical migration and border studies, the thesis explores the interfaces where specific modalities of migrant illegality are produced. The exploration of these interfaces – in deportation, surveillance, patrolling, rescues, reception and activism – relies on an extended field site, with research carried out in Senegal, Mali, Morocco, southern Spain and European policing headquarters. Throughout, the thesis highlights not just the workings of the migration industry but this industry’s excesses and absurdities, which make the business of bordering Europe a fraught and contradictory enterprise