The surprising impact of COVID-19 on domestic healthcare migration in China

During the COVID-19 pandemic, China adopted one of the world’s most restrictive policies on human mobility. Though largely effective at controlling the pandemic’s spread, these policies also created new pressures for ‘healthcare migrants’, citizens who need to travel to access better medical care within the country

Conceptualizing government-organized non-governmental organizations

This article offers a conceptual framework to identify and analyse the contemporary behaviour of the paradoxical government-organized, non-governmental organization (GONGO). We discuss how GONGOs’ activities fit within mainstream civil society theories and traditions. Furthermore, we compare and analyse GONGOs and NGOs in terms of their sources of power, main activities and functions, and dilemmas. Finally, we theorize the effects, and implications, the growth of GONGOs has on state and society relations globally

NGOs and the success paradox: gay activism ‘after’ HIV/AIDS in China

What happens to NGOs when they succeed in meeting key goals, when the issues around which activists mobilize are no longer of interest to those granting them economic and political opportunities? How do they deal with success? This paper presents the case of gay activism in China, which has risen largely because of HIV/AIDS. While the virus persists, international interest has waned, resulting in fewer opportunities for gay activists in the country. The paper draws upon insights of gay activists’ responses in the US and Europe and formulates hypotheses for how Chinese gay activism might navigate the success paradox. It explores potential adaptive techniques by viewing them through a political economy lens of gay activism in China, demonstrating how context-specific conditions might limit the options for NGOs dealing with success. In doing so, it contains important insights for NGOs and civil society beyond China and LGBT right

The one-child policy, eldercare, and LGB Chinese: A social policy explanation for family pressure.

Lesbian, gay and bisexual (LGB) people in China consistently report family pressure as the greatest challenge they face in their daily lives. This problem has been primarily explained by highlighting sociocultural factors. While such explanations are important to understanding family pressure, they do not easily lead to actionable policy interventions to relieve it. This article suggests a new way of looking at family pressure by positing a social policy explanation. In particular, it reveals how both the one-child policy and eldercare reforms have strong heteronormative biases which negatively and disproportionately affect LGB people and explores social policy interventions that may serve to help address them. Beyond the China case, the article seeks to open up new avenues for research into how sexuality should be better accounted for in analyses of social policies and considered in broader discussions on defamilization and welfare state reform

Negotiating in/visibility: the political economy of lesbian activism and rights advocacy

Efforts to address HIV/AIDS have brought new opportunities and resources to LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) activism in many parts of the developing world. But increased attention in terms of both political opportunities and economic resources is uneven across the diverse population of LGBT peoples and activists. Lesbian activists have reaped far fewer benefits than their gay men counterparts. Building on existing approaches to movement visibility and invisibility, we posit a ‘political economy of in/visibility’ to analyse lesbian activism in China and Myanmar, where activists face particularly restrictive political and economic conditions. Rather than focus on visibility as a movement pre-condition, objective, or strategy, we examine the sources of in/visibility and their interactions with activists’ agency; in/visibility emerges from political and economic conditions, but is continuously reshaped by activists who negotiate them. We demonstrate that, despite challenges, lesbian activists respond in ways that help advance LGBT rights advocacy broadly, sometimes even with tactics that their more visible gay counterparts avoid. These interactions subsequently influence the conditions that shape in/visibility. Investigating the political economy of in/visibility, therefore, has significant implications for understanding not only lesbian activism, but also LGBT advocacy and collective mobilization, especially under politically and economically restrictive conditions

Responsibilization and sexual stigma under austerity: surveying public support for government-funded PrEP in England

Under austerity, governments shift responsibilities for social welfare to individuals. Such responsibilization can be intertwined with pre-existing social stigmas, with sexually stigmatized individuals blamed more for health problems due to “irresponsible” sexual behavior. To understand how sexual stigma affects attitudes on government healthcare expenditures, we examine public support for government-provisioned PrEP in England at a time when media narratives cast the drug as an expensive benefit for a small, irresponsible social group and the National Health Service’s long-term sustainability was in doubt. This paper uses data from an original survey (N = 738) conducted in September 2016, when public opinion should be most sensitive to sexual stigma. A survey experiment tests how the way beneficiaries of PrEP were described affected support for NHS provision of it. Contrary to expectations, we found that support was high (mean = 3.86 on a scale of 1 to 5) irrespective of language used or beneficiary group mentioned. Differences between conditions were negligible. Sexual stigma does not diminish support for government-funded PrEP, which may be due to reverence for the NHS; resistance to responsibilization generally; or just to HIV, with the public influenced by sympathy and counter-messaging. Having misjudged public attitudes, it may be difficult for the government to continue to justify not funding PrEP; the political rationale for contracting out its provision is unnecessary and flawed. With public opinion resilient to responsibilization narratives and sexual stigma even under austerity, welfare retrenchment may be more difficult than social policymakers presume