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Brazil: Immigration in Brazil: The Insertion of Different Groups

Zeila de Brito Fabri Demartini

in Immigration Worldwide: Policies, Practices, and Trends

The paper deals with the phenomenon of immigration in Brazil, in the 19th and 20th centuries, explaining the factors that had favored that as well as the positioning of the Brazilian state with ... More

The paper deals with the phenomenon of immigration in Brazil, in the 19th and 20th centuries, explaining the factors that had favored that as well as the positioning of the Brazilian state with regard to the entry of immigrants with different origins. It focuses on the insertion and experiences from the main groups of immigrants in the state of São Paulo: the Germans, the Italians, the Japanese, and the Portuguese. São Paulo was the Brazilian region that received the greater contingent of immigrants in this period because of its economic development. Also, it traces in general terms the current politics of the Brazilian government with regard to immigrants and the programs that can meet their needs. Although a poor country, Brazil has been attracting immigrants for well over a century and is able to contribute to international discussions about the conditions of immigrants worldwide.Less

An Introduction to the History of Debt

Louis Hyman

in Debtor Nation: The History of America in Red Ink

This introductory chapter provides a history of debt. While personal lending had always existed, before 1917 it had never been legal to charge interest rates high enough to turn a profit and, equally ... More

This introductory chapter provides a history of debt. While personal lending had always existed, before 1917 it had never been legal to charge interest rates high enough to turn a profit and, equally important, lenders had never been able to resell their consumers' debts or borrow against them. In short, personal debt had never been able to be a normal business. However, personal debt assumed a new role within American capitalism once it became legal, sellable, and profitable. These developments did not occur all at once, but happened over the course of the twentieth century, beginning after World War I, and resulting as much from entrepreneurial innovation as governmental policy. Common to all these shifts were new ways of regulating and reselling debt. Indeed, regulation made legal lending possible, but its relative strength and enforcement propelled lending in some unexpected directions.Less

African Refugees and Diasporic Struggles in Cairo

Diane Singerman

in Cairo Contested: Governance, Urban Space, and Global Modernity

This chapter argues that African migrant groups are marginalized on the level of governmental policies, national discourse, and daily life yet, despite these exclusionary policies and economic ... More

This chapter argues that African migrant groups are marginalized on the level of governmental policies, national discourse, and daily life yet, despite these exclusionary policies and economic hardships, Cairo's spaces of illegality, informality and (transnational) kinship networks, and community solidarity can make it a “more fluid and thus safer urban space” than that experienced by refugees in many other nations. It also covers the ways in which Somali and Sudanese communities, fleeing civil war and violence in their own countries, rebuilt their communities in Egypt, yet, when Sudanese refugees grew frustrated by very slow resettlement programs and the diminishing possibilities to gain refugee status, over 1,200 men, women, and children staged a sit-in. In general, Egypt, with its rigid citizenship laws and its public discourse of exclusionary nationalism and its simultaneous commitment to the protection of refugees and the cosmopolitan daily realities of its urban spaces, seems to be a host society that is both closed and open to refugees.Less

Workplace Flexibility Options

Jocelyn Elise Crowley

in Mothers Unite!: Organizing for Workplace Flexibility and the Transformation of Family Life

This chapter explains workplace flexibility as a unifying concept for bringing all mothers together. Exploring across groups and the work-for-pay/stay-at-home dichotomy, it addresses the question of ... More

This chapter explains workplace flexibility as a unifying concept for bringing all mothers together. Exploring across groups and the work-for-pay/stay-at-home dichotomy, it addresses the question of whether or not mothers tend to support various workplace flexibility initiatives. It also examines the levels of support that exist for governmental policies promoting workplace flexibility—ranging from educating firms about the benefits of such options, to tax breaks for companies that offer such plans, to mandatory requirements that organizations offer employees processes through which they can receive such arrangements. In doing so, the chapter offers possible parameters for policy makers as they develop reforms to generate the widest levels of public support.Less

Social and Labour Rights under the EU Constitution

Brian Bercusson

in Social Rights in Europe

This chapter addresses the recurrent question of justiciability, and, relatedly, indivisibility, tackling the question of social rights under the new, although now ill-fated European Union ... More

This chapter addresses the recurrent question of justiciability, and, relatedly, indivisibility, tackling the question of social rights under the new, although now ill-fated European Union Constitution, and in the Charter of Fundamental Rights. It provides a critical account of the debates which led to the provision of the Charter distinguishing between ‘principles’ and other rights, and moves on to consider several different ways in which the various social rights contained in the Charter may come to be given domestic effect, whether through indirect interpretative methods, or non-judicial methods, or through varying ‘equilibria’ of these mechanisms. The chapter identifies at least three groups of social rights: those that are clearly justiciable and simply need effective implementation, those that are moving towards greater justiciability as positive enforceable rights, and finally those that are programmatic in nature and that require greater ongoing monitoring of governmental policy together with a form of ‘consistency’ review.Less

Introduction

Matthew D. Adler

in Measuring Social Welfare: An Introduction

This chapter is a brief introduction to Measuring Social Welfare. The book provides an overview of the social welfare function (SWF) framework for assessing governmental policy. This introductory ... More

This chapter is a brief introduction to Measuring Social Welfare. The book provides an overview of the social welfare function (SWF) framework for assessing governmental policy. This introductory chapter motivates the framework via some stylized examples of policy choices involving environmental protection, redistributive taxation, infrastructure planning, climate change, and health policy. These examples illustrate recurring features of policy choice: that policies affect multiple dimensions of individual well-being; have “losers” as well as “winners”; produce a range of well-being changes (losses or gains) to individuals starting at a range of well-being levels; and may require a tradeoff between overall well-being and inequality. The SWF framework is able to take account of these recurring features of policy choice, and is applicable to a wide range of policy domains.Less

Discussion and Conclusions

Zohar Amar and Efraim Lev

in Arabian Drugs in Early Medieval Mediterranean Medicine

This chapter draws some conclusions from the researches laid out in the previous chapter. It considers the extent of the Indian contribution to the inventory of medicinal substances in the early ... More

This chapter draws some conclusions from the researches laid out in the previous chapter. It considers the extent of the Indian contribution to the inventory of medicinal substances in the early Islamic period, as well as how evidence of such contributions seems so scarce in comparison. The chapter also discusses the distribution of these drugs and how they were spurred on by ‘strong market forces’ — namely, the new trading routes and economic conditions created by the Arab conquests and their governmental policies. Literature and translations were just one way to transmit medical knowledge from the Classical to the Arab world and from there to the West; others were trade, diplomacy, pilgrimage, and waves of conquests. The chapter thus shows how the Arabs rendered a transformation of the entire medieval world, including the comprehensive dominance of Greek pharmacology along with Persian and Ayurvedic drugs.Less

Baptism 1893

in Citizen: Jane Addams and the Struggle for Democracy

Between 1892, when she first emerged on the national stage, and 1898, Jane Addams would become increasingly engaged in shaping governmental policy. In retrospect, Addams saw this broadening of her ... More

Between 1892, when she first emerged on the national stage, and 1898, Jane Addams would become increasingly engaged in shaping governmental policy. In retrospect, Addams saw this broadening of her agenda as an inevitable consequence of the times. In Twenty Years at Hull-House she presents herself as “the personality upon whom various social and industrial movements in Chicago reacted.” When she was sixty-nine she recalled the urgency she and others felt. “There was something in [those years],” she wrote, “that was very overwhelming. I am sure if it caught us again it would make us do what we could moment by moment because we felt under pressure to do something.”Less