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Any discussion of Chinese Buddhist diaspora communities in Canada must account for the broader context within which they have been subsumed. To a great extent the timing and nature of Chinese Buddhist activity in Canada was determined by a legacy of racism and harsh immigration laws that were not fully reformed until the late 1960s. The first significant flow of Chinese migration to Canada began in the mid-19th century, commencing with gold rushes in California and British Columbia during the 1850s. Following this, construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway (1881–1885), spanning a distance of approximately 4,700km between Montréal, Québec, and Port Moody, British Columbia, provided the impetus for a subsequent wave of Chinese migration for the purpose of providing rail construction labor on Canada’s west coast. Despite the presence of significant numbers of Chinese in Canada, there is very little evidence of Chinese Buddhist practice and certainly practice within institutional settings prior to the 20th century. Nineteenth-century Chinese religious activity, such as it was, took place in the context of centers serving as clan shrines with altars dedicated to local deities linked to clan home regions. Buddhist figures mixed with popular deities were associated with clan rituals informed by a cyclical calendar of rites. Development of the critical social mass needed for support of Buddhist temples and centers was severely curtailed by an absence of a basic supporting family structure, as the Chinese population was virtually all male through 1885. Subsequent modest population gains made in the first decades of the 20th century were reversed with passage of the Chinese Immigration Act of 1923. Historically, Chinese religious activity has had a strong public dimension that includes public, and often outdoor, festivals. This, combined with the distinct appearance associated with Buddhist architecture, would make Chinese Buddhist communities’ institutions and practices conspicuous during times when they were viewed with widespread hostility. Relegated to “Chinatowns,” there was little support for building Buddhist institutions and every reason not to make such conspicuous and dangerous cultural gestures. Following World War II, and coincident with the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights, to which Canada was a signatory, things began to change for the better. In 1947 the Chinese were finally able to vote, though immigration legislation remained deeply racist. In 1967 Canada’s Liberal government under Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau (1919–2000) inaugurated the point system, permitting people to qualify for landed immigrant status without reference to their particular country of origin. In the same year this change was made the community roots of the first Chinese Buddhist institutions were established in Vancouver and Toronto. Major development of Buddhist institutions did not begin to gain any real momentum until the mid-1980s, with a significant increase in Chinese migration from Hong Kong. This accelerated as the 1997 handover of Hong Kong from Britain to the People’s Republic of China (PRC) drew closer. Significant social networks and an increase in economic resources finally made the purchase of land and the construction of Chinese Buddhist temples a reality. Canada’s demographics underwent a dramatic transformation as European migration that had peaked in the mid- to late 1970s was equaled and then eclipsed by migration from East Asia. In Canada, Pure Land Buddhist organizations such as Ling Yen Mountain Temple and Gold Buddha Monastery, with roots in Taiwan and the United States, and International Buddhist Temple, with roots principally in Hong Kong, led the way in the emergence of Chinese Buddhist diaspora communities. Through the 1990s Taiwan-based Dharma Drum Mountain, which provides both Pure Land ceremonies and Chan teaching, established itself in Vancouver, as did Tung in Kok Yuen, an organization originating in Hong Kong. A significant increase in PRC migration, concentrated in Montréal, Toronto, and Vancouver, did not bring with it any significant institutional ties, but the new immigrant population did provide a constituency from which temples could draw new members, though they competed in this regard with Christian churches. Through the early 21st century Chinese migration numbers have remained robust, and Chinese Buddhist communities in many cases continue to consolidate and grow with deepening and expanding local community roots and increasingly strong international ties and outreach.

