international migration and it's relationship with migration development nexus. using special case study to illustrate the inequality of transnational migrants, especially in through polity and political point of view. the slides using EL Salvador and OP case to show the inequality and conflict and gender labor devision of transnational migration. adds knowledge on how transnational study reject the binary view about MDN.

1. PRACTICE THEORY
GLD 3153 Lecture 4
Spring 2024
Adrian Bailey
1

2. Aim & Objectives
Aim
How can practice theory improve the MDN?
Objectives
• What are the current weaknesses of the MDN?
• What is practice theory?
• What is the potential of practice theory to address
weaknesses and re-think the MDN?
2

3. Outline
1. Aim and objectives of lecture
2. Gaps
3. Practice theory turn
3.1 Principles
3.2 Potential
4. Applying practice theory
5. Evaluation
5.1 Revisit [OP]
5.2 Digital Agriculture
6. Summary 3

4. 2. Gaps
2.1 General challenges
2.2 Engagement with Transnational Studies
(TNS)
2.3 Overall summary of possible
improvements
4

5. 2.1 General challenges
MDN:
Ideology supported by research and implemented
through policy that migrants impact development,
particularly through remitting
“co-ordinated and enabling institutional and
discursive measures that promote migrant
remittances as legitimate means of social and
economic development” (Drbohlav et al 2017: 527)
5

6. Challenges and fixes
6
Progress/Challenges (after L2) Fix
How to sustain integration (UN/IOM)
and comprehensive approach?
Understand how the MDN as an
institution changes
Politicization and racialization of policy Better theory of power
Digitalization Understand threats (eg digital divide,
management) and potential (data)
Diversification of MDN Understand how the MDN as an
institution changes
Fragmentation of knowledge, no
common ground, no effective dialogue
(eg Gaia Vince)
New methods for reliable and trusted
data and evidence
Transnationalism Engagement with TNS

7. 2.2 Engagement with TNS
2.2.1 Fragmentation of knowledge
• MDN missing transnational trends eg
belonging, dependency, third space etc
• El Salvador case
– MDN policy limited by ongoing politicization and
racialization eg tap on tap off
– Digitalization and digital divide
– Remittance dependence
– Fluid belonging & loss of hope among some TPS
migrants

8. [OP] case illustrates transnational trends
1. Transnational Community [OP]
2. Dual home bases (instaneity and simultaneity)
3. Symbolic content used to imagine third space of [OP] (re-
territorializing fiestas)
4. Belonging not fixed and references both village and
Poughkeepsie and [OP]
5. Reproduction of traditional gender roles and identities
alongside possibility for dissent (wife robbing)
6. Social formations reinforcing traditions and referencing
material consumption
7. Alternative social formations emerge in opposition to TN
norms
8

9. [OP] case challenges MDN
• How to make developmental use of remittances?
• How to avoid remittance dependency?
• How to create conditions for the emergence of
more even social formations (gender, cultural
norms)?
• How to give migrants and families more
“theoretical voice” alongside account of ICT and
globalization (balance bottom up and top down)?
9

10. 2.2.2 Dialogue between MDN and TNS
limited by weak theory
• TNS was too descriptive, e.g. “hype of hybridity”
(Mitchell,1997)
• How distinct from globalization?
– Just a technological variant! (eg, TN caused by ICT)
– Evidence of cross-border mobility long time before
globalization!
– Evidence of variation in transnational activities that could not
be explained by a universal process such as globalization (eg,
China transnationalism not same as Mexican
transnationalism, Pieke et al 2004)
• TNS is a “multidiscipline” with no unifying theory
10

11. • TNS “cut and pasted” existing theories (globalization,
modernization, NELM etc) - but these assumed dualisms
• Evidence not of dualisms but both and and
– Dual home bases
– Re-territorialization
– Fluid belonging
– Both top down and bottom up and third space
• TNS did not have theories that could “follow the action”:
A global multi-sited ethnography…to ground our
understandings in everyday experience …methodological
finesse will not deliver without theoretical finesse Jan
Nederveen-Pieterse 2011: 45
11

