Child Money and Food Stamps: A comparative analysis of Mongolian welfare programmes in theGerDistricts of Ulaanbaatar

Park H., Fan P., John R., Ouyang Z., Chen J.

Ulaanbaatar, the capital of Mongolia, has experienced unprecedented urbanization following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Lack in housing supply has led to an expansion of informal settlements, mostly in the form of Gers — portable tents used by nomads in Mongolian Plateau. These settlements now host approximately 45% of Ulaanbaatar’s total population, resulting in some serious urban challenges (i.e., limited public services, waterborne diseases, and air pollution). However, there is a limited understanding on how these informal settlements have evolved because they have been constantly growing and changing over the past few decades. We conducted semi-structured interviews and applied remote sensing imagery to generate a comprehensive picture of informal settlements in Ulaanbaatar over the past three decades. Throughout the semi-structured interviews, we identified informal settlements as evolving objects with infancy, consolidation, and maturity stages. Through QuickBird and Landsat satellite imagery, we developed spatial distributions of informal settlements from 1990 to 2013 and found the total area of informal settlements increased from 32.15 km2 to 221.15 km2. We identified distinct spatial patterns of informal settlements (i.e., spillover, linear aggregation, leap-frogging, and infill development). Particularly, we verified that the emergence of informal settlements in the infancy stage occurred in the periphery of the city and along major roads, with informal settlements rapidly evolving over time (i.e., about 40% of infancy-stage in 1990 had segued into the consolidation and maturity stages in 2013). These results are credited to the accessibility of economic opportunities and public services, as well as the availability of vacant land and associated unique Mongolian land tenure law.

Fox E.

In the outskirts of Ulaanbaatar, known as ger districts, a growing number of rural-to-urban migrants live without access to formal urban infrastructure or regular incomes. Under these challenging material conditions, personal networks take precedence, providing and regulating access to employment and meat provisioning. Looking beyond discussions of anticipation among migrants focusing on the goals of migration, I interrogate the role of anticipation in the making and maintaining of relational networks. Existing analyses of such networks in Mongolia have generally relied on idioms of reciprocity or obligation. Focusing instead on material transfers and transactions among ger district residents reveals such networks to be more ambiguous and prone to failure than notions of reciprocity or obligation can easily accommodate. This article argues that the productive contradiction within the concept of anticipation – encompassing both expectative waiting and pre-emptive action – can illuminate new aspects of these relations and networks in action.

Dugarova E.

Rosenberger S., Koppes S.

Theoretically embedded in the migration/social policy nexus, this paper investigates cooperation with return (CWR) as a policy tool to remove practical deportation barriers for third-country nationals pending removal. Based on legal and policy documents and expert interviews with stakeholders in Austria and the Netherlands, the paper asks how CWR is implemented and what influence it has, both on migration control aims and on access to social rights. We argue that the politicization of the issue and diverging interests between policy networks of welfare and migration affect the regulation and implementation of the tool. By comparing the use of CWR within two country contexts, the analysis presented here adds valuable insights on features of governmental instruments in response to the “deportation gap”. The paper further adds to the literature on sanction-oriented, personalized migration policies.

Chuluunbat N., Empson R.

This article identifies relationships that dominate small and medium businesses in Mongolia. Unlike other parts of Asia, these relationships are not necessarily hierarchical, nor are they purely ma...

Plueckhahn R., Bayartsetseg T.

This article explores the types of actions that are dramatically shaping the formation of the peri-urban economic landscape of the ger areas in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. Drawing from numerous intervie...

Morris L.D.

This article begins by examining UK government discourse on welfare and migration for the period 2010–2016, viewed here as the expression of a distinctive process of moralisation. This discourse is...

Kuitto K.

Measuring welfare state generosity in developing and transitional welfare states is often challenged not only by lack of comparative quantitative data, but also by issues of conceptual stretching. This paper demonstrates and discusses the use of one of the key measures of welfare entitlement generosity developed in the comparative welfare state research in the context of post-communist countries of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). With the new time series data provided by the Comparative Welfare Entitlements Dataset CWED2, comparative approaches including the CEE countries have become feasible. This paper first discusses quantitative measures of welfare entitlement generosity in the tradition of the social rights of citizenship approach and how they can be applied for cross-country comparisons. It then demonstrates empirically how the emerging CEE welfare states’ generosity compares to mature “old” OECD welfare states. Finally, the paper shows the potential and the pitfalls of quantitative measures of welfare state generosity by discussing, to what extent do indicators of social security scheme generosity measure the same in established and emerging welfare states, which functional equivalents may be relevant in the context of emerging welfare states and how far can we stretch our theoretical concepts.

Terbish B., Rawsthorne M.

AbstractMongolia is undergoing rapid economic, social and political change. A key question facing the government is how it will manage this rapid change to ensure opportunities are shared among its citizens. This article reports on the findings from a household survey of 80 newly arrived residents in the fringe areas of the capital city. The paper concludes that existing government policy is not addressing the social exclusion of these residents. The social work profession is poorly placed to contribute to the needed policy changes. Significant investment in community capacity building is required to enable resident participation and inclusion.

Ben-Yehoyada N.

