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Mancunian Chinese Diaspora Organisations’ Response to Covid-19 – Studying the Societal Actors’ Perspective on Collaborative Governance in Crisis

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Abstract

This article contributes to the emerging field of research on collaborative governance in crises. It asks how social organisations see their contribution of skills and expertise to tackling a wicked problem such as the Covid-19 pandemic. For this purpose, I interviewed representatives of ethnic Chinese organisations about their work and relationships with the local government in Manchester in 2020 and 2021. Ethnic Chinese organisations are an interesting group because they had early access to knowledge about the spread of the virus and its harmfulness. Collaboration with them could potentially have helped to contain the pandemic in the ethnic Chinese community in the city and beyond. Based on semi-structured interviews with representatives of ethnic Chinese organisations and applying the combined theoretical frameworks of social capital and collaborative governance theories, the study identifies five organisational types in terms of their involvement in collaborative governance efforts.

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Collaboration is a necessary foundation for dealing with both natural and technological hazards and disasters and the consequences of terrorism. This analysis describes the structure of the American emergency management system, the charts development of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and identifies conflicts arising from the creation of the Department of Homeland Security and the attempt to impose a command and control system on a very collaborative organizational culture in a very collaborative sociopolitical and legal context. The importance of collaboration is stressed, and recommendations are offered on how to improve the amount and value of collaborative activities. New leadership strategies are recommended that derive their power from effective strategies and the transformational power of a compelling vision, rather than from hierarchy, rank, or standard operating procedures.
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Like the United Kingdom and the Netherlands, France is one of the major centres of Chinese migration in Europe. Chinese sojourners arrived in France at the beginning of the twentieth century and the 1911 census showed the presence of 238 Chinese in the country. From 1900 to World War I, this little community remained heterogeneous in its socio-economic and professional composition (Archaimbault, 1952). Changes in this community occurred during World War I when the lack of labourers led the French Government to recruit 140,000 Chinese workers (Wou, 1939). The 2,000 to 4,000 Chinese who remained in France after the war constituted the basis of a Chinese community in France. In the 1920s, they were joined by some 2,000 student labourers (Wang, 2001; Bailey, 1988). From the 1920s to the 1940s, Zhejiang immigration in France rose until World War II and the rise of the communist party in China stopped the movement. Yet, Chinese immigration did not cease. Migrants of Chinese origin arrived essentially from the old French Indochina (Viet Nam-Laos-Cambodia) (Le, 1995). Immigration from these countries increased in the 1970s when different conflicts occurred. From the late 1970s to the early 1980s, France also saw the arrival, albeit in smaller numbers, of Chinese from Hong Kong and Taiwan, family members of citizens of the People's Republic of China (PRC). The new wave of Chinese migration from PRC started in the mid-1980s and grew steadily until now, with some peaks, e.g. in the mid-1990s.
Article
Chinese migration to Germany is not very well documented, even though sojourners arrived in this country as early as the first half of the eighteenth century. There is some research on particular issues in specific historical contexts, such as the discrimination and persecution during the Third Reich (Yü-Dembski, 1996, 1997), Chinese students in Germany between 1860 and 1945 (Harnisch, 1999), Chinese-German mixed marriages (Groeling-Che, 1991), and irregular immigration and human trafficking during the 1980s and 1990s (Giese, 1999a). Yet, no systematic research on the history of Chinese migration or continuous analysis of more recent migration trends and related political issues has been carried out so far. Some of the reasons for this include: Chinese communities have always formed only a small minority among the non-German population; after World War II, Chinese communities were dispersed over the whole of (West) Germany and they have not created any visible “Chinatown” yet; and, until very recently, there seemed to be virtually no political or social problems related to Chinese migrants, and the few emerging political issues still appear insignificant compared to those related to other ethnic groups. As a result, Chinese immigration and the lives of Chinese migrants — widely ignored as a potential research topic for Modern China Studies in Germany — have not yet received attention from scholars of social sciences. This article will attempt to offer a comprehensive summary of the history of new Chinese migration to Germany from the early 1970s to the end of the second millennium. Mainly based on official statistics, it will then discuss recent trends in Chinese immigration for different groups of migrants since the 1990s, focusing on policy-related issues and political implications of these recent and potential future developments.
