志成 2/24/2007

Time: 2/24/2007, 2-5pm
Place: UTC 3.102
Speaker: Almond Meng (蒙志成), Department of Government
Host: Cheng-Fu Chen

Help Hindering? The Political Economy of Migrant Remittances Flows to Developing Democracies

This paper proposes to investigate the relative agenda-the impacts of migrant remittances on recipient countries’ politics and economic development. In practice, the study of the impact of remittances has never been more important than it is today. Migrant remittances are the crucial issues that accompany the mobility of migrant labors to many labor-outflow countries. According to the United Nations’ (2002) statistics, migrant remittances in developing countries have played the second-largest source of capital inflows, just behind the FDI. Moreover, a lack of research on migrant remittances has created the theoretical gap. Although migrant remittance is recognized by international financial institutions (IFIs), such as World Bank and IMF, and many development scholars, most of their revealed optimistic perspectives to development are unfounded. The key problem with current research on remittances is that researchers rarely pay attention to the impact that remittances have on politics. Within contemporary theoretical perspective, little study conveys how the substantial remittances affect recipient countries’ democratic ruling and constituents’ political attitudes as well. There is no study working on investigating how the regional or international political economy influence recipient countries’ governance and citizen’s ideas toward democracy through the inflows of remittances.

The objective of the paper is four-fold: to examine whether more inflows of remittances reduce citizens’ willingness of voicing dissent through political channels; to investigate whether more inflows of remittances result in defection of recipient governments’ accountability; to explore whether more inflows of remittances assimilate the citizens’ ideas towards democracy to the emigrant destination countries; and to analyze whether and how more inflows of remittances along with relative actors’ expectation retard the other external capital inflows thereby influencing recipient countries’ macroeconomic and socioeconomic development.

The time-series cross-sectional (TSCS) analysis of global data, vector autoregression (VAR) and spatial econometrics estimation will be conducted to test a series of hypotheses related to the paper’s objectives across 153 developing countries over 1980 to 2003. The results will provide insight into the real-world effects correlated to the dramatic increases of remittances within developing countries during the era of globalization.

Chat room topic: 留與歸 It's either this way or that way...

Happy New Year from Jimmy at Spain

Dear Friends,

I didn't tell all of you about my recent status. Yes, I'm still at Intel and travel a lot. Even today is the Chinese New Year, I'm still in a conference room at Spain. By the way, after this email is sent out, Christine, Chia-chien and I are heading to London for the New Year vacation. Before this, we staid at the Malaga, Spain for a whole week. The Hotel is next to the beach, yes, it's the Mediterranean. And Attachemt are the photo, we went to the Mijas, a small white town.

To Tienming,
I still don't have a chance to Chicago. By the way, maybe in the middle of March, and we don't know what's happen in Intel. Maybe I'll be in the other side of the Mediterranean, Isreal. Who knows.

Happy New Year,
Christine, Chia-chien, and Jimmy

維瑄 02/10/07

Time: Saturday (02/10) 2PM
Location: Park
Speaker: Wei-Hsuan Serena Wang
Topic: Exploring the Fascination of Cross-Cultural Psychology
Taiwan Chatting Room: Me and You and Our Cross-Cultural Experiences
Host: Hsiangyun

Wei-Hsuan (Serena) Wang, a doctoral student in the Area of Human Development and Education, Department of Educational Psychology. I am highly interested in cultural and cross-cultural studies in Psychology. I also love watching Food Channel, especially Emril's show!

Exploring the Fascination of Cross-Cultural Psychology

Introduction:

"Like the fish that is unaware of water until it has left the water, people often take their own community's ways of going things for granted." – Barbara Rogoff

Do you still remember the cultural shock you had experienced when you first stepped onto the land of the U.S.? Have you ever pondered that how your cross-cultural experiences of studying abroad has influenced your way of thinking, perceiving, and behaving? Have you ever thought that each individual is actually the product of culturally-shaping process? We are just like the fish which has left the original water (Taiwan) and have immersed into another different water region (U.S.)., and culture is like the water or lens which affect the ways we view and evaluate the world.

In this talk, I will try to bring you to explore the fascination of cross-cultural psychology. I'll talk about some basic ideas of cross-cultural psychology, the relation between cultural background and the formation of self-concept, and the application of cross-cultural psychology to the real life.

Taiwan Chatting Room

I suggest the two following topics concerning the cross-cultural issues:

a) Taiwanese students' cross-cultural adaptation – Sharing your own experiences and your observation of other Taiwanese students.

b) Multicultural education in Taiwan – Please refer to the attachment which is a piece of interesting news from China Times in this January, regarding foreign spouses and their children's educational issues in Taiwan. I got this news when I was back to Taiwan in January and thought it can be a facilitating material for our chatting room.

Winter 06 Graduations

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