The 2000 census counted 3,406,178 Puerto Ricans living in the United States, bringing the total for those living in Puerto Rico and the United States to 7,333,403 million (U.S. Bureau of Census. (2000). Overview of race and Hispanic origin. We the people: Hispanics in the United States. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office). The label “Puerto Rican” is not a race but a self-identifier. A Puerto Rican might be born in Puerto Rico or in the United States from Puerto Rican parents. A Puerto Rican might be first-, second-, third-, or even fourth-generation in the Unites States or 20th-generation in Puerto Rico. As long as they identify themselves as Puerto Rican, they are Puerto Rican. The label Puerto Rican has many different connotations to both Puerto Ricans and non–Puerto Ricans. For the purpose of this entry, Puerto Ricans, whether born in Puerto Rico or in the United States, are defined as a multiracial and multicultural ethnic group with more than 500 years of history. The discussion in this entry provides a brief overview; for more in-depth reviews please see the following references: (Anderson, R. W. (1965). Party politics in Puerto Rico. Stanmford, CA: Stanford University Press.; Fitzpatrick, J. P. (1987). Puerto Rican Americans: The meaning of migration to the mainland (2nd ed.). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall; Lewis, G. K. (1963). Puerto Rico: Freedom and power in the Caribbean. New York: Harper & Row; Morales. (1986). Puerto Rican poverty and migration: We just have to try elsewhere. New York: Praeger).

Internally displaced people (IDPs)—those involuntarily uprooted but remaining within their nation's borders—now greatly outnumber refugees, who are similarly uprooted but in their search for refuge cross an international border. For protection and assistance, IDPs are dependent on their national governments. In cases of displacement because of natural disasters or large-scale development projects, governments may be able and willing to help or to invite the international community to assist. People displaced by conflicts are often the most vulnerable, when national governments are unwilling or unable to help. The global IDP crisis, also understood as a traumatic incident of geopolitical dislocation, is one that can use the skills of social workers at all levels.

Japan established a protectorate in 1905 and annexed Korea in 1910. The colonial occupation officially lasted thirty-five years, until the atomic bombs dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima precipitated the end of World War II on August 15, 1945. The Government-General of Korea administrated the colony’s affairs and enforced many laws and regulations from Japan. Yet the Japanese also made significant legal modifications that allowed for stricter censorship and control of the colony. In principle, the Government-General had absolute authority over Korea and was only accountable to the Japanese emperor rather than the Imperial Diet under the Meiji Constitution. However, in practice the Government-General was not completely independent because of the need to file reports and receive financial subsidies from the Imperial Diet. The considerable autonomy of the Government-General to enact its own legal provisions may be important to keep in mind to understand how colonial Korea was an authoritarian system that operated separately from the Meiji Constitutional order. Korea underwent a major transition from an agrarian society to the beginnings of an industrial society during the colonial period. Many historical accounts tend to portray the colonial administration as an omnipotent force, but the Japanese faced considerable limitations and challenges in ruling the colony. Korea gradually became integrated into an autarkic economic block along with Manchuria that formed the basis for Japan’s East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. However, political integration remained a controversial topic that was never resolved before 1945. The Japanese enforced numerous policies to mobilize the colonial population for World War II. Yet even as Koreans marched into the battlefront and served labor duty in the factories, basic political rights continued to be denied. Many of today’s tensions between Korea and Japan stem from the unresolved historical controversies from the colonial period.