Article
During the past 15 years, the Chinese migrant community in Spain has grown significantly. Originally a small and dispersed population, it now ranks fourth among the migrant groups from non‐European Union (EU) countries. Its increasing presence in daily urban life is evident everywhere. Even though the Chinese community has a long history of settlement in Spain, the Spanish population still considers the Chinese as a closed and somewhat mysterious community. References to exaggerated stereotypes and prejudices regarding their activities and social organization can often be overheard in daily conversations. However, China, usually considered exotic and remote, has recently assumed greater importance in Spain's foreign policy. Thus, the Spanish Government has drawn up the Asia‐Pacific Framework Plan for 2000–2002 as part of its international policy considerations, thereby extending its interests to include areas well beyond its traditional foreign policy focus on Latin America. The Government's objectives are to expand its economic relations with Asia, to enhance trade and tourism with the area, expand the development cooperation with China, the Philippines, and Viet Nam — countries defined as top priorities for the Spanish Government — and to reinforce linguistic and cultural ties with these countries (Bejarano, 2002). In support of the Asia‐Pacific Framework Plan, the Casa Asia (House of Asia) was established in Barcelona in 2002, an institution created to organize academic and artistic activities in order to promote the knowledge of the region among Spaniards, and to foster political, economic, and cultural relations with Asia. The Government intends to pursue two important objectives related to the increasing commitments it is seeking to establish with China, and which are also of relevance to the overseas Chinese as the principal social actors involved. First, the strengthening of commercial exchanges with the People's Republic of China (PRC) are likely to benefit import‐export activities among the Chinese migrants, and be supported by their knowledge and practical experience of the respective social environments. Second, the dissemination of information on Spain is expected to establish and maintain stronger links in both directions. In the near future, these initiatives may also be instrumental in increasing the movement of people between China and Spain. Besides these primary objectives, the initiative pursues another important aim — the promotion of the social integration of the Chinese migrant community in the country. This paper addresses these issues, including data sources and their availability on Chinese migrants in Spain, the relevant local legal framework and how it influences the development of the Chinese migrant group, its sociodemographic composition, and migratory patterns. Finally, it addresses the changes in their economic activities.
Article
Most of the work on the early history of Chinese migration to eastern Europe, that is, the first half of the twentieth century, has been written by Russian scholars. Contemporary sources — accounts of Russian travellers and government documents — are overwhelmingly preoccupied with migration to the Russian Asian territories. But the interest in Chinese immigration since the 1990s has resulted in considerable attention being paid to the historical background as well, notably by Larin (1998, 2000) and Saveliev (2002). Chinese scholarship on Chinese labour in Europe during World War I (e.g. S. Chen, 1986) only devotes little space to eastern Europe. Yet, Chinese migration to eastern Europe has a particular policy interest because in the past decade it has proven to be predictive of trends in Europe as a whole. A new flow of entrepreneurial migrants, who often had no connection to the historical, rural-based chains of migration that produced the earlier Chinese migrant populations of western Europe, found it possible and profitable to do business and settle on the European periphery during a brief period of liberal migration controls. Erratic crackdowns on illegal migration in the absence of thought-through migration regimes resulted in a volatile situation, periodically generating migration flows from one country in the region to another. These were facilitated by, and gave further rise to, networks of kinship and information spanning both eastern and western Europe. While this paper focuses on Hungary, it also attempts to review information on other eastern European countries (particularly Russia, Romania, Yugoslavia, and the Czech Republic) where it is available. In doing so, it intends to fill a gap in information on Chinese in eastern Europe until more substantial research is produced, as well as to highlight the common features of, and links between, Chinese migration into individual eastern European countries as well as into western Europe.
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Networks have assumed a place of prominence in the literature on public and private governing structures. The many positive attributes of networks are often featured—the capacity to solve problems, govern shared resources, create learning opportunities, and address shared goals—and a literature focused on the challenges networks pose for managers seeking to realize these network attributes is developing. The authors share an interest in understanding the potential of networks to govern complex public, or “wicked,” problems. A fundamental challenge to effectively managing any public problem in a networked setting is the transfer, receipt and integration of knowledge across participants. When knowledge is viewed pragmatically, the challenge is particularly acute. This perspective, the authors argue, presents a challenge to the network literature to consider the mind-set of the managers—or collaborative capacity-builders—who are working to achieve solutions to wicked problems. This mind-set guides network managers as they apply their skills, strategies, and tools in order to foster the transfer, receipt, and integration of knowledge across the network and, ultimately, to build long-term collaborative problem-solving capacity.
