Search results

The purpose of this paper is to explore the processes and complexities of community participation in a water supply project for the urban informal poor in Dhaka, Bangladesh.

This paper reviews the performance of a community-based water governance entitled Dushtha Shasthya Kendra Model. The Model includes the local urban poor community with the formal urban service providers in the process of water supply. Using a case study of Karail slum in Dhaka, the paper affirms the potential of community engagement for successful implementation of water supply project by the formal organizations.

The opportunity of community participation by the urban poor helps them to be engaged with the formal organizations. Community engagement not only offers them access to water supply but also ensure formal/legal existence in the city. Despite the fact, the community initiative in the slum faces huge locally situated political and socioeconomic challenges. Addressing these complexities with a proper management may still provide a successful community-based effort for water supply to the urban poor in the slums.

The paper presents a case study of water supply system for the informal poor. Water scarcity in the slum is a serious problem in Dhaka city, though the formal authorities often forget the issue during policy making and planning. This study certainly offers a better understanding of complexity and potentiality of community-based water governance, which may further ensure community participation as well as equal access to water by the urban poor.

This chapter addresses the following questions: To what extent do the socio-economic characteristics of circular/repeat migrants differ from the migrants who return permanently to the home country after their first trip (i.e. return migrants)? And, what determines each of these distinctive temporary migration forms? Using Albanian household survey data and both a multinomial logit model and a maximum simulated likelihood (MSL) probit with two sequential selection equations, we find that education, gender, age, geographical location and the return reasons from the first migration trip significantly affect the choice of migration form. Compared to return migrants, circular migrants are more likely to be male, have primary education and originate from rural, less developed areas. Moreover, return migration seems to be determined by family reasons, a failed migration attempt but also by the fulfilment of a savings target.

This paper aims to explore the determinants of the livelihoods of return migrant workers in Vietnam. The findings will help authorities updating their regulations on migration, thus grasping the economic benefit from documented but low-skilled return migrant workers.

The sample is collected when the COVID-19 pandemic hit the Vietnamese economy severely. The author considers six issues of income and employment, including total income, stable income, financial pressure experiences, unemployment, stable job and time to find a job. For this purpose, through a pre-structured questionnaire, the primary data is collected from 258 Vietnamese return migrant workers in various foreign countries. Notably, all respondents in the sample are documented but low-skilled return migrant workers. The author uses various empirical regression analyses to conclude that personal traits, family characteristics and their characteristics before and after migration play a critical role in determining the livelihood of migrants returning to Vietnam.

The author finds that personal traits, family characteristics and their characteristics before and after migration play a critical role in determining the livelihood of migrants returning to Vietnam.

The findings are critical for Vietnamese authorities in finalizing and updating their regulations on migration, thus grasping the economic benefit from documented but low-skilled return migrant workers.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is the first study to exploit the drivers of the livelihoods of return migrants in Vietnam, a rich, two-wave panel survey of respondents in Vietnam aimed at characterizing the history of migration of low-skilled and documented migrants back to Vietnam and to use these histories to gain insight into Vietnamese return migrants’ economic status, access to financial, welfare and health insurance benefits and employment prospects.

While there is evidence that return migration promotes entrepreneurship and self-employment of those who migrated, previous studies have not focused on whether migration provides the same benefits to individuals who did not migrate. Using a unique dataset that provides information on both current and return migrants in rural China (RUMiC), we investigate the impact of migration on entrepreneurship among individuals with no migration experience. We explore the self-employment choices of individuals who live in households with return migrants and individuals who live in households that have migrants currently in the city, comparing them with individuals living in non-migrant households. Our methodology allows us to control for the potential endogeneity between the migration and self-employment decisions. The results show that return migration promotes self-employment among household members who have not migrated. However, left-behind individuals are less likely to be self-employed when compared with those living in non-migrant households.

The paper reviews existing literature on South Asian ecosystem-based disaster risk reduction (DRR) and identifies how community participation can be used to plan and implement ecosystem-based DRR approaches.

