Introduction

Norbert Elias was steeped not only in developments in biology, psychology, philosophy, history and, of course, sociology, but he was also deeply immersed in literature, art, architecture, sport and leisure culture more generally (Steuerwald 2018). Problems of art that first intrigued Elias in his twenties formed an abiding concern throughout his long lifetime. In some ways, the Breslau of Elias's youth was a rather unpromising environment for sustaining a habitus oriented towards art. Until the 1920s, Breslau had been something of a cultural backwater with ‘few contemporary artists of note and no real artistic milieu, with few galleries, exhibition spaces, arts cafes, or salons’ (Barnstone 2016, 111). Even so, Elias cultivated an aesthetic disposition. As a student at Breslau he learned from the ethno-nationalist art historian (and later Nazi) Wilhelm Pinder (1878–1947) of the significance of inter-generational shifts in artistic taste and from August Grisebach (1881–1950), a specialist in Renaissance and nineteenth-century architecture, how an artwork like the Ghent altarpiece was a product of the emergent Flemish bourgeoisie (Jitschin, chapter one, this volume). In a precocious essay of 1921 Elias (2006a) explored the relationship between the sensual experience of art and the scientific understanding of nature. A few years later he began to work for an abandoned Habilitation thesis supervised by Alfred Weber on the historical sociology of painting and the natural sciences (Elias 2006d), a theme that would resurface in 1987 with his Involvement and Detachment (Elias 2007, 37–63). In the 1930s, Elias was personally acquainted with critical theorists Walter Benjamin and Theodor Adorno and became a close confidante of Karl Mannheim around the time that Mannheim (1956) was developing his model of the democratisation of culture. Within Mannheim's research group, Elias influenced Mannheim's doctoral student Gisele Freund's pioneering research on the sociology of photography, Nina Rubinstein's thesis on the aristocratic émigrés of 1789, Margarete Freudenthal's study of women and structural changes in the urban bourgeois family household, while Jitschin (Chapter 1 this volume) suggests that his approach to aristocratic romanticism was, at least in part, indebted to Natalie Halperin's doctoral thesis on eighteenth-century German women writers (Kettler et al. 2008).

In recent years, the decade of the 1980s in China has attracted research interest among researchers old and new. Like all nostalgic views of the past, which often reflect present discontents and apprehensions about existing social conditions, this new interest among some Chinese seems to be based on a comparison of the current decade to the first decade of reform – especially the differences in official discourses, if not ideological tendencies, policy re-alignments and socio-political climates. Several cultural critics have even called for a ‘return to the 80s’ (Hong and Cheng 2009). Although such discussions have mostly taken place within the fields of literary and cultural studies, the notion of returning to the 1980s has various connotations and denotations, making the topic more socio-political than literary.

A number of researchers have explored why the 1980s, in particular, has become the focus of nostalgia. In the words of Zhang and Zhang (2011), in an early analysis of the topic, this nostalgia is a condensed representation of the sentiments of many critics and writers. They argue there are three types of publications that can be regarded as part of the push for a return to the 1980s. Besides the pure academic literature, such as various journal articles and textbooks, there is a sizeable body of memoirs, biographies, autobiographies and other records that are historical or semi-historical rather than purely literary works; and, finally, there are numerous literary depictions of the 1980s, generally portraying it as a decade full of passion, ideals and changes. Reflecting these depictions, the phrase ‘emotional memory’ has been used to explain the attraction to the 1980s.

Under the influence of some earlier publications, as well as the unquantifiable oral histories of 1980s in China, new cohorts of writers produced a large number of inspirational works for China's huge book market. New titles about the 1980s are often associated with optimistic, positive and inspirational narratives or depictions, invoking the era's supposed opportunities for new careers, entrepreneurship, becoming rich, living an exciting life – even becoming a straight-A student, as many are assumed to have been in the 1980s.

The social consequence of the change to the central leadership in certain authoritarian systems is, to a great extent, similar to that of regime change. Both could lead to the abrogation of power and privileges of some people and the creation of new opportunities for others. As pointed out in Chapter four, a number of political obstacles were swiftly removed in response to the demands made by hundreds of thousands of people in the 1976 Tiananmen Incident. Apart from a small group of radical leftists, including the Gang of Four, who were politically dumped or punished, the vast majority of people were happy to see a time for changes both in their personal life and in society more generally. The latter was clearly seen in rural villages, where the rigid rule of organising rural production was relaxed, with the politically incorrect activities of selling and buying surplus agricultural produces. In the cities, as analysed in Chapter four, many people's attention was drawn to the renewed university entrance system, which not only provided young people with a chance to study at university, but also relaxed some related restrictions.

