The Oxonian Globalist - Hilary 2011

THE

OXONIAN

Hilary 2010 / Vol 1. Issue 2

Globalist Slumming It

The ethical dimensions of poverty tourism

A New Kind of Minority Politics The politics of Serbian Gay Pride

The Postmodern Traveller Philanthropist or Narcissist?

A foreign affairs magazine produced by students of the University of Oxford

THE

OXONIAN A foreign affairs magazine produced by students of the University of Oxford Hilary 2011 / Vol. 1 Issue 2 Editor-in-Chief Jemima Peppel-Srebrny, Trinity Managing Editor Masuma Ahuja, Somerville Publisher Marianne Lagrue, Trinity Production Editors Annette Chau, LMH Rachel Chew, St Peter’s Associate Editors Michael Brodsky, Keble Cailin Crockett, St. Cross Sahiba Gill, St. Anne’s David Leon, Wolfson Mark Longhurst, Hertford Tina Nandha, St. Edmund Hall Alice Xu, St. Peters

Writers Cailin Crockett, St Cross Louise Harney, Christ Church Sarah Inman, Wadham Thomas Granovsky, Wolfson José Carlos Gutiérrez, Yale University Maggie Lemere Mark Longhurst, Hertford Zoë West, Linacre Alice Xu, St Peter’s Holly Young, Balliol Advisors Dr Stephen Fisher, Trinity

This magazine is published by students of the University of Oxford. The University of Oxford is not responsible for its contents.

For the online version of the Oxonian Globalist, please visit toglobalist.org

DEAR

Globalist

READERS,

Dear Readers, With the days in Oxford still short and the skies grey, wistful stories of “once, when I was travelling abroad” abound. Gap years and gap summers spent in exotic locations are becoming a rite of passage for many Western students, with slum tours and short periods of volunteer work included to mitigate the hedonism of drunken nights on exotic beaches. Discussions on the motivation underlying such travel and its effectiveness have become commonplace, and yet many questions remain – are ‘postmodern travellers’ venturing out into the world to save it, to find their place and meaning in it, or simply to engage in a CV-building activity? Is the clichéd ‘gap yah kid’ a manifestation of Western postcolonial cultural condescension, of middle-class guilt or of students’ genuine interest in broadening their horizons and understanding the challenge of global development? Is the “spiritual – cultural – political exchange” aiding development? And, after all, what right have we to question the motives behind volunteer tourism?

These are some of the questions that the second issue of The Oxonian Globalist, dedicated to the gap year phenomenon and the ‘postmodern traveller’, aims to address. Holly Young argues that the critical pitfall is the confusion of the traveller’s search for meaning with development itself – and hence that education about the complexities of poverty mitigation is key in preventing tourists from being sold the culture shock experience as anything more glorified or constructive than a personal revelation. Cailin Crockett retorts that most volunteer tourism is not just a passive glimpse at poverty, but rather a genuine, active effort to challenge global disparities. In contrast, the only value that Hugh Evans, CEO of The Global Poverty Project, can find in volunteer tourism is from a “global-interconnectedness point of view“. By offering a diverse range of perspectives and angles on the matter, we thus hope to illuminate some of the critical issues involved in this debate.

Our special thanks go to Jim Ryan and Sony Computer Entertainment Europe for their generous support.

We would love to hear what you think – you can get in touch with all writers and editors via editor@toglobalist.org. Thank you for your interest,

Front cover photo by Rachel Chew Back cover photo by Garry Knight

Masuma Ahuja, Managing Editor Jemima Peppel-Srebrny, Editor-in-Chief Pictures from CreativeCommons used under Attribution Noncommercial license. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/bync/3.0/

THEME: THE POSTMODERN TRAVELLER

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Slumming It Holly Young What ethical, educational and economic value does ‘poverty tourism’ have?

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“I’m Off To Find Myself ” The changing face of volunteer tourism

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Smokey Mountain Mark Longhurst An interview with Hugh Evans, CEO of the Global Poverty Project

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Death Under The Full Moon Louise Harney Party tourists and subsistence living clash on Thailand’s beaches

Cailin Crockett

POLITICS AND ECONOMY 16

The Fall of the Great Firewall Alice Xu The political implications of the standardisation of language in China

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A New Kind of Minority Politics Sarah Inman Opposition to the Serbian Gay Pride March and its European implications

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“I’ve Been a Miner for a Heart of Gold” Thomas Granofsky The human impact of international institutions’ investment in mining in Ghana

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Confetti in Qatar Mark Longhurst Why those who leave the Global South tend to bolster the welfare of those who stay

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José Carlos Gutierrez The Oportunidades of Mexico Mexico’s flagship social program could work if indigenous people had a real say in how it is applied

CULTURE 26

Movers and Shakers Cailin Crockett Latina women in the Los Angeles immigrant rights movement

PERSPECTIVES 28

Maggie Lemere & Zoë West U Agga Nya Na A narrative from Burmese monk U Agga Nya Na, a survivor of Burma’s military regime

Rangoon Photo by Zoë West

Slumming It

Southern Quito, Ecuador Photo by Jemima Peppel-Srebrny

Holly Young questions the ethical, economic and educational value of poverty tourism.

It would come as a surprise should anyone reading this not know of someone with tales of ‘slumming it’. Our generation crystallises the death of the package holiday tourist and the birth of the postmodern ‘traveller’: holidays are now ‘travels’ and escapism is rebranded as a search for meaning and enlightenment. Backpacker culture is not simply about travelling on a budget. It is, to a greater or lesser extent, about buying into this search for authenticity – for the ‘real’ India, for the ‘typical’ Bolivian village, for the most potent culture shock available. One of the most intriguing expressions of this Holy Grail has been the way in which sun, sea and sex has been traded in for squalor.

You would be right to argue that this is hardly new, that it is more of a 60s hangover than a contemporary cultural phenomenon. What is new, however, is the extent to which THE POSTMODERN TRAVELLER

it is now accessible. This ‘alternative’ travelling experience has become mainstream tourism. Slum tours across the world from Rio de Janeiro to Cape Town to Slumdog Millionaire’s Dharavi slum in Mumbai have, since the mid 1990s, increasingly capitalised on this captive market. It becomes difficult, then, to distance oneself from the clichéd ‘gap yah’ figure: what has become the parody of the postmodern tourist. We are predisposed to see this tourist in terms of economic and cultural exploitation, of neocolonial cultural condescension and faux philanthropy. It is this cultural backdrop that has fed the ferocity of the media backlash to which this kind of tourism has been subjected. It is seen, along with ‘disaster tourism’, as the more sinister corner of a wider bracket of poverty tourism that encompasses ‘voluntourism’ and cultural exchanges, spawning scathing terms such as ‘poor voyeurism’, ‘poorism’ and ‘poverty porn’.

7 Critiques of the fetishisation of poverty have been accompanied by debates over the extent to which slum tours benefit development. The link between development and tourism is well established. Developing countries have for a long time acknowledged the opportunities of foreign exchange and the employment it affords. It has a substantial ability to contribute to GDP. It is not only luxury tourism but backpacking that is recognised in this capacity. Although generally speaking less profitable, the perceived asymmetry between meaningful experience and areas of economic growth enables backpacking to be a means of economically penetrating marginalised areas, both rural and poor. Developing countries, with their unexploited natural and cultural riches, readily cater for this market. Stimulation of foreign investment and social regeneration are the perceived outcomes of tourism as a poverty panacea. It is within this discourse that tours justify themselves. Both the favela and Dharavi slum tours make a point of bringing you to the community schools that their profits fund – enabling immediate validation of the connection between your $34 dollar fee and the global project of human development.

It would, however, be naive to accept this narrative without scepticism. Although there are credible organisations, such as Dharavi’s Reality Tours and Travel, which are able to prove their not-for-profit status, altruistic market ventures inevitably attract those wishing to exploit. There is particular opportunity for false advertising in developing countries where there is often an absence of state economic regulation. Besides management issues such as benefit distribution and sensitivity to local residents, there is also scope for more substantive anxieties about the theory connecting poverty tourism to development. Is this merely a temporary makeshift solution to poverty? There is a genuine danger that communities will become too dependent on the industry. Is the irony that the slum tour market incentivises the preservation of poverty?

Slum tourism is not without its success stories. Tours in the villages of Mayange,

THE POSTMODERN TRAVELLER A Guangxi household visited by a ‘poverty tourist’ Photo by David Woo

8 The most critical omission of the tours has been their failure to situate the slum within the global context. The social and economic disfranchisement of slum dwellers is mirrored geographically by their confinement to particular urban areas. Subsequently slums have been conceptualised as legal black holes ‘outside’ the city. This has understandably attracted fascination but also, problematically, the portrayal of slums as ‘exceptional’ spaces. The UN Habitat report makes it clear that slums are far from exceptional. Rather, they are fast becoming the norm.

Slums must be understood not as transient spaces in the trajectory of modernisation but expanding, structurally integral elements of neoliberal development.

