JOURNAL ARTICLES

2024

Informal Pandemic Precarity and Migrant Food Enterprise in South Africa During COVID-19

Jonathan Crush and Godfrey Tawodzera

In focusing on informal pandemic precarity in South Africa, this paper has three main objectives. First, it shows why the South African government’s policy response to COVID-19 increased the precarity of migrant enterprise in the urban informal sector. Second, drawing on data from our survey of informal food sector enterprises…

Urban Food (In)security and the Role of Migrant Informal Food Waste Recyclers in Delhi

Sreerupa and Tanisha Dasgupta

Urban food systems in developing countries like India are rife with inequalities that preclude food security for all. In this context, the paper examines the role played by informal workers in the ‘circular economy’ for food in improving the accessibility of food and urban food security in Delhi, India. Evidence…

Incomplete Documentation, Social Isolation, and Culinary Estrangement: Factors Affecting Food Security Among Urban Migrant Populations in Mexico

Tiana Bakić Hayden

This paper describes some of the factors that contribute to food insecurity among the growing populations of migrants who reside in Mexico City. It contributes to a growing body of literature that focuses on the relationship between migration and food security by qualitatively analyzing the specific challenges faced by migrants…

Rural-urban Transition and Food Security in India

Chetan Choithani, Abdul Jaleel CP, S. Irudaya Rajan

As a growing proportion of world’s population lives in cities and towns, food security is increasingly acquiring an urban character. The locus of food security research and policy agendas has correspondingly expanded from rural areas to include urban centres in recent years. However, the dominant discourse on urbanization-food security relationship appears to be shaped…

Food Security Among Female Migrant Workers in Kerala Returning from the Gulf Cooperation Council Countries

S. Irudaya Rajan, Arokkiaraj Heller, Abraham John

This paper seeks to enhance our comprehension of the interplay between COVID-19, international labour migration, and food security. The primary objective is to discern food security characteristics among female migrant workers (FMWs) returning to Kerala from Gulf countries, particularly under heightened social and economic uncertainties shared with male migrant workers (MMWs). This study conducted in the state of…

Exploring a Novel Approach to Enhancing Urban Food Affordability: Assessing Subsidy Policies for Food Retailers in China

Yaya Song, Zhenzhong Si, Taiyang Zhong, Jonathan Crush, Xianjin Huang

Urban food affordability is pivotal to achieving the second of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)—Zero Hunger. This paper introduces fresh evidence and innovative practices from the Global South, focusing on retailer-side strategies to address urban food affordability issues. Specifically, it investigates the impact of China’s policy on subsidizing…

Embedding Global Sustainable Development Goals in Local Agroecology Initiatives: Experiences from China

Zhenzhong Si, Danny Ning Dai, Max Lutairan Chen & Steffanie Scott

As part of sustainable agricultural innovations and the alternative food movement, agroecology provides important tools to achieve the sustainable development goals (SDGs). Yet very few existing studies have explicitly addressed their linkages. Synergies among the SDGs are often examined at the national level, overlooking nuanced opportunities revealed by small agroecology…

Experimental Urban Commons?: Re-examining Urban Community Food Gardens in Cape Town, South Africa

Tinashe P. Kanosvamhira, Alexander Follmann, and Daniel Tevera

Contemporary literature on urban agriculture often analyses urban community gardens as ‘existing’ commons with the capacity to counter neoliberal urban development and resource management practices. However, the existing literature on ‘political gardening’ generally focuses on cities in North America and Europe, despite the prevalence of urban community gardens and neoliberal…

Digital Disruptions in the South Africa–Zimbabwe Remittance Corridor During COVID-19

Jonathan Crush and Godfrey Tawodzera

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on migrant remittances has generated a great deal of confusion and debate. This article aims to test three conflicting global and local narratives about the relationship between the pandemic and remittance flows in the South Africa–Zimbabwe remittance corridor. We refer to these as remittance…

Burmese Migrant Domestic Workers’ Foodwork and Biopedagogies in Pandemic Singapore

Bittiandra Chand Somaiah, Immanuela Asa Rahadini, Brenda S.A. Yeoh, Theodora Lam, Kristel Anne Fernandez Acedera

