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Indonesia is in a process of democratic regression. The government increasingly strives to confine civic spaces by using different instruments of digital repression such as surveillance, Internet shutdowns, lawfare, and online manipulation with the help of so-called buzzers. This is particularly alarming ahead of the concurrent parliamentary and presidential elections scheduled for February 2024. The upcoming elections are crucial for the development of Indonesia's electoral democracy. Right-wing populist Prabowo Subianto, who is supported by President Joko Widodo (Jokowi) and leading in most surveys, could win the presidency in 2024 and then accelerate a slow process of democratic backsliding ongoing since the early 2010s. Social media contributes to the political discourse's manipulation, to society's polarisation, as well as to civil society's fragmentation. Its platforms are a threat to the government, but political elites have reacted by misusing them to their advantage. Jokowi, who is not allowed to run again because of a term limit, uses particularly lawfare to keep critics in check. Laws and regulations, originally designed to curb defamation and the spread of fake news, are systematically employed to intimidate and prosecute journalists, civil society activists, and academics and to instil fear among the broader public. Government actors as well as certain political, administrative, judicial, and business elites employ buzzers to delegitimate critics and to spread disinformation, for example by manufacturing certain narratives about politicians and policies.

Im Rahmen dieser empirischen Studie wird ein mehrjähriger Arbeitskonflikt von indonesischen Textilarbeiterinnen im Norden Jakartas analysiert. Von der Blockade der Fabrik über die Aneignung dieser bis hin zur selbstverwalteten Produktion werden die unterschiedlichen Perspektiven der beteiligten Akteur*innen herausgearbeitet. Diskutiert wird dies entlang eines feministischen Arbeitskampfbegriffs, der am Fall theoretisch herausgearbeitet wurde. In den Auseinandersetzungen und Aushandlungen darum zeigt sich, welche Widersprüche und Brüche in der Perspektive auf den Arbeitskampf zwischen den gewerkschaftlichen Vorstellungen und den Vorstellungen der Arbeiterinnen im Rahmen ihrer Selbstorganisation hervortreten. Wie sich die unterschiedlichen Strategien und Vorstellungen gegenseitig bedingen, befruchten oder gar widersprechen, ist demnach wichtiger Bestandteil der Analyse und trägt zur Beantwortung der zentralen Forschungsfrage bei: "Wie denken, verhandeln und gestalten die indonesischen Textilarbeiterinnen den Arbeitskampf vor dem Hintergrund ihrer geschlechtsspezifischen sozialen Rollen als Frauen und damit verbundenen Arbeits- und Lebensrealitäten?" Um dies jedoch entlang der Geschlechterverhältnisse zu verstehen, verschiedene Facetten darin zu erkennen und letztlich deuten zu können, bedarf es eines feministisch erweiterten Arbeitskampfbegriffs, da der verkürzte androzentrische Begriff von Arbeitskampf in erster Linie als Auseinandersetzung zwischen Kapital und Arbeit konzipiert ist. Damit werden andere gesellschaftliche Ungleichheitslagen und Herrschaftsverhältnisse oft außer Acht gelassen und die verschiedenen Arbeits- und Lebensrealitäten von Frauen, trans*- oder nicht-binären Personen finden darin kaum Beachtung. In der Diskussion um einen feministischen Arbeitskampfbegriff wird dieser in seine Wortbestandteile "Arbeit" und "Kampf" geteilt. Diese werden dann aus einer feministischen Perspektive diskutiert, bevor der Begriff Arbeitskampf in der Zusammenführung dann konzeptionell neu gefasst wird.

International audience ; How can we design conservation and development projects that produce lasting changes? How can we increase their effectiveness and legitimacy? The classical economic incentives of environmental policies (certification, sustainable forest management, payments for environmental services, green loans, etc.) are effective in the short term, but their environmental performance is not necessarily guaranteed in the long term. However, when the intrinsic motivations of beneficiaries are activated, these beneficiaries take greater ownership of the objectives of actions: they demonstrate more lasting behavioural change. Recent research combining behavioural economics and social psychology, conducted for such projects, is opening a rich and complementary avenue to mobilise this latent human potential. Considering intrinsic motivations implies recognising the importance of the psychological dimension of any action. Research and development decision-makers and donors can and ensure their calls for projects incorporate methods to identify and activate these motivations.

