Migration Theory by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781317805960
Publisher: Taylor and Francis

Some scholars have addressed the conceptual distinctions between diaspora and transnational communities. Levitt (2001: 203) has suggested that “Diasporas form out of transnational communities that span sending and receiving countries and out of the real or imagined connections between migrants from a particular homeland who are scattered throughout the world. If a fiction of congregation takes hold, then a Diaspora emerges.” For an attempt at a theoretical paradigm of diasporas, see Shuval (2000). For its application to refugee studies, see Wahlbeck (2002). See also Vertovec 1997 and Butler 2001.

11 J.A. Barnes (1954) first recognized the analytical utility of the concept of social networks in his research on a Norwegian fishing community. Social networks received a good deal of attention from British social anthropologists working among urban migrants in Africa in the 1960s (Epstein 1961; Gutkind 1965; Mayer 1966; Mitchell 1971, 1974).

12 See Layton (1997) for a complete discussion of this approach within anthropology.

13 This was equally true of much historical research. Several excellent monographs focusing on immigrant women have emerged to compensate for this lack of attention (for example, Diner 1983; Friedman-Kasaba 1996; Gabaccia 1994). Most recently, anthropologists have argued that gender is an analytic category that should equally be applied to an understanding of men’s migration (Mahler and Pessar 2006). For comprehensive consideration of the theoretical role of gender in migration research across a range of disciplines see the special issue of the International Migration Review, Volume 40 (2006).

14 Examples of research that addresses how wives who remain behind manage remittances and maintain the reproductive and productive activities of the home community can be found in Connell (1984); Brettell (1986); Hammam (1986); Georges (1992); and Hondagneu-Sotelo (1992). See also Donnan and Werbner (1991).

15 See Abu-Lughod (1993) for a good example of the postmodern feminist approach.

16 For other discussions of the concept of cultural identity, see Bammer (1994); Gupta and Ferguson (1992); Rouse (1995a); Williams (1989).

17 For more thorough discussions than can be offered here see Banks (1996) and Jenkins (1997). Earlier reviews can be found in Cohen (1978), Reminick (1983), and Jenkins (1986). Cohen (1978: 384), in particular, addresses the difference between “tribe” and “ethnic,” the former characterized as isolated, primitive-atavistic, non-Western, bounded, systemic, and objectively identified; the latter characterized as non-isolated, contemporary, universally applicable, a unit in relation to others where the degree of systemic quality varies, and both objectively and subjectively identified. While the traditional/modern dichotomy underlies these differences, it is nevertheless apparent how the transfer from thinking about tribes to thinking about ethnic groups was influenced by a reconceptualization of the concept of culture.

18 In what is quite apparently a challenge to an outsider perspective and to the question of rights pursued by some political scientists, Rouse (1995a) suggests that few of these Mixtec migrants construed their problems in terms of prejudice and discrimination or by recourse to the language of rights.

19 For a very interesting approach to the role of material culture in studies of migration, see De León’s (2012) analysis of the relationship between migrants and objects that are part of the routinized and violent process of border crossing.

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