Artykuły w czasopismach na temat „New Zealand Meat Workers' Union”

In 1960, the Northern Drivers’ Union of New Zealand instituted its anti-racism policy. How this came about, and what it meant for union struggles in the following two decades, are the central concerns of this article. Effectively, the implementation of democratic organising principles within the Northern Drivers’ Union assisted the formation of anti-racism policy and practice. Union officials linked domestic racism with the experiences of black workers under apartheid in South Africa from 1960, which generated calls for a boycott of South Africa and local support for the Citizens’ Association for Racial Equality. Anti-apartheid sentiment in relation to South African rugby tours, which had galvanised unionists in the 1960s, became a source of division by the 1970s as attention turned to more “local” experiences of racism. In particular, this article considers how Māori rank and file, working together with Pākehā union officials such as communist Bill Andersen, extended trade union anti-racism work across the northern regions of the country, especially Auckland.

This article addresses the challenges connected with interest representation in transnational labour markets. It draws on an in-depth case study of the labour market that matches Eastern European workers to jobs in the German meat industry. This labour market has emerged under the European Union Posted Workers Directive. The posting regime has entailed dumping wages and extreme exploitation in the German meat industry. The German Food Workers Union has faced great difficulties in organising workers posted in the meat industry and in negotiating collective agreements because of strong employer resistance to industry-level bargaining. Yet 2014 saw a shift towards a new employment regime and a re-ordering of the transnational labour market, which entailed several improvements for workers. This article sheds light on how this change came about through campaigning by a coalition of different sorts of (collective) actors and not traditional collective action by the union. The role and impact of campaigning for labour protection in transnational labour markets in the Global North are further discussed.

The objective was to describe the current epidemiology and trends in New Zealand human leptospirosis, using descriptive epidemiology of laboratory surveillance and disease notification data, 1990–8. The annual incidence of human leptospirosis in New Zealand 1990–8 was 4·4 per 100000. Incidence was highest among meat processing workers (163·5/100000), livestock farm workers (91·7), and forestry-related workers (24·1). The most commonly detected serovars were Leptospira borgpetersenii serovar (sv.) hardjo (hardjobovis) (46·1%), L. interrogans sv. pomona (24·4%) and L. borgpetersenii sv. ballum (11·9%). The annual incidence of leptospirosis declined from 5·7/100000 in 1990–2 to 2·9/100000 in 1996–8. Incidence of L. borgpetersenii sv. hardjo and L. interrogans sv. pomona infection declined, while incidence of L. borgpetersenii sv. ballum infection increased. The incidence of human leptospirosis in New Zealand remains high for a temperate developed country. Increasing L. borgpetersenii sv. ballum case numbers suggest changing transmission patterns via direct or indirect exposure to contaminated surface water. Targeted and evaluated disease control programmes should be renewed.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine the Hotel Workers Union and its impact on talent management in the New Zealand hospitality sector using the corporatist framework drawing primarily on the works of Schmitter (1979) to construct a critical, historical employment relations approach.Design/methodology/approachThe data for this paper were gathered as part of a history of employment relations in the New Zealand hotel sector from 1955 to 2000. The main methods were, namely, semi-structured interviews and archival research.FindingsThis study found a historical employment environment of multiple actors in the employment relationship, with hotel unions playing a more complex and nuanced role to influence talent management in the New Zealand hotel sector. The paper suggests that neither the hotel union nor employers effectively addressed talent management challenges in this sector.Research limitations/implicationsThe study contributes detailed empirical knowledge about historical relationships between hotel unions and talent management issues in New Zealand.Originality/valueThe paper argues that applying a corporatist perspective to the history of the Hotel Workers Union and the issues of talent management that result from that history provides a unique and insightful contribution to the field

Abstract With cancer accounting for half of all work-related deaths in the European Union (EU) and other developed countries, data on cancer-causing exposures at work and information on prevention measures used at the workplace is essential to improve and preserve the safety and health of workers. EU-OSHA led in 2023 the largest worker survey conducted in Europe to assess exposure to a range of known cancer risk factors, including for example asbestos, benzene, chromium (VI), diesel engine exhaust emissions, nickel, respirable crystalline silica, ultraviolet radiation or wood dust. In total, 24,402 workers in all occupations were interviewed in six EU countries. The survey uses an occupational exposure assessment tool for epidemiological studies (OccIDEAS) to assess the probability and level of exposure to the selected cancer risk factors based on respondent answers. A similar worker survey has been implemented in New Zealand: the New Zealand carcinogens survey 2021, which also used OccIDEAS to estimate the prevalence of carcinogen exposure. After explaining the methodology applied, key findings from both the European Union and New Zealand will be presented. A special focus will be given to the workers exposed to ionising and ultraviolet radiation in the EU, and to the workers in the health and social care sector and their exposure to cancer risk factors.

The trade union recognition process is a pre-requisite to the collective bargaining action of a trade union. The recognition is important to ascertain the competency of a trade union and the acceptance by the workers to represent them in the collective bargaining action with the employer. However, the ambiguities in the existing legislations on the trade union recognition process in Malaysia and the anti-union practices of the employer are currently depriving the workers of their rights to negotiate for better working conditions. The primary focus of the present work is to identify the weaknesses of the recognition legal framework and the anti-union practices of employers in the recognition process of trade unions. Secondly, is to critically analyse the good faith bargaining practice in other countries and its significance to the recognition process in Malaysia. To explore the anti-union tactics perpetrated by employers, semi-structured interviews have been conducted to analyse the trade unions’ experience in their recognition claims. This research employed a qualitative approach as the instrument to study the good faith bargaining practices in the Australian and New Zealand labour law framework. The findings reveal that the good faith bargaining practices in Australia and New Zealand have improved the odds for trade unions to represent the workers in negotiating collective agreements. The study finally concludes that in order to reform the recognition process of trade unions in Malaysia, the good faith bargaining practice should be implemented in the nation’s industrial relations law framework.

SUMMARYThis study estimated the frequency of exposure of meat workers to carcasses infected with Leptospira serovars Hardjobovis or Pomona in a sheep-only abattoir in New Zealand. A stochastic spreadsheet model was developed to assess the daily risk of exposure of eviscerators, meat inspectors and offal handlers to live leptospires in sheep carcasses from May to November 2004 (high-risk period), and from December 2004 to June 2005 (low-risk period). The average sheep processed per day were 225 for an eviscerator, 374 for a meat inspector, and 1123 for an offal handler. The median daily exposures during high- and low-risk periods were 11 [95% distribution interval (DI) 5–19] and three (95% DI 1–8) infected carcasses/day for eviscerators, 18 (95% DI 9–29) and six (95% DI 2–12) for meat inspectors, and 54 (95% DI 32–83) and 18 (95% DI 8–31) for offal handlers, respectively. Stochastic risk modelling provided evidence that processing of sheep carcasses exposed meat workers regularly to live leptospires with substantial seasonal variation.

This paper examines factors contributing to the environment within which reform of New Zealnnd's public health care and its industrial relations system occurred. These include radical state sector; health and labour law reforms that marketised the health sector, decentralised bargaining, the ending of compulsory union membership and the elimination of the requirement that employers bargain 'in good faith'. The paper examines the implementation of these changes and their impact on various unions. Domestic service workers have fared poorly, while medical specialists have benefited from the reforms. The impact on nursing and support staff unions has varied according to regional and market pressures for different occupations. Various union strategies and structures are examined. The paper concludes that reform has ended the exceptionalism of labour relations in New Zealand.

One option for reversing US union decline, requiring no legislative change, would involve re-legitimizing non-majority or minority union representation, allowing unions to organize without running the gauntlet of union certification. Such minority representation, applicable only to workplaces without majority union support on a members-only basis, could run in parallel with the existing system of exclusive representation in workplaces where majority support is achieved. The increased representation in the currently unrepresented workplaces would inevitably promote workers’ collective voice and contribute to union revival. However, minority unionism has been criticized for breeding union competition because it is non-exclusive. In this paper, the nature and extent of inter-union conflict under minority unionism are re-examined, using survey data from unions in New Zealand which already has non-exclusive, minority union representation. The low levels and consequences of conflict suggest that the benefits of minority unionism far outweigh any potentially unfavourable effects.

In this article, we seek to examine the potential for cross-fertilisation of legal regimes relating to trade union representation of members in collective bargaining. The United Kingdom has moved from an entirely voluntarist model in the 1980s to a statutory regime which facilitates recognition of a trade union following majority support from workers (usually by a ballot). By way of contrast, New Zealand has shifted from a highly regulated award-based model in the 1980s to an "agency" model whereby an employer is required to bargain in good faith with any union representing two or more of the employer's employees, but with some balloting also contemplated for coverage of non-unionised workers. It is uncontroversial that the United Kingdom legislation has been severely limited in its effects in a context of ongoing decline in collective bargaining, while the New Zealand model offers only faint remediation of the dismembering of the collective bargaining system by the Employment Contracts Act 1991. In both legal systems, a Labour Party is now proposing implementation of forms of sectoral bargaining. We explore the reasons for these political and legal developments, exploring democratic and human rights rationales for their adoption, as well as more pragmatic approaches. In so doing we examine the scope for democratic trade union representation via consent or ballot, the role of individual human rights and regulatory rationales. We conclude by considering how representative and regulatory approaches may be mutually reinforcing and address different understandings of "constitutionalisation". In so doing, we reaffirm the emphasis placed in Gordon Anderson's writings on substance over form.

SUMMARYThe aims of this study were to determine the annual incidence of infection withLeptospira interrogansserovar Pomona and/orLeptospira borgpeterseniiserovar Hardjo and its association with influenza-like illness (ILI) in meat workers in New Zealand. Sera were collected twice, 50–61 weeks apart, from 592 workers at eight abattoirs slaughtering sheep (n = 4), cattle (n = 2) and deer (n = 2), and tested by the microscopic agglutination test for Hardjo and Pomona. Forty-nine (8·3%) participants either seroconverted or had at least a twofold increased serological titre against either serovar. The worker infection risk was higher in sheep abattoirs (11·9%) than in abattoirs processing deer (0%) or cattle (1·2%) (P < 0·01). The annualized risk of mild (ILI) or severe clinical disease attributable to the twoLeptospiraserovars was 2·7%. This study has demonstrated that meat workers are at substantial risk of infection and clinical disease, suggesting further investigation of infection sources and preventive measures are warranted.

