̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - Gates Foundation

Chinese migrant workers in Japan: behind the headlines

mjg209 — Tue, 26 Aug 2014 09:00:00 +0000

̽��ֱ��study, “Place making” in Kawakami: aspirations and migrant realities of Chinese “technical interns”, was led by Gates Cambridge Scholar Meng Liang and was published in the peer reviewed journal Contemporary Japan.

̽��ֱ��paper examines Chinese agricultural labour migrants’ experiences in rural Japan. ̽��ֱ��research is based on multi-sited ethnography, mainly in Kawakami, a village located in central Japan, from July to November 2012.

Meng Liang says: "I go beyond the labelling of Chinese migrants as passive victims of difficult work conditions and exploitation, which pervades much of the literature on international migration, and argue that Chinese peasant workers possess an agency to negotiate, navigate, and survive in the village. ̽��ֱ��strategy they take is to contest over local institutions to build up their own 'places', where they can find provisional security, a sense of relief, and mutual support. These 'places' further facilitate the formation of social networks among the workers, although this is officially repressed by the dominant society. A functioning social network plays a significant role to help workers adapt, overcome difficulties, and exercise their agency in a more effective way."

Meng, who is doing a PhD in Asian & Middle East Studies at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, says the Japanese press have tended to focus on the negative and depicted the relationship as solely one of exploitation, but her research has found a much more complex and nuanced situation based on mutual dependency.

“China has a huge labour surplus and a huge population of peasants," she says. "It supplies the highest number of migrant workers to Japan. Working in Japan they earn more than in Chinese cities. They earn around £6 an hour. They may earn in one summer as much as they would earn in a year in China.”

There are problems, for instance, over communication, but her main concern is that immigration policy and Japanese and Chinese people's perceptions of each other need to be informed by what is actually going on the ground, not sensationalist media reports.

Meng's work focuses on a Japanese agricultural workers programme, the ‘Technical Internship Programme’, which worked through recruitment agencies in China to bring Chinese workers to Japan, and in particular on the Japanese village of Kawakami which accepts more than 600 Chinese workers per year (the local population is only around 4,000). Her fieldwork involved spending around 10 months in China and Japan. In China, she studied how workers were dispatched. Most came from rural areas of China.

Her research found a much more complicated relationship than is suggested by Japanese newspaper headlines with Japanese employers largely dependent on the Chinese workers because of Japan’s demographics. She noted no obvious discrimination, although there was not much communication because the Chinese workers only have basic Japanese despite some use of translators. She noted that lack of communication can cause confusion and tension.

Workers normally get an initial work visa to stay for seven months, from April to November. Most then return to China and cannot reapply. However, if they pass a test they can extend their visa for up to three years, depending on the area they are working in. If they stay longer, a strong relationship may be formed between worker and employer. Meng says some employers treat their workers like members of the family and, for instance, buy them laptops.

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Chinese migrant workers in Japan are more than passive victims of difficult work conditions and are able to use their own networks and provide mutual support, according to new research.

"I go beyond the labelling of Chinese migrants as passive victims of difficult work conditions and exploitation and argue that Chinese peasant workers possess an agency to negotiate, navigate, and survive in the village."

Meng Liang

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New US Gates Cambridge Scholars announced

pbh25 — Wed, 12 Feb 2014 11:08:06 +0000

̽��ֱ��40 Scholars represent 35 institutions, five of which have never had a Gates Cambridge Scholar before.

̽��ֱ��five new institutions are the ̽��ֱ�� of Puget Sound in Washington, the ̽��ֱ�� of Wyoming, California State ̽��ֱ�� in Fresno, Carleton ̽��ֱ�� in Ontario, Canada and the Medical College of Georgia.

Professor Barry Everitt, Provost of the Gates Cambridge Trust, said: "We are delighted to announce our new US Scholars. They are an outstanding group of individuals from a very diverse range of backgrounds who are both intellectually exceptional and show a dedication to improving the lives of others. We look to them as future leaders who will change the world for the better.”

Twenty-two of the institutions where the new Scholars have studied previously are private, with 13 being public. Six are Ivy League colleges. ̽��ֱ��Scholars come from 21 US states.

̽��ֱ��gender ratio continues to be in favour of women with 23 of the 40 being women. This is broadly consistent with the last three years of the total intake which have seen women make up the majority of Scholars.

While 18 of the 35 colleges and universities are in the Times Higher Education’s top 100 world university rankings, 11 do not even rank in the top 400, highlighting the broad range of institutions and the high level of access for outstanding candidates from any college or university.

