When I was young, both of my parents have to work until late night every day. If there wasn’t a maid who looked after me, my parents wouldn’t have been being succeed in their career. She was my friend ,my guardian , she spent time with me and take care of my daily life, also the house work. However, one day she told me that she has to go back to her home country to prepare for the wedding ceremony. Since then, I realized that she also has family and friends in the corner of the world. I don’t know where Philippines was, I also don’t know she also has another life somewhere outside this country.

After that, every time I saw a maid working on the street with one child, I will think who can they talk with if they are feeling homesick? Since one family need a maid is mainly because normally parents are busy and they have a child that don’t have time to take care of. Parents are normally don’t paid much attention on how she feel but just the work she had done for that day.

They are normally being low paid, one of the main reasons is the living index of their home country is lower, as getting the low paid salary in the country they are working for is being high paid compare with their own country. Being a minority group working in a country, do they have the right to enjoy the welfare provide by the country they worked for? Some of them might have worked long enough to become citizen in the country; do they have the same right as the normal citizen?

Most of the domestic labors are women, they worked for others family, doing housework that is not belong to their own family. More often they have to take care child, if they are married and have child they couldn’t even being able to take care of their own child. They are one of the minority group that we should pay more attention on to.

by Chi Lun Cheng

What did we do before Facebook? I do not even remember. Facebook has been in my life for a mere five years, and still, I cannot imagine life without it. It has become part of my daily routine, and it keeps me in touch with people. It is especially useful when I am travelling or living abroad, since it enables me to share my life across the world with people back home more easily.

The first thing you see when you type in Facebook.com is the sentence “Facebook helps you connect and share with the people in your life.” But is this really true? I usually update people about my life here in Japan by uploading pictures or simply writing a status update, and my family and friends seem to be very appreciative of this. Also, I can share my opinions and thoughts about basically whatever I want and reach out to hundreds of people simultaneously. In this sense, Facebook is genius.

It is also easy to keep up with everybody from all around the world, and I actually enjoy catching up on the lives of childhood friends that I have not seen in years. However, the conversations are often limited to the Facebook chat and rarely develop into an “irl” (in real life)/face to face meeting. Sometimes, you do not even write anything. All you have to do is press “like” and you have done your part. And sometimes, you do not even do that. Facebook enables people to snoop around and read about other people’s lives without ever saying a word to that person. Just because you are friends on Facebook does not necessarily mean that you actually communicate. Facebook makes it easier to keep in touch, that is for sure, but at what level? I would argue that Facebook lacks to offer depth to relationships. Everything is kept on the surface since Facebook often replaces physical contact, and in my opinion, conversations over the Internet can and should never be compared to meeting someone in real life and having eye contact, seeing that person’s facial expressions, body language and hearing the person’s tone of voice, and so on.

But I admit it; I am a Facebook addict. Because of this reason I have contemplated deleting my Facebook account several times, but I never seem to get around to it. I do have friends that have tried to close their accounts though. However, they usually end up pausing their accounts instead since deleting it for good seems to be an impossible task. The reason why I have not closed down my account yet is because I feel like I would miss out on so much. I get events sent to me every week, and if you are not on Facebook, you risk missing out on these events and on updates (this is known as the digital penalty). I also have a friend who never uses Facebook, and she is missing out on a lot of events and updates because of that. She does not care for technology, which makes is difficult for us to communicate and keep in touch while I am in Japan. I have only talked to her once since coming here. There is definitely a digital divide between those who have Facebook and uses technology and those who do not.
But what do you think? Is Facebook keeping us together or keeping us apart? And would you “dare” to delete your Facebook account?

by Erika Selander Edström

In my last blog post, I mentioned that my generation is looking away from problems concerning the system we live in and just lives for the fun of today.

However, this also is a very naïve approach to what’s really going on. The main issue is that even though we may want to change the ongoing situation in which huge parts of the world population live in poverty, in which our planet is destroyed by massive amount of pollution of the rivers, the air, the woods, chemicals used for industry and other unacceptable disasters. I am sure there are many young people out there who are concerned about all this and want to see a modification. So, why does nobody seriously strive for it?

The question should rather be: how should we do that?

For an easy example, if you buy food in the stores you may be aware of genetically modified vegetables and try to avoid them. But even if you do so, who tells you the company did not just mix the modified ones with a certain percentage of biologically produced ones? If you need to buy new clothes, do you have to research upon every little label to reassure they were not produced by child labor? A few years ago, the brand ‘esprit’ who claimed to ban child labor from their clothing production was convicted to actually support it!

Being part of the society makes you be part of the culprits. How can we stop being integrated in that? Demonstrating seems to have little or no effect on politics as they will just continue doing what they want to do and at worst arrest those who harass “local peace”. If we really want to be consequent about making a change that affects the system, we would be forced to step out of it and organize resistance. Who tells you that this will be successful and in the end, you’ll not just lose your job? Life is not a video game, where you can play Robin Hood for those in need and fight those with power and money. After all, this will just make you be the bad guy and exclude you from your social environment, like family, friends, and neighbors.

