Jytte Agergaard

Critical Commentary. The World Development Report 2009

This is a report written by economists, which ignores previous quantitative economic geographers’ work on urban agglomeration. Agglomeration is viewed as an imperative for development and, most signifi cantly, an ‘engine of growth’, inverting past World Bank and Western aid agency thinking which saw ‘urban bias’ as a severe drain on development. Why the change of mind? Critical Commentary. The World Development Report 2009

Empowering the 'local' through education?: exploring community managed schooling in Nepal

This article attempts to unpack the policy vision and discourse driving community management of schooling in Nepal and to consider the ways in which these policies are being experienced by bureaucrats, teachers, parents and children. The focus is on the World Bank funded Community School Support Project (CSSP) launched by the Government of Nepal in June 2003 and currently being used as a basis for extending community management to all of the country’s 26,000 public schools. The article illustrates how national level policy prescriptions lead to a range of outcomes, many of which are unintended. Community‐based schooling in Nepal is intended to shift the role of the State from manager to facilitator of schooling. However, the article suggests that reforms carried out in the name of greater efficiency, accountability and empowerment are driven primarily by a desire to limit the role of the State in the provision, but not necessarily control, of public education. The consequences of this include the on‐going marginalisation of many of the country’s poor and disadvantaged groups, a de‐motivated and further politicised teaching force and continued chronic under‐funding of public education.

Agents of internationalisation? Danish universities' practices for attracting international students

Universities are increasingly urged to take new responsibilities as agents of internationalisation as the globalisation of higher education intensifies the competition for international students and leads to transformation of national and European policy landscapes. Drawing on the case study of two leading universities in Denmark, this paper analyses how they navigate between ‘being internationalised’ and ‘doing internationalisation’ in this context and adjust their practices for attracting international students. It concludes by assessing factors that influence the universities’ ability to act as agents of internationalisation and draws attention to the implications that these carry for understanding international student mobility in general.

Transitional rural landscapes: The role of small-scale commercial farming in former homelands of Post-Apartheid KwaZulu-Natal

Abstract Geografisk Tidsskrift, Danish Journal of Geography 106(2): 87–102, 2006 The paper presents trends in past and present land use patterns in parts of a former homeland of KwaZulu-Natal, and discusses the changing role of farming. It suggests that an understanding of the transition in rural land must take into account the impact of rural-urban relations and the Colonial and Apartheid socio-spatial policies. A sequence of map data is analysed and compared with interviews with residents of the studied area and official data concerning actual and prospected development. The data demonstrate how population pressures and changing sources of income during the Apartheid period have resulted in a land use system dominated by home gardens and some attempts to develop small-scale commercial farming, while traditional subsistence farming has gradually decreased. On this background the prospects for small-scale commercial farming are discussed. It is argued that at least four aspects may explain why commercial farming is still marginal: the troubled land allocation system, the continued dependency on cash income for successful farming, the institutional obstacles to farmers from the homeland who wish to develop market relations, and the changing territorial logics that have characterized demarcation and land use in the post-Apartheid period.

‘DOING FAMILY’: Female migrants and family transition in rural Vietnam

Drawing on a case study of married female migrants from two rural villages of Hung Yen province to Hanoi City, Vietnam, this paper investigates the implications of female migration on gender roles and relations within families. The paper shows that wives’ migration changes gender roles and relations within the family. Being on the move, migrant wives become the main breadwinners while their husbands left behind take on the role of carers. The migrant wives acquire a stronger voice in family matters and a strong sense of pride, worthiness and earned respect, whereas their husbands experience a loss of power. However, these changing gender roles and relations rarely result in family fragmentations; instead, families are still being sustained as migrant wives ‘do family’. By ‘doing family’, they can exploit their increasing power in an acceptable manner, so that patriarchal family ideals are not openly confronted. This paper provides a more nuanced understanding of the implications of female migration on families, i.e. the simultaneity of the reproduction of and the change in gender roles and relations within families.

Suburbanisation, homeownership aspirations and urban housing: Exploring urban expansion in Dar es Salaam

This paper offers an exploration of urban expansion from the point of view of the individual residents buying land, settling and living in new, rapidly growing peripheral settlements of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The findings suggest that the demand for affordable housing is the primary motivation for residents moving to the periphery. The demand for self-built, owner-occupier housing is especially significant initially, while the demand for non-ownership housing increases in importance later in the process. Income-related motives, on the other hand, are strikingly absent from settlement considerations. Urban residents settle in the periphery, even though income-generation is often tied to working somewhere else, namely in the central parts of the city. The paper proposes that the processes of urban expansion depicted in this study are usefully conceptualised as suburbanisation processes, though it is a type of suburbanisation that has some peculiarities given the particular context, where expansion happens informally and largely unguided by planners.