Asian-Latin American literature is a heterogeneous body of writing by Latin American authors of Asian ancestry who identify themselves as Asian immigrants or as descendants of Asian immigrants. There are no formal differences between Asian-Latin American literature and other literature from Latin America. The main differences reside instead in content, such as the representation of Asianness, as Asian-Latin American authors tend to avoid or challenge Orientalist or other stereotypes, offering instead more authentic renderings of the Asian-Latin American experience. A second characteristic is their tendency to express filial piety in their writings more recurrently than other authors. Third, Asian-Latin American literature often leans toward autoethnography, offering cultural translations for readers who are unfamiliar with Asian or Asian-Latin American cultures. Fourth, while some authors of no Asian descent also denounce the abuses committed against Asian communities in the past, such denunciations s areeven more common among Asian-Latin American authors. But what is truly unique to Asian-Latin American literature in this regard is the fact that at times it also denounces the racism of Asian immigrants against the local population, which at times is considered inferior, as well as intra-ethnic discrimination, such as that of Naichijin (mainland Japanese) against Okinawans or that of Asian immigrants against the descendants of Asian immigrants, particularly if they are of mixed race or unfamiliar with the customs and language of their ancestral land. The fifth commonality is the seemingly contradictory propensity to celebrate cultural differences while concomitantly claiming their belonging to the Latin American nation that hosted them or their ancestors. Sixth, (semi-)autobiographical writing abounds. Seventh, Asian-Latin American often reflects the uninterrupted contact with the sending communities in Asia, via mail, remittances or voyages back to the birthplace to visit relatives or find a wife. And one last idiosyncrasy is that it is, for the most part, relatively recent. Whereas Asian-Latin American literature cannot be considered “exile literature,” part of it is genuine “migration literature,” since several authors are immigrants who write about their immigration experiences. Sometimes, part of the narrative is set in the host Latin American country, while other times, they are set in the native Asian country. Both lyrical and narrative texts tend to chronicle or evoke the migration process itself. Because it is, for the most part, written by descendants of Asian immigrants, diasporic narratives are even more common than migration literature. Diasporic narratives are typically set in the Latin American country, and family sagas are common. Unlike characters in migration narratives, the ones in diasporic narratives typically do not long for a return to the fatherland. And while some migration literature is written in Asian languages, diasporic cultural production is written mostly in Spanish or Portuguese, even if it often incorporates words from Asian languages, mainly to give an impression of cultural authenticity or to underscore pride in cultural difference. While not necessarily absent, the sense of alienation is less pervasive in diasporic narratives than in migration literature since characters tend to be more culturally integrated into mainstream society.

Arabic-speaking migrants from the Ottoman Empire embarked on mass migrations across the Atlantic in the late 19th century. Large numbers traded and settled in the Caribbean region, forming the nucleus of communities that still thrive in the early 21st century. Although underplayed in the existing historical literature on the Caribbean and modern Middle East, these Caribbean migrations were a vital part of the creation of an Arab diaspora across the Americas. In the early years of emigration out of the Ottoman Empire, mostly Christian Arabs utilized their preexisting trading bases in the ports of Western Europe to launch new exploratory ventures across the Atlantic. In many cases, the Caribbean islands were their first ports of call where they found ideal conditions for peddling small consumer goods they imported from Europe and North America. From these initial bases, they fanned out across the region, often using the Caribbean islands as stepping stones toward ventures on the mainland. A pattern developed whereby migrants sought out boomtowns around the Caribbean region where fast-expanding export economies (particularly in bananas and sugar) offered lucrative opportunities for peddlers and small-scale retailers. In cities like San Pedro Sula (Honduras), San Pedro de Macorís (Dominican Republic), and Barranquilla (Colombia), Arab traders played central roles in the rapid growth of the local economy. Taken collectively, these case studies speak of an “Arab Caribbean”—a regional sphere of migration and trade that transcended national boundaries, encompassing both the islands and the Caribbean coasts of Mexico, Central America, and South America. Despite their frequent persecution in their new places of residence, Arab migrants in the Caribbean proved remarkably resilient, utilizing their region-wide networks to regroup and adapt to the changing economic and political landscape.

While the first Muslims in northern Mexico were migrants from the Levant in the early 20th century, since 2010 the number of Muslims living in northern Mexico, particularly the borderlands, has grown rapidly. This is especially true in northern Baja California, where Mexican converts to Islam aid Muslim migrants from the Middle East, Africa, and Central Asia who make their way to the city of Tijuana in hopes of claiming asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border. The first musallas (places of prayer) were built in the border cities of Tijuana and Rosarito in the 2010s, and they serve diverse communities of Muslims. As Muslim migrants continue to make their way to northern Baja California, the forces of the U.S.-Mexico border shape the emergence of this religious community in a variety of ways. In striving to live a coherent Muslim life, Muslims in this region of Mexico navigate life in a country where few people know about Islam in addition to multiple layers of border security and surveillance developed as part of the U.S. war on terror. While Muslims in the greater Tijuana area come from all over the world, they have recourse to the Islamic discursive tradition in building community together and as a way of making sense of life in a border zone.