These new social dynamics slowly transformed the rest of the late 1970s and early 1980s into a situation where more people from different backgrounds or political persuasions were allowed to try to position, or reposition, themselves in their anticipated places in society, but also to conduct it in their own ways and capabilities. Such new massive-scale social repositionings, in turn, transformed the conditions of social actions and performances of individuals, and the dynamics of their social positionings as well. The latter was characterised by an increasing number of highly motivated citizens and their attempts for the advantages under the Dengist leadership.

This chapter analyses to these changes and people's new repositioning efforts in the early years of China's post-Mao reform and opening up, which started in 1978. To help readers understand the social conditions of people's repositioning, a few more general changes need to be taken into consideration. Within the first few years, numerous Chinese had opted to throw themselves in the new, open and competitive societal environment generated by many new measures before reforms run into their first momentous trouble in the mid-1980s, which was a small but meaningful turning point in our examination.

The nature and extent of the problems faced by temporary migrant workers in Aotearoa New Zealand (hereafter, Aotearoa) workplaces were first realised in 2010 by social justice activists – themselves migrants – and the fast-food workers union Unite. This realisation led to the formation of a dedicated organisation, the Indian Workers Association, in October 2012. Within weeks it became obvious that temporary migrants from most countries were victims of exploitation and other workplace issues. Accordingly, the name of the newly formed organisation was changed to Migrant Workers Association.

By 2017, the Migrant Workers Association had successfully resolved many employment disputes. The Association also started to raise awareness about work rights and immigration matters through a weekly radio show, which led a campaign to overturn unfair deportations of several international students. Taking stock of the width, breadth and depth of the issues that migrants faced, and drawing inspiration from the Black Lives Matter movement in the United States, the Migrant Lives Matter campaign was launched in October 2017 at the Auckland Unitarian Church. Among other things, the purpose of this campaign was to remind the newly formed Labour Coalition Government to deliver on its promise to bring back the international students recently deported. Following a successful campaign, the students were returned to Aotearoa in 2018 and 2019.

While the world admires Aotearoa for its kindness, inclusiveness and compassion following the Christchurch mosque terror attacks and in handling the Covid-19 pandemic, activists in Aotearoa have made continuous efforts to shine a light on the plight of migrant workers who are holding temporary work visas. Traditionally, trade unions and workers associations have been at the forefront of raising a voice against migrant exploitation and bringing the issue to the political arena as well as societal platforms. More recently, many newly formed migrant groups and employer associations have also joined the struggle.

The exploitation of temporary migrant workers was rife before the Covid-19 pandemic hit in early 2020, but the last few months have shown us an endless number of sham redundancies, wage-subsidy thefts and much more dished out by exploiting employers. The Government made some minor provisions, often quite late in the piece, to provide temporary relief; for example, automatic visa extensions for some visa categories and some relaxation of conditions for employer-supported visas. While these changes are welcome, they are only window dressing and do not address the root cause of migrant exploitation.

This chapter begins with a brief explanation of events during the politically turbulent period covered by the second half of Chapter six and the present chapter. Many readers know that this period includes the 1989 Tiananmen protests, which lasted several months before the military crackdown on 4 June 1989. Historically, this was the PRC's third large-scale crackdown on activist members of the urban educated elite. In 1957, the Anti-Rightist Campaign was carried out by the CCP in response to the widespread and strong criticism voiced by many urban citizens during the Hundred Flowers Campaign. Much of this criticism went far beyond what the first generation of PRC leaders were prepared to tolerate, particularly in the aftermath of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. As many as half a million Chinese people were persecuted according to official figures. The second major assault was the Cultural Revolution from 1966 to 1976; while this impacted on almost every section of the Chinese population, educated people had always been the key target of class struggle. Millions of educated Chinese were abused in one way or another. What occurred in Beijing, as well as in several other cities, in 1989 and the purge that ensures were a third attack on the new educated elites, with tens of thousands ousted from their posts in the party-state system and forced to seek a living elsewhere.

