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Based on fieldwork in Fuzhou's Changle county―an emigrant-sending region in the People's Republic of China (PRC)―this paper analyzes transnational judicial practice as it pertains to resolution of transnational migrants' legal disputes. Resolution of "foreign-related" disputes had been obstructed by spatial and temporal barriers and difficulties navigating the PRC's judicial system. However, a more efficient path for transnational migrants to resolve their legal disputes emerged due to: the PRC government's increased concern toward transnational migrants; implementation of new governance procedures within the judicial system; utilization of the transnational migrant's informal social networks; and, application of internet-enabled communication technologies. By examining the extra-territorial reach of state authority in regulating transnational activities, analysis from the 26 interviews conducted reveals the key role played by leaders in Overseas Chinese Associations, who act as informal judicial "mediators" between the PRC's judicial system and transnational migrants. Additionally, internet-enabled communication technologies and social networks have helped collapse the physical and temporal distances that previously separated transnational migrants from their country of origin. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As part of the first qualitative-based research on the life-course of methamphetamine users in Aotearoa/New Zealand, this paper analyses the life domains of school, friendship and work. Through application of interactional theory, this paper increases understanding of the situational contexts and interpersonal factors that influence drug use trajectories and the transition from one life domain to another by identifying the patterns within each domain and the influence school, friendship and work exerts on drug use and, conversely, how drug use impacts on school, friendship and work. The analysis discovered 20 commonly shared adverse experiences that hindered educational and employment success and contributed to drug use, including: negative school transitions, significant turning point events, weak commitment to school, poor school attitude and performance, low academic achievement, low school and work ambition, low parental expectations, and high levels of mental health issues, delinquency, delinquent peer involvement, bullying victimisation, work victimisation, unstable careers and illegal economic activities. Specifically, it was common for interviewees to 'track backwards' in high school. This study highlights the importance of the educational domain for altering drug use trajectories, especially high school. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study combines and compares data from the Korean Youth Panel Survey and the Korean Children and Youth Panel Survey to examine the effects parenting, peers, school, social structure, and personality exert on nonviolent and violent delinquency among 5,462 male and 5,103 female adolescents in South Korea. Overall, parental effects were found to be more important than peer effects, but their influence diminishes relative to that of peer effects with age. The semiparametric group-based modeling approach identifies distinct groups of stable nondelinquents, stable moderates, moderate escalators, de-escalators, and desistors (but not chronic offenders). Lastly, this study does not provide support for a public discourse that infers juvenile delinquency has increased in frequency and severity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study seeks to locate "the points of impact of social forces" regarding juvenile bullying-and-violence in South Korea. Based on the multi-informant case-file material of 20 perpetrators of school violence detained at a Juvenile Detention Centre between 2011 and 2013, this is the first qualitative study to place bullying-and-violence in South Korea within its life-course context. This novel approach is achieved by applying classic findings from developmental criminology conducted in Western societies to the South Korean case-file material. Additionally, original emoticon-based "life-course turning points diagrams" are presented as potentially offering an alternative means of conceptualising and analysing life-course trajectories. Against a binary conceptualisation of school violence, this study reveals a cyclical connection between earlier victimisation (in the home) and later offending (at school). In contrast to school-and-security-centric measures advocated and implemented by the government at the time, this study advocates more family management-centric measures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

“Internet addiction” in China and elsewhere is considered a serious social problem. In China, some psychiatrists have claimed 10% of all Internet users—60 million—are potentially “addicted” to the Internet. Following on the heels of the publication of the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), this qualitative-based research article critically investigates the new concept Internet gaming disorder, a category recently included in the DSM-5 as a condition “warranting more clinical research and experience before it might be considered for inclusion in the main book as a formal disorder.” This article takes up this challenge and responds in the following way: When we investigate the social existence of online gamers labeled Internet addicts in China, and then subject their social existence to the DSM’s own definition of a mental disorder, we discover not a clearly understood mental disorder called Internet gaming disorder but more so an issue of social deviance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through an analysis of a pollution-based incident at Refinery-G in an infamousQiaoxiangtown in Fujian, China, this paper analyses how transnational migrants participate in and influence the public management activities in their hometowns. This paper underscores four factors driving civic and political participation that emerged during the revelation, resistance, negotiation and settlement of this incident: (1) the role of the ‘leisured’ villager; (2) the role of overseas Chinese in caring for the developmental path of their hometown; (3) the role of independent civic organizations; and (4) the role of the news media in shaping public opinion.Qiaoxiang's civic participation is both more active and more effective. With the development and globalization of modern communication technology and low-cost and convenient communication and transportation systems, it is possible for overseas migrants to influence public management activities in their hometown through civic organization and political participation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper analyzes the lifeworld of those labelled “Internet addicts” in China. Contrary to professional belief, such deviant youth are not simply having trouble controlling their Internet use, but, more seriously, with the normal functioning of society. Underneath this existential, ethical, and social crisis is a social-economic-political phenomenon which pivots around the competition—between China’s education system expressed through the parents (work), and its consumer society expressed through the online gaming industry (leisure)—for the hearts and minds of transforming and individualizing youth. These “Internet addicts” uncover not individual pathology but the following psycho-social-structural dilemma: citizens cannot live on economic reforms alone. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the emerging service industry in Shanghai through the prism of young male migrant hairdressers and their even younger assistants. These “cosmopolitan” service workers are framed within Lisa Rofel's concept of “desiring China” in order to show how the service industry in Shanghai is a kind of “Goffmanian world”, in that the hairdresser must present and “sell” himself in particular ways on the “front-stage” of the market-driven service industry. By examining both the “impression management” and “emotional labour” of the hairdresser, I argue that not only are we able to observe China's opening up policy as it is embodied in the service worker, but we are also able to observe on the salon floor hierarchical and power labour relations at work and the emergence of a commodity-style subject. These young male migrant service workers are framed as a kind of complement, or extension, of the young female migrant industrial workers studied by Pun Ngai in her book Made in China. By comparing and contrasting the “Chinese working daughters” of the factory regime with the “Chinese working sons” of the service regime we are able to observe Shanghai's structural shift from an industrial production centre to a service-based world city. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper is based on case studies in Fuzhou, China, with the aim of exploring the changes in Fuzhou's irregular emigration activities. The findings indicate that due to changing socio-economic and historical circumstances, a more legalizing tendency of irregular emigration from Fuzhou can be observed. Among these new developments are the following: less risk, along with the use of safer tactics, is now involved in the process of emigration; emigrants are better supported with resources such as financial support, network support and a higher level of education; 'legal' status is cherished in the process of emigration, and fewer and fewer emigrants are likely to be victimized by organized smuggling groups; and migratory waves have decelerated and the passion for emigration has become both more rational and more sensible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]