Union affiliation is often viewed with cynicism by both managers and some academics in the field of human resource management. This research note reports New Zealand data from an exploratory study which examines the relationship between union affiliation and a range of workplace attitudes commonly considered as related to positive performance outcomes for the organization. Using a survey approach, the views of managers, supervisors and workers are assessed. Differences between groups are identified using t–tests. This study finds no discernible difference to exist between past union affiliation and views about employment relations, organizational commitment, job satisfaction and HRM effectiveness for all three of the groups examined. However, differences are evident for current union membership. This tended to be associated with comparatively lower ratings across nearly all of the attitudinal dimensions examined for both supervisors and workers, but not for managers. Also of interest, this study finds the lowest ratings recorded for all three groups to be in relation to the practice of HRM.

This exploratory study examines union-civil alliances in New Zealand (NZ). It focuses on the involvement of NZ’s peak union body, the Council of Trade Unions, in three civil group coalitions around the Living Wage Campaign, Decent Work Agenda and Environmental Agenda. It assesses how the CTU and its affiliates’ coalition involvement are informed by and seek to progress liberal (representative), participatory and/or more radical democratic principles, and what this means for organizational practice; the relations between the coalition parties; workplaces; and beyond.Through case discussions, the study finds that civil alliances involving the CTU and its affiliates do not reflect a core trait of union activity in NZ. Among the union-civil alliances that do exist, there is a prevailing sense of their utility to progress shared interests alongside, and on the union side, a more instrumental aim to encourage union revival. However, the alliances under examination reflect an engagement with various liberal and participatory democratic arrangements at different organizational levels. More radical democratic tendencies emerge in relation toad hocelements of activity and the aspirational goals of such coalitions as opposed to their usual processes and institutional configurations.In essence, what emerges is a labour centre and movement which, on the one hand, is in a survivalist mode primarily concerned with economistic matters, and on the other, in a position of relative political and bargaining weakness, reaching out to other civil groups where it can so as to challenge the neo-liberal hegemony. Based on our findings, we conclude that Laclau and Mouffe’s (2001) view of radical democracy holds promise for subsequent coalitions involving the CTU, particularly in the context of NZ workers’ diverse interests and the plurality of other civil groups and social movements’ interests. This view concernson-goingagency, change, organizing and strategy by coalitions to build inclusive (counter-) hegemony, arguing for a politic from below that challenges existing dominant neo-liberal assumptions in work and other spheres of life.

In recent decades, the majority of outbreaks of listeriosis with a high percentage of deaths was caused by the consumption of food products, including meat and meat products. One of the main principles of prevention of listeriosis in humans and animals is a constant quality control of food and feeds. The district of the Ussurisk city specializes mainly in the production of agricultural products. Meat production work on the raw materials of local origin, and the imported meat is also used. There was executed a study concerning the possibility of the contamination of meat products of Listeria monocytogenes on the territory of the agricultural province of the district of the Ussurisk city for the period from 2012 to 2015. A total of 21491 sample products were investigated according to rules “Common sanitary and epidemiological and hygienic requirements for goods subject to sanitary-and-epidemiologic supervision (control)” of the Customs Union (Chapter II, section 1) and the Technical Regulations of the Customs Union № 880 “About security of food “(Appendix 1). The presence of 45 positive cases of L. monocytogenes was revealed, at that the most of them have been found in meat products and poultry meat. Observations of the occurrence rate of L. monocytogenes in meat of the imported production for a number of years show these the pathogenic bacteria to be isolated every year in 40% - 66.6% of cases (of all positive cases of isolation from meat). This meat was imported mainly from countries such as Brazil, Paraguay, New Zealand, Austria, England, Uruguay. A large proportion of meat and meat products, contaminated by L. monocytogenes enters the territory of Primorsky Kray from Latin America. It is important to note that meat and meat products contaminated by these pathogens were also produced in the territory of the district of the city of Ussurisk. In connection with it there is obvious the need as for further continuation of monitoring products on the market, as a survey of agricultural animals of private and public farms in the district.

Animal production factors can affect the fatty acid and volatile profile of lamb meat. The fatty acid and volatile composition of the M. longissimus thoracis was evaluated from 150 lambs from 10 groups of commercial lambs that differed in age, sex, diet and breed, from three farms, which represent typical forage lamb production systems in New Zealand. The meat from 4-month-old composite lambs slaughtered at weaning had a similar polyunsaturated to saturated fatty acid ratio compared to 6- to 8-month-old composite lambs, but a greater ratio than that of 12-month-old Merino lambs (p < 0.05), with all ratios being lower than the recommended ≥0.45. All lamb production systems produced meat with an omega-6 to omega-3 ratio below 1.5, well below the recommended ratio ≤ 4.0. Meat from 4-month-old lambs had higher C12:0, C14:0 and C16:0 and lower C18:0, reflecting the composition of the milk diet, resulting in higher atherogenic index than meat from other animal groups, while meat from 12-month-old Merino lambs, with lower content of polyunsaturated fatty acids, showed higher thrombogenic index. Meat from lambs processed at weaning contained the greatest concentration of eicosapentaenoic and docosahexaenoic acids, which would qualify as a ‘source’ or ‘good source’ of these target fatty acids based on the Commission of Regulation of the European Union or the Food Standards Australia New Zealand guidelines, respectively. Volatiles were extracted from the headspace of raw lean meat and 36 volatile compounds were identified. The abundance of carbon disulphide, isododecane, heptanal, 2,5-hexanediol and 3-octanone and pentanoic, octanoic, nonanoic and heptanoic acids was similar between all groups of lambs. Meat from 12-month-old Merino lambs had low abundance of acetic, propanoic, butanoic and hexanoic acids, and hexanal, octanal and dimethyl sulphide. For 6- to 8-month-old composite lambs, hexanal, octanal and nonanal were present at higher relative abundance in meat from lambs that grazed on chicory than perennial ryegrass. The significant differences in the fatty acid and volatile profiles in meat from 12-month-old Merino lambs compared with lambs slaughtered at weaning or further grazed on red clover, chicory or mixed pasture may result in distinctive nutritional value and lamb flavour.

The main objective of this study was to present data on the current situation and future trends of pig meat production in the European Union-27 (EU). Pig production has played an important social and economic role for centuries in many states of the EU. In 2022, pig meat production in the EU reached 23 M tons, which represented 21% of total production worldwide. The two key reasons that justify such amount of pork produced, are the acceptance and high consumption of the meat by the local population and the high quality of the meat produced which facilitated pork export. However, current data show a reduction in pork production for the last three years, as a consequence of a series of events that include i) problems with the chain of ingredients supply, ii) uncontrolled increase in African Swine Fever (ASF) outbreaks, iii) fast recovery of pig production in China, iv) increasing concerns by the rural population on the high cost to meet future requirements of the EU legislation on farm management, environmental sustainability and animal welfare, v) increased cost of all inputs involved in pig production and vi) limited interest of the new farmer generation to work on the pig sector. Consequently, pork production is expected to decrease in the EU for the next years, although sales will be maintained at a relative high level because pork is the meat preferred by local consumers in most EU countries. In order to maintain the favourable position of the pork industry in the near future, strategies to implement include: i) maintain the quality of the meat destinated to export markets, ii) improve the control of outbreaks of ASF and other swine diseases, iii) implementation of technological innovations to improve working conditions making more attractive to work in the pork sector of the food chain to the new generation of farmers and workers.

Leptospirosis in New Zealand has been strongly associated with animal-contact occupations and with serovars Hardjo and Pomona. However, recent data suggest changes in these patterns, hence, serovar-specific epidemiology of leptospirosis from 1999 to 2017 was investigated. The 19-year average annual incidence is 2.01/100,000. Early (1999–2007) and late (2008–2017) study period comparisons showed a significant increase in notifications with serovar Ballum (IRR: 1.59, 95% CI: 1.22–2.09) in all cases and serovar Tarassovi (IRR: 1.75, 95% CI: 1.13–2.78) in Europeans and a decrease in notifications with serovars Hardjo and Pomona in all cases. Incidences of Ballum peaked in winter, Hardjo peaked in spring and Tarassovi peaked in summer. Incidence was highest in Māori (2.24/100,000) with dominant serovars being Hardjo and Pomona. Stratification by occupation showed meat workers had the highest incidence of Hardjo (57.29/100,000) and Pomona (45.32/100,000), farmers had the highest incidence of Ballum (11.09/100,000) and dairy farmers had the highest incidence of Tarassovi (12.59/100,000). Spatial analysis showed predominance of Hardjo and Pomona in Hawke’s Bay, Ballum in West Coast and Northland and Tarassovi in Waikato, Taranaki and Northland. This study highlights the serovar-specific heterogeneity of human leptospirosis in New Zealand that should be considered when developing control and prevention strategies.

The aim of this paper is to discuss the challenges of organising women workers in Asia, and to discuss how trade unions can facilitate their more effective participation in these movements. The paper is primarily informed by research undertaken with Southern Initiative on Globalization and Trade Union Rights (SIGTUR). Formed in Perth, Western Australia in 1991 and made up of delegates from India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Thailand, Malaysia, South Korea, the Philippines, Hong Kong, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand and Brazil, the aim of SIGTUR is to promote collaborative activity by independent trade unions in the ‘South’ or rather countries within the Asia-Pacific. The paper highlights the effects of neo-liberalism on workers and develop appropriate international responses.

New models of union organizing have become an important instrument of union growth and renewal. We examine the transfer of US-developed organizing practices to Ireland. We enquire whether the practical experiences of SIPTU can be considered successful. In particular, we focus on the question: in what way is the architecture of union organizing shaped by the material conditions that affect workers’ power? We look at three campaigns across three low-wage sectors (hotels, red meat processing and contract cleaning). The campaigns share a number of common properties, but differ in respect of the power resources available to employees and the shape of their outcomes. Using a most similar systems comparative research design, we identify a variety of causes which help explain the success and shape of the different organizing campaigns. Finally, we make a number of arguments in respect of how our findings link to debates about the future of trade unionism.