12. 2.2.2 Dialogue between MDN and TNS
limited by narrow view of power
• Original focus on “nation-state” privileged Western
political economic power
• Missed diverse cross-cultural traditions
(eg indigenous practice across Africa and Pacific)
• Underestimated significance of military power:
The hidden hand of the market will never work
without a hidden fist. McDonald’s will never flourish
without a McDonnell Douglas Glick Schiller 2005:454
• Terrorism, religious fundamentalism, climate change point
to rising socio-cultural and ecological influence…but
theory did integrate diverse sources of power
• How was power not top down or bottom up but both and
and? 12

13. Summary: TNS engagement challenges
and fixes
13
Challenges Fix
How to understand diverse power (eg
politicization, racialization, cross-cultural
traditions)
Better theory of power
How to escape limits of binary thinking
(top down/bottom up, economic/cultural
etc)
Both and and realities
How to understand circular (cumulative)
processes (eg remittance dependence,
gendering, digital divides, loss of hope)
Better account of social change
Fragmentation of knowledge and lack of
theory that could produce evidence base
that is widely understood and trusted and
could support effective dialogue
Better methods
Unifying theory

14. 2.2.3 Overall summary of possible
improvements
14
# Improvement agenda
1 Understand social and institutional transformation
(including of the MDN)
2 Better theory of power to integrate diverse political,
economic, social, cultural, ecological, and digital
sources
3 Both and and realities
4 Better methods for mutual dialogue

15. 3. Practice theory turn
3.1 Introduction
3.2 Distinctive philosophical claims
3.3 Potential for MDN improvement
15

16. 3.1 Introduction
• Practice theory is long established and widely used
approach to social change across the social sciences (could
it unify??)
• Increasingly used to study organizational change and
development policy
“while theories of practice have their own problems, they are
nevertheless useful because they draw attention to the
symptomatic silences of existing theorisations of behavior,
agency and structure…that underpin and endorse existing –
and unsustainable – development policies”
Page and Mercer 2012: 3
16

17. What is practice theory?
17
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RPvW98ZXVPU
• Understands the social world as a dynamic mosaic
of emerging social practices, not individual
behaviors
– Contra to rational choice theory, NELM,
economic modernization theory
• Rejects binary thinking (eg capital/labor,
objective/subjective, self/society)
– Contra to dependency theory, structural
globalization theory

18. 3.2 Distinctive philosophical claims
Aspect Concerns
with
Practice theory claims Section
Ontology Theory of
existence
Process 3.2.1
Relational 3.2.2
Epistemology Theory of
knowledge
Mutual constitution of agent
practice and social structure
3.2.3
Contingency 3.2.4
Methodology Theory of
methods
Study everyday life to trace
emerging relations between
agent practices and structures
3.2.5
18

19. 3.2.1 Process ontology
Claim: Flow
Sequence/cumulative
Meaningful social change
19

20. 3.2.2 Relational ontology
Claim: No dualisms/binaries
Interdependence not partition between, for
example:
• Agents and society
• Agents and the planet
• Agents and structures
• Determinism and freedom
• Objectivity and subjectivity
• Now and then
• Now and later
• Here and there
Etc etc
20

21. 3.2.3 Mutual constitution of agent practice
and social structures
21
• Claim: practices change social structures (eg racist practice
creates racialized society)
• Claim: social structures influence practice (people more likely
to act in racist ways when society is racialized)
• Racialization is not either an individual problem or a structural
problem: but the result of their ongoing cumulative relations
• i.e., the world works in “relational” ways

22. 3.2.4 Contingency
• Claim: Social practice depends on its context
(setting)
• Context can be social, spatial, and temporal
– When/where is it appropriate to talk to stranger?
– After how many years does return migration
become impossible?
22
Right: Puente de Oro
bridge, destroyed
October 1981 during
Salvadoran civil war

23. 3.2.5 Everyday life
• Claim: everyday life is where and how to see the
emerging relations between agent practices and
structures;
• Claim: can trace how power and access to
resources affects the capacity for practice
• Practice theory uses in-depth and holistic methods
to explore objective/material (eg cash) and
symbolic (eg love, hatred) forms of power and
resource exchange
23

24. 3.3 Potential for
MDN improvement
24
# Improvement agenda Practice theory offers
1 Understand social and
institutional transformation
(including of the MDN)
Process ontology
2 Better theory of power to
integrate diverse political,
economic, social, cultural,
ecological, and digital sources
Process ontology
Relational ontology
Mutual constitution
Contingency
3 Both and and realities Relational ontology
Mutual constitution
4 Better methods for mutual
dialogue
Unifying framework
Everyday life evidence
So ….how does
practice theory
improve MDN??

