National Borders (national + border)

Distribution by Scientific Domains


Selected Abstracts


Darfurian Livelihoods and Libya: Trade, Migration, and Remittance Flows in Times of Conflict and Crisis1

INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION REVIEW, Issue 4 2007
Helen Young
Labor migration and commerce between Sudan and Libya have long been features of livelihoods in Darfur. This paper describes the importance of historical trade and migration links between Darfur and Libya, and provides a background to the political and economic situation in Libya which has influenced opportunities for Sudanese migrant workers. A case study of the situation of the Darfurian migrants in Kufra (an oasis and transnational trade hub in southern Libya) illustrates how the recent Darfur conflict has affected migration patterns from Darfur and remittance flows in the opposite direction. Official estimates of Darfurian migrant workers in Libya were unavailable but were estimated to be between 150,000 and 250,000. The closure of the national border between Sudan and Libya in May 2003, largely a result of insecurity in Darfur, stopped the traffic of migrant workers between northern Darfur and southern Libya (which prevented the onward travel to Sudan of several thousand migrants in Kufra), and curtailed the well-established trade routes, communications, and remittance flows. The current limited economic prospects for migrant workers in Libya, combined with the threat of detention, difficulties of return to Sudan, and loss of contact with and uncertainty about the fate of their families in Darfur, have created a sense of despair among many Darfurians. The paper concludes with a series of recommendations to improve the conditions of the Darfurian migrants in Libya, including an amnesty for illegal migrants, and also to ease the travel of migrants, promote communications between Libya and Darfur, and support the flow of remittances. [source]


Unemployment clusters across Europe's regions and countries

ECONOMIC POLICY, Issue 34 2002
Henry G. Overman
Summary High unemployment and regional inequalities are major concerns for European policy-makers, but so far connections between policies dealing with unemployment and regional inequalities have been few and weak. We think that this should change. This paper documents a regional and transnational dimension to unemployment , i.e., geographical unemployment clusters that do not respect national boundaries. Since the mid 1980s, regions with high or low initial unemployment rates saw little change, while regions with intermediate unemployment moved towards extreme values. During this polarization, nearby regions tended to share similar outcomes due, we argue, to spatially related changes in labour demand. These spatially correlated demand shifts were due in part to initial clustering of low-skilled regions and badly performing industries, but a significant neighbour effect remains even after controlling for these, and the effect is as strong within as it is between nations. We believe this reflects agglomeration effects of economic integration. The new economic geography literature shows how integration fosters employment clusters that need not respect national borders. If regional labour forces do not adjust, regional unemployment polarization with neighbour effects can result. To account for these ,neighbour effects' a cross-regional and transnational dimension should be added to national anti-unemployment policies. Nations should consider policies that encourage regional wage setting, and short distance mobility, and the EU should consider including transnational considerations in its regional policy, since neighbour effects on unemployment mean that an anti-unemployment policy paid for by one region will benefit neighbouring regions. Since local politicians gain no votes or tax revenues from these ,spillovers', they are likely to underestimate the true benefit of the policy and thus tend to undertake too little of it. [source]


Geographical Aspects of Food Industry FDI in the CEE Countries Geografische Aspekte ausländischer Direktinvestitionen (ADI) in der Lebensmittelindustrie in mittel- und osteuropäischen Ländern Les dimensions géographiques de l'IDE dans l'industrie alimentaire des pays d'Europe centrale et orientale