Maybe we live in the wrong period of time. If it were the 70ies, where ideas of freedom and love circulated, it was much easier to respond to ideologies and be part of a social movement. Nowadays, as nothing is more important than efficiency and success, it is much harder to speak up.

So what can we do about it? The most common answer is to keep things personal. We make an effort to consume consciously and make a change little by little. Protecting individual bodies by purchasing products isn’t likely to transform us into environmental activists, yet it does make a change in our live.

To peg people who actually do something with people who do not have care in the world as ignorant seems to me to be conceited. We are surrounded by helping organizations for the third world, we see so many allegedly organic food, and we think we do the right thing until we realize that we shouldn’t have judged this company for its environmental friendly cover. In the end, we cannot see the wood for the trees and end up querulous.

A change does not necessarily begin from top down. A bottom-up one, where more and more people change little by little is a good start. If we get the majority of the population of rich countries to do so, the system might eventually modify itself without a revolution.

by Julia Semineth

Back when I lived in Norway I didn’t really have any problems with immigration. The town I lived in, despite only having a population of about 2000 people, had a lot of immigrants – with many of them being from Chile. Some of my best friends growing up had parents from another country, and my mother worked as a Norwegian language teacher for foreigners. Once a year, there would be a market where they sampled food from all over the world. This enabled me to experience a lot of different cultures in a relatively small community. When I moved away to one of the bigger cities in Norway in order to start studying at the university I realized how different the situation was there. Not all the immigrants got the proper follow-up while they were learning the language, and many immigrants had problems getting jobs because of their cultural backgrounds or their lack of knowledge of the language. I also noticed that people I talked to sometimes reacted negatively to the topic of immigration. Norway is a wealthy country, and one of the reasons people against immigration usually give for not wanting more people to enter the country is “having to pay tax which is in turn given as support through the welfare system and sent back to the home country of the immigrants”, among other things. On the other hand, since immigrants sometimes have such a hard time finding jobs, what other choice do they have than to rely on the support from the state?

On the 22nd of July 2011, a bomb went off in the capital of Norway, in one of the parliament buildings. On the same day, a youth camp for the Norwegian Labor Party was attacked when a man opened fire on the attendees. Before the attack on Norway, the right-wing parties in favor for closing the borders and letting less people into the country had experienced a boost in voters, but after the attack the left-wing parties gained more support. An election that had been scheduled beforehand was to take place not long after the attack, and was carried out despite the disturbances the country had faced. The election showed less support for the parties that fought the most for less immigration. The attacker claimed he had done it in defense of the “Islamic invasion” that was about to overtake the country. This fierce stance against a different culture and immigration in turn led to harsh criticism against the right-wing parties’ previous campaigns and advertisements for shutting down the borders and not allowing more immigrants into the country.

Another case that gained a lot of attention in Norway is the writer Maria Amelie, who after writing a book about being an illegal immigrant in Norway despite having lived there for almost 10 years, was deported from the country. After the publishing of the book she was arrested and deported to Russia. This case sparked a discussion on treatment of immigrants and how their stories often went unheard, but also made Norwegians question the current laws for immigration and asylum. Some claimed the Maria Amelie-case overshadowed some of the other immigrants in more dire need of support, but in the end it also put a focus on immigration in the media. The case also led to political debates, and changes made to the rules for applying for permits for staying in the country. Following this, Maria Amelie was allowed back into Norway on a work permit in April, 2011.

The country has faced hardships recently, but I believe the recent events have made an impact on people’s views, and I think it’ll be interesting to see how Norway’s stance on immigration develops from now on.

by Sindre Berg

In centuries past, a young worker would apprentice for years, learning a craft at the feet of a master. Today, companies try to create systems that require “zero-training.” Fast food industry is one of the best examples of this. I think the shift was caused by the industrial movement. In early 19th century, people had to work with the limited technology and often required handwork that took long time to complete a task. This was basically the feature of traditional industry. However, people have been more and more impatient as the technology developed because they can do the mass production and do things much faster than the traditional manmade task. Because of this alternative technology, new types of industry came to exist and new types of business started from it and there was a significant proportional transfer from the previous industry to new types of industry and the business.

Many sociologists argue that organization and mechanization of fast food restaurants create an “interchangeable” industry. In this environment, teenagers are the best kind of employee for fast food companies. The purpose of the mechanization of workplace is to increase the “throughput” with the small number of employees. Mechanizations were designed to do jobs as fast and much as possible. Fast food companies didn’t depend on the skills or talents of the employees but the “innovative technology” that requires no training. Therefore, fast food companies basically didn’t care who are working for them and gave great importance to the mechanical systems that organize the environment which was for “mass production.” And the companies try to make the systems and instruction/direction of it as simple as possible so that anyone, especially the teenager, can easily follow it, which requires no talents or skills of the workers. Therefore, the companies can employ anyone and that’s why they can replace people easily when they got tired of it. Teenagers were targeted because the companies can hire them with fewer wages to pay because they have no experiences and skills and can reduce the labor costs. Moreover, since teenagers don’t have knowledge of society and how society works, they are easily controlled by the people in top.