COVID-19 not only increased food insecurity across the globe but has also given rise to pandemic-induced “biopedagogies,” a concept premised on conflating health with instructions on the “bios,” including how to live healthily, what to eat, and how much. Based on 24 qualitative interviews with low-waged migrant domestic workers (MDWs)…

Migrant Domestic Workers and Transnational Foodcare Chains in Pandemic Times

Bittiandra Chand Somaiah, Brenda S. A. Yeoh, Kristel Anne F. Acedera, Theodora Lam

In view of heightened food security issues in COVID-19 times, we employ a transnational lens to give bifocal attention to migrant women’s experiences during the pandemic, as they sought to secure access to food for themselves and for left-behind children and family members in Indonesia and the Philippines. In conjunction with the…

COVID-19, Internal Transitions and Vulnerable Citizens: Narratives of the Migrant Crisis in India during the Pandemic

Niyathi R. Krishna, P. Sivakumar, Supriya Subramani & S. Irudaya Rajan

This article illustrates how the state’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic led to an internal migrant crisis in India, making the country realise the presence of physical borders within itself. Through a narrative analysis of the chronicles of internal migrant workers and the migrant crisis published in print media during…

Wild and Indigenous Foods (WIF) and Urban Food Security in Northern Namibia

Ndeyapo Nickanor, Lawrence Kazembe, Jonathan Crush

Rapid urbanisation and food system transformation in Africa have been accompanied by growing food insecurity, reduced dietary diversity, and an epidemic of non-communicable disease. While the contribution of wild and indigenous foods (WIF) to the quality of rural household diets has been the subject of longstanding attention, research on their…

E-grocery as a New Site of Financialization? Financial Drivers of the Rise and Fall of China’s E-grocery Sector

Danny Ning Dai, Phoebe Stephens & Zhenzhong Si

During the past fve years, the e-grocery sector in China has experienced double-digit growth which accelerated at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Part of this hypergrowth was fueled by changing consumption patterns and pandemic-induced demand for contactless food delivery. However, this study highlights two other important but understudied drivers…

2023

A Imigração Africana e os Novos Espaços Urbanos no Municipio da Cidada de Maputo

Inocência Felicidade Bata Muianga and Inês Macamo Raimundo

Os estudos de migração enfatizam as causas dos movimentos populacionais, impacto demográfico e econômico e distribuição espacial dos fluxos migratórios dando menor foco aos novos espaços urbanos criados por aqueles que vieram de outros lugares dentro dos territórios africanos. O foco deste estudo são os imigrantes africanos na cidade de…

Intersections of Race, COVID-19 Pandemic, and Food Security in Black Identifying Canadian Households: A Scoping Review

Keji Mori and Elizabeth Onyango

Although studies have identified food insecurity as a racialized inequity issue disproportionately affecting Black identifying Canadians, research exploring how anti-Black racism across multiple systems create inequities including increased risk for food insecurity among African Caribbean Black identifying households in Canada, is limited. Using an intersectionality lens, this scoping review addresses…

Urban Community Gardens in Cape Town, South Africa: Navigating Land Access and Land Tenure Security

Tinashe P. Kanosvamhira and Daniel Tevera

Land tenure security continues to pose a significant challenge to the sustainability of urban community gardens in global South cities. However, a few studies have explored the mechanisms that urban gardeners employ to facilitate land access and variations in land tenure security arrangements made with land owners in South African…

Migrant Domestic Workers and the Household Division of Intimate Labour: Reconfiguring Eldercare Relations in Singapore

Brenda SA Yeoh, Jian An Liew, Elaine Lynn-Ee Ho & Shirlena Huang

As Singapore confronts escalating demands for eldercare labour in the face of rapid ageing, families are increasingly resorting to market-based, gender-normative options predicated on the care-chain migration of women to resolve familial care deficits. At the same time, given the prevalence of discourses of Asian familialism, the abdication of eldercare…

The Critical Temporalities of Serial Migration and Family Social Reproduction in Southeast Asia

Brenda SA Yeoh, Theodora Lam, Bittiandra Chand Somaiah, Kristel Anne Fernandez Acedera

