West-Central Asia: a comparative analysis of students’ trajectories in Russia (Moscow) from the 1980s and China (Yiwu) from the 2000s

Through an exploration of oral history and ethnographic material, this article makes a comparative examination of the life-trajectories of students from Yemen, Iraq, and Afghanistan who studied in Russia (Moscow) during the late 1980s, and from Tajikistan, Iran, Azerbaijan and Saudi Arabia who studied in China in the 2000s. In contrast to the cohort of students in Moscow who were mainly men from places with relatively amicable relations with the USSR, the female students of Muslim background from West and Central Asia regarded China as a place where they could pursue fulfilling forms of economic and personal autonomy. By comparing these two groups of international students, this article sheds light into the nature of historical, geographical and geopolitical connections and disconnections between West-Central Asia, Eurasia (especially Russia) and East Asia (especially China). By centring its attention to the demise of Soviet/Russian education and the emergence of China as a figure of economic prosperity, the article theorises West-Central Asia as a particular arena of interaction suitable to comprehend the networks, ‘third spaces’ or zones of interaction (e.g. Moscow and Yiwu), and forms of connection fostered by these students’ trajectories

Reliability and validity of Turkish version of the impact on family scale: Assessment of depressive symptoms and quality of life in mothers with cerebral palsied children

The pragmatic aims of this study were to investigate the reliability and validity of the Turkish version of the Impact on Family Scale (IFS) and to evaluate the impact of having disabled children on mothers. Two hundred and forty seven mothers with cerebral palsied children completed the Turkish version, Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) and Nottingham Health Profile (NHP). Fifteen mothers also completed the Turkish version on two occasions, one apart, to evaluate the test-retest reliability. Cronbach's alpha and Interclass Correlation Coefficient (ICC) were calculated, respectively. Concurrent validity was examined by comparing with two instruments: BDI and NHP. Internal consistency was 0.74. When the coping items were excluded, the results showed that its Cronbach's alpha was excellent (0.81). ICC score for the test-retest reliability coefficient was 0.79. The findings indicate that the Turkish version is a reliable tool for assessing the impact of having a cerebral palsied child on Turkish speaking mothers living in Turkey

Not a Silk Road: Trading Networks between China and the Middle East as a Dynamic Interaction of Competing Eurasian Geographies

This paper offers a different theorisation of the commercial geographies and economic networks that connect China to the Middle East from those associated with the metaphor of the ‘silk road’. Many accounts of the recent and ongoing internationalisation of the Chinese trade in small commodities through the well-known market city of Yiwu describe the increasingly significant flows of commerce between China and the Middle East in these terms. The paper proposes an alternative theoretical frame, arguing that the commercial geographies fashioned by Arab traders in Yiwu are, rather, formed through a dynamic relation of competition and cooperation between a series of distinct but overlapping Eurasian political geographies which have been in process from the 1970s onwards. Analysts have also often highlighted the Muslim and Arab ethnic nature of the transnational economic networks which connect Yiwu to markets across the Middle East. But rather than adopting a network governance approach which sees these networks as embedded in a shared culture or ethnicity which furnishes the possibility of trust, I adopt a structural analysis approach in which traders act as brokers, moving and mediating between different geographies. The paper argues that they act strategically to keep several contexts in play at once because they are faced with an unforeseeable future and marginal citizenship rights.This work was supported by the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme 669 132 – TRODITIES, ‘Yiwu Trust, Global Traders and Commodities in a Chinese International City’