European Union is facing challenges of ageing societies and changes in structure of economy, thus labour shortages turn into an urgent issue that ultimately affects labour market sustainability. In its attempt to recruit highly qualified workers EU has strong international competitors, e.g. USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and pursues a variety of initiatives at national level of the Member States and at the EU level in general. This article aims at assessing the EU policies related to migration of highly qualified workers. Statistical data analysis has revealed that labour mobility is increasing in EU. Thus the EU Mobility directive could be evaluated as bringing benefits, yet with a room for improvement, because highly qualified workers still make up just a small part in all the mobile citizens’ population. National initiatives are more effective in fostering the migration of highly qualified workers, but this has the threat of unequal benefits in different EU regions; the effectiveness of EU Blue Card initiative is weak but with a high potential, thus it needs further improvements in its issuing policies. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5755/j01.ppaa.16.3.19345 An erratum to this article is available at: DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5755/j01.ppaa.16.3.24731

Abstract The development of biofuel production in the European Union is expected to increase the production of distillers grains, which can be a good feed material after concentration, centrifugation and drying. Research shows that dried distillers grains that meet microbiological and toxicological standards can be a nutritious feed for different species of animals. The aim of the study was to determine the effect of adding different levels (5 or 10%) of maize dried distillers grains with solubles (DDGS) to complete feeds on rearing performance and meat quality of young rabbits. The study was carried out with New Zealand White rabbits from weaning at 35 days to 90 days of age. The results obtained showed that the introduction of 5% DDGS to rabbit diets had no negative effect on rearing performance of rabbits from 35 to 90 days of age and on the quality of their meat. Despite using a detoxifier, the 10% level was hazardous to rabbits due to the high level of mycotoxins in the purchased DDGS and markedly decreased the quality of their meat. Therefore it appears necessary to analyse the distillers grains fed to this group of animals for mycotoxins, in particular to determine their safe levels for rabbits.

In February 1951, industrial discord between New Zealand watersiders and British ship-owners led to a dispute that was seen by each as a lockout and a strike respectively. Throughout the duration of the dispute, the Trades Union Congress and Wellington Waterside Workers’ Union Action Committee produced and distributed substantial amounts of printed material to stiffen the struggle among its members, vilify strike-breakers and the National Government – whose ultimate aim it was to crush the Union –and to ridicule the police – who were the instruments ofenforcement against the newly-minted Waterfront StrikeEmergency Regulations. In defiance of Regulation 4(d),which banned the production and distribution of ‘seditious’literature, a steady stream of illegal leaflets, pamphlets,lino-cut illustrations and cartoons emerged from theGestetners and small presses in the homes of membersand supporters of the watersiders. While printed materialis touched upon in the documented examination of thedispute as a political and industrial struggle, it is never thefocus of discussion. This article examines the multi-modalrhetoric of the underground literature to form a pictureof one side of the story of what was, arguably, the mostdisruptive and divisive 151 days in the history of the NewZealand labour movement.

In response to the need for more inclusive collective bargaining legislation to combat inequality and improve conditions in the workplace, this paper considers the recently introduced New Zealand Fair Pay Agreement [FPA] sectoral bargaining framework and offers a preliminary series of ideas and proposals setting out how an FPA model for bargaining sectoral standards could work in Canada. It is intended as the beginning of a more detailed discussion on the development of an FPA regime culminating in model legislation that could be adapted to different Canadian jurisdictions. Guided by principles of accountability, integration, and inclusivity, this proposal is intended to apply to all workers in an employment relationship – including dependent contractors and gig and platform workers. The proposed system is to be structured as a new, stand-alone statute, drawing upon existing institutions administering collective bargaining legislation, incorporating some familiar collective bargaining concepts: good faith bargaining, dues check-off, and unfair labour practice protection. It is intended to preserve existing collective bargaining arrangements by excluding specified sectors with existing high union density or existing sectoral bargaining. However, it is also intended to offer a new, sectoral bargaining option based on industry or occupation sectors, producing FPA “sector agreements” containing minimum standards applying to all employees and employers in the sector. This proposed framework would operate in parallel and in conjunction with the existing enterprise-level collective bargaining system.

This article explores European Union (EU) policy on geographical indications (GIs) as expressed in the outcomes of EU trade negotiations. This empirical approach provides a factual basis about the GI deals which are acceptable to the EU. Across the EU’s six recent Global Europe treaties the EU has achieved a good degree of success in obtaining strong-form GI rights (no use of -like, -style qualifiers on labels) for a number of specific products. The article also identifies GI outcomes in recent treaties driven by US negotiating demands. While US-driven treaties prioritize a trademark approach to GIs, they also allow for coexistence with EU-style strong-form GIs. Comparing these two sets of outcomes provides useful insights for future EU trade negotiations, such as the proposed Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) with the US or the proposed Free Trade Agreement with Australia and New Zealand. In particular the Canada-EU Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) shows how the interests of domestic cheese and meat producers can be protected while allowing for strong-form GI privileges for a reasonable number (163 in CETA) of listed product names.

Abstract In the economy of the Polish People’s Republic in the field of agriculture, the key resources which were a subject of competition included: land; production assets (machines, devices, tools for agricultural production, fertilizers, plant protection chemicals) and people necessary to work on farms and for farms. The command economy of the times of the People’s Republic of Poland was an example of an economy of permanent shortages, which increased in times of crises of the entire system. The collapse of 1979-1982 was such a socio-economic crisis. The Trade Union of Independent Farmers’ “Solidarity”, which was part of the great social protest movement in 1980-1981, forced a change in the communist regime’s approach to the peasantry and, together with other pressure groups, contributed to the implementation of the agricultural reform covering the entire sphere of agriculture and not only its state farm segment. The reform of 1981, initiated by the Rzeszów-Ustrzyki agreements, gradually changed the living situation of farmers and, above all, led to changes in the profitability of agricultural production and the legalization of trade in meat products at marketplaces as well as the release of prices for food products in 1989. Peasant farms won the competition with state-owned farms for capital resources – new production factors, and they expanded their land acreage (land factor). Farmers, however, were losing competition for workers in confrontation with industry and services in cities and state-owned farms, where farm workers could count on very generous social benefits.

If Conservative Party leader Winston Churchill fought World War II determined not to be the prime minister who lost the Empire, Clement Attlee, Ernest Bevin, and Herbert Morrison, who as Labour members of the Coalition government served with him, were equally determined to hold on to Empire once peace was won. The Empire/Commonwealth offered both political and economic benefits to Labour. Politically, the Commonwealth provided substance for Britain's pretensions to a world power role equal in stature to the new superpowers of the United States and the Soviet Union. For this claim to be effective, however, the Commonwealth needed to be demographically strong and firmly united under British leadership. Economically, imperial preferences and the sterling area offered a financial buffer against Britain's true plight of accumulated wartime debts and major infrastructural damage and neglect. Receiving over 40 percent of British exports and providing substantial, and in the case of Australia and New Zealand, dollar-free imports of meat, wheat, timber, and dairy produce, the Commonwealth seemed a logical body on which the United Kingdom could draw for financial support. In short, postwar policy makers believed preservation of the Empire/Commonwealth to be a necessary first step in domestic and foreign reconstruction.Yet in 1945, a variety of circumstances combined to make the task of imperial preservation one of reconstitution rather than simple maintenance. First, it seemed that, just at the moment when Britain needed them most, some of the strongest and oldest members of the Commonwealth appeared to be moving away.

Worker campaigns for a more direct say in protecting their health and safety are a significant but under-researched subject in labour history. Largely overlooked are the attempts by coalminers in the UK, Australia and Canada to establish mechanisms for representation on health and safety in the 1870s. This push for a voice then spread to New Zealand, France, Belgium and other countries, with unions eventually securing legislative rights to inspect their workplaces a century before workers in other industries gained similar entitlements. In Australia metalliferous miners’ unions followed coalminers in initiating a parallel campaign for the right to appoint their own mine-site and district inspectors (known as “check-inspectors”) from the late nineteenth century. This article examines the struggle for and activities/impact of workmen-inspectors in Australian metalliferous mines, including adoption of the competing UK-Australian and Continental-European models. It finds the development conforms to a resistance rather than mutual-cooperation perspective with check-inspectors performing the role of “knowledge activists.” The article argues this finding is not only relevant to understanding more recent experience of worker involvement in occupational health and safety but also demonstrates the relevance of historical research to contemporary regulatory policy debates and union strategies.

The importation of more than 60,000 Chinese laborers to work in the Witwatersrand gold mines in South Africa between 1904 and 1910 remains an obscure episode in the history of Asian indentured labor in European colonies. Yet the experience of the coolies on the Rand reverberated throughout the Anglo-American world and had lasting consequences for global politics of race and labor. At one level, the Chinese laborers themselves resisted their conditions of work to such a degree that the program became untenable and was canceled after a few years. Not only did the South African project fail: Its failure signaled more broadly that at the turn of the twentieth century it had become increasingly difficult to impose upon Chinese workers the coercive and violent exploitation that had marked the global coolie trade in the era of slave emancipation. At another level, the Chinese labor program on the Rand provoked a political crisis in the Transvaal and in metropolitan Britain over the “Chinese Question”—that is, whether Chinese, indentured or free, should be altogether excluded from the settler colonies. Following the passage of laws limiting or excluding Chinese immigration to the United States (1882), Canada (1885), New Zealand (1881), and Australia (1901), Transvaal Colony and then the Union of South Africa, formed in 1910, likewise barred all Chinese from immigration—making Chinese and Asian exclusion, along with white rule, native dispossession, and racial segregation the defining features of the Anglo-American settlerism.

This article questions the perception of non-union workers as rather rigid and out-of-reach non-unionists by using research conducted in New Zealand. It explores whether, under new institutional architecture, non-unionists would continue to exhibit the same preferences and exercise the same choices as before. This was done by testing their responses to a union default scenario. The significance of this study concerns how this particular group of workers, contra non-union workers in non-union workplaces, would react to a union default where a union is already available to them. By contrast, non-union workers in non-union workplaces not only at present have effectively no choice for gaining union representation but are also bereft of any experience of it in their workplace. The results suggest 44% of these employees would join as a result of a union default with union density consequently rising in New Zealand from 17–18% to 26–27%.

Trade unions and trade unionism are under serious threat in most industrialised countries, in what has been referred to as the ‘crisis in trade unionism’. The crisis is common to trade unions across the globe, consisting of a decline in membership and density, coupled with a loss of political influence and social standing. The crisis has been caused by changes in the political economies of the industrially developed nations. Social Movement Unionism (SMU) is one of the strategies to combat this crisis which has been embraced by unions and union movements in many of the Liberal Market Economies (LME). In the context of New Zealand, Jane Parker has looked at the possibility of SMU at a union movement level. However, at a single union level, the Service and Food Workers’ Union (SFWU) has engaged with this vision of renewal through participation in the Living Wage Movement Aotearoa New Zealand (LWANZ).This paper will seek to place the SFWU’s engagement with this campaign within a theoretical framework of union renewal; that is, a re-imagining of trade union relationships in order to (re-)gain power along various dimensions. We will further consider the SMU literature and will draw on three concepts identified by Ross in her analysis of social unionism: the ethos, or “collective action frame”; the strategies or “repertoire”; and, the “internal organisational practices”, and how these interlink with the literature on union renewal. Of particular note will be the response of both the union and non-union participants in the LWANZ to the development of their relationships, and whether and how this is contributing to the successes of LWANZ and of union renewal.