The prevailing neoliberal labour migration regime in Asia is underpinned by principles of enforced transience: the overwhelming majority of migrants – particularly those seeking low-skilled, low-waged work – are admitted into host nation-states on the basis of short-term, time-bound contracts, with little or no possibility of family reunification or permanent…

Application of Item Response Theory Modelling to Measure an Aggregate Food Security Access Score

Vonai Charamba, Lawrence N. Kazembe & Ndeyapo Nickanor

Food security measurement is of paramount importance as it guides governance, policy formulation and intervention projects targeting and monitoring and evaluation. The measurement of food insecurity has proven to be a difficult task owing to the multi-dimensionality of the construct and different measurements have been developed to measure different dimensions…

New Immigrant Destinations and the Role of the Migration Industry: Moving Filipino Domestic Workers to Mainland China

Hui Chen, Yungang Liu, and Brenda SA Yeoh

In recent years, while scholarly work on new immigrant destinations (NIDs) within the United States and Europe has increased, little attention has been given the role and significance of the migration industry in promoting the emergence of NIDs. This is a particularly significant lacuna as some Asian nations are undergoing…

Re-emerging from a Hiatus: Migrants and Migration in a Post-Pandemic World

S. Irudaya Rajan

In my last editorial as the editor-in-chief of Migration and Development, titled “Migration at a Crossroads: COVID-19 and Challenges to Migration”, I wondered what the world of migration and migration corridors would look like after the world recovered from the COVID-19 pandemic (Rajan, 2020). I was confident that migration as…

The Last Straw? Experiences and Future Plans of Returned Migrants in the India-GCC Corridor

S. Irudaya Rajan, Balasubramanyam Pattathband and Hossein Tohidimehr

In this article, we explore how precise information about migrants’ working conditions in their destination countries impacts their decision to migrate again upon returning home. Using household data from Kerala and Tamil Nadu from 2020–21, we study return emigrants (REM) who returned during the first COVID-19 lockdowns in the Gulf…

Food Security, Equitable Development and South–South Migration: Towards a Research Agenda

Sujata Ramachandran, Jonathan Crush

In this Commentary, we reflect on recent policy-related and research moves to connect migration with food security.

Sustainability and Resilience in Migration Governance for a Post-pandemic World

Anna Triandafyllidou & Brenda S.A. Yeoh

This paper discusses the contradictions and tensions in the governance of international migration that the pandemic has exposed. It starts by defining the pandemic emergency as a wicked problem. Even though wicked problems usually do not have solutions, we argue that building resilience and sustainability as key features in migration…

The Nanjing Model: Comprehensive Food System Governance, Localization and Urban Food Security in China

Taiyang Zhong, Jonathan Crush, Zhenzhong Si, Steffanie Scott

Food supply localization has been extensively studied and advocated in North America and Europe, focusing on its oppositional stance to food system globalization, long food supply chains, the disconnect between producers and consumers, and a desire to reconnect urban consumers with small farmers in the hinterland of cities. The Northern…

Heterogeneity Among Merchants in Mexico City’s Municipal Markets

Susana Rosales, Tiana Hayden, Verónica Crossa

In the last decade and after nearly half a century of neglect, Mexico City’s public markets have once again made their appearance on the urban agenda, both in terms of policy and academic studies. This article, drawn on ethnographic fieldwork with merchants in three public markets, contributes to the burgeoning…

Governing for Food Security During the COVID-19 Pandemic in Wuhan and Nanjing, China

Yi-Shin Chang, Zhenzhong Si, Jonathan Crush, Steffanie Scott, Taiyang Zhong

The global COVID-19 pandemic has elicited a range of public health governance responses. One common result has been an associated disruption of food supply chains and growing urban food insecurity. Policy responses to this situation have not yet received sufficient research attention. This paper therefore focuses on the urban food…

Migración en contexto de pandemia: las respuestas políticas en el Ecuador

María Mercedes Eguiguren, Cheryl Martens, Diego Martínez Godoy

Venezuelan migration is the largest exodus in the contemporary history of Latin America, characterized by complex issues, including precarious living conditions in Venezuela. Ecuador is a main destination country for Venezuelan migration. Leading up to and during and beyond the context of the Covid-19 pandemic, Ecuador faces a socioeconomic crisis,…