̽��ֱ��postgraduate scholarship programme was established through a US$210 million donation to the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in 2001, which remains the largest single donation to a UK university.

Competition for places is fierce and the programme is unique in its emphasis on social leadership as well as outstanding academic ability.

̽��ֱ��successful 40 candidates, 28 of whom will study for one-year master's degree courses and 12 of whom will pursue PhD degrees, were whittled down from an initial field of 800 applicants.

̽��ֱ��89 shortlisted candidates were interviewed by US and Cambridge academics at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s offices in Seattle on 31 Jan and 1 Feb 2014.

̽��ֱ��US Scholars will join 55 Scholars from other parts of the world, who will be announced later this year.

At any one time the Gates Cambridge Trust aims to support 225 Scholars at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge.

For this reason its Trustees have increased the total number of Scholarships from 90 to 95 for 2014 entry with the hope that this will be sustainable in the longer term, given the mix of one-year and PhD courses being undertaken.

To view a full list of the Scholars click here.

Forty of the most academically brilliant and socially committed young people in the USA will take up a Gates Cambridge Scholarship to study at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge this autumn as the programme continues to expand to a diverse range of institutions across North America.

We look to them as future leaders who will change the world for the better.

Professor Barry Everitt, Provost of the Gates Cambridge Trust

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Synaesthesia is more common in autism

sj387 — Wed, 20 Nov 2013 08:07:50 +0000

Synaesthesia involves people experiencing a ‘mixing of the senses’, for example, seeing colours when they hear sounds, or reporting that musical notes evoke different tastes. Autism is diagnosed when a person struggles with social relationships and communication, and shows unusually narrow interests and resistance to change. ̽��ֱ��team of scientists from Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� found that whereas synaesthesia only occurred in 7.2% of typical individuals, it occurred in 18.9% of people with autism.

On the face of it, this is an unlikely result, as autism and synaesthesia seem as if they should not share anything. But at the level of the brain, synaesthesia involves atypical connections between brain areas that are not usually wired together (so that a sensation in one channel automatically triggers a perception in another). Autism has also been postulated to involve over-connectivity of neurons (so that the person over-focuses on small details but struggles to keep track of the big picture).

̽��ֱ��scientists tested – and confirmed – the prediction that if both autism and synaesthesia involve neural over-connectivity, then synaesthesia might be disproportionately common in autism.

̽��ֱ��team, led by Professor Simon Baron-Cohen at the Autism Research Centre at Cambridge ̽��ֱ��, tested 164 adults with an autism spectrum condition and 97 adults without autism. All volunteers were screened for synaesthesia. Among the 31 people with autism who also had synaesthesia, the most common forms of the latter were ‘grapheme-colour’ (18 of them reported black and white letters being seen as coloured) and ‘sound-colour’ (21 of them reported a sound triggering a visual experience of colour). Another 18 of them reported either tastes, pains, or smells triggering a visual experience of colour.

Professor Baron-Cohen said: “I have studied both autism and synaesthesia for over 25 years and I had assumed that one had nothing to do with the other. These findings will re-focus research to examine common factors that drive brain development in these traditionally very separate conditions. An example is the mechanism ‘apoptosis,’ the natural pruning that occurs in early development, where we are programmed to lose many of our infant neural connections. In both autism and synaesthesia apoptosis may not occur at the same rate, so that these connections are retained beyond infancy.”

Professor Simon Fisher, a member of the team, and Director of the Language and Genetics Department at Nijmegen’s Max Planck Institute, added: “Genes play a substantial role in autism and scientists have begun to pinpoint some of the individual genes involved. Synaesthesia is also thought to be strongly genetic, but the specific genes underlying this are still unknown. This new research gives us an exciting new lead, encouraging us to search for genes which are shared between these two conditions, and which might play a role in how the brain forms or loses neural connections.”

Donielle Johnson, a Cambridge Gates Scholar who carried out the study as part of her Master’s degree, said: “People with autism report high levels of sensory hyper-sensitivity. This new study goes one step further in identifying synaesthesia as a sensory issue that has been overlooked in this population. This has major implications for educators and clinicians designing autism-friendly learning environments.”

People with autism are more likely to also have synaesthesia, suggests new research in the journal Molecular Autism.

Genes play a substantial role in autism and scientists have begun to pinpoint some of the individual genes involved

Professor Simon Fisher

Richard E. Cytowic

Synesthetic number form

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