What do unions do? The major objective of unions is to improve the terms of conditions of employment for their members. At the same time, unions have a considerable impact on the employment conditions of not only their own members but non-unionised workers as well. One of the most important employment terms unions negotiate is wages. As a result, wage bargaining has been identified as a primary function of unions, and differences in wages between union and non-union members are considered an important measure of union power. In most countries this differential is called the ‘union/non-union’ wage differential. In New Zealand, however, there are employees who are union members but are not covered by collective agreements, contrary to the more common occurrence in other countries (e.g. the United States and Canada), where non-union members are often covered by collective agreements. Therefore, in New Zealand the differential should be more precisely called the ‘collective versus individual’ wage differential. In this article we focus on the raw ‘collective’ wage differential, but due to convention we still call it the ‘union’ wage differential.

This study assessed the potential impacts of changes in meat and dairy consumption and production, as well as different trade policies in China and India, on agricultural trade in New Zealand (NZ) and the European Union (EU-27), using the Lincoln Trade and Environment Model (LTEM). This partial equilibrium model forecasts international trade, production and consumption of agricultural commodities. Several scenarios were developed simulating different ranges of consumption and production of meat and dairy commodities, as well as full trade liberalisation in China and India. Results showed that changing consumption, production and trade patterns in India and China could lead to higher producer returns from meat and dairy commodities in NZ and the EU-27 by 2020. However, if China and India significantly increase meat and dairy consumption and production simultaneously, producer returns in NZ and the EU-27 could decline.

uropean Union is facing challenges of ageing societies and changes in structure of economy, thus labour shortages turn into an urgent issue that ultimately affects labour market sustainability. In its attempt to recruit highly qualified workers EU has strong international competitors, e.g. USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and pursues a variety of initiatives at national level of the Member States and at the EU level in general. This article aims at assessing the EU policies related to migration of highly qualified workers. Statistical data analysis has revealed that labour mobility is increasing in EU. Thus the EU Mobility directive could be evaluated as bringing benefits, yet with a room for improvement, because highly qualified workers still make up just a small part in all the mobile citizens’ population. National initiatives are more effective in fostering the migration of highly qualified workers, but this has the threat of unequal benefits in different EU regions; the effectiveness of EU Blue Card initiative is weak but with a high potential, thus it needs further improvements in its issuing policies.

uropean Union is facing challenges of ageing societies and changes in structure of economy, thus labour shortages turn into an urgent issue that ultimately affects labour market sustainability. In its attempt to recruit highly qualified workers EU has strong international competitors, e.g. USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and pursues a variety of initiatives at national level of the Member States and at the EU level in general. This article aims at assessing the EU policies related to migration of highly qualified workers. Statistical data analysis has revealed that labour mobility is increasing in EU. Thus the EU Mobility directive could be evaluated as bringing benefits, yet with a room for improvement, because highly qualified workers still make up just a small part in all the mobile citizens’ population. National initiatives are more effective in fostering the migration of highly qualified workers, but this has the threat of unequal benefits in different EU regions; the effectiveness of EU Blue Card initiative is weak but with a high potential, thus it needs further improvements in its issuing policies.

Abstract A growing interest has been noted if both industry operatives and consumers in cell-based meat (CBM), as visible in the increasing investment into this technology by major food industry corporations. However, in almost all countries worldwide, there is a lack of clear legislation with regard to the labeling of such products. The aim of the article is to collect and review current legal regulations concerning the international approval and labeling these types of products. In the manuscript, we reviews and analyze the legal situation of CBM and its labelling in countries from 4 different continents (EU members, the UK, the USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, Japan, Singapore and Israel). Aside from Singapore, no other country has approved CBM for placement on the market. The US has reached an agreement and established regulatory frameworks on CBM matters, where both the USDA and the FDA will be the control institutions. Within the European Union, CBM products will be evaluated under the Novel Food Regulation. The most anticipated process in other countries is the evaluation of CBM under the legislation on novel foods and subsequent amendments. Since local laws are still being developed, special care should be taken by the policymakers to avoid implementing local laws which could cause a negative approach to the technology by the consumers.

In a paper to LEW10, I asked why the concept of a living wage, formerly prevalent in New Zealand discourse, was no longer a common slogan – and suggested that it might be politic for it to be revived as a campaigning tool in the context of overseas activity. Exactly ten years later, such a campaign, led by the Service and Food Workers Union (SFWU) and with widespread union and community group support, is well under way, inspired partly by successes overseas. For example, the London Olympics used the living wage principle, while many UK local government authorities including the Greater London Council declare themselves to be living wage employers. Many other countries also have active campaigns and jurisdictions where living wages have been adopted. This paper will first discuss the political, economic, social and industrial relations context and rationales for such a campaign and the progress to date in New Zealand. It will then move on to the definitional, theoretical and practical issues in establishing the quantum of a living wage above the minimum wage, drawing on relevant overseas literature and experience. It will also discuss opposition based on lack of affordability, interference with the market, and employment implications. Basic definitions are variations on the theme that a living wage represents a minimum income required for a ‘decent livelihood’, to include the costs of paid work, particularly child care and transport/other directly attributable costs. The major methods of establishing a living wage are similar to those for establishing a poverty line, but must include the in work costs as well as often being based on a slightly more generous standard to ensure that being in paid work has some material benefit above social security minimum standards, in addition to its intrinsic benefits. There are therefore two common methods for calculating a living wage. The first uses relativities to average or median incomes, commonly 60% of the median (the NZ Poverty Measurement Study used 60% of median, equivalent, disposable, household income). The second approach builds up household budgets using one or ideally both of two approaches - published data from expenditure surveys and focus group discussions. Reconciliation or averaging of the two approaches, which often lead to fairly similar results, is common. This paper will discuss these methods, together with issues related to different household structures and regional differences, which make the living wage conceptually and practically more complex than a minimum wage. Finally, the paper will discuss the relationships, both positive and with some tensions, between the living wage campaign and various other social justice initiatives in the labour market and society generally – to improve paid parental leave, oppose changes to the welfare system, reduce child and general poverty, and reverse the thirty year increase in inequality

Health worker shortages in many countries are reaching crisis levels, exacerbated by factors associated with the COVID-19 pandemic. In New Zealand, the medical specialists union has called for a health workforce emergency to be declared, yet at the same time, many foreign-trained healthcare workers are unable to stay in the country or unable to work. While their health systems differ, countries such as New Zealand, the USA and the UK at least partially rely on international medical graduates (IMGs) to ensure access to health services, particularly in underserved communities. This paper focuses on the challenges faced by many IMGs, particularly those that constrain their capacity to live and work in the countries that rely on their skills. These challenges give rise to two ethical problems. First, they represent a failure of reciprocity towards IMGs; second, they represent a source of harm, both to IMGs themselves and to communities whose healthcare service depends on contributions made by IMGs. We argue that brain waste and disvaluing the contributions of IMGs and other foreign-trained health professionals have significant costs for maintaining a functional healthcare system, costs which must be adequately recognised and counted.

