M.A. / Migration and resettlement in South Africa bring many challenges to refugee women. Within a very hostile and discriminating environment, refugee women have to familiarise themselves with a new culture and new languages, as well as gain access to systems of health, education and employment. Loss of identity, income, career, equality and significant others are evident, which leaves them, as refugee women, excluded, isolated and disempowered. However, instead of just becoming passive recipients of aid, refugee women are active in forming their own informal horizontal helping networks, defined as Philanthropy of Community (PoC). PoC can be described as informal, multi-directional, intra-gender helping relationships among refugee women, who share communality in terms of language, culture, social circumstances and ideals. In this study, the networks are also referred to as “the sisterhood”, based on the shared goals, circumstances and feelings of mutual empathy and loyalty toward each other. Driven by the philosophy of ubuntu, altruism and religious beliefs, and guided by the principle, “If I have, I give”, the sisterhood gives and receives material and non-material help in its community. The goal of this study was to gain an appreciative understanding of philanthropy of community (PoC) among refugee women in Johannesburg as a social asset for community development. Objectives of this study were to identify and describe the PoC of the sisterhood, as it perceives and experiences it, and identify assets that can be utilised to facilitate community development practice. The sample consisted of five Congolese refugee women from Yeoville. All participants had a tertiary qualification, yet were unemployed. A qualitative research approach was followed to allow participants to construct meaning out of their social and cultural realities. Data collection methods were focus groups and individual interviews to elicit information and meaning of the sisterhood in Yeoville. 2 The following social assets were identified in the sisterhood of Yeoville: protection against social exclusion, provision of informal social support, maintenance of cultural links, promotion of socialisation and communication, community-building, pooling of human capital, self-organised support in adversity and a sense of well-being and spiritual fulfilment. Despite the positive effect of PoC, it also has limitations: a perceived sense of familiarity, based on same-ethnic relationships, as well as laziness, often lead to exploitation of fellow sisters, resulting in distrust and loneliness. It was concluded that PoC does not have the potential to meet all the psycho-social needs of refugee women, and cannot fully replace organised social welfare services. Research concluded that while participants acknowledge PoC within the sisterhood as their main means of survival, they find it difficult to envision the mobilisation of existing sisterhood networks towards participatory community development initiatives, creating sustainable livelihoods and integration into the local community. Reasons are a lack of capacity, lack of assertiveness and distrust. While they seem well-informed about the internal functioning of their sisterhood, they show a lack of information and skills on how to link with the external community to form partnerships and networks to stimulate development. A participatory Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD) approach, with its mechanism for healing, social cohesion and nation-building, is the most appropriate way to propel human, social and economic integration and growth in the current migration context. By focusing on what is present, instead of what is absent, problematic or needed among women refugees, and embracing their strengths, gifts and indigenous wisdom, PoC within the sisterhood can be applied by community developers as a social tool in a planned change process to facilitate integration and development of refugee women in South Africa.

Magister Artium (Development Studies) - MA(DVS) / This study examines internal migration, remittances and welfare impacts among migrant households in the Dormaa Municipality in the Brong Ahafo Region of Ghana. Data were gathered though a questionnaire survey among 202 migrant households and in-depth interviews with 8 of them and some key informants. The findings were analysed largely based on the Push-Pull theory and New Economics of Labour Migration Theory. The findings of the study indicate that an overwhelming majority of migrant households reported an improved welfare as a result of having a migrant in their household who have moved away to other communities during the last 10 years and have been away for the last six months or are expected be away for six months or more. Majority of these migrants sent remittances back to their families left behind, either in the form of cash or goods. More males migrate than females,which is consistent with the general tendency for males to migrate more than females. The age category with the highest proportion of migrants was 30-39 years. Many of the migrants moved to another town or village in Ghana for work-related reasons, notably job transfer, work, or seek work/better work. The migrants themselves were the main people who made the decisions to migrate followed by spouses, parents and siblings, lending support to the collective decision making within households. Also, most of the migrants had some connections or contacts at their most recent migration destinations. A lot of the migrants relied on their personal savings to finance their migration whilst others received funds from family members and banks to finance their migration. The study recommend that government should make efforts to monitor remittance flow in Ghana and also increase awareness about the importance of remittance for the national and household economy. Further, there is the need to scale up education on social attitudes and discourses about internal migration and policy initiatives on remittance management in Ghana.