Other than mechanization, fast food companies use various strategies to keep labor costs down. When U.S. experienced the end of baby-boom, the fast food companies were targeting “immigrants, the elderly and the handicapped” that were I think poor and can be hired with cheap wages and longer working time. Another strategy was to hire the crew members. The employers arrange their schedules so that they can limit the amount of work they can do and at the same time not making the overtime payment. And often the companies used some tactics to force the employees to work and control their working time. Even though the workers work for overtime, some companies cheated by just erasing the working time on the papers and force them to just work, ignoring their complaints and claims. Moreover, employers often don’t pay wages but serve food to the “minors and recent immigrants” instead of the overtime payment.

by Hirokazu Takeuchi

Reference
Schlosser, E. (2005). Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All American Meal. Harper Perennial.

When there are many news articles talking about urbanization; about young people leaving their home town to work in big cities; about only elderly left in the town and lead to depopulation in rural area. However there is some news articles keep popping out saying that there is a new trend of moving back to the rural area to farm. People who move back to the rural are not just retired elderly people, but also some young people. They give up their job also the convenient life style in big cities, while we are thinking what’s wrong with those people. Have you thought about the food that you eating everyday were grown by the farmers in rural area?

The Global food shortage is catching more attention now and this encourages young people to move back to the rural area. Food is one of the most important elements for us to maintain our daily life; especially Japan is a country that most of their foods are imported. The awareness of food safety is another reason that encourages young people to farm, many young people are interested to learn how to produce organic food and there are farmers who teaching young people how to farm in an organic way.

Life in big cities is hustle and bustle. Take typical white-collar workers as example, trying to get onto a train which is full to go to work, get on the empty train to go home every day, with long working hours, included the over-time work. Work occupies most of their time, they might have good salary, but they also have to afford the high rent and high living cost. No matter where you are going it is always crowded. Would you enjoy a life style like this? Young people who tired of the big cities life style moved out and starting a brand new life in the rural area!

Back to the origin, living in somewhere that are not surrounded by convenience store, growing your own organic food; earn money by selling the food that you grew; your life not controlled by your work anymore, conversely you got the right to control your life. I believe most of the young people moving out of the city are because they found the way of living in the rural area is enriching their life and soul.

by Chi Lun CHENG

People from all over the world can enjoy the same films, TV channels, fashions, and goods in current society. The apparent differences between nations are disappearing. To what extent do you think the disadvantages outweigh the advantages of this? Globalization offers conditions for widening international exchanges, strengthening mutual understanding between nations, expanding cultural, educational, and scientific cooperation between countries, enjoying the cultural achievements of people around the world which encourages the process of modernization and the enrichment of national culture.

However, these conditions also create the possible danger of diminishing the national culture with a negative impact on national identity. Through globalization and an open door policy, different concepts and a lowering of ethical standards, an individualistic lifestyle and exotic cultural products can easily be imported into the country. At present, modern information technology which in the main is controlled by US is hourly and intensively disseminating US ideology, way of life, culture and films across the world. Even US food is promoted so that some people consider globalization as global Americanization. In China, young people are used to wearing jeans, eating Mcdonald and watching movies from Hollywood. They are accepting American culture gradually, and sometimes they even know more about American customs than China’s. Here I come up with an example of the movie Mulan by Disney. The original theme of this Chinese traditional story is to praise Mulan’s filial piety to her father, however, in the movie the theme seems to become to tell how Mulan pursues her self-worth. This makes many Chinese teenagers confused, since the movie are representing different things from what they learn from textbook, and maybe after 20 years, Mulan’s traditional theme will be totally replace by the new one. Thus if there are more Chinese traditional subjects juggled, the true Chinese culture will disappear in the future.

During the process of economic globalization, inequality between developed and developing countries has been increasing and the gap between the rich and the poor has become wider, most of the result of globalization go to assist developed countries. Globalization does not pose equal interests and risks to all nations. Because of the rapid growth of global trade and global production system and continuous expansions of multinational corporations and their capital, the national economy of developing countries have to face more and more pressures and attacks, and the dependency to developed countries is aggrandizing. Developed countries are holding capital and advanced technologies and controlling the international economy system, so they can leave the developing countries far behind in the economic globalization process.

For these reasons, globalization is a fierce and complicated struggle in both cultural and ideological fields. We take the initiative in international economic integration but also have to take the initiative in fighting to keep our distinct culture resisting pro-foreign and cross-bred phenomena, and overcoming the psychology of preferring money over ethical values.

 by Xue Wang