Slum tours transform tourists’ reality into a zoo in Mike Davies, in his influential essay ‘Planet of Slums’, described slums as warehouses for a surwhich the slums’ inhabitants are objectified and plus humanity. The Pentagon has anticipated ‘othered’ in the act of reflexivity. It is a canvas not that the growth in the gulf between the urban rich and the urban poor renders cities the natural for transgression but for the confirmation of the battleground of the 21st century. These evaluasuperiority of Western values and understanding of tions appear drastically at odds with the image development as economic growth. of the slums as sites of progress, undermining the justification of slum tours’ existence.

one hour south of Kigali, Rwanda, are led by New Dawn Associates, a Rwandan social enterprise tourist agency, alongside Rwanda Nziza, a locally run tourism cooperative which provides training in tourism for its members and shares the profits. Of the $60 per head that the tour costs, 70% of the revenue is given back to the community members that participate in the tour. To maintain equality of distribution, the community participants are on a rotation system. The scope for growth is shown by the example of local cooks being so successful that the tourism cooperative invested $10,000 in a restaurant for them. A demonstration of the way in which all this can be not only

financially fruitful but socially empowering is found in the large weaving cooperative run by a group of women for whom increased sales brought greater independence and wealth. It appears, then, that the link between tourism and development is not necessarily a fallacy. The key is in regulating the legitimacy of tour management.

While slum tours are not innately problematic, the ethical dimensions complicate the issue. Taking a step back from the charged discussions amongst the countless blogs and articles which slum tours have generated, it becomes clear that the issue is not simply ‘is it right to pay to look at a poor person?’ but who attributes meaning to the experience. How are we led to understand the culture shock?

The promotional literature of slum tourism claims to sell you insight and understanding, yet the media backlash argues that the experience entrenches ignorance. More than that, it deceives. Dharavi’s Reality Tours and Travel demonstrates the trend in poverty representation of inverting the image of the glassy-eyed slum child with outstretched arms and replacing it with the neoliberal citizen, a slumdweller smiling beside newly made handicrafts. The subtext: not all poor people are lazy, and you are invited to admire the ‘spirit’ of the people. Yet some argue that this reduces development to the stimulation of entrepreneurship. Tourists leave with no understanding of the complexities of removing structural inequality. Indeed, as Reality Tours and Travel’s website hints, there may be more pressing issues at stake: “It is quite an adventure to pass through the narrow alleys, and you will almost certainly lose your sense of direction!”

THE POSTMODERN TRAVELLER

Furthermore, rather than being sites of cultural osmosis and understanding, boundaries are reconfirmed: slum tours transform tourists’ reality into a zoo in which the slums’ inhabitants are objectified and ‘othered’ in the act of reflexivity. It is a canvas not for transgression but for the confirmation of the superiority of Western values and understanding of development as economic growth. It is a simulation of the ethnographic experience made accessible to the masses. Tourists consume a staged reality and return home with the badge of ‘authentic’ travel.

While this discourse is seductive, it oozes self-righteousness. It is unsurprisingly produced in the main by those engaged in development projects. Implicit is the message that engaging in development should be left to the development elite, and is not for the participation of the masses. While the necessity of education in the issues of development is undeniable for those working towards it, the by-product of these critiques is a demonization of the initiative to understand conditions of poverty. This is equally as problematic as the romanticisation of poverty.

Reconceptualising this positive impulse as a distasteful cliché threatens to delegitimize the basis of global understanding and empathy. Perhaps a limited understanding of poverty is better than no understanding at all.

It is thus tempting for the sake of journalistic punch to regurgitate the sensationalist viewpoints flooding the web, but this would not move the debate forward. In this context, the sensible line is more controversial. What is needed is a more balanced narrative of slum tourism that filters

9 out both the sensational and the misleading. Perhaps this is a convenient way of coming to terms with the fact that, despite finding the critiques convincing, I still could not deny my interest in visiting a slum. My conscience was eased upon discovering that slum tours can also be, given the right preconditions, beneficial for development. Furthermore, resignation to their existence is pragmatic; with such a fast growing market they are not going anywhere any time soon. The critical pitfall is the confusion of the postmodern tourist’s search for meaning with development itself. Education about the complexities of poverty

mitigation is key in fostering consumer awareness so that the tours are seen for what they are: interesting but artificial. This will enable tourists to resist being sold the culture shock experience as anything more glorified or constructive than a personal revelation.

Holly Young is studying for an MSc in Contemporary Indian Studies at Balliol College.

THE POSTMODERN TRAVELLER Photo by Kevin Leung

“I’m off to find myself” Cailin Crockett investigates the changing face of student volunteer tourism from yuppie gap year to student-led development.

benefits from this exchange? And how altruistic are the motives behind the travel?

Artwork by Antiochus Omissi

www.Stuffwhitepeoplelike.com, a witty blog that catalogues the pretentious tastes of bourgeois twenty-somethings, writes: “Though you might consider finishing school or having a good job to be ‘accomplishments’, many white people view them as burdens. As such, they can only handle them for so long before they start talking about their need to ‘take a year off’ to travel, volunteer, or work abroad.”

Indeed, the luxury to be able to take a year (or a summer) off from ‘real life’ to ‘find yourself ’ (or pad a resumé) has become mainstream among university graduates in recent years. Many student travel agencies, savvy entrepreneurs and non-profit organisations are taking notice. In the 21st century, volunteer tourism is the new ecotourism. While in 1998, recent graduates would fly down to the Amazon to see endangered species in their natural habitats, in 2011, young people in their ‘gap year’ are teaching English to indigenous Amazonian communities. But who really THE POSTMODERN TRAVELLER

Steve Atamian, founder and CEO of Global Brigades, has something to say on the matter. A non-profit organization whose stated mission is “to empower volunteers to facilitate sustainable solutions in under-resourced communities while fostering local cultures”, Global Brigades was founded after Atamian travelled to Central America with Marquette University in 2004. After participating in a week-long trip to Honduras to build water-filtration systems in rural communities, he was moved to recreate the experience on an ongoing basis and make it accessible to more university students. “Something [on that trip] caught my eye”, Steve told me. “Number one was the volunteers’ passion, which made me think, if we bring more students, then we can follow-up with the same community every couple of months.”

Six years later, Global Brigades is now the world’s largest student-led global health and sustainable development organisation, with a network of over ten thousand volunteers ‘serving’ more than three hundred thousand people.

University students partner with professionals in the areas of medicine, law, dentistry, public health, the environment and microfinance to embark on projects in disadvantaged communities in Honduras, Panama and Ghana. Global Brigades aims to have a permanent presence in the communities in which it works, employing locals to oversee the continuation of projects and building networks with other non-profit organisations.

11 When asked why he selected Honduras, Panama and Ghana as the locales for service, Atamian explained that not only are these places ‘ripe for relief ’ from a development perspective, but also that they are safe enough to send thousands of students to travel in. Panama, for example, was chosen to support indigenous communities “that are victims of the largest economic disparities in the Western hemisphere”, he explained. “While Panama as a whole is doing well, half an hour away from the corporate skyscrapers of Panama City, there are indigenous people making less than one dollar a day. Panama is a low-hanging fruit

They are not passive glimpses at poverty, but rather active efforts to challenge global disparities by designing projects that address the needs of specific communities.

- by bringing the global economy to these villages, there is an opportunity to make a big impact.”

In recent years, many organisations like Global Brigades have cropped up, transforming the notion of the gap year and utilising this demographic of young and able-bodied students to try to create real change. By adding a dash of pragmatism to the ideal, such groups are finding ways to provide volunteer opportunities abroad in one or twoweek increments, making the experience accessible to students who do not have the luxury of ‘taking a year off,’ and, to some extent at least, sustainable for impoverished communities.

Further in its description of the infamous gap year, Stuffwhitepeoplelike.com includes: “Within the first five days following departure, [travellers] will come up with the idea to write a book about their travel experience …

Regardless of how a person chooses to spend their year off, they all share the same goal of becoming more interesting to other people.” Though this caricature may be considered insightful, many non-profit organisations are making a real effort to change the face of volunteer tourism. They have sparked a movement of ongoing international service projects, as opposed to stints of backpackers volunteering for a few weeks in one country, then moving on to another. These are not passive glimpses at poverty, but rather active efforts to challenge global disparities by designing projects that address the needs of specific communities.

Now that is something to write a book about.

Cailin Crockett is studying for an MPhil in Political Theory at St Cross.

THE POSTMODERN TRAVELLER Photo by Marianne Lagrue

Smokey Mountain Mark Longhurst speaks with Hugh Evans, co- founder and CEO of The Global Poverty Project, about future trends in development and volunteer tourism

“Are you recording?” I hesitate for a moment, startled at the recent addition to Hugh Evans’ vocal persona. Audibly juxtaposed against an otherwise hearty Australian accent is the hint of a grating American twang; an indication that Hugh Evans is a long way from home, and has been for some time.

At a tender twenty-seven years of age, the recent Cambridge graduate holds the role of Chief Executive Officer of The Global Poverty Project, a non-government organisation based in New York. Hailing from Melbourne, Evans holds a curious status within Australia. While not quite a celebrity, he has received his fair share of national attention over the past seven years, and is renowned for rubbing shoulders with the likes of Hugh Jackman, Jeffrey Sachs and former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd.

While Evans’ journey from student to CEO is fascinating and unique, it’s a tale familiar to many Down Under.

What first drew him to working in the field of development? “My first interaction with this started at the age of twelve-years-old when I did the 40-hour-famine with World Vision, and then, through doing that, was invited to the Philippines at the age of fourteen-years-old to see their work first-hand.” The deliberate phrases and crafted language hint that the presentation of this narrative has been shaped by countless speaking events and interviews over the past decade. “There was a night on a slum called Smokey Mountain in the centre of Manila that changed my life forever, and ultimately kick-started my long-term journey.”