As noted in previous chapters, the analysis in this chapter is based on this third crackdown, but focuses on the understudied aspects of this historical episode, as well as the problem of laid-off (xiagang) workers, which worsened around the same time. At first glance, the laid-off worker issue caused by SOE reforms after the mid-1980s, notably in 1994 and 1995, was distinct from the trouble facing educated liberals; however, many of those affected by each sought to reposition themselves in the same employment market.

The 1989 Tiananmen protests have been well documented in English, providing readers with ample details about the event; however, the political and social vacuum left by the crackdown has not been clearly explained. The 1989 clampdown was a sudden turn to the political left, quelling the demonstrations and reintroducing various social control measures. It was soon followed, however, by China's unprecedented economic growth. A very clear and sharp zigzag change of political direction emerged before many people had recovered from their anger and sadness of the crackdown on the student rallies.

This section compares three OECD member countries with comparable GDP (total, US dollars per capita) to Australia (USD55,627) in 2021. These OECD member countries are Canada (USD50,722), Germany (USD58,663) and Sweden (USD59,576). This comparison is restricted to paid maternity and parental leave provisions, with particular attention to leave duration, funding and eligibility. For ease of comparison, local currencies were converted to the equivalent Australian dollar amount.

Gross domestic product (‘GDP’) is the standard measure of a country's value created by the production of goods and services in that country for a particular period. GDP also measures the income earned from such production or the total amount spent on final goods and services (less imports). Although GDP is the single most important indicator to capture economic activity, it falls short of providing an appropriate measure of people's material well being for which alternative indicators may be more appropriate. For example, analysing social welfare and employment benefits is not entirely dependent on GDP since GDP substantially focuses on economic growth. Therefore, this comparison will use ‘nominal GDP’ (or GDP at current prices or GDP in value) as an alternative indicator referring to US dollars per capita for the year 2021.

A Canada

As of 01 January 2022, Canadian entitlements available to mothers (maternity and parental leave combined) add to a maximum of 55 weeks paid at a full-time equivalent of CAD638 [AUD682] per week. The duration can be extended to a maximum of 84 weeks with a weekly payment of CAD638 [AUD682] for the first 15 weeks, followed by a weekly payment of CAD383 [AUD409] per week for the remaining 69 weeks.

In Canada, paid parental and maternity leave is administered through the Employee Insurance (‘EI’) program, enshrined in the Employment Insurance Act. The EI Program is managed by the federal Department of Employment and Social Development and is available to all Canadian residents, except Quebec residents, who are covered by Quebec's parental leave program. Under the EI Program, benefits are funded by premiums paid by employers and employees, based on a premium rate that applies to every CAD100 [AUD107] of insurable earnings to the maximum insurable earnings threshold as determined by the Employment Insurance Financing Board annually. The Act defines ‘insurable earnings’ as the total amount of earnings an insured person has from insurable employment.

Introduction

On 5 June 1863, amid spiralling conflict between Māori and settlers in Te Ika-a-Māui (the North Island), Arthur Samuel Atkinson, White supremacist and immigrant to Aotearoa New Zealand (hereafter, Aotearoa) from County Durham in England, wrote in his journal that ‘I find one lies in wait to shoot Maoris without any approach to an angry feeling – it is a sort of scientific duty’ (Atkinson 1863, 49). Five years later, in November 1868, John Bryce, White supremacist, politician and immigrant from Glasgow, Scotland, led a patrol of volunteer settler cavalry on the Nukumaru flats in south Taranaki. Bryce and his troops chanced upon a group of unarmed Māori children who were chasing pigs and geese near William Handley's woolshed. The soldiers charged at the children killing two young boys and wounding others (Riseborough [1993] 2022). Bryce was henceforth known to local Māori as Bryce Kōhuru or Bryce the murderer, a reputation that can only have been strengthened after he led the invasion of the pacifist settlement at Parihaka (Ray 2018; Riseborough [1993] 2022).