25. Page and Mercer argue that practice theory
improves MDN in 6 ways:
• Context matters (eg avoid abstract globalization, consider
multiple stakeholders)
• Practices tend to endure (eg policy that avoids tap on tap off)
• Practices change via combination of everyday life activity and
top-down regulation/teaching (eg re-balance agency)
• Practices are embodied (eg grounded in real world realities and
the capacities of migrants and families to overcome, like border
walls)
• Tacit knowledge matters (eg avoid top-down policy directives)
• Practices are purposive (eg practices balance short-term and
long-term social and economic agendas)
See Page and Mercer 2012: 9 25

26. 4. Applying practice theory
How to operationalize practice theory?
4.1 Schatzkian logic
4.2 Propositions
26

27. 4.1 Schatzkian logic
• Traditional focus on social characteristics of
structures (eg social capital, Bourdieu 1977, 1990)
• Ted Schatzki (2002) adds timespace characteristics
• TNCommunities have distinctive timespaces (eg
instaneity, third space etc)
27
Recent presentation by Schatzki:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=M5Ff1XoH4YU
Other useful introductory
reviews: Everts et al 2011,
Schatzki 2011, Page and Mercer
2012, Splitter et al 2018

28. Schatzki’s additional claims
Aspect Concerns with Practice theory claims
Ontology Theory of
existence
Process
Relational
Flat (site)
Epistemology Theory of
knowledge
Mutual constitution of agent practice and
the social and timespace characteristics of
structures
Contingency
Methodology Theory of
methods
Study everyday life to trace emerging
relations between agent practices,
structures, and site of the social
28

29. • “Flat” ontology does not assume a priori levels like global/local,
East/West, North/South, internal/overseas etc
• Levels and hierarchies are categories created through practice
“it draws attention to fundamental re-configuration of relations of
power, inequality, and exploitation that are intrinsic to
globalization processes, but because of its focus on practice rather
then structure [capital/labour], does so without assuming a clear,
unified framework of centres, peripheries, semi-peripheries”
Pieke et al., 2004: 15
29

30. 4.2 Propositions
30
# Proposition
1 Social practices can be recognized through orientation, activities,
habituality, and ends
2 Practices only exist alongside the arrangements of structures they need
and shape (Practice Arrangement Bundles, PABs)
3 Activities of any given practice involve coordination with other PABs
4 Coordinating PABs calls into existence meaning-filled “sites of the
social”
5 Site meanings change orientation
Studies social change through 5 testable
propositions:

31. 31
# Proposition Example
1 Social practices can be recognized through
orientation, activities, habituality, and ends
Studying
2 Practices only exist alongside the
arrangements of structures they need and
shape (Practice Arrangement Bundles,
PABs)
Books, energy, teachers,
administrators
3 Activities of any given practice involve
coordination with other PABs
Working, socializing, professional
networking, filial duty, etc
4 Coordinating PABs calls into existence
meaning-filled “sites of the social”
Classrooms, wechat groups,
5 Site meanings change orientation and
arrangement
Learning, networking, familyhood
For example….

32. 32
Number Proposition
1 Social practices can be recognized through orientation, activities,
habituality, and ends
Orientation reflects 4 factors (PNOG)
‘Practical understanding’ is about the physical and mental
capacity for getting things done.
‘Norms’ refers to rules, social constructions, principles, legal
codes, and templates that determine actions.
‘Oughts’ refers to the feelings, acceptabilities, and ‘oughtness’
associated with practice. This includes ideologies, ethics and what
is seen as right to do.
‘General understanding’ refers to broad regimes of thought that
guide practice, including, for example, Confucianism, Catholicism,
and conspicuous consumption.

33. 33
Number Proposition
1 Social practices can be recognized through orientation, activities,
habituality, and ends
Activities are the doings and sayings of the practice

34. 34
Number Proposition
1 Social practices can be recognized through orientation, activities,
habituality, and ends
• Habituality refers to the repetitive and tacit nature of
practice, for example:
 can be undertaken without constant evaluation
 part of a tradition or daily routine
 Often seen to be done by others
• Habituality implies practice is consequential:
 has ends with outcomes needed for everyday life
 leads to meaning being created.

