Mancunian Chinese Diaspora Organisations' Response to Covid-19 – Studying the Societal Actors' Perspective on Collaborative Governance in Crisis

This article contributes to the emerging field of research on collaborative governance in crises. It asks how social organisations see their contribution of skills and expertise to tackling a wicked problem such as the Covid-19 pandemic. For this purpose, I interviewed representatives of ethnic Chinese organisations about their work and relationships with the local government in Manchester in 2020 and 2021. Ethnic Chinese organisations are an interesting group because they had early access to knowledge about the spread of the virus and its harmfulness. Collaboration with them could potentially have helped to contain the pandemic in the ethnic Chinese community in the city and beyond. Based on semi-structured interviews with representatives of ethnic Chinese organisations and applying the combined theoretical frameworks of social capital and collaborative governance theories, the study identifies five organisational types in terms of their involvement in collaborative governance efforts. © The Author(s) 2023.

Bearing witness through pandemic borders and film: convergent media, mobility and Windrush Betrayal.

This paper examines the role of convergent media and the film, Windrush Betrayal (2020), in representing and challenging borders, mobilities and UK government immigration policies. Print and digital news provide important contexts for exploring media geographies of current events. Documentary film is also a provocative medium for investigative analyses that go beyond more general headline reporting. This study seeks to expand on earlier studies by examining how complementary mediums such as digital news media and film can respond to each other and become part of dynamic transnational conversations around place and identity. Media formats have been pushed to incorporate new settings and styles as Covid-19 restrictions have been implemented and alternative approaches utilised in media production. Adopting innovative techniques for filming in response to pandemic restrictions, Windrush Betrayal illustrates the ongoing impacts of immigration policies on Caribbean Diaspora populations in the UK. This paper provides a timely opportunity to tease out the ways in which changes in government immigration policies, media work practices and the production of migration narratives can highlight hidden geographical stories and marginalised voices.

Living a diasporic space online: semiotic landscape and landscaping of Chinese students in the UK under COVID pandemic

Recent linguistic landscape studies have increasingly underscored an online-offline agenda to understand the entanglement of people's digital and physical lifeworlds. In this light, this study concerns itself with the diasporic space lived online by Chinese overseas students residing in the UK during COVID, taking it as a nexus of their experienced semiotic landscape and practiced landscaping. Drawing on research diaries and interviews collected during a stretched time of fieldwork and observations, this research delineates shared semiotic landscapes shaped by homogeneous attention structure and health beliefs in the digital lifeworlds of Chinese overseas students during the pandemic. The shared semiotic landscapes reterritorialize the idea of local space in digital infrastructures, and constitute an online community space where cultural identities are articulated and practiced. By advocating the analytical strength of linguistic landscape in digital settings, this study articulates and makes sense of the social-semiotic dynamics of a discrete diasporic group specifically conditioned by COVID on a broader spatial level. [ FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Journal of Multilingual & Multicultural Development is the property of Taylor & Francis Ltd and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full . (Copyright applies to all s.)