During World War II, the Soviet Union’s food supply was in a state of crisis. Hitler’s army had occupied the agricultural heartlands of Ukraine and Southern Russia in 1941 and, as a result, agricultural production for the entire nation had plummeted. Soldiers in Red Army, who easily ate the best rations in the country, subsisted on a daily allowance of just under a kilogram of bread, supplemented with meat, tea, sugar and butter when and if these items were available. The hunger of the Red Army and its effect on the morale and strength of Europe’s eastern warfront were causes for concern for the Soviet government and its European and American allies. The one country with a food surplus decided to do something to help, and in 1942 the United States agreed to send thousands of pounds of meat, cheese and butter overseas to help feed the Red Army. After receiving several shipments of the all-American spiced canned meat SPAM, the Red Army’s quartermaster put in a request for a more familiar canned pork product, Russian tushonka. Pound for pound, America sent more pigs overseas than soldiers during World War II, in part because pork was in oversupply in the America of the early 1940s. Shipping meat to hungry soldiers and civilians in war torn countries was a practical way to build business for the U.S. meat industry, which had been in decline throughout the 1930s. As per a Soviet-supplied recipe, the first cans of Lend-Lease tushonka were made in the heart of the American Midwest, at meatpacking plants in Iowa and Ohio (Stettinus 6-7). Government contracts in the meat packing industry helped fuel economic recovery, and meatpackers were in a position to take special request orders like the one for tushonka that came through the lines. Unlike SPAM, which was something of a novelty item during the war, tushonka was a food with a past. The original recipe was based on a recipe for preserved meat that had been a traditional product of the Ural Mountains, preserved in jars with salt and fat rather than by pressure and heat. Thus tushonka was requested—and was mass-produced—not simply as a convenience but also as a traditional and familiar food—a taste of home cooking that soldiers could carry with them into the field. Nikita Khrushchev later claimed that the arrival of tushonka was instrumental in helping the Red Army push back against the Nazi invasion (178). Unlike SPAM and other wartime rations, tushonka did not fade away after the war. Instead, it was distributed to the Soviet civilian population, appearing in charity donations and on the shelves of state shops. Often it was the only meat product available on a regular basis. Salty, fatty, and slightly grey-toned, tushonka was an unlikely hero of the postwar-era, but during this period tushonka rose from obscurity to become an emblem of socialist modernity. Because it was shelf stable and could be made from a variety of different cuts of meat, it proved an ideal product for the socialist production lines where supplies and the pace of production were infinitely variable. Unusual in a socialist system of supply, this product shaped production and distribution lines, and even influenced the layout of meatpacking factories and the genetic stocks of the animals that were to be eaten. Tushonka’s initial ubiquity in the postwar Soviet Union had little to do with the USSR’s own hog industry. Pig populations as well as their processing facilities had been decimated in the war, and pigs that did survive the Axis invasion had been evacuated East with human populations. Instead, the early presence of tushonka in the pig-scarce postwar Soviet Union had everything to do with Harry Truman’s unexpected September 1945 decision to end all “economically useful” Lend-Lease shipments to the Soviet Union (Martel). By the end of September, canned meat was practically the only product still being shipped as part of Lend-Lease (NARA RG 59). Although the United Nations was supposed to distribute these supplies to needy civilians free of cost, travelers to the Soviet Union in 1946 spotted cans of American tushonka for sale in state shops (Skeoch 231). After American tushonka “donations” disappeared from store shelves, the Soviet Union’s meat syndicates decided to continue producing the product. Between its first appearance during the war in 1943, and the 1957 announcement by Nikita Khrushchev that Soviet policy would restructure all state animal farms to support the mass production of one or several processed meat products, tushonka helped to drive the evolution of the Soviet Union’s meat packing industry. Its popularity with both planners and the public gave it the power to reach into food commodity chains. It is this backward reach and the longer-term impacts of these policies that make tushonka an unusual byproduct of the Cold War era. State planners loved tushonka: it was cheap to make, the logistics of preparing it were not complicated, it was easy to transport, and most importantly, it served as tangible evidence that the state was accomplishing a long-standing goal to get more meat to its citizenry and improving the diet of the average Soviet worker. Tushonka became a highly visible product in the Soviet Union’s much vaunted push to establish a modern food regime intended to rival that of the United States. Because it was shelf-stable, wartime tushonka had served as a practical food for soldiers, but after the war tushonka became an ideal food for workers who had neither the time nor the space to prepare a home-cooked meal with fresh meat. The Soviet state started to produce its own tushonka because it was such an excellent fit for the needs and abilities of the Soviet state—consumer demand was rarely considered by planners in this era. Not only did tushonka fit the look and taste of a modern processed meat product (that is, it was standard in texture and flavor from can to can, and was an obviously industrially processed product), it was also an excellent way to make the most of the predominant kind of meat the Soviet Union had the in the 1950s: small scraps low-grade pork and beef, trimmings leftover from butchering practices that focused on harvesting as much animal fat, rather than muscle, from the carcass in question. Just like tushonka, pork sausages and frozen pelmeny, a meat-filled pasta dumpling, also became winning postwar foods thanks to a happy synergy of increased animal production, better butchering and new food processing machines. As postwar pigs recovered their populations, the Soviet processed meat industry followed suit. One official source listed twenty-six different kinds of meat products being issued in 1964, although not all of these were pork (Danilov). An instructional manual distributed by the meat and milk syndicate demonstrated how meat shops should wrap and display sausages, and listed 24 different kinds of sausages that all needed a special style of tying up. Because of packaging shortages, the string that bound the sausage was wrapped in a different way for every type of sausage, and shop assistants were expected to be able to identify sausages based on the pattern of their binding. Pelmeny were produced at every meat factory that processed pork. These were “made from start to finish in a special, automated machine, human hands do not touch them. Which makes them a higher quality and better (prevoskhodnogo) product” (Book of Healthy and Delicious Food). These were foods that became possible to produce economically because of a co-occurring increase in pigs, the new standardized practice of equipping meatpacking plants with large-capacity grinders, and freezers or coolers and the enforcement of a system of grading meat. As the state began to rebuild Soviet agriculture from its near-collapse during the war, the Soviet Union looked to the United States for inspiration. Surprisingly, Soviet planners found some of the United States’ more outdated techniques to be quite valuable for new Soviet hog operations. The most striking of these was the adoption of competing phenotypes in the Soviet hog industry. Most major swine varieties had been developed and described in the 19th century in Germany and Great Britain. Breeds had a tendency to split into two phenotypically distinct groups, and in early 20th Century American pig farms, there was strong disagreement as to which style of pig was better suited to industrial conditions of production. Some pigs were “hot-blooded” (in other words, fast maturing and prolific reproducers) while others were a slower “big type” pig (a self-explanatory descriptor). Breeds rarely excelled at both traits and it was a matter of opinion whether speed or size was the most desirable trait to augment. The over-emphasis of either set of qualities damaged survival rates. At their largest, big type pigs resembled small hippopotamuses, and sows were so corpulent they unwittingly crushed their tiny piglets. But the sleeker hot-blooded pigs had a similarly lethal relationship with their young. Sows often produced litters of upwards of a dozen piglets and the stress of tending such a large brood led overwhelmed sows to devour their own offspring (Long). American pig breeders had been forced to navigate between these two undesirable extremes, but by the 1930s, big type pigs were fading in popularity mainly because butter and newly developed plant oils were replacing lard as the cooking fat of preference in American kitchens. The remarkable propensity of the big type to pack on pounds of extra fat was more of a liability than a benefit in this period, as the price that lard and salt pork plummeted in this decade. By the time U.S. meat packers were shipping cans of tushonka to their Soviet allies across the seas, US hog operations had already developed a strong preference for hot-blooded breeds and research had shifted to building and maintaining lean muscle on these swiftly maturing animals. When Soviet industrial planners hoping to learn how to make more tushonka entered the scene however, their interpretation of american efficiency was hardly predictable: scientifically nourished big type pigs may have been advantageous to the United States at midcentury, but the Soviet Union’s farms and hungry citizens had a very different list of needs and wants. At midcentury, Soviet pigs were still handicapped by old-fashioned variables such as cold weather, long winters, poor farm organisation and impoverished feed regimens. The look of the average Soviet hog operation was hardly industrial. In 1955 the typical Soviet pig was petite, shaggy, and slow to reproduce. In the absence of robust dairy or vegetable oil industries, Soviet pigs had always been valued for their fat rather than their meat, and tushonka had been a byproduct of an industry focused mainly on supplying the country with fat and lard. Until the mid 1950s, the most valuable pig on many Soviet state and collective farms was the nondescript but very rotund “lard and bacon” pig, an inefficient eater that could take upwards of two years to reach full maturity. In searching for a way to serve up more tushonka, Soviet planners became aware that their entire industry needed to be revamped. When the Soviet Union looked to the United States, planners were inspired by the earlier competition between hot-blooded and big type pigs, which Soviet planners thought, ambitiously, they could combine into one splendid pig. The Soviet Union imported new pigs from Poland, Lithuania, East Germany and Denmark, trying valiantly to create hybrid pigs that would exhibit both hot blood and big type. Soviet planners were especially interested in inspiring the Poland-China, an especially rotund specimen, to speed up its life cycle during them mid 1950s. Hybrdizing and cross breeding a Soviet super-pig, no matter how closely laid out on paper, was probably always a socialist pipe dream. However, when the Soviets decided to try to outbreed American hog breeders, they created an infrastructure for pigs and pig breeding that had a dramatic positive impact of hog populations across the country, and the 1950s were marked by a large increase in the number of pigs in the Soviet union, as well as dramatic increases in the numbers of purebred and scientific hybrids the country developed, all in the name of tushonka. It was not just the genetic stock that received a makeover in the postwar drive to can more tushonka; a revolution in the barnyard also took place and in less than 10 years, pigs were living in new housing stock and eating new feed sources. The most obvious postwar change was in farm layout and the use of building space. In the early 1950s, many collective farms had been consolidated. In 1940 there were a quarter of a million kolkhozii, by 1951 fewer than half that many remained (NARA RG166). Farm consolidation movements most often combined two, three or four collective farms into one economic unit, thus scaling up the average size and productivity of each collective farm and simplifying their administration. While there were originally ambitious plans to re-center farms around new “agro-city” bases with new, modern farm buildings, these projects were ultimately abandoned. Instead, existing buildings were repurposed and the several clusters of farm buildings that had once been the heart of separate villages acquired different uses. For animals this meant new barns and new daily routines. Barns were redesigned and compartmentalized around ideas of gender and age segregation—weaned baby pigs in one area, farrowing sows in another—as well as maximising growth and health. Pigs spent less outside time and more time at the trough. Pigs that were wanted for different purposes (breeding, meat and lard) were kept in different areas, isolated from each other to minimize the spread of disease as well as improve the efficiency of production. Much like postwar housing for humans, the new and improved pig barn was a crowded and often chaotic place where the electricity, heat and water functioned only sporadically. New barns were supposed to be mechanised. In some places, mechanisation had helped speed things along, but as one American official viewing a new mechanised pig farm in 1955 noted, “it did not appear to be a highly efficient organisation. The mechanised or automated operations, such as the preparation of hog feed, were eclipsed by the amount of hand labor which both preceded and followed the mechanised portion” (NARA RG166 1961). The American official estimated that by mechanizing, Soviet farms had actually increased the amount of human labor needed for farming operations. The other major environmental change took place away from the barnyard, in new crops the Soviet Union began to grow for fodder. The heart and soul of this project was establishing field corn as a major new fodder crop. Originally intended as a feed for cows that would replace hay, corn quickly became the feed of choice for raising pigs. After a visit by a United States delegation to Iowa and other U.S. farms over the summer of 1955, corn became the centerpiece of Khrushchev’s efforts to raise meat and milk productivity. These efforts were what earned Khrushchev his nickname of kukuruznik, or “corn fanatic.” Since so little of the Soviet Union looks or feels much like the plains and hills of Iowa, adopting corn might seem quixotic, but raising corn was a potentially practical move for a cold country. Unlike the other major fodder crops of turnips and potatoes, corn could be harvested early, while still green but already possessing a high level of protein. Corn provided a “gap month” of green feed during July and August, when grazing animals had eaten the first spring green growth but these same plants had not recovered their biomass. What corn remained in the fields in late summer was harvested and made into silage, and corn made the best silage that had been historically available in the Soviet Union. The high protein content of even silage made from green mass and unripe corn ears prevented them from losing weight in the winter. Thus the desire to put more meat on Soviet tables—a desire first prompted by American food donations of surplus pork from Iowa farmers adapting to agro-industrial reordering in their own country—pushed back into the commodity supply network of the Soviet Union. World War II rations that were well adapted to the uncertainty and poor infrastructure not just of war but also of peacetime were a source of inspiration for Soviet planners striving to improve the diets of citizens. To do this, they purchased and bred more and better animals, inventing breeds and paying attention, for the first time, to the efficiency and speed with which these animals were ready to become meat. Reinventing Soviet pigs pushed even back farther, and inspired agricultural economists and state planners to embrace new farm organizational structures. Pigs meant for the tushonka can spent more time inside eating, and led their lives in a rigid compartmentalization that mimicked emerging trends in human urban society. Beyond the barnyard, a new concern with feed-to weight conversions led agriculturalists to seek new crops; crops like corn that were costly to grow but were a perfect food for a pig destined for a tushonka tin. Thus in Soviet industrialization, pigs evolved. No longer simply recyclers of human waste, socialist pigs were consumers in their own right, their newly crafted genetic compositions demanded ever more technical feed sources in order to maximize their own productivity. Food is transformative, and in this case study the prosaic substance of canned meat proved to be unusually transformative for the history of the Soviet Union. In its early history it kept soldiers alive long enough to win an important war, later the requirements for its manufacture re-prioritized muscle tissue over fat tissue in the disassembly of carcasses. This transformative influence reached backwards into the supply lines and farms of the Soviet Union, revolutionizing the scale and goals of farming and meat packing for the Soviet food industry, as well as the relationship between the pig and the consumer. References Bentley, Amy. Eating for Victory: Food Rationing and the Politics of Domesticity. Where: University of Illinois Press, 1998. The Book of Healthy and Delicious Food, Kniga O Vkusnoi I Zdorovoi Pishche. Moscow: AMN Izd., 1952. 161. Danilov, M. M. Tovaravedenie Prodovol’stvennykh Tovarov: Miaso I Miasnye Tovarye. Moscow: Iz. Ekonomika, 1964. Khrushchev, Nikita. Khrushchev Remembers. New York: Little, Brown & Company, 1970. 178. Long, James. The Book of the Pig. London: Upcott Gill, 1886. 102. Lush, Jay & A.L. Anderson, “A Genetic History of Poland-China Swine: I—Early Breed History: The ‘Hot Blood’ versus the ‘Big Type’” Journal of Heredity 30.4 (1939): 149-56. Martel, Leon. Lend-Lease, Loans, and the Coming of the Cold War: A Study of the Implementation of Foreign Policy. Boulder: Westview Press, 1979. 35. National Archive and Records Administration (NARA). RG 59, General Records of the Department of State. Office of Soviet Union affairs, Box 6. “Records relating to Lend Lease with the USSR 1941-1952”. National Archive and Records Administration (NARA). RG166, Records of the Foreign Agricultural Service. Narrative reports 1940-1954. USSR Cotton-USSR Foreign trade. Box 64, Folder “farm management”. Report written by David V Kelly, 6 Apr. 1951. National Archive and Records Administration (NARA). RG 166, Records of the Foreign Agricultural Service. Narrative Reports 1955-1961. Folder: “Agriculture” “Visits to Soviet agricultural installations,” 15 Nov. 1961. Skeoch, L.A. Food Prices and Ration Scale in the Ukraine, 1946 The Review of Economics and Statistics 35.3 (Aug. 1953), 229-35. State Archive of the Russian Federation (GARF). Fond R-7021. The Report of Extraordinary Special State Commission on Wartime Losses Resulting from the German-Fascist Occupation cites the following losses in the German takeover. 1948. Stettinus, Edward R. Jr. Lend-Lease: Weapon for Victory. Penguin Books, 1944.