35. 35
Number Proposition
1 Social practices can be recognized through orientation, activities,
habituality, and ends
Ends refers to the deliberate and intended goal(s) and
target(s) of the practice (may never be achieved but
are aspirational)

36. 36
Number Proposition
2 Practices only exist alongside the arrangements of structures they need
and shape (Practice Arrangement Bundles, PABs)
• Arrangement of 4 structures is necessary to a practice (POAT):
People (eg nations, families, cities )
Organisms (eg living world)
Artefacts (materialities) (eg culture, food, guns, music,
capital, markets, symbols )
Things of nature (eg wind, oceans)
• Practices shape arrangements
• Mutual constitution of practices and arrangements referred to
as Practice Arrangement Bundle (PAB)

37. 37
Number Proposition
3 Activities of any given practice involve coordination with other PABs
Figure 1 Splitter et al (2018)

38. 38
Number Proposition
4 Coordinating PABs calls into existence meaning-filled “sites of the social”
Coordinating PABs brings sites into existence by giving them
meaning
• Social meanings (e.g., exclusion, difference,
dependence, possibility, limit, security, hybridity,
inspiration etc)
• Timespace meanings (e.g. close, far, isolated, networked,
caged, simultaneity, nomadic, getting left behind,
imminence, laying flat, permanent temporariness etc)

39. 39
Number Proposition
5 Site meanings change orientation
• The social and timespace meanings of site re-orient practices
via PNOG

40. A
P
S
P
A
B
40
#1
#2
#5
Key: AArrangements P Practices PAB Practice Arrangement Bundles S Sites
# refer to the above propositions 1-5
#4
Figure 1: Schatzkian practice framework

41. Testing these propositions
Defining practices, we argue, requires at least three
steps: providing a description of the relevant
components and how they combine #1, #2; looking at
the embeddedness of the social practices in broader
sets or bundles of practices and material
arrangements #3; and making an analysis of the
trajectory of the practice, i.e. its historical
development and its connections with other practices
#4, #5
Lamers et al (2016: 232) 41

42. 5. Evaluation
• Can we find evidence of practices in
everyday life?
• Does practice theory actually improve
MDN?
5.1 Revisit [OP]
5.2 Digital Agriculture
42

43. 5.1 Re-visit [OP]
Two objectives: (a) Can we find evidence of practices
in everyday life? (b) does practice theory improve
MDN?
Re-visit [OP] using a representation-in-relation to
analysis that reads the discussion on pages 413-5 of
“the language of [OP]” against the sociolinguistics
concept of “translanguaging practice”* (see
Canagarajah, 2011)
* For example, the use of hybrid and situational linguistic strategies for
transformative purposes 43

44. 44
# Schatzki Proposition Applied to Translanguaging
1 Social practices can be recognized through
orientation, activities, habituality, and ends
How can we recognize a
translanguaging practice?
2 Practices only exist alongside the
arrangements they need and shape (Practice
Arrangement Bundles, PABs)
What arrangements are needed by
– and shaped by – translanguaging
practice?
3 Activities of any given practice involve
coordination with other PABs
What other PABs are coordinated
with translanguaging?
4 Coordinating PABs calls into existence
meaning-filled “sites of the social”
What are the meanings of site
arising from coordination of
PABs?
5 Site meanings change orientation and
arrangement
How do site meanings change
practice?
Analysis

45. 45
# Translanguaging
proposition
1 How can we
recognize a
translanguaging
practice?
Orientation shows Practical Understanding (PNOG)
“an analysis of language we find that women’s knowledge of
Poughkeepsie, a place where they have never been, is extensive.. people
refer to Poughkeepsie with various common phrases, and others always
understand the references” {examples al otro lado, al norte, alla arriba,
tambeon subio, brinco [413]}
Activities
Sayings: hybrid forms (Pokipsi, los galerias, la main)
Doings: TN phone book “sections were not separated into town city and
state but rather ...by whichever name the family understood as the
location. Canerica, San Augustin, Oaxaca, Amenia each had their own
page” [414]
flick of head + alla
Habituality
Telephone book
Ends
Maintain connection
Maintain Catholic and Zapotec tradition across distance
1 Recognise practice

46. 46
# Translanguaging
proposition
2 What arrangements
are needed by – and
shaped by –
translanguaging
practice?
People: migration of villagers
Organisms: ??
Artefacts: ICT, VCR, internet, paper, aircraft
Things of Nature: ??
3 What other PABs are
coordinated with
translanguaging?
Connecting [411, 412]
Migrating PAB [412]
Remitting PAB [407, 412]
Mourning PAB [403, 410]
Fiesta PAB [409, 410, 415]
2 & 3 Arrangements and PAB coordination

