Livelihoods and Migrants' Social Protection: An Investigation of Migration and Health in Beijing and Tianjin, North China

This paper contributes to a growing body of research on the social protection for rural-urban migrants in Chinese cities. Drawing on extensive fieldwork in Beijing and Tianjin and applying an analytical framework of livelihood studies, it examines an important aspect of migrants‟ social protection, namely migrants‟ health, in particular workplace safety and occupational health. It aims at (1) delineating the current state of affairs in respect of social protection for rural migrants; (2) identifying the risks and threats to migrants‟ health as perceived by the actors involved; (3) examining the extent to which the social rights of rural migrants are recognized, and the struggles that migrants have fought for securing livelihood and realising such rights; and (4) assessing the central and local government responses to the challenges posed for mobile livelihoods and suggesting possible ways forward

Migration, Risk and Livelihoods: A Chinese Case

China has turned from a ‘low risk’ to a ‘high risk’ society since the start of the market reforms in the late 1970s. Market, while bringing diverse livelihood opportunities to rural people, has simultaneously distributed risks, and the exposure and vulnerability to them unequally among different social groups. This paper attempts to apply the risk concept to the study of one of the most socially disadvantaged groups in China, namely rural-urban migrants, through analysing the narratives of members of a migratory family of the Hui Muslim national minority from the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, who run a business in the northern city of Tianjin. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, the research adopts an actor-oriented perspective combined with qualitative longitudinal research methodology (or ‘extended case method’) to delineate a livelihood trajectory of this family, and explore the relationships between livelihood, risk, social networks, agency and public policy interventions

Rights, social policy and reproductive wellbeing: the Vietnam situation

Wellbeing Rights and Reproduction Research Paper I

A better life? Migration reproduction and wellbeing in transition

Mainstream theoretical approaches to migration and reproduction in Asia and elsewhere separate questions relating to reproduction from exploration of economic migration, leading to limitations in current understandings. The tendency to see migratory livelihoods in largely productive terms and to conceptualise the reproductive in terms of consequence or constraint neglects the complex inter-linkages between migration and reproduction in the search for a ‘better life’. Addressing these ‘missing links’ involves taking a broader approach to reproductive behaviour that factors in not only sexual relations and reproductive management but also social reproduction, gender relations between men and women and wider well-being. The transitional economies of Vietnam and China have experienced rapid growth in new forms of migration, in particular rural-urban migration that challenge existing presumptions about migration and reproduction. Not only does marriage migration in this context have strong economic dimensions, economic migration also has clear reproductive dimensions. Prevailing policy and popular stereotypes about how migration intersects with reproduction are being undermined by an increasing diversity of migrant strategies for building and sustaining their own families. Moreover existing institutional and policy constraints mean that these strategies often involve difficult and unpalatable trade-offs for individual and family wellbeing. In both countries the remaining household registration system and the related structuring of social entitlements lead to social exclusion of migrants and their families in urban areas, and perpetuate rural-urban inequalities, with outcomes detrimental to the well-being of current and future generations of the migrants who are trying to build livelihoods and meaningful lives

Implementing reproductive rights: population debates and institutional responses to the new agenda

Wellbeing, Rights and Reproduction Research Paper I

Vector Meson Propagator and Baryon Current Conservation

If baryons couple only with $\omega$-mesons, one found the baryon spectral function may be negative. We show this unacceptable result is caused by the $k_\mu k_\nu$-terms in the $\omega$-meson propagator. Their contribution may not vanish in approximate calculations which violate the baryon current conserves. A rule is suggested, by which the calculated baryon spectral function is well behaved.Comment: 9 pages (LaTeX file), 3 figures (PostScript file

Manipulation of magnetization reversal of Ni81Fe19 nanoellipse arrays by tuning the shape anisotropy and the magnetostatic interactions

Two series of highly ordered two-dimensional arrays of Ni81Fe19 nanoellipses were nanofabaricated with different aspect ratios, R, and element separations, S, to investigate the influence of the self-demagnetization and the magnetostatic interaction upon the magnetization reversal. For nanostructures with low shape anisotropy, an additional magnetic easy axis was induced orthogonal to the shape-induced easy axis by reducing the separations along both axes. For the structures with larger shape anisotropy, the switching field distribution/coercivity (SFD/Hc ) was reduced, and for the array with the smallest separations (20 nm and 35 nm along the long and short axes, respectively), coherent rotation of the whole array occurred. The magnitude of both the shape anisotropy and a configurational anisotropy induced by the magnetostatic interactions have been estimated. These results provide some useful information for the design of potential magnetic nanodot logic and for high-density magnetic random access memory

Coupled Dyson-Schwinger Equations and Effects of Self-Consistency

Using the $\sigma -\omega$ model as an effective tool, the effects of self-consistency are studied in some detail. A coupled set of Dyson-Schwinger equations for the renormalized baryon and meson propagators in the $\sigma -\omega$ model is solved self-consistently according to the dressed Hartree-Fock scheme, where the hadron propagators in both the baryon and meson self-energies are required to also satisfy this coupled set of equations. It is found that the self-consistency affects the baryon spectral function noticeably, if only the interaction with $\sigma$ mesons is considered. However, there is a cancellation between the effects due to the $\sigma$ and $\omega$ mesons and the additional contribution of $\omega$ mesons makes the above effect insignificant. In both the $\sigma$ and $\sigma -\omega$ cases the effects of self-consistency on meson spectral function are perceptible, but they can nevertheless be taken account of without a self-consistent calculation. Our study indicates that to include the meson propagators in the self-consistency requirement is unnecessary and one can stop at an early step of an iteration procedure to obtain a good approximation to the fully self-consistent results of all the hadron propagators in the model, if an appropriate initial input is chosen. Vertex corrections and their effects on ghost poles are also studied.Comment: 20 pages (include 5 tables), 17 figures (PostScript file