The Discourse

Digital Media, Gulf Migration Aspirations, and Masculine Identity among Educated Youth in Southern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan

ABID ULLAH — 2025-12-20

This paper presents the discussion of how digital media affects the Gulf migration desires and masculine self-identification among the educated unemployed youth in the Southern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan. A qualitative approach was used in collecting data, which consisted of 12 in-depth interviews and 6 focus group discussions with a total of 30 participants based in Karak, Bannu, and Lakki Marwat. The results indicate that unemployment puts strain on young men to assume provider roles, which results in frustration and identity stress. The social media, including WhatsApp, Tik Tok, and Facebook, amplify the desire to migrate by exposing youngsters to the success of migrants in foreign countries. Migration is perceived as an economic objective as well as a means of earning social respect and masculine status due to remittances. The findings of the study include the conclusion that a digital media influence has a significant role in the formation of aspirations, social comparison, and identity formation among the unemployed youth in the area.

Key Words: Digital media, unemployed youth, qualitative, KPK.

THE RISE OF CHINA AND ITS GLOBAL IMPACT: ECONOMIC TRANSFORMATION, GEOPOLITICS, AND SUSTAINABILITY

Khyber Khan — 2025-12-20

This study is focused on development of China as a world economy, and its multidimensional influence to the global system. At an above level, this study has a qualitative research design based on secondary data from academic literature and policy reports and international institutions measured by content analysis. A summary of the results indicates that China owes its economic transformation to a combination of open-market reforms, export-led industry and diligent state-directed strategic planning. The analysis also shows China’s rise has caused opportunities and challenges around the world. Although trade, investment and infrastructure development are given to developing countries in return for overcoming economic dependence they remain as concerns. However, in developed economies China has increased the competitiveness of industries and altered global trade. The analysis also calls attention to the rise of a more geopolitical China and how it has helped move toward a more multipolar order. Nonetheless, the environmental implications will still be substantial; China is dedicating more resources to sustainable development now than ever before. With the integrated analysis of China development and its economic impacts, geopolitical implications as well as environmental consequences, this paper adds to existing literature.

From Petrified Wood to Folk Art: A Somatic Reading of Celie’s Trauma and Reclamation in The Color Purple

Maryam Munir — 2025-12-20

This article examines the somatic experience of Celie’s journey from victim to agent, as she traverses the narrative and encounters trauma in the novel, The Color Purple by Alice Walker, concluding that it is a neurobiological and text-based negotiation of trauma. This study combines poststructuralist ideas of Catherine Belsey on gaps in the text with Cathy Caruth’s theory of “belatedness” and Bessel Van der Kolk’s theory of somatic encoding. It suggests that the healing of Celie is a process of physical reawakening, in which her journey from the dissociated images of “making herself wood” to the tactile act of sewing is similarly a process of physical healing.

Energy Intensity, Transmission Losses, and the Ecological Footprint: A Panel Study of Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan

Zahid Murad Khan — 2025-12-20

The developing South Asian countries like Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan need to grow their economies and provide energy to millions of people, but at the same time they also need to protect the environment from pollution and climate change effect. This study uses data of these three countries from 1990 to 2024 collected from the World Bank website to compare the green energy transitions. Statistical methods including correlation analysis, panel unit root tests, Pedroni cointegration, and panel regression are used to find out what factors affect the ecological footprint. The results show that renewable energy consumption significantly decreases the ecological footprint (coefficient = -0.017, p < 0.001), while energy intensity (coefficient = 0.269, p < 0.001) and GDP per capita (coefficient = 0.204, p < 0.001) increase it. Exports and electricity line losses also have positive effects on the footprint, but industry share unexpectedly has a negative effect. Unit root tests performed to check the stationarity of variables, most variables are stationary at first difference (I(1)), except electricity losses which is stationary at level I(0). A long-run relationship between the variables is confirmed by the Pedroni cointegration test. The regression model is very good fit as it explains 91% of the variation in ecological footprint. Based on these findings, it is recommended that India continue investing in renewables and energy efficiency, Pakistan reduce transmission losses and energy sector circular debt, Bangladesh expand off-grid and fluctuating solar projects. The main limitation is the small number of countries in the panel, so future research should include more South Asian nations.