THE POSTMODERN TRAVELLER

Hugh Evans Photo by the Global Poverty Project

The full chronicle is presented in Stone of the Mountain: The Hugh Evans Story, an autobiographical diary released by Evans when he was twenty-one-years-old. After a stint of travelling abroad during and after secondary school, he returned to Australia and founded The Oaktree Foundation at age twenty. Less than a year later, Evans and the foundation were thrust into the national spotlight when he received the Young Australian of the Year Award in 2004. Capitalising on the opportunity to spread the word about the foundation, Evans travelled around Australia, fielding interviews and impressing audiences at speaking engagements. His voice soon became synonymous with calls for Australia to increase the quantity of private and public funds available to eradicate extreme poverty. As a result, interest in The Oaktree Foundation exploded. Seven years later, the foundation boasts 55,000 members, and has raised more than one AU$1 million for overseas development.

From across the Atlantic, I spoke to Hugh Evans about what he believes will be the future trends in development.

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In September 2010, at the Millennium Summit in New York, the General Assembly at the United Nations expressed deep concern that progress on the Millennium Development Goals had fallen short of what was needed. How much progress on the Millennium Development Goals should people expect from the United Nations before the 2015 deadline?

Unfortunately, it looks unlikely that we will achieve the Millennium Development Goals within the 2015 timeframe, but I don’t think that’s any reason to stop trying, nor any reason to not re-double our efforts. I think these goals provide an intellectual and moral framework in which the world sees that the challenges of ending extreme poverty are possible and that they are measurable and that they are time-bound, and therefore we should do everything within our power to achieve these goals.

The past couple of decades have witnessed the rise of ‘volunteer tourism’ and ‘gap years’. What impact do students from the Global North who work at non-government organisations in developing countries for a short period of time have on development assistance?

I’m not a big fan of the notion of volunteer tourism at all. I think it can actually be very detrimental. I think that those who are going over for a short period of time

(i.e. under six months) should really consider that their investment is as much an investment in themselves and their own personal development as it is in the process of community development. I’m not saying that that kind of volunteerism is not beneficial from a global-interconnectedness standpoint, because I think it does serve to foster global citizenship, and ultimately it can provide people with a starting point to get involved. But I think that those who are going overseas in the short-term should really view it for what it is, which is an opportunity to develop their own understanding of these issues.

How should poverty advocates treat political issues, such as decreasing barriers to trade and migration, which have the potential to greatly increase the human welfare of people in developing countries, but may be unpopular with voters?

I am a big believer that good policy shouldn’t be driven by its popularity. I don’t believe ingrained political interest should be a justification for inaction. I think that ultimately, if it’s deemed, as we saw with the end of the slave trade, that something is morally right and also makes economic sense, then every effort should be made to encourage nations and citizens to lobby for that policy, despite the fact that it could be politically difficult or challenging in the short term.

Hugh Evans’ dynamic confidence and easy-going attitude leave listeners with the distinct impression that his past achievements are merely a pre-amble to greater things that lie ahead. Regardless, Hugh Evans can claim to be among only a handful of individuals to have been recognised for such extensive contributions to grassroots development at his remarkably young age – and it seems likely that he will continue to play an important role in development in the future.

‘I am a big believer that good policy shouldn’t be driven by its popularity. I don’t believe ingrained political interest should be a justification for inaction.’

Mark Longhurst is studying for an MPhil in Economics at Hertford.

THE POSTMODERN TRAVELLER

Death Under the Full Moon Louise Harney struggles to come to terms with the contrasts between party tourists and the subsistence living of the locals on Thailand’s coastal resorts.

Among the palm trees and sunshine on the island of Koh Phangan in the gulf of Thailand, thousands of gap year students and tourists from Europe and North America flock to the beaches to celebrate the full moon each month. The all-night parties attract between ten and thirty thousand travellers to one strip of beach. The tradition is rumoured to have originated as a party for a small group of travellers on the island in the 1980s, and since then there has been no stopping its expansion. With Thailand becoming the latest trendy gap year destination, the tourist industry is booming and the locals take every opportunity to claim their share of the profits.

In contrast, across the sandy expanse of a fisherman’s beach not far up the island coastline from Haad Rin, alongside the ‘pre-drinks‘ beach bars where hedonists get their fix, a body is dragged ashore and left lying motionless on the beach. The cause seems obvious – it is monsoon season and dangerous storms rage across the gulf of Thailand, presenting a continuous threat to the lives and livings of fishermen. Children continue to play only a few metres from the body; a man continues to fish next to the motionless man. They do not seem concerned by the reality of the dangerous storms battering the island; daily life continues, with no pause to reflect. The cold, matterof-fact sentiment is clear: a dead body on the shore is not a new sight.

Haad Rin beach is littered with makeshift stalls selling cocktails, served in children’s buckets that appeal to the drinking culture of the West and allude to Miami’s glitzy South Beach - no one, however, would mistake Haad Rin for its wealthier, Western counterpart. Thirty years after tourists began to seek sun and surf in Thailand, its beaches – and the tourists on them – continue to bear witness to the antagonism between hardship and holiday that plays out on Thailand’s shores.

Kathu, Phuket Photo by Pablo Pecora

THE POSTMODERN TRAVELLER

Two American girls were swimming only metres from where the body was found. “That’s the third body we’ve seen washed ashore in four days”, they say. “It’s just amazing how little they do. The police won’t stick around long.”

The police arrived, took a quick look at the beach, got straight back in their car and left. The body was left lying in the sand.

15 temple wearing only bikinis. It seems that Thailand’s own In Thailand, fishing is traditionally passed down through culture has been sidelined in favour of the money-making generations with the inheritance of the family fishing opportunities of Western-style bars. boats. For Thai children, being the son or daughter of a fisherman means a destiny of drudgery - a fate no better In an attempt to find out who the man on the beach was than their parents’ own. Children begin working at an and why he had died, I spoke to a bartender at a hotel early age, helping their parents and spending their mornnearby - an Australian who had retired to Thailand. “The ings before school hand-picking seafood from the shallows trouble is, you can never know if it is a genuine drownof the Gulf. By the age of fourteen, they commonly join ing, or if drugs had some part to play. Everyone here is so the family profession full-time. Yet the wages of a fisherdesperate to make a living out of tourism, they will go to man are meagre – the equivalent of about £63 per month. any extremes, even to drugs. And they won’t be concerned This is about a half of the country’s average wage. There are alternatives to fishing and tourism such as farming – pineapple and coco‘You can never know if it was a genuine drowning, nut harvesting in particular – massage salons and teaching, but these require or if drugs had some part to play. Everyone here is so a commitment to staying in school bedesperate to make a living out of tourism.’ yond age fourteen. On Thailand’s tourist coast, a strong tradition of fishing about faking a drowning, especially with the storms here and the immediate need for additional income that dire recently. So many fishermen drown out here, it’s nothing poverty entails means that fishing and tourism continue like England.” Thai people are well aware of the prevato be the most popular, if not the most lucrative choices lence of drugs on the island, but they appear to operate a of occupation. ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy in which any method of making money from tourists is apparently deemed acceptable.

Tourism, however, appears to endanger some of Thailand’s traditions. The conservative, religious nature of Thailand’s Only the families with histories on the islands and busicultural heritage is threatened by the ‘party lifestyle’ imnesses to keep remain. The rest, especially the younger ported by tourists. Religious buildings and institutions members of the local population, plan to move as soon as are often not fully respected by Thailand’s visitors, and possible to large cities such as Bangkok, which offer the seem at risk of becoming just another snap for the photo chance of a better standard of living and a safer future. Yet album, with hundreds of tourists visiting monks and gazthere are still many teens who aspire to become a part of ing in awe at the bright décor every day without regard for the glitzy party lifestyle of Haad Rin and have jobs such as the spirituality or religious customs of the nation. performing as fire dancers or painting bikini-clad tourists with glow paint.

It must be acknowledged that, given the monks’ reliance on offerings from their communities to survive, the tourChildren push their way through a crowd of drunken ists’ money is welcomed. However, many tourists have Westerners, attempting to sell necklaces made out of never experienced values such as those held in Thailand, beads, vines and discarded straws, to earn enough money where women may not touch the monks nor directly look for just one more dinner. Under light of the full moon, at them, and must be covered up at least over their shoulfor which this night’s party is held, an eight-year-old ders and knees. It is a huge embarrassment for a Thai to be child twirls fire in the air, burning himself as it falls to drunk in front of his friends. It is drilled into Thai chilthe ground. The moment of pain goes unnoticed amongst dren that parents are to be respected first and foremost, the Western revelers on the beach as the music pounds followed closely by teachers and the Royal family. Even another few hours into the child’s bedtime. tearing a note bearing the King’s face is illegal, and brings with it harsh corporal punishment in schools. Prison sentences of up to fifteen years are handed down for disrespecting the King. But the tourists visiting this conservaLouise Harney is studying physics at Christ Church in her tive nation seem completely unaware of how offensive to third year. local culture they are being by riding motorcycles past a

THE POSTMODERN TRAVELLER

The Fall of the Great Firewall

Olympic torch protest in San Francisco Photo by Thomas Hawk

Alice Xu investigates the implications of the politically motivated standardisation of language and attempts at censorship of the internet in China.

The day that President Barack Obama was inaugurated marked a turning point in the movement towards change.