Sending Money Home in Conflict Settings: Revisiting Migrant Remittances

Despite the challenges, remittances frequently remain a primary source of economic support for those left behind, as well as for national development of post-conflict countries. [...]situations in the wake of recent conflicts are known for heightened remittance flows.3 As a large share of the remittance flows in conflict settings occurs through informal channels, the importance of remittances in these economies has often been underestimated. A focus on broader settings that can provide security, justice, and economic sustenance to individuals and communities affected by the crisis has been reflected in the human security approach6 to post-conflict7 development.8 Remittances can be central to fighting poverty—by diversifying household income sources, providing capital for productive investment and facilitating local markets, and funding education, health, and other social expenses.9 Remittances can contribute to post-conflict recovery in the long term. "20 Horst has shown that among the Somali diaspora in Norway, most political engagements do not occur through state institutions but take place on sub-national levels, including individual and group money transfers and certain humanitarian initiatives.21 Somali diaspora members mediate with clan leaders and elders who can contribute to reconciliation processes through customary mechanisms such as compensatory payments, but as noted above, such involvement can also sustain continued warfare.22 While the role of diaspora in post-conflict reconstruction efforts can be significant, diaspora can also remain an "under-utilized resource" whose strong emotional connection to their home country is offset by unstable institutional environments.23 Weak formal institutions and regulatory frameworks may offer little systematic support for entrepreneurship development, which is constrained by high transaction and compliance costs. Informal institutions and cultural attitudes remain important in the post-conflict assimilation of returning migrants who bring with them beliefs and understandings from their countries of settlement, resulting in hybrid norms and institutions.24 Many forcibly displaced and returning migrants may also lack properly transferable professional skills.25 The transfer of social and political remittances does not always signify "diffusion of democracy"—the effects of returning migrants to democratization depend on their experience of political mobilization as migrant workers, as well as on the status of democratic values in the political order of the host country, among other factors.26 Changing perspectives on conflict-affected remittances Remittances became central in the migration scholarship only in the 1990s, when the analytical focus shifted from migration as a result of [End Page 44] decision-making of rational individuals towards a more nuanced view of the role of households, social networks, and community in migration processes.

Shifting ecologies of family language planning: Hungarian Australian families during COVID-19

This study took a mixed-methods approach to investigate family language planning (FLP) in Hungarian families raising children in Australia. The study aimed to explore the complex factors impacting FLP and how families responded to the rapidly changing social conditions during the outbreak of Covid-19. The pandemic highlighted the shifting spatiotemporal dynamics of the family domain. Therefore, the project sought a holistic insight into the shifting family ecology, incorporating language use patterns, motivations, language maintenance and learning strategies and family well-being. Data were collected through an online survey (N = 80) and parental interviews (N = 13). The findings provide empirical evidence of the translocal and transnational dimensions of intergenerational language maintenance. The paper argues for an ecological approach in FLP, which recognises the complex social, affective and ideological dimensions of the family domain and the translocal aspects of language planning. As the results demonstrate, Hungarian families experienced the impact of Covid-19 in contrastive ways: for some, new opportunities arose to establish the home domain as a dynamic multilingual space;for others, the social isolation further reduced the space afforded to the heritage language. Therefore, agency was crucial for responding to these shifting circumstances. © 2023 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Second generation diaspora: pandemic, development and connection

The new millennium has seen a proliferation of scholarship and research addressing the relationship between diaspora and development. Conventionally, it is assumed that the second generation in the diaspora experiences a diminishing attachment to their countries of origin. Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, diasporas have been at the forefront of supporting their communities at home and abroad. In this article, we examine the contribution of the second-generation diaspora to the country of origin in South Asia to provide comparative insights across time, countries, and types of crises. We examine the transnational framework in the context of ‘diaspora' and ‘engagement during the pandemic,' drawing on transnational scholarship. This provides an opportunity to examine the means, motivations, and agency of diaspora members – and their descendants – in transnational activities with a clear development objective. The study offers actionable recommendations for better-leveraging diaspora contributions in times of crisis. [ FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of South Asian Diaspora is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full . (Copyright applies to all s.)

Queering Diasporic Desi Solidarity: South Asian Activism in US and UK Multiracial Social Movements

This article explores the linkages between queerness, racialization, activism, and community care in the South Asian diaspora. It examines activism, organizing, and social movement work practiced by queer diasporic South Asians in the UK and the United States. By analyzing the South Asian activist relationship to, and solidarity and partnership with, Black liberation activism, this article conceptualizes a framing of queer South Asian diasporic solidarity. This solidarity is framed through contrasting articulations of joint struggle, allyship, and kinship in queer communities. To articulate this struggle, the article contrasts histories of South Asian racialization, politicization, and queerness in the UK and the United States, and synthesizes first-person activist accounts of modern-day queer South Asian activists in the diaspora. Finally, it argues that queer feminist South Asian activists in both countries are employing a model of queered solidarity with Black activists and Black liberation, though in differing forms in each country, that centers queer intimacies and anti-patriarchal modes of organizing for liberation across queer communities of color.