The literature review methodology involved several stages. Firstly, the research objective was determined. Secondly keywords for the literature search were determined. Scopus, Google Scholar, JSTOR and AUT online library were utilized for the literature search. After the search, the literature was screened. The study design, methodology, results and limitations were identified and documented. After data extraction, the literature was analyzed. The patterns, trends and inconsistencies in the literature were identified based on the research question. Later the gaps, controversies and future research needs were identified. Then, a comprehensive and structured literature review that summarizes the relevant literature, synthesizes the findings and provides a critical evaluation of the literature was documented. After writing the document, it was reviewed and edited to ensure its clarity, accuracy and coherence.

The paper identifies four different themes recurrently emerging in literature on the importance of community participation in ecosystem-based DRR in South Asia. The themes are local community participation in ecosystem-based DRR governance, knowledge production, livelihood enhancement and increased public acceptance.

The paper also illustrates the challenges in integrating community participation with the dominant physical scientific approaches ecosystem-based DRR and proposes a five-element framework to facilitate the integration.

The European Union has pursued two contradictory policies over the last decade in response to the challenges of globalization. On the one hand, the EU has loosened borders to facilitate trade and make the EU more competitive globally. On the other hand, the EU has tightened borders to enhance its security, fearing the negative consequences of a globalized world. In this paper, I examine the effects of implementation of the EU's Schengen border regime, a set of rules governing external border control, on the post-communist countries and the difficulties that Schengen has posed for the governments in the region. I also discuss the EU's emerging European Neighborhood Policy (ENP), designed to address many of the concerns voiced by the Central and East European (CEE) officials regarding Schengen. An important element of ENP is to work across the EU external border to facilitate economic relations and develop joint institutions with non-members to create new cooperative borderlands.

Two images are frequently invoked with regard to the evolution of the EU. Certain scholars portray the organization as moving toward a new, post-modern, post-Westphalian entity comprising an increasingly borderless Europe. Other scholars view European integration as a process by which the EU is increasingly taking on the trappings and functions of the state to build a “Fortress Europe.” The discussion of Schengen and the eastern enlargement suggests a more complex reality than either of these two images in which borders are constantly shifting and whose functions are changing in response to the different challenges posed by globalization and internal developments. The EU's external borders will continue to change, both in terms of where they are located and how important these will be. Europe's ENP, with its emphasis on cross-border cooperation, is changing borders into borderlands, zones of cooperation and collaboration across a line on a map. Governance and the shaping of policy are increasingly taking place at multiple sites and with different kinds of actors, further transforming the importance of borders. Perhaps, a new vision of European integration is needed to capture the evolution of the EU.

The aim of this paper is to investigate the impact of exogenous shocks of remittances on consumption, investment, imports and output in five Mediterranean countries.

This paper builds a Keynesian type econometric model with a dynamic perspective and a sound theoretical basis. The model is used for estimating short and long‐run multipliers of remittances, through which the impact of remittances on growth and other key macroeconomic variables is estimated.

The analysis reveals a uniform country performance of instability and uncertainty, with great temporal and inter‐country fluctuations of remittance effects. The findings point to different inter‐country priorities of remittance spending and to an asymmetric impact of remittance changes, in the sense that the good done to growth by rising remittances is not as great as the harm done by falling remittances.

In this paper the purpose is to examine the demand side impact of remittances and uses remittances as an exogenous variable in the model. A more comprehensive approach would probably be to consider jointly supply side elements and handle remittances as an endogenous variable to estimate feedbacks.

The impacting shock of an increase or a drop of remittances is found not to be instantaneous, but is distributed over time smoothing out its effects on growth. This gives time for relevant policies to be adopted in case of emergencies in the remittance flows. The findings show that economies are weakly sheltered against the damaging impact of falling remittances. Consequently, countries with high remittances should be seriously taking them into consideration as a major pillar in planning a strategy for an overall development. Policy makers may carefully consider remittance induced imports, not necessarily to reduce them and turn them to domestic production, which may be inflationary, but to reshuffle them towards imports of investment goods.

The value of this paper and its novelty is first, its methodological approach to build a new econometric model, based on a sound theoretical basis, for estimating the dynamic impact of remittances simultaneously on key macroeconomic variables; and second, the capability of the model to pinpoint similarities and divergences of remittance effects across countries and over time.