International audience ; How can we design conservation and development projects that produce lasting changes? How can we increase their effectiveness and legitimacy? The classical economic incentives of environmental policies (certification, sustainable forest management, payments for environmental services, green loans, etc.) are effective in the short term, but their environmental performance is not necessarily guaranteed in the long term. However, when the intrinsic motivations of beneficiaries are activated, these beneficiaries take greater ownership of the objectives of actions: they demonstrate more lasting behavioural change. Recent research combining behavioural economics and social psychology, conducted for such projects, is opening a rich and complementary avenue to mobilise this latent human potential. Considering intrinsic motivations implies recognising the importance of the psychological dimension of any action. Research and development decision-makers and donors can and ensure their calls for projects incorporate methods to identify and activate these motivations.

In recent years, the migration of people from Myanmar into Thailand has increased tremendously. Since 2005, when the Thai government officially allowed migrant children to enroll in Thai government schools, there has been a steady increase in the number of migrant students. In such a context, it is imperative that teachers develop multicultural competence, or the knowledge, skills, and attitudes required to work with culturally diverse students. However, teachers in Thailand reported that they have not been trained in the knowledge and skills to teach in multicultural classrooms. The study has two main objectives. Firstly, it attempts to design a multicultural education training program that incorporates modules that will lead to building and strengthening teachers' multicultural competence. Secondly, it implements the training program, and measures the level of multicultural competence of teachers who received the training by comparing them to those who do not receive the training. Results revealed that teachers appraised the module about cultures of migrant students and the module about the rules and regulations in enrolling and graduating migrant students as the most useful. Results from an independent-samples t-test showed that the overall multicultural competence level of teachers who participated in the program was significantly different from those who did not participate; teachers who took part in the training demonstrated a higher level of multicultural competence compared to those who did not participate.

Context: Thailand is now facing skilled labour shortages, which has prevented the country from achieving significant economic progress. This paper examines Thailand's vocational education policy discourses from 1992 to 2014 and how such policies were discussed to build the country's skilled labour force.

Approach:This study utilised a qualitative approach, using documentation analysis as a key research method. We also used data triangulation and thematic analysis to categorise the public discourses. In order to examine the vocational education policy discourses in Thailand, secondary data such as the five NESD plans (7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, and 11th) and other government policy statements were investigated and triangulated, along with data from newspaper articles, other public documents, reports from international organisations, and academic journal articles.

Findings: Based on the findings of the study, we identified three key policy discourses regarding vocational education in Thailand during 1992-2014: (1) increasing the vocational skilled workforce, (2) the minor role of private vocational providers, and (3) collaboration between vocational providers and industry.

Conclusion: We argue that there are five key policy themes in building a vocational skilled workforce: (1) the dedication of the government in increasing the quantity of vocational skilled workforce, (2) encouraging collaboration between vocational colleges and industries, (3) fostering a greater role for private vocational providers, (4) promoting a positive reputation for vocational education, and (5) maintaining the continuity of policy implementation.

Asien gehört zu den vom Klimawandel besonders betroffenen Gebieten: Von den zehn Ländern, die von 1999 bis 2018 am meisten von Extremwetter geschädigt wurden, liegen sieben in Asien. Sehr schwer getroffen ist derzeit die Mekong-Region, die von einer Jahrhundertdürre geplagt wird. Ernteausfälle, Nahrungsmittelknappheit und Wassermangel sind nur einige Auswirkungen. Verschärft werden sie durch den Bau von Staudämmen am Oberlauf des Mekong, was oft lokale wie zwischenstaatliche Kon­flikte nach sich zieht. Daher ist es notwendig, ein nachhaltiges transnationales Wasser­management für den Mekong zu etablieren. Unter dem Gesichtspunkt einer globalen Klimapolitik sollte Deutschland sich weiterhin dafür engagieren. (Autorenreferat)