EUROCHOICES, Issue 1 2009
Csaba Jansik
Summary Geographical Aspects of Food Industry FDI in the CEE Countries Food industry FDI has favoured certain food processing sub-sectors over others and it has also been distributed rather unevenly in geographical terms both between countries and regionally within each country. As for the regional distribution, foreign investors have typically targeted locations with a relatively high density of consumers as opposed for instance to prioritising the proximity of agricultural raw materials. The capital city areas and their surrounding regions have attracted a much higher proportion of total food industry FDI than their contribution to agricultural and food processing output would warrant. FDI has contributed in many ways to the development of the regions and industries which have received capital inflows. There has been some levelling off in FDI between countries more recently, a trend driven by the tendency for multinational enterprises to shift their production capacity across national borders among their CEE subsidiaries in a search for greater economies of scale or cost savings. This realignment has helped certain branches of the food industry in some CEE countries perform better than others in competing for common EU food markets. Positive effects of the recent FDI inflows include rapid productivity improvements and enhancement of food export volumes. L'IDE dans l'industrie alimentaire a privilégié certains sous-secteurs de la transformation alimentaire plutôt que d'autres et sa répartition géographique, à la fois entre pays et entre régions au sein d'un même pays, a été plutôt inégale. En termes de répartition régionale, les investisseurs étrangers ont typiquement ciblé des zones où la densité des consommateurs est assez élevée plutôt que de donner, par exemple, la prioritéà la proximité des produits agricoles primaires. Les capitales et les régions qui les entourent ont attiré une proportion bien plus grande de l'ensemble de l'IDE dans l'industrie alimentaire que ce que leur contribution à la production agricole et alimentaire représenterait. L'IDE a contribué de maintes façons au développement des régions et des industries qui ont reçu des capitaux. Une certaine égalisation de l'IDE s'est produite plus récemment entre pays, ce phénomène étant entraîné par la tendance des entreprises multinationales à transférer leur capacité de production d'un pays à l'autre entre leurs filiales d'Europe centrale et orientale, à la recherche d'économies d'échelle et de coûts. Ce rééquilibrage a aidé certaines branches de l'industrie alimentaire de certains pays d'Europe centrale et orientale à réussir mieux que d'autres dans la compétition sur les marchés alimentaires de l'UE. Parmi les effets positifs des entrées de capitaux d'IDE récentes, figurent des améliorations rapides de la productivité et la croissance en volume des exportations de produits alimentaires. Ausländische Direktinvestitionen (ADI) in der Lebensmittelindustrie haben sich auf bestimmte Teilsektoren konzentriert. Außerdem ist die Konzentration der ADI sowohl geografisch zwischen den Ländern als auch den Regionen einzelner Länder ungleich. Bei der regionalen Konzentration haben die ausländischen Investoren ihre Wahl nicht etwa anhand der Entfernung zu landwirtschaftlichen Rohstoffen getroffen, sondern Orte mit einer relativ hohen Kundendichte bevorzugt. Auf die Hauptstadtregionen entfiel ein viel größerer Anteil an den gesamten ADI als es ihre Beteiligung an der Produktionsmenge in Landwirtschaft und Lebensmittelverarbeitung rechtfertigen würde. ADI haben in vielerlei Hinsicht zur Entwicklung der Regionen und Industrien beigetragen, die einen Kapitalzufluss erfahren haben. In letzter Zeit wurden ADI zwischen den Ländern etwas weniger konzentriert, da multinationale Unternehmen danach streben, ihre Produktionskapazitäten länderübergreifend auf ihre MOE-Tochtergesellschaften zu verlagern, um Skaleneffekte und Kosteneinsparungen besser nutzen zu können. Durch diese Neuorientierung konnten sich bestimmte Lebensmittelindustriezweige in einigen MOEL gegenüber anderen im Wettbewerb um die gemeinsamen Lebensmittelmärkte der EU behaupten. Zu den positiven Auswirkungen von ADI-Zuflüssen zählen eine rasche Steigerung der Produktivität sowie größere Mengen an Lebensmittelexporten. [source]


Securitization: The Transformation of Illiquid Financial Assets into Liquid Capital Market Securities Examples from the European Market

FINANCIAL MARKETS, INSTITUTIONS & INSTRUMENTS, Issue 3-4 2000
Charles Austin Stone
Since the benefits a firm can derive from securitization are universal, the discussion of a market bounded by national borders is somewhat artificial unless the focus is on constraints particular to the country which promote or inhibit the use of securitization. With the exception of the United Kingdom, regulatory constraints have been an important factor in slowing the development of a European market for asset and mortgage backed securities. In addition to the regulatory hurdles, securitization in Europe has been inhibited by segmented corporate bond markets and the relatively slow development of money market savings vehicles for households. Liquidity across credit spectrums has been enhanced since the introduction of the Euro, as has been the competition for savings. European companies are developing the ability to securitize even if the technique is not yet being widely exploited. What is the European market for mortgage and asset backed securities? Does it include the U.S. credit card banks, Citicorp, Chase, MBNA, and First USA that have refinanced U.S. credit card receivables in European currencies and in Euro? Does it include GMAC which has structured Swiss Franc and Euro ABS backed by its U.S. dealer floor plan loans? Does it include Japanese banks that have refinanced Yen denominated leases with Euro and Swiss Franc ABS? Does it include Barclays' issue of $1 billion of ABS backed by sterling credit card receivables? Of course the answer is yes. Markets are defined by both the supply and demand sides. Our analysis focuses on the supply side of the domestic European market. [source]


