Department of Sociology
Permanent URI for this collection
Browse
Recent Submissions
Item Facets of Cross Border Commuting in the Central European Region and the (Re)production of inequalities(2018-02-16) Wiesbock, L.; Tonah, S.ABSTRACT This presentation examines intra-European labour mobility from the perspective of social inequality and social stratification. The focus lies on cross-border commuters from the border regions of the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary who work in Austria. The aim is to shed light on causes and forms of changes in inequality as a consequence of transnational labour involvement in the Central European Region (CENTROPE). This region is of particular interest, as it has a long history of cross-border mobility and social exchange, from the Habsburg Monarchy to the postwar period and after 1989, culminating in the accession to the EU in 2004. Since May 1st, 2011, all citizens were given the freedom to seek employment according to their skills in Austria. The superordinate research question of the study is: How do transnational labour practices in the Central European Region relate to the (re)production of social inequalities? In order to answer this question, the paper looks at influencing factors systematically linking both labour markets and mobility: the legal framework, the macro-economic context, the welfare state regime, the economic structure of the local region, employers’ practices and commuters’ life worlds.Item Significance of Topaze by Marcel Pagnol from structuralist theory perspective(2019-11-01) Pande, A.There is limited literature about the fertility industry of assisted reproduction in the African context, partly because of the assumption that such markets and technologies are unsuitable for and unavailable in low-resource settings. However, with neo-liberalisation of healthcare and the rise of private-sector corporate hospitals, some countries in this region have become hubs for reproductive travel. Patients may fly to Kenya, Ghana and Uganda for surrogacy, and to South Africa for “egg safaris”, to get matched with South African gamete (egg and sperm) providers. More recently, there is the growing trend of white Afrikaner South African women flying to different parts of the world to provide their eggs and fulfil the need for making (white) babies for cheap in the global fertility market (Pande and Moll 2018). I argue that though the media and medical professionals frame these women as “naïve or greedy girls”, the frame of “biolabour” offers a far more complex lens for understanding their roles and responsibilities. Three key themes emerge: altruism and/or ambivalent maternity, responsible repropreuneurship, and cosmopolitan competency. As bio-labourers, the women find an opportunity to combine an act of responsible altruism with the opportunity for adventure. Bio-labour becomes a passport to see the world and become a global citizen. While a move away from the victim narrative to one of chosen (bio) labour challenges gendered assumptions, it also brings attention to the multiple forms of gendered risks and responsibilities embedded in these bio-markets.Item Technological Transfer and Democratization of Education in Africa: Reflections on the Educational Television in Côte d’Ivoire(2016-09-09) Assié-Lumumba, N.T.; Abotchie, C.At the historical threshold of African countries’ independence, the stakeholders of education subscribed to the idea of its critical importance for development. At the 1961 Addis Ababa Conference on “the development of education in Africa,” African states adopted a resolution to achieve universal primary enrollment, working towards increased access to secondary and expansion of the higher education by 1980. Countries across the continent adopted their respective national policies toward their common goal. In the case of Côte d’Ivoire, a highly publicized educational television program was adopted in the early 1970s. This program was conceived as an effective technological innovation for the implementation of the common goal. Despite the confidence of the Ivorian policymakers and the solid international support for this educational television program, ten years after the beginning of the first experimental schools, the program was discontinued. However, it left behind heavy debt acquired through loans obtained to pay for the imported technology and the labor of the consultants and technical assistants who designed and ran the program. Even more important, the program produced a new generation and category of primary school graduates and early school leavers with a different learning experience. The thrust of this presentation is to analyze this educational innovation, with a focus on the potential benefits and perverse effects of technology in its application to education.