In George Orwell’s Animal Farm, the pigs infamously changed the law to read: “some animals are more equal than others” (108). From Charlotte’s Web to Babe, there are a plethora of contemporary cultural references, as well as expressions of their intelligence and worth, which would seem to support the pigs’ cause. However, simultaneously, the term “pig” is also synonymous with negative attributes—greed, dirtiness, disarray, brutality and chauvinism. Pigs are also used to name those out of favour, including police officers, the obese, capitalists and male chauvinists. Yet, the animal’s name is also used to express the most extraordinary and unlikely events as in “pigs might fly”. On the one hand, pigs are praised and represented as intelligent and useful, but then they are derided as unclean and slovenly. We are similarly paradoxical in our relationship with then, ranging from using them as a food source to keeping them as pets, and from seeing them as a valuable farm animal/resource or dangerous feral pest depending on which side of the farm gate they are on. Pigs also give a voice to many aspects of popular culture and feature in novels, fairytales, cartoons, comics and movies. As food, pigs are both for feasts and forbidden, their meat the site of both desire and disgust. They are smoked, roasted, fried, stewed and braised, and farmed in the worst of industrial food producing factories. They are also leading the charge in an eating revolution which is calling for heritage, free-range, organic and cruelty-free farming. Snuck into dishes during the Inquisition to expose false conversos, pigs are today seen by some as unclean, inedible and/or fattening and, yet, they provide the symbolic heart of tip-to-tail eating and some of the most expensive and desired of foodie products: heritage Spanish hams, for instance. In an age where to be slender is the goal of many, pigs have been bred and farmed to provide pork which is ever leaner, and yet, their fat—at its most unctuous and melting—is providing a space where the most celebrated of chefs revel. When more and more people are disconnected from what they eat, snout-to-tail eaters are dining on recognisable pigs’ ears, pig’s head filled pies and braised trotters. For many, pigs are the other white meat.Those of us who grew up with television muppet, Miss Piggy, are familiar with the mixed feelings that pigs can evoke. As the contributions to this issue attest, the idea of “pig” can evoke a similarly wide range of responses from scholars working in a variety of disciplines. While as editors we approached the idea of “pig” from an interdisciplinary food studies approach, the symbolic, and even iconic, significance of the pig is a central concern of all of the papers. As Claude Lévi-Strauss put it so elegantly “food has to be good to think as well as to eat” (1963: 128). A number of the authors in this issue have responded with a regional or country-specific focus, and include perspectives from, or about, places and cultures as diverse as Ireland, Tonga, New Zealand, the Soviet Union, the USA and China. “The Pig in Irish Cuisine and Culture”, the title and subject of Máirtín Mac Con Iomaire’s historical analysis, opens with the fact that more pork is eaten per capita than any other meat in Ireland but pigs themselves are almost invisible. Various themes confirm the importance of pigs in Irish culture—literature, folklore, the domestication of the animal and their value in household economics, their role in feasts and how they are raised, killed, prepared and consumed. How the history of the pig in Ireland complements that of the potato—the food item more widely recognised as a major contributor to Irish cuisine—is also included, as are an indication of the new interpretations of Irish pork and bacon dishes by contemporary chefs. In Tonga, conversely, pigs are killed to mark a special event, and are not eaten as everyday food by most people, although they are very significant in Tongan life and culture precisely because of this ceremonial importance. In “Pu‘aka Tonga,” ex-resident of Tonga Mandy Treagus, explains that this is one of the few things about the Tongan diet that has not changed since Cook visited the area and named it the “Friendly Islands”. Treagus also critiques the ways in which the Tongan diet has changed, and how food in Tonga is a neo-colonial issue with pervasive and, sometimes, negative ramifications for Tongans.Jeremy Fisher’s memoir “Tusk” similarly weaves personal and cultural history together, this time in New Zealand. “Tusk” orients the life story of the narrator’s father around the watershed moment he experienced when he killed a boar at 16. The tusks he took from the killing were mounted on gold and accompanied him throughout his life, as well as acting as a reminder to others of his act. The tusks thus function as a physical reminder of the night he spent out in the bush and killed the boar, but also a remembrance of both change and continuity over time. Jenny Smith moves us spatially, and temporally, to the Soviet Union in her “Tushonka: Cultivating Soviet Postwar Taste”. During the Second World War, the USA sent meat, cheese and butter overseas to help feed the Red Army. However, after receiving several shipments of SPAM, a more familiar canned pork product, Russian tushonka, was requested. Smith uses the example of tuskonka to trace how this pig-based product not only kept soldiers alive during the war, but how later the requirements for its manufacture re-prioritised muscle over fat and influenced pig breeding programs. Smith asserts that this had a significant influence on faming and food processing in the Soviet Union, as well as the relationship between the pig and the consumer.Pigs are at the centre of debates that have arisen from the growth of a number of social movements that are becoming increasingly mainstream, reminding us that they are also alive, and beings in their own right. These movements include environmentalism, vegetarianism and other alternative food movements advocating ethical eating. Thus, in his analysis of alien creatures with pig and human features in the science fiction series Dr Who, “Those Pig-Men Things”, Brett Mills explores our reactions to these characters and their fates. Discussing why pig-human representations are capable of being both “shocking and horrific”, but also of arousing our empathy, Mills’s analysis suggests the possibility of more complex notions of human/non-human interaction. It also assists in working towards, as he states, “helpfully destabilis[ing our] simplistic ideas of the superiority of the human race.” The deepest form of human-animal interaction underlies Peta S. Cook and Nicholas Osbaldiston’s “Pigs Hearts and Human Bodies: A Cultural Approach to Xenotransplantation”. Cook and Osbaldiston discuss how our categorisation of animals as a lower species has enabled their exploitation, arguing how, in the contemporary West, we largely attribute “a sacred high value to human bodies, and a low, profane quality to animal bodies.” The authors provide a compelling account of the social and cultural ramifications of the use of pigs in xenotransplantation (animal-to-human transplantation), a process in which the current “choice” animal source is pigs. The line dividing human and animal can at other times be a tenuous one, demonstrated by the anxiety generated over eating practices exposed in fears of eating “like a pig”. In her article, “Sugar Pigs: Children’s Consumption of Confectionery”, Toni Risson explains how rules about eating and concealing food in the mouth remind us that eating is an animal act that instruction is required to modify and control. Children’s lolly-eating rituals—sharing half-eaten food, monitoring the progress of its consumption and change, and using fingers to inspect this change or pull stuck lollies off teeth—can evoke disgust in adults, but can also create friendship networks, intimacy and a sense of belonging for children as they transgress the rules of civilised eating. As Risson puts it, as “the antithesis of civilisation, the pig is the means by which we understand ourselves as civilised beings, but the child with a lolly is an ever-present reminder that we may be animals after all”.Feminism can be added to this list of social movements, with Arhlene Ann Flowers drawing attention to the power of language in her article “Swine Semantics in U.S. Politics: Who Put Lipstick on the Pig?”. Flowers chronicles the linguistic battle between the presidential candidates in the US 2008 campaign over the colloquialism “lipstick on a pig”, used in a speech by then Democratic presidential candidate, Barack Obama. Flowers traces the history of this phrase, as well as the use of other porcine terms in political language including “pork barrelling” and “male chauvinist pig.”In her article about New York’s first gastrobpub, The Spotted Pig, one of the co-editors of this issue, Donna Lee Brien, has constructed a brief restaurant biography for the eatery famous for founding chef April Bloomfield’s nose-to-tail, locally sourced pork dishes. In this, Brien reflects upon the pig’s place in contemporary dining, whether as “raw foodstuff, fashionable comestible, brand, symbol or marketing tool.” In Lillian Ng’s novel, Swallowing Clouds, references to pigs are similarly closely related to food, but in her article, Spanish author Catalina Ribas Segura argues these references to flesh and meat evoke the concepts of freedom, transgression and desire. In “Pigs and Desire in Lillian Ng´s Swallowing Clouds”, Segura focuses on pork and the pig and what these reveal about the two main characters’ relationship. One of these, Zhu Zhiyee, is a butcher, which means that pigs and pork are recurrent topics throughout the novel, but other porcine expressions appear throughout. Pig-related terminology in the novel provides a means for Segura to consider the relationship between food and sex, and sex and literature, and includes a discussion about the connotations of pigs in Chinese culture, where pork is used in a variety of dishes. Lee McGowan’s “Piggery and Predictability: An Exploration of the Hog in Football’s Limelight” focuses in more closely on one of the uses to which we have put pigs, discussing how far “the beautiful game” of football (soccer) has come from the days when an inflated pigs bladder was used as the ball.Reversing this focus from use back to how we, as humans, relate to animals, can show that how we conceive of pigs in our human history reveals our own prejudices. It is known that pigs and humans have interacted for some 10,000 years. The history of that interaction and their own adaptability mean that pigs have a broad range of possible relationships with humans, wider and more complex than either that of many other species or our contemporary treatment of them would attest. The other co-editor of this issue, Adele Wessell, takes a historical perspective to restore pigs to the centre of the narrative in “Making a Pig of the Humanities.” Drawing on a growing body of work on nonhuman animals, Wessell is interested in what a history of pigs and our relationship with them reveals about humans more generally. She argues that all the significant themes in modern history—production, religion, the body, science, power, the national state, colonialism, gender, consumption, migration, memory—can be understood through a history of our relationships with pigs. Jim Hearn is a chef, a researcher and writer. Hearn’s article “Percy” is the story of a pig who, as the only pig in the farmyard, longs to “escape the burden of allegory”. All Percy wanted was to belong, but his pig-ness caused offence to all the other animals in the farm. Percy’s story is about belonging and identity, body-image and representation, told from a pig’s point of view. Percy is burdened with the layers of meaning that have built up around pigs and longs to escape, and this fable provides a fitting ending to this issue.Together, we hope the articles in this collection indicate the wide significance and large number of meanings of “pig” that are possible for different cultures and across historical periods, and the place that pigs inhabit in our national, popular and food cultures. They reveal how pigs are used and misused, as well as how they are understood and misunderstood. These interesting and diverse articles also show how pigs are both material and allegorical; how they are paradoxical in how they are revered, avoided and derided; and, commonly, how they are eaten. ReferencesOrwell, George. Animal Farm. Fairfield, IA: 1st World Library—Library Society, 2004.Lévi-Strauss, Claude. Totemism. Boston, Beacon Press, 1963.