Critical Orthodoxies and (Re) Imagining Scholarship for a Brave New World

Introduction to the special issue.

Global Classics

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO SPEAK of "global Classics” in the "post-COVID era?” Reaching the post-COVID period may have eluded us, but the notion of a global Classics—Classics as it is received outside the West—has been a topic of serious interest in the field over the past decade, even in advance of the new opportunities for conferences and conversations across time zones made possible by Zoom and the virtual office.1 Paradoxically enough, the question of how to read—and interpret—the texts of the Classical tradition in a globalized world arises just as the field is facing critique from within, as texts once standard in university curricula are condemned for their historical use in the service of empire, expansion, ideology, and propping up hierarchies of class, race, and gender. At a 2019 conference on "Classics and Global Humanities” at the University of Ghana,2 (non-globalized) Classics' involvement in the ideologies of colonialism was openly acknowledged, but new frameworks were also suggested within which these texts could speak to topics relevant to the present, spurring readers to discuss such subjects as academic freedom and politics, race in the canon, citizenship and migration, globalization and education, and more.3 As Erin Mee (2010: 314) puts it in her review essay of Classics in Post-colonial Worlds and Crossroads in the Black Aegean: Oedipus, Antigone, and Dramas of the African Diaspora, "What better way to challenge colonialism (either before, during, or after the ‘official' period of colonization) than by using the very tools that colonial powers used to justify their cultural superiority and therefore their dominance?”4 Other voices agree: Here, then, "global Classics” strives to be truly global by cutting across social and economic status in its search for representative texts—representative, perhaps, of "the human condition,” to the extent that is possible. Unfortunately, the Yale-NUS liberal arts college (and its vibrant international student body with it) has just been shut down by policy makers at NUS: the challenges of teaching a broad-ranging core in a country without complete freedom of speech apparently proved to be too much.11 Here politics confronts the habits of mind of the liberal self, which is often prompted by the classical texts of any culture to ask questions about human beings' relationship to themselves and their society that do not mesh well with nationalism, autocracy, or the control of propaganda.

‘Will I be able to see my family ever again?' Tales from the Indian diaspora in times of COVID-19 in Singapore

The novel coronavirus began spreading worldwide since 2020 leaving behind hundreds of thousands of Indian Diaspora stranded. Indian diasporas are heterogeneous, diverse and are perceived as wealthy, dynamic and generally thriving, especially in highly developed countries. However, the COVID-19 pandemic has brought to light both strengths and weaknesses of these diasporas. Thus, this paper explores the various ways in which COVID-19 has impacted the lives of the high-skilled Indian diaspora in Singapore. In explaining their varied experiences, I used the concept of commonality. Through a qualitative study, collected data shows their struggles of commonalities embraced by COVID-19. In spite of living an affluent lifestyle in Singapore, they confront uncertainty, pain, fear of losing the loved ones back home. They are nevertheless happy and content, and are very grateful for the ways in which their Singapore have supported them during troubled times. © 2023 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Psycho-Social Approaches to the Covid-19 Pandemic: Change, Crisis and Trauma

Fabrication of Metallic Pressure Vessels delivers comprehensive coverage of the various This book explores how meaning-making during the COVID-19 pandemic, and specifically during the period of the April 2020 lockdowns, may be derived from shared lived experience among participants, residing in diverse geographical regions. This study conducted 46 in-depth interviews with Greek participants residing in 13 district countries and 23 cities around the globe and argues that meaning making of the pandemic derives from shared lived experiences of radical change and everyday transformations, fearful as well as well as hopeful perceptions of crisis and trauma emerging through loss of life before the pandemic. © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022.