Tornadoes are one of the most frequent and destructive disasters in the United States. Like other environmental calamities, tornadoes too act as push factors for migration. The objectives of this study are to define tornado hot spots in the US, to analyze migration effectiveness in the tornado hot spots and non-hot spots, and to explore how tornado and other socio-economic factors influence migration decision. Both quantitative and qualitative methods were used. Internal revenue service migration data, SPC tornado data, and Census Bureau data were used in the study. The results indicate that there are significant differences between migration patterns in the tornado hot spots and rest of the country: tornado hot spots are losing population to other regions. The results also indicated that along with the traditional socio-economic push and pull factors of migration, tornado occurrences also influenced people’s migration decision in the United States.

This thesis investigates socio-economic drivers and impacts of internal migration in two countries, Brazil and Ghana. The first empirical chapter analyses the choice of Brazilian workers to move out of metropolitan cities. This direction of movement is substantial in the Brazilian context and leading against standard models of rural-to-urban migration. I estimate the role of living costs and local amenities in the determination of the destination choice of metropolitan out-migrants. Furthermore, I quantify the returns to migrating out of a metropolis by computing counterfactual wages applying matching techniques. The metropolitan out-migrants prefer to move to smaller towns where their real wage gain is positive. They minimize the physical and social costs of migration by moving to closer towns within their state of birth. Living costs in big cities appear to be a main driver for workers to leave these, especially if they are low-skilled. In the second empirical chapter, I investigate the effect of internal migration on homicide rates in Brazil in the period from 2005 to 2010. I construct a retrospective panel of migration rates between municipalities and use local labour demand shocks in the manufacturing sector at the origins of migrants as instrument for immigration rates. An increase in immigration rates of 1% translates in an increase of 1.2% in crime rates at the local level. The effect is predominant in municipalities with historically higher homicide rates and there is no effect in locations with a large informal sector. While internal migration puts pressure on destination labour markets, these results suggest that it is the presence of a criminal or lack of a flexible sector that channel this pressure into negative outcomes. The third empirical chapter explores dynamic patterns of internal migration from rural areas in Ghana. With a new household panel survey collected in 2013 and again in 2015, I document that many households have multiple migrants moving at different points in time and for various reasons. Conditional on having had a migrant in the past, I estimate the effect of having a new migrant on the asset welfare of origin households. The findings suggest that due to prior migration experience and consequently lower migration costs for new migrants, there is no decline in welfare from having a new migrant.

Globalisation, localisation and tourism are processes that are closely interconnected. They relate to historical mobilities and non-mobilities of humans, ideas and capital that impact on environment, economy, culture, politics and technology. Yet, these impacts on local tourism destinations are not well researched. Small destinations are not researched in relation to the impact of globalisation and tourism overtime. The thesis develops an historical understanding of globalisation, localisation and tourism within the context of the Otago Peninsula in Dunedin, New Zealand. It portrays the �glocalisation� processes, the specific mix of local and global forces that shaped the Otago Peninsula and created the basis for the current conditions, especially for tourism. The research on the Otago Peninsula clearly identifies different stages of mobilities to the place, generally following a similar pattern to other places in New Zealand settled in the latest phase of colonialism. The first settlers, the Polynesians, were followed by white explorers, sealers and whalers at the beginning of the 19th century who exploited a local resource that was valuable to international markets. After the over-exploitation of the resource white settlers arrived to �conquer� nature and to improve on their living conditions in a new country. They provided the basis for the following mobilities by developing or facilitating a local, national, regional and international infrastructure. Towards the end of the 19th century the major European migration had ended. The next major mobility movement was recreationists from the close urban centre of Dunedin who used the infrastructure on the Otago Peninsula at weekends, as time, money and technology limited mobilities to places further away. From the 1920s onwards, when these limitations were reduced by, for example, a better infrastructure and new technological developments such as the car and more disposable income and time, New Zealanders started to more widely discover their own country. Finally, international travellers started to arrive in the 1960s after the main obstacle, the distance and time needed to travel to New Zealand and the Otago Peninsula, was reduced by technological development, especially airplanes. During all of these phases of mobility, the Otago Peninsula became increasingly interconnected with other places on the globe, creating the conditions for tourism. In this study, within the context of the phase model of mobilities, a variety of research methods were used to assess the impact of globalisation, localisation and tourism on the Otago Peninsula. These methods include literature, newspaper, local promotional materials and photographic images analysis, as well as participant observation and historical interviews. The research clearly highlights the changes to the Otago Peninsula created by historical events that happened as a consequence of human mobility. Internal and external conditions at different geographical scales, ranging from the local to the global, changed the economy, the environment, culture, politics and the use of technology on the Otago Peninsula. The place was (and still is) constantly glocalised. Consequently, international tourism, as one of the more recent forces, has to be managed within this historical framework of stretched social relations, the intensification of flows, increasing global interactions and the development of global infrastructure and networks.