The paper discusses mobility in the context of displacement. How is the mobile phone appropriated by refugees in immigration detention? What does the mobile phone, and indeed, mobility, signify in an Australian policy landscape of mandatory detention of asylum seekers and formerly prohibited access to mobile phones for detainees inside immigration detention centres? What does this intimate about the perceived dangers of “new” and mobile media? The author’s preliminary research with refugees in Australian immigration detention centres compares policy and practice. Firstly, it interrogates the unwritten policies regulating refugees’ access to media technologies when incarcerated in immigration detention. As there is no written policy on technology access and practices vary across immigration detention centres, the information in this paper has been given by detainees and has not been verified by the management of detention centres. The paper suggests that the utopian promises of mobile media echo those made about cyberspace in the 1990s. Furthermore, the residual effects of such rhetoric have infiltrated government policy in terms of perceiving mobile media as dangerous when adopted by marginalised groups such as refugees. Secondly, the research examines how and why the mobile phone has been adopted by immigration detainees despite their former prohibition. It explores the ways in which refugees practice an imagined mobility through media whilst in detention, and finds that this is critical to sustaining connection with their imagined communities. Why Refugees? In the context of increased forced migration of people due to circumstances such as political instability, war, natural disaster and famine; it is necessary to better understand how refugees mobilise and organise in situations of displacement. As new technologies encourage the capacity for borderlessness, such advantages also have to be contrasted with the potential dangers of spontaneous border crossings. The study of the behaviour and practices of refugees in relation to communication technologies offers an insight into the efficacy of immigration detention policy in filtering movement and interaction, both physical and virtual, between Australia and other countries. Although the study of refugees is a discipline in its own right, there has been minimal examination of how they appropriate technology, particularly that which facilitates and complements their mobility, to maintain connections with their diasporic networks while in situations of displacement. The studies that have been undertaken concentrate on the use of technology by refugees living in the wider community (see Glazebrook, McIver Jr. and Prokosch; Howard and Owens), rather than in the context of detention. In previous research of diasporas within the discipline of Cultural Studies, technology has been regarded as vital to subcultures and minority groups. Technology has been the tool by which such communities respond to their structural conditions (see Cunningham; Hall; Halleck). Such investigations have concentrated on the intersection of class, gender and ethnicity and how they inscribe meanings to specific technologies, which in turn, become intrinsic to the identities of the groups and communities. The research extends the work that has been done within Cultural Studies by similarly focusing on a marginalised group, refugees, and their participation in particular technologies. A review of literature across refugee studies, diaspora studies and technology studies has shown that: The study of technology use by refugees has had minimal investigation The study of diasporas has rarely included refugees The study of communities and communication practices which surround particular technologies has concentrated on groups other than refugees The escalation of issues of asylum and border control in public discourse warrant more knowledge about refugees and their networks of communication beyond the boundaries of detention and Australia The notion of “networks” refers to people, technologies, processes and practices that form the relationships between refugees in institutionalised immigration detention and the outside world. The Australian Immigration Detention Context Between 1992 and 1994, Australian law moved from permitting (but not enforcing) limited detention of asylum seekers, to a blanket policy of mandatory detention (HREOC) which, at one point, had up to 12,000 individuals in detention (Castan Centre for Human Rights Law). The detention context is particularly relevant to Australia, because its policy of mandatory detention means that refugees have restricted contact with the world outside of the detention centre. In 2005, the Migration Amendment (Detention Arrangements) Bill allowed detained families with children to live in community detention, that is, in residential accommodation outside of an immigration detention centre. Although community detention carries with it specific conditions, families are unaccompanied and have more freedom of movement. This paper discusses the author’s preliminary work with refugees in immigration detention, prior to the introduction of community detention. The research sought to investigate how asylum seekers use technology to sustain connections with their virtual communities in situations of displacement. Specifically, it explored how technology is appropriated to mediate communication in the context of institutionalised detention. The key research questions addressed by the research were: what kinds of technologies are available to refugees? How are these used? How are their benefits and limitations perceived? What, if any, kinds of social networks surround these technologies? How are relationships of power surrounding these technologies negotiated? Can technology assist refugees in sustaining connections with their communities of choice and reducing their sense of isolation? Can technology play a role in reducing the well-documented effects of this incarceration by providing mediated social interaction? What are the implications for policy, especially in relation to permitted technologies and surveillance of communication practices? Access to informants was gained by working with a refugee community advocacy group, which has established links with refugees in detention and experience in dealing with the management of detention centres. One such group is ChilOut, which organises visitor programs to immigration detention centres. This affiliation was important in gaining access to, and trust of, detainees who were willing to participate in the research. It presented opportunities to interact with detainees on a social basis. Semi-structured interviews with the research subjects were conducted to ascertain the strategies and resources currently utilised to counter the effects of mandatory detention. In 2005, detainees had access to a range of technology which can be broadly termed “old media”, while access to “new media” – such as the Internet and mobile phones – are prohibited. At the time of printing, detainees reported that mobile phones without cameras were only recently permitted. Detainees have access to pay phones inside the centre. Visitors are allowed to give detainees phone cards so they can use the pay phones without charge or the need for change. In addition to pay phones, detainees are provided with access to a fax and photocopier, which are generally used to liaise with and send relevant documentation to lawyers. There is distrust of using the fax machine at the detention centre because it is in a management office area and the detainees require permission to use it. It means the guards can read the faxes that are sent, as well as those that are received before notifying the detainees that they have received one. Detainees also have television, videos, DVDs and newspapers, so there is the possibility of feeling like part of an imagined community (Anderson) through these media. There are computers available, but no Internet access. Some of the children load computer games on them to play, others have Playstation in their rooms. It is noteworthy that the only technology to which detainees have access and which facilitates real-time person-to-person interaction is the telephone. The phone offers the opportunity for direct contact with the outside world without the visual and other sensory realities of detention. The telephone is able to mask the extent of imprisonment as it does not show the barbed razor wire surrounding the compound. Yet detainees were not permitted to have mobile phones for a long time. Thus, the key question remains: why were they deprived of access to mobile phones while allowed access to pay phones and landlines? What does this suggest about the perceived dangers of mobile media and the resonance of last century’s techno-utopian discourses? Given that detainees were only given access to “old media”, it seems that this tired but resolutely upbeat rhetoric about new technology which celebrates it as inherently liberating actually inflected policies determining the kinds of technologies to which detainees have access. It confirms the pessimistic assertions of media theorists such as Schiller and Mosco, that new technologies further alienate disadvantaged groups. As the Australian government attempts to regulate the physical movement of people across its borders, mantras of the dot.com era such as “everyone is a free agent” (Kumar 77) appear to undermine this agenda. The assumptions of liberty and democracy embedded in this “free agency” are implicit in policies that denied refugees access to “new media” such as the Internet and mobile phones. The “liberating” nature of such technology was regarded as unsafe in the hands of refugees, whose freedom of movement is institutionally contained by the Australian government through mandatory detention. The physical movement of refugees, as well as the agency and freedom with which they can claim asylum in a country, is actively discouraged through immigration detention policy and limitations on access to technology. The promise of self-expression afforded by mobile media seemed antithetical to the prejudicial administration of refugees, which is premised upon a distrust of their claims of identity and asylum. Subsequently, their use of mobile technology was also assumed to be suspect and therefore had to be restricted. Detained refugees serve as a reminder of the parameters of upbeat discourses about new technology. That is, the utopian possibilities of mobile media appear to be conditional such that its “power” can only be entrusted to certain groups. In policy terms, the mobile phone is a rich site of signification. Not only does the technology itself imply a way of being (that is free, mobile, always accessible and always able to access), but it also connotes an ideal type of user, one that is appropriate and deserving of such technology. It seems that refugees are not entitled to their mobility and, therefore, do not have rights to media that is considered to facilitate such mobility, in spite of their detention. Furthermore, there is a suggested dichotomy in the government’s classification of the technologies to which refugees have access. The fact of detention means refugees are surrounded by technology, held captive by it and are inevitably in close proximity to it. It is technology which is seen as antithetical to mobility and therefore could be described as “static”: phones, faxes, photocopiers, television, video – all of which may be characterised as “old media”. The binary opposite of such technology is that which can be regarded as mobile or new or interactive media; that which resonates with the residual effects of 1990s techno-utopian rhetoric; and could be considered as threatening in the hands of those who have physically made unauthorised border crossings. However, prior investigations of “mobile” technologies, demonstrates that such dualisms are flawed as the lowest technologies also have the capacity to facilitate mobility. Examples include Paul Gilroy’s work on the Black Atlantic, which notes that books and records have been vital in carrying oppositional ideologies and philosophies across the black diaspora. Within Asian diasporas, the exchange of video letters and taped Bollywood movies have been interpreted as forms of localised challenges to the centralised power of the broadcast media industries (Ang; Gillespie). These economies of exchange as facilitated by older forms of mobile media have been studied in relation to issues of migration and marginalisation. Given that refugees are also affected by such issues, their mobile media practices are a sobering reminder that mobility is not necessarily hi-tech nor confined to the realms of the affluent, educated and socio-economically advantaged. Rather, mobility can be a tenuous state of being displaced and itinerant, with