Bridges to learning: international student mobilities, education agencies and inter-personal networks

GLOBAL NETWORKS, Issue 4 2008
FRANCIS LEO COLLINS
Abstract International education is a fundamentally transnational project. It relies on the movement of individuals or knowledge across national borders, disturbs the centrality of the nation-state in educational reproduction, and is facilitated by economic and social networks that act as bridges between countries of origin and education. In this article, I address this latter point through reference to research conducted with South Korean international students in Auckland, New Zealand. In particular, I discuss the emergence of transnational social and economic activities that are facilitating the movement of international students from South Korea to Auckland , activities that might usefully be understood as forming ,bridges to learning'. These include the activities of education agencies, immigrant entrepreneurs and the interpersonal relationships with which many students engage in the negotiation of their transnational lives. In a broader sense I illustrate how the emerging mobilities of international students cannot be viewed as independent of other phenomena but must be seen as embedded within transnational processes that take place at different geographic and social scales. [source]


Globalization and cultural mediation: the construction of Arabia in London

GLOBAL NETWORKS, Issue 4 2002
Christa Salamandra
The Arab Gulf's relationship to London epitomizes the processes of globalization i.e. flows of people, images, ideas and wealth beyond national borders. The rise of oil wealth in the mid,1970s financed the growth of London as a centre of Gulf Cooperation Council,funded Arab cultural production. The British capital's populations of ex,servicemen, former diplomats and Middle Eastern immigrants serve as ,third culture' mediators. Often well educated, well heeled and well connected, these intermediaries possess the social position and cultural know,how to play a central role in the construction and marketing of Gulf Arab local culture and heritage. Romantic notions of Gulf Arab cultural particularism feature prominently in mediators' products and activities. In the case of Arab London's mediation industries, globalization results not in cultural homogenization, but rather in the (re)production and commodification of reified notions of cultural difference. [source]


Isotope Methods for Management of Shared Aquifers in Northern Africa

GROUND WATER, Issue 5 2005
Bill Wallin
Access to fresh water is one of the major issues of northern and sub-Saharan Africa. The majority of the fresh water used for drinking and irrigation is obtained from large ground water basins where there is minor contemporary recharge and the aquifers cross national borders. These aquifers include the Nubian Aquifer System shared by Chad, Egypt, Libya, and Sudan; the Iullemeden Aquifer System, extending over Niger, Nigeria, Mali, Benin, and Algeria; and the Northwest Sahara Aquifer System shared by Algeria, Libya, and Tunisia. These resources are subject to increased exploitation and may be severely stressed if not managed properly as witnessed already by declining water levels. In order to make appropriate decisions for the sustainable management of these shared water resources, planners and managers in different countries need an improved knowledge base of hydrological information. Three technical cooperation projects related to aquifer systems will be implemented by the International Atomic Energy Agency, in collaboration with the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization and United Nations Development Programme/Global Environmental Facility. These projects focus on isotope hydrology studies to better quantify ground water recharge and dynamics. The multiple isotope approach combining commonly used isotopes 18O and 2H together with more recently developed techniques (chlorofluorocarbons, 36Cl, noble gases) will be applied to improve the conceptual model to study stratification and ground water flows. Moreover, the isotopes will be an important indicator of changes in the aquifer due to water abstraction, and therefore they will assist in the effort to establish a sustainable ground water management. [source]


Spatial Effects in Website Adoption by Firms in European Regions

GROWTH AND CHANGE, Issue 1 2009
MARGARITA BILLON
ABSTRACT The purpose of this paper is to provide empirical evidence on the neighboring effects of Internet adoption as measured by the percentage of firms with their own website in the European regions. This is the first study that explicitly analyzes the role played by spatial effects to explain website adoption for the European case. A set of instruments and techniques commonly used in the spatial econometrics framework is employed to test the hypothesis that proximity matters when explaining Internet adoption by firms. Results show that firms in physically adjacent regions register a similar degree of Internet adoption, confirming the presence in this context of positive spatial dependence. Nevertheless, the spatial effects detected are mainly constrained by national borders. Gross domestic product (GDP) per capita, population density, sectoral composition, and education are positively related to geographic distribution of Internet adoption in the enlarged European Union. In addition, regional disparities in Internet adoption were found to be less important than territorial inequalities in GDP per capita. [source]