The Canaries were the only Macaronesian archipelago to have had a stable population before the European expansion in the Atlantic in the late Middle Ages. North African indigenous populations occupied the Canary Islands in the first centuries of the 1st millennium ce and formed island communities whose historical definition amalgamates traditions from their continental origin, local adaptations, and the social dynamics generated by periods of isolation, yet also includes occasional migratory events that affected some of the islands. This shaped populations with a particular development in each part of the archipelago that is manifested in different archaeological expressions. Thus, while some traits can be regarded as held in common, such as the agropastoral resources on which subsistence depended and certain domestic models and funerary practices, other materialities reflect autonomous sociocultural processes. The European conquest and colonization of the Canary Islands in the 15th century led to the sudden disappearance of those Insulo-Amazigh cultures, even though a few aspects have survived, such as some traditions, linguistic elements, foodstuffs, and a genetic footprint that can still be identified in the modern Canary population.

Migration and health are intimately connected. It is known that migrants tend to be healthier than non-migrants. However, the mechanisms for this association are elusive. On the one hand, the costs of migration are lower for healthier people, thereby making it easier for the healthy to migrate. Empirical evidence from a variety of contexts shows that the pre-migration health of migrants is better than it is for non-migrants, indicating that there is positive health-based selection in migration. On the other hand, locations can be viewed as a bundle of traits including but not limited to environmental conditions, healthcare quality, and violence. Each of these can impact health. Evidence shows that moving from locations with high mortality to low mortality can reduce mortality risks. Consistent with this, migration can increase mortality risk if it leads to greater exposure to risk factors for disease. The health benefits enjoyed by migrants can also be found in their children. However, these advantages erode with successive generations.

The 1969 conflict between Honduras and El Salvador signaled the weakening of the Central American economic integration process; marked an end to an era of economic growth, industrialization, and political openness; and inaugurated a new chapter, characterized by growing political polarization and violence. There is a prevailing consensus about the significance that this conflict had as a breaking point and historical turnaround. The roots of the crisis between both states, commercial partners and members of a regional political-military alliance, lie in the drastic changes introduced by the Honduran government in its migratory and agrarian policies. These changes sought to contain the massive migration from El Salvador and to reduce by all means necessary, including by violent dispossession, the Salvadoran presence in Honduras. A ferocious anti-Salvadoran media campaign preceded and accompanied the massive expulsion of Salvadorans. Alarmed by the destabilizing effect that a return en masse of poor Salvadoran peasants could bring to the country, and facing an intransigent Honduran government, the leadership in El Salvador decided to resolve the conflict through war. Once this began, both countries mobilized their military forces for over one hundred hours of bloody fighting in July 1969. Although neither country won a decisive victory on the battlefield, at the moment the ceasefire was imposed the military situation amply favored El Salvador. The political, economic, military, and diplomatic consequences of the war had a profound impact during the 1970s and beyond the signing of the peace agreement early in the 1980s. On the one hand, the recounting of the war, full of falsifications and half-truths, continues to play an important role in Honduran nationalism. On the other hand, for Salvadorans the war is an almost forgotten memory.