Urban Food Insecurity and the Impact of China’s Affordable Food Shop (AFS) Program: A Case Study of Nanjing City

Taiyang Zhong, Jonathan Crush, Yaya Song, Zhenzhong Si, Steffanie Scott, Yuxin Peng

Food subsidies are widely implemented as part of government policies globally to mitigate food insecurity amongst the urban poor. Subsidies to retail outlets are one a type of supply-side subsidy designed to make food more affordable to low-income consumers. China’s Affordable Food Shop (AFS) program introduced by the central government…

Migrant Networks, Food Remittances, and Zimbabweans in Cape Town: A Social Media Perspective

Sean Sithole

This study examines the evolving connection between migrant networking on social media and cross-border food remittances in Southern Africa. Emerging research and academic debates have shown that social media platforms transform migration networks. But the role and link between migrant remittances and social media are generally overlooked and neglected. This…

Did Household Income Loss Have an Immediate Impact on Animal-Source Foods Consumption during the Early Stage of the COVID-19 Pandemic?

Qi Shen, Taiyang Zhong

The outbreak of COVID-19 in 2020 caused extensive impact on household income and foods consumption. However, little attention has been paid to the immediate impact of income loss on animal-source foods consumption in the early stage of the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper aims to narrow this gap, and a total…

When Food is Finance: Seeking Global Justice for Migrant Workers

Lisa Simeone, Nicola Piper, Stuart Rosewarne

The steady growth of international labour mobility has been one of the defining features of globalization. Alongside the liberalization of international trade, labour mobility has been a key dynamic propelling economic development in the new millennium. In recent years, migrant labour is increasingly regulated via temporary schemes, deepening and widening…

The Threat of COVID-19 on Food Security: A Modelling Perspective of Scenarios in the Informal Settlements in Windhoek

Ndeyapo M. Nickanor, Godfrey Tawodzera, Lawrence N. Kazembe

Due to the heterogeneity among households across locations, predicting the impacts of stay-at-home mitigation and lockdown strategies for COVID-19 control is crucial. In this study, we quantitatively assessed the effects of the Namibia government’s lockdown control measures on food insecurity in urban informal settlements with a focus on Windhoek, Namibia….

Food Insecurity and Dietary Deprivation: Migrant Households in Nairobi, Kenya

Elizabeth Opiyo Onyango, Jonathan S. Crush, Samuel Owuor

The current study focuses on food consumption and dietary diversity among internal migrant households in Kenya using data from a city-wide household survey of Nairobi conducted in 2018. The paper examined whether migrant households are more likely to experience inferior diets, low dietary diversity, and increased dietary deprivation than their…

Venezuelan Migration, COVID-19 and Food (In)Security in Urban Areas of Ecuador

Taymi Milán, Cheryl Martens

The forced migration of nearly 6 million Venezuelans is a global issue that is transforming urban contexts, particularly in Latin America. Ecuador is the third main recipient country of displaced Venezuelans. The lack of State migration policies and the deteriorating economic situation throughout the region have had significant impacts on…

COVID-19 and Urban Food Security in Ghana During the Third Wave

Elizabeth Opiyo Onyango, Bernard Owusu, Jonathan S. Crush

While the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on household food security have been documented, the intensity and forms of food insecurity in urban households in the Global South have not been adequately explored. This is despite the emerging consensus that impacts of the pandemic were more severe in urban than…

Opportunity and Survival in the Urban Informal Food Sector of Namibia

Jonathan S. Crush, Lawrence Kazembe, Ndeyapo Nickanor

Literature on participation in the informal food sector in cities of the Global South is conventionally characterized by a survivalist or opportunistic perspective. The main difference is that opportunists, in contrast to survivalists, are motivated by entrepreneurial choice rather than necessity and see opportunities for economic and social advancement in…

Impacts of Community-Level Grassroots Organizations on Household Food Security During the COVID-19 Epidemic Period in China

Yajia Liang, Taiyang Zhong

Purchasing food via community-level grassroots organizations was a new pattern of food patronage for Wuhan residents during the COVID-19 lockdown in 2020, but little attention was paid to it. The study examined the relationship between community-level grassroots organizations and household food insecurity based on an online survey of household food insecurity in…

2022

Bilateral Labor Agreements as Migration Governance Tools: An Analysis from a Gender Lens

Jenna L. Hennebry, Nicola Piper, Hari KC and Kira Williams

This article discusses BLAs as tools of global labor migration governance, with a specific focus on gender. Drawing on our global database of 582 bilateral labor migration agreements (BLAs), we investigate the extent to which these governing instruments connect and align with relevant international normative frameworks, in particular the extent…

Food Resilience and Urban Gardener Networks in Sub-Saharan Africa: What Can We Learn from the Experience of the Cape Flats in Cape Town, South Africa?