Even my grandfather, who closely followed Obama’s progress in the elections from China, was excited to the point of tears. He called on the night of Inauguration Day to ask us to mail him a hard copy of Obama’s inaugural address, which we printed directly off a Google search – apparently, Obama’s brief reference to the targeting of fascism and communism was too much for CCTV, China’s central broadcasting network. Chunks of his speech were censored even as he was making the address. Afterwards, all copies of Obama’s inaugural speech were censored on Sina.com, China’s largest online news portal, as well as on many other websites. I came to realize that what initially seemed like a peculiar request on my grandfather’s part only seemed so because, as a U.S. resident, I took my uninhibited access to content on the web for granted.

The dramatic popularity of a YouTube cartoon with obscene undertones would seem unmerited in the U.S., but in China, the appeal of the cartoon figure known as the “grass-mud horse” (草泥马) is more understandable. The POLITICS AND ECONOMY

“grass-mud horse” evokes the image of an alpaca-like cartoon character and would at first seem like a typical run-of-the-mill animation. What sets this simple figure apart from the rest, however, is the double entendre of the Chinese characters 草泥马. Although they mean literally “grass-mud horse,” they can pass for a foul profanity when spoken. Since its first appearance in early 2010, the YouTube video has garnered millions of viewers – and Michael Wines of the New York Times writes that the grass-mud horse is “conceived as an impish protest against censorship” that raised real questions about China’s ability to “stanch the flow of information over the Internet”.

Government computers in China rummage the net for words and phrases that are considered seditious. This explains why the grass-mud horse is revered by the Chinese public as a laudable icon of dissent against censorship.

Ever since its establishment in October 1949, the Communist Party of China (CPC) has taken great pains to ingrain certain Communist principles via language manipulation and censorship. Shortly after coming into power, it published a new standard of Chinese orthogra-

17 phy that proposed a total of 515 simplified characters and 54 simplified radicals. Since China has 55 ethnic groups and over 400 dialects, the CPC hoped standardizing written language would facilitate progress. While advocates of simplification claim the new standard makes learning how to read and write Chinese much easier, decreasing the illiteracy rate in the country, this might not be the CPC’s only motive.

beyond complete control”, writes Jennifer Lee of the New York Times. Chinese web users’ exposure to the principles and mentality of those from democratic nations does not sit well with Chinese government leaders.

Numerous topics—Falun Gong, Taiwan, Tibet, Tiananmen Square protests, and democracy, to name just a few— are considered taboo by the CPC. But seemingly it continues to fail to realise how such censorship can backfire.

Censorship creates the impression that there is something worth veiling from the public. It calls attention to the specific words and ideas that the government considers “dan-

Scholars like linguist Kam-Yee Law have argued that this simplification is a political strategy aimed at replacing traditional Chinese principles with Communist ones. For example, the CPC’s removal of the character for heart As China continues to strive for modernisation, (心) from the word love (愛), creating the new ‘heartless’ love character (爱), clashes with the exposure of its citizens to the differing traditional Confucianism’s emphasis on filial political, cultural and civil principles of other piety and humanity of the individual. Such nations and peoples is unavoidable. manipulation of the language could be understood as marking the start of a shift away from gerous” and makes them even more powerful. the individual and the family towards that of the nation as a whole, in particular given that achieving a sense of colIt seems, however, that the flexibility of both the written lectivism has been a part of the CPC’s agenda ever since and spoken forms of the Chinese language make censorthe days of Mao Zedong’s Great Leap Forward. Indeed, ship unfeasible. Chinese calligraphy is distinguished by censored bloggers often say their posts have been ‘harmothe large variety that individual radical and stroke comnized’, a term directly derived from President Hu Jintao’s binations allow - and the many possible tonal alterations professed goal of creating a ‘harmonious society’. of spoken Chinese resulted in the glorious success of the ‘grass-mud horse’.

The strive for collectivism is also evident in the CPC’s recent attempts to curtail the variety in Chinese characters Before long, the CPC will have to come to terms with allowed for naming newborns. “Chinese parents’ desire the impracticality of censorship on the Internet. As China to give their children a spark of individuality is colliding continues to strive for modernisation, the exposure of its head-on with the Chinese bureaucracy’s desire for order,” citizens to the differing political, cultural and civil prinwrites American journalist Sharon LaFraniere. Many of ciples of other nations and people is unavoidable. China’s the 60 million Chinese individuals with obscure characambitions for a position in the international community ters in their names are coerced into changing their names that reflects its economic clout will also require it to emif a character is not found in the government’s new, combrace this greater openness. puterized database of names. “Government officials,” LaFraniere writes, “suggest that names have gotten out of As Barack Obama stated in his inaugural address: “to those hand, with too many parents picking the most obscure who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the characters they can find or even making up characters, silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side like linguistic fashion accessories”. By drastically cutting of history; but that we will extend a hand if you are willthe number of characters in the current database of Chiing to unclench your fist”. If China holds any hopes of nese characters for ‘everyday use’, the CPC is thus essenimproving its image among the international community, tially subsuming all outliers in the name game. it will need to unclench its fist and trust its people. If the CPC aspires to make any great leaps forward, it will need The CPC’s vision of order and assimilation is causing a to rethink its practice of censorship. The definition of procontinuously expanding cloud that has grown to encomgress calls for change, so if China wants progress, it will pass the regulation of the internet. Since 2001, the numneed to search its pockets for better policies. ber of internet users in China has more than quintupled to nearly 400 million in 2010, and for Chinese leaders, Alice Xu is a visiting student from Columbia University, “the internet is a doubled-edged sword, a rapidly evolving studying PPE at St Peter’s College. medium that brings economic opportunity but remains

POLITICS AND ECONOMY

A New Kind of Minority Politics The opposition to the Serbian Gay Pride March ref lects the difficulties involved in rebuilding the war-torn country and integrating it into the European political arena, Sarah Inman argues.

Graffiti in Belgrade featuring a new anti-gay stencil and text that reads ‘We are waiting for you’, a threat to participants in the upcoming gay pride march.

Photo by Jonathan Davis

Truncheons. Shields. Riot cops. Ambulances. A mass of black-clad young men hurling missiles and shouting abuse. It could have been any number of cities across Europe, but this was not just another anti-cuts demonstration. The object of the rioters’ rage was not politicians or bankers or another wave of ‘austerity measures’ – it was in fact another demonstration, taking place only a short distance away. This second demonstration could not have been any more different: comprised of a small but determined group, marching under a raft of brightly coloured banners and balloons, each marcher baring a round pink sticker on their chest. The day was 10 October 2010, and the scene was Belgrade’s second-ever Gay Pride March.

It is natural to focus on the rioters who came in thousands, waving religious images and nationalist flags. Or on the arrests, totalling nearly 200. Or on the wounded, of which there were forty-four in all – forty-two of them policemen. But this obscures a development that is arguably far more important: the fact that for the first time since 2001 hundreds of gay activists marched through Belgrade, a city not generally renowned for possessing an accepting attitude toward minorities. Of course, the ghost of 2001 haunted the parade. The violence that erupted during that year’s protest was nothing short of stomachchurning; gangs of self-styled extremists brutally beating and kicking gay activists as they lay crumpled on the floor, grown men punching women as they tried to escape, the POLITICS AND ECONOMY

police presence negligible despite repeated warnings that violence was going to break out. At that point, homosexuality had been legal in Serbia for a mere seven years. By that awful standard, this October’s march was a startling success. Still, it is not exactly an enviable yardstick.

On the surface, it might be tempting to write this off as further proof of the theory that Serbs are a backwards, uneducated people who only think in terms of physical force. However, this is as racist as it is inaccurate. Truly understanding a complex country is never an easy task; thus, only a few of the main strands can be elucidated here that have combined to form a movement which, through its focus on homophobia, is trying desperately to cling on to the last vestiges of a traditional notion of Serb identity.

The roots of the violence that broke out during the parades run deep and cut to the very heart of what it means to be Serbian. In a nation that has known decades of war and strife, still smarting from the loss of a territory considered by many to be its very heartland, the search for national identity was bound to be fractious. This much is reflected in the imagery on display by the rioters: a mix of skinhead hairstyles, national flags, Orthodox Christian symbols, football shirts and the skull and cross-bone flag of the Chetnik movement of the Second World War. The core of the movement is not that distinct from far-right movements in other Western nations, but it is imbued with elements of Balkan culture.

19 A perhaps unexpected twist is the pivotal role that religion plays in this cocktail of far-right politics. The role of the Orthodox Church in the rise of homophobic feeling is substantial. Roughly 85% of Serbians are Orthodox Christians. After the downfall of secular communist Yugoslavia, as inter-communal divides deepened, people became more closely identified with the religion linked to their ethnicity. To many, the Orthodox Church is inextricably linked with Serbian national identity: as the only Serbian institution to survive during Ottoman rule, it became a focal point for the culture during years of oppression. Today, the church espouses a patriarchal, traditionalist philosophy which is openly hostile towards homosexuals. Although the Patriarch issued a statement condemning violence in the lead-up to the October parade, he nevertheless refused to recognise the right of homosexuals to march. During the 2001 march, priests were seen amongst those committing the violence.

Another strand playing into this is the ‘football hooliganism’ that has been a recurring theme of past Balkan conflicts. In 1990, before the breakup of Yugoslavia, the rise in ethnic tensions was attested to by a violent standoff between supporters of Red Star Belgrade and the Croat Dinamo Zagreb. Since then, gang bosses have used football fan clubs as recruiting ground, often for participants in ethnic massacres and atrocities in Serbia and Croatia.