The household as a unit of analysis: reflections from migration research in Nepal

Abstract Geografisk Tidsskrift, Danish Journal of Geography 99: 101–111, 1999 The main objective of this paper is to discuss the importance of looking at households as basic analytical categories in studies of migration in the Third World. The paper points to the difficulties of defining the household, and in particular the assumption that the household can be treated as a strategic decision making unit, is challenged. The importance of taking a critical stand towards the household, as the basic analytical category, is illustrated by the results from research into the migration trajectories of Hill migrants settled in the Terai region of Nepal. It will be demonstrated how previous research has overlooked the importance of the split-up of extended households in relation to the migration and settlement process. It is concluded that future studies should continue to consider households as important elements in migration and settlement pro- cesses, however, they should be treated with many more analytical pre...

Urban transformations, migration and residential mobility patterns in African secondary cities

Abstract Urban growth is a significant trend in Africa. Scholarly attention and urban planning efforts have focused disproportionately on the challenges of big cities, while small and medium-sized urban settlements are growing most rapidly and house the majority of urban residents. Small towns have received some attention, but very few studies have focused on secondary cities. This paper offers a study of urban transformations, migration and residential mobility patterns in Arusha, a rapidly growing secondary city of Tanzania. Arusha functions as a major attraction for migrants and in-migration is a central dynamic shaping transformation processes in central areas characterized by high population turnovers, vibrant rental markets and widespread landlordism. There is also a considerable degree of intra-urban residential mobility within and between central areas. Intra-urban residential mobility is the most important dynamic shaping transformation processes in peripheral areas characterized by long-term urban residents moving from central parts of the city as part of a process of establishing themselves as homeowners. Overall, the paper provides crucial insights on how migration and residential mobility patterns influence processes of urban growth and transformation in the context of large secondary city, and thereby contributes to fill a significant knowledge gap on secondary cities in Africa.

Returning home: migrant connections and visions for local development in rural Nepal

Abstract Migration to domestic and international destinations has become an emblematic feature of Nepal’s societal changes. Part of this development is education migration from rural to urban areas within the borders of Nepal, an often overlooked but increasingly important aspect of contemporary migration flows. By focusing on these educational migrants, this paper explores how they connect to their rural homes. Guided by a critical reading of the migration-development scholarship, the paper examines how migrants and their relatives make sense of educational migrants’ remitting and returning practices, and by comparing three groups of educational migrants, the migrants’ reasons for staying connected and sending remittances are scrutinized. The paper finds that although educational migrants do not generate extensive economic remittances for local development in Nepal, they stay connected to their rural homes and partake in important social remittance practices that represent a vision for impacting local development.

Urban transformations and rural-city connections in Africa

It is projected that by the middle of this century, the majority of Africans will be urban residents, although with huge variations between countries, as is the case today (McGranahan & Satterthwaite, 2014). Currently, only a small proportion of the region’s population lives in cities and towns, but this is rapidly changing. Thus, urbanization and rural–urban transformations are critical qualities of contemporary societal change in sub-Saharan Africa. The articles in this issue all address these processes and discuss how planning and governance systems are lacking behind in their abilities to address the social and spatial consequences of the complex and rapidly shifting rural–urban connections. Often the concept Rurban has been used to capture rural– urban transformations. The term can be traced back to 1920s’ economic planning literature where it is used to describe land in the countryside on the edge of a town or city. It has been used in a similar vein by researchers studying the peri-urban zone. The term has also been coined by the French philosopher and sociologist, Henri Lefebvre who did not exclusively use the term as a spatial category but also included the social, cultural and political dimensions of rural-to-urban transformation (for a discussion see Brenner, 1997; Lefebvre, Kofman, & Lebas, 1996). However, the term has also been used for policy purposes: For example, during the 2000s by the European Parliament to promote partnerships for sustainable urban– rural development among, and within, member states. Most recently, the Indian Government has launched a RURBAN mission to develop 300 rural growth clusters in order to (1) bridge rural–urban gaps; (2) reduce migration;(3) provide economic opportunity; (4) improve quality of life (For more information see, http://rurban.gov.in/about.html, retrieved 3 August, 2017). However, in this special issue, with reference to the RurbanAfrica project (see www.rurban.ku.dk/), the term is mainly descriptive, while insisting on the need for a holistic approach to rural and urban development. In the following, we will provide an introduction to the special issue. The presentation of the seven articles is grouped under three thematic headlines; (i) Urban expansion and changes in rural–urban land use, (ii) City dynamics: the role of migration, mobility and urban–rural connections and (iii) Social inclusion and access to urban services. Addressing these themes in turn, we conclude the article with a discussion of the connections between rural and urban transformations, based on insights from the RurbanAfrica research and the preceding thematic sections, and related to this, reflections on the planning and governance challenges associated with rural–urban transformation.