47. 47
# Translanguaging
proposition
4 What are the
meanings of site
arising from
coordination of
PABs?
• Meanings tied to emergence of the TNC third space of [OP]:
“That these {translanguaging} words exist within the dialogue of
the village, that they are part of a daily conversation, exposes
socio-linguistically the adaptation of a manifestation of
Poughkeepsie into everyday village life” [415]
• Hybridity: (Both and and) meanings eg Pokipsi in the village as
a form of re-territorialization
• Simultaneity and instaneity: “a constant awareness of those
there” [413]
• Spatial restriction: “the community meets barriers that are
linguistic, cultural, and physical in form and which restrict”[410]
• Socio-spatial gendered restrictions:
(a) “Single women…once they have broken ground by migrating
north, risk the loss of reputation as a virgin and decrease their
opportunities for marriage within the village” [422]
(b) Upscaling of cargo also leads to rigid gender norms in [OP]
[418, 420]
4 [OP] site meanings

48. 48
# Translanguaging
proposition
5 How do site
meanings change
orientation and
arrangement?
• Emerging “enclaving” PAB: community
in Poughkeepsie remains tight knit and
substantially insular [410]
• Gendering of social-spatial arrangement
• Social change: possibility for new social
formations and “membership” PAB
[411-12]
los ausentes
los irresponables
Adventists
5 Site meanings and changing orientation and
arrangement

49. Summary of [OP] case
Objective (a) Can we find evidence of practices in
everyday life?
• Multiple PABs including translanguaging
• Emerging site [OP]
49

50. Objective (b) does practice theory improve MDN?
• MDN is invisible (is it illegitimate?)
• How to build MDN?
– Promote positive virtuous cycle
– [OP] meanings de-emphasize conspicuous consumption
PAB and enclaving PAB
– [OP] meanings emphasize equality (gender)
– Empowerment via “community of practice” with a shared
purpose across diverse stakeholders including Catholic
church, traditionalists, Poughkeepsie employers etc
50

51. 5.2 Digital agriculture
Objective: can practice theory
improve MDN?
3 year research project:
• Food security across Africa &
China
• Migration and climate change
• Best form of Sino-African
partnership for digital
agriculture?
51

52. 52
Country Rank
on
HDI
2021
% who
work in
agricult.
2021
Rank and %
who used
internet last 3
months
2021
Rank on Food
Vulnerability
Index 2021
Rank on
Ecosystem
Service
Vulnerability
Index 2021
No. of
coups
1945-
2022
TFR
2023
Year of
BRI MOU
Democr.
Republic of
Congo
179 82%
164
23%
165 126 10 5.9 2021
Liberia
178 43%
155
33%
166 148 13 4.3 2019
Mali
186 58%
153
34%
170 130 13 5.9 2019
Niger 189 75% na 189 96 10 6.9 na
Sierra
Leone
181 61% na 168 169 14 4.3 2018
Somalia 191 80% na 186 177 6 na 2015
Zimbabwe
150 69%
151
35%
135 133 4 3.6 2018
Notes/
Sources
Out of
189
UN
FAO Out of 176:
World Bank in
TheGlobal
Economy.com
Out of 189
ND-GAIN
Out of 180
ND-GAIN
Cline
(2023)
UN Nedopil
(2023)
Addresses urgent MDN challenge: food security and
ecosystem vulnerability across 7 African nations

53. Empirical focus
• MDN is Sino-African cooperation
• Key PAB is digital agriculture
• Other PABs: migration (Chinese and
African); remitting; ecological citizenship
53
Source: Fu
et al 2023