With unemployment at 20%, it is not a surprise that Serbia’s disaffected youth are searching for something to believe in – even a gang culture, if need be. Football clubs – especially Red Star – have provided the foot soldiers for nationalist and neo-fascist movements when confronting demonstrators at Gay Pride events.

soured the EU’s image in the eyes of much of Serbia’s citizenry. Many do not want to beg on their hands and knees for membership, especially to a court that they see as interfering with the country’s sovereignty. The EU’s calls for Serbia to officially recognise Kosovo’s independence have done nothing to improve matters.

Both anti-European and anti-globalisation sentiment have fuelled the flames of homophobia. Many Serbs are loath to see Western materialism seep into their much-cherished traditional society, especially after the NATO bombings of the 1990s. Gay rights are seen as part and parcel of this cultural imperialism, as an export from the unpopular West. This view was clearly illustrated by police behaviour during the Pride marches in 2001 and 2010. During the first, despite warnings from far-right groups that they were intending to cause violent disruptions, the police turnout was less than meagre – only fifty policemen, without any riot gear, to combat nearly a thousand rioters. The Chief Constable of Belgrade, Bosko Buha, made the somewhat spurious claim that he had been unaware that the planned opposition was so great, also describing the Pride march as a ‘demonstration of perversity’. Fast forward to 2010, and the picture is markedly different: Serbia’s pro-Western government, eager to prove to the EU that it does tolerate minorities, stationed hundreds of visor-wearing, shieldwielding, riot police around the city. This time, the vast majority of those injured were policemen. But it remains to be seen whether the fundamental attitudes of Serbian society have changed.

At the end of the day, protesters disperse and some semblance of calm returns to Belgrade’s streets. What is left behind is the damage: burned out cars, smashed shop windows, vandalised bus shelters. It seems a fitting metaphor: the task of rebuilding looms ever large. But this is a nation

All of this paints a somewhat familiar picture: Serbia is a nation at low ebb – modest income, high unemployment and quite literally torn into pieces by the wars of the past two decades. Key to Gay rights are seen understanding how all of this relates to LGBT rights is none other than the EU. imperialism, as an Serbia has been preparing for a EU candidacy bid ever since the fall of Milosevic’s regime in 2000. Since then, its biggest stumbling block has been co-operation with the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY). The tribunal called for the handing over of a number of alleged Serbian war criminals, including Slobodan Milosevic, Radovan Karadzic, and Ratko Mladic.

The former two are now in custody, but the latter remains at large. For many years, the ICTY’s chief prosecutor, Carla Del Ponte, accused Serbia of not fully cooperating with the court, although that accusation has now been withdrawn – perhaps due to the ten-fold increase in the reward that the Serbian government has put on Mladic’s head. Nevertheless, their back-and-forth verbal spats have

as part and parcel of this cultural export from the unpopular West.

with experience in patching up the wounds, gluing back together the parts, only to see another breakdown follow shortly after. Once again, the real challenge is to find a way of creating lasting harmony. For us, the crucial question becomes what role – if any – the West should play. There is a fine line between allowing a country to run roughshod over its minorities, and abusing our powerful influence to impose certain values on a nation. It might just be the case that the West has too much blood on its hands from Serbia’s point of view to be able to return preaching civil liberty and expect a welcome.

Sarah Inman is studying PPE in her first year at Wadham.

POLITICS AND ECONOMY

“I’ve Been a Miner for a Heart of Gold” In Ghana, the human impact of international development institutions’ investment programs still plays an alarmingly small role, Thomas Granofsky argues.

“Dumase is a ghost town now.”

These are the words of Dei Nkrumah, community leader of Dumase, a small Ghanaian community that has borne the brunt of multiple cyanide spills and suffered heavily from the gold extraction taking place in the vicinity of the village. Since the 1980s, Ghana’s gold mining industry has been liberalised and deregulated as a result of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank’s policy of loan conditionality. The gold mining industry flourished, yet what may be termed the ‘human impact’ can hardly be called positive.

Although Ghana’s economy has benefited from the foreign direct investment induced by the IMF’s structural adjust-

ment programs, many argue that the negative consequences of these programs have far surpassed their benefits. For one, the limited economic return relative to the outflow of valuable resources has, in particular, been criticised as exploitative: Ghana’s mining industry is 85% foreignowned, and accounts for only 5% of GDP, 4% of government tax revenues, and a mere 0.7% of employment for the working age population. Furthermore, the structural adjustment programs implemented in Ghana – and many other developing countries – resulted in the elimination and prevention of regulation and accountability measures seen as inhibiting investment, thereby leaving people more vulnerable to the significant negative impacts of mining concessions. Gold mining in Ghana often involves forcible displacement without adequate compensation, elimina-

A gold mine in Ghana Photo by Hansueli Krapf

POLITICS AND ECONOMY

21 tion of agricultural lands, increased incidence of malaria and other diseases from stagnant waters, military, police or security violence, environmental degradation as well as the disruption of daily life due to dust and vibration.

“These multimillionaire companies on our concession, they are mistreating, violating human rights”, Nkrumah says.

In spite of these negative impacts, the World Bank, through its investment wing, the International Finance Corporation (IFC), has continued to invest directly in extractive industries in less developed countries as a means of poverty alleviation. It is difficult to weigh the short and long-term economic benefits versus the human impact of the projects that the IFC invests in, but the human toll is unquestionably substantial - in 2000, 3.2 million people worldwide faced displacement due to IFC/ World Bank projects.

In Ghana, IFC mining projects are indeed subject to domestic legal statutes. However, these were either drafted by or approved through policies required by the structural adjustment programs. Also, World Bank citizen complaint mechanisms seldom result in tangible changes or compensation, since the recommendations made by the Compliance Advisory Ombudsman in response to complaints are non-binding for the corporation holding the project concession. Despite the World Bank’s Corporate Social Responsibility standards often being held up as the ‘gold standard’ for commercial investment banks and multinational corporations, they have yet to prove their capacity to induce change and a greater concern for the social effects of corporate projects.

The central point of recourse for people negatively affected by mining in Ghana is the domestic legal system. At a trial in the city of Tarkwa in the Western region of Ghana, the heart of the gold mining industry, dozens of people had made the difficult journey from their villages to seek justice in a court of law from a mining company accused of failing to compensate the villagers for their displacement.

But the representatives from the mining company never even arrived – a depressingly regular occurrence and an effective means for companies to slow court judgments to a crawl. It was here I met Nkrumah and other community members from Dumase, who were pursuing legal action against the Canadian gold mining company Golden Star Resources, for a cyanide spill that occurred in 2004 from the Bogoso/Prestea mine. They were aided by the Center for Public Interest Law (CEPIL), a not-for-profit human rights law firm primarily engaged in the legal representation of communities negatively affected by mining In Dumase, Nkrumah showed me the Ajoo stream, a tributary of the Aprepre river, which had been contaminated

by cyanide. This stream and those connected to it are the sole source of drinking water and irrigation for the whole Dumase community. In Nkrumah’s words: “We have sent the company to court on the cyanide spillage, which occurred on 23rd October, 2004, which is six years now. Nothing has been done on this. They have not paid any compensation to the victims. Even some are dead.

Some of the people are dead. Some have illness. They have rashes, skin rashes, blood in urine. Even at night if you sleep, you can scratch, you can scratch your eyes, you can’t sleep. Always, the whole of the 24 hours, the machines:

‘Always, the machines: noise, noise. We can’t sleep. We can’t do anything.’ noise, noise. We can’t sleep. We can’t do anything. So the people, we are facing hardship. Community livelihood is at risk. Because the land is taken from the families, we have no land to farm. We have nothing to do in our community.”

Corporate Social Responsibility measures on the part of the mining companies have been woefully inadequate in ensuring responsible mining practices, and states have been loath to impose accountability standards on mining companies with operations abroad for fear of capital flight.

A case in point: the Canadian parliament recently defeated Bill C-300, which proposed Federal authority to investigate the alleged abuses of Canadian mining companies abroad and potentially seal off access to the public purse.

Thus, the policies and investments of international economic institutions and their impact on the communities and domestic policies of countries such as Ghana need to be critically scrutinized and reconsidered. These institutions carry a responsibility to ensure that their policies aid the economic and human development of less developed countries rather than the corporate interests residing in those countries that have the greatest institutional voting power. Currently, the lack of accountability of the World Bank for its own investments appears to ensure that gold mining in Ghana will continue to be managed irresponsibly and that the human impact of these investments is not fully taken into account.

As I was leaving Dumase a large tank truck passed by the taxi I was in; on the side it read: “TOXIC: SODIUM CYANIDE”.

Thomas Granofsky is studying for an MPhil in Comparative Social Policy at Wolfson College.

POLITICS AND ECONOMY

Confetti in Qatar Those who leave the Global South tend to bolster the welfare of those who stay, Mark Longhurst argues.

An immigrant in Palermo, Italy Photo by giopuo via Flickr

In early December 2010, as Sepp Blatter began to speak, a small nation on the Arabian Peninsular held its breath.

After thirteen excruciating minutes of acknowledgments and pleasantries extolled in a thick Swiss accent, the president of FIFA revealed that Qatar had won its bid to host the World Cup in 2022. Characteristically phlegmatic Qatari public servants leapt from their seats in euphoria as applause erupted in the crowded pressroom. In the streets of Doha, overjoyed football-fans waived crimson flags in front of television cameras and bellowed decorated vuvuzelas loudly, heralding an evening of frivolity. Hours later, as confetti was swept from pathways and Qatari citizens returned to their daily routines, analysts across the globe began to ponder the implications of the result for development. The expected surge in Qatar’s demand for foreign workers lead some experts to conclude that Qatar’s win could represent an immense victory for the Global South.