technology adopted to manage and adapt to its challenges. The Mobile Media Practices of Detained Refugees The initial findings from the fieldwork indicate that for refugees, the mobile phone is not a technology of choice but instead, a technology of necessity and survival. Every technology that is available to them is used to sustain connection to their localized and globalised networks. The restriction to their physical movement of detainees is compensated through use of technology which allows any sort of interaction and communication. Being part of a technologically-mediated community appears to minimise the marginalisation and isolation they experience. Such feelings of dislocation have been well-documented in studies of the impact of incarceration on the mental health of refugees (see Mares and Jureidini; RANZCP; Hodes). It seems that the telephone and fax are the mainstays of their communication networks. However, such technologies are closely monitored, as landline phone calls can be traced or even tapped, and faxes have to be sent from an office manned by guards. An experienced visitor to detention centres commented that “most” detainees had mobile phones and when they were contraband, guards knew about them but generally ignored their use by detainees. Only mobile phones offer the potential for communication to be free from the surveillance by detention centres staff. The ways in which mobile phones are used by detainees is decidedly lo-tech, for example, for communication with family where use of a landline is impractical. One of the detainees said that he speaks to his wife and children on the centre pay phone every few days. However, the call costs are expensive as his family only has a mobile phone, not a landline, at their place of residence. For them to call him is also expensive and awkward, because they have to call the pay phone and if somebody answers, they have then to locate him somewhere within the compound. Thus, the connections between the detainees and their loved ones are very fragile in that they are almost totally dependent on the phone to maintain these relationships. In this instance, the mobile phone offers another means for managing the tenuous nature of these ties. The mobile phone, particularly SMS technology, offers a suitable alternative as the detainee can communicate with his family cheaply and quickly. It compensates for the constraints of the pay phone. The informal interactions afforded by the mobile phone also extend beyond family members of detainees to their supporters and advocates. Likewise, the mobile phone complements the communication practices facilitated through permitted technologies. For example, when detainees are liaising with the Department of Immigration (DIMIA), they will ask advice from the regular visitors to the immigration detention centre who come from an array of organizations such as churches, refugee advocacy groups, law firms and health organizations. Visitors generally offer whatever assistance they can by obtaining necessary forms from the department, searching the Internet, undertaking letter writing campaigns, and lobbying government ministers. Something worked in amongst all the network activity that took place over the course of this week. As promised to the family, I scoured the DIMIA web site for a form for applying under Section 417. While there didn’t seem to be an official form, I used the opportunity to research the section of the Migration Act. Googling turned up a 12 page “guide to section 417 applications” written by a barrister, which I printed out and faxed to them. So as to ensure that the family received the fax, I SMS-ed them to let them know a fax was on its way and how many pages to expect. They responded to me by fax, saying that they had been notified that they too were going to be released into community detention in the coming weeks. (Extract from fieldwork diary) The mobile phone serves the function of anticipating and verifying communications which may potentially be surveilled by staff of detention centres. Where detainees may not trust that they are being given all the letters or faxes that have been sent to them, the mobile phone enables a degree of privacy so that they at least know what to expect from their correspondents. Furthermore, it provides the opportunity for detainees to speak about matters related to their case for asylum that are regarded as too sensitive to risk being discussed in a public place such as on the centre pay phone. Often this involves seeking assistance with their application for asylum. He rang T on the centre pay phone and said that he would like to speak with me, but did not have my number. He didn’t have a pen and paper to jot down my details at the time, so he gave T his mobile number and asked her to pass it onto me, so I could ring him on it. When I rang, he had returned to his room where he could talk freely. He told me about the visit from the Commonwealth Ombudsman, who undertook to look into his case over the next couple of weeks. We talked about what would assist the Ombudsman in reviewing the case. I said I would write a letter or email in the first instance, and if he wanted other letters of support, I could circulate details of his case on the ChilOut newsletter. He said he didn’t want publicity at this stage. I offered to fax him a copy of my email, but he preferred that I give it to him in person as the fax machine in the office was too public and any documents received could be read. Again, the mobile seems to be the most appropriate technology for coordinating and organising privately away from centre surveillance… (Extract from fieldwork diary) Fear of breaches of confidentiality form only part of detainees’ desire for privacy from detention centre staff. There is also a need for private space away from other detainees as their imprisonment necessitates the constant use of communal facilities such as the pay phone. In addition to being used for its capacity for private communication, the mobile phone was also exploited as a broadcast technology by detained refugees. Text messages proved an effective way of providing brief updates to family and friends about the status of their case: 20 September 200510:24:07 Hi Linda. I am fine thank u. not news yet, I think they’ll come to see me soon, if I got news, I’ll let u know. Wish u have a good time. 15 October 200516:31:49 HI Linda, I was interview by Ombudsman yesterday, we talked about one hour and a half, it sound good…Thank u for yr concern 25 December 200520:26:54 Hi Linda. I am still in [detention centre]. No any news from Ombudsman, may be early next year. I am fine here, thanks. Tuesday 17 October 200613:44:41 Hi Linda…I transferd to [community] housing. Its much better here. How a u? takecare ur health, thanks. Thursday 16 November 200618:46:23 HI There is a good news to let u know I got the decision from that I won the FC case. Thus, for detained refugees, the mobile phone has been adopted for simple, lo-tech use. None of the respondents indicated a desire for a camera function on their mobile phones. However, one detainee did suggest that she would like to use a webcam to see and hear her child in China, whom she has not seen in eight years. While she did use the Internet for this purpose when she was on the “outside”, now she can only rely on weekly telephone conversations made from inside the detention centre. Conclusion What happens when technology is placed in the hands of those for whom it was never meant? It makes explicit what is often implied in studies of adoption of new technology, that the “utopian promise” is confined to a narrow socio-economic demographic: the advantaged, the affluent and the educated. Those who fall outside these perimeters are perceived as undeserving and untrustworthy of such technology. This is exemplified in the Australian government’s policy to deny refugees access to “new” and mobile media whilst being compulsorily detained. The decision to withhold mobile technology from mobile communities who are not so materially privileged is not only ironic but unwarranted in light of the empirical data. This has since been acknowledged by allowing detainees use of mobile phones. The mobile phone practices of detained refugees show that it is being used as a complementary and alternative technology, that is, to compensate for the inadequacies of the communication media allowed by detention centres. The mobile phone is exploited for the functions that permitted technologies do not offer: firstly, the ability to communicate with friends and family more immediately and effectively; secondly, the capacity to communicate privately with less probability of surveillance; thirdly, the opportunity to broadcast content one to many. In such communications, use of the mobile phone is simple and lo-tech: it is deployed for straightforward (but improved) interaction with detainees’ imagined communities which would otherwise be possible anyway through the “old” media technologies provided in detention. In practice, there was no evidence of the use of the hi-tech functions of mobile phones; nor was there any indication, as implied by policy, of the possible dangers that may ensue if such features of mobile media were available to detained refugees. Potentially, the research can impact on immigration detention policy, particularly in terms of reviewing the conditions under which technology is made available to refugees in institutionalised detention contexts. However, further research is required, especially a comparison of the former prohibited use of mobile media in immigration detention centres with the permitted use of these in community immigration detention. References Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities. London: Verso, 1993. Ang, Ien. Living Room Wars: Rethinking Media Audiences for a Postmodern World. London: Routledge, 1996. Castan Centre for Human Rights Law. 2003. “Detention, Children and Asylum Seekers: A Comparative Study.” Submission to the National Inquiry into Children in Immigration Detention. 26 July 2004. http://www.hreoc.gov.au/human_rights/children_detention/ submissions/castan.html>. Cunningham, Stuart. “Popular Media as Public ‘Sphericules’ for Diasporic Communities.” International Journal of Cultural Studies 4.2 (2001): 131-147. Gillespie, Marie. Television, Ethnicity and Cultural Change. London: Routledge, 1995. Gilroy, Paul. There Ain’t no Black in the Union Jack. London: Hutchison, 1987. Glazebrook, Diana. “Becoming Mobile after Detention.” Social Analysis: International Journal of Cultural and Social Practice 48.3 (2004). Hall, Stuart. “Aspirations and Attitude… Reflections on Black Britain in the 90s.” New Formations: Frontlines, Backyards. London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1998. Halleck, Dee. “Watch Out Dick Tracy! Popular Video in the Wake of Exxon Valdez.” Technoculture. Eds. Constance Penley and Andrew Ross. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1991. Hodes, Matthew. “Three Key Issues for Young Refugees’ Mental Health.” Transcultural Psychiatry 39.2 (2002): 196-213. Howard, Ellen, and Christine Owens. “Using the Internet to Communicate with Immigrant/Refugee Communities about Health.” Poster presentation at JCDL ‘02, Portland, Oregon, 13-17 July 2002. Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC). “A Last Resort?” Report on National Inquiry into Children in Immigration Detention. 26 July 2004. http://www.hreoc.gov.au/human_rights/children_detention/ submissions/castan.html>. Kumar, Amitava. “Temporary Access: The Indian H-1B Worker in the US.” Technicolor: Race, Technology and Everyday Life. Eds. Alondra Nelson and Thuy Linh Tu. New York: NYU P, 2001. Mares, Sarah, and Jon Jureidini. “Children and Families Referred from a Remote Immigration Detention Centre.” Forgotten Rights – Responding to the Crisis of Asylum Seeker Health Care: A National Summit. 12 Nov. 2003. McIver, William, and Arthur Prokosch. “Towards a Critical Approach to Examining the Digital Divide”. IEEE, 2002. Mosco, Vincent. Pushbutton Fantasies: Critical Perspectives in Videotex and Information Technology. Norwood: Ablex, 1982. Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists. “RANZCP Airs Deep Concern at the Mandatory Detention of Child Asylum Seekers.” Media release, 11 Nov. 2003. Schiller, Herbert. Information Inequality: The Deepening Social Crisis in America. London: Routledge, 1996. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Leung, Linda. "Mobility and Displacement: Refugees' Mobile Media Practices in Immigration Detention." M/C Journal 10.1 (2007). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0703/10-leung.php>. APA Style Leung, L. (Mar. 2007) "Mobility and Displacement: Refugees' Mobile Media Practices in Immigration Detention," M/C Journal, 10(1). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0703/10-leung.php>.