Using the holistic approach to migrant exclusion, the purpose of this paper is to examine the refugee crisis as a preparation stage for future exclusion in the host countries. In previous migration analyses, the preparation stage involved only the country of origin, where people were becoming acclimatized to casual and low-status work and an ethos of survival. In the refugee crisis, this important stage spans across three spaces: the country of origin, Turkey as an intermediate stage and the hotspots of Greece.

This is a qualitative research that was based on 22 semi-structured interviews with refugees from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan who live in the hotspot of Moria which is situated in Lesvos, Greece.

The research shows that in the first two countries of the preparation stage, refugees have become accustomed to casual and low-status jobs, which results in the loss of their labor identity and the development of instrumental work orientations. Similarly, the living conditions at the hotspots are so problematic that refugees are becoming desperate to escape this environment. These can have serious consequences for integration in the host countries, as refugees become pacified and at the same time strongly inclined to enter casual and low-status employment. Both developments can drastically undermine the refugees’ relation to the societies of the host countries.

The paper suggests that, given the preparation stage in these three settings, migration policy in the host countries should focus on recognizing long marginalization processes, immediately decongesting the hotspots and pay particular emphasis on the acknowledgment or creation of skills that can distance refugees from casual and low-status work.

The purpose of this paper is to provide further insights into understanding the finance‐growth nexus by verifying the hypothesis that financial development promotes economic growth through its capacity to attract increased international migrant remittances to Ghana.

A dynamic equilibrium‐correction mechanism model for the period 1987(3)‐2007(4) was estimated following the Johansen cointegration procedure. This approach produced maximum likelihood estimators of the unconstrained cointegrating vector, and suggested the number of cointegrating vectors without relying on an arbitrary normalization.

The findings reveal two stylized facts with reference to Ghana. First, although financial development Granger‐causes international migrant remittance inflows, it is in itself directly detrimental to endogenous growth. Second, international migrant remittance inflows are statistically significant in explaining variations in endogenous growth in the short run as well as in the long run.

Since directly, financial development hampers endogenous growth, but Granger‐causes increased inflows of migrant remittances, and these remittances impact positively but marginally on endogenous growth, it follows that the sequencing of implementing Ghana's financial reform programmes should be re‐examined, whilst an enabling environment is created to induce Ghanaians living abroad to remit home through official channels.

International migrant remittances were found to be statistically significant in promoting endogenous growth, albeit marginally. Financial development does not directly engender growth, unless it succeeds in attracting non‐debt foreign capital in the form of remittances through the formal sector. Financial development causes migrant remittance inflows which impact positively on growth.

The role of local authorities is crucial in addressing the essential needs of communities, and they possess the right to impose property taxes on all properties within their territory. Property taxes are levied on all properties, contributing to approximately 60% of the local authority’s finances. However, their role in this policy is not frequently understood, primarily in executing property tax reassessment. Hence, this paper aims to reveal property tax reassessment implementation and identify its key challenges.

The latest tone of the list record was extracted from the local government division, Ministry of Housing and Local Government Malaysia, to answer the research objective. The data were received on November 2021 by email. Furthermore, through the literature review, the most significant challenges in property tax reassessment were identified, compared and presented.

The results highlight that property tax reassessment implementation in West Malaysia is at the level of concern where only two councils have the latest tone of the list. However, larger councils have a higher performance compared to smaller councils. The findings also reveal various challenges in property tax reassessment, such as insufficient human resources, inadequate property systems and software and lack of financial capacity. Others include a shortage of competent assessors, lower public education, political interference and socioeconomic uncertainty.

This study offers practical implications to policy and decision-makers in the West Malaysian local authorities. Despite inferior performance by West Malaysian local authorities, there is a need for conducting property tax reassessment activity to ensure the quality and uniformity of the assessment. This study suggests that local government stakeholders and managers should devote more attention to formulating long-term plans and promoting the property tax reassessment practice. The property tax reform could solve the current situation of substandard reassessment activity.

This study explains, compares and interprets the actual statistical data through the figures and summarises the challenges of property tax reassessment activity among local authorities.