This article offers recent dynamics of unauthorized migration and interception in the central Mediterranean as an example of historical anthropology of transnational region formation. It exemplifies how we can rescale classical themes in Mediterraneanist anthropology – hospitality, in this case – to illuminate transnational processes. I argue that anthropologists actually share with human rights advocates and European officials these ways of thinking about the scales of the moral and the political dimensions of migration, and I offer an alternative understanding of the scales of action, responsibility, and sovereignty as well as a clue about how regions come to life. « Venez avec moi et je ferai de vous des pecheurs d'hommes » : echelles morales et politiques des migrations dans le centre du Bassin mediterraneen Resume Le present article se propose d'examiner la dynamique recente des migrations non autorisees et de leur interception dans le centre du Bassin mediterraneen comme exemple d'une anthropologie historique de la formation transnationale de regions. Il montre comment on peut changer l’echelle des themes classiques de l'anthropologie mediterraneenne, en l'occurrence de l'hospitalite, pour eclairer des processus transnationaux. L'auteur affirme que les anthropologues partagent avec les defenseurs des droits humains et les officiels europeens ces manieres de penser les echelles des dimensions morales et politiques de la migration. Il propose une autre maniere d'apprehender les echelles de l'action, de la responsabilite et de la souverainete et donne quelques indications sur la maniere dont se creent les regions.

Yeung Y., Howes S.

Smith R.J.

Schumacher G., van Kersbergen K.

Populist parties increasingly take a welfare chauvinistic position. They criticize mainstream parties for cutting and slashing welfare at the expense of the ‘native’ population and to the benefit of the ‘undeserving’ immigrant. Given the electoral success of populist parties, we investigate whether and when mainstream parties ignore, attack or accommodate welfare chauvinism. Using key theories of party behaviour, we test whether mainstream parties (1) respond immediately to populist parties, (2) respond with a time lag, or (3) respond only when they lose elections or are in opposition. Our quantitative analyses of party manifestos, speeches and policies of European mainstream and populist parties (1980–2012) show that mainstream parties adapt to populist parties on welfare chauvinism, but which parties adapt and when varies significantly. In our in-depth examinations of the Dutch and Danish cases, we highlight important cross-country and cross-party differences.

Ulikpan A., Mirzoev T., Jimenez E., Malik A., Hill P.S.

The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 resulted in a transition from centrally planned socialist systems to largely free-market systems for post-Soviet states. The health systems of Central Asian Post-Soviet (CAPS) countries (Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan) have undergone a profound revolution. External development partners have been crucial to this reorientation through financial and technical support, though both relationships and outcomes have varied. This research provides a comparative review of the development assistance provided in the health systems of CAPS countries and proposes future policy options to improve the effectiveness of development.Extensive documentary review was conducted using Pubmed, Medline/Ovid, Scopus, and Google scholar search engines, local websites, donor reports, and grey literature. The review was supplemented by key informant interviews and participant observation.The collapse of the Soviet dominance of the region brought many health system challenges. Donors have played an essential role in the reform of health systems. However, as new aid beneficiaries, neither CAPS countries' governments nor the donors had the experience of development collaboration in this context.The scale of development assistance for health in CAPS countries has been limited compared to other countries with similar income, partly due to their limited history with the donor community, lack of experience in managing donors, and a limited history of transparency in international dealings. Despite commonalities at the start, two distinctive trajectories formed in CAPS countries, due to their differing politics and governance context.The influence of donors, both financially and technically, remains crucial to health sector reform, despite their relatively small contribution to overall health budgets. Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, and Tajikistan have demonstrated more effective development cooperation and improved health outcomes; arguably, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan have made slower progress in their health and socio-economic indices because of their resistance to open and accountable development relationships.

Lindskog B.V.

Beginning with the demise of the socialist state system in 1990, Mongolia embarked on a process of neoliberal economic reform, initiating what is known among the Mongols as 'the Age of the Market'. The socialist health system has been replaced by a series of reforms initiated and substantiated by foreign donor organisations. This paper critically examines Mongolia's health system and discusses the extent to which this 'system', despite its provision of universal, accessible and essential primary health care services, is unable to accommodate the health needs of poor urban in-migrants and nomadic herders in remote provinces. With a particular focus on recurrent natural winter disasters (dzud) and an escalating rural to urban migration, the paper argues that the issues of access to health services and health system strengthening must be understood in relation to factors external to the health system. Ethnographic research highlights that despite a growing economy, considerable external aid and an established primary health care model, weak rural politics, environmental challenges and economic constraints create escalating health vulnerability among the poorest in Mongolia.

Empson R., Fox E.

How do family relations change in the move from rural to urban living? What are the impacts of ur­banisation on the domestic? Drawing on the ethnography of two families on the outskirts of Mongo­lia’s capital, Ulaanbaatar, this chapter tackles the intersections of urbanisation and intergenerational care, charting the effects of rural-urban migration on family lives. Although their family structures differ, Tuya and Duya each find themselves shouldering the burden of being urban female breadwin­ners. To navigate conditions of profound economic precarity, they approach their families through a lens of economic-cum-moral strategizing, which we term a form of ‘ethical calculus’. In the city, money becomes synonymous with care and family members are categorised according to a scale of asset-to-burden based on their capacity to support or increase the breadwinner’s load. A focus on the work involved in such forms of care reveals a qualitatively different approach to family ties in ur­ban Mongolia that pulls people in two directions. The first is the reconfiguration of marginal popu­lations’ relationship with the state to one that equates care with money. The second is the atomising pressure that life on Ulaanbaatar’s margins puts on the hopes and capacities of household members.