Suchergebnisse

The document contains a commentary on the wider issues of responsibility raised by the collapse of First Solution Money Transfer. This was a UK based private limited company which provided a money transfer service, providing expatriates the facilities to transfer money back to their family in Bangladesh. In June 2007, the company went into liquidation owing nearly 2 million pounds to the public, the majority of whom were from the Sylhet region of Bangladesh.

Prepared for an Immigration Law Practioner's Association Conference, this paper explores the way in which the religious right has taken advantage of the doubtful legitimcay of Pakistan's success regimes, both civilian and military, to engineer itself into a position where it is able to mount a constant critique of state authority. In the course of so doing it has steadily undermine the capacity of civil institutions to challege its narrow, authoritarian, and in demographic terms largely unpopular agenda. As a result members of all those groups whose agendas differ from that of the neo-fundamentalists, especially in terms of gender and religion, currently find themselves under ever more vigorous attacks, from which the properly consituted authorities are either able or willing to offer them adequate protection.

Within days of the 9/11 attacks, American authorities prepared to wage war on terror on both financial and military fronts. As the Taliban fled Kabul in the face of advancing American forces, U.S. Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill announced he was forging a global alliance through which "we are going to pursue the financiers of terrorism like they've never been pursued before". His target, however, was as shadowy as al-Qaida itself: the informal system of international money transfer known as Hawala.

No other district in Pakistan has seen a higher proportion of its population engage in transnational migration than Mirpur, and from nowhere else have a higher proportion of such migrants successfully established themselves in Britain. Yet despite the intensity of the trans-local linkages which have thereby been created, and the huge flow of remit tance capital into a district which otherwise occupies a thoroughly marginalised position on the global periphery, in no way has this served to stimulate any kind of sustainable pattern of economic development. This article sets out to place these developments in their appropriate historical, political, environmental, local and global contexts in an effort to establish how and why it is that the Mirpuris'otherwise sophisticated and suc cessful entrepreneurial capabilities have not led to more successful and sustainable outcomes in their home base. There are good reasons why the lessons that can be learned in Mirpur could well be applicable elsewhere.

This paper takes a close look at the impact of large-scale overseas emigration - and the resultant inflow of migrant remittances - on the local economy of Mirpur District in Pakistan. No other District in Pakistan has seen a higher proportion of its population engage in transnational migration than, and from nowhere else have a higher proportion of such migrants successfully established themselves in Britain. Yet despite the intensity of the trans-local linkages which have thereby been created, and the huge flow of remittance capital into a District which otherwise occupies a thoroughly marginalised position on the global periphery, in no way has this served to stimulate any kind of sustainable pattern of economic development. This article sets out to place these developments in their appropriate historical, political, environmental, local and global contexts in an effort to establish how and why it is that the Mirpuris otherwise sophisticated and successful entrepreneurial capabilities have not led to more successful and sustainable outcomes in their home base. There are good reasons why the lessons that can be learned in Mirpur could well be applicable elsewhere.

Against the background of ever greater levels of ethnic polarization between all three of Punjab's major religious traditions, and a resulting tendency for each tradition to be represented in essentialistic terms, this paper sets out to show that the historical roots of these tendencies are extremely shallow. Developing a counter-view, the paper suggests that such politically-driven understandings of the religious scene in Punjab are strongly Euro-centric in character, and argues that a greater sensitivity to the logic of popular ideas and practices, together with an awareness of the different levels at which Punjabi religion operates reveals a much higher level of overlap between the three traditions than current discourse normally allows for.

Well over half of British Pakistanis trace their origins to Mirpur District in Azad Kashmir: the narrow strip of territory along the western edge of the former princely state of Kashmir which was not incorporated into India in 1947. This article explores the social political and economic dilemmas faced by contemporary Azad Kashmiris in the light of their marginal position in Pakistan, and the benefits - and costs - of the construction of the Mangla Dam and large scale overseas migration.

This essay explores and describes the roots and development of processes of the ethno-religious polarization in Punjab between 1849 and 1991. It is also an attempt to explain the origins of the Sikh conflict.