54. 54
MDN as Site of the social
Arrangement
Practise

55. 55
Concept or feature Under existing theoretical
frameworks
Re-conceptualisation under Schatzkian
practice theory
What is digital
agriculture?
Individual behavioural adaption
involving the utilization of digital
data and digital technology in
agricultural activity (eg TAM,
NAM, TPB, DIT)
(a) Routinised, recognisable and digitally
mediated agricultural practices
(b) The nexus of digitally mediated agricultural
practices, arrangements, and socio-ecologic
affordance
What is socio-
ecologic resilience?
The capacity to adapt or transform
in the face of disruptive change in
social-ecological systems that
supports human wellbeing
How orientation to any practice (including
agricultural) reflects the socio-ecological
meanings and affordances produced as PABs
are coordinated
How does
contingency
matter?
Scalar, compositional, and site
characteristics (eg positivist human
geography)
(a) Through timespace arrangements necessary
to practice
(b) Through transformation of timespace by
site meanings including socio-ecological
affordance
What are
transitions?
Exogenous and potentially
disruptive events and crises in
social and ecological systems
which require behavioural
adaptation
Endogenous aspects of spatial and temporal
dynamics
What is the MDN? Ideology underpinned by research
enacted by policy that connects
migration to development often
through remitting
Nexus of cross-border PABs recognized by its
potential for positive social, economic and
ecological change (i.e. both top down and
bottom up and third space)
Re-frames existing approaches

56. 56
Methods combine field interview
data (4, 5, 7), secondary survey data
(6), and big data (8)

57. 57
Aspect of
practice
Covariate Data source
(see above)
Doing Self-identification of farmer’s main agricultural activity as crop
farmer, livestock, blue, forest/hunting, mixed, agriecological
FAO-DIEM
Aggregate measure of yields/outputs RS
Aggregate measures of agricultural exports (volumes, value) NC, WB
Size of area under agricultural use RS
Saying Key words and phrases associated with an agricultural activity GT
Trend in key word and phrase primacy (fewer terms used indicating
more coherent identification of practice)
GT
Routinization Recent trend in aggregate measure of yield/output/area under
agricultural use (change over 5 years)
RS
Historic measure of yield/output/area under agricultural use (30
years before: surrogate for inter-generational transmission)
RS
Ends Stated intention (earn money; live in harmony with nature;
reproduce extended family)
FAO-DIEM
Practical
Understandings
Stated knowledge gap eg selling product, trading FAO-DIEM
Receive social remittances FAO-DIEM
Membership of epistemic online community SM
Social capital FAO-DIEM
Training participation FAO-DIEM
Norms Gender FAO-DIEM
Ethnicity (group) FAO-DIEM
Proximity to increasing IT utilization WB, GDELT
Young farmer success stories SM
Oughts Hunhuism SM
Receive any type of remittance from family overseas FAO-DIEM
Willing to accept the risk of an activity if it is the right thing to do FAO-DIEM
General
Understandings
Age FAO-DIEM
Education FAO-DIEM
Migration history FAO-DIEM
Demonstrates that practice theory can be
validated using variety of data sources

58. 58
Covariate Data source
Aspect of arrangement
Population Urban/rural composition RS/NC
Urbanisation rate NC
Family structure NC
Morbidity (self and family) FAO-DIEM/NC
Age composition NC
Age composition change NC
Forced migration, recency, frequency, acceleration IOM
Outmigration trends UN/HS
Family crisis event eg death, dissolution, unemployment FAO-DIEM
Population growth trend UN
Regime change (eg coup) recency, frequency, acceleration GDELT
Endemic violence against population GDELT
Food Insecurity Experience Scale (FIES) FAO-DIEM
Organisms,
Things of
Nature
Precipitation eg amount, variability, timing, trends, floods, droughts RS
Soil type, trends RS
Land use, land change trends RS
Pests and plagues impacting agriculture RS, GDELT, IS
Pandemic experience in last 10 years eg HIV-AIDS, Ebola,
Covid19
WHO, GDELT
Biodiversity index RS
Artefacts Aggregate economic remittances inbound WB
Aggregate social remittances inbound SM
Energy supply, reliability NC, IS
Irrigation availability RS
Internet connectivity WB
Household income FAO-DIEM
Area, regional income NC, WB
IT penetration WB
IT cost WB, GT, IS
IT support WB, GT, IS
Road and rail infrastructure RS
Crop storage facilities RS, IS
Sino-African cooperation activities FOCAC, IS
Agricultural extension facility FAO, NC, IS
Veterinary provision FAO, NC, IS
Banking and financial infrastructure WB, SM, IS
Seed supply IS
Government targeted support for digital agriculture IS
Site Use of phrases such as: optimistic, trust, willing to cooperate,
agentic, uncertain hope, collectivist, resilient, fatalistic, fragile,
precarious, greening, agroecologic
GT, IS