Tinashe Paul Kanosvamhira, Daniel Tevera

This paper draws on the results of a mixed-methods study that investigates whether urban gardener networks in a low-income neighbourhood in Cape Town are contributing to urban agriculture and food resilience. The findings reveal that the urban gardeners are organised into largely fragmented informal networks whose primary goal is to…

COVID-19 Pandemic: Ghana and the Geographies of Blame

Bernard Owusu, Senanu Kutor and Austin Ablo

The emergence and the rapid spread of the novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) have resulted in a global public health crisis. The debilitating social and economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on vulnerable societies has given rise to questionings, blames, and accusations about how the pandemic has been managed at the national…

Managing the Non-Integration of Transient Migrant Workers: Urban Strategies of Enclavisation and Enclosure in Singapore

Brenda S.A. Yeoh and Theodora Lam

Research on migration in arrival cities, particularly in the west, has traditionally focused on spatial formations such as ‘ethnic enclaves’ or ‘immigrant neighbourhoods’ in order to investigate questions around assimilation, integration and settlement issues relating to more permanent forms of migration. By shifting attention to the cities of migration in…

Pathways to Food Insecurity: Migration, Hukou and COVID-19 in Nanjing, China

Fei Xu, Jonathan Crush, Taiyang Zhong

The COVID-19 pandemic has issued significant challenges to food systems and the food security of migrants in cities. In China, there have been no studies to date focusing on the food security of migrants during the pandemic. To fill this gap, an online questionnaire survey of food security in Nanjing…

Insecure Infrastructures: The Affects and Effects of Violence in Mexico’s Food System

Tiana Bakić Hayden

This article puts into dialogue anthropological discussions on violence, infrastructures, food systems, and affect to argue for the importance of understanding the role of affective responses in shaping not only subjectivities or experiences of individuals but also the networks, infrastructures, and institutions in which they participate. Set in contemporary Mexico,…

Cross-Border Food Remittances and Mobile Transfers: The Experiences of Zimbabwean Migrants in Cape Town, South Africa

Sean Sithole, Daniel Tevera, Mulugeta F. Dinbabo

Mobile transfers have become a defining feature of cross-border remittance transmission in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). However, recent studies on mobile transfers have mainly focused on cash remittances and need to pay more attention to mobile food transfers. This paper addresses this research gap on mobile food transfers by examining cross-border…

Boon or Bane? Urban Food Security and Online Food Purchasing during the COVID-19 Epidemic in Nanjing, China

Yajia Liang, Taiyang Zhong, Jonathan Crush

This paper examines the relationship between the rapid growth of online food purchasing and household food security during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in China using the city of Nanjing as a case study. The paper presents the results of an online survey of 968 households in Nanjing…

Les supermarchés au Mexique et dans la Zone Métropolitaine de Mexico

Guénola Capron, Salomón González Arellano, Linda Moreno Sánchez

The article analyses the logics of expansion and spatial distribution of supermarkets at three scales: global, national (Mexico), and especially metropolitan (Mexico City), from rich to poor spaces and social categories. It seeks to understand how supermarkets, in a country like Mexico where they initially target mainly the middle class,…

The Household Food Security Implications of Disrupted Access to Basic Services in Five Cities in the Global South

Cameron McCordic, Bruce Frayne, Naomi Sunu, Clare Williamson

COVID-19 has caused significant disruptions regarding the extent to which households can access basic services and resources in cities around the world. Previous studies have indicated a predictive relationship between the consistency of resource access and food access among urban households. These investigations, however, have predominantly been isolated to Southern…

African Migrants toward Inclusive Growth in Mozambique: A case study of the city of Maputo