The main thesis of this study is that migration is an integral component of the major processes of structural change in a country. As such, migration should not be studied in isolation from the historical and evolving patterns of development of the country. In their specific forms and magnitudes, migration processes are patterned movements of human populations within and between territorial units. The important point to stress here is that these movements are a response to, and at the same time, conditions the economic and social forces which affect significant sections of a community.

In China's urban metropoles, the hukou system of household registration regulates one of the largest movements of people in human history. While rural-urban migrations are reshaping societies worldwide, the migrants who make up a great portion of urban China's low-wage labor force and burgeoning population face unique legal and social challenges. Although the trajectories of their migration do not cross international boundaries, most are legally prevented from ever gaining the within China's hukou system of household registration. The functions of this system parallel those of national citizenship policies, and are difficult to explain through standard conceptions of sovereignty and national citizenship. Extending recent work in border studies that thinks of borders in dimensions that go beyond the line itself, this thesis argues that national borders and national citizenship should not be considered as the exclusive sites from which bordering processes emanate. Instead, I argue that citizenship and bordering processes can both take place apart from the norms of nation-state territory. Based on a series of qualitative interviews conducted in Shanghai and Anhui province, this article examines the structure and effects of the hukou system as it regulates legal inclusion and exclusion of migrant workers.

Globalisation, localisation and tourism are processes that are closely interconnected. They relate to historical mobilities and non-mobilities of humans, ideas and capital that impact on environment, economy, culture, politics and technology. Yet, these impacts on local tourism destinations are not well researched. Small destinations are not researched in relation to the impact of globalisation and tourism overtime. The thesis develops an historical understanding of globalisation, localisation and tourism within the context of the Otago Peninsula in Dunedin, New Zealand. It portrays the �glocalisation� processes, the specific mix of local and global forces that shaped the Otago Peninsula and created the basis for the current conditions, especially for tourism. The research on the Otago Peninsula clearly identifies different stages of mobilities to the place, generally following a similar pattern to other places in New Zealand settled in the latest phase of colonialism. The first settlers, the Polynesians, were followed by white explorers, sealers and whalers at the beginning of the 19th century who exploited a local resource that was valuable to international markets. After the over-exploitation of the resource white settlers arrived to �conquer� nature and to improve on their living conditions in a new country. They provided the basis for the following mobilities by developing or facilitating a local, national, regional and international infrastructure. Towards the end of the 19th century the major European migration had ended. The next major mobility movement was recreationists from the close urban centre of Dunedin who used the infrastructure on the Otago Peninsula at weekends, as time, money and technology limited mobilities to places further away. From the 1920s onwards, when these limitations were reduced by, for example, a better infrastructure and new technological developments such as the car and more disposable income and time, New Zealanders started to more widely discover their own country. Finally, international travellers started to arrive in the 1960s after the main obstacle, the distance and time needed to travel to New Zealand and the Otago Peninsula, was reduced by technological development, especially airplanes. During all of these phases of mobility, the Otago Peninsula became increasingly interconnected with other places on the globe, creating the conditions for tourism. In this study, within the context of the phase model of mobilities, a variety of research methods were used to assess the impact of globalisation, localisation and tourism on the Otago Peninsula. These methods include literature, newspaper, local promotional materials and photographic images analysis, as well as participant observation and historical interviews. The research clearly highlights the changes to the Otago Peninsula created by historical events that happened as a consequence of human mobility. Internal and external conditions at different geographical scales, ranging from the local to the global, changed the economy, the environment, culture, politics and the use of technology on the Otago Peninsula. The place was (and still is) constantly glocalised. Consequently, international tourism, as one of the more recent forces, has to be managed within this historical framework of stretched social relations, the intensification of flows, increasing global interactions and the development of global infrastructure and networks.

Thesis--University of Wisconsin--Madison. / Typescript. Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 339-356).

Thesis (Ph.D.) - University of Queensland, 2005. / Includes bibliography.