This wave of White-supremacist vitriol and violence carried to Aotearoa by European migrants was not limited to the nineteenth century, nor were Māori the only victims of it. On 24 September 1905, John Terry, White supremacist and recent immigrant from Kent, England, shot and killed an elderly Chinese man, Joe Kum Yung, on Haining Street in Wellington. Terry, who was fervently racist to the point of obsession, committed the murder in hope of raising the profile of his book of White-supremacist verse The Shadow (Ray 2019; Tod 1996). Some years later, on 3 January 1921, White supremacist and immigrant from Limavady, Northern Ireland, then-Prime Minister William F. Massey penned a New Year's message to the people of Aotearoa. In it, Massey wrote that ‘Nature intended New Zealand to be a white man's country, and it must be kept as such. The strain of Polynesian will be no detriment’ (Massey 1921, 5). Massey also spoke openly of his aversion to Chinese people, telling the House: ‘I am not a lover or admirer of the Chinese race … I should be one of the very first to insist on very drastic legislation to prevent them coming here in any numbers’ (Massey 1910, 402).

Migrant Lives Matter

The Migrant Lives Matter slogan was first used in a 2015 protest against European governments letting asylum seekers die at sea rather than offering them refuge (De Genova 2018). Much like the Black Lives Matter activism the slogan connects to migrant activists and their allies have been calling out state-sanctioned structural violence that treats racialised/migrant bodies as worthless and disposable and consciously puts their lives at risk.

In Aotearoa New Zealand (hereafter, Aotearoa), migrant activists adopted the Migrant Lives Matter slogan in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic to draw attention to the exclusionary and dehumanising effects of the New Zealand Government's Covid-19 response on migrants. As Aotearoa closed its borders to all but permanent residents and returning New Zealand citizens on 19 March 2020, the lives of temporary visa holders were thrown into disarray. Many of those who were in Aotearoa at the time lost jobs and faced financial difficulties, with often little access to the social support available to residents and citizens. For some time, they faced insecurities about their prospects of remaining in Aotearoa as visa processing was curbed or suspended. In addition, temporary visa holders in Aotearoa were immobilised in so far as had they wanted or needed to journey overseas, they would have had to forfeit any possibility of return. Meanwhile, temporary visa holders who happened to be overseas on 19 March 2020 – including those readying themselves to migrate to Aotearoa as well as those already home in Aotearoa but momentarily absent – found, and more than two years later continue to find, themselves in limbo. While Aotearoa's borders were closed, the vast majority of those migrants were unable to return, no matter how long they had previously lived in Aotearoa, no matter whether they had jobs or studies to return to, and no matter whether their family members lived in Aotearoa. Initial short-term blanket extensions of temporary visas, a one-off 2021 Resident Visa and the gradual opening of the border since May 2022 have brought relief to some, though by no means all, of the temporary visa holders in and outside of Aotearoa. Rather than offering a blanket amnesty to all onshore temporary visa holders, the one-off 2021 Resident Visa, for instance, retained a range of exclusions based on the perceived value of migrants centred on a ‘settled, skilled or scarce’ logic.

Diasporic Strategies – From Hostility to Solidarity (and Back Again?)

Many countries re-evaluated their relationship with diasporic communities around the turn of the twenty-first century, with Larner (2007) and Gamlen (2013), among others, noting the early 2000s as an inflection point in diaspora strategy for Aotearoa New Zealand (hereafter, Aotearoa). Gamlen (2013) cites high-profile mainstream media and political comments that expressed hostility to permanent residents and citizens who live outside Aotearoa – including stereotypes that those who emigrate are selfish or disloyal, that they have abandoned their ‘natural’ solidarity with family and nation and that they have betrayed their compatriots in search of economic gain. Beginning in the early 2000s, however, political sentiment and public policy began explicitly to recognise the value of Aotearoa's diaspora, both economically and culturally, as well as the many benefits of internationally connected residents within the country (Gamlen 2013).

The earlier negative attitudes towards the diaspora are striking and in need of some explanation. Lorenzo Veracini's (2010) work on settler colonialism suggests one potential line of analysis. He argues that in settler colonial societies like Aotearoa, there exists

A plausible chain of associations may run from the self-understanding of the settler as someone whose legitimacy is derived from their intention to ‘stay’. From this perspective, those who leave are violating a sort of compact, undermining the claims to legitimacy of those who want to stay, and leading to perceptions of betrayal and associated negative stereotypes that cast aspersions on the loyalties and solidarities of those in the diaspora.

In this context, the turn of the century rise in international mobility (de Haas, Castles, and Miller 2020, 4; Scholte 2005, 104–105) created incentives to positively re-evaluate Aotearoa's large diaspora, as well as internationally connected residents within Aotearoa's borders. As Gamlen suggests, governments increasingly oriented to an interconnected global market began to perceive the value of the international knowledge and connections their diasporic communities could bring (Gamlen 2013).