I M Raimundo

Migration African scholars have argued that the Migration of Africans is occurring within the continent. That Migration can either be intra-regional or inter-regional. South Africa and Northern Africa constitute the core for all African immigration flows; the so-called intra-immigration is made of migration chains such as within the Maghreb region,…

2021

Reflections on Intersectionality: A Journey Through the Worlds of Migration Research, Policy and Advocacy

Tanja Bastia, Kavita Datta, Katja Hujo, Nicola Piper, Matthew Walsham

The term ‘intersectionality’ is usually attributed to Kimberlé Crenshaw, a legal scholar, who coined the term in 1989. In this paper, we reflect on how the concept has travelled through both space and time. We trace the longer history and more complex geography of intersectional approaches rooted in grassroots women’s…

Preparing for COVID-19: Household Food Insecurity and Vulnerability to Shocks in Nairobi, Kenya

Elizabeth Opiyo Onyango, Jonathan Crush, Samuel Owuor

An understanding of the types of shocks that disrupt and negatively impact urban household food security is of critical importance to develop relevant and targeted food security emergency preparedness policies and responses, a fact magnified by the current COVID-19 pandemic. This gap is addressed by the current study which draws…

Revisiting China’s Supermarket Revolution: Complementarity and Co-Evolution between Traditional and Modern Food Outlets

Yuan Yuan, Zhenzhong Si, Taiyang Zhong, Xianjin Huang, Jonathan Crush

Like many emerging economies in the Global South, China is experiencing major transformations of its national and local food system characterized by the rise of supermarkets. There has been an ongoing debate on the relationship between supermarkets and wet markets in developing countries. Drawing on data from a city-wide supermarket…

Comprehensive Food System Planning for Urban Food Security in Nanjing, China

Taiyang Zhong, Zhenzhong Si, Steffanie Scott, Jonathan Crush, Kui Yang, Xianjin Huang

Food system planning is important to achieve the goal of “zero hunger” in the UN’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (UN, 2016). However, discussion about comprehensive planning for food security is scarce and little is known about the situation in Chinese cities. To narrow this gap, this study collected and…

Migration, Rural–Urban Connectivity, and Food Remittances in Kenya

Elizabeth Opiyo Onyango, Jonathan Crush, Samuel Owuor

This paper draws on data from a representative city-wide household food security survey of Nairobi conducted in 2017 to examine the importance of food remitting to households in contemporary Nairobi. The first section of the paper provides an overview of the urbanization and rapid growth of Nairobi, which has led…

Emergency Food Supplies and Food Security in Wuhan and Nanjing, China, During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Evidence from a Field Survey

Taiyang Zhong, Jonathan Crush, Zhenzhong Si, Steffanie Scott

Motivation Detailed empirical work on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on food security is scant. Local management of food security has received little attention. Purpose This article describes emergency food policies in Wuhan and Nanjing, China during lockdown in 2020 and their implications for household food security in the…

Food Insecurity, Dietary Patterns and Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs) in Windhoek, Namibia

Lawrence N. Kazembe, Ndeyapo Nickanor, Jonathan Crush

This paper investigates the relationship between dietary patterns and non-communicable diseases (NCDs) in Windhoek based on data from a cross-sectional random sample of 863 households. We identify three major dietary patterns: starch–sugar–oil, fruits–vegetables, and meat–fish, which explain more than 43% of the variation in food consumption. High uptake levels of…

Factors Determining Household-Level Food Insecurity During COVID-19 Epidemic: A Case of Wuhan, China

Yu Zhang, Kui Yang, Song Hou, Taiyang Zhong, Jonathan Crush

Background: In coping with the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) epidemic, cities adopted social isolation and lockdown measures; however, little is known about the impacts of these restrictions on household food security. Objective: This study provides a timely assessment of household food insecurity (HFI) in the Chinese city of Wuhan during the COVID-19…

Street Food as Infrastructure: Consumer Mobility and Food Security in Mexico City

Tiana Bakić Hayden

Street food vendors are a ubiquitous but controversial feature of Mexico City’s foodscapes; in the context of urban renewal and modernization projects, vendors are frequently portrayed as backwards, dirty, and undesirable and are targeted for removal. While most studies of such processes focus on the implications for vendors themselves, this…

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