The Republic of Mali comprises a very diverse population spread over a vast territory composed of a large part of the southern Sahara, the Sahel, and the savannah. One of the world’s great rivers, the Niger, runs through much of the national territory, reaching its northern apex near Timbuktu. For over a millennium, this territory has allowed empires and kingdoms to flourish alongside decentralized societies. These include the empires of Ghana, Mali and Songhay, as well as any number of smaller states, trading diasporas, and nomadic and semi-nomadic communities. The territory of Mali has long been a hub in African commercial and intellectual circuits, notably those linking the societies of the Maghreb (or North Africa) to those bordering the Atlantic. In the 19th century, as elsewhere in Muslim Africa, new and explicitly Islamic states emerged in western and central Mali. They did not endure more than a few decades, as the territory was colonized by France in the late 19th century. The Republic of Mali claimed its independence in 1960 and rapidly developed greater autonomy from French neo-colonialism than did most of its neighbors. Mali has maintained an out-sized diplomatic and cultural role on the African continent and beyond under a socialist government from 1960 to 1968, military government through 1991, and a vibrant democracy in the decades since. However, since 2011, the country has been increasingly beset by violent conflicts between nonstate actors, the national government, and foreign forces including the French. Thus, in historical perspective, Mali’s geographic position and its environment have proven conducive to the production of expansive, diverse, and mutually dependent communities that have produced radically distinct and often fragile states.

Islam in the Scandinavian countries—Denmark, Norway, and Sweden—has a long history. There are evidences of contacts between Scandinavia and the Muslim world at least since the Middle Ages. The presence of Muslims in Scandinavia is however of a later date and more established from the 1950s, when immigrants arrived, mainly due to the needs in the labor markets; they successively established congregations and mosques, as they realized that they were to stay in their new countries. Following this period, Muslim migrants have arrived due to geopolitical factors, such as war, which have increased the number of Muslims and their presence and visibility in public space and public debate, which in turn has affected the media image of Islam and Muslims and influenced research. The research on Islam and Muslims has a long history in Scandinavia as well. With the increase of Muslim inhabitants in Scandinavian countries, scholarly interests have also related more to the present and to the study of their own Muslim populations, as well as case studies related to Islamophobia, media images, Muslims in the school systems and labor market, and specific incidents, such as the cartoon crisis and its aftermath.

Millions of Indians migrated internally within the British Empire during the 19th and 20th centuries. While some migrated as labor migrants, many others did so as merchants and other businesspeople. By the start of World War II, more than 200,000 Indians worked in trade outside of India. These merchants played key roles in the British Empire within India and the larger Indian Ocean economy. Several conditions facilitated and perhaps caused Indian merchant migration within the British Empire. First, precolonial Indian commerce continued and adapted to imperial trade patterns. Second, within India, British rule lowered transaction costs and opened markets. Third, British rule brought preferential access to British colonies outside India, access that was denied to merchants from outside the British Empire. Internal merchant migration within India shows the importance of distinct religious, caste, and linguistic groups, many of which were active before British control. Gujarati-speaking merchant migrants and Parsis were bulwarks of Bombay’s commercial class. Specific merchant communities migrated within trading networks across India as railroads connected the subcontinent. Outside India, merchants—often from these same groups—accompanied British expansion in Asia and Africa. In Burma and Malaya, Chettiars from the south formed banking and trading networks that tied these colonies closer to the Indian economy. Chettiar finance was crucial in the development of industry in both Burma and Malaya. Indian businesspeople dominated commerce in East Africa and played key roles in commerce. Indian businesses in Uganda developed local commercial agriculture and industry, and Indians in South Africa played a large role in commerce before legal restrictions reduced their involvement. Distant colonies in which indentureship was the dominant form of migration experienced a transition from labor to trade, with merchant migration playing a smaller role. These colonies do not fit the pattern of merchant migration seen in India and the larger Indian Ocean economy, but they illustrate the role of Indian tradespeople outside India.

