Migration and Economy: Global and Local Dynamics

by Lillian Trager (Editor)

Overview

Trager and her coauthors focus on migration not as a single event but as a dynamic process that responds to and is shaped by broader economic, cultural and social forces. Individual essays consider issues of international and internal migration, of voluntary migration and forced movements due to civil conflicts and environmental degradation, and of macro-level forces and micro-level institutions. The authors investigate a wide variety of types of mobility, describe transnational and multilocal networks through which remittances and other flows take place; focus on migrants as active agents; and examine the impacts of ethnicity and assimilation. They offer original studies on Mexico, Puerto Rico, West Africa, Kazakstan, and Mozambique. This new volume will be a valuable resource for researchers and practitioners in development anthropology, migration studies, and international planning and policy.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780759114586
Publisher:	AltaMira Press
Publication date:	10/13/2005
Series:	Society for Economic Anthropology Monograph Series , #22
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	344
File size:	4 MB

About the Author

Lillian Trager is professor of anthropology at the University of Wisconsin, Parkside.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 Introduction: The Dynamics of Migration
Chapter 2
Chapter I. Migration, Households, and Stratification
Chapter 3 1. Unbound Households: Trajectories of Labor, Migration, and Transnational Livelihoods in (and from) Southern Puerto Rico
Chapter 4 2. Multilocality and Social Stratification in Kita, Mali
Chapter 5 3. Non-migrant Households in Oaxaca, Mexico: Why Some People Stay While Others Leave
Chapter 6 4. Migration and Risk-Taking: A Case Study from Kazakstan
Chapter 7 5. Migratory Modernity and the Cosmology of Consumption in Côte d'Ivoire
Chapter 8
Chapter II. Remittances and Beyond
Chapter 9 6. When Houses Provide More than Shelter: Analyzing the Uses of Remittances within their Socio-cultural Context
Chapter 10 7. Women Migrants and Hometown Linkages in Nigeria: Status, Economic Roles and Contributions to Community Development
Chapter 11 8. The Moral Economy of Non-Return Among Socially-Diverted Labor Migrants from Portugal and Mozambique
Chapter 12 9. Direct to the Poor Revisted: Migrant Remittances and Development Assistance

Editorial Reviews

This volume is an important addition to the literature on migration. It makes a valuable claim for the contributions of anthropology to an understanding of economic dimensions of migration. Several essays also contribute to a growing literature on the meaning and impact of return migration and remittances on sending communities. Above all else the essays in this volume are clearly written and well-grounded in rich ethnographic data from a number of places around the world.
— Caroline B. Brettell, Southern Methodist University

Anthropological Quarterly

This volume is an important addition to the literature on migration. It makes a valuable claim for the contributions of anthropology to an understanding of economic dimensions of migration. Several essays also contribute to a growing literature on the meaning and impact of return migration and remittances on sending communities. Above all else the essays in this volume are clearly written and well-grounded in rich ethnographic data from a number of places around the world.

Anthropological Quarterly - Caroline B. Brettell

This volume is a much-needed contribution to our understanding of migration dynamics. It is especially valuable for providing detailed case studies from across the globe that highlight how local contexts profoundly shape a given migrant process. It includes extremely well grounded ethnographic data from extremely diverse cases (Kazakhstan, Puerto Rico, African nations, Latin America), not just the countries we usually hear about in discussions of migration. In particular the strength of the articles on African cases add a completely new picture to migration studies, as this region is so often left out. Yet, reading the entire collection of articles illuminates ways to explore migration from a comparative perspective, and to find issues that echo cross-culturally without losing the insights gained from each case study. The volume is a genuinely new and different contribution with far-reaching implications for migration studies. Important themes revealed throughout the volume include 1) the negotiation processes between migrants and home communities - whether it's negotiation over material, social or symbolic systems, 2) the context-specific potential for beneficial outcomes to sending communities of migration and 3) the need to examine a variety of types of mobility (internal, international, long term, short term, external incentives, internal incentives, etc) in order to better grasp this profoundly important phenomenon of our contemporary world. The volume is an excellent source for researchers and scholars on recent research on migration, and will also be extremely useful in the classroom for courses on globalization, migration, economic development, and economic anthropology.

Lisa Cliggett