59. Summary: can practice theory improve
MDN?
Advances
– Integrate socio-ecological, population, and
political economic vulnerabilities as sources of
power that impact practice;
– Inform better Sino-African cooperation policy;
– Incorporate diverse stakeholder data on activities,
orientations, constraints, values;
– Exploit potential of digital data and methods.
59

60. 6. Summary
Review Aim & Objectives
Aim
How can practice theory improve the MDN?
Objectives
• What are the current weaknesses of the MDN?
• What is practice theory?
• What is the potential of practice theory to address
weaknesses and re-think the MDN?
60

61. What are the current weaknesses of the MDN?
61
# Improvement agenda
1 Understand social and institutional transformation
(including of the MDN)
2 Better theory of power to integrate diverse political,
economic, social, cultural, ecological, and digital
sources
3 Both and and realities
4 Better methods for mutual dialogue

62. A
P
S
P
A
B
62
#1
#2
#5
Key: AArrangements P Practices PAB Practice Arrangement Bundles S Sites
# refer to Schatzki’s propositions 1-5
#4
What is practice theory?
Schatzkian practice framework

63. What is the potential of practice theory to
address weaknesses and re-think the MDN?
63

64. “Real world” case applications further
suggest practice theory improves the
MDN by emphasizing how it:
• Becomes visible/legitimate
• Enables positive virtuous cycle of PAB
coordination, meaning, re-orientation
• Includes diverse stakeholders
• Integrates not just political economic and
sociocultural but also socioecological power
• Integrates digital data and methods.
64

65. What is the potential of practice theory to re-
think the MDN?
From seeing the MDN as
an ideology supported by research and
implemented through policy that migrants
impact development, particularly through
remitting
To seeing the MDN as
a nexus of cross-border PABs recognized by
its potential for positive social, economic and
ecologic change
65

66. Key differences:
• Focus on practice not individual behavior;
• Diverse stakeholders have “flat” agency;
• All failure is collective: not the single fault
of policy – or migrants – or researchers;
• Key issue is how to generate and keep
positive virtuous cycles (not cause-effect);
• From international and transnational to
cross-border
66

67. Rest of the course demonstrates how practice
theory improves MDN
Practice theory
improvement
agenda
TN Migration
Practice (L5)
Remitting
(L6)
Reproduction
(L7)
Family (L8) Overseas
Communities
(OCs) (L9)
Social and
institutional
transformation
Risk of less
equal gender
relations
No good
families
Global
reproduction
stratification
Fragmented
TN families
Rise of capacity of
OCs
Better theory of
power
Pastoral PAB
Europeanis-
ation PAB
Racial
discrimina
tion &
deskilling
Mother-worker
agency
Performativity
of TN family
Power of a
category
Both and and
realities
Family PAB Sending
PAB
Reproductive
labor PAB
Frontiering
PAB &
Inclusion PAB
OC as Networks of
networks
Better methods
for mutual
dialogue
GOC support
for Georgians
in diaspora
Digital
social
remitting
Intersection of
reproductive
labor PAB and
policy PAB
Family as a
process and
vibrant
encounters
Diverse citizenship
67

68. Glossary
Practice (i.e.
social practice)
Orientation guided by PNOG (Practical
Understandings, Norms, Oughts, General
Understandings)
Site (of the
social)
Ontology (flat, process, relational)
Activities
(sayings, doings)
Meaning (social, socio-spatial, socio-
temporal)
Ends Practice Arrangement Bundle (PAB)
Binaries /
dualisms
Arrangements of POAT (People, Organisms,
Artefacts, Things of nature)
Timespace Epistemology (recursive, contingent)
Habituality Unifying theory
68

69. Sources
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Bourdieu, P (1990) The logic of practice. Polity
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Drbohlav, D., Bailey, A., Lupták, M., Čermáková, D. (2017) Migrant values and social remittances across the contemporary migration-
development nexus: the case of Moldovans in Czechia. Geografie,122, 4: 526-553
Everts, J, Lahr M, and Watson M (2011) Theories of practice and geography. Erdkunde 65, 4: 323-334.
Flynn, D. (2005). New borders, new management: the dilemmas of modern immigration policies. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 28(3), 463-
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Mitchell, K. (1997). Different diasporas and the hype of hybridity. Environment and Planning D: Society and space, 15(5), 533-553.
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Cuhna, M Eds management, organizations and contemporary social theory. NY: Routledge. 69

70. Next
class
70