Word: migrant
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...recent incidents of xenophobia in South Africa not only reveal the brutality of some criminals, they also show the government's difficulties in fighting poverty. Although South Africa's economy has been growing constantly, people in the townships - especially migrant workers from Zimbabwe - do not really benefit. I wonder whether the attacks will impact on South Africa's staging of the 2010 World Cup. Adrian Lobe, STUTTGART, GERMANY...
...promote the very practices it purports to detect. In The China Price, Alexandra Harney describes how Chinese suppliers set up "five-star factories" whose model working conditions impress auditors, while also creating "shadow" factories to meet actual order deadlines. With a minimum of paperwork or safety codes, staffed by migrant workers who often put in 12-hour days seven days a week, these shadow factories are unregulated, but common. The craze for auditing has, paradoxically, led factory owners to create such factories. It also sops up resources that could be channeled toward improving labor conditions. "If factories are getting monitored...
...meantime, there are more immediate economic minefields to navigate. Inflation, for example, is surging in cities like Doha and Dubai, driving up the price of everything from food to office space. Nobody is hurt more than the Gulf's millions of ill-paid migrant workers, and this exacerbates the danger of growing labor unrest. One measure that Gulf countries are considering to dampen inflation: a dismantling of the peg that ties their currencies to the beleaguered U.S. dollar...
...life could be threatened by a steady influx of Han Chinese. The wave of immigration has seen the Han share of the province's population - estimated at about 6% in 1949 - rise to an official 40%, a figure that is much higher if millions of undocumented migrant workers are included. That massive immigration has transformed the north of the province, effectively establishing a Han majority and helping to turn what might have been a base for a festering separatist problem into a race-relations issue. Just as Inner Mongolia, now 70% Han, has been Sinicized, so too are Xinjiang...
...major retrenchment could have serious consequences for China's economy and society. The specter of legions of laid-off migrant workers roaming the streets in search of jobs is bound to keep Beijing's economic policymakers--who fear the political consequences of widespread social unrest--up at night. Sun, the Lehman Brothers economist, says that as manufacturers are pushed to the brink, China's stock markets could see sharp declines. Given that many large, listed Chinese companies pad their profits by investing in stocks themselves, "a big correction could bring [corporate earnings] even lower, and a vicious cycle could result...