Multi-party elections and the signing of a Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement (NCA) in 2015 raised hopes in the international community of a possible settlement of Myanmar's protracted conflict and one of the world's worst protracted displacement situations (PDS) in the near future. Yet conflicts in the border areas and human rights abuses carry on, more than 600,000 Burmese continue to be displaced within Myanmar and three to five million remain in Thailand. This Working Paper examines strategies that displaced persons from Myanmar have developed striving to cope with major challenges of displacement. We observed that strategies go beyond the commonly used three durable solutions. The findings suggest that neither return nor local integration into the society of the host country is necessarily definite or are mutually exclusive. Both are merely two poles of a wide range of displaced persons' possible coping strategies, encompassing return, cyclical movements, temporary return, de jure local integration and different levels and stages of de facto local integration.

In scrutinizing whether the change of governance eradicated the causes of displacement, brought peace and laid the foundation for return, our research revealed significant flaws in Myanmar's political transition. Notwithstanding impressive achievements, conflicts persist and are likely to cause new waves of displacement. With regard to access to legal, economic, political rights, services, house, land, property and livelihoods, the situation of displaced persons (DPs) remains dire. Still, the international community promotes return and has been reducing assistance for camps in and outside of Myanmar. For internally displaced persons (IDPs) and refugees, this means that options of refuge have diminished, while the causes to flee remain. After decades of displacement, DPs have developed a set of practices such as diversifications of livelihoods, income sources, residences, and others. We argue that it is imperative for any long-term and coherent strategy that addresses protracted displacement to take those micro realities into account.

Migration is generally seen as a key process driving transformation, especially from a 'traditional agriculture' to a 'modern industrial society.' In Thailand, rural-urban migration has been evident for a long time. However, at present, a great number of the population is still earning its living in rural areas. The force of transformation was not enough to move Thailand beyond being a 'middle income country.' This paper explores the implication of migration on well-being of families and communities in the Northeast of Thailand. The empirical data for the analysis of this paper is drawn from a study of three rural villages in the Northeast of Thailand, carried out within a research project named "Personalising the Middle Income Trap." It will argue that along with the material transformation, returning migrants and villagers have re-prioritized their values. These values and material aspects become decisive factors in the choice of how to earn a living and therefore shape well-being outcomes. This study also found that the rich seem to be experiencing higher happiness after returning to their villages, while the poor do not experience subjective well-being in the same manner.

Die Territorialkonflikte im Süd- und Ostchinesischen Meer sind zu Problemen der internationalen Politik geworden. Japan und die USA verlangen von ihren westlichen Partnern mittlerweile nachdrücklich Solidarität in ihrer Auseinandersetzung mit der Volksrepublik China. Beijing wiederum nutzt immer häufiger sein Gewicht, um nicht genehme Positionierungen zum Beispiel der EU-Staaten zu verhindern. Alle Parteien, die an den Konflikten beteiligt sind, betreiben militärische Symbolpolitik mit erheblichem Eskalationspotential. Es wird noch dadurch erhöht, dass die Kontrahenten die Territorialstreitigkeiten entweder zum Lackmustest für die liberale Weltordnung erklärt haben oder (wie China) zur nationalen Schicksalsfrage. Wenn deutsche Außenpolitik die Streitgegenstände nüchtern bewertet und nicht einseitig Partei ergreift, kann sie dabei helfen, die Auseinandersetzungen zu entschärfen. Deutschland könnte sich für eine regionale Friedenskonferenz stark machen, auf der die beiden Konflikte umfassend behandelt werden. (Autorenreferat)

Myanmar's political transition of 2011 was followed by changes in the political and economic realms of society. The transition emboldened social activism, expressed as protests regarding the injustices suffered by people under the military regime. Many of these protests were related to large-scale extractive investments that had little regard for local communities and the environment. After the West lifted most of its sanctions, transnational capital actors who had been absent for the previous two decades returned to the country, many of them offering higher investment standards. In response to the "push" of public pressure and the "pull" of new investments, reformists in the Government of Myanmar (GoM) are now attempting to implement a stronger investment regulatory framework. The GoM's new demands on foreign investments to comply with higher investment standards are strengthened by Chinese state reformers' own nascent efforts to curtail the excesses of that country's state-owned enterprises globally. As a result, prominent SOEs are being pressured to adapt to the new operating environment, resulting in observable changes in investment behaviour. We conclude that reform efforts are challenged by limitations on reformist state actors' autonomy and capacity to regulate investments.

