Migration and Economy

Global and Local Dynamics

Contributions by Ricardo Perez, Dolores Koenig, Jeffrey Cohen, Meltem Sancak, Peter Finke, Sasha Newell, Silvia Grigolini, Stephen Lubkemann, Robyn Eversole Edited by Lillian Trager

Publication date:

05 October 2005

Length of book:

344 pages

Publisher

AltaMira Press

ISBN-13: 9780759107755

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.

Chapter 1 Introduction: The Dynamics of Migration
Part 2 Part 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
Part 8 Part 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

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.