Keywords: Ecological Footprint, Renewable Energy, Energy Intensity, South Asia, Panel Data, Bangladesh, India, Pakistan

Quiet Prompting under Algorithmic Governance: How Generative AI-Enabled HRM and Economic Bargaining Power Shape Discretionary Effort

Sheraz Hassan — 2025-12-20

We examine how generative AI–enabled human resource management (HRM) systems shape a subtle form of withdrawal that we call quiet prompting. Quiet prompting refers to employees’ selective reduction of discretionary effort in response to AI‐driven HR decisions. Integrating organizational justice, social exchange, and algorithmic governance perspectives, we argue that generative AI–enabled HRM (GenAI-HRM) influences quiet prompting through employees’ perceptions of algorithmic fairness, algorithmic transparency, and trust in AI-driven HRM. We further theorize that perceived economic bargaining power conditions the effect of trust on quiet prompting, such that employees who feel less able to exit their organization are especially sensitive to how they are treated by AI systems. We test our model using a three-wave time-lagged survey of 634 employees in 11 countries whose organizations had implemented at least one generative AI–based HR module. Structural equation modeling shows that GenAI-HRM is positively associated with perceived algorithmic fairness and transparency, which in turn build trust in AI-driven HRM. Higher trust is linked to lower quiet prompting, and this negative relationship is significantly stronger for employees who report low economic bargaining power. Our findings introduce quiet prompting as an AI-specific form of selective withdrawal, extend justice and trust theories to generative AI–enabled HRM, and highlight how perceived labor-market power shapes employees’ behavioural responses to algorithmic governance.

The Abraham Accords: A New Political Approach to Palestine

Qaisar Ali — 2025-12-20

The 2020 Abraham Accords fundamentally reshaped Middle Eastern geopolitics by establishing formal diplomatic relations between Israel and several Arab states—namely the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco, and Sudan—thereby dismantling the decades-old Arab consensus that had made normalization contingent upon a comprehensive resolution of the Palestinian issue. This historic breakthrough represented more than mere diplomatic recognition; it signaled a profound strategic realignment wherein individual state interests, particularly regarding security and economic development, began to supersede longstanding ideological commitments to pan-Arab solidarity and the Palestinian cause.

This analysis aims to critically examine the complex strategic motivations underlying the Abraham Accords and to assess their transformative impact on the regional order, particularly regarding how they have reconfigured traditional alliance structures and conflict dynamics across the Middle East.

The primary objective is to identify and analyze the convergence of "push and pull" factors driving this realignment—with specific focus on the perceived Iranian threat as the principal push factor, alongside the attractive forces of technological cooperation, security partnerships, and economic diversification as key pull factors—while also evaluating the long-term sustainability of this new geopolitical configuration.

The study employs an integrated multi-theoretical framework combining realist, liberal, and constructivist perspectives to provide a comprehensive understanding of the Accords, examining respectively the security calculations against Iran, the economic incentives driving cooperation, and the emerging shift toward a pragmatic regional identity that transcends traditional ideological commitments.

The research reveals that while the Accords have successfully transformed the broad Arab-Israeli conflict into a more localized Palestinian-Israeli struggle, this new status quo remains inherently fragile. The unresolved Palestinian question continues to generate popular unrest and provides strategic leverage for non-state actors, while the signatories' simultaneous hedging strategies through engagement with China and Russia, combined with the architecture's heavy dependence on U.S. mediation susceptible to domestic political volatility, collectively undermine the long-term stability of this realignment. Thus, the Accords represent not the conclusion of regional conflict but rather the beginning of a more complex and uncertain chapter in Middle Eastern international relations.