Between 1919 and 1929, Clements Musa Kadalie rose to worldwide fame as secretary of the Industrial and Commercial Workers’ Union of Africa (ICU). Under his leadership, the ICU transformed Southern Africa’s labor movement. Organizing black railway, dock and factory workers, miners, domestic servants, and farm laborers across South Africa, South West Africa (modern-day Namibia), Basutoland (Lesotho), and Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) into “One Big Union,” the ICU led a number of strikes, challenged pass laws and unionized anywhere between 100,000 and 250,000 members. Over six foot tall and always dressed in an immaculate suit, Kadalie regularly addressed mass meetings of thousands of people across rural and urban South Africa. Kadalie was born in Chifira, Tongaland, British Central Africa Protectorate (modern-day Malawi) around 1895. After being expelled from the local mission school, he migrated via Southern Rhodesia to South Africa. He was elected as the ICU’s secretary at its first meeting. The ICU took a leading role in the 1919 Cape Town dock strike and won wage increases for dock workers in 1920. By 1925, the trade union had over 50 branches across Southern Africa and a widely circulating newspaper, The Workers’ Herald. In 1927, Kadalie toured Europe, calling on the international labor movement to campaign against a raft of repressive legislation. Amid fractious internal disputes, however, Kadalie’s “czarlike” character, frivolous expenditure and “foreign” birth were publicly denounced by rivals, and the financial contributions of ICU members collapsed. Kadalie led a breakaway Independent ICU from February 1929 and called a general strike in East London in January 1930. He passed away on November 28, 1951, leaving a complicated legacy. The ICU’s radical rhetoric and mass mobilization, nevertheless, demonstrated both the possibility and necessity of organizing black workers and inspired black leaders across the world for decades to come.

Human population movements have throughout history balanced social obligations with vocational or entrepreneurial activities, with all practices heavily influenced by patterns of human and physical geography. West Africa’s particular shape and location on the Earth’s surface create special conditions for human mobility. West Africafeatures a complex system of human population movements ranging from temporary labor migration to herder mobility, apprenticeships, and other mostly urban-based work opportunities. Demographers, historians, geographers, and others have studied these movements and have worked to correlate them with underlying patterns of precipitation, food sufficiency, economic opportunity, and household dynamics. Understanding the complexities of human population movements in the region provides a window into not only diverse cultures but also the ways these communities have remained resilient in the face of periodic food-security crises. Often the ways outsiders view population movements in West Africa is biased toward the Western-style permanent move, where a job seeker cuts ties with her former home and sets up housekeeping someplace entirely new—a pattern only rarely encountered on the continent of Africa. The region known as the Sahel features a temperature and precipitation regime characterized by an extremely seasonal and unimodal distribution of rainfall that creates starkly delimited wet and dry seasons. Climate is a well-known feature of the Sahelian West African region, with influence on all aspects of life. In the Sahel, there is only one rainfed cropping season, leaving a “dead season” of six months or more when rainfed cropping is impracticable. Rainfed agricultural production is prey to the vicissitudes of the weather, and on-farm investments often reflect drought risk. Precipitation corresponds to the movement of the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ), an area of contact between air masses north and south of the equator that follows the high-sun season throughout the year. The northernmost extent of the ITCZ brings needed precipitation to the Sahelian zone but is unreliable. Agricultural conditions are satisfactory in approximately four out of every five years, but there is a propensity toward drought (or in the other extreme case, flooding) on a regular though indeterminate basis. In response to this climate and environmental context, humans in the West African region have adapted in multiple ways to use rainfed agriculture when practicable and spread assets among livestock, cropping, and social network investments that often span considerable distances. In order to understand the complex interplay of place characteristics and human practices, typologies of movements are helpful. In anthropological fieldwork on mobility among the Hausa people of southern Niger and northern Nigeria, Harold Olofson identified twenty-five emic (or locally defined) categories of spatial movement, all but one of which were circular in nature. In a cosmological view of mobility, destinations are frequently indeterminate, and little qualitative distinction exists between yawon ganin gari (walk of seeing the town) and yawon ganin duniya (walk of seeing the world). In other words, there is not much difference between stepping a few yards from one’s door and traveling hundreds of miles away. Perhaps the differences between short- and long-term mobility are governed by cultural norms and economic logic, but particular decisions to move are difficult to quantify due to the flexibility of the practice. Of all the intriguingly interlocking explanations for West Africa’s complex patterns of human migration—environmental, sociopolitical, economic—perhaps the most compelling ones see a kind of pocketbook rationality in their sometimes erratic-appearing moves, from one rural farming setting to another, or living half the year in a nearby city, or traveling from market town to market town in a serpentine pattern reflecting the varied landscapes of the region, so heavily flavored by precipitation. Destinations for movements can be markets, through-points, or friends in a social grouping who could be a key link in a time of emergency, when any contact however indirect could come in handy during a drought. Westerners who view migration as a permanent move with cut ties to the home region, or who are blinded by their survey instruments, will miss the complexities of entire cultural systems organized across sometimes-great distances, with some of the movements over a millennium old. Some balanced place and network investments in transcontinental trade routes to the Maghreb or to the Guinea (gold, ivory, or slave) Coast. In the city of Maradi, a city of approximately three hundred thousand in southern Niger along the border with Nigeria, mobilities practiced by itinerant sellers became more attuned to market opportunities during the colonial period. Having a detailed understanding of all mobilities practiced by women, men, or children helps shed light on the social cohesion and resilience, expressed geographically through asset-spreading, complex social networks based on gifts and reciprocal sharing (such as would take place at a wedding or naming ceremony), and reliance on information—particularly meteorological and market information—to allow people to make informed household decisions.

