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ABSTRACTNow complete, the effects of the Three Gorges Dam on rural livelihoods can be observed. This article presents the first longitudinal analysis of the livelihoods of two groups of rural households that were first surveyed in 2003, just after inundation, and again in 2011. It finds remarkable gains in income and social well‐being along with moderate improvements in food security and income equality. This study explores the livelihood strategies associated with these outcomes, namely land consolidation, agricultural specialization, livelihood diversification and migration. These strategies are discussed in the context of the dramatic changes that have taken place in the Three Gorges Resettlement Area over the last decade and across China more broadly. The article concludes that while non‐farm jobs are increasingly important, land remains an essential resource in the reconstruction of rural livelihoods, allowing rural households to respond to their drastically altered environment more effectively and at a pace of their own choosing.

At the Third Plenary of the 18th Chinese Communist Party Central Committee, the Party announced a number of rural reforms. Commentators were quick to pronounce a win for farmers' land rights. However, the broader commitment of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to deepening economic liberalization raises the question: can these reforms protect farmers' rights in the event of land acquisition? The author draws on fieldwork, recent interviews and China's documented history of land acquisition practice to identify four risks posed by these reforms: undervaluation, elite capture, exploitation and the expansion of the urban underclass. The article concludes that China's steadfast resolve to expand capitalism in rural China is undermining its attempts to secure rural property rights. (J Contemp China/GIGA)

In recent years, governments, researchers, non‐government organisations, service providers and international institutions have become increasingly concerned with how to best support the settlement of refugees in UNHCR resettlement nations. Anxieties about the formation of a refugee underclass and the intergenerational impacts of social stratification motivate such inquiries. Settlement is often viewed through either of two lenses; the biomedical frame or the social inclusion frame. These frameworks are complementary rather than exclusive. It is from this combined theoretical perspective that this paper explores the impacts of family separation on the settlement of refugees in Australia. Drawing on focus groups and in‐depth interviews across three refugee background communities in metropolitan Melbourne, the paper finds that family separation has pervasive impacts on the wellbeing of the participants and on their capacity to participate and direct their own futures. Family separation is found to be a barrier to settlement and therefore a crucial consideration for the design and provision of settlement services to people with refugee backgrounds.

In this article we bring together conceptual threads from political ecology, commodity geographies and agrarian studies to enable an inquiry into the political nature of crops. This inquiry is underpinned by the idea that crops are not just a means or a target of political projects, but can have effects through their webs of relations, and that their different capacities might mean that they may differently engage in political projects. This article examines how specialized cash crops in rural China are enrolled in state projects. We explore the cases of orange orchards and apple orchards in different locations in Hebei by detailing flows of capital and expertise, and smallholder-crop relations. Our analysis demonstrates that a political ecology of cash crops can provide insight into the politics of successive state projects that have been rolled out in China's agricultural communities. We argue that through evolving relations with smallholders, the attributes of the crops themselves, and particular market dynamics, robust smallholder-crop complexes have emerged that are currently proving resistant to the latest state project to achieve at-scale, industrialized agriculture. If we take political crops and their relations seriously in the story of contemporary agrarian change in China, we find that apple and oranges, previously with the state, can also come to act against it.

This paper explores the transnational dimension of social policy by examining the case of Indonesia, where social policy systems have shifted from community-based schemes for social protection and targeting of the poor to more centralized but broadly national coverage. Focusing on the health care system in particular, it draws on in-depth elite interviews and relevant policy documents to demonstrate how global policy diffusion pushed Indonesia towards universal health care provision. It argues that global actors, such as AusAid, WHO and various UN agencies, played an important role in this transformation, and they have done so in different ways. It further argues that this was made possible by qualitative changes in the relationship between the Indonesian government and global actors, especially AusAid, that broke away from earlier models of foreign intervention.

In the last decade, social protection has risen in prominence as a strategy to address poverty and vulnerability in developing countries (Barrientos 2011). International organizations such as the United Nations and development banks have adopted strategies and policies on social protection.1 To this end, the International Labour Organization's (ILO) role in promoting social protection floors has been particularly prominent (Deacon 2013). Less is known about the role that Overseas Development Assistance (ODA) plays in the reform of social protection. ODA typically supports the social sector in recipient countries in various ways: general budget support, funding for particular projects with social objectives or investment in infrastructure, such as schools or hospitals. However, it is in filling the gaps in the social programmes of emerging economies that ODA can be most effective. [.] By observing the PRSF we observe the actioning of many of the principles of aid effectiveness as outlined in the Paris Declaration. In its engagement with the Government of Indonesia (GoI), Australia acted as a "constructive partner" rather than a "demanding donor", which contributed to the recipient government retaining ownership over its activities. Two other principles of aid effectiveness - harmonization and alignment - were also observed. The PRSF was embedded within the Indonesian governance structures and operated in a manner that was sensitive to the political culture of the Indonesian bureaucracy. Finally, this paper suggests that two-way transformation can occur as a result of effective ODA investment in social protection reform. ; Prepared for the UNRISD project New Directions in Social Policy: Alternatives from and for the Global South