Alexander Rubtsov at the Russian Museum: A Long Journey Home

Traditionally friendly Russian-Tunisian relations have a long history. They are successfully developing in various fields, filled with new content but invariably maintaining positive dynamics. A trusting political dialogue is combined with fairly robust trade and economic cooperation, including in such science-intensive industries as nuclear energy and space exploration. Ties are being strengthened in education and health care, including in the fight against the novel coronavirus infection. Russian language and culture maintain strong positions in Tunisia. Against this backdrop, there is growing interest in common historical heritage. Many details of the formation of the first Russian diaspora in Tunisia, associated with the exodus from Crimea, the centennial of which was celebrated in 2020, are already well known. Back then, at the end of the Russian Civil War, 33 ships of the Black Sea squadron with our sailors and their families arrived in the Tunisian port of Bizerte from Crimea.

Did COVID-19 Make Me an Afro-Pessimist? A Conversation in Three Parts

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to rage and disproportionately affect BIPOC, we keep count of the death toll around the world, in the U.S., in our own communities and in our own families. How can we have a "wish to live,” while so many around us die? Does a space exist between fateful (faithful) optimism present in Aretha Franklin's, "Mary Don't You Weep?” and the ever-present power structure, that as Reverend Al Sharpton noted, has always had its knee on our necks? More concretely, how do we reconcile what Aisha Durham discusses as "weathering and wounded,” as we sit in the space of being both and not wanting to endure much more. This piece articulates some of the conversations that we have stumbled upon, worked through and raged against from the space of our collective homes and fatigued spirits. It addresses notions of Afro-Pessimism and the intersection of Black Feminist Theory, the role that grief plays in Black Feminist praxis, the role of Diaspora in the historical imagination, and asks the question, "Did COVID and the state-sanctioned killings of Black people make us Afro-Pessimists?”

COVID-19 lockdown, information access and use among African diaspora in Norway

This chapter takes up the discourse on marginalisation and 'othering' surrounding information and communication among the African diaspora in Norway during the 2020 COVID-19 lockdown. Following the Norwegian Health Directorate (FHI)'s (2020, 2021) concerns about the statistically higher number of infections among immigrant groups, the chapter unpacks the dynamics surrounding this group's information access and use during lockdown. The chapter explores 'public institution' informational initiatives targeting immigrants at local levels and experiences of individual immigrants outside the public institution. Theories on media representation, otherness and trans-national communication were harnessed to analyse data generated qualitatively. While individual experiences were fragmented and diverse, 'otherness' and disadvantage on the basis of socio-cultural, economic and political marginality emerged with nuances depending on stratified contexts such as age, educational, nationality, religion. Public institutional efforts were experienced as necessary and valuable but insufficient in fully combating fear, uncertainty and confusion among the immigrants. These, mainly top-down interpretations of national and local directives and statistics, were thus supplemented with alternative and contra sources of information to feed fragmented immigrant informational needs. © 2022 by Carol Azungi Dralega, Yam Bahadur Katuwal and Henry Mainsah.

I cinesi among others: the contested racial perceptions among Chinese migrants in Italy

This article examines the vernacular system of racial designations and perceptions deployed by Chinese migrants in Italy for making sense of the pluralistic and hierarchical racial reality in which they live. Data primarily came from 14 months of ethnographic fieldwork in Bologna from 2014 to 2015 and the subsequent annual visits until the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Focusing on three major racial labels, it sheds light on the ways in which Chinese diasporic subjects produce a racialized vocabulary related to racism and practice racial formations in transnational contexts. Their localised racial ideology reflects their predicament of being simultaneously both socially vulnerable and economically privileged. It paradoxically both reproduces and negotiates the preexisting Italian racial hierarchy that also reflects globally circulating racial hierarchies, while intersecting with their own understandings of civility and modernity. The perspectives of Chinese migrants who, themselves subject to racialisation, also racialise others reveal a contested bottom-up narrative of racial formation in a European society experiencing rapid demographic change. This ethnographic study thus challenges the existing narratives of racialisation and immigration beyond Eurocentric frameworks. © 2023 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Pandemic-Amplified Material Hardship and Community-Led Support among Marshallese Diasporic Communities in the United States.