Africa turned the corner of marginalization in international affairs at the beginning of the 21st century. The end of the Cold War and global shifts in power toward the end of the previous century were closely followed by “Africa rising.” This contrasted previous decades-long narratives of a hopeless, war-ravaged, and plague-ridden continent. The Africa rising mantra followed reforms implemented in the late 1980s and early 1990s that improved institutional capacities and established African countries on firm business, economic, and political trajectories. This promised improved business environment, economic vitality, and positive democratic outlook. Africa has thus become important to major powers. They court it for its support to govern challenges that necessitate international cooperation and to enhance the major powers’ influence in global institutions and on the world. Rising Asian economies such as China and India compete for Africa’s natural resources against traditional global powers like the European Union (EU). The EU has long been economically and politically involved with Africa and has generally dominated these relations. Leading theories, discussions, and research that examine the historic, economic, and geopolitical factors at play in the evolution of African Union (AU)-EU relations suggest that elements of dependency are a calculated creation of colonialism and encounters that occurred between Africa and Europe before the advent of colonialism. Dependency continues to characterize these relations, as shown by formal AU-EU pacts. Decolonial scholars argue that the dependency is real, as Africa did not demolish colonial structures at independence. Some critical scholars further argue that the history of colonialism is also pertinent to the history of the EU in that the history of European integration was partly influenced by the history of colonialism. That is, the history of colonialism contributed to the political creation of the EU, and attempts by Western European countries to form a pan-European organization coincided with early 20th-century efforts to stabilize colonialism in Africa. The European countries could only efficiently exploit Africa by combining their political and economic capacities. AU-EU relations face many challenges in the 21st century. Influence in the relations is predominately unidirectional, with the EU determining the terms of engagement even on issues peculiar to Africa or the AU and where the latter appears to have the upper hand. The challenges show that the AU and EU are interdependent, but the onus is on the AU to set priorities right and enhance capabilities for engaging the EU. This would be easier if the EU were not continuously devising ways to maintain its dominance in the “partnership.” An overarching challenge in the partnership, therefore, is finding common ground and leveling the playing field.