With more than seven expatriates for every citizen, Qatar hosts the most migrants relative to its population of any country. They funnel large outflows of capital from the Arabian Peninsular around the globe. The Qatar Central Bank estimates that remittances from foreign workers totalled $24 billion from 2005 to 2009, a significant proportion of which flowed to developing countries. As Qatar contemplates employing additional labour to develop infrastructure for the 500 million people who travel to take POLITICS AND ECONOMY

part in the world’s largest football event, remittance flows are predicted to soar. “Qatar winning the vote to host the World Cup in 2022 will produce significant increases in migration flows from, and remittance flows to, South Asia, East Asia and East and North Africa”, predicts Dilip Ratha, lead economist at the World Bank.

Every year, a consortium of au pairs, fishermen and construction workers guide a steady flow of remittances from developed to developing countries. In 2010, they totalled $350 billion globally, more than double the $126 billion contributed in official development assistance from the West. In many countries, remittances exceeded private capital flows and direct investment. For some small, lowincome countries, like Tajikistan, Tonga and Lesotho, remittances accounted for over a quarter of national GDP. However, these headline statistics tend to overstate the impact of remittance flows for the world’s poor for two reasons. Firstly, the distribution of remittance flows is skewed towards emerging economies and newly industrialised countries. Collectively, China, India, Mexico and the Philippines account for more than 40% of global remittances. Least-developed countries, particularly those that send few migrants abroad, are underrepresented. Secondly, while remittances tend to reduce global inequality, remittances can exacerbate national or local inequality.

23 Since migration requires initial costs for education and travel, high-income households unsurprisingly receive the lion’s share of remittance flows in many countries, which tends to widen the gap between rich and poor.

Nevertheless, remittances have shown to deliver positive outcomes that other forms of capital flows cannot. Person-to-person transfers bypass the bureaucratic and often corrupt administration process that decreases the effectiveness of foreign aid. In addition, the global financial crisis revealed that remittances are much more resilient to macroeconomic fluctuations than other capital flows. Between 2008 and 2009, amidst increasing unemployment and falling wages in the West, remittances to developing countries fell by just 5.5%, compared to a 40% decline in foreign direct investment and an 80% drive in private equity flows. In addition, the quantity of country-specific remittances tends to spike soon after a natural disaster. A surge in remittances to Pakistan in the wake of June 2010 floods demonstrated the efficacy with which expatriates respond to the needs of friends and family members in distress. Beyond remittances, people living abroad can contribute to development at home in less quantifiable ways.

Returning migrants often bring skills and experience that are valuable to labour markets in developing countries.

From a developing country’s perspective, migration presents both costs and benefits. Young, educated professionals from developing countries may migrate to seek employment in overseas labour markets. Evidence suggests that the impact of this brain drain is both significant and growing. The effect is particularly acute in small, geographically isolated, low-income countries: in Haiti and Jamaica, approximately 80% of native-born college graduates work outside their home country. However, policies aimed to limit the incidence of brain drain should be treated carefully. Government initiatives that aim to restrict the movement of high-skilled professionals overseas are likely to be ineffective: those who choose to move have sufficient information and capital to overcome such restrictions. The key to retaining high-skilled professionals from developing countries is to increase the wages and standards of living within those countries, a task which lies at the heart of development itself.

From a Western perspective, however, immigrants are often mainly regarded as unwelcome visitors. On April 15, 2010, Gerard Oliver, a retired toxicologist from Cheshire, asked the first question of the first political debate ever broadcast live prior to a federal election in the United Kingdom. “What key elements for a fair, workable immigration policy need to be put in place to actually work effectively?”, he queried. One by one, each of the three major political candidates extolled plans to curb and control

immigration. David Cameron committed to reduce net immigration to “the tens of thousands, not the hundreds of thousands”. Gordon Brown boasted that his party’s initiatives had ensured that “no unskilled worker from outside the European Union can come to Britain”. Nick Clegg advocated controls pertaining to the regions within which immigrants could seek work. Such anti-immigration sentiments in the West are driven, at least in part, by a desire to protect the economic interests of citizens: rising unemployment in the United States and Europe has fuelled the case for fewer migrants. Political parties founded to advocate for tighter immigration restrictions, such as the Netherland’s Party of Freedom, attempt to unite voter angst regarding economic conditions with fears about national security and the clash of cultures.

Glaringly absent in this policy line is an acknowledgement that migration can carry significant benefits for both sending and receiving countries. From an economic perspective, so long as each person’s welfare is weighed equally, the case for removing barriers that impair migration in order to increase human welfare is logically sound, given the presumption that migration increases global welfare overall. One might expect politicians, then, to embrace policies that favour more open migration. However, coherent migration policies fall victim to political realities.

Representative democracies are designed to promote only the interests of those who vote, which in any democracy, is of course a relatively small proportion of the global population. Thus, while the consensus opinion among migration experts is that migration contributes significantly to the growth of the global pie, some countries or people may receive a smaller slice. Similar to struggling industries that demand protectionism and oppose free trade, the voices of those poised to suffer from increased levels of migration tend to be loud relative to those who stand to gain.

Qatar’s victory represents a leap forward for a tiny nation. In 2022, the emirate will make history as the first Arab nation to host the world’s most celebrated sporting event. Of the factors considered by FIFA’s twenty-twomember panel that delivered the decision via secret ballot, the flow-on effects for the world’s poor is unlikely to have weighed heavily. Nevertheless, for some fortunate soccerloving migrants, a short-term work visa to Qatar may offer the opportunity to witness a World Cup game firsthand – and many more. For some poverty-stricken families in the Global South who, in the future, will rely on the financial support of their loved-ones abroad, the outcome of the bid could not have been more meaningful.

Mark Longhurst is studying for an MPhil in Economics at Hertford.

POLITICS AND ECONOMY

The Oportunidades of Mexico Mexico’s f lagship social program could work if indigenous people had a real say in how the program was applied in their communities, José Carlos Gutierrez argues Four years have passed since Diego Sántiz’s children last attended class at their community school in Oniltic, an indigenous Tzeltal community in the highlands of Chiapas, Mexico. The Sántizes and nine other families were expelled from their community for their activities with an organization of traditional doctors and midwives in resistance to a government-funded health clinic. Many members of their organization landed in jail and some were severely beaten by the community police. An 84-year-old traditional doctor was tied to a post in the blazing sun for 18 hours.

These incidents had nothing to do with the drug trafficking, religious conflicts, or territorial disputes that underlie violence in rural Chiapas. Instead, their roots lie in patterns of patronage and abuse within the Oportunidades Human Development Program.

Oportunidades is Mexico’s flagship social program. Targeting the country’s poorest, it distributes cash stipends to families based on their attendance at doctors’ appointments and health lectures and children’s school attendance. The program provides nutritional supplements to mothers, babies, and undernourished children.

Since the program’s founding in 1997, academics have praised it and foreign governments have imitated it. According to Laura Rawlings of the World Bank’s Human Development Department, Oportunidades is so innovative because it addresses “both future poverty by fostering human capital accumulation among the young… and current poverty by providing income support for smoothing consumption in the short run.”

The monetary support is designed to encourage a more diverse family diet and cover the opportunity cost of a child staying in school instead of working in the fields.

Although on paper Oportunidades seems like a cure for poverty, its implementation has been far from smooth.

Doctors have abused their privileges in some clinics. The POLITICS AND ECONOMY

government clinic in Oniltic claimed that pregnant women would lose their Oportunidades benefit money if they did not submit to extra blood testing. Sántiz explained, “They refused to tell us why they wanted the blood samples; they never even returned results to the women who did comply. Of course we were going to object.”

A cultural divide exists between doctors and their indigenous patients. Sántiz’s organization opposed both the clinic’s use of papsmears by male doctors and its emphasis on family planning. Dr. Miguel Maza, who administered a rural -clinic in Guanajuato and then left Oportunidades for an NGO, said the program is overbearing in its encouragement of birth control or sterilization right after or even during birth. “They would say things like ‘you see, do you really want another one?’… or ‘Oh! It didn’t hurt while you were doing it now, did it?’”

“Starting with your education as a doctor,” Maza continued, “you are taught that poor people lead better lives if they have less children”. But in an agrarian society like rural Chiapas, having more kids means more hands to work the fields, additional income, and better care for parents in old age. “you’re not going to eradicate poverty by preventing poor people from having babies,” concluded Maza.

Family planning programs, though, are useful in rural communities where gender inequality often restricts a woman’s right to choose how many children to have. Access to contraception is vital. But there is doubt that a push for gender equality really drives the program’s focus on family planning: The program essentially takes control away from husbands only to give it to doctors, not women.

Traditional medicine in Mexico has been haunted by state persecution, not to mention disdain from modern physicians. But the conflict in Oniltic alludes not only to the clash between two medical paradigms, but also between two civilizations: one modern, urban and western, and the other rural and indigenous. Throughout history, the Mexican state has attempted to “integrate” the country’s

25 various indigenous groups into modern Mexican society, which has often meant the loss of indigenous languages, traditions and ultimately culture. For indigenous beneficiaries like Diego Sántiz, Oportunidades can be a doubleedged sword, tearing the social fabric that underpins the community’s way of life.