Environmental and social transformations in Jambi province, Indonesia, are inextricably interlinked. Large-scale agro-industrial development and nature conservation policies equally alienate local communities from their agricultural lands and turn land into a scarce resource. Consequently, access to agricultural land becomes increasingly contested, not only between communities and state institutions or companies but also among communities themselves. To secure or restore local 'indigenous' land rights against land grabbing and green grabbing by states and companies, indigenous land titling has become a powerful tool all over the world. Ongoing activities of indigenous land titling in Indonesia have been largely perceived as an act of justice by indigenous and land rights activists and affected communities. Yet, a challenging step towards titling is the identification of who is and who is not 'indigenous'. This highly political process creates ethnicity-based identities tied to rights and possibilities around land as a contested resource. Based on a case study of a national park in central Jambi, this paper shows that what is perceived as an act of justice against the state can also produce injustice among local communities by heavily impacting and transforming local social structures and relations. (ASEAS/GIGA)

"This article argues that the interplay of changing environmental conditions in the wake of climate change and dynamic migration systems will lead to even more clearly articulated new regional formations. The way regions perceive the risks of climate change, how they cope with and adapt to these risks and their constitution as resilient entities determines the way migration and mobility take place. We focus on the regional dimensions of climate change and broader related developmental trends such as urbanisation and will highlight this nexus for coastal regions. We present two regional case studies, Keta in Ghana and Semarang in Indonesia. Both cities have experienced floods and related environmental risks throughout their histories. The contrasting analysis of the two cases illustrates that similar environmental challenges may have very different effects on the migratory patterns." (author's abstract)

This paper will extend work originally presented in Pertierra and Turner's Locating Television (2013) to argue that the reasons for which the demise of television was prematurely assumed can be understood and corrected by critically examining the geopolitics of television scholarship. The spaces from which television has been taken seriously as a topic of investigation have enabled a neglect of empirical and theoretical research that genuinely engages with the ways in which television might be understood as variously surviving, growing, innovating and even leading the current and future global media landscapes. The paper offers two ways in which television scholars might productively re-locate their spheres of concentration to understand the diversity of television worlds today: 1) empirically, it considers the case of the Philippines where broadcast television is successful in ways that could only be dreamed of by television executives in the so-called 'world centres' of the global entertainment industry. 2) theoretically, the paper refers to complementary attempts in sociology, literary and cultural studies to offer alternatives to Europe and North America from which scholars might locate the vanguard for modernity, globalization and innovation. It is by engaging with both of these strands in concert - empirically investigating television beyond the 'usual places' in such a way that responds to the call of cultural theorists to question our very assumptions about where television studies' 'usual places' should be, that more nuanced understandings, and fewer premature declarations, might be made about what television is, and where it is going. (author's abstract)

Since assuming the presidency, Rodrigo R. Duterte has "stuck to his guns" in carrying out his campaign pledge to launch a violent anti-drug campaign. Duterte's presidency was preceded by six years of political stability and high growth under the relatively liberal and supposedly reformist administration of President Benigno "Noynoy" S. Aquino, III. What did voters find so appealing about Duterte given that drugs and criminality were not a major national concern until he launched his candidacy? Unlike previous populist politicians in the post-Marcos Philippines, Duterte's strongest support did not come from the poorest voters but rather from the elite and the middle class who most feared for their personal security. Although Aquino was widely perceived to be personally honest, his administration had become "systemically disjunctive" and vulnerable to replacement by violent illiberalism because its narrative of "good governance" had been undermined, its strategic allies were weakened, and liberal institutions discredited. Duterte is an illiberal populist who changed the prevailing political order into an illiberal one through a new law-and-order governing script, new key strategic groups (the communist left and the police), and the quick removal of remaining liberal constraints (particularly in Congress and the Supreme Court). Duterte constructed a strongman political model at the local level before "nationalising" it after his election as president. (JCSA/GIGA)