From the countryside to the city, from the city to foreign lands, people who challenge heteronormative notions of gender and sexual practices have left their place of origin in search for freedom of expression for ages. Despite this, it was only in the late 1980s to early 1990s that migration studies scholars started to look at the role of sexuality within migratory patterns, probably due to historical facts such as the civil rights movements, new trends within feminism (i.e., Third World feminism), the birth of fields that spur on intersectional approaches (such as cultural and LGBTQ studies), and most importantly, the AIDS pandemic and the way it “traveled” around the world, particularly affecting sexual and racial minorities. Whereas exile is often understood as a legal or political category, sexile may come detached from official institutions and yet still imply an individual’s undesired uprooting from his or her nation state. Building on the scholarship of David William Foster, Arnaldo Cruz-Malavé, José Quiroga, and others, Puerto Rican academic and author Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes was the first to put into circulation the implications of sexual practices and identities for migratory patterns within Latin American literary studies. But it was Puerto Rican sociologist Manolo Guzmán who coined the neologism “sexile” to refer to emigration caused by one’s sexual orientation. While the practice is, in a sense, a timeless and global phenomenon, it is more common for residents of the Caribbean due to the region’s colonial history. The effects of extended colonialism and its constant cultural contact with previous colonizing empires, as well as neocolonialist socio-economic structures in place at present and common to the geographical zone as a whole, make its development differ from that of other Latin American countries, which obtained independence in the early 19th century. Thus, many of its inhabitants look to move to places such as the United States or Spain, which have commonly influenced their sexual imaginaries, seeking a friendlier environment than that of a region contestably referred to as one of the most homophobic places on earth.

Massive migration both within and between countries has been witnessed over the last two centuries. Migration is a multifaceted event with significant socioeconomic, cultural, political consequences for both receiving and sending countries/regions. Migrants typically move to a more developed region with the hope of obtaining better employment and living standards. Migrants, a cheap labor source with high achievement motivation, seem to be the ideal workforce for aging societies that have an urgent need for working populations. Despite migrants being needed for local economic growth, migrant workers are often marginalized in host societies. In addition, lacking human, social, and cultural capital, migrants are more disadvantaged in the job markets, especially during economic downturns. Life establishment in host societies is by no means an easy task for migrants who are also confronted with issues such as cultural differences and extra socioeconomic pressures. Institutionalized and daily discrimination from host societies also have significant negative impacts on migrants’ professional and everyday lives. Thus, migrants often report lower levels of happiness, job satisfaction, and health than their local counterparts. It is urgent to facilitate migrants’ integration and diminish social division between migrants and locals to improve migrant workers’ life quality in the host societies.

The transnational sex trafficking of women is an enduring social concern across a strikingly vast array of policy realms, activisms, and academic disciplines, including criminology, sociology, criminal justice, social work, political science, psychology, medicine, gender studies, and anthropology, among others. There are five prevailing themes across this vast body of multidisciplinary work: (a) transnational law and policy responses, (b) antecedents, (c) social organization and politico-economic considerations, (d) representations, and (e) interventions and carceral logics. The analysis featured is keenly attuned to each cited study’s unique disciplinary frameworks and methods, and it concludes with recommendations for future research on this critical human rights issue.

The positioning of Southeast Asia (comprising Brunei, Cambodia, East Timor, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar or Burma, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam) as an anti-trafficking hub belies the global relevance of regional patterns. The configurations of anti-trafficking vary across countries; however, the specific trends and patterns hold relevance to the region as a whole. For instance, the research on anti-trafficking in Thailand examines the co-constitutive interactions between the illegibility of human trafficking and the growth of the anti-trafficking industry, particularly in relation to market-based interventions. Critical research on Vietnam offers an instructive analysis of the fusion between humanitarianism and punishment that characterizes “rehabilitation” efforts in anti-trafficking. Research on Singapore and Indonesia considers the function of co-constitutive interactions between the hyper-visibility of sex trafficking and the relative invisibility of labor trafficking. In Indonesia—as a country of origin, transit, and destination—the fractured contours of anti-trafficking responses have produced unexpected or unpredictable interactions, marked by competing understandings of what trafficking is and the accountability of differing governmental bodies. Recent research on the Philippines illustrates the use of gendered surveillance in barring the departure of Filipino nationals as a means of “preventing” human trafficking. These patterns demonstrate the uneasy fusions and alliances among humanitarianism, market economies, law enforcement, and border control that mark responses to human trafficking in Southeast Asia.