Doctors also complain that the Oportunidades clinics are poorly staffed and maintained. Maza said that “in practice, [the doctors] are residency students, youth who go into a community for a year and don’t want any problems. They don’t try hard and the workload is heavy. They don’t even give the health lectures.” Maza’s own year with Oportunidades fulfilled his post-medical school requirement for social service.

Many facilities have dirt floors and generally poor infrastructure, says Dr. Aurora Hernández: “you should see where I see patients.” Doña Eufemia of the Marqués de Comilla municipality in Chiapas is one of many Oportunidades beneficiaries who has to walk hours to reach a clinic. She cannot afford to miss a day of work spending hours in the waiting room before an appointment. Nor can she afford to return home empty-handed when the inhouse pharmacy does not have medication.

Almost all healthcare programs would benefit from additional resources. But the most surprising criticism of Oportunidades is that its programs are designed more for international acclaim than for poverty reduction. According to Hernández, the program’s focus on pregnant women is due to the current global emphasis on reducing maternal mortality. She continued, “There are people who Oportunidades really does help, but I see it more as a political strategy… it helps make the numbers look better.”

She paused and smiled nervously: “But we’re not supposed to say that now, are we?”

Dr. Gerardo Juarez, who also works with Oportunidades, commented that “the objective isn’t health,” but rather keeping households dependent on the government. Oportunidades can comprise more than half of a family’s income, creating an enormous incentive to comply with the program’s requirements and endowing nurses and doctors who record attendance with considerable power within communities. Oportunidades beneficiaries are not always well-informed on which medical procedures are obligatory and which are not, and if they are, the simple threat of losing Oportunidades benefits can often persuade them to comply with any extra-official demands made by clinic personnel. The conflict in Oniltic provides an example of this scenario. According to Sántiz, “There are people who say, ‘the government is our father. We have to obey…’ It’s

a way of dividing us and winning us over. To me, that isn’t aid.’”

In April, the government recalled all government doctors—essentially terminating Oportunidades benefits— from the Montes Azules Reserve, a stronghold of the indigenous political movement Zapatismo. “They left without ever saying why,” remarked José Alfredo Esqueda.

“The only explanation I can see is that they’re being punished for being Zapatistas,” arguing that the government may be using denial of care as a weapon against political dissidents.

Oportunidades has helped many of Mexico’s poorest, and its focus on women and girls is intended to help close the gender gap in Mexico: Stipends are higher for girls and are usually channeled through women to help overcome roadblocks to female education. But when a program affects social behavior so strongly, it is important to question whose rights are being respected—and whose are not—in the process.

Perhaps surprisingly, Mexican law offers a solution to the conflicts involved in the implementation of Oportunidades. According to Esqueda, the program currently violates Article Two of the Constitution, which requires programs affecting indigenous populations to “be designed

‘I see it more as a political strategy.’ She paused and smiled nervously: ‘But we’re not supposed to say that now, are we?’ and operated jointly with [the indigenous communities].”

This coordination is certainly not practiced with Oportunidades, and the failure is no exception to the rule: In Mexico, the letter of the law hardly determines the practice.

With Oportunidades, at least, the root of the problem points to a potential solution: respecting indigenous culture and autonomy. This is surely easier said than done, but only within a framework of equality can rural healthcase improve and a truly pluralistic society become possible. “If the law was followed,” explained Esqueda, “and indigenous people had a real say in how the program was applied in their communities, perhaps Oportunidades could work.”

Some names have been changed to protect the identities of the sources. This article first appeared in The Yale Globalist and is reprinted with permission. José Carlos Gutiérrez is a History major in Silliman College, Yale University.

POLITICS AND ECONOMY

Movers and Shakers

Protest in Los Angeles Photo by Joel Carranza

For Latina women in the L.A. immigrant rights movement, do gender concerns compete with group rights? Cailin Crockett investigates.

In the most recent incarnations of the struggle for immigrant rights in Los Angeles, Latina women have emerged as the movement’s most visible leaders. A 2009 study by Dr. Ruth Milkman, a sociology professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, describes the rising status of women in the campaign by underscoring an intriguing paradox. Though Latina women are dynamic movers and shakers in leading the charge for immigrant rights in Los Angeles, they are not articulating gender concerns into CULTURE

the discourse of their protest. The question of why issues specific to female immigrants are absent from the agenda remains. How significant a role does gender play in the migration process?

Rather than looking for an answer in far-removed, purely academic social theory, scholars are taking to the streets to ask the women themselves. Interviews with prominent figures in the movement indicate that, compared to men,

27 women attest to a marked improvement in gender status when they come to the United States. Challenging the machismo social framework that many women say dictated life in their home countries, participation in the workforce empowers Latinas and substantiates their claims to equality. At the same time, the advocation of the attainment of basic rights for migrant workers is a reminder that the conditions of their participation need desperately to improve.

Despite the fact that many of the positions available to immigrant women are in the domestic sphere, employment enables the recognition of women as financial contributors to their families. Remarkably, instead of reinforcing traditional gender roles by focusing on the nature of their work, immigrant men are increasingly acknowledging their wives, mothers and sisters as equals. Connected to

tions, is a “life or death” situation. Advocating for the universal needs of the community obligates the subordination of gender-specific demands since so much has yet to be realised. Interestingly, research by Dr. Milkman has shown that many women describe their leadership in the movement as an extension of motherhood, as they are focussed on improving the welfare of their children. This suggests that despite championing non-gender specific concerns, the motivation behind Latina participation is tied to their gender-specific identity as mothers.

To what extent, however, is the absence of gender concerns in protest rhetoric symbolic of a greater problem? Dr. Maylei Blackwell, a gender consultant for the National Day Laborers Association, says that Latinas face a dual strug-

Is the fact that these women are being recognised in a leadership role enough of a coup for equality? Or is something missing in their protest, such as calls for the prosecution of routine sexual exploitation of female workers by their employers? this recognition, however, is a loss in gender status among male immigrants, who tend to have greater difficulty and less interest in integrating into their new communities.

While men appear to remain nostalgic for their homeland, many women generally prefer conditions in Los Angeles, despite its difficulties. As a result, many immigrant communities have formed hometown associations, made up of families from the same region in their native country.

Though these neighbourhood councils have become a significant community builder among immigrants, men often dominate them. Frustrated by the disconnect between their elevated status within the family and the perpetuation of patriarchy within the community, Latina women answer the call to organize the greater struggle for immigrant rights instead.

The 2006 March for Immigrant Rights in Los Angeles, the largest-ever protest of its kind, is a brilliant example of how these women are framing their demands for human rights. Is the fact that these women are being recognised in a leadership role enough of a coup for equality?

Or is something missing in their protest, such as calls for the prosecution of routine sexual exploitation of female workers by their employers? When asked why women’s issues are still not an explicit part of the agenda, one leader responded that at this stage, the denial of basic labour standards, such as reasonable wages and working condi-

gle between the “public agenda” of the immigrant rights movement and the “internalities of power” within their communities. Dissatisfied with the gender hierarchy of community organizations such as hometown associations, women are pressured to keep their protests quiet in order to promote “group solidarity”; they are told that voicing gender concerns would compromise a united front. This critical perspective posits another question worth considering: Does women’s status actually improve with immigration?

Probing the complex territory of gender and immigration, the subject of women’s leadership in the local context of Los Angeles has initiated an important dialogue regarding the challenge of reconciling group rights with gender rights. While some activists object to the inclusion of gender-specific demands in the protest for immigrant rights under the premise that it fractures the movement’s unity, perhaps we all must be reminded that feminist concerns are never exclusive to women. On the contrary, the championing of women’s rights paves the way for the realisation of universal human rights.

Cailin Crockett is studying for an MPhil in Political Theory at St Cross.

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U Agga Nya Na An excerpt from the forthcoming book “Nowhere To Be Home: Narratives From Survivors Of Burma’s Military Regime”, edited and compiled by Maggie Lemere and Zoë West

U Agga Nya Na Photo by James Robert Fuller

U Agga is an activist monk who we first met in Utica, New York, where he lived with three other Burmese monks in exile. Several months later, he welcomed us to the Brooklyn brownstone to which he and the other monks had moved, in order to be closer to the network of people working for human rights in Burma. The brownstone was sparsely furnished, and now serves as a monastery as well as an office for the All Burma Monks’ Alliance. The monks, wearing their traditional saffron-colored robes, were busily walking in and out of the house and meeting with friends, in preparation for their monastery’s opening ceremony later that week.

In 2007, U Agga marched in the Saffron Revolution, a

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monk-led uprising against the policies and oppression of the SPDC. The marches were the largest anti-government demonstrations in Burma in almost twenty years. When protests intensified in Rangoon, with tens of thousands of people marching, U Agga found himself in the middle of the military government’s brutal crackdown.

We Cannot Just Watch The Saffron Revolution started because the military regime heavily increased the price of fuel and basic commodities in August of 2007. The military regime sells our

29 regime from Buddhism. If someone is removed from the Buddhist religion, it’s a very strong symbol. That’s why when the monks held the alms bowls upside down to excommunicate the Tatmadaw [the Burmese armed forces], it was a very serious message. The students and civilians encouraged us while we were marching —they were clapping, shouting, and paying their respects to the monks, and they offered us water, medicine, candy and some donations of money.

natural gas to countries like China, India and Thailand, so fuel is very expensive in Burma, even though we have a lot of natural gas. Most people in Burma cannot pay such high prices. Most people cannot even get enough electricity—in most cities, even big cities like Rangoon, the electricity goes out almost every day. People get electricity for just a few hours each day— sometimes the lights come on in the early morning, or when people are sleeping. But after maybe three hours, they go out again. People living in the countryside can’t get any electricity at all. It’s difficult for people to work with the electricity shortage, and most people were very angry about the situation in 2007.