Rethinking Kashmir's History from a Borderlands Perspective

HISTORY COMPASS (ELECTRONIC), Issue 7 2010
Chitralekha Zutshi
Although borders haunt its historical and recent past as well as its contemporary political situation, Kashmir has rarely been theorized as a borderland. This article examines the perspective of borderlands as conceptualized in North American, Asian and African borderlands scholarship. It argues that the application of this perspective , in which borderlands are defined as middle grounds where imperial competition and negotiations among a variety of imperial and indigenous actors led to the production of distinct political cultures , to rethinking Kashmir's history has the potential to liberate the region from the imperatives of national borders that misread its history, while also reinvigorating South Asian borderlands scholarship. [source]


The Diffusion of Calculative and Collaborative HRM Practices in European Firms

INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS, Issue 4 2006
ERIK POUTSMA
The aim of this paper is to trace and explain variations in calculative and collaborative human resource management (HRM) practices between companies and across national borders. Variations and similarities are explained in terms of the convergence and divergence of HRM practices determined by national institutions, and the increasing influence of multinational companies (MNCs). We explore the diffusion of HRM practices in Europe over time, using data sets from two surveys conducted in several European countries in 1995 and 2000. We use institutional explanations for the development of three selected bundles of HRM practices: individual, calculative performance-oriented practices; collective incentive schemes for the alignment of interests; and collaborative practices that seek to enhance the commitment of employees. We found substantial effects of country-specific institutions and of the country of origin of MNCs, which clearly support the institutional duality thesis. Foreign-owned MNCs, especially those that are US-based, appear to moderate country-specific institutional effects on the diffusion of the three HRM bundles. [source]


Best Practices to Reduce Migration Pressures

INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION, Issue 3 2002
Philip Martin
Are there best practices to foster economic development, reduce population growth, and protect the environment in source countries of unauthorized migration, in a manner that reduces emigration pressures and redirects migration towards legal channels? This paper outlines cooperative actions that can be undertaken by both source and receiving countries to better manage the movements of people over national borders. There are two broad approaches to foster wanted migration and to reduce unwanted migration. First, maximize migration's payoffs by ensuring that the 3 Rs of recruitment, remittances, and returns foster economic and job growth in emigration areas. Second, make emigration unnecessary by adapting trade, investment and aid policies, and programmes that accelerate economic development and thus make it unnecessary for people to emigrate for jobs and wages. Most of the changes needed for stay,at,home development must occur in emigration areas, but immigration areas can cooperate in the management of immigration, guest workers, and students, as well as in promoting freer trade and investment, and in targeting aid funds. In a globalizing world, selective immigration policies may have important development impacts, as with immigration country policies toward students, and workers in particular occupations, such as nurses and computer programmers, as well as with mutual recognition of occupational licenses and professional credentials. Trade policies affecting migration are also important, such as trade in services and laws regulating contracts between firms in different countries that allow the entry of lower wage workers as part of the contract. opening channels for legal migration can deter irregular migration. [source]


Transnational Protest: States, Circuses, and Conflict at the Frontline of Global Politics,

INTERNATIONAL STUDIES REVIEW, Issue 2 2004
Kate O'Neill
Transnational antiglobalization protests have become a hallmark of global activism since 1999. Over this time, the transnational protest movement has generated its own internal and external dynamics of conflict and cooperation, playing them out on a global scale. This essay addresses these dynamics, focusing on the role of performance and theater as a means of generating cooperation within a diverse transnational movement, on intramovement conflict, and on the role of the state with respect to transnational protest. By breaking down dominant conceptions of the state as a unitary actor, transnational protests have helped fuel an as yet understudied form of cooperation: that among policing agencies, across local and national levels of law enforcement, and across national borders. Cross-national police cooperation has become particularly important in the context of the war against terrorism. However, it has also been shaped by the need to maintain public order that has arisen as a result of the large, and often disruptive, street protests against globalization, which have involved activists from many countries. [source]