This article explores the experiences of Marshallese diasporic migrants in the United States (U.S.) during the COVID-19 pandemic in relation to material hardship and community-led relief efforts. Focus groups with 53 Marshallese migrants in three states revealed that material hardship, including food and housing insecurity, inadequate healthcare, and difficulty paying bills, intensified among their communities during the pandemic. In response, Marshallese community-based groups provided relief to their fellow community members, including food, cash assistance, and personal protective equipment. The findings fit a pattern of intensified hardship and community-led relief among marginalized communities in the U.S. during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Towards a Definition of Performance During the Covid-19 Pandemic: A Study of Ramlila in India

This article demonstrates how Covid-19 transformed the performance aesthetics of ancient theatre traditions in India. I draw primarily on the October 17, 2020 performance of the Ramlila, the folk staging of Ramayana, produced by the Shri Ram Dharmik Leela Committee, Tri Nagar, one of the most popular theatre troupes in North Delhi. In the first part of the article, I explore the metatheatricality of the production by analyzing its camera-centric aesthetic while demonstrating how the performance divested gods of their power. In the second part, I investigate how the performance's paratextual thematic bestowed power on humans. Broadly, I show that the Covid-era performance of Ramlila marks a break from some of the traditional conventions of performance aesthetics in India.

Diaspora in Humanitarian Action: Analysing the Indian Diaspora's Humanitarian Potential and Efforts for ‘Mother India'

Humanitarian action is commonly thought to involve two types of aid providers: international and local actors. But this tends to ignore a third humanitarian domain, namely transnational humanitarianism during conflicts, global epidemics and natural disasters by diaspora individuals and organisations. These transnational connections, which involve the mobility of people, goods and money, significantly change the context in which global humanitarian actors function and may have notable secondary effects on other aid providers. We contend that the significance of diaspora humanitarianism during natural disasters and the COVID-19 pandemic has still not been thoroughly explored in the academic literature and remains relatively ‘invisible' in aid practices and policies. This article arises from an empirical study on the significance of diaspora in humanitarian action by analysing the impact of diaspora remittances and organisations that have emerged as an important potential for diasporas during humanitarian action. To examine the potential and role of the diaspora in humanitarian action, this article makes the case for the Indian diaspora's humanitarian potential and efforts, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic in India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of India Quarterly is the property of Sage India and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

International politics of migration in times of 'crisis' and beyond the COVID-19 pandemic

A much-anticipated end of the COVID-19 pandemic is on the horizon. It is important to reflect on the ways in which the pandemic has impacted the international politics of migration and especially on the migration-security nexus, which is still little understood but affecting policies and population movements with future implications. How the pandemic has shaped tradeoffs between securitization of migration, health, and economic concerns in governing migration? What are the new trends emerging from the pandemic on the migration-security nexus? And how can we study these in the coming years? This Research Note features insights from scholars associated with the British International Studies Association's working group on the 'International Politics of Migration, Refugees and Diaspora'. They argue that the pandemic has exacerbated tendencies for migration control beyond reinforcing nation-state borders, namely through foregrounding 'riskification' of migration discourses and practices, adding to an earlier existing securitization of migration considered as a 'threat'. Digital controls at borders and beyond were ramped up, as were racial tropes and discrimination against migrants and mobile persons more generally. These trends deepen the restrictions on liberal freedoms during a period of global democratic backsliding, but also trigger a counter-movement where the visibility of migrants as 'key workers' and their deservingness in host societies has been enhanced, and diasporas became more connected to their countries of origin. This Research Note finds that enhanced controls, on the one side, and openings for visibility of migrants and transnational connectivity of diasporas, on the other, are worthy to study in the future as political trends per se. Yet, it would be also interesting to study them as interconnected in a dual movement of simultaneous restriction and inclusion, and in an interdependent world where the power of nation-states has been reasserted due to the pandemic, but migrant transnationalism has remained largely intact. [ FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Migration Studies is the property of Oxford University Press / USA and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full . (Copyright applies to all s.)