Many students and civilians joined us, and some watched from their apartments or from the sidewalk. Although we marched all day, we were not tired; the students and civilians inspired us to keep marching for justice in Burma.

I had never seen so many monks outside—I think there were at least 50,000 monks marching in Rangoon. It was a very good opportunity for the monks and students to march together in harmony. Monks have a very close relationship with students, because whenever we do peaceful protests, we organize with each other—not only in 2007, but throughout history.

Another reason for the Saffron Revolution was that the military regime was spending a lot of money to build their new capital, Naypyidaw. They built so many buildings for no reason. They didn’t need to build a new capital— we already had a capital, Rangoon. When they built this new capital, they took a lot of land from farmers without giving them compensation. A lot of the farmers were in trouble because they lost their livelihood. The construction of Naypyidaw also made the prices of fuel and basic commodities become much higher than before. So one of our demands in the peaceful protest was to decrease fuel prices.

Some monks brought religious flags from the pagoda. The religious flag represented the unity of Burmese monks.

We were just chanting the Metta Sutra, loving-kindness,

Because of the high fuel and commodity We thought that if we sat and prayed in front of prices, about five hundred monks in Pakokthem, they would not crack down. ku decided to do a peaceful march, chanting chanting and singing along the way. We didn’t recite any loving-kindness. But military soldiers brutally cracked political slogan as we marched, we were just praying: down on all those monks who were marching peacefully.

When we heard this news, the All Burma Monks’ AlliMay all human beings be free and happy; may all human ance issued a statement calling for all monks in Burma to beings be free from danger, may all human beings be free march peacefully. Burmese monks made four demands: from physical suffering and mental suffering; may all human number one, the regime must apologize for cracking down beings be free from fear and anger. on the monks; number two, all political prisoners, including Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, must be released; number We marched with all the monks together in the middle, three, the price of fuel and basic commodities must be and the students and civilians surrounding us. The stulowered, and number four, the regime must have dialogue dents and civilians marched in two lines on either side with Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, our national leader, and the of us, to protect the monks in case the security forces atrest of the democratic opposition. But the military didn’t tacked us. In the beginning, not so many people joined, comply with our demands. but after about two days, we kept marching and it built up more and more. It became very crowded—the streets and September 20th - 22nd sidewalks were full of people.

Some monks began marching on September 18th, 2007, On September 22nd, I heard that monks and students but there was heavy rain on the 18th and 19th, so I could would march in front of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi’s house not get to the protests because of flooding. I was also finthat day. It’s very dangerous to march in front of her ishing an exam at my monastery, but my mind was on the house—there were always many security forces there. But protests—I was eager to go. I joined on September 20th. after we marched to Shwedagon Pagoda that day, we all We marched holding the alms bowls upside down, which decided to march in front of her house. The monks prommeant we were excommunicating the Burmese military

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30 ised the soldiers that we would not do anything violent, that we would just march and pray and chant the Metta Sutra. After we negotiated with them, they decided to let us march in front of her house. I think Aung San Suu Kyi heard our chanting, because she came out to the street and stood at the gate of her house. She put her palms together and paid respect to the monks at the gate of her house. Many students bowed to show their respect for her.

I couldn’t see her very clearly because the riot police were standing around her, but I could see her face and hands very clearly.

September 26th The military regime imposed a curfew on the night of September 25th. They announced on the state-run television station that they would arrest or shoot anyone who marched anywhere in the city—they said they would take action on anyone gathered in groups of five or more. They also made the announcement that night from military truck loudspeakers going through the streets of Rangoon.

But even though they imposed the curfew, more and more monks and students came out the next day.

On the morning of September 26th, I went with many monks to Shwedagon Pagoda. When we arrived at the East gate at around 10:30 am, I saw the soldiers there, pointing their guns at the protesters. There were soldiers stationed everywhere around the pagoda. Many rows of soldiers were blocking the main road to the pagoda and they had weapons. About two hundred soldiers stood in front of a blockade made of iron and wood, as well as a fence made of tin. When I saw the military blockades, I felt that things would be very tense—I thought they were ready to crack down. At the time, there were probably around two hundred and fifty monks, and about five hundred students and civilians were standing and sitting behind us.

When we reached the military soldiers, they said that nobody could go to the pagoda and nobody could march that day. When we confronted the soldiers, they told us they already had the order to shoot anyone who marched

that day. We responded, “We came here just to pray and chant very peacefully. We will not harm anybody. We will just go and pray in this pagoda. We are not breaking any laws; we have the right to pray.”

Then they asked us, “Will you go back to the monastery or will you go to prison?” “We will not go back to the monastery and we will not go to prison,” we said. “If you want to shoot, you can shoot, but we will not go back to our monastery.”

And then they started getting very aggressive with us. We tried to negotiate with them for nearly forty minutes, to convince them not to crack down on the march. Many students and people were surrounding the monks, so I didn’t feel scared when I was talking with the soldiers and police officers. Actually, I felt very happy that we could talk directly with them, to tell them that the reason we went there was to develop our country—I was happy to try to solve this in a peaceful way.

I spoke to the soldiers with other monks, including U Gawsita, who is now my friend; we requested that they don’t use violence. “In our country, all people—including soldiers like you—have many problems. There are people with political problems, or people with economic problems,” we explained. “Our people are oppressed by this military regime in many ways. People are starving, there’s the economic crisis, and many other kinds of problems.

This is because of the military dictatorship system.” Some of the soldiers were listening to us, and they seemed to accept this explanation. However, they could not avoid their orders from the senior military leaders. If the ordinary soldiers don’t obey their orders, I’m sure they would also be imprisoned or punished.

Some of the monks from my monastery tried to negotiate by sitting down in front of the soldiers and praying.

We thought that if we sat and prayed in front of them, they would not crack down; we wanted to show lovingkindness for the welfare of the people, and we expected it could help solve the problem in a peaceful way. While we sat in front of the soldiers, some leaders from differ-

PERSPECTIVES Rangoon, Burma Photo by Zoë West

31 ent monasteries were trying to talk with the soldiers, and other leaders tried to enter Shwedagon Pagoda through a different way. But then the soldiers started to crack down, and we were trapped between two groups of soldiers.

The soldiers used so much tear gas to disperse the crowd that we couldn’t see the pagoda. It hurt our skin, especially our faces—it burned. After the tear gas, the soldiers started beating the protesters. Many of the monks were in the middle of the crowd when they started to crack down, but I climbed over the monastery wall and I could clearly see soldiers beating monks with bamboo sticks and batons—they were beating their backs, their hands, their legs and especially their heads. The civilians were so angry and upset because they’d never seen anyone beat a monk before. They were shouting loudly and angrily at the soldiers, and some people were throwing stones at them.

I saw many monks who were wounded—some were bleeding from their heads—but we couldn’t take them to the hospital. The military regime had ordered the hospitals not to treat any monks or students who were wounded during the protests. Soldiers were dragging monks through the streets and arresting them. I saw them taking monks and putting them into a military truck—I saw about seventy monks and students being put into trucks that day.

U Agga Nya Na Photo by James Robert Fuller

tect us from the tear gas, and we gave the students some masks too. The soldiers tried to block us while we were marching, but the crowd was too big for them to block us.

If they blocked one way, we would march another way to avoid them.

I was hiding for about twenty or thirty minutes after they cracked down with beatings and tear gas, and then a group of us—monks and students who escaped from the crackdown—gathered near Kandawgyi Lake to prepare to march in the downtown city center of Rangoon. Kandawgyi Lake, people gave us drinking water to wash our faces because the tear gas made our faces sting. About five or six people also brought us masks to protect us from tear gas, in case the soldiers dispersed us again. They were ordinary masks, like the kind people use to protect themselves from pollution.

We marched near Shwedagon Pagoda again after the crackdown, and some soldiers started shooting up toward the buildings, to threaten the protestors. They didn’t shoot at the protestors that day, but the next day they started shooting directly at the crowds. I was already in hiding that day—not many monks were out on the 27th, because the military had already started raiding monasteries. By that time, it was mostly students and civilians marching in the streets.

We rallied outside of Kandawgi Lake, in a street near a bus stop. There were so many monks and students that cars couldn’t pass. We discussed where we would march and how we would avoid the military soldiers and the tear gas.

Since all the monks and students had come out that day, we were not willing to go back home or back to the monastery without marching; everyone was willing to march for the whole day. We also discussed how we would respond if the soldiers shot at us. Then our group marched to the downtown area, near Sule Pagoda. Even more monks and students came out to join us after the crackdown. They came by bus and truck, more and more of them. I was not scared to march again, although we were worried that more monks would be arrested. We wore the masks to pro-

This is an excerpt from the forthcoming book “Nowhere To Be Home: Narratives From Survivors Of Burma’s Military Regime”, edited and compiled by Maggie Lemere and Zoë West (McSweeney’s & Voice of Witness; March 2011): http://voiceofwitness.org/burma Maggie Lemere holds an MA in international peace and conflict resolution from American University in Washington DC. Zoë West is pursuing graduate studies in social anthropology at Linacre College.

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