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What is the most effective framework for analyzing complex accountability challenges within governing networks? Recognizing the multiscale and intersector (public, private, and nonprofit) characteristics of these networks, an accountability model is advanced organized around democratic (elected representatives, citizens, and the legal system), market (owners and consumers), as well as administrative (bureaucratic, professional and collaborative) relationships. This concept draws from 2005 events following Hurricane Katrina. Multiple failures of governing networks to plan for and respond to Katrina include a breakdown in democratic, market, and administrative accountability as well as a pervasive confusion over trade-offs between accountability types emerging from crises. This essay offers several useful recommendations for emergency management planners as well as for those who teach and research.
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This paper outlines the elements of a pluralistic system of accountability with regard to one of the most ambitious institutional innovations in global governance: multisectoral public policy networks. These networks bring together the public sector (governments and international organizations), civil society and business around issues ranging from corruption, climate change and fighting malaria to environmental and labour standards. We argue that multisectoral networks should be embedded in a pluralistic system of accountability making use of a combination of accountability mechanisms on a number of dimensions (actors, process, outcomes). The paper discusses some of the key conceptual, empirical and practical challenges of a ‘learning model’ of accountability in networks.
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The February 2009 bushfires have prompted a debate with regard to contemporary arrangements for dealing with large-scale disasters. In this article, we seek to contribute to that debate by culling lessons learned from the literature on crisis and disaster management. We discuss what constitutes an effective disaster response system, we identify some key barriers to the effective functioning of such a system, and offer some suggestions for improvement. © 2010 The Authors Australian Journal of Public Administration © 2010 National Council of the Institute of Public Administration Australia.
Article
The search for scientific bases for confronting problems of social policy is bound to fail, becuase of the nature of these problems. They are wicked problems, whereas science has developed to deal with tame problems. Policy problems cannot be definitively described. Moreover, in a pluralistic society there is nothing like the undisputable public good; there is no objective definition of equity; policies that respond to social problems cannot be meaningfully correct or false; and it makes no sense to talk about optimal solutions to social problems unless severe qualifications are imposed first. Even worse, there are no solutions in the sense of definitive and objective answers.
Conference Paper
Video-based media spaces are designed to support casual interaction between intimate collaborators. Yet transmitting video is fraught with privacy concerns. Some researchers suggest that the video stream be filtered to mask out potentially sensitive ...
Chapter
In Social Capital, Nan Lin explains the importance of using social connections and social relations in achieving goals. Social capital, or resources accessed through such connections and relations, is critical (along with human capital, or what a person or organization actually possesses) to individuals, social groups, organizations, and communities in obtaining their objectives. This book places social capital in the family of capital theories (the classical and neo-capital theories), articulates its elements and propositions, presents research programs, findings, and agenda, and theorizes its significance in various moments of interactions between individual actions and social structure (for example, the primordial groups, social exchanges, organizations, institutional transformations and cybernetworks). Nan Lin eloquently introduces a groundbreaking theory that forcefully argues and shows why it is 'who you know', as well as 'what you know' that makes a difference in life and society.
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Extensive empirical evidence and theoretical developments in multiple disciplines stimulate a need to expand the range of rational choice models to be used as a foundation for the study of social dilemmas and collective action. After an introduction to the problem of overcoming social dilemmas through collective action, the remainder of this article is divided into six sections. The first briefly reviews the theoretical predictions of currently accepted rational choice theory related to social dilemmas. The second section summarizes the challenges to the sole reliance on a complete model of rationality presented by extensive experimental research. In the third section, I discuss two major empirical findings that begin to show how individuals achieve results that are "better than rational" by building conditions where reciprocity, reputation, and trust can help to overcome the strong temptations of short-run self-interest. The fourth section raises the possibility of developing second-generation models of rationality, the fifth section develops an initial theoretical scenario, and the final section concludes by examining the implications of placing reciprocity, reputation, and trust at the core of an empirically tested, behavioral theory of collective action.