This study critically examined the current legal landscape of paid parental leave in Australia and compared it with equivalent provisions in other OECD member countries with a nominal GDP similar to Australia’s, namely, Canada, Germany and Sweden. In comparing the legal entitlements of women against the OECD member countries, major discrepancies concerning leave duration and operation were established. This research has analysed the international treaties that have informed parental leave policies, the CEDAW, ICESCR, CRC and the ILO's Conventions and Recommendations. It has explored three variants of feminism, which were applied to analyse current Australian paid parental leave provisions. This analysis led to an observation that paid parental leave provisions are categorical to cultural feminism, whereas unpaid parental leave provisions fall under liberal feminism. These observations appear inconsistent with the parental leave policies of the identified OECD member countries, whose provisions fall under the cultural and reconstructive feminist paragons, championing women's rights as mothers and, equally, as breadwinners for the family.

Further, this monograph has relied on a breadth of social and political research into how Australian paid parental leave laws have developed from their inception to the current period. These social and political findings have effectively demonstrated that not only is Australia lagging in terms of duration and generosity of parental leave, as compared with OECD equivalents, but it has also been stagnant in terms of domestic development, with Australian paid parental leave not introduced until 2010. Employerpaid parental leave was also examined, revealing that, in practice, parental leave payments are viewed as welfare payments instead of a human right, as stipulated by international treaties.

While Australia's statutory paid parental leave aims to address gender inequality, promote women's workforce participation and promote child and maternal health, the 18-week duration falls considerably short compared with other OECD member countries and fails to meet the WHO's 26-week minimum leave duration for optimal child and maternal health. On average, mothers in Canada, Germany and Sweden have up to 74 weeks of statutory paid parental leave, paid at approximately AUD700 per week following childbirth or adoption. Meanwhile, Australian mothers are only entitled to up to 18 weeks of statutory paid leave weeks (less than 25% of the average entitlements of Canada, Germany and Sweden) at AUD754 per week.

Introduction

The 2019 Ōtautahi Christchurch (hereafter, Ōtautahi) terror attacks in Aotearoa New Zealand foregrounded an emergent relationship between Māori and Muslim communities (Andrews 2019; Parahi 2019). In the aftermath of the attacks by a lone gunman who entered two mosques in Ōtautahi and shot unarmed worshippers, killing 51 people, there were numerous gestures of support and care shown by Māori communities towards Muslims. These included marae (Māori tribal meeting places, including a traditional meeting house) opening their doors to Muslim mourners, te reo messages of kia kaha (be strong) and aroha (love) written outside mosques and translated into Arabic, and a joint spiritual cleansing by Ngāi Tahu (the principal Māori iwi/tribe in the South Island) and Muslim leaders of the two mosques that were attacked (Homayun 2020). Immediately following the Ōtautahi attacks, initiatives occurring at the government level included various support and relief efforts led by E Tū Whānau, a ‘by Māori for Māori’ movement affiliated with the Ministry of Social Development (see Khan-Janif this collection).

This chapter unpacks the complex culturally derived value systems characterised by respect, reciprocity and relationality that are central to this budding relationship between Muslim migrants and Māori. We demonstrate that relationships built on such values can be a fruitful avenue for cultivating solidarities through a shared sense of belonging between Muslim communities and Māori in Aotearoa New Zealand. The bonds that are forming between Muslim migrant and Māori communities further constitute a starting point that may serve as a pathway for developing enduring relationships between migrant communities of Colour and Māori in this nation. For far too long, mana whenua (local Māori authorities) have been side-lined in conversations relating to migrant settlement, to the detriment of these communities (both migrant and Māori). The pervading settler colonial rhetoric that guides migrant settlement strategy in Aotearoa New Zealand does little to create opportunities for building enduring relationships and solidarities between migrant communities of Colour and Māori as tangata whenua (people of the land). In particular, current mainstream settlement strategies and symbolic aspects of settlement (such as the citizenship oath for instance) offer limited guidance on how migrant communities, including Muslims, might build respectful and mutually beneficial connections with Māori. Throughout this chapter, we argue that a focus on culture-centred relationship building can cultivate a relational sense of belonging for both Muslim migrants and Māori by recentring Māori as the hosts of this whenua (land).