,A Stranger to its Laws': Sovereign Bodies, Global Sexualities, and Transnational Citizens

JOURNAL OF LAW AND SOCIETY, Issue 4 2000
Carl F. Stychin
This article examines the importance of mobility in the historical and ongoing constitution of lesbian and gay subjectivities. While the state in the past frequently sought to restrict the movement of sexual dissidents across national borders, current developments in an array of jurisdictions suggest a more permissive attitude, particularly in the case of the ,unification' of same-sex couples. These legal and political developments are interrogated with respect to the construction of ,acceptable' homosexualities and, more broadly, in terms of cosmopolitan and communitarian visions of sexual citizenship. [source]


Border Effects in Passenger Air Traffic

KYKLOS INTERNATIONAL REVIEW OF SOCIAL SCIENCES, Issue 4 2004
Henning Klodt
SUMMARY The empirical literature on border effects suggests that national borders substantially reduce the level of economic transactions. This paper adds another piece of evidence to the significance of border effects by applying a new data set which is completely independent of the data sets of previous studies. Our data refer to domestic and international passenger departures from German airports. The econometric results indicate that the German border reduces passenger air traffic by a factor of four to five. This magnitude is in line with the results of previous studies for trade and investment flows. ZUSAMMENFASSUNG Die empirische Literatur zum Einfluss von Grenzen hat gezeigt, dass nationale Grenzen den Umfang von ökonomischen Transaktionen beträchtlich reduzieren. Dieser Beitrag präsentiert einen weiteren Beleg für die Relevanz von Grenzen, indem ein neuer Datensatz ausgewertet wird, der vollständig unabhängig von den in früheren Studien verwendeten Datensätzen ist. Unsere Daten beziehen sich auf die Passagierzahlen bei nationalen und internationalen Abflügen von deutschen Flughäfen. Den Schätzergebnissen zufolge reduziert die deutsche Grenze das Passagieraufkommen im Flugverkehr um den Faktor vier bis fünf. Diese Größenordnung steht in Einklang mit den Grenzeffekten, wie sie in anderen Studien für Handels- und Investitionsströme gemessen worden sind. RÉSUMÉ La littérature empirique sur les effets des frontières suggère que le niveau des transactions économiques est fortement réduit par les frontières nationales. Cet article propose de contribuer à ce débat en utilisant une nouvelle base de données qui se différencie substantiellement de celles utilisées jusqu'à présent. Nous utilisons des données sur le nombre de passagers au départ d'aéroports allemands vers des destinations nationales et internationales. Les résultats économétriques démontrent que l'existence des frontières allemandes réduit le trafic de passagers aériens par un facteur de quatre à cinq. Cet ordre de grandeur est comparable aux études antérieures concernant le commerce et les flux d'investissement. [source]


Crossing Borders: Globalization as Myth and Charter in American Transnational Consumer Marketing

AMERICAN ETHNOLOGIST, Issue 2 2000
Kalman Applbaum
In this article, I explore the strategic practices and cultural theories of marketing managers in three U.S.-based transnational corporations (TNCs) as seek to meaningfully direct their products across national borders. While cultural anthropologists have lately focused on local adaptation and appropriation of TNCs' products to local meanings, the reverse process by which TNCs co-opt local meanings to a universalizing evolutionary paradigm,in what they have come to regard as a consumption-led new global order,has not been examined. Globalization is explored as a key cultural concept driving marketing managers' practices,the myth and charter behind large TNC border crossings. [consumer marketing, globalization, transnational corporations, United States] [source]


Museum specimens reveal changes in the population structure of northern Fennoscandian domestic reindeer in the past one hundred years

ANIMAL GENETICS, Issue 3 2010
G. Bjørnstad
Summary Traditional reindeer herding of northern Fennoscandia has been based on seasonal movements independent of national borders. At the beginning of the 19th century, these yearly movements of reindeer were excessive, but during that century the borders between the Fennoscandian countries were closed. By analysing a 190-base pair fragment of the mitochondrial DNA control region in 79 museum samples, we show that the reindeer of northern Fennoscandia were one homogenous population shortly after the national borders were closed. However, anthropogenic activity has effectively ended genetic exchange within northern Fennoscandia and has made the reindeer population within this region heterogeneous. Genetic input of eastern origin is also suggested within the extant Russian reindeer of the Kola Peninsula. [source]


Border crossing of Muslim women in southern-border provinces of Thailand

ASIA PACIFIC VIEWPOINT, Issue 1 2009
Nisakorn Klanarong
Abstract In general, the main roles of married Thai Muslim women were as home makers good wives and good mothers. Nevertheless, both married and single women from rural areas have been increasingly obliged to work outside the household, locally and in other countries. People in rural areas are now faced with the difficulty of maintaining their livelihoods if they depended on agricultural production alone. In some instances, female migration might be a response to families not being able to survive on the incomes earned by the male household heads. In response, women in southern Thailand provinces use long-standing social networks that facilitate their migration for work, because they benefit from the close proximity, language, and religion that they share with the destination area. Commonly, they travel to work in Malaysia by using a border pass, while some travel and work without any documents. The effects of crossing national borders on migrants themselves and on their communities are mixed, generally positive from an economic perspective, but negative from a social viewpoint. Socially negative responses reflect a system of social control in the region based on patriarchy. [source]


Globalisation, Security and International Order After 11 September

AUSTRALIAN JOURNAL OF POLITICS AND HISTORY, Issue 3 2003
Mark Beeson
This article advances the discussion of the contentious question of links between global inequalities of power and violent responses, focussing on globalisation and non-inclusive forms of governance. Drawing on international political economy, the article criticises the "nationstate-centrism" in much political discourse, suggesting that both authority and security need to be reconsidered , to account for less plausible national borders and controls. It suggests that "human security" (including issues of development and equality) ought to replace "national security" as the primary focus of public policy. It draws attention to the intractability of difference, insisting that the terrorism of 2001 has complex transnational antecedents. Realist approaches to international order have become part of a problem to be overcome through further intellectual debate. [source]


A KOREAN PERSPECTIVE ON DEVELOPING A GLOBAL POLICY FOR ADVANCE DIRECTIVES

BIOETHICS, Issue 3 2010
SOYOON KIM
ABSTRACT Despite the wide and daunting array of cross-cultural obstacles that the formulation of a global policy on advance directives will clearly pose, the need is equally evident. Specifically, the expansion of medical services driven by medical tourism, just to name one important example, makes this issue urgently relevant. While ensuring consistency across national borders, a global policy will have the additional and perhaps even more important effect of increasing the use of advance directives in clinical settings and enhancing their effectiveness within each country, regardless of where that country's state of the law currently stands. One cross-cultural issue that may represent a major obstacle in formulating, let alone applying, a global policy is whether patient autonomy as the underlying principle for the use of advance directives is a universal norm or a construct of western traditions that must be reconciled with alternative value systems that may place lesser significance on individual choice. A global policy, at a minimum, must emphasize respect for patient autonomy, provision of medical information, limits to the obligations for physicians, and portability. And though the development of a global policy will be no easy task, active engagement in close collaboration with the World Health Organization can make it possible. [source]


Post-maritime transnationalization: Malay seafarers in Liverpool

GLOBAL NETWORKS, Issue 4 2007
TIM BUNNELL
Abstract The lives of seafarers may provide examples of transnational connections prior to the globally interconnected era in which ,transnationalism' has risen to prominence. In this article, I examine the long-distance connections of seafarers from Southeast Asia who settled in Liverpool, UK. Drawing on oral history/life story interviews with Malay pakcik-pakcik (elders) in Liverpool, I examine the ways in which connections with Southeast Asia have changed over the course of their lives. Much of this concerns political geography, which is often overlooked in the literature on transnationalism. During the period of Liverpool's pre-eminence as a seaport, irrespective of the depth or intensity of maritime linkages with Southeast Asia, connections did not involve the crossing of ,national' borders. Ironically, transnational connections are being forged in the post-maritime stages of the lives of pakcik-pakcik in Liverpool. I also show how Malay ,transnationalization' has resulted from expanded technological possibilities for long-distance travel and communications. Post-maritime transnationalization takes place in a ,community' clubhouse in Toxteth where the lives, emotional attachments and memories of pakcik-pakcik are intertwined with those of people with